How do you win on Deity?

[sunblazer]

How do you win on Deity?

I've played two games on diety (standard-standard-pangea) and around turn 100. A super power near me declares war and I get destroyed by the blanket of death (i.e. overwhelming units).
Any tips?

(btw in Alpha Centauri on transcendent, I used to give techs away to bid my time and then back stab the AI. I can't do that here... )

 

[Slowpoke]

HULK SMASH! Or more literally horsies smash. Using hit and run, and a horse by turn 60 or so, you can survive anything but artillery. The only viable peaceful route is mass research agreements.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Starting in Civ 3, the devs started giving the AIs enough bonuses on Deity that you can't simply outbuild them. The rework of powerful Wonders/Projects like the PTS and the Datalinks also hurt human players.

You CAN outtech them if you build enough cities and run enough Scientists. You can keep up with Research Agreements. If you have a tech lead, you will slaughter units in the field.

 

[hellboy909]

Germany + Duel Pangea + Marathon speed

Worked for me.

 

[sunblazer]

Sure but what about with a standard amount of AI players?

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

Expand conservatively. Build archers for defense early on. Play diplomacy right and do not piss your neighbours.
At Diety level, AI is so agressive that they will DOW each others pretty rapidly. Capitalize on that and choose your next target and timing right.
Other then that, I usually take honor for Social policy. Pick china as my favorite civ. Beeline machinery. Then you ll get the best combo ever (before artillery )with Cho-Chuk+melee units + GG.

 

[aimlessgun]

First off, you need to figure out how to exploit the terrible military AI to the fullest. You should be able to handle ridiculous odds.

General strategy-
Early game options:

A-Horse rush
B-warrior/swordsman rush
C-plan for a peaceful game, so settler block and start trying to figure out the diplomatic landscape

If you rushed, you can choose to either keep warmongering or you can consolidate. It is probably a little easier to keep warmongering if you sword rushed, since you can just keep going towards Rifling and keep upgrading your initial troops. If you decide to consolidate, it's best to ICS.

If you chose to play peacefully, you have to keep your neighbors always in 1 of 2 states: war with someone else, or in a Pact of Cooperation. You must maintain this for the rest of the game. You must not screw up your relations with people you have a PoC with, basically meaning don't expand towards them, don't mess with their city states, don't make war on anyone. You keep AI's at war by bribing them into wars.

If you play peacefully the AI may out-tech you (the margin depends on the game), but they are so bad at winning the game it won't matter, you'll have plenty of time to pull off a win.

If you have any sort of defensive chokepoint to your lands it doesn't really matter what you do, just slaughter the AI at the chokepoint until you figure out how you want to win.

 

[sunblazer]

Thanks Aimlessgun (big fan btw, Re: AI posts) and Cow.

I'm ok in a fight. It was hilarious last night, I decided to reload my Japanese game 20-30 turns before the DoW with England. This time I was prepared. Elizabeth first sent archers and warriors, then transitioned into crossbowmen and longbow men, then finally into musket men before my capital got taken.

It was funny because I'd taken out all of her melee units and none of her archers/crossbow men could advance on my capital, resulting in a sea of a dozen crossbowmen milling around outside my city gates doing nothing. It also worked to my advantage since warriors/spearmen had to run around the crossbow men to get to the capital. At one stage it looked like a replay of Lord of The Rings (Two Towers) - "Legolas! Take him down! Shoot him!" as I was desperately bombarding all incoming melee units with my catapult as a single hit would have been the death of me.

The war had dragged out for so long that, at the beginning, where I found myself far to the south of the English Empire; before I died, I was right smack in the middle of it, surrounded by English cities - like a little Japanese white cancer in a sea of English red.

Elizabeth was so strong that halfway through the war she declared on Darious and was fighting on 2 fronts - winning against me and him.

I'll start another game and see how it goes with your help.
btw, has anyone here played Alpha Centauri?

 

[DonChipotle]

I'd like to add that you should check in periodically on which AI's can be bribed to war on other AI's. Usually the AI with the largest army in demographics will DoW anyone else for 100-200 gold. This can be a great way to keep them busy, keep their army sizes from getting out of control, and keep them off your back. I find when the AI's have a nice world war every once in a while their "carpets of doom" are much more sparse.

In a recent game, I bribed Monty to attack Oda, and when Oda became vulnerable I attacked him. Worked great. Monty declared on me after that, but by then Oda was no longer a threat. So I only had to deal with one AI at a time.