Just a few questions about deity

[Art Cheslog]

i am a long time civ player. just watched a wainy youtube video. i normally play at king/emperor. wainy did a lot of things differently than i would have and i learned a lot. he did a bowman rush. why wouldn't he build a barracks? or buy? then, an armory? i understand why he didn't build roads, but, it goes contrary to what i thought was good financially. i highly recommend his video to players wishing to upgrade their play.

 

[Winterday]

Though I'm sure Wainy will stop by and so point to answer this himself. I believe in his video he answers this question. He is going for quantity. A promotion or two extra on his bowman is not as good as just having more bowmen. Especially when he's attacking cities, having one extra level in shock or barrage won't matter.

 

[zyx]

You'd better ask wainy!

What I can tell you is: each road tile costs 1 gpt (gold per turn). So if cities are too fare away or yet too small, road "upkeep" would cost more. There is a formular in the forums when a road is profitable. Could also be that wainy prefered harbours on the video you have seen.
Building baracks might not be a good idea: because your first chance to instant heal a unit takes longer, as the first 15 experience points triggers of a promotion at 10 experience points and your next chance to instant heal would be at a total of 30 experience points: 15 points away instead of just 10.

 

[vanjito]

Yeah, number of archers is paramount and without barracks you can insta-heal them sooner (if needed)

Eh, is there a way to delete a post?

 

[Mesix]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I only use the instant heal promotion for units which are expendable. When I am waging war, I generally have a front line of melee and mounted units with ranged units behind. My melee and mounted units are (based on the results of a few early battles) either marked for promotion or expendable status. The ones which get promotions are kept alive/moved to the back to heal when necessary. The ones which get the instant heal will continue to get the instant heal when they level up and be used in suicide attacks on cities or key enemy units when necessary.

My rational is that the instant heal is a wasted promotion if I am planning to develop the unit. I would like to get the third tier promotion as fast as possible so that I can get March/Blitz on my units. The accompanying expendable units are used to soften up defenses.

With this strategy, I would never build with the rational that the instant heal is 10 xp instead of 15 xp. I'd rather have the extra promotion. That said, early rushes (like the Babylonian Bowmen rush described) often benefit by having more Bowmen rather than one extra promotion. I also have cities without Barracks which produce my expendable units when I am at war.

 

[MadDjinn]

early rushes on Deity tend to require the use of insta-heals to finish the job.

You can take the time and sit there, pulling units away to heal, but the city/one ranged defender will eventually start doing 4-5 points of damage/turn to your archers (walls speed this up).

Given that ranged units never need to take a promotions (firing cancels the select promotion UI), you can bank 'insta-heals' for some time (as long as you can fire every turn) and save a few units to get the job done sooner.

Overall, it's not a great way to get good units, but if the choice is decent units for upgrades or a capital puppet really early, I'll take the capital puppet.

 

[Mesix]

I agree with your logic for using insta-heal. I disagree with the logic of ZYX that use of insta-heal is a reason not to build a Barracks (because of 10 xp vs 15 xp to get promos). An early rush needing more units faster is a good reason not to build a Barracks. Trying to limit the starting xp of a unit seems counter intuitive to me.

 

[JamesCivFan]

@MadDjinn, aren't the best early rushes *usually* done by the use of Swordsmen? Or is it better to do what Wainy did in his Bab2lon videos? Supposing you don't have a Civ with a Unique Unit based on Archery (in other words, having simple archers/warriors).

What are the best policies to pick then? And what's the best strategy in your opinion?

 

[zyx]

I agree with your logic for using insta-heal. I disagree with the logic of ZYX that use of insta-heal is a reason not to build a Barracks (because of 10 xp vs 15 xp to get promos). An early rush needing more units faster is a good reason not to build a Barracks. Trying to limit the starting xp of a unit seems counter intuitive to me.

An archer gets 2 XP per ranged attack and another 2 XP when being attacked by the city if I remember correctly. so the instant heal option is 1 to 2 turns later if you have barracks. The difference might not be decisive, but I found it useful to have an instant heal option at a crucial moment - when the city's defense is allmost down.

 

[MadDjinn]

I agree with your logic for using insta-heal. I disagree with the logic of ZYX that use of insta-heal is a reason not to build a Barracks (because of 10 xp vs 15 xp to get promos). An early rush needing more units faster is a good reason not to build a Barracks. Trying to limit the starting xp of a unit seems counter intuitive to me.

realistically, the Barracks is a waste of hammers or gold. You'd have more archers without it and therefore a better chance at winning.

@MadDjinn, aren't the best early rushes *usually* done by the use of Swordsmen? Or is it better to do what Wainy did in his Bab2lon videos? Supposing you don't have a Civ with a Unique Unit based on Archery (in other words, having simple archers/warriors).

What are the best policies to pick then? And what's the best strategy in your opinion?

I sometimes find myself settler rushing. No, not buying settlers, but actually running around looking for a new spot, catch a barb ruin that gives me a map showing an AI, then plant myself 3 tiles from the AI cap.

archers+scouts ftw! No uniques needed. Just DoW once you've got 3-4 archers ready at your cap. You'll be close enough to draw their forces to you for an easier kill. Once all warriors are killed, surround the cap and start shooting. Don't forget to steal a worker and use it as bait if they have an archer/chariot archer/whatever in their capital. They can't resist getting a worker...

Scouts are faster to produce, than warriors, and you never mind losing one or two (plus they can move through rough terrain better, meaning you can leave them behind your archers until you're almost finished with the city). If they survive, they can head off looking at the rest of the map.

of course, the above only works, on purpose, if you catch a map by turn 4 (as long as it's not just water). As well, it helps to have an AI within 14-18 tiles, if it's mostly open terrain, within 8-10 tiles, otherwise (civ dependant of course). You can luck into catching their 'normal' 2ndary city location and therefore slow them for a number of turns while they walk it elsewhere.

and well, be careful who you rush. Babylon will laugh at you with their Bowmen and a fast Masonry start+walls (which they do).

though, realistically, the best 'rushes' are the ones that launch before turn 30. By that time, the AIs are into classical and some have decent units.

I consider swordsmen more of a 'timing attack' than a rush. You take a lot of time to get it ready.

Otherwise, Honour, honour, honour.... Always get the free GG/faster production 2nd, otherwise get the XP boost for archers and Discipline for melee pushes (as a 3rd policy, the opposite one as the 4th).

 

[Tabarnak]

A good sword rush is done by settling a good amount of cities from Liberty and start building warriors in satellite cities. Obviously, you want to beeline Iron working and stay in unhappiness a couple of turns. You also need iron...(with 3-4 cities you have very good chances to catch some)

A 6 swordmen+ 2 archers by turn 45-50 can do a lot of damage against any civs on any level. I prefer to wait a dozen of turns for swords than to take a big chance with only warriors and archers. Way more powerful.

You can continue steamrolling too, thing that you can't with only archers and scouts. But Madjinn's strat is not bad, just very situational(semi-isolated, weak civ, etc).

 

[MadDjinn]

A good sword rush is done by settling a good amount of cities from Liberty and start building warriors in satellite cities. Obviously, you want to beeline Iron working and stay in unhappiness a couple of turns. You also need iron...

A 6 swordmen+ 2 archers by turn 45-50 can do a lot of damage against any civs on any level. I prefer to wait a dozen of turns for swords than to take a big chance with only warriors and archers. Way more powerful.

You can continue steamrolling too, thing that you can't with only archers and scouts. But Madjinn's strat is not bad, just very situational(semi-isolated, weak civ, etc).

definitely a sword timing push with at least 4 swords+ an amount of archers is much stronger than what I wrote. But it's not really a rush.

Though, you can do it without the extra cities as well. just pump warriors and get to Iron Working + the free settler about the same time and mass upgrade (random point here - you actually need the iron around for this to work. No iron = fail rush).

Also, definitely what I wrote is very situational.

a) You have to hate your start (why leave it otherwise?)
b) there needs to be a close civ (2 close civs - ensure you're not close to both)
c) you can get within 4 tiles of their capital before they land a 2nd city in front of you (rough terrain hurts this unless you're Incans, then it's a double win for hills+slingers)
d) the AI can't have good early ranged UUs (Babylon, Incans, India - egypt doesn't count since the chariot archer isn't better than the archers)
e) * you must finish the Iroquois before they hit Iron Working

everyone else is fair game. Best targets are Chivalry or Gunpowder UU civs. They're weak before then, so hurt them before they can hurt you.

though, ensure to split the ranged fire coming at you. Both the city and ranged defender will target the weak unit (or both on the same one if a choice), so if you plant a scout behind a hill or forest, the city will always target it (if weakest) and the ranged defender will target something else. This means you have more time to allow archers to deal damage before pulling them off the line.


Otherwise, if you've tech archery, then to IW, you can switch into a swords timing attack on the next AI. If the iron is elsewhere, you'll need to either take it from an AI or wait for a settler.

 

[w a i n y]

I think that I would have been better off building a few more early cities near my capital and linking them with roads (I'm talking about Bab2lon). As it was, I would have had to pay upwards of 10 gpt just to connect to the closest puppet. That was kind of an extreme example though, and you won't encounter such isolated pangaea starts most of the time. In general, I think it's unwise to avoid roads.

 

[Tabarnak]

Otherwise, if you've tech archery, then to IW, you can switch into a swords timing attack on the next AI. If the iron is elsewhere, you'll need to either take it from an AI or wait for a settler.

With a good bait, i guess that's the best to leverage the first sub 30 turn rush. Maybe settling on a lux(need that tech before archery or right after) with 2nd city close to ennemy cap and rush buy 2 archers in it.

Settling more cities is good while warmongering because you already in warring mode and don't want to lose much land to the AI if more neighbors around. But yeah it's also situational.

 

[tommynt]

just playing it like mp should guarantee u win vs any ai

 

[Tabarnak]

just playing it like mp should guarantee u win vs any ai

Yep that's what i have demonstrated in the no writing tech deity game. But if by any bad luck you just can't get iron you are pretty screwed.

 

[w a i n y]

just playing it like mp should guarantee u win vs any ai

Yep that's what i have demonstrated in the no writing tech deity game. But if by any bad luck you just can't get iron you are pretty screwed.

I disagree in general. Certain strategies which should work well against humans (eg generic archer rushes) would fail miserably against deity AI, just because they have so many more units in the early stages of the game. I don't think a mastery of multi-player is sufficient to master deity (although the two skillsets have a great deal of overlap.

 

[Tabarnak]

I disagree in general. Certain strategies which should work well against humans (eg generic archer rushes) would fail miserably against deity AI, just because they have so many more units in the early stages of the game. I don't think a mastery of multi-player is sufficient to master deity (although the two skillsets have a great deal of overlap.

There is the question of double moves too. But in general the idea in mp is to not do things half ways like in deity. Skills is more important in mp(aka clickfest). I didn't see an archer rush in mp games yet. Archers alone are weaker in multiplayer, mainly because games are often played at quick speed.

 

[w a i n y]

But in general the idea in mp is to not do things half ways like in deity. Skills is more important in mp(aka clickfest).

What do you mean by these two sentences?

 

[Tabarnak]

What do you mean by these two sentences?

Ok i guess i made a spelling mystake...you should read: ''like(also?) for deity''. Same for both mode, you can't be lazy about your main goal and a solid strat is needed to have a chance to win.

If you don't act rapidly when a turn begins, you may lose more units than you should and lose the game only because of that, especially when you are the warmonger.