How do you cope with the AI's massive science lead in domination deity games

[Bro]

I think this is the biggest problem I currently have in domination games on deity. For example lets look at the last game. I was China and I had Greece and Japan near me. I found a natural wonder after a couple of turns and I thought I'll rush a Stonehenge for the Crusader and/or Defender of the Faith. I managed to pull it off just in time when I was dowed by Greece. I had to go for the Defender of the Faith and it worked well, my Archers were destroying the greek army inside my cultural borders and after that I quickly started to take down their cities with Archers and Swordmen. He never asked for a peace so I had to conquer his whole nation and at this point it was about turn 80ish. One of the problem was that I had only one iron and one horses near me so I needed to build an Encampment to produce my units. Now at some point Japan was sending his Apostles towards me so I needed to build this Holy Site with a Shrine and a Temple to get Inquisitors and was also racing for the Crusader belief so I could have the +10 strength against him at some point.

One of the problem was that Greece had build only Holy Sites and Theater Squares so I couldn't steal any Commercial Hubs or Campuses from him. At about turn 90 I was ready to take on Japan with the full force of my army, only to notice he already had Knights and Crossbowmen while I only had Archers, Horsemen and Swordmen. This was alright due to the vastly experienced army I had with loads of upgrades and I took his first city with ease. But when I started moving towards his next city, with a couple of Knights at this time he already had Cavalry, Field Cannons and Musketmen. His cities were now near strength 80 while my army was only near the 60 strength mark.

So the question is, how do you cope with this in your domination games?

 

[Victoria]

By not using your stratgey.
You rushed Stonehenge instead of rushing slinger/archers
At Deity you are way behind at the start, every turn you delay catching up with them is a turn they get much further ahead of you
You catch up by expanding, taking cities, building a city design better than just farms and the odd district, using your cards well.
Building Stonehenge is not in the list, all is not lost but you made your job a lot harder.
So you built stonehenge and took one civ, you are probably too behind to try another (I normally get 1.5 civs before I back off). At this stage you cannot take cities so you expand, build well and use cards well.
At prince you can do pretty much anything once you have a grasp, at emporer you have some limitations and need to start practising some efficiencies. At deity you just should not do some things of if you do like china you have a harder job. You do have 4 build builders and so thats an advantage over the AI, attacking cities you have no civ advantage. Seize the moment, build well and then go again.

 

[Bro]

By not using your stratgey.
You rushed Stonehenge instead of rushing slinger/archers
At Deity you are way behind at the start, every turn you delay catching up with them is a turn they get much further ahead of you
You catch up by expanding, taking cities, building a city design better than just farms and the odd district, using your cards well.
Building Stonehenge is not in the list, all is not lost but you made your job a lot harder.
So you built stonehenge and took one civ, you are probably too behind to try another (I normally get 1.5 civs before I back off). At this stage you cannot take cities so you expand, build well and use cards well.
At prince you can do pretty much anything once you have a grasp, at emporer you have some limitations and need to start practising some efficiencies. At deity you just should not do some things of if you do like china you have a harder job. You do have 4 build builders and so thats an advantage over the AI, attacking cities you have no civ advantage. Seize the moment, build well and then go again.

Well you need to adapt to the situation. I figured that I had 2 warmongering AIs right next to me. I could have propably got like 3 units more untill I was dowed and I don't know would those made a difference against Greece at that point.

 

[Victoria]

Yup adaption is important in civ6, which makes it potentially a great game.
I do not know if they would have helped, quite likely. Just trying to explain logically why you fell behind.

 

[jeremy savarese]

To answer your question: How do you keep up with the science deficit?

I don't, I usually catch up in science around turn 200-220, and this happens as a result of conquering a ton of cities (I aim for roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the entire map.) Usually if I haven't achieved this, I fall behind and lose. I typically make a massive army as early as possible and don't worry about my economy at all until it starts becoming hard to conquer cities.

There are probably some people who are really good at micromanaging cities and don't take this to the extreme like I do, but I've found this to be a consistent way to win on deity.

 

[Japper007]

Generally you just abuse the AI's poor tactical management to have your units punch above their weight. I've taken out tanks with cavalry several times. Just cycle out units and think about your moves carefully.

The AI also can't handle submarines, it doesn't scout for them so you can just bomb a cities defenses down at one or two points per turn, do it with a few of them that you level to wolfpack (or whatever the fire and retreat promotion is called) and you can blitz any city no matter the defenses, then capture it with an ironclad or embarked unit. The tech for subs is really easy to bee-line, and always nessesary anyways because it's the one that also gives you power plants.

3 range units are the bane of the AI's existance, because they can't counteract them effectively, just focus fire their units to death as they mill around trying to avoid the fire and then move on their cities.

Also never stop a war, even one that's going badly, as long as you kill a lot of AI units they'll get war weariness rebels and collapse while you just shoot your own war weariness rebels and their units with city bombardment (AI still cant take cities with walls, at all).

 

[sa1vy]

I agree with everything Victoria said. Stonehenge isn't really that great unless you are going for a religious victory. Otherwise, having a religion can provide some somewhat beneficial bonuses, but it's nothing really great. I guess you'll make it harder for another civ to win a religious victory, but I've yet to see any civ convert more than 3/8 civs (besides myself, of course), even on deity. Maybe I've just had really passive religious opponents so far... But religion really is pretty underpowered. Your faith that you would spend on spreading it can be much better spent on great people, or buying units if you go theocracy for some reason... Actually, theocracy isn't an awful an idea if you have lots of faith income from holy sites (that you most likely conquered). You can build a pretty powerful army pretty cheaply and quickly.

I find building a campus as my first district to be very helpful for just about any victory type (besides religion). I think after you're done building your initial army and then 1-2 settlers, start on a campus. It's really important. Of course, right when you finish writing you should immediately switch production to campuses in all your cities, just to place it and lock in the cost. If it's inconvenient to finish it at that time, you can always switch back to whatever you were on; the production cost is the same once you start it.

I think early machinery is helpful for many things. One, it's helpful for your army, obviously. Two, it leads directly to Printing. This is helpful for culture victory because it doubles tourism from great works of writing. It also unlocks the Forbidden City. This is a wonder that is actually pretty easy to secure. I think I got it all 6 deity games I tried for it. This is probably because I more or less beelined for it, but even so, I think it's pretty doable. It allows a lot more flexibility to any government, and can help any victory type a lot, especially science since you're culture will be lagging. The +5 culture isn't huge, but also helps for SV.

So domination, you're going to need lots of money, so lots of commercial hubs, but science is also extremely important. I'd build campuses first in my first 5 or so cities then commercial hubs, then in cities after that, commercial hubs into campuses. After printing, continue running along the bottom of the tech tree for field cannons, which should be pretty OP with your upgrades. I don't really have more domination advice for after that because I usually get bored of the combat around then, and I just pursue a lazy culture victory.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

You need to plan ahead and switch between focusing on conquest and developing what you have. You choose military tech goals where you will start a conquest phase. You develop your empire to tech towards those goals as fast as possible. You prepare to get an army up as fast as possible when you get there (by pre-building earlier units and upgrading them en-mass), then you estimate when your units will be obsolete and you stop producing the units long before that time. (Build units with a plan for what the are to conquer and dont build a unit if you dont think it will be a significant contribution to conquering multiple cities.).

You may for example conquer 1 neighbour with archers and warriors. Then after producing say a dozen ancient units, you swich to building up your empire and have a half a dozen horses to upgrade to knights when you get to chivalry. If you think knights are not going to be able to conquer the world, you again get only as many as you can put to good use, and start developing and teching to the next significant military tech, allong the way probably upgrading your archers to xbows to help the nights. If it seems you cant reach a tech in time for it to be significant on the world stage, just focus more on long term development and aim for a later one.

 

[Victoria]

In another thread they were talking about the real start position earth map and how hard it would be for Vicky on deity. I gave it a go tonight and at turn 150 its as good as won, I can even still change my victory condition of need be. (.sav in other thread)

That map has England stand on a crappy little island anyone would restart from normally. ... and all I have built on it is pretty much 2 harbours, 2 campuses and a commercial.
To answer the question of this post as best as possible I would say that normally just efficient play will do but the more restricted you are, like in the case above, the more you need campuses just to keep you close enough until you grow. If you want to be less efficient (mess around with stonehenge) you will need some good campuses later to catch up... and growth, and good build/play.

I also do not micromanage but I do keep my homecities building... just not granaries.. they get unhappy doing that. (I guess no-one likes putting their granny in a home)

 

[Chibisuke]

Victoria gave some good advice there. I also mostly agree with what everyone else said except for one thing. You DO want to end wars, but you just want to do it when you can extract the maximum benefit.

Something that has been game changing for me in improving my Deity play is to take more advantage of the AI's bonuses and turn them to your own benefit.

For example, say you start off next to France (as I did in my last game). First thing I do is send my warrior over to them and have him camp out near their capital. Assuming that I do this early enough, at some point she will send out a settler. 9 times out of 10, that settler is not escorted all the way to its destination. I figure out where that settler is going, position my warrior so that he can't be killed off right away by France's troops, then declare war and steal the settler. Now I have a second city early in the game, which can make a huge difference down the line.

Next thing, France will send its troops to try and kill me. Well, I have built a bunch of slingers so I destroy all of their troops. Next I upgrade my slingers to archers and march on their capital. By now, they might have gotten another settler so let's say they have 3 cities. I will take over the capital and one city, and leave them with 1 remaining city. Why do I leave them with a remaining city? Because now I can do a peace deal where France gives me all of its Gold in the treasury, all of its Gold Per Turn and any other stuff it might have. Because AI gets such huge bonuses at Deity, it is likely that even with only one city France is still making a decent amount of gold. Now all of that gold is mine.

What do I do with that gold? There are many options, but most likely it will go to upgrading my archers to Xbows. (Although if I got a ton of gold from them I might use some of it to buy a granary in my capital.)

Also, usually I will hard build one settler early on, possibly after i build my first or second slinger. This depends on the circumstances, but usually that helps a lot. Assuming I did that, I now have 3 cities that I settled (since I stole a settler from France) and 2 cities I captured from France, including their capital. So I have 5 cities, and its probably like turn 50 or 60. Now I might have turned on the social policy that speeds up settlers. At this point, I would probably be finishing building campuses in all of the cities that I can build them. Then I would start building settlers in capital and more army in other cities. Crank out maybe 3-4 more troops, then switch to building commercial districts in any city I can.

In the meantime, if I have another neighbor who is still weak enough, my army is taking them over. If they are too strong though, by now I am probably upgrading all my archers to Xbows and warriors to swordsmen. That should be enough to take out another civ if I couldn't do it earlier. That civ probably had like 6 cities. So I take 5 of them, leave them 1, and give a peace deal where they give me all their gold and luxuries. At that time, I probably built 2 more settlers. So now after I settle those and take 5 cities from other neighbor civ, I now have 12 cities and all of their gold. At some point in there I may have built 3 or 4 heavy charriots and upgraded them to knights as well. Depends on circumstances.

By this time, I am probably catching up to the leading civs in tech. Maybe it is somewhere between turn 100 and turn 150. I start focusing more on development, but still have a couple cities that are building settlers (if there is still good space left) or troops. Next plan of attack is to upgrade my swordsmen to musketeers before declaring war on the next closest civ. Also, I built at least 1 battering ram and that + musketeers allows me to take over another civ. After that, I am probably the tech leader and i'm pretty much set to take over the world.

This is one way you could plot things out in Deity. I think in most cases, it will go something like this. You are constantly planning your next take over. Someone posted a thread before on "timing attacks." This is important. Every time you take over another civ, it will likely be right after you upgraded a whole class of your army to the next level and that civ is now helpless to defend against them.

(1) slingers to archers
(2) warriors to swordsmen
(3) charriots to knights
(4) archers to xbows
(4) swordsmen to musketeers

You want to have a decent number of the lower tech unit built and ready to upgrade. Time your discovery of that tech for the exact moment before you want to attack, then grab it, upgrade your units, and rush the AI civ.

Then, once you have taken almost all of their cities, give them peace and force them to give you EVERYTHING they have. Then you use all that stuff to prepare for your next attack on someone else. Rinse repeat.

 

[Victoria]

Also never stop a war

You DO want to end wars, but you just want to do it when you can extract the maximum benefit.

War for me is primarily getting the capital, also freeing city states. I loose interest in a civ after their capital is down but will swap cities for good luxuries.
I will also stop when I know its going to go badly or too long. A rest and refit can be great change of pace, clears your head and round 2 feels good.

 

[sa1vy]

For example, say you start off next to France (as I did in my last game). First thing I do is send my warrior over to them and have him camp out near their capital. Assuming that I do this early enough, at some point she will send out a settler. 9 times out of 10, that settler is not escorted all the way to its destination. I figure out where that settler is going, position my warrior so that he can't be killed off right away by France's troops, then declare war and steal the settler. Now I have a second city early in the game, which can make a huge difference down the line.

I LOVE starting next to France. They're seriously the biggest pushovers. No offense to any French people here, just the AI is a big pushover. One game I stole a settler, took a city, then she built the pyramids. ??? Really?? I took over a quarter of your empire, and you think NOW is a good time to build the pyramids. Classic AI logic. This was back in November iirc, so I think it's improved a bit since then. But that series of decisions was just SO bad. I thought they were going to fix unescorted settlers...

War for me is primarily getting the capital, also freeing city states. I loose interest in a civ after their capital is down but will swap cities for good luxuries.
I will also stop when I know its going to go badly or too long. A rest and refit can be great change of pace, clears your head and round 2 feels good.

Pretty much the same for me. If an enemy only has 1 or 2 cities left, but they look really hard to take, I'll just stop. I could win, but it would be a pyrrhic victory, and I'd lose too many troops. I think trading cities is better for Victoria than most other civs, though.

 

[gimper42]

I try to build a campus as my first district when I play Deity. And hope I get lucky when I capture nearby cities and have some campuses there. If I build 5 cities I try to have campuses in at least 3 of them. I rarely have a problem gaining and keeping the tech lead by the industrial era unless Gilgamesh is doing well.

I never try for a religion straight away on Deity. Sometimes I can eek out the final Prophet if I conquer a civ that has already built enough Holy Sites to have earned their own Prophet. Rarely I can earn that final Prophet on my own. It's not really worth trying for it unless you have a couple of spare build queues lying around.

 

[MyOtherName]

Really?? I took over a quarter of your empire, and you think NOW is a good time to build the pyramids. Classic AI logic.

Why do you call it AI logic?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/its-boring.610749/page-3#post-14660792

Reminds me of this XKCD:

https://www.xkcd.com/385/

 

[Bro]

All of you should really try the religious start on deity domination, the prophet is easy to get if you find a natural wonder in the beginning. Crusader is awesome mixed up with missionaries. In one deity game I had Kongo as my neighbour and he was so happy to see my religious units converting his cities. Only to be swarmed with my troops a couple of turns later!

 

[Victoria]

I'll bite, why the natural woder?

 

[gimper42]

Presumably for the very early boost to Astrology.

I've had situations where I spawn almost on top of a natural wonder several times.So far, it has not made a rush to religion look sane or appealing.

 

[Victoria]

Ahhh, thanks... yeah I can often find a NW in about 10-15 turns but getting it early enough.
RV on deity is just not fun or really a challenge IMO.

TBH the best challenge I have had in a long time was yesterday with the earth true start getting Victoria to work

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Crusader might be good (and I've personally seen it too), but for me religion is a bonus. I don't weep if I don't get one, though I love Crusader/Defender of the Faith if I manage to capture enough Holy Sites to secure a religion.

 

[gimper42]

Crusade looks good on paper, but I prefer to spend faith on military units. Flipping enemy cities, even while at peace, consumes a lot of resources for what usually amounts to a very short window of payout. Conversions usually take place on the front lines of a religious war, which means there are going to be more enemy religious units coming along soon to try to flip that city back. I could spend a lot of faith on Apostles and Inquisitors. Sure, I could do that. Or I could buy musketmen 1:1 instead. That's a no brainer if you're trying to for domination.