How to beat deity?

[nitedemon]

I mean without using the schytia horse selling cheat or setting up a two person map with Congo and only have religious victory enabled. The AI seems to get so much bonus and before I get my ancient wall up, I am already stomped to death. And do you just need to forget about founding your own religion on Diety? Help, please ...

 

[slowcar]

The question is a bit overly broad for such a complex game, so i would say: Learn to play the game, work your way up from a difficulty you are winning.

 

[ilker]

If you prepare your defense for the first assault, which there will be for sure, you can outmatch the AI in Deity with much less problems than CiV. However, I just abandoned one very good Deity start with Spain since I am trying to pursuit a religious victory and in Deity it is almost impossible to get great prophet, or at least both focus on that and defense at the same time.

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

Religion? Fuhgeddaboudit.

I can always found one, at the cost of 15 turns for a holy site and prayers. Then armies of AI apostles arrive to cleanse the heresy, or the barbarian hordes or attacking legions overrun my cities.

I beat the deity AI to Mars after I gave up on religion and wonders, focused first on rushing an army of 6 archers, winning the early war, then settling densely packed cities, then developing trade and production, and finally catching up in culture and science.

 

[Acken]

In that order :
Make army. Kill the agressive army and or barbs.
Capture settlers if you can and want.
Expand massively through conquest and settlers. Horsemen should be enough to kill one AI or two.
Build commercial and industrial.

Finish however you want. No exploit required. Wont really work for a religious victory though unless youre saladin maybe.

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

We've already reduced winning on deity to a formula, less than a week after release.

What's the next difficulty up from deity?

 

[King Jason]

For real though - the only thing you need to worry about on Deity is the initial rush. If you survive it and then manage your empire properly (Industrial overlap, interior trade routes, etc) you will eventually catch up and surpass the A.I. and there's nothing they can do to stop you.

I guess religious victories can sneak up on you - my last Science win I ignored religion entirely, when I checked the stats a few turns before winning I had noticed that Hojo had 5/6 civs converted.

Also, religious wins are easy if you snuff out the heathens are the start of the game. Especially if you get one of the ultra faith-generating pantheons.

Spoiler :

Taken a few turns before the vic. I only needed 3 cities. Admittedly, I was in a stupid defensible position. Anyway, Germany was one of the other religious founders, so his was dead almost immediately - sumeria went down next. The only one that put up any fight was England but I had already convered the entire world by the time I made it over to her. No exploits required. I delayed the victory so I could become Suzerain of Zanzibar for the achievement.

One thing for me, that I think is a testament to how much fun this game is on a fundamental level - despite the observable shortcomings - is one of the biggest complaints I had about civ5 was how easy it was. Personally, I think civ6 is even easier... yet I barely care because I think it's really fun to play. City planning is a fun aspect.

Russia isn't necessary for the above to work, I did the same thing with a Greece using the Desert Pantheon.

 

[Furycrab]

One thing for me, that I think is a testament to how much fun this game is on a fundamental level - despite the observable shortcomings - is one of the biggest complaints I had about civ5 was how easy it was. Personally, I think civ6 is even easier... yet I barely care because I think it's really fun to play. City planning is a fun aspect.

That many more years of dissecting the gradually improving AI does help make you better at 6 I feel.

Personally I've focused my time looking at build orders, and I'm just surprised at how much depth there is to find. I genuinely feel stupid (although getting smarter), but I'm still having fun.

It's all the little things... Really has you playing the map. Looking at what Great People are available or planning districts several turns ahead.

Only thing that kinda annoys me since I'm trying to theorycraft things is running into things that the game tries really really really hard to not make it impossible to standardize all but the most basic of rushes. Like almost always something doesn't flow right. For example... When you bump into a game where you can't find a Natural wonder, or Continent, or even just 3 different Barbs to kill (it happens). Like it's not a bad thing, but damn it drives me up walls sometimes.

It's cool in that every game is a puzzle, but let me get out of the first 50 turns before I need to bring radical reordering.

 

[Hans Tork]

Acken and others have already provided the best tips but anyway here is my flowchart for Deity wins.(I won both of my deity games with Scythia and Gorgo using these general strategy.)
Early BO:Scout,Slingerx5,Monument,Granary,Archers till decent army is built.(An army of 15 archers can take out about 2-3 civs till T80-T95).
Use the early slinger army to clear barbs and DOW your neighbour if you see unguarded settlers or workers. In any case by T35 you should DOW your closest neighbour and try to eliminate him. You need to grab his cities to get science and culture.
Do not bother with builders/settlers. You may build one settler if there is a very good spot but steal the rest from the AI.
Meanwhile try to beeline Archery and then Machinery for Crosswbows. Upgrade to archers(way too OP) .By turn 60 you should be done with your first AI victim. Recoup for a few turns and the DOW your next neigbour/closest AI. Your cities should all be building archers/xbows. Later after you have a decent army build up campuses and commercial hubs. The xbow army can easily last till T180. If you are still in doubt throw in a couple of knights and catapults and you are good to go.
Next try to beeline nuclear device and blast the remaining few spamming/annoying AIs to death if you have not won already.(Usually not needed in my deity experience.)

Other things to note is prioritize commercial and also industrial hubs and keep all/majority of cities you have conquered. Civ 6 is all about ICS. Even with 25 cities I hardly noticed rebellions. Currently amenities is just a number and even with 15 odd cities you can easily get your cap to pop 12 and another city to pop 11. Also 150 science is decent enough to win you the game though with rapid expansion you would end up having 200-300 science.

Also would like to mention that without walls any 6 pop city can fall to 5 archers easily in 2-3 turns. If you are finding walls and taking losses then use catapults but place them behind the archers or melee units.

Finally IMHO deity AI in CIv 6 is a complete joke compared to Civ 5 AI.(played and won a lot of deity games in Civ 5 but still find the Civ 5 AI to be challenging) .In Civ 6 domination victory is way too easy if you are aggressive from the get go.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Also, religious wins are easy if you snuff out the heathens are the start of the game. Especially if you get one of the ultra faith-generating pantheons.

Funny. I'm trying to get a deity religious victory with Russia but i really have big troubles converting the AIs

...

because i can't maneuver my apostles through their "carpets of shame"
I'm easily pumping 200 faith per turn, have plenty of apostles and killed plenty of theirs as they were trying to move in my lands, but getting next to their cities is another story as every single tile is filled with warriors and spearmen. I only managed to wipe Gandhi's religion so far (t162 like in your screenshot) and Pericles is already in Modern era (with only 3 cities)

 

[Fluphen Azine]

It is kinda hard to expand on the simple strategy that Acken has posted. I recently just had a game where I was close to Germany. Before turn ten I stole a settler of his and had 4 archers max and a warrior and it was enough to take his capital around turn 25 or so. I decided to train my units on his last city for XP and after awhile I just took it. To the North of me Saladin and Egypt had a nice war. I built more troops and worked my way up and declared on both of them. I wanted Saladin since he hardly had any army left and cities were empty but he offered a decent peace deal and Egypt had built the Pyramids so I took an Expo and her Capital and all her goodies and another city that was built up pretty nice. Peace with her and back to war with Saladin where I took an Expo and his Capital and another monster peace deal. I hardly worried about any districts or buildings. I did buy and build things like monuments, granaries, and water mills. I put a Science District up in my Capital and bought a library. It just doesn't seem like it matters if you have any buildings or not. It is pretty easy to get your boosts with Eurekas and it isn't hard to maintain the cost of a large army. I really don't see much strategy or Diplomacy involved for Deity. You just build army and roll. Maybe I am wrong but I have to agree so far that Deity AI for Domination is far easier compared to Civ V at the time being. I haven't tried for anything else and I can only imagine the Pain in the A--- a Religious Victory would take if you don't use War as your friend.

 

[stormtrooper412]

In that order :
Make army. Kill the agressive army and or barbs.
Capture settlers if you can and want.
Expand massively through conquest and settlers. Horsemen should be enough to kill one AI or two.
Build commercial and industrial.

Finish however you want. No exploit required. Wont really work for a religious victory though unless youre saladin maybe.

That's how my Emperor games work, I was sure it wouldn't work on Deity but maybe that was just me

 

[Ryika]

That's how my Emperor games work, I was sure it wouldn't work on Deity but maybe that was just me

There isn't really that much of a difference between the two difficulties other than the strength of the initial assault that you have to withstand, and the number of walls you'll find while conquering. Deity's armies are more numerous in general, but it's still mostly basic units which are just fodder for horsemen for the most part.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

gain experience in a game. Unless you are an exceptional civ expert and now spending 20 hours a day to study every bit of theory about the game you can find, you are not supposed to beat deity in the first week after its release.

I do consider myself quite the civ expert and i started playing on emperor. I do not feel i need to beat deity right now. Im sure ill beat it once i got a few 100 hours into the game.

 

[nitedemon]

Thanks guys for all the helpful tips. I am playing Diety Arabia (cos my OCD says "must found religion) and was lucky to be spawned on hilly/mountainous area. Managed to found 6 cities so far including the settler I stole from Japan. Now using a couple of archers and ancient walls to hold off the chariot spam from Hojo pretty comfortably. Even though my tech and culture are still lagging but it is looking much brighter now. I might just be able to get that damned Diety achievement done( and go back to King or something lol)

 

[Timally]

I mean without using the schytia horse selling cheat or setting up a two person map with Congo and only have religious victory enabled. The AI seems to get so much bonus and before I get my ancient wall up, I am already stomped to death. And do you just need to forget about founding your own religion on Diety? Help, please ...

I just failed at this. Constant barbs, but was getting on top of it. Build a lavra and founded a religion. Started spreading religion. He had conquered the two or three city states on the map. As soon as the final notification that the city state could not be recovered came through I lost the game

Also even though there was only two of us it would have let me build stonehenge in my second city after I founded the religion, which was wierd.

 

[TheDuckOfFlanders]

We've already reduced winning on deity to a formula, less than a week after release.

What's the next difficulty up from deity?

Diety and spend the first 10 turns without settling youre first city.