A friend and I have been playing some co-op multiplayer games recently.
We are playing with the two of us on the same team vs. a handful of AI teams of 2.
We breezed through the difficulties pretty quickly and worked our way up to deity. We have lost a couple close deity games, but it seems like we should be able to do this without this much trouble, so what are some strategies or tips others use?
Some random background info and some basic strategies we are using:
Both playing Beyond the Sword.
Economy:
We have tried numerous setups of CE, SE, hybrid, etc. and have basically come to the conclusion that a financial leader with one scientist producing city (for GS lightbulbs), a couple specialized production cities (and maybe a GE if lucky), and the rest mass cottages for insane commerce/research/gold has much higher output of tech, gold, and production than any form of a SE or non-financial leader. Basically the financial trait is insanely good and we don't even bother to play non-financial leaders at this point as it would only make things harder on ourselves. I am sure it is doable with non-financial leaders, but at this point we are trying to make this easier not harder. Once we master the financial leaders, we will continue on to the non-financial leaders.
Leaders/Civs:
This being said we have restricted ourselves to only 10 possible leaders.
Huayna Capac:
UU - If you start with 2 cities and 4 quechuas, you can sometimes take out a nearby enemy without much trouble. This gives you a big step up, but beware his partner could seek revenge in the future and unless you manage to grab a huge portion of land he will likely be ahead of you in tech and power.
UB - Terrace +2 culture is great since AIs get insane culture bonuses on deity and destroy your borders.
Industrious - Allows you to grab some wonders you normally wouldn't be able to get on deity, plus half speed forge in production cities is nice.
Victoria:
UU - Redcoat +25% bonus vs gunpowder is nice but on an ancient start game the outcome will likely be determined long before this UU comes around.
UB - +15% gold is nice, but not that big of a deal and comes pretty late.
Imperialistic - The faster settlers is really good because you need to grab every inch of land you can. If the AI gets a land advantage you are in trouble.
Elizabeth:
See above for UU/UB.
Philosophical - helps for getting the GS or GE earlier and half build university is nice in your commerce cities. Probably inferior to Victoria in reality, unless you plan on playing a SE.
Pacal:
UU - nice if you don't have copper but basically useless.
UB - +2 happy col is nice, but you should have hereditary rule by then so it won't matter.
Expansive - very good since the health penalty (or lack of bonus) on deity is brutal. Also faster workers and granary are amazing for the early early game.
Hannibal:
UU - sounds good, but by the time you can get HBR and pump these out the AI will almost have longbowmen or crossbowmen. And you still lose to spearmen.
UB - +2 happy aqueduct is pretty good, but again this can be replaced by hereditary rule.
Charismatic - I love the +1 happy before you can have hereditary rule and it is even better if you go for stonehenge (which is really good in team games btw). The -25% upgrade costs come in really handy if you are warring a lot, too.
Mansa Musa:
UU - Skirmisher is good on paper, it is a +33% strength bonus over the archer. But you still can't really do anything with it. If you are having to defend a city at this point in the game you are probably screwed and already lost anyways and they aren't strong enough to attack or take cities.
UB - useless because you should only have forges in production cities, not commerce cities.
Spiritual - great for improving diplomatic relations by accepting all the civic and religion requests from the AI. Also lets you most civics and religions around whenever you want which is nice.
Willem van Oranje:
UU - some crappy boat no one cares about
UB - comes way too late to matter, game will already be determined by this point
Creative - double speed theater colosseum and library are great and +2 culture is a big help for early expansion and for combatting deity ridiculous culture spread.
Wang Kon:
UU - the +50% vs melee catapult sounds pretty good, but realistically its not that useful.
UB - +10% research university is nice but not that great
Protective - nice if you are on the defensive, but if you are on the defensive you have probably already lost.
Ragnar:
UU - macemen are an awkward time and place in terms of tech and I have never been able to utilize them for an attack so both of their bonuses just go to waste.
UB - boats, useless
Aggressive - free combat 1 is nice, but not really that great. only the production cities should have barracks.
Darius:
UU - Immortals are awesome and amazing if you start with horses. Without horse you cant do anything. This makes things difficult because you don't know where horses are when you start, so they are a bit unreliable.
UB - +2 health grocer? awesome
Organized - this sounds better than it is. It only reduces civic upkeep costs, not city maint or unit upkeep. Unless you run some crazy high upkeep civics the benefit of this seems very low.
So basically it seems like:
Ragnar and Wang Kon are out of the picture.
Darius, Elizabeth, and Willem are last resorts.
Hannibal and Mansa Musa are good/acceptable choices.
Huayna Capac, Victoria, Pacal are really good/best choices.
The other thing to consider is starting techs.
HC has no overlap with Victoria, Hannibal, or Mansa Musa.
Victoria overlaps with Pacal, MM, Hannibal leaving only HC.
Pacal overlaps with all the other good candidates.
So basically it leaves the preferred team as HC + Victoria, but HC + MM or Hannibal are both great teams too.
It is doable to play a game with overlapping techs, just puts you a little behind in the early game, but that is when a "little behind" hurts you the most, so we avoid it when possible.
Maps:
We have played a handful of combinations but found that more coast + islands + water = less opportunity for you to catch up on research. Basically the commerce bonus from cottages is the best opportunity for evening the odds and you need as much land as possible (not crappy coastal squares) to make this happen. Also you need fresh water which only comes inland most of the time. So we have played a few continents, pangea, etc. Most recently we are trying inland sea and it seems pretty fun. Lots of fresh water plus the opportunity to cut off the AIs expansion without much trouble. We always play balanced resources.
We have mostly been playing standard size map with 5-6 teams of 2, so it is a little bit more crowded than normal settings. We played smaller sized maps with less teams and found it to be less fun. We enjoy more teams, more wars, more diplomacy problems, more conflicting religions, etc.
We tried a large map with 9 teams once but it was too much for our comps to handle and was too annoying with the slow load times. Was fun though.
Starting out:
We use advanced start and typically start with 2-3 cities/settlers. Shoot for 1-1.5 workers per city at all times, but this isn't always feasible. Always try for fresh water since health is such a problem mid game on deity. Food resources/flood plains and some production is important. Grab huts if you can, but it sure seems like most of them are just hostile and end up taking one of your cities, ha ha.
Early expansion is really important because if you give the AI a higher land percentage than you it will be nearly impossible to ever come back and close that gap.
Workers build improvements on all resources and build cottages on all 2+ food non resource squares (grassland, flood plain). Work the cottages and as soon as they go to hamlets you will have a 2 food, 3 commerce square. If you build a cottage on a river tile, it will start with 3 commerce! (thanks financial) In production cities build mines and a couple farms, later add some workshops. The GS city might need a couple farms if it doesn't have food resources. Also it will need a mine or a little production to get a library. Connect cities for trade routes and resource sharing, also connect to your ally.
Techs:
Pottery and bronze working are priorities for cottages, granaries, and slavery.
Alternate path, if we have marble you can go for priesthood and rush Oracle.
Also get the techs that allow you to work your resources (AH if you have pig/cow, agg if you have corn/wheat, etc. )
Monarchy is really good for hereditary rule. The happiness bonus is awesome and lets your cities grow and work more tiles, thus giving you more research, gold, production.
The AI never seems to research aesthetics until later and you can trade it to everyone to backfill all other techs. You will be way behind in techs on deity if you don't do a lot of trading. The problem comes later when all the AIs say "We fear you are becoming too advanced." Apparently this is caused by some counter that increases every time you trade for a tech. So more tech trading early means less later. But you will need to trade just to stay in the game.
Then there are a couple options. Do you tech for a early/mid war? Or go liberalism? I like rushing trebuchets since they are awesome at taking out cities. Nothing in that era can defend against them. Just make sure you have some HA or axemen or something to finish off the cities since trebs can only knock down to 25%.
Diplomatic Relations:
It seems like most of the time it is beneficial to give in to AI demands. You do NOT want them declaring war on you when you aren't ready. You aren't giving them that much anyways, they have like 50% research bonus on deity. Or one turn of anarchy is much better than getting wardecd. Also building relations and having allies when you do decide to go to war is invaluable.
Religion:
Typically it seems like religion is a bad idea since it just leads to negative relations and more people hating you and declaring war. Sometimes it is good though, like if all your neighbors are the same religion. Or if you use Mansa Musa (spiritual) then you can just change it around for trading or relations whenever you want.
So anyways, these are just a bunch of random observations from our games. Will add more as they come up. Looking for more input or strategies or tricks other people use. I am sure there are a lot of other ways to play the game and beat team deity, too, so post yours here.
I have not seen any other posts with deity level strategy for team/multiplayer games vs. the AI so thought it would be good to start a topic on it.
We are playing with the two of us on the same team vs. a handful of AI teams of 2.
We breezed through the difficulties pretty quickly and worked our way up to deity. We have lost a couple close deity games, but it seems like we should be able to do this without this much trouble, so what are some strategies or tips others use?
Some random background info and some basic strategies we are using:
Both playing Beyond the Sword.
Economy:
We have tried numerous setups of CE, SE, hybrid, etc. and have basically come to the conclusion that a financial leader with one scientist producing city (for GS lightbulbs), a couple specialized production cities (and maybe a GE if lucky), and the rest mass cottages for insane commerce/research/gold has much higher output of tech, gold, and production than any form of a SE or non-financial leader. Basically the financial trait is insanely good and we don't even bother to play non-financial leaders at this point as it would only make things harder on ourselves. I am sure it is doable with non-financial leaders, but at this point we are trying to make this easier not harder. Once we master the financial leaders, we will continue on to the non-financial leaders.
Leaders/Civs:
This being said we have restricted ourselves to only 10 possible leaders.
Huayna Capac:
UU - If you start with 2 cities and 4 quechuas, you can sometimes take out a nearby enemy without much trouble. This gives you a big step up, but beware his partner could seek revenge in the future and unless you manage to grab a huge portion of land he will likely be ahead of you in tech and power.
UB - Terrace +2 culture is great since AIs get insane culture bonuses on deity and destroy your borders.
Industrious - Allows you to grab some wonders you normally wouldn't be able to get on deity, plus half speed forge in production cities is nice.
Victoria:
UU - Redcoat +25% bonus vs gunpowder is nice but on an ancient start game the outcome will likely be determined long before this UU comes around.
UB - +15% gold is nice, but not that big of a deal and comes pretty late.
Imperialistic - The faster settlers is really good because you need to grab every inch of land you can. If the AI gets a land advantage you are in trouble.
Elizabeth:
See above for UU/UB.
Philosophical - helps for getting the GS or GE earlier and half build university is nice in your commerce cities. Probably inferior to Victoria in reality, unless you plan on playing a SE.
Pacal:
UU - nice if you don't have copper but basically useless.
UB - +2 happy col is nice, but you should have hereditary rule by then so it won't matter.
Expansive - very good since the health penalty (or lack of bonus) on deity is brutal. Also faster workers and granary are amazing for the early early game.
Hannibal:
UU - sounds good, but by the time you can get HBR and pump these out the AI will almost have longbowmen or crossbowmen. And you still lose to spearmen.
UB - +2 happy aqueduct is pretty good, but again this can be replaced by hereditary rule.
Charismatic - I love the +1 happy before you can have hereditary rule and it is even better if you go for stonehenge (which is really good in team games btw). The -25% upgrade costs come in really handy if you are warring a lot, too.
Mansa Musa:
UU - Skirmisher is good on paper, it is a +33% strength bonus over the archer. But you still can't really do anything with it. If you are having to defend a city at this point in the game you are probably screwed and already lost anyways and they aren't strong enough to attack or take cities.
UB - useless because you should only have forges in production cities, not commerce cities.
Spiritual - great for improving diplomatic relations by accepting all the civic and religion requests from the AI. Also lets you most civics and religions around whenever you want which is nice.
Willem van Oranje:
UU - some crappy boat no one cares about
UB - comes way too late to matter, game will already be determined by this point
Creative - double speed theater colosseum and library are great and +2 culture is a big help for early expansion and for combatting deity ridiculous culture spread.
Wang Kon:
UU - the +50% vs melee catapult sounds pretty good, but realistically its not that useful.
UB - +10% research university is nice but not that great
Protective - nice if you are on the defensive, but if you are on the defensive you have probably already lost.
Ragnar:
UU - macemen are an awkward time and place in terms of tech and I have never been able to utilize them for an attack so both of their bonuses just go to waste.
UB - boats, useless
Aggressive - free combat 1 is nice, but not really that great. only the production cities should have barracks.
Darius:
UU - Immortals are awesome and amazing if you start with horses. Without horse you cant do anything. This makes things difficult because you don't know where horses are when you start, so they are a bit unreliable.
UB - +2 health grocer? awesome
Organized - this sounds better than it is. It only reduces civic upkeep costs, not city maint or unit upkeep. Unless you run some crazy high upkeep civics the benefit of this seems very low.
So basically it seems like:
Ragnar and Wang Kon are out of the picture.
Darius, Elizabeth, and Willem are last resorts.
Hannibal and Mansa Musa are good/acceptable choices.
Huayna Capac, Victoria, Pacal are really good/best choices.
The other thing to consider is starting techs.
HC has no overlap with Victoria, Hannibal, or Mansa Musa.
Victoria overlaps with Pacal, MM, Hannibal leaving only HC.
Pacal overlaps with all the other good candidates.
So basically it leaves the preferred team as HC + Victoria, but HC + MM or Hannibal are both great teams too.
It is doable to play a game with overlapping techs, just puts you a little behind in the early game, but that is when a "little behind" hurts you the most, so we avoid it when possible.
Maps:
We have played a handful of combinations but found that more coast + islands + water = less opportunity for you to catch up on research. Basically the commerce bonus from cottages is the best opportunity for evening the odds and you need as much land as possible (not crappy coastal squares) to make this happen. Also you need fresh water which only comes inland most of the time. So we have played a few continents, pangea, etc. Most recently we are trying inland sea and it seems pretty fun. Lots of fresh water plus the opportunity to cut off the AIs expansion without much trouble. We always play balanced resources.
We have mostly been playing standard size map with 5-6 teams of 2, so it is a little bit more crowded than normal settings. We played smaller sized maps with less teams and found it to be less fun. We enjoy more teams, more wars, more diplomacy problems, more conflicting religions, etc.
We tried a large map with 9 teams once but it was too much for our comps to handle and was too annoying with the slow load times. Was fun though.
Starting out:
We use advanced start and typically start with 2-3 cities/settlers. Shoot for 1-1.5 workers per city at all times, but this isn't always feasible. Always try for fresh water since health is such a problem mid game on deity. Food resources/flood plains and some production is important. Grab huts if you can, but it sure seems like most of them are just hostile and end up taking one of your cities, ha ha.
Early expansion is really important because if you give the AI a higher land percentage than you it will be nearly impossible to ever come back and close that gap.
Workers build improvements on all resources and build cottages on all 2+ food non resource squares (grassland, flood plain). Work the cottages and as soon as they go to hamlets you will have a 2 food, 3 commerce square. If you build a cottage on a river tile, it will start with 3 commerce! (thanks financial) In production cities build mines and a couple farms, later add some workshops. The GS city might need a couple farms if it doesn't have food resources. Also it will need a mine or a little production to get a library. Connect cities for trade routes and resource sharing, also connect to your ally.
Techs:
Pottery and bronze working are priorities for cottages, granaries, and slavery.
Alternate path, if we have marble you can go for priesthood and rush Oracle.
Also get the techs that allow you to work your resources (AH if you have pig/cow, agg if you have corn/wheat, etc. )
Monarchy is really good for hereditary rule. The happiness bonus is awesome and lets your cities grow and work more tiles, thus giving you more research, gold, production.
The AI never seems to research aesthetics until later and you can trade it to everyone to backfill all other techs. You will be way behind in techs on deity if you don't do a lot of trading. The problem comes later when all the AIs say "We fear you are becoming too advanced." Apparently this is caused by some counter that increases every time you trade for a tech. So more tech trading early means less later. But you will need to trade just to stay in the game.
Then there are a couple options. Do you tech for a early/mid war? Or go liberalism? I like rushing trebuchets since they are awesome at taking out cities. Nothing in that era can defend against them. Just make sure you have some HA or axemen or something to finish off the cities since trebs can only knock down to 25%.
Diplomatic Relations:
It seems like most of the time it is beneficial to give in to AI demands. You do NOT want them declaring war on you when you aren't ready. You aren't giving them that much anyways, they have like 50% research bonus on deity. Or one turn of anarchy is much better than getting wardecd. Also building relations and having allies when you do decide to go to war is invaluable.
Religion:
Typically it seems like religion is a bad idea since it just leads to negative relations and more people hating you and declaring war. Sometimes it is good though, like if all your neighbors are the same religion. Or if you use Mansa Musa (spiritual) then you can just change it around for trading or relations whenever you want.
So anyways, these are just a bunch of random observations from our games. Will add more as they come up. Looking for more input or strategies or tricks other people use. I am sure there are a lot of other ways to play the game and beat team deity, too, so post yours here.
I have not seen any other posts with deity level strategy for team/multiplayer games vs. the AI so thought it would be good to start a topic on it.
) by playing closer to normal settings (that the AI manages better) and a lower difficulty level.
Of course if you always pick the same Civs and play advanced start it might be more viable...
With the doubled concerted production capability, war in any era and very various unit compositions is very possible though. Cheeserush (Quechua, Immortal, Vulture, etc, or even a combination of thereof for super-cheese), Elepult, Medieval (Knight/Mace/Treb), Cav, Rifle/Treb, Musket/Cannon, Rifle/Cannon can all be optimal for some circumstances. All in all warfare is much easier in team since AIs cannot actively defend their teammate's cities, only retaliate.
