Let's Talk Deity (dominant strategies, openings, etc.)

[JamesCivFan]

@antimony, how consistently can the human player get the Great Zimbabwe on Deity if they beeline for it?

 

[martyb36]

Even when doing a Horse/Knight rush I still build ~6 Slingers. I find that before my enemy gets Horsemen Archers will always be able to get Wall-less cities or even walled cities if they are in a bad location. Maybe you scrapped too early?

But it is true that the 1st start will set you behind a lot in early conquering, maybe your initial idea of Slinger into Archer rush would have been the better option there.

Did you forward settle your opp with your first expo? Did you get the Monument in your first expo before or after Slingers? I much prefer after.

Once the archer/warrior army was ready I was about to head over to take the city state and then to the Civ near them and take another city or two. But then Horse Barbs happened which was a real stinker.

I mainly scrapped because the culture/science trees were way off If I wanted to grab Knights like Vic said (circa turn 60-70)

I did Monument first then slingers in my 2nd city. And the city wasn't forward settled, I dropped it about 6 tiles north west of Capital (Nearest Civ was about 20 tiles West). It was a location I could get Horsey eureka for building a pasture.

I'll try again later hopefully and report back. I think I need to bait an AI to attack me to get the "war declared" inspiration. Would you grab construction tech to get the inspiration for the civic that gives you Coloseum etc (can't remember it's name but it's on the way to Feudalism). Not sure if it's worth it as this involves building a water mill too.

 

[myclan]

So talking of fast science victories... extra cities have the purpose of extra districts, not extra mines.

4 cities of 2 mines and a campus is far superior to a single city with 8 mines and a campus.

What else do you need in the city? Well a monument as civics are important and you do need a few commercial and industrial districts but not one in every city. I am weirdly starting to park my cities anywhere sooner rather than later because all I care about is a campus. I even am starting to avoid fresh water.

If you are having a large area of land but very few luxury resources, it's right to spam 2 pop cities for they don't cost amenity but give science output which you want. But if it's not the case, I think growing a city is far more important. If you have 4 luxury resouces=16 amenity, you can grow about 10 cities to size 4~6, then each building a campus. But if I choose to grow about 7 cities to size 6~8, I save the production of 3 settlers, and building library+university faster than you. And at the same time building IZ/CH for eureka.

 

[MIS]

@antimony, how consistently can the human player get the Great Zimbabwe on Deity if they beeline for it?

Almost 100% of the time. The AI does a bad job of planning this ahead.

 

[MIS]

Have you tried selling cities? Especially ones that you conquered in bad locations? You can get absolutely disproportional sums of money, do some nasty tricks and so forth. Some consider it an exploit, but (so far) the only real exploit the game had was Horse Economy, imo.

This would be banned under Civ5 HOF rules:

Exploit involving trading for Lump Sums of Gold
Systematically making and breaking agreements for lump sums of gold with the AIs is not allowed. It is considered an exploit when there is a clear pattern of activity beyond normal play.

Examples of tactics used:

• Repeatedly selling a resource (luxury, strategic, etc.) and pillaging or allowing Barbarians or other civs to pillage the resource or trade route to break the deal.
• Repeatedly selling a resource (luxury, strategic, etc.) and declaring war or otherwise bringing about a war that breaks the deal. (i.e. a phony war just to break the deal.)
• Repeatedly selling Gold per Turn (GPT) and declaring war or otherwise bringing about a war that breaks the deal. (i.e. a phony war just to break the deal.)
• Repeatedly selling Cities and declaring war or otherwise bringing about a war so you can take them back. (i.e. low risk, low cost war just retrieve the cities for resale to another civ.)

 

[Victoria]

What I'm getting at is how on earth do you manage to get Feudalism by approx turn 60?! Without capturing a large amount of AI cities with a hastily built army or going Gorgo.

1. You need your civic eurekas which is why building a settler and worker is important. You really have to concentrate on eurekas... and if you did not notice your craftsmanship was at 50% for 2 turns then that's an issue.
One quite clever thing with delaying slingers a bit is often people will declare on you which is a double bonus. An otherwise unreachable eureka and their army is near/on your turf so easier to deal with. How about a eureka for building a district?.... well the encampment helps there as you are crazy to ignore bronze working early.

2. You need monuments. Most cities you capture will have a repairable monument, capture those damn cities, know how you are going to take them and which ones are best to take. You do not need to take 10, take 4. And the first thing your settler builds is a monument... note I never said build one in your capital although feel free if you think you have it prioritised right or you cannot get 1 or 3 or 4

3. If you are next to a culture generating lux at the start, settling on it gives a huge % increase in culture. Something like Piopiotahi cannot be relied upon but is nice if you can get to it early, otherwise it's value diminishes over time.

4. Naturally first to a culture CS is a free monument... you can still take the CS but make sure you can do it fast as it's value is less at the start because you already have it's monument so to speak.

5. Of course there is always a pantheon to consider... starting with 2-3 bananas may be worth worshipping the banana god. Being a New Zealander, worshipping the sheep pastures is always pleasurable.

So... if you can get all 5 above you have done something wrong, namely getting number 5. You do not need all of the above but you need some and it is about practice. ... and eurekas are the most important.

This would be banned under Civ5 HOF rules:

It is an honour system based on exploiting.
If I repeatedly sell the city then that's wrong. If I capture 5 cities and one is rubbish of course I am allowed to sell it, as long as the intention is not the to attack that city in the near future.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

@antimony, how consistently can the human player get the Great Zimbabwe on Deity if they beeline for it?

Before T100 I think.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Nice. I gotta try this out for myself. Getting GZ and Ruhr should give me a huge boost for an SV.

 

[antimony]

If you're ahead of AI in tech by turn 100 you can build GZ and Big Ben, which is all you need to buy the great people for a SV. Like the poster above said, AI almost never builds GZ, but they do build Big Ben when given the opportunity.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

If you're ahead of AI in tech by turn 100 you can build GZ and Big Ben, which is all you need to buy the great people for a SV. Like the poster above said, AI almost never builds GZ, but they do build Big Ben when given the opportunity.

I mean, you shall have the Zimbabwe built before T100.

 

[JamesCivFan]

So it should be GZ + Ruhr in 1 city. Hopefully the capital. That means you will have an immense amount of production per turn to quickly build the spaceship parts to victory.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

So it should be GZ + Ruhr in 1 city. Hopefully the capital. That means you will have an immense amount of production per turn to quickly build the spaceship parts to victory.

The case is that you don't have time for Rhur. I suggest all wonders and your spaceport being built by harvest/cut down.

 

[Victoria]

Hey @Lily_Lancer what order do you build your first few districts and how far into the game?

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Hey @Lily_Lancer what order do you build your first few districts and how far into the game?

I always start with a worker, then a settler, then multiple slingers with 2 cities. I think it is ridiculous to have a scout at the beginning of the game. On 1/5 of time you can catch a settler and that scout is useful, on other 80% times it just waste you ~5T.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Hey @Lily_Lancer what order do you build your first few districts and how far into the game?

For districts, I'd like to capture a militaristic/commercial/religious city-state with its district first. Wasting precious early hammers on districts is not what I want.

 

[JamesCivFan]

What about isolated starts? Do you guys re$-roll?

Lily, I also wouldn't say the Scout is a total waste. I managed to get into quite a few goody huts in my last game and I got at least 2-3 important eurekas, as well as a second free Scout.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

What about isolated starts? Do you guys re$-roll?

Lily, I also wouldn't say the Scout is a total waste. I managed to get into quite a few goody huts in my last game and I got at least 2-3 important eurekas, as well as a second free Scout.

That obviously do not worth 30 of your valuable early production. A scout cost roughly half a settler, so it shall provide your what half a city yields.

Isolated starts of the most fun since we can think about and try different strategies on these maps. Civ properties also can get their most use.

For example, I had a game which start isolated on a landmass of ~5 cities with Brazil, and I beelined Mineas Geras, got them at ~T125, and won a victory at ~T160. (The Map is earth, Ais didn't build any navy and there was only a few coastal cities. But Mineas Geras is certainly not only a naval unit.)

 

[JamesCivFan]

Interesting. I'll open with a worker next game and see how it does. Although I expect it to be sitting around for quite a few turns, since I won't even have some important techs to improve my resource tiles unless I have a lucky start with luxuries that require only Mining or AH.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Interesting. I'll open with a worker next game and see how it does. Although I expect it to be sitting around for quite a few turns, since I won't even have some important techs to improve my resource tiles unless I have a lucky start with luxuries that require only Mining or AH.

Build a mine on plain hills or build a pasture or camp is always what you can do. By the way, as the worker finished you shall grow a border tile and have enough gold to purchase another. With these 2 additional tiles it's sure that the worker won't sit still.

 

[JamesCivFan]

I'll post my start and play on Immortal. I'll try Builder -> Settler -> Slinger X2. I guess that's what you mean? What do you build in your second and third cities first? What's their build order usually? Slinger -> Monument -> Slinger? Or Archer I guess.