I have to ask... Does lily lancer lose games too? I don't know but going for ambiitious openings will end up with going down without even a fighting chance in a fraction of games.. For me at least. When the AI doesn't even bother to surround your capital and just rams warrior after warrior in... Eventually you will die...
Let's Talk Deity (dominant strategies, openings, etc.)
- Thread starter JamesCivFan
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- civilization deity strategies
Scout
Scout first to me is suicidal in deity... Chances are you are going to run into a neighbor and suffer the first impressions negative modifier earlier... So you've pretty much hastened the inevitable early DoW. The chances of meeting a CS first is very low on deity (true in 20% of games maybe that might work but I discover that if you cannot meet the nearby CS first with your warrior then chances are the AI will... And your scout will not make any difference) also that CS has no guarantee of staying alive since the AI loves to kill them with their starting units. Personally I prefer not to meet any AI until I'm ready either with a gift or with enough of a defense force. You simply will not be ready if all you have is a scout.
Lily_Lancer
Deity
A scout cannot help with your defense, also you have to send it far away instead of keeping it close to your capital. If it does not capture a settler, it only delays your military forces. If you find a neighbor, You shall always keep your warrior close to your capital. With River defense and +20 regen per turn you can defend your capital from early rushes. You can make peace with Ai after 10T war, so declare war before AI declares on you and build a slinger if the situation is really tough. Ai may spend some time on his route, all you have to do is to hold for the remaining few turns(
If you wait for AI to declare on you, then Ai will declare right when he reaches your capital and his army well-formed, that is really bad. The worst case is a joint war that you can make peace only 15T after declaration.) .
If you manage to kill an AI warrior without losing anything, you'll get a good peace deal then.
Usually by T30 you can have 5 archers, so there's nothing to worry after that.
For defense before T30, currently I can deal with
3 barb camps+ nearby America, (Declared on me at ~T18 in the previous Alexander game)
or 3-civ nearby joint war+2 horse camps (Declared at ~T15 in another Poland game)
I don't know if when things come to more barb camps+ more early joint wars whether I can defend or not. There're 4 directions around you, each direction can be either an AI or a barb camp, so I think maybe there's no space to place more enemies?
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wow thanks! I never thought of declaring war preemptively! Usually I always am scared and they always DoW me when their army is already in my lands... That's what I've been doing wrong.
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JamesCivFan
King
Gotm uses cooked settings (in my experience with the BNW ones anyway) and are not quite representative of your generic map. They pre-play the map to make sure people will enjoy it. Otherwise I don't see how so many people could snatch one of the AIs extra settlers so easily... With their scouts nonetheless. In my experience it is very very rare to get a settler with an early scout and then successfully escaping with it... Most of my early settler steals have been with my starting warrior and that only in maybe 10% of my games. In reality it is far more likely you will be joint DoW'd (from meeting multiple civs early... And to get the negative first impressions debuff for more turns) than you will be the first to meet a CS, let alone pick up a settler with that scout. I say if I cannot meet the CS first with my warrior then 99% I will not find it with my scout before the AI does.
JamesCivFan
King
So the general consensus is to open up with a Slinger?
Also I must add. Since I've tried opening up with a Builder. It's a high risk, low reward move since you're leaving yourself completely unprotected against both the AIs and Barbarians. If you find out you started close to two aggressive neighbors on Deity, you're pretty much screwed since you spent about 10 turns building a Builder. They will most likely just pillage your tiles while you're desperately trying to get Slingers up, in order to defend yourself. I haven't seen a Builder opening work yet on Deity Pangaea. At least not consistently.
Also I must add. Since I've tried opening up with a Builder. It's a high risk, low reward move since you're leaving yourself completely unprotected against both the AIs and Barbarians. If you find out you started close to two aggressive neighbors on Deity, you're pretty much screwed since you spent about 10 turns building a Builder. They will most likely just pillage your tiles while you're desperately trying to get Slingers up, in order to defend yourself. I haven't seen a Builder opening work yet on Deity Pangaea. At least not consistently.
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Imo the builder is there to do two things... Improve a luxury for a gift (hence avoiding war if possible) but this has to be done ASAP before the first impressions take their toll otherwise the plan fails... And for triggering the agoge Eureka doesn't matter if you farm blank tiles as long as its 3 tiles... Also helps for feudalism eureka although I'd like to have a mine if possible (improving tile yields is but a fringe benefit early on) In emergencies it chops out an army... Refunding it's cost at the expense of forest... Which is why I go for mining first. The fact that the tiles eventually get pillaged matters little.
JamesCivFan
King
Unless you have a tier-1-tech-based luxury within your immediate vicinity (e.g. Gypsum), building a builder first won't get you a luxury at all. I usually get Irrigation-based Luxuries, which means I will have to farm a Wheat, then wait till I research Irrigation and then finally I'm able to have access to that luxury. Until then, the Builder can only either mine, farm, or build a pasture (and that delays Irrigation even more). Therefore, it's very situational to open up with it.
I am fine with accepting that it's not as safe to open up with a Scout, but it looks like a Slinger opener is the safest of them all, for multiple reasons mentioned before.
I am fine with accepting that it's not as safe to open up with a Scout, but it looks like a Slinger opener is the safest of them all, for multiple reasons mentioned before.
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Incorrect, you can completely sidetrack an attacking force with one scout. They change priorities when they see a scout.
Their ZOC is great for city attacks,the steal settlers and builders, misdirect city attacks and are really handy with the extra move for giving extra support and flanking
A builder start is not efficient. You will get your builder too early by about 5-6 turns for getting both mining and animal husbandry...I agree that given the chance it should be second, being able to get to agoge before you main slingers is important. So first off scout or slinger... I interchange depending on difficulty, terrain and how I feel. It's a 6-7 turn gap filler and the fact a scout takes 1 turn less than a slinger and is highly flexible it just makes more sense often.
This prove yourself in GOTM is silly, you get one shot and things often go wrong in games that you just cannot help. I agree that violence is a virtue in this game but there is eurekas to consider as well as untimate force. 10 seems excessive as a standard rule. I have no issue with 6-8 with some warriors, it's just fitting them in the timeline. If you were top of GOTM I may listen more to your strat but whacker seems to have a better strat.
I do not disregard it and am impressed but you seem to refuse to consider whackers may be superior. You see no point to commercials or building great zim in your science centre but these are strats that seem to outplay you.
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JamesCivFan
King
I agree with you here. I am fiddling around with my current game, testing out BOs. There are 2 main factors that make Builder opening VASTLY inferior to Scout/Slinger opening on Deity:
1) Barbarians with Horsemen spam
2) Aggressive neighbor AIs
I found out in practice that Slingers help me to prevent Barbarian Scouts from reaching back at their camp, which in turn prevents the endless Horsemen spam. It also helps if you steal a Settler from the AI, since even 1 Slinger can defend and kill off a couple of their Warriors, which causes the AI to retreat and ask for peace. You can either take the offer or refuse, build about 5-6 more Slingers, upgrade them into Archers (with the help of early Agoge from a Builder in between the Slinger spam) and then go from there. That initial builder (which should NOT be your first thing to build), essentially helps you reach Agoge, which cuts down at least 7-10 turns overall in your Slinger spam.
These 7-10 turns are equal to the amount of turns that it takes to build that Builder, which gives you the Eurekas to Horseback Riding and/or Irrigation and of course Craftsmanship.
So, in other words, I agree that an early builder is important, but it should almost NEVER be the first thing you build. It's simply too inconsistent. I don't really care about winning in 150 turns in 1 game where I get lucky, and then losing another 3-4 in a row, because I got rushed by either the AI or a Horseman barbarian rush, that forced me to deal with them for like 15 turns. This isn't optimal playing. This is, essentially, re-rolling till you get lucky. A.k.a. gambling.
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A scout also does adequately well when I'd meets a barb scout purely by standing in front of it. The barb scout then typically goes off at right angles... but not always.
Deity is tricky, ideally you want to delay slinger for agoge to be efficient but if the hordes start coming you do really need to start getting a few, although warrior can also be surprisingly handy.
JamesCivFan
King
You mean you bait out the barbarian Spearman with the Scout, the maneuver it around and then keep it it between the Spearman and the camp in order to get into the empty camp afterwards?
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You can do that too, I was just saying stand your scout in front of a barb scout and it changes direction. It takes one turn not 5 and the scout has to try and find a settler, I'd rather get one of the enemies 3 starting settlers than the barb camp,that's my warriors job. Killing a camp is not always best, you do want a bronze eureka after all. If my scout finds a barb nest I may check around for horses but it ends there. Situation is everything though, no hard and fast rules.
JamesCivFan
King
Hm, alright. Would you like me to PM you that Alexander start I rolled on Deity? It's a Tiny Pangaea map, so it should end quite fast. I'd like to see how opening with a Scout will do for you. Note: it uses CQUI.
Exactly. Which is why I said in an earlier post, only mining and AH luxes are safe to gift. Mining being the safest path to take with worker first but AH is in archery path and is not a terrible first tech. Your luxes are gypsum, marble, diamonds, silver, jade, salt, mercury, furs, ivory, truffles (and occasionally, "horses"... now if AI will offer you money for horse, which is not all the time, but occasionally, you may treat it as a lux as it gives a huge positive diplo modifier same as gifting a lux) which is probably roughly over half the time. Plantation and sailing luxes are terrible to open builder with. They are simply connected too late, and irrigation does nothing for you in the tech tree that leads to a strong military unit, to save your ass against an aggressive neighbor. If I have plantation lux, I might even open monument and beeline archery (getting the agoge card just by having extra culture without taking eureka), not scout, if I want to play risky (at least the monument has a definite benefit... whereas I think scout is not a promising investment most of the time).
Btw I don't really understand why Victoria says the builder pops out 5-6 turns before the tech is complete... actually AH or mining takes 8 turns for me... and I generally take 8 turns to build a builder as well. Unless Victoria is working a hill forest deer tile or something.... btw a single slinger is not going to kill any warriors by itself on deity (at most it does 20 damage per shot and has to be garrisoned otherwise they just fall in melee to fast) and the AI usually promotes its units so it takes like 8 shots to kill one... the slinger is there to become an archer ASAP so that the early attack is repulsed... building a straight archer is too slow.
I never said builder first is always optimal of course... but I think it beats scout first in my case...
Yet, as Victoria seems to point out... I have probably need to learn new tricks about how to mess with the barb's AI using the scout.... usually my scout doesn't really help at all if by "divert" you mean just run him away before he gets killed... and I certainly don't see barb scouts getting killed by my scout nor does it seem to make him run back...
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yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
@LilyLancer
I tried out your strat last night and went with 9 instead of the normal 6 or 7 Archers. Had great results, but all my cities were lacking behind, underdeveloped. That I didnt like. Can you share the full BO for your Capital and first Expo?
@kb27787
What are you doing that youre getting DOWed in your games? I exclusively play on Deity and I dont even remember the last game where the AI DOWed me, not the other way around.. I think thats a highly specific scenario. And even then the Scout can help a lot.
Early builder is imo just a noob trap. I would never value the little amount of raw stats higher than the information that a scout or a slinger gives me. To me its either Slinger first or Scout first. Also imo gifting away a luxury is insanity. I usually sell them off for 1xx raw gold and use that to upgrade/rushbuy. I think you are unnecessarily afraid of an early AI DOW. In 9/10 cases you can just fortify two warriors and fend the AI off, as @LilyLancer already told you.
@Victoria
Love you, thanks for making all the points I wanted to make.
I tried out your strat last night and went with 9 instead of the normal 6 or 7 Archers. Had great results, but all my cities were lacking behind, underdeveloped. That I didnt like. Can you share the full BO for your Capital and first Expo?
@kb27787
What are you doing that youre getting DOWed in your games? I exclusively play on Deity and I dont even remember the last game where the AI DOWed me, not the other way around.. I think thats a highly specific scenario. And even then the Scout can help a lot.
Early builder is imo just a noob trap. I would never value the little amount of raw stats higher than the information that a scout or a slinger gives me. To me its either Slinger first or Scout first. Also imo gifting away a luxury is insanity. I usually sell them off for 1xx raw gold and use that to upgrade/rushbuy. I think you are unnecessarily afraid of an early AI DOW. In 9/10 cases you can just fortify two warriors and fend the AI off, as @LilyLancer already told you.
@Victoria
Love you, thanks for making all the points I wanted to make.
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JamesCivFan
King
I would agree with you about the "Builder first > Scout first" if and only if the AI and barbs were not so aggressive in Civ VI. If they acted like in BNW, then probably a Builder first would be better. Again, this depends on the game/map.
About Slingers killing off enemy Warriors. I found that they always seem to follow a sole Slinger into your territory, so you can hide inside your city and kill them off in 3-4 hits. You need to kill about 1-2 before they start moving away.
I've been following the thread. A couple of questions:
Instead of gifting a lux, why not just sell it for cash? With the money you get you can buy something. And if the AI DOWs, you get the lux back.
Is scout first just for SV, or Domination also? People who say they do it sometimes - what do they base the decision on?
Are people's opinions based on different goals, e.g. quickest win v most consistent win?
Would any new patch changes make a difference to your opinion?
Thanks y'all
Instead of gifting a lux, why not just sell it for cash? With the money you get you can buy something. And if the AI DOWs, you get the lux back.
Is scout first just for SV, or Domination also? People who say they do it sometimes - what do they base the decision on?
Are people's opinions based on different goals, e.g. quickest win v most consistent win?
Would any new patch changes make a difference to your opinion?
Thanks y'all
