[NFP] I need help with going from Immortal to Deity (and how do you obtain enough Science?)

Camus

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Poland, Łódź
Greetings,

I would like to ask for tips about managing the jump from Immortal to Deity. On Immortal I had found game to be, hmm, easy. AI won't win until turn ~320-330, and I found myself able to win Culture/Science on turn around 270-280.
I'm playing just with Barbarians Clans and Secret Societes, I find Legends to be quite unflavourful, although powerful.
That is, howerer, way too late on Deity, where I find myself outpaced and outsettled by the AI. I conceded my last game as a Portugal - turn 220, I had embarassing Science output of... 220. I figured out my best shot at victory would be Biosphere; building that wonder in my highest production city would have taken 40 turns.



So, how do you manage to get high Science output? I do try to build Campuses in all of my cities, and I always use my Spies, which I rush, for stealing tech boosts. Midgame I find myself unable to boost my output, it remains constant.

I'd be grateful for help. :)

Cheers,
Piotr

EDIT: How do you make images smaller?
 
A campus in every city is great but you also need the building in there. You can boost them with envoys to science cs by alot (every science cs with 6 envoys is 6 science per campus extra if you have all the buildings). Where possible go for high adjacencies ones. Also make sure to power as many cities as possible to get full benefits from research labs.

There are also cards to boost your campusses adjacencies and its buildings yields (do note that your base adjacency without the doubling card needs to be 4 in order for the later card to work). Later in the game there is a card for +5% science per cs you are suzerain of.

Look out for the scientists that boost your buildings yields. Get a science alliance and send your trades to this ally.

Put Pingala in your highest pop city and get the promotion that provides science per pop.

Get wonders like Kilwa (combined with 2+ science cs) to get an empire wide science boost. Also Oxford in your best science city is huge.

Communism provides a 10% boost to your science.

And ofc more cities are always better for science generation.

As you can see you need good culture as well to get good cards and a good government fast. Infact culture is even more important in the early game. Also make sure to get some high production cities where you can build the space race projects later on.
 
I would like to ask for tips about managing the jump from Immortal to Deity. On Immortal I had found game to be, hmm, easy. AI won't win until turn ~320-330, and I found myself able to win Culture/Science on turn around 270-280.
I'm playing just with Barbarians Clans and Secret Societes

Your victory timing should be quite enough to deliver you all the Deity victories you want. Deity AI is usually unable to win any kind of victory before t300, except for some rare major fluke. With no modes, on standard speed and size map Deity AI wins around t310-360. So don't give up too early, if you continue you can usually win.

If some AI approaches CV, buy some great works off them, for example.

For a SV, an early AI Moon Landing means nothing. AI's SV victory techs haven't been updated from Vanilla to match required GS techs, so AI sometimes reach Future Tech first and even researches it a few times, before it gets to Nanotechnology and Mars Mission and then launches Exoplanet Expedition. Unless AI has enough aluminium, they will not build any laser projects. And they tend to waste aluminium on planes etc.

As for generating science, to add to the above post, Barbarian Clans mode should result in quite a few city states on the map, depending on your settings, of course. Try to have required number of envoys in the scientific ones, so your campus buildings become better. Don't hesitate to use science specialists, especially after you've built science labs.

And, you can also pillage. Scout the map well, choose your friends, make friendships and alliances with them, so they wouldn't get angry, when you declare some wars on the rest of the AI. It does not have to be wars for conquest. Send some fast cavalry units, slot in Raid or Total War cards and pillage their campuses and anything else that you can reach, then peace out. AI builds campuses in every city nowadays - a result of one of the most recent updates. Not that it helps them very much...
 
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Number one overall tip for jumping up to deity is to be patient. Especially at first, you're going to be behind for a lot of the early part of the game. Don't worry about that, and don't worry about building early wonders, getting early great people, etc. (unless you're in a perfect position to do so). Focus on building up a sufficient army (deity AI can be very aggressive early), and expanding/building basic infrastructure (improving luxuries, strategics, growing your pop, etc.). If you have a solid base of 6-8 cities early, and enough military to hang on (if not to do some conquering/pillaging of your own), then in the midgame you can start catching up while you continue expanding to available areas.

Portugal is not a super strong early civ, but once you get past the beginning stages your ability to generate money is huge. What that means for a science victory is that you should play as wide as possible for the whole game, and you can quickly chop in (or buy with Reyna) campuses in each new city, then buy all the buildings. You should also have available gold to buy troops, great people, etc., which are helpful in their own right but also can help do CS quests and get you envoys, particularly in science citystates. Also, since you get science from the Navigation School for having coastal tiles in a city, there is an incentive to go wide and settling on small islands that other civs might leave alone.

I'm guessing if you were planning on building Biosphere in the last game that means you were focusing on a culture victory. For Portugal, that means using your wealth to buy buildings in theatre squares (and/or the district itself), and buy great works to fill them from the AI. You can (and should) also buy holy site buildings to generate faith for rock bands. Since you'll be such a coastal civ, you should have lots of places to put seaside resorts as you get into the late game.

Basically, with Portugal on deity you want to weather the early game, set up your empire, make a bunch of money, then use that to buy what you need for a chosen victory condition.
 
One thing no one has mentioned is the role of faith in a science victory. I'm increasingly convinced that a strong faith economy is even more potent than gold. You are playing with Secret Societies, so presumably can take advantage of the medieval era Voidsingers' Chorus promotion to boost science in a major way. Plus faith can buy you buildings (universities/research labs) with Jesuit Education as a religious belief and can help you snipe the Great Scientists and Engineers of most interest, not to mention the numerous other ways it can be employed.

You should read the thread called Religious Russians on this forum by ATEX, who remains one of the top experts on fast science victories at Deity level. It's a little outdated now but still has a lot of great advice as to how to go about it.

Also, be prepared to interfere with a runaway civ that is streaking to Sci Vic, either by spies or by direct military force. You can tell which spaceport is building the space project by the half-finished rocket icon on the launch pad. Pillage it by using a spy or by air pillaging with a bomber (carrier -based if necessary).
 
I have a few questions about Amenities and City-State. How much do you care?
From -7 with -40% yield malus to +5 with bonus +20% yield, you can go from 60% Science to 120% Science which is double. Do you maximise Amenity to the point of putting a lot of EC/WP? Or just improve Luxury, do some trade and that's enough?
City-States: do you only aim for the 3 first Envoys for the first 2 tier buildings bonuses, or do you actively seek suzerain statue at all cost? The AI seems to love conquer City-States and raze them because they suddenly found out they do not have the Loyalty to keep them. Do you plan War in order to liberate scientific or overpowered City-States (Chinguetti, Kumasi...)?
 
@Aurelesk Good points, thanks. Answer to most of them are negative - I mainly just improve Luxuries and that is all, the same with city-states. I had never actually waged a war in order to liberate a city-state.

And thank you all for helping me out :)
 
@Aurelesk Good points, thanks. Answer to most of them are negative - I mainly just improve Luxuries and that is all, the same with city-states. I had never actually waged a war in order to liberate a city-state.

And thank you all for helping me out :)
To be fair, it was an open question to everyone. I am far from mastering Deity level, and I was asking some tips too. I tend to do a lot of EC/WP, but by the late game. Colosseum is gamble that I cannot secure everytime. City-State-wise, I basically just do 3 Envoys per city-State, then ponder if pushing toward 6 in the Industrial era is a good move (how much I am going to have tier3 building) or if I save my Envoys. Suzerain statut is a thing I do if the CS's bonus is very powerful or if it allows to trigger Kilwa Kisiwani bonuses.
Is my way of doing good? I don't even know. What do you do? What is the optimal play here?
 
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I'm playing just with Barbarians Clans and Secret Societes, <...>
I tried a deity Portugal game with those modes on a standard size&speed Island Plates map, to remember how Portugal felt, and, man, they're bonkers! :) Sweating gold.

What kind of map did you pick, btw? Simple Continents or Pangea may not fit Portugal so well, as they do need coastal AI cities. I also made a random pool of mostly naval civs to have as AIs in my game.

Portugal needs a good scouting (preferably with galleys, to control the barbs at the same time) and fast contacts with as many AIs as possible as soon as possible, to start their trade routes going and rivers of gold flowing. Then you just build districts and buy buildings or whatever else you need - settlers, builders, units, Great People... Navigation Schools are so neat, and with Barbarian Clans there were eventually a million city states, so have a Diplomatic Quarter and its buildings early, to speed up envoy generation. With Kilwa it's insane.

A few alliances, Wisselbanken policy card and Democracy are a great help to boost or concentrate production with the trade routes.

I only had 6 cities on my starting island plate, and founded 3 more on another one later, for niter and national parks, fought only one small war which an alliance dragged me into, and was approaching a lazy SV and CV, when a WC session delivered me 5 DV points, bringing me up to 18/20 (there wasn't a single Aid emergency, btw.), so I just built a SoL and ended it there with a DipV at T243.

I figured out my best shot at victory would be Biosphere; building that wonder in my highest production city would have taken 40 turns.
Try to have one or two IZs, with Portugal you can freely afford them, so that you start generating GE points, and then keep an eye on them and try to snatch Wonder building ones. For late game wonders Gustave Eiffel or Shah Jahan are very helpful. With Portuguese funds Shah Jahan will complete the Biosphere for you in just 1 turn. And do have the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus - this wonder is virtually uncontested by the AI, you can build it at your leisure in your Medieval or Renaissance, and it gives an additional charge to GE, which is very nice.

What do you do? What is the optimal play here?
I don't know what is the optimal play, but I tend to skip or neglect EC/WP, including I forget to build the Colosseum as well, as I usually manage my amenities via the trade of luxuries. The Quick Deals UI mod makes this trading painless and very quick (should've been a feature of the base game since the beginning tbh), so that's what I usually do.
 
For amenities, for most of the game I tend to focus on just keeping cities content so as not to have a malus, but generally don't build many ECs or Waterparks (with trading luxuries, TOA, Cahokia, BA, or other sources, I usually don't run into amenity issues until later in the game).
Once you get into late game, I find it pretty easy to get most cities up into the happy or ecstatic zone - start planning out where to put ECs/WPs so that the regional buildings can hit a lot of cities, and that should bump up quickly. Also remember that while they can't be in the same city, EC/WP regional bonuses do stack on top of one another, so get one coastal city and one other city to cover all of the cities in an area. Plus national parks and ski resorts are an easy way to add amenities here and there (ski resorts easier than NPs, but NPs can give a big amenity boost).

For citystates, I'll prioritize the ones I know have suze bonuses that are helpful - Bologna, Nan Madol, Johannesburg, others - and otherwise just try to get 3 into as many as possible. Depending on the size of the map, if I focus on doing some of the envoy quests and build Kilwa (maybe Apadana), I tend to not have much trouble getting suze over all or nearly all by the late game.
 
How do you make images smaller?
Resize before copy/pasting
Portugal is not a super strong early civ
:eek: Oh they can be incredibly so.
How much do you care?
All science help and amenities does make a difference, especially at these %stack
They nerfed CS so they are not so strong, they nerfed rationalism so it is not so strong.
But they missed Kilwa which should be got ASAP and the double adjacency science card is a no brainer. You really do have to build up those adjacencies.
Many cities are just there for science so settle with good adjacency… growing them too much hurts amenities.
Did I mention research labs?
All of these things together in a single city with Pingala will make your 220 alone, especially with Good GS’s.
The best overall help for a SV is conquest though.
 
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