My first diety game, need some tips.

[Zier]

I am the maya (haven't been them before) and I'm playing on a small pangea map.

After like 4 or 5 turns I allready bumped into a iraqious warrior and a few turns later I saw a portuguese scout. So as you can see from the pic the expand goes pretty fast just as I expected. It kinda sucks though that I'm cramped up between 2 other civs that start with 2 extra settlers at the start which doesnt leave me with much room to expand.
I got mystiscm, bronze working, warrior code, alphabet and ceremonial burial by trading them with the AI and now I'm tryin to be the first to get philosophy.
Copan could be a nice settler factory but as soon as its ready I think all the land will allready be taken.
Red spots should have highest priority I think, then blue spots.
I only have 2 warriors atm (lost one to a barbarian camp) and was thinking that I should soon start building maya's UU to try to enslave some units attacking one of my weakest neighbours? But I'm not quite sure how many units I can expect for the counter from the AI on diety. I can win emperor without much hassle and I skipped demigod since I think I can take diety with some more micro'ing, if not it will be a good learning experience.

Any hints, tips maybe?

 

[Chieftess]

Personally, I'd build much tighter, and make use of those rivers. Make use of your agricultural trait. I'd also have 2 workers per tile.

 

[Commander Bello]

Use the Javalin Thrower to get some slave barbarian workers, and make use of the desert tiles then.
And, as Chieftess indicated, on that map you should build more densely. Expansion (in matters of space AND size) is, what counts!

 

[Qitai]

Along the line of what chieftess said, your choice of city site seems bad to me. There are no immediate usable tiles at those sites (By usable I usually put a minimum requirement of 2 food, 1 shield, 1 trade - factoring if land can be improve in time). The valuable tiles at the start are those near the rivers and those bonus grassland. It seems you have actually skipped much of those tiles. The existing two new town will take a long time before it can even contribute to your empire.

 

[Chieftess]

Tile management is very important too. If you want to designate a city as a, say, sword factory, you might want it to have 10spt, or 15spt (5spt at the least), for a sword every 3, 2 and 6 turns, respectively. A 10-15spt city might be size 7-10, so a river is essential, even if it is only 2 tiles away from the capital.

 

[Zier]

Originally posted by Chieftess
Personally, I'd build much tighter, and make use of those rivers. Make use of your agricultural trait. I'd also have 2 workers per tile.

I guess you're right, I normally dont play small maps so that's why my city placement is a little less tight then it should be. As soon as I have some more cities I'll start getting some extra workers.

Originally posted by Commander Bello
Use the Javalin Thrower to get some slave barbarian workers, and make use of the desert tiles then.

I really would but I doubt there are still barbarians around? Where should I look for em...lol?

Originally posted by Qitai
Along the line of what chieftess said, your choice of city site seems bad to me. There are no immediate usable tiles at those sites (By usable I usually put a minimum requirement of 2 food, 1 shield, 1 trade - factoring if land can be improve in time).

I dunno, the capital has 1 cactus and has a river. My second city Copan has 3 (!) elephants which are all +2 food. Palenque has a wheat at lower left below the 1 (its hard to see).

Next I'm going for the red spots and will try to build a little more dense. I'm guessing overlapping tiles don't really matter that much on small maps because as soon as sanitation will be discovered the game will long be decided?


Anyways thanks for the replies guys, I'll work with that.

 

[Qitai]

Ivory(Elephants) are +2 trade, not +2 food. All usable tiles in Copan's radius is only 1 food.

The capital is okay since in the beginning, one would not know if moving will actually help.

I did mistook the game as fur at Palenque, and missed that there is a second bonus grassland in Palenque. So, my initial assessment is not correct for Palenque. The wheat though, could have been closer (Either using Palenque or an additional city after that). Settling beside it would give you faster growth immediately instead of waiting for a temple before you have access to the wheat.

 

[Zier]

Ok I see.
So when I have a few more cities and some workers out, do you reckon I should start building offensive units or city improvements?

Thnx again.

 

[Qitai]

Well, that is basically a builder Vs War Monger Question. I don't think there is a one answer to that since people view it differently. It also depends on how well you control the other factors in the game.

Personally, there is alot more factors I need to consider to determine which direction I will go. Although, my bottomline consideration is always the cost-benefit of warring Vs building improvements.

Generally, I do go to war. This is mainly because I have fine-tuned my development/trading skill to be able to pretty much be ahead of tech even before ancient age is over even on Diety level (And possibly even on Sid I can do that). With that, I could get the AI to fight among themselves to exhuast their troops before I even build up my troops. This usually means by the time I gather my troops, the AI's have mostly just 2 defensive unit per city waiting for me to take over the city. In this case, warring is almost a zero risk choice and cities are gain usually with minimal casulties making it an obviously good choice.

This, however, is not always true since without pre-engaging the AIs in war, you will face a consirable force which means high casulties and some risk of even losing cities and hence a not so attractive choice.

So, essentially, no fixed answer - bottomline is "Is the benefit of warring worth the cost?"

 

[Zier]

Yeah I guess that's true, the way it looks now I'm not gonna have a whole lot of land though so it might be worth trying to take out a rival civ. It'll be a whole lot harder then all my previous emperor games though so we'll see.

I'm pretty good with tech brokering and try to check almost every turn, but I'm not as good as you though that I can get on par with the AI before ancient age is over, I think it will be more around when TOE is up untill I can take the lead for me usually. Do you do your research yourself or is it superior tech trading with the AI that you can beat them that fast? Any tips on this would be appreciated.

 

[Qitai]

It is a combination.

1) My expansion and land development is very agressive usually. So, my research capability is more or less on par with the AI by 1500BC. This is one aspect which is really very difficult to teach. But one of the necessary skill would be what is highlighted above - proper city site choices. And secondly, building enough workers and proper development priority. You can check GOTM22 where I have a good example of it. I usually have my lands almost fully developed by 490BC. Fully here means every single tile, including mountain tiles, in the core region is mined/irrigated and roaded. So far, I have not seen many players being able to accomplish this.

2) Proper research choices - This provides you with good trading opportunity and when done right, gets you "the rest of the known tech" which basically means it gets you on exactly on par with the most advance AI.

3) Proper tech trading - I believe you know this pretty well now.

 

[Riccett]

Do you get the AI at war with each other by signing MA's, or is there another way?

 

[Qitai]

Signing MA.

 

[Riccett]

I guess I really have a bunch of questions and since diety games is the topic of this thread, I don't see the need to start another.

1. How early do you start giving gpt?

2. When should I plan to have my first settler completed?

3. When should I build my second worker?

4. Since cash is very important in high difficulty games, should I be roading before mining. I think irragating comes first if there is a good food supply, is this a good approach?

5. I usually go with a build sequence similar to this....

1. Warrior
2. Warrior/Curragh
3. Warrior/Curragh
4. Granary

But, I often find myself spending to much on Lux. Problem is if I use my warriors for MP's, I can't get contacts quick enough. Is there another, more effective building sequence I should look into?

Thx for any input

Riccett

 

[Zier]

Well, I was playing some more yesterday night and I'll give a small update of what happend.

I managed to get like 3 more cities in before all the land was taken by the AI (damn they are fast). I decided I'd get barracks up before temple/library and it turned out to be a decent choice because the Iraquious came with a 120 gold demand or something like that. I declined and they declared war. However, my scouting warrior south of their lands saw they were also fighting with the Greece so he couldn't really focus all his forces on me. With the help of a handfull javalin throwers I managed to raze 2 of his cities and captured 1 and snagged about 6 or so workers in the process. Two of these 3 cities had iron so those are both mine now, after that I sued for peace and got like 6 or 7 techs of him.

I'll post a screenie of it later when I get home

 

[Qitai]

@Riccett

1. No fixed rule. Rather, I would say the better question would be when and how much should you spend on buying tech. And in that case, it is usually more prudent to buy the most expensive tech available and then re-sell this same tech to the other contacts. When done right, the tech you just bought could be free. You have to make sure you can actually re-sell it for something first. I do not mind paying 10 gpt and then gaining 200 gc. It may look like you are losing gold every turn. But you are really balance since 10gpt is essentially 200gc.

2. ~3000BC if you have good terrian. Instead of planning when you should complete, the more important thing is when you should start. I will go more into this on Q5.

3. Immediately when you find you pop is not contributing, you should build a worker. Every pop cost you maintenance. You need 2 food to feed it and it is always born unhappy at deity. So, you need 2 food and 1 trade to maintain a pop. If it is not giving you at least that much, then the pop is not contributing and may even be taking more than it is contributing. A simple rule I always follow - each pop MUST give me 2 food and 1 trade. If it is not, then build a worker to improve the land so that it can contribute at least that much. Even if it is, I still build a worker since it just feeds itself and is still not contributing. Typically, only when it gives me at least 2 food 1 shield and 1 trade do I keep it as a citizen in the city.

4. You are really again asking a bigger question - how should each tile be developed. I answer this with respect to despotism since that is probably the most important portion of the game and you can always change the development later if you want. Any tile which can give you more food upon irrigation should be irrigated in general. Otherwise, mine. Growth is the most important thing in the beginning. As to whether road first or mine first, i find little difference since you really should be doing both each time you move your worker onto a new tile to work on. What is more important is that you should make sure that every tile your citizen is working on is fully developed before moving on to the next tile. Don't just develop blindly. Make sure it coincide with the tiles that the city actually will be using and make sure it is fully developed.

5. The build sequence is fine, just make sure you do send all of those units out to explore. Sometimes, I stop at two or just one if expansionist. Granary is generally good but sometimes if there are very good food area around, I build a settler before the granary. I view granary as doubling of food output (rather viewing it as halfing the food requirement), so if a second city can get me more food, it is better off than a granary.

6. Spending on Lux is necessary for the seek of exploration and growth. If you have problem with that, then it is likely your capital is using tiles that are not roaded and you are not near a river. Try to use more tiles beside rivers and do a bit more roading. If you start far away from any rivers or lakes or resources that gives you trade, then I am afriad, roading is probably the only answer. This links to Q4 above.

I hope this helps.

 

[Commander Bello]

Qitay,

please allow for a comment upon your advice #4.
You say it might make not much difference what is build in first place at a certain tile and that one should fully develop that tile before moving on.
I have a slightly different opinion about that. Personally, I nearly always built roads first. By that, I enhance my strategic freedom, as all units will benefit from the roads. If it won't be a dead-end road, I will continue it first, to get all places in my empire connected ASAP.
Ok, the latest statement applies under the following circumstances only, of course:
I will be capable of making commerce on those roads, that is they are all covered by my cities' productive areas. If not, I will spare the time to build roads there, unless strategic reasons dictate to do it. Second, at the early beginning a city radius will not contain more roads than just (currentpop+1[may be 2]), since they will not be able to make use of it.
Assumed, that a given city has 3 pop and that there is 1 worker available and that one of the tiles is a shielded grassland, I will build 3 roads there. This consumes 12 turns. At the end of turn 12 I will have got 12 commerce plus 12 shields. If I would have built mines (mines > roads, mines > roads) first, at the end of turn 12 I will have 18 shields and 2 commerce.
Although everything always depends on the current situation, I regard the 12/12 (plus the higher mobility potential) as better in general than the 18/2. But again, this may be seen differently.

Just my thoughts about your concept.

 

[Qitai]

I do agree with what you just said. But these are details which I do not want to go through since it usually serve to confuse rather than help those less experienced. The gist of #4 is about developing what you need rather than just develop without thinking about whether you will actually use it. I have seen players who just road or mine everywhere whether they use it or not. I am trying to steer them away from that.

As an added note, my personal consideration of what to do first are much more complicated than the above, sometimes including detail calculation of the exact shield on x turn for that city considering if what it is building will have wasted shield or not.

Additionally, I do usually have a few workers who task is to extend the road network (outside the range of usable tiles of existing towns) so that my settlers gets to their desination faster and this is probably one of the reason I can out-expand the AI on deity without much problem - they may build their settlers a little bit faster than me, but I always get my settler there first. And in this respect, I even consider where I expect the settlers to be build and where are the rivers so that the settlers would actual use the last third of their movement to cross the river while using the roads. This is the level of detail I go into. But this is probably not for a leisure players. So, I usually keep my advise to only the most important stuff.

 

[Zier]

Here is a piccy of it

 

[ducki]

I decided to try a dot map on this to try to show how I, personally, would tighten up the spacing - I tend towards City-tile-tile-City on all maps, with the occasional City-tile-City if I really have great tiles that I can share.
Here's what I came up with, but it was a little tough without the gridlines - mine are the pink squares.

Criticism welcomed.

Edit: This assumes Chichen Itza is on the river, which is hard to see.