In which I fail at Civ5

[The Pilgrim]

Oh - @The Pilgrim. Did you mean "ally Belgrade" when you said "ally Singapore"? Because I don't think I've met Singapore.

No, I meant Rio. Sorry.

Regarding city locations common sense rules: high food + high production + luxuries.

You don't specialize as you do in Civ4, so most of your core cities are the mix of all good things.

Basic guidelines:

• Settling on hills is a very high priority. Both for extra early production (you get extra hammer by doing so) and extra defense. The latter is especially important on deity, where AI brings hordes of troops against your very few defenders.
• Settling on rivers is very advisable too for better cash flow and buildings you can't unlock otherwise (gardens, watermills and hydro plans).
• Settling next to a mountain allows building observatory which is a great science booster.
• Settling on top of luxuries allows selling them as soon as appropriate tech is researched without the need to improve the tiles. Basically, resource sales is what keeps you alive in early game on deity. Sell as much as you can, milk all the cash AI has to rush buy workers, settlers, archers and sometimes libraries and granaries and even shrines. Btw, you have less AI buyers on smaller maps, that's why sometimes they are harder than standard ones.
  Mining luxuries are the best to settle on because they only require 1 tech and usually appear on hills. With lack of Mining luxes, settling on others is viable as well, but lately less so, since they barely appear on hills.

The best possible location is forested hill next to a mountain near Paris.
High food, high production, 2 different luxes, riverside hill and a mountain. The only and huge downside it's too close to french borders and this kind of aggressive settling would push Napoleon into war mood instantly. Not sure you want this. Although in this specific case I wouldn't overcome the temptation to bring a bunch of archers and immortals with that settler and take Paris down right off the bat. It's on flat land and easily accessible, so you should have an edge here.

I'd have placed the capital 2W from its current position.

More spots based on what you have now:

• NW of Urulu has been mentioned already.
  
• Depending on whether you have sea resources to the south and south-east of barb camp or not, another possible spot is somewhere between it and Rio. There are probably no resources at all or some random and lonely fish, so I wouldn't bother to settle on coast and go for E/2E of immortal. This area is well defended by natural terrain (Rio) and is not very productive, thus mining the hill will benefit you more.
  
• NW from salt, because you have to grab it (if you don't know this yet, the salt is uber awesome ). Very low production, so early on you'll need to invest quite a bit in rush buying buildings (persian long golden ages come in handy). Later with harbor and seaport the city will be better.
  
• If you take Paris, SW from warrior is another not great but bearable spot and since you've gone Liberty anyway, you should try to max it and expand as much as you can.

You really should explore the rest of your continent. Do you have the initial save? I'd be interested to take a shot at it.

 

[Optional]

I'm gambling that the AI won't settle through neutral/enemy/city-state hexes, even when they can move through them.

I agree with you here. The AI doesn't like to do this. I have a small screenshot here of a game of mine where I placed Ankara rather aggressively towards Pacal (I'm white, he's beige/salmon). Pacal went to war with me over this, claiming he needed more living space - you'll see Ankara hemmed in between two CS's, plenty of space behind it, but Pacal obviously felt obstructed:

An early war with a Deity AI is tough. This is the AI's starting crew on that level:

Napoleon is one of the more aggressive civs in the game, he'll have no quelms about attacking you if he's interested in your terrain.
He's the best early expander in the game. The extra 2 culture per city means he gets his free Liberty settler earlier, and going for Liberty and expansion seems his normal approach to the game.
His attitude is normally friendly, until he attacks. Then after signing peace he's normally back to friendly again. So he's a good trading partner, not the worst to have in the game, although to start so close to him is not ideal.

Religion I discarded - I'm a novice playing way above my head, so I cannot afford to commit to expensive, shiny stuff that I may get locked out of. So I'll just adopt someone else's religion, and save my faith for buying stuff.

Can be a good decision, especially if you're in an early fight for space, like here with Napoleon. A pantheon can still be strong, regardless of whether you'll be going for a religion or not.

Thoughts moving forward: Stick to the plan. Third city blocks, libraries, NC. Look at the game after NC finishes - do I think I have a hope of beating Napoleon in a stand-up fight? If so, go for it. If not, play the diplomatic game while I expand peacefully.

'Playing the diplomatic game' won't work as well in Civ5, if you mean playing nice with Napoleon to prevent him from attacking you. He's is already ticked off over your placement of Pasargadae. In my opinion your best chance to stand up to him lies with those City States. They could hardly have been more strategically placed, smacked right between you and Napoleon. A CS will fight on your side when you're allied with it, this could save your butt when you only have a fraction of the military your AI opponent has. I would make every effort to get at least one of those CS's on my side, never mind if this leads to another complaint from Napoleon.

On placing of cities on resources: looking at that screenshot and seeing how long it takes Pasargadae to make a worker, you've wasted that stone by placing a city on top of it.
Personally I never settle on a resource because I think you shouldn't get the benefit of a resource if not having worked it. If you don't consider it an exploit settling on a luxury is strong, as you get the immediate happiness (provided you've researched the appropriate tech). In the longer run improving a luxury with a worker will give you slightly better yields I believe, but the early benefit of having the happiness straight away without even needing a worker is stronger. For bonus resources this doesn't go.

Starting out on Deity is a little unusual, but I'm considering Immortal a normal step-in level for players with some experience of previous civ games and who also do some basic analysis while playing.
I noticed you like to manually organise your workers. Effective is then to set a town on production or gold focus before it grows.
The game first counts the gathered food. If that's enough for a new citizen, then this new citizen will be born, and only then production, gold, faith etc gets counted. This means that if the new citizen gets dropped on a foody tile (which is what the governer by default would do) this food is lost for that turn. But all other yields will still count.
So upon growth it's effective to try and get the new citizen to spawn on the right tile, but it also means you will normally want to take if off there again for the following turns, if you want to continue your town to grow.

 

[coanda]

@sufficiency: I'll keep that in mind for future games. Sounds like natural wonders may be more significant than I thought. I guess I was still thinking of a good "resource" yield as something like 5-6, instead of what seems to be a more typical 3-4 in Civ5... so I didn't stop to think about how strong Uluru could be.

@MerkQT: Yeah, you were the first of a whole series of people to warn me that the city I just settled will be throwing me into war with Napoleon sooner or later. Going to have to make a plan for that I think.

@Aaron90495: Thanks for the extensive advice. I'd kind of figured ranged units would be the dominant factor thanks to concentration of force, but it's good to see that confirmed. Regarding the early rush... I didn't plan for it initially because I assumed I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of pulling it off, but a comment earlier made me think maybe my expectations were off. I'm going to assume your advice is more spot-on regarding this - rushing a Deity AI in the first couple dozen turns of the game is a way to get into a world of hurt.

@Unresolved: Yeah, I'm coming to that conclusion. It sounds like the Civ5 AI is a bit smarter about deciding where a "fair" border is; in Civ4 it was pretty much first-come first-served up until you started getting actual overlapped tiles, so I was trying to keep my new city from overlapping any of Napoleons cities for a while. Wrong decision, your suggested spot would have been better.

@The Pilgrim: It's interesting that several people have suggested that monuments are more useful in Civ5 in the capital. I hadn't even *considered* this at the start of this game, but I can see how unlocking Social Policies earlier could be more than worth the cost. I am curious though - if scout - monument is a good "default" opener, under what circumstances (if ever) would you recommend going worker-first or warrior-first instead?
Thanks for the more in-depth advice on city locations. One thing I didn't even think to ask earlier - is there any penalty for settling far away from your capital in Civ5 (besides just being harder to move things between the two / connect the two with roads)?

@Azzaman333: Another one joining the chorus telling me "scout and monument early; if you're settling towards an AI, might as well settle defensively too." Advice received and appreciated.

@BBMorti: I hadn't even realized hills always gave an extra hammer in Civ5, but it makes sense on reflection given how I think the mechanics are working (guaranteed 2 food; any yield bonuses on the tile are kept by the city).

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Ok, time for a little more progress. Comments have warned me that settling Pasargardae where I did was the equivalent of walking up to Napoleon, slapping him in the face, and calling him "shorty," then waiting to see how he reacts. So I'm assuming war with him is inevitable, sooner or later, at this point. I presume it's better to start a war on my terms instead of his. So I see three options.
1. Try to kill Napoleon before going for NC.
2. Cross my fingers that Nappy is feeling generous and doesn't attack for a while; block him off, get NC, maybe fill in with a couple more cities, and (if he leaves me alone that long) hit him with Crossbows at Machinery, or if that falls through maybe at Dynamite or something.
3. Go for broke - try to get NC and still take him with a late Composite Bowman strike.
I discard the last option right away - it sounds like fatal overreach. It seems wiser to focus on one thing and do it well than to try and get everything done and end up failing at everything.
The second option is the one I've been basically planning for this far, but I took a more careful look at the fog and it looks like Napoleon may have quite a bit of land to the far northeast to fill in. If that's the case, I'd probably just never catch up even if he left me alone.
So it's go-for-broke time: I'm spamming archers, teching Construction, and hoping to catch Nappy napping.

What time window do I need for this? Well, my "minimum" striking force goal would be something like a half-dozen composite bowmen and 2 immortals. I have 1 immortal and 1 archer now, with the potential to turn out an archer every 5 turns or so from my capital. So I'll set a deadline about 25 turns down the line - say, turn 70 to arrive at his borders with my force. If the random internet source I found is right that it's 2*(hammer difference) + 10 gold to upgrade, that makes upgrading archer to composite bowman cost 80 gold. Upgrading 6 of them is almost 500 gold. I have 142 now, will be up to around 300 by the time I'm ready to go, and can hopefully trade another luxury to Napoleon for another ~240 gold at some point - giving me just barely enough.

So, the plan: Build archers. Research Construction. Play about 25 turns, pausing this set when ready to attack Napoleon.

And now, for the wrench in the plan.

Turns out, Pasargadae may not have been the wisest place to put a city. He comes pouring across the border with approximately a million units (ok, by my count it was really more like a dozen), when I'm only just barely starting my military buildup - and what troops I have are still injured from killing off a barbarian camp down south. I did my best; I didn't lose any units, and killed off about five of his. Unfortunately, I did lose a city.

A tragedy, in pictures:

Spoiler :

He'll give me peace now, in exchange for 20 gold. I'm somewhat divided on the right move at this point. As I said, I have killed about a half-dozen of his units... which means if I've been keeping track right, he should have about a half-dozen units left. Two archers, a pair of spears, some warriors, plus whatever additional reinforcements he built in the last 10 turns. Meanwhile I have 4 archers, an immortal, and a warrior. So... three choices here.
1. Decide that the game is so badly lost that there isn't even anything I could learn from sticking it out from here on; resign in disgrace.
2. Pay for peace, fall back to hope for some sort of cheesy victory condition or a diplomatic alliance with someone overseas to salvage this centuries down the line. If so, what exactly is the fallback plan? Do I settle NW of Uluru and NW of the salt, or would that just piss Napoleon off again? Do I keep all my military, or disband some to cut down on upkeep?
3. Double or nothing. Keep spamming archers, trying to pick off individual AI units, and hope to reach critical mass and take back what I lost and push on to Paris.

Edit: Oh yeah - for anyone who's interested, here's the starting save... I think. It keeps re-saving it every time I load it to check, but it seems to be the same save.
Feel free to show me how this map should be done. Assuming I don't end up abandoning it here, please keep spoiler tags handy.

 

[Browd]

Could take peace, settle near Uluru and regroup. But, as you see Nappy spam cities below you (and soon behind you), I suspect your best choice at this point is to churn out units and go for broke. If it works, great. If not, you're toast, but you'll have gotten some experience beseiging a city, and will have learned a lot from this game.

 

[regeneration64]

I think it is double or quits time.

Build up the largest force you possibly can (CBs are your best friend) as quickly as you can in your capital. You need to stop Napoleon in his tracks otherwise you can kiss goodbye to Persepolis too. You'll need to steamroll onto Paris and brace yourself for low happiness (do NOT go below -9) and gpt.

If everything goes to pot think of this as a steep learning curve (and something I have had to get to grip with on Emperor): You need enough ranged units to deter and, at worst, fight off the aggressive AI. At least one ranged unit per city (preferably 2) and a few other units as backup.

I would also go back to what you said in your last post about going to war on your terms. This is great in theory but sometimes the best practice is to defend against the inevitable AI rush at the start and then counterattack.

And, of course, whilst fighting for your very survival, I cannot stress the importance of building the NC sooner rather than later. Delaying science for too long will shoot yourself in the foot later and you will really struggle to catch the AI who is about to launch the spaceship.

 

[Buccaneer]

No, there no penalty (or maintenance) regarding city distance. I'll reiterate a few points about the start of the game:

1. Scount-Monument is indeed the initial builds most of the time
2. Move the warrior first (two hexes if possible) to scout for a better settling spot
3. City-States can be a great buffer, chokepoint or ally against a close enemy. You have to get them to at least Friends, preferably Allies
4. My opinion is in the minority but I think it is important to get a Pantheon (you don't have to be first) but not so much a Religion (unless going Domination in which Holy Warriors can be very nice)

 

[dslartoo]

I don't have advice to offer beyond what others here have already passed on (400+ hours into this game and I still play on King, myself) but I would like to remark that this thread is vastly entertaining. I'm loving your progress reports. Thanks for sharing!

cheers,
Phil

 

[Optional]

I am curious though - if scout - monument is a good "default" opener, under what circumstances (if ever) would you recommend going worker-first or warrior-first instead?

I realise I'm not The Pilgrim, but in my opinion an early monument is more crucial when opening Liberty and less when going Tradition or Honour. With Liberty you'll want your free settler and worker asap, so there's the case for your monument. Other poicies are more flexible in my opinion.
I will often want a good pantheon, and then I rather build a shrine than a monument.

A worker I will not build early for just building a farm, I want it to be able to improve a resource, so then it depends a bit on which techs I need. If I have Calendar resources in forest, meaning I need 3 techs first to unlock the lux, then I'll not build a worker straight away, but I'll build the worker sooner if I have a lux just requiring Mining.

I recommend you have a look at this thread, containing the leader stats: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=409062. Although the leaders' personalities are subject to a bit of dice roll per game, a Napoleon will always be different fish from a Gandhi, and it'll help if you have a bit more understanding of their personalities.

3. City-States can be a great buffer, chokepoint or ally against a close enemy. You have to get them to at least Friends, preferably Allies.

I think Rio could have been a massive help here, leading Napoleon to spread his troops and getting caught in a crossfire. Allied status is crucial, of course.

4. My opinion is in the minority but I think it is important to get a Pantheon (you don't have to be first) but not so much a Religion (unless going Domination in which Holy Warriors can be very nice).

I agree with that, although it's hard to see what would have be the best pantheon in this game. And building both a shrine and a monument in a game with Napoleon so nearby on Deity would be reckless - the followed strategy has shown to be reckless enough anyway.

In starting up a new game I recommend going with the default number of civs instead of one extra.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Sounds like natural wonders may be more significant than I thought. I guess I was still thinking of a good "resource" yield as something like 5-6, instead of what seems to be a more typical 3-4 in Civ5... so I didn't stop to think about how strong Uluru could be.

Yeah, overall tile yields are somewhat lower, but you'll get used to it. That's the easy part.
Some natural wonders are better than others. Some aren't worth working/settling them at all. However, the religious ones guarantee you a pantheon and give a shot at religion. Both of which are hard to obtain on deity unless you're religious civ and even then it's iffy. I won't recommend traveling 20 tiles away from capital settling NW in the middle of dead desert just to get faith per turn, but in your case, when it's actually a decent city spot, why not? Even if you don't get a religion eventually, at least you benefit from pantheon without investing hammers and maintenance in shrines and temples.

@MerkQT: Yeah, you were the first of a whole series of people to warn me that the city I just settled will be throwing me into war with Napoleon sooner or later. Going to have to make a plan for that I think.

I think you misinterpreted a little what has been said. The very fact of your existence is what caused the war, not settling that particular spot. Doing so just made the defense against inevitable battle difficult. You could stay with capital only, and Napoleon would have DoWed you anyways. When you start close to him, he does - 10/10 times.

Regarding the early rush... I didn't plan for it initially because I assumed I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of pulling it off, but a comment earlier made me think maybe my expectations were off. I'm going to assume your advice is more spot-on regarding this - rushing a Deity AI in the first couple dozen turns of the game is a way to get into a world of hurt.

Attacking too early is usually not a good idea. Warrior/archer rushes don't work on higher levels. Composite bowmen's, however, do. If you manage to amass 6-7 of them with couple of melee (you have a very helpful early UU) fast and the path to enemy capital is flat and open, you might have a chance.

I can see how unlocking Social Policies earlier could be more than worth the cost.

It is.

I am curious though - if scout - monument is a good "default" opener, under what circumstances (if ever) would you recommend going worker-first or warrior-first instead?

Worker first - never. I usually buy a worker between 15-20 with gold from scouting and selling some gold per turn to AI. I steal another one from CS and maybe then build some more. Unless I have gold to rush buy/go Liberty/really have to kick more settlers out before AI takes desired spots.
Monument first is standard for archipelago. There is nothing to scout on land and you can't embark before Optics.
Warrior first can be viable with civs than have bonuses vs. barbs, - the Aztecs (jaguars are barely slower than scouts), Germany.
Stele (monument replacement UB) -scout-scout is my standard with Ethiopia.
Scout-scout (and even scout) is standard for Spain.

Thanks for the more in-depth advice on city locations. One thing I didn't even think to ask earlier - is there any penalty for settling far away from your capital in Civ5 (besides just being harder to move things between the two / connect the two with roads)?

The only penalty for additional cities is unhappiness. 3 per city (6 for India) +1 per each pop. In addition, roads cost maintenance, as you probably know, so the longer the road, the bigger both capital and connected city need to be to make the trade route profitable. And defending remote locations is also hard.

2. Cross my fingers that Nappy is feeling generous and doesn't attack for a while; block him off, get NC, maybe fill in with a couple more cities, and (if he leaves me alone that long) hit him with Crossbows at Machinery, or if that falls through maybe at Dynamite or something.
3. Go for broke - try to get NC and still take him with a late Composite Bowman strike.
I discard the last option right away - it sounds like fatal overreach. It seems wiser to focus on one thing and do it well than to try and get everything done and end up failing at everything.
The second option is the one I've been basically planning for this far, but I took a more careful look at the fog and it looks like Napoleon may have quite a bit of land to the far northeast to fill in. If that's the case, I'd probably just never catch up even if he left me alone.

Second option was never an option, but an illusion. Third is your best bet. That's what you usually need to do to succeed, however the strike shouldn't be late. You rush for CB's and NC simultaneously. You need to take some french cities to make up for losing yours. At the same time If you delay the NC too much, you fall behind too far to the point you can't catch up (unfortunately, I'm afraid, this happened already, civs on other continent(s?) are probably way ahead of you and France). But, you have nothing to lose. On the positive, Pasargadae and Troyes are both very soft and you won't have problem capturing them, I assume. Paris might be another story. Don't be surprised if at 70 instead of expected half dozens of units Napoleon has a dozen and a half. I'd still try to counter push with CB's and immortals and see how it goes.

He'll give me peace now, in exchange for 20 gold.

Just fyi, he considers you defeated and wants all you have. Since 20 gold is all you have, he demands it. If you had more cities, he would've asked them too. AI has no clue when it's winning and when loosing, so its demands aren't good indication of what's going on. You can thrash all of his troops, capture most cities including capital and it still thinks it has an upper hand.

Edit: Oh yeah - for anyone who's interested, here's the starting save...

Thanks. I'll give it a go later and report back.

4. My opinion is in the minority but I think it is important to get a Pantheon (you don't have to be first) but not so much a Religion (unless going Domination in which Holy Warriors can be very nice)

I agree too. Pantheon is usually nice to have, but if you get it purely by shrine's 1fpt and can't get faith booster from terrain, don't bother.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I realise I'm not The Pilgrim, but in my opinion an early monument is more crucial when opening Liberty and less when going Tradition or Honour. With Liberty you'll want your free settler and worker asap, so there's the case for your monument.

Also true. You can obtain free monument via Legalism, although free amphitheater is more tempting.

In starting up a new game I recommend going with the default number of civs instead of one extra.

6 is standard...

 

[Optional]

Also true. You can obtain free monument via Legalism, although free amphitheater is more tempting.

Yes, it's amphitheatres I go for always. The culture and border expansion from the Tradition opener makes it much easier to postpone a handbuilt monument in the capital.
With Honour it's more interesting to build an extra warrior early (instead of a monument).

6 is standard...

Ah yes, I looked wrong, I thought there were 6 AI's, hadn't noticed the first one was human. I always pick my civ, the set-up screen looked different from what I'm used to. Also in-game it looked a bit cramped. Maybe unlucky.

 

[Browd]

Small maps are more cramped than Standard. Small has 25% fewer civs (6 vs. 8) and CSs (12 vs. 16), but the map itself is 33% smaller (2772 hexes vs. 4160 hexes)

From CIV5Worlds.xml:

<Type>WORLDSIZE_SMALL</Type>
<GridWidth>66</GridWidth>
<GridHeight>42</GridHeight>

<Type>WORLDSIZE_STANDARD</Type>
<GridWidth>80</GridWidth>
<GridHeight>52</GridHeight>

 

[MerkQT]

Unfortunately I think the game is over for you, I think when those new cities near your capital start to grow borders Nap won't be satisfied and will march again.

Fortunately you actually got some good points of basic civ play in a deity play through and some of the posters here have had some extremely good advice. So some points to take from here;
- Placements of cities is vital to your survival, while logically creating a barrier for Nap by settling seemed like a good idea expansion-wise, diplomatically speaking it was a nightmare.
- Natural wonders are great tiles in civ 5
- Build order could be improved (I prefer monument -> scout)

I would strongly recommend having a look through these forums and finding out how diplomacy and AI mentality works. It was really just bad luck that you happened to spawn next to Nap, I've always had trouble with him.

 

[Mohed]

Hello and welcome to Civ 5.

First of all let me state the obvious just to get it out the way. Starting on deity is a complete and utter bla bla bla bla ripped a new one bla bla bla by turn 80. Done.

There are a lot of specialized strategies one might want to use going in to a game and in such cases the stuff written hereon forth wont stand valid.

The bad news.

1. Ai's on this level are very aggressive and start with a lot of stuff that players don't. This makes it important to be able to defend one self early. Therefor you should highly priorities settling on hills for the defence bonus. A hill will also give you the extra hammer speeding up your early construction. In this case you had a hill with a lux item one tile away. If you would have settled on the copper you would have been able to sell the copper upon discovery of mining without the need to work it giving you a huge head start. So after moving to that tile you would have discovered the river with the hill tile next to it. Now on a hill next to a river is a super location, and you wouldn't have to sacrifice any lux resource.

2. Because ai have extra stuff catching up to them is important. This is usually done by building a scout first so that you can go find city states giving you 30 g an stuff, as opposed to 15g, if you weren't the first to find them. Secondly this will allow you to find the goody huts before the ai pics them up. Thirdly it would let you meet other civs so you can sell your lux items to them, and figure out how to lay out your diplo side of the strategy (in this case because napoleon and you are alone you cant have him warring with someone else therefor you cant settle in his lap). Down the line comes the ability to early spot what social policy you will choose, how big of a military you need and how fast to get it and so on.
Secondly comes the fact that social policies are very important, and you want them early and you want them in bunch. So i tend to go monument second, because the culture will unlock the policies, although one can deviate from this with a clear goal in mind.

3. City spam is not the way to go any more. You can do good with as little as one city. Standard empires will have 4 cities if going tradition and 6 cities if going liberty. All and all i find tradition to be slightly better. I judge witch social policy to go based on my starting position and my surroundings. Many good city locations with a mediocre location for your capital with room to expand safely means liberty to handle the happiness side of things and get you going faster. A few good spots and a powerhouse of a capital means tradition to boost that potential. Note that one can have a combination of the two and in that case number of city locations takes priority imo. Good city locations are ones witch can soak up a bunch of lux and bonus items while being easily defensible and having useful terrain.
In this case you have 3 good spots, including your capital, namely one on the forest east of the wheat on the southern cost line and one on the hill south of the copper on the eastern coastline. Now you have a bunch of stuff around Pasargarde but in a desert landscape, witch make it decent at best, and its in the face of one of the most aggro ai's in the game. Also its impossible to defend because of flat terrain meaning units will reach it and maneuver around it easily. But mostly no hill.
With 3 and a half good locations i would safely suggest tradition is your best bet.

4. I wouldn't worry about NC and science so early, especially if your not aiming for that type of victory from the start. My checklist would look something like the following and in that order.

Luxury and bonus tile improvements.
Basic defence.
Expansion.
Full on defence.
Science and economy.

5. Diplomacy is basically how you win on deity, and frankly how you should play on all levels. To answer you question you cant get good relations with napoleon. The fact that you settled so close made that impossible, and frankly you were pretty close to begin with so maybe that didn't mater so very much. Good relations comes from common enemies and mutual friends, not from trading. Other stuff that boosts relations are if you trade embassies and use the same civics.
The fact that your alone on the island with him is very bad because you cant set him up in a fight with someone else. So you cant distract him so you get the time to build up and you cant slow him down in any way. Later on when you find other civs you need to keep them constantly at war with each other so they don't grow to big or to advanced. Without this kind of game play you cant win on deity anymore.

The good news.

The fact that your don't have anyone west, south and north of you is amazing. This will give you a break when France attack you, and they will, and that will happen very soon. Now all the stuff that you mentioned, chariots, warriors, scouts, and all sorts of units, will only come from one direction.
Building the warrior early was good thinking, although i don't remember the last time i built a warrior if not to prebuild an army and upgrade to swordsman. You have the immortal witch is a beast of a unit in that time period.

Going forth.

Don't bother with protection right now, or ever imo except in very specific situations namely piety mass friendly strat, because it only does more bad then good. When it comes to religion then i agree with the fact that you shouldn't bother with it except if you are using a specialized civ for that end and you know what your doing. I never bother with it at all at deity.

So what i would do given your position right now is stop building the NC right away. Krank out a as many military units as your economy can handle and try to fend of napoleon when he comes. For that to eave be remotely possible you need to switch your research to the wheel, and build or buy walls in Pasa asap . If you manage to stop him then you can try to go for his cities. He will send everything he has so if you stop him then you would have killed of the majority of his armiy, witch opens up the possibility to go after his cities.

Edit: Well it took some time to write this stuff so a bit out dated it has become.

 

[coanda]

Well, so much for that game. I turned it around for a while, but couldn't stem the tide in the long run. I was right, I had reduced his current forces to pretty much a paper tiger through attrition over Pasargardae, so I was able to retake that and drive him back temporarily. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the economic backing needed to drive the war through to victory. My high-water mark:

As you can see, he's starting to turn out significant numbers of composite bowmen, catapults, and swords. I'm still using archers and one immortal, turning out one new unit every 4 or 5 turns. He slowly pushed me back to Pasargardae (as I kept having to pull wounded units back to avoid losing them), retook it, and I was effectively eliminated. I could still have peaced out for all my gold, but didn't see much more to be learned from this.
On the plus side, I wasn't the first civilization to lose my capital - someone else lost theirs during my war with Napoleon.

Thank you for all the advice; I'll probably have some last questions and closing thoughts in a bit.

 

[Syailendra]

I have to admit that you didn't play that bad on your first game, of course at some points you are not playing perfectly (which is a must at deity). but its a good first deity game. from what I see, your deadly sin is not settling the city on the forested hill near the mountain, thats all. If you do, you'll probably able to defend pasargadae, remember you should only kill his melee units, as archers can't take cities.
You can later on trample Paris when you have a golden age, 1 movement bonus is huge for early stage warfare.
Actually, i say that you should restart the game, being one on one with an aggresive Civ will bring good experience for you.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I have to admit that you didn't play that bad on your first game

I second that.

coanda, I don't know why people are so shocked you wanted to try deity and see how the worst case scenario looks like. It's a good learning (and humbling ) experience overall. You didn't expect to win, just to learn, which I'm sure you did, and now you can set your goals pretty high. I believe on immortal you'll do much better and will be bored on emperor.

 

[Barturion]

I second that.

I believe on immortal you'll do much better and will be bored on emperor.

Although I also read this thread with much pleasure I seriously doubt that.
On emperor and on immortal he'll probably last longer than he did this game only to be defeated around turns 150 -200.

I took the exact same road he did. Playing CIV from day 1 (feels like ages ago), doing OK in CIV4 and starting on Diety with CIV5.

I dont like to reroll / restart and try to finish every game I play but also on emperor I'm sometimes just blown away by a runnaway Civ.

@coanda

Please keep posting this very detailed first approaches on Diety.
I recognised so many things I ran into starting CIV5.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Although I also read this thread with much pleasure I seriously doubt that.
On emperor and on immortal he'll probably last longer than he did this game only to be defeated around turns 150 -200.

Maybe. And maybe not. If I have to bet, I'll go with the latter. For his first attempt he did not bad at all and learned a lot. Immortal is manageable. If you do most things right, there is no reason not to win. On emperor you can do most things wrong and still win, because AI can't.

I took the exact same road he did. Playing CIV from day 1 (feels like ages ago), doing OK in CIV4 and starting on Diety with CIV5.

I dont like to reroll / restart and try to finish every game I play but also on emperor I'm sometimes just blown away by a runnaway Civ.

There's something you're missing then. Emperor level AI is not capable of doing any serious damage to competent player. I'll plug the Deity Challenges ones again. You don't need to be deity player yourself to participate. You don't have to win. It's helpful enough just to play the same map as other, more experienced players do and compare notes. Austrian map (challenge #3) is very easy (relatively to deity, of course ). You may want to check it out.

 

[Buccaneer]

Yeah, I think he did better than I did on my first Diety attempt in which I got rolled and not able to counter attack.

coanda, there is no shame in starting at the mid-level (Prince-King) to learn ALL of the mechanics of the game. Just think of it as a tutorial. It doesn't matter if you win or lose or whether you'll be bored or not, you need to learn more Civ5 and to unlearn some of the foolishness from Civ4.

Welcome to Civ5! I was a long time Civ2 player (until 2005) and thought that was the greatest game. I then played Civ4 until 2010 and thought the same thing. Now I easily think Civ5 with G&K is the greatest game. I believe the hexed-based, 1upt for combat was brilliant (for the Civ series), as well as what they did for social players. Plus I really like what they did for the leaders/Civs with their UU/UA/UB. Good luck and have fun.