Just Got to Say It: I Frickin' Hate Deity

[snarzberry]

when i think about a deity domination strategy i can only think of a couple that are viable in a "it didnt hinge on luck" kind of way. i think the same goes for any vic condition in that the early eras tend to have to be done a certain few ways and changing gears for a different condition is nigh impossible. i havent seen any deity LPs (all the ones ive seen from wainy/maddjinn/tabarnak) that dont follow certain repetitive tactics/strats for the vic. Even Tabarnak's "no writing" game was still a 4-city sword rush. ive also never seen a deity LP of an archipelago dom vic. most of them are always pangaea.

I guess you're thinking more along the lines of 'attack hard and early, usually with iron units, produce GS's and sign RAs to unlock strong upgrades for your units'. You're right that is the general idea of a domination victory, but it's a pretty broad and incomplete statement that I've made there.

There's also archer rush - crossbows - rifles. Pikes - defend - rifles. Defend early - horse units - tanks or defend early - deep bulb to bombers, or to mechs. If you want to go on conquest in the first 100 turns then yeah you're either going to be playing a Chivalry civ or you're gonna want iron units. It doesn't seem narrow to me, that's what iron units are for. There aren't any other units that we have available to do the job at that time Even then there are two ways, go with swords for the first target or wait for longswords.

Then there's all the other stuff like use of bulbs and SPs that can be varied and interesting and multiple approaches can work. Piety into Autocracy is something I've just discovered that is perfectly viable on deity and requires significant changes to early game development, compared to say a Rationalism game.

Think about how many ways you can approach the tech tree, targeting key military techs like Chemistry, Rifling, Dynamite, Radar, Electronics, Nuke stuff, Stealth and Lasers. There seem many ways to approach to me.

I don't think we disagree, we're just looking at it differently. Maybe while taking a closer look at the specifics of each game then you might agree there is quite a lot of variation, and each way only works under the right conditions.

Stealth bombers + a bit of navy makes water maps domination games pretty easy right? Alternatively straight to powerful naval units like frigates-destroyers and own the seas. I don't play those games, not my cup of tea, but given the state of the naval AI I don't see a problem with getting those wins.

 

[gozpel]

Rant-Master, you WILL win one day.

But not today.

Mega-Helmling, it was a good try, tomorrow you WILL win.

"just a little bit of luck and you're there"

5 for your determinaion, next time....

 

[UTBear]

It's just a game and you should play it what ever way gives you the most enjoyment. That being said, if you beat Deity by cheating, then you haven't beaten Diety.

 

[Man vs Civ AI]

I think somehow you've got to avoid the AI civs as long as possible in diety. The only diety I won on was begun in the future era, pangea, huge map, marathon, conquest victory only. AI civs in the future era did not contact me unless they were close, so by avoiding them, I was able to avoid wars until I built up city production capability, and then units - first some giant death robots, then nukes, concentrating on AI civs with uranium to make even more of them, then getting the policy that doubles resources to create lots of nuclear missiles to obliverate enemy cities, keeping only capitals. Even then, the AI made lots and lots of units, all vaporized by my nukes! And if you are the Russian civ, your uranium doubles up too, and combine that with the doubling policy, you get 4x uranium.

 

[spider1]

It's just a game and you should play it what ever way gives you the most enjoyment. That being said, if you beat Deity by cheating, then you haven't beaten Diety.

But, you can easily beat Diety by setting up the game in a certain way in the menu settings. Would that be considered cheating if it's in the parameters of the game? The whole point to laying down your money for a game is to enjoy the game in any fashion possible so as to get your money's worth.

I'm not arguing with you, but in fact agree with your point. I wouldn't enjoy Civ 5 if I cheated it. So, I don't play at the higher levels, Prince and King are enough of a challange for me. I will however cheat if I should happen to fire up Sim City. It's a different mind set for two different games.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I guess you're thinking more along the lines of 'attack hard and early, usually with iron units, produce GS's and sign RAs to unlock strong upgrades for your units'. You're right that is the general idea of a domination victory, but it's a pretty broad and incomplete statement that I've made there.

There's also archer rush - crossbows - rifles. Pikes - defend - rifles. Defend early - horse units - tanks or defend early - deep bulb to bombers, or to mechs. If you want to go on conquest in the first 100 turns then yeah you're either going to be playing a Chivalry civ or you're gonna want iron units. It doesn't seem narrow to me, that's what iron units are for. There aren't any other units that we have available to do the job at that time Even then there are two ways, go with swords for the first target or wait for longswords.

Then there's all the other stuff like use of bulbs and SPs that can be varied and interesting and multiple approaches can work. Piety into Autocracy is something I've just discovered that is perfectly viable on deity and requires significant changes to early game development, compared to say a Rationalism game.

Think about how many ways you can approach the tech tree, targeting key military techs like Chemistry, Rifling, Dynamite, Radar, Electronics, Nuke stuff, Stealth and Lasers. There seem many ways to approach to me.

I don't think we disagree, we're just looking at it differently. Maybe while taking a closer look at the specifics of each game then you might agree there is quite a lot of variation, and each way only works under the right conditions.

Stealth bombers + a bit of navy makes water maps domination games pretty easy right? Alternatively straight to powerful naval units like frigates-destroyers and own the seas. I don't play those games, not my cup of tea, but given the state of the naval AI I don't see a problem with getting those wins.

i agree with that, but my broad definitions are a little less broad than you described. this is what they all boil down to (for dom vics at least), with micro variations being the real variety:

iron rush
archer rush
UU rush (keshiks, cav, rifles)
stealth bomber strat
all require making use of as many RAs as you can get.

it seems like much less variation to me. but now that i think about it that's actually a fair amount of variation for a dom vic. it still gets old after doing it several times though (regardless of difficulty). but what about the others? do sci/diplo/cult vics have as many? if there are more i'd like to see them as more than just hypotheticals. I do like that they dont absolutely require the GL slingshot. It took me a while to actually drop that as a requirement. But I think they all require rapid RAs (certainly timed median values) and/or getting into Rationalism through Astronomy. I probably need a larger selection than the LPs Ive watched (forgot about a few of DaveMcW's i'd seen).

again, i agree that we are seeing it in a different light and I also understand that you and the guys who do those strategies are MUCH better than me because you are the players that discovered those strategies through trial and error whereas i just "borrowed" them from your hard work, but like many games, when you get to the highest difficulty the methods to "beat" the game become less and less. and i guess they should be otherwise it wouldnt be the tougher difficulty. but it's still frustrating to me that I cant do a turtled up war-less victory on deity (without cooked settings at least). (and i still want that to be very tough to achieve, requiring a lot more diplomacy/relationships to remain at peace, not just the typical "next turn" clicks.) my own sensibilities would find that to be the ultimate victory in a strategy game like this, that it would be the furthest definition from actual history possible, that a culture existed (and "won") from beginning to end without war. but c'est la vie.

 

[snarzberry]

Here's hoping the expansion opens up a bunch of new playstyles and diplo options along those lines, you might get your wish. As much as I like war in civ 5, it's the peaceful play stuff that I'm looking forward to the most in GK. I wonder if the re-balancing and new mechanics/units will alter the game so much that all of our current deity strategies will have to be binned or just tweaked.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

it will be interesting how impacting the expansion will be. i'll be curious, for certain.

 

[Tabarnak]

They need to at least rework RAs, the power of some wonders and make a tech tree and policy trees where it's possible to play from different ways.

Snarz hit the point here. If you play for a domination victory, you can find many ways to achieve this(you will probably need to fight a very large numbers of units, which is the principal point why i don't like this level) and find this less boring than if you try a science, diplo or cultural victory where you need to play very tight and linear(i.e. the usual science path : Edu(PT), RAs and stay calm).

 

[blasto]

Wait...what? Are you running some kind of mod or editor or what?

Yeah, Worldbuilder is friggin awesome!

When I first started cheating I would lock in my starting position on a map I built, give myself a few Natural wonders and lots of luxuries, units and gold. Now I'm real close to not cheating at all (comparatively speaking) where I can beat Diety with just a few thousand gold and a couple GP's with out choosing a starting position at all.

But if you haven't messed with Worldbuilder, I have to say, its as fun as the game almost.