How to beat this one? (Deity)

[SilverDash]

See attachment.

My 3rd and best try so far at Deity. I'm out-teched by about 1 era. I run max RA's and steal as much as I can. Russia wants me dead all game long and used to be the mightiest civ but by using diplomacy I got them crippled.

But these Babylonians got so strong... They are currently taking over the world with 'the speed of light' and yet I still have to 'bribe' other civs to not attack me but him instead. Because they all want to attack me due to my small army.

Is this still winnable? And how? I never got this far on Deity and quitting now would be such a waste.

I was thinking about submarines (they are invisible and don't get insta killed by some missile or bomber or whatever) + a few b-ships with nukes. But I fear that 80% of the world will be in Babylons hands by then, if I still live. But I'm in nuke range and the Babylonians are now right next to me from the east. He has like more units than he can possibly fit on a single 23" screen.

 

[slowcar]

I don't think this can be won, not with all victory conditions enabled. Babylon can launch quite soon i guess.

It is a water map, you could have conquered with galeasses, or frigates the latest. The AI is pretty much doomed when it comes to water warfare, and as soon as your ships get reach it's pretty much game over for them.
In later ages it gets a bit more difficult due to bombers and nukes, but by no means impossible.

 

[SilverDash]

I'm sorry I forgot to mention but it's domination only.

By the time I had frigates they had submarines... I never had a chance to dominate. This is actually the first time that I'm not really far behind on Deity and the fact that I'm still alive . But I do fear their nukes, 3-4 nukes from Russia on my main producing cities and I'm done. Unless I go babylon first but that guy got infinite armies and Russia might attack me from behind any moment.

 

[Maxym]

So if this is only domination you cannot lose, just don't let them take your lands. Babylon is not an issue as he cannot launch, get them to destroy everyone else for you and help them. Then sail a force of nukes, destroyers, and BS to his cap and take it in one turn. GG

 

[Falconiano]

Not so hard.
Just get everyone to war them, so their armies get crushed, then you start conquering (possibly from capital so you get their wonders).

Btw you seem to have issues teching, until deity you should always be the most teched.
Do you slot scientists in cities? And you did the GL+NC combo?

I see Medina is building a LH while your cap is making the Manhattan Proj and yet Medina has sea resources... you should prioritize the LH much earlier (as with any other food building) so that you get more pop = more beakers.

 

[SilverDash]

I tried maxyms approach. I got Babylon at war with everyone else except me and I even became friends with Russia in the war against Babylon. But about 30 turns later babylon started stealing land from me. Every turn 1-2 generals came in... not normal. A whole train of war generals to steal land from me and my cities went starving and I lost my only uranium and such.
I tried going to war with them but they crushed me in 2 turns... Also my units take 30 damage each per turn in his territory, I don't know why.
But at least I didn't get a single nuke on me because they all used their nukes on each other, all cities on pretty much all islands around me have radiation .

No I missed both those wonders. I only got 2 wonders (1 gives +25 gold from trade routes and the other is SH I believe). I do not know what the NC acronym stands for btw.
The LH wonder was already build, she is probably building a regular LH. Babylon controls 80% of all wonders, about 29 or so I believe.

Maybe I should just start over (again) and try to stay on par with tech and get at least 2 uranium patches?

 

[slowcar]

If you want to win on Deity you have to learn how to achieve tech parity.
In the beginning the AIs lead by huge amounts, but later on you keep up with research agreements, stealing techs and, most important, great scientists.

you can check out LCs current Babylon game where he goes for a science victory (while getting war declarations from his neighbours all the time):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9at2J9zqfE

The damage of your troops was most likely due to a citadel, it damages all enemies near it at the beginning of the turn.

 

[Maxym]

I meant for you to do the opposite, become friends with Babylon and help them war everyone else, then backstab and take his cap in one turn if it's coastal. If not you need to plan around it.

Reason you lose 30hp in his lands is you end turn next to citadel, pillage it to stop it.

NC is National College, and yes your science is very low for that point in the game. With the cities you had it could be above 1000 by now.

Post a save from the time you have the screen shot and we will take a look at it. It is definitely winnable.

 

[Justice1337]

NC stands for National College. It's a National Wonder, so no worry about the AI beating you to it. My first piece of advice is to strategize about how to stay up on tech relative to the AI. It's probably the single most important thing on Deity, and there are lots of threads that you can research telling you how to do it. Judging by the fact that you did not build the NC, the tips there will be very useful for you to take your game up to where it needs to be.

Otherwise, it looks like you are playing on a Large or Huge map. This presents immense challenges on Deity, and on the Domination VC specifically. First, it is hard to war with equal tech level units against the AI when it takes almost an entire era on Standard speed to get to its territory. It's more or less essential to have a Gold-based economy and a city on each continent to purchase from. Second, the AI benefits more from larger empires than the player does. Its flat bonuses to production and tech carry over perfectly, while the player's good strategic decisions on city specialization don't apply as widely. So, it can become impossible to keep up with an AI who amasses 20'ish cities, no matter what you do. And the AI does this all the time on Large+ maps, even water maps.

So if you are starting off on Deity, I would recommend playing on a Standard sized map or smaller.

 

[SilverDash]

@Maxim
I uploaded the relevant savefiles to this post.
DD7 & DD8 = are older savegames.
DD9 = the one from the screenshot.
Temp2 = the latest one but I'm kinda screwed in that one because my land is being stolen all the time by Babylon.

Yes it is a large map with no barbarians and no city states and 5 AI, domination only. And yes the AI builds cities on every free square inch of space... Even on the southpole... And his level 1 cities are stronger than my lvl 17 cities...

@slowcar
It's a long youtube video and I'm still watching it. But it's a good video.


So if I would started over, I should take a standard sized map instead.
But is Arabia not a solid choice? The oil, trade routes, bazaars ensure gold+happiness and on top of that I can give away resources to the AI so they can battle each other instead. Only Arabia can really support huge armies and many battleships afaik.

 

[Browd]

Eliminating barbs and CSs and having an artificially low number of AIs is recipe for losing control of the game, with few tools to catch up. All that room to expand in peace may seem luxurious, but the AI are the pigs at the buffet table, able to out produce the human player and occupy every square inch of territory, leaving you with maybe 200 turns of relative peace at the beginning and then 200 turns of runaway, militant AI opponents. Unless you are playing on a very low level and want all that room to be the runaway to the sleepy AI, I would suggest leaving in barbs and CSs and a "normal" number of AI opponents for your desired map size.

 

[Justice1337]

Eliminating barbs and CSs and having an artificially low number of AIs is recipe for losing control of the game, with few tools to catch up. All that room to expand in peace may seem luxurious, but the AI are the pigs at the buffet table, able to out produce the human player and occupy every square inch of territory, leaving you with maybe 200 turns of relative peace at the beginning and then 200 turns of runaway, militant AI opponents. Unless you are playing on a very low level and want all that room to be the runaway to the sleepy AI, I would suggest leaving in barbs and CSs and a "normal" number of AI opponents for your desired map size.

+1

So if I would started over, I should take a standard sized map instead.
But is Arabia not a solid choice? The oil, trade routes, bazaars ensure gold+happiness and on top of that I can give away resources to the AI so they can battle each other instead. Only Arabia can really support huge armies and many battleships afaik.

Arabia is one of the top civ's right now, certainly, but lots of civ's can field big armies. Besides, 95% of the economic benefits Arabia gets are linked to good Diplo relations, and so in your most aggressive games you won't see as much benefit because you won't have as many friends to trade with. Really, the +1 Gold per trade route is very minor. Inca has better trade route yield, even where there are zero hills. Carthage has free trade routes on many, if not most, cities. Even Germany, not normally thought of as an Economic civ, will compete with the raw yield of Arabia's bonuses in terms of saved unit maintenance.

The two main things you're looking to capitalize on with Arabia are 1) Camel Archers, and 2) Desert Start bias, specifically Desert Folklore and Petra.

If you are playing on a Large Water Map w/ 5 civs, it's quite likely that you and the AI are both busy expanding during the window where Camel Archers are best. They remain very good until Great War Infantry, but you're making best use of them when you thrown them down at or around turn 120, 130.

 

[Maxym]

< This

Try replaying this map and keep track of how you opened. I would suggest tradition and quick NC followed by education and rushed unis. fully staffed of course, then build galleases and upgrade upon navigation, take out few civs like that and then figure where to go next. Remember at flight ur frigates won't cut it. Maintain good relations at the begging to make most of you UB and UA, and don't worry about camels here. They are best suited to continents or pangea type maps. Let us know how it went and we can make pointers as you go along.

 

[Deau]

Eliminating barbs and CSs and having an artificially low number of AIs is recipe for losing control of the game, with few tools to catch up. All that room to expand in peace may seem luxurious, but the AI are the pigs at the buffet table, able to out produce the human player and occupy every square inch of territory, leaving you with maybe 200 turns of relative peace at the beginning and then 200 turns of runaway, militant AI opponents. Unless you are playing on a very low level and want all that room to be the runaway to the sleepy AI, I would suggest leaving in barbs and CSs and a "normal" number of AI opponents for your desired map size.

This. The more "bonus room" you allow a deity AI, the more you are screwed. The more likely a gigantic runaway will rise.

However, on a different related topic, your BPT is extremely low for the turn you are at and how wide your empire for T305. I'm usually shooting for 300 bpt somewhere between T140 and 180, depending on strategy and map type. As such, while it may not be super appealing, I recommend working on opener strategy, doing games for T1-150 or so until you get the hang of catching up on tech (make it to position 1-4 out of 8 living opponents) by T150 or before.

 

[JothHago]

Domination or not, you should really keep pace in tech. 300 turns in with +286 is quite worrisome even on emperor. Even at T200 with +600 bpt is quite worrisome for deity.

I am not sure if playing this game without CS will severely cripple your chances of winning in deity. I find them extremely helpful to help catch up in any way possible, even during war time, having them around makes for defending/attacking helpful.

 

[SilverDash]

I saw on the youtube video that the enemy AI had room for max 3-5 cities (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9at2J9zqfE). But in my case, the enemy AI will have room for ~15-20 cities each while I only have enough happiness at the start of the game to get maybe 5 cities max. Any more will drain my happiness far into the negative. By the time I have enough happiness to expand to 10 cities, my room is taken.

So I tried a smaller map (see attachments) with Babylon. Again I got outteched really fast (crossbowman & landknecht vs my bowmen+composite). What did I do wrong? I quickly put down a great scientist and rushed libraries and even conquered a city from the germans (which has a library build) and I'm about to put down a citadel. Yet I'm still outteched by about 1/2 of an era.

 

[Lieu]

I saw on the youtube video that the enemy AI had room for max 3-5 cities (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9at2J9zqfE). But in my case, the enemy AI will have room for ~15-20 cities each while I only have enough happiness at the start of the game to get maybe 5 cities max. Any more will drain my happiness far into the negative. By the time I have enough happiness to expand to 10 cities, my room is taken.

So I tried a smaller map (see attachments) with Babylon. Again I got outteched really fast (crossbowman & landknecht vs my bowmen+composite). What did I do wrong? I quickly put down a great scientist and rushed libraries and even conquered a city from the germans (which has a library build) and I'm about to put down a citadel. Yet I'm still outteched by about 1/2 of an era.

Half an era is more or less normal around that point because you start so far behind on deity and have to play catchup. The thing is, you should be making good progress by this point but you aren't. 29 science won't cut it at T78. Not in that situation.

The immediate red flag is a size 4 capital at T78. Your other cities aren't very big and in particular your growth times are all really long. It's not just science; your whole economy is reliant on food/production. Civ is heavily dependent on investments so you really need to make sure you are growing your economy as best you can

A great step you can immediately take would be to make sure your cities always have good food surpluses. Build granaries and watermills everywhere. Choose tiles to make sure cities don't stagnate. Growing in <10 turns is very good. These investments pay for themselves in <30 turns and start snowballing (ie, you invest your previous return on investment over and over again and it grows exponentially) so it's really important. With all the extra production you'll find it easier to keep investing into growth/science/units/etc.

 

[SilverDash]

Pfff this game is the hardest game I played for like the last 3 years of my life haha. Yes my capitol got stuck because of the war with Germany.. He kept blocking my tiles for quiet a while.

Another try: (attachment, domination only + Pangea)
Wonders:
- NC
- Terracotta (I had nothing else to build at that time)
- Oracle
- Oxford

The AI got the Renaissance era 2 turns before I started acoustics. It's getting really close now. But.. did you see the map? I can't be more lucky. Pangea where the only land-access to the nearest AI is guarded by 2 city states and has only 2 free tiles (which I blocked so they can not scout me by land). How lucky can I get... And 2x Crab.

But what should I tech first now? Rush Economics/Education? I hope that I'm still in time for the Sistine Chapel. But the top 3 AI are getting really powerful.

 

[slowcar]

Maybe you should consider to learn the ropes at a lower difficulty.
The numbers just don't add up for you at the moment (growth, science etc), and experimenting with these should be a lot easier on emperor.
a very large percentage has never won a game on Deity, so it is a good idea to go for that eventually as a goal, but maybe not as a starting point.

 

[JothHago]

just a quick question mate.

have you tried comfortably getting through emperor or immortal? Sistine Chapel, Oracle, those are wonders that even most experienced players won't be getting in a deity game because it slows down growth (maybe not so much oracle but point in hand).

Benchmarks for G&K deity is usually NC @ 80 (unless early warring and you are GETTING capitals), universities T120 or so. Regular deity player will tell you that your tech will ALWAYS be behind up to probably T120-T150 sometimes even more, it's just the mechanics of the difficulty level.

You're playing Pangaea, by that stage, you should really have met almost all the other civilizations . Meeting other civilizations actually HELPS your science, besides the usual trade and etc.

You should be building units instead of wonders. Those turns of terracotta production could give you another 3-4 bowmens at the very least and help you sustain yourself.

Perhaps get comfortable with Emperor/Immortal before trying on Deity.