Just signed up for hardest level in the tournament - I'm scared...

[pnp_dredd]

Ok I usually play at emperor level. Sometimes monarch, but mostly emperor. Unless I get a REALLY bad starting location (jungle, or absolutely no luxuries/horses/iron) I will keep playing until I have lost or about 1000 AD when I get bored.

So I signed up for the "emperor/diety" level in the tournament. I have tried 5 diety games so far. Random everything, 3 tiny, 2 small maps. I am losing miserably.

It is possible that I have just been unlucky and gotten very high water % maps, but the 3-5 other civs seem to be either right on top of me or come within view in 10-20 turns. They then proceed to take every tiny scrap of useful land (I will have 2 cities by then... 3-4 with a nice food start).

I have tried building all defensive units. I have tried early attacking strategies. I have restarted one nice start (a grass wheat next to capital, 2 cattled plains for 2nd city - all irrigatable quickly) 3-4 times trying to do some damage to the Aztecs just to the north, who box me in. No go. A 2 warrior rush doesnt work. A 3 archer, 2 spearmen, 5 warrior fairly early rush is even less successful (only stopped to build a barracks in one city - Im Japanese, so barracks are cheap). If I hang around any longer than that then they get swordsmen and there is no hope.

I have no horses, and there is an iron I can get too now that I know where it is, but thats not the point of the game.

I have read all of the "diety strategy" posts in the civ3 war academy, but a lot of the advice is out of date with the new patches, and a lot of them start with "1) restart until I get an awesome starting position", which isnt going to work in the tournament.

Are people willing to post the strategies (?exploits?) that they use to consistantly beat diety? Does anyone consistantly beat diety? (ie >50% success, all starts taken into account)? Is the strategy used heaps different to even emperor strategy?

In emperor I use a fairly balanced strategy... medium defensive military expansion, some cultural growth, some expansion depending on food conditions, 0% science, try and keep my excess luxuries to trade for the important military/pre-built wonder advances. Is a balanced strategy not the way to go for diety? should I build only the best military units, and send them out randomly in groups of 3 or so to try and luckily capture and enemy city?

Please help if you have ANY experience with diety skill level in the 1.16 or 1.21 patches (which have really different gameplay to the earlier patches)

 

[lwchen]

The difference between Emperor and Deity is like night and day.

A generic strat to win on Deity is ...

1. Start on good land. Deity is practically unwinnable if you start on crappy land.

2. Don't play land grab with settlers ... the AI will win. Instead, consolidate your best cities and hope for iron and horses. Then try a swordsman/horseman rush with a nearby civ. Don't wait too long though ... if they get pikemen before you're done attacking you've probably lost.

3. Buy or extort most of the techs up till the industrial age. By then your economy will have the potential to be on par with the AI. Hope for coal, industrialize, then the game becomes winnable.

4. Building wonders really isn't viable until Universal Suffrage or so, but go all out for Hoover Dam ASAP. This wonder mitigates the huge bonus the AI gets on Deity.

5. Stay out of war whenever possible. War only slows you down. Your goal should be space race victory between 1400 and 1600. Later than that usually means defeat.

6. Go for production and economy. Since the AI builds cultural buildings so quickly, you need good culture to keep from being assimilated. But since it's like 3x harder to assimilate than to be assimilated, culture really isn't that important. Economy, however, is huge. With enough cash you can buy anything you need. And keep a healthy-sized military as a deterrent.

It's possible to win by practically any method, but space race is the most prominent. Diplomatic victory is very possible, but the hardest part is building the UN or acquiring enough land to make the ballot. Cultural victory in a single city is improbable due to how difficult it is to build the early wonders. Conquest on large maps becomes very tedious ... but if you can conquer or win by total culture, then you possess the means to launch a space ship.

On average I'd say I win on Deity maybe 1 in 4 times ... and that's after restarting till I got a decent starting spot each time. No cheese tactics though. I pretty much know by 1 AD whether or not I've got a prayer.

On Emperor it's more like 4 out of 5 times. Night and day.

 

[pnp_dredd]

finally got a game where I have at least got a foothold. Set it to highest land % pangea small map. Rolled the chinese in a nice location, plenty of flood plains and forests/hills. Mind you, flood plains arent as good as they used to be since you cant rush settlers anymore .

I have about 8 cities, all in reasonable spots. I have only built barracks and a spearmen or two, and the rest has been horsemen. Bought every tech up till mono/fuedalism, and I am researching cavalry so I dont have to pay lots of $$$ (monotheism + feudalism cost all my gold +2 per turn). I will have a rider army of maybe 20-30 riders, and I will try a large war with them.

One thing I have noticed on diety... barbarians are NEVER a problem for me. The setting is "random", but unless this is broken and always rolls "no barbs" then the other civs are taking care of any barbarians before I see them. Actually I saw a hut once, but they have never come attacking.

How does the AI manage to get a settler before I get a warrior? They must only need about 4 extra food to gain a population point or something.

 

[lwchen]

Deity games are easier when you limit the % of land. The AI grabs it so fast that it actually behooves you to select small land masses. That way the AI civs don't get huge.

Pangaea is also the hardest of the land types to win with. War is not something you want so I'd say continents is much easier. Archipelago is OK, but you may not have fresh water and that could mean no Hoover Dam.

Large pangaea maps are perhaps the ultimate challenges on Deity level if you like that sort of thing.

Since corruption is a major factor on Deity, it matters less that your empire is fairly small. In fact it's possible to win with less than 10 cities on a small world. It is imperative that all 10 cities benefit from a palace though.

But if you let a scientific civ get huge, watch out. I've seen spaceships launched in the 1300s by Persia and Germany.

I have no idea how the AI manages to feed its settlers so quickly. Just watch a replay of the game and you'll notice that most civs will have 5 cities before you have 3. Personally I think this much cheating just detracts from the game, but until MP is available I suppose it'll have to do.

Good luck with your game. Once you get a few Deity victories under your belt, it won't seem that intimidating.

 

[Sullla]

While I have never played a game on deity before and have no intention of trying, I do know that the AI starts with 2 settlers and about 6 military units, either warriors or archers. Combine that with the fact that settlers only cost 16 shields for them... you cannot possibly outexpand them. Therefore your best bet is probably to limit the available land as much as possible because otherwise the other civs will just be gigantic.

I don't think even the best Civ3 players can win more than 1/3 of their games on Deity either; just too much luck of what the AI civs do involved.

 

[SirPleb]

I'd never tried Deity on maps smaller than standard so I've recently been trying a number of game starts on tiny, trying to prepare. I haven't been counting (I should have) but I think I've tried about 7 so far. All with random settings on everything but map size. I believe that two of the maps I rolled were 100% impossible. On those maps, within 10 to 20 turns of starting, a nearby rival came along with 3 to 5 units and clobbered my start town. Instant game over. I retried one of them a few ways, making a peace deal, giving money. It made no difference - my neighbor was "polite" and clobbered me anyway In the other starts I tried, survival was possible until into the Middle Ages. I didn't get to a position of any real power and don't know if they could have been won or not.

On standard or larger maps I think that probably a fairly high percentage of random Deity maps are theoretically winnable. I think the chances for winning (still speaking of theoretically winnable ) increase as the map gets larger - there are more Civs to play off against each other, and less chance of getting nailed early on before any hope of defending. But in practice is of course quite another matter! Winnable without foreknowledge and without fantastic luck? I really don't know.

I don't know whether playing random Deity maps is going to end up being fun or maybe just won't work. I do think we can count on seeing a lot of lost games. If we get a truly impossible game which dies in the first few moves no matter what, then I guess it might become necessary to roll a new start for that game - cross that bridge if/when we come to it? If on some map everyone gets wasted in the first 20 moves it will become apparent quickly...

Everyone signing up for the Emperor/Deity division is brave to give it a whirl! It is scary. But what the heck, even if it doesn't work out it is going to be interesting trying it.

About the original questions:

"Does anyone consistantly beat diety? (ie >50% success, all starts taken into account)?"
I don't think I've seen anyone claim near that level of success. If someone has done it, we want them in the tourney to show us how! Maybe as we play the tournament we'll learn techniques that make this possible. I think it is uncharted water. Unless we get lucky maps I suspect that our Deity games will include a lot of loss submissions. But there will still be better and worse losses.

"Is the strategy used heaps different to even emperor strategy?"
On Emperor you can beat the AI by playing on its own terms. My feeling is that at Deity there's no hope of beating the game on its own terms. You have to gamble on the AI not taking advantage of your weakness. Play mainly to survive. (Every time I've tried it, very early warfare == suicide at Deity.) Conserve your strength and build, using every small trading advantage you can get. Expanding as much as possible (given the AIs advantages) has worked for me. Watch for golden opportunities to eventually make a move even though you are weak. E.g. an AI who gets targeted by a feeding frenzy, an AI which is missing a key resource, a way to manipulate the world successfully through diplomacy, etc.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Well, you can always unsign yourself, and sign up the next group below. Idea is to have fun, not fear.

 

[JuicyCivNewbie]

Originally posted by lwchen
1. Start on good land. Deity is practically unwinnable if you start on crappy land..

Untrue! You can win on very mediocre land on deity. Great land is not a must by a long way (I classify mediocre land as a couple forests, a couple plains, and a couple grassland with mountains and hills in between). Obviously if you start on a tiny island or in the middle of a huge jungle you will have it very difficult.

The rest I mostly agree with, but on smaller maps all out conquest is the way to go. Also, cultural OCC victory is almost impossible even if you get the wonders, as you just don't have the time to get the 20,000 culture.

The vast majority of my deity level losses occur in the early game. But I don't really consider it a loss when my captial gets assaulted by 5-10 archers and warriors in 2500BC (when there was nothing I could do to win). It's rare for me to lose once I get my early conquest successfully completed. After that it's all much easier.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Noone can always beat deity unless he employ slave labor camps.

I didn`t try deity yet with 1.21, but i guess the highwer number of defenders makes it a lot harder, sinde now you need decidedly more lucky breaks