My one last Deity game

[noontide]

Res Gestae. Took me 12 in-game hours (probably triple the time due to replays) and 15 year in life. Thanks guys!

 

[noontide]

The gold is irrelevant at this point but you need the votes, the more the better. Otherwise you may end up losing Religious and being able to block resolutions which you don't want to pass is very handy.

In 1250 save you are running wrong civis and building a lot of useless stuff, such as universities, libraries and markets. Basicaly you are not focusing on warfare, if you did, it should not be too difficult to win Domination around 1500 AD from 1030 AD save.

Edit: You still don't chop! There should be death penalty for such crimes.
I'll have to post my take on this war (from 1030 AD to the end), because you appear to have only vague idea of Deity warfare, which is very different from Immortal because Deity AI builds units and does research much faster than Immortal one.

Thanks again @Anysense. I wish I had seen your post before I went on to finish mine, had an excruciating war of attrition with Spain and it took me till 1912 to win. Yeah, I still need to learn about waring on Deity. I'm a builder at heart, and it's enormously satisfying to me to have a couple of tall cities with losts of culture and gold. That's why moving up to Imortal and Deity is as much techniques learning as mentality change. If you continue to play the save please post it here and I'll study it.

So basically, once you have the key military technology you just produce units in all cities but nothing else? If the city does not have much hammer then what do I do, gold? I get it market is an expensive building but don't even need to build library and unversity? For "generic" cities (i.e. not GP farm or hammer city), what buildings are essential on Deity?

 

[sampsa]

what buildings are essential on Deity?

Granary.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the advanced key deity secret ideas is chopping. They are just lying around there waiting to be collected. You can even make units with wood, who would've thought?

 

[Anysense]

So basically, once you have the key military technology you just produce units in all cities but nothing else? If the city does not have much hammer then what do I do, gold? I get it market is an expensive building but don't even need to build library and unversity? For "generic" cities (i.e. not GP farm or hammer city), what buildings are essential on Deity?

On Deity time is short, particularly on normal speed where window of opportunity is often ridiculously narrow - waste just a couple of turns and you are in for a long slog, rather than quick victory. Clearly, building anything but units during war is insane. There exceptions, of course, like building Taj or a granary if it destroyed somehow. Basically, granary is the only building that you need in every city that has decent food. While barracks are rather expensive for early rushes, they become more attractive as units become more expensive and with cannons building barracks is pretty much automatic.

Libraries are useful but rather expensive, so you don't simply build them everywhere. This is all about opportunity costs. You wheigh your options and invest hammers into what will bring more profit over shorter period of time. Universities wthout philosophical leader take for ever to pay back, just don't build them other than for Oxford or in a very strong bureau capital. This is one of the very few ironclad rules in Civ4. Oxford usualy does not pay back at all, with an exception of space games.

 

[noontide]

Granary.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the advanced key deity secret ideas is chopping. They are just lying around there waiting to be collected. You can even make units with wood, who would've thought?

Yeah thanks, I usually chop settlers at the beginning or units for very early war but lack the discipline to do so in later phase.

 

[Fippy]

Even granary can be skipped in cities that have no food, and are built for resi grabs.
Or they can be delayed if you have no happy cap early, and already no problems with expansion.
I.e. a double fish city needs a library with 4 happies (so scientists for bulbs, sometimes academy, can be hired).
On deity your adapting skills are tested.

 

[Anysense]

Rome fell in 1370 AD but August is still doing fine Well, compared to 1-city Brennus - who peace-vassaled to him - he is doing fine indeed. Shaka offered his loyalty a few turns previosly, something that I have never seen before; I can't remember having any peace-vassals except Mansa. Once Romans stopped that pointless resistance I would need only to take care of Isabella. On the next turn I will become the AP resident and from that point on the game will be entirely under control.

 

[noontide]

Rome fell in 1370 AD but August is still doing fine Well, compared to 1-city Brennus - who peace-vassaled to him - he is doing fine indeed. Shaka offered his loyalty a few turns previosly, something that I have never seen before; I can't remember having any peace-vassals except Mansa. Once Romans stopped that pointless resistance I would need only to take care of Isabella. On the next turn I will become the AP resident and from that point on the game will be entirely under control.

This is much faster than my playthrough, I need to learn to split my armies into different groups and attack at several front simultaneously. I usally just have one SoD pushing through.

How did you get so many cuirassiers so fast? After reading Sampsa's reply I tried going for cuirassiers but once my war started around 1100 my research practically grinded to a screetching halt. I watched Lain's video where he played Gilgamesh I believe, he attacked a mature city with 4 or 5 cuirassiers with no siege weapons and took it with minimal or no loss, it was amazing.

 

[Anysense]

How did you get so many cuirassiers so fast?

Just built them. I think it was a mistake to stay in Rep+Caste - it slowed unit production down a great deal. There was rather more resistance than I anticipated. All in all I killed 58 rifles and dozens of other units to take 6 cities. Most of those cities had so many defenders it was impossible to wipe them out in one go even if I won every fight except losing some cannons.

As to Lain taking a city with just 4 cuirs, I suspect that it happened around 500 AD or earlier. At this time AI may still have just 2 longbows per city, allowing some very easy success with cuirs. Even better protected cities can be taken in the same manner if you use city revolt.

Edit: Teching Steam Power and waiting for Gandhi to research Rifling was a huge mistake. No point in teching towards AL when cannons+cavalry can do the job faster than you can even make it to infantry.

 

[shakabrade]

Even granary can be skipped in cities that have no food, and are built for resi grabs.
Or they can be delayed if you have no happy cap early, and already no problems with expansion.
I.e. a double fish city needs a library with 4 happies (so scientists for bulbs, sometimes academy, can be hired).
On deity your adapting skills are tested.

Indeed, a granary can be skipped if you have no happy cap. There is a development challenge thread currently active where I built my first granaries probably around T75 because of happy cap and double food and generally almost didn't whip anything until I connected the happy stuff. It is much better to stagnate on settlers and workers while working 2 cottages until you sort that problem out than to stay on size 2-3 while whipping stuff you can't afford and tanking your research.

About adapting skills being tested on deity, I mean, you are punished more for mistakes but I find it hard to play a good game on lower levels because my deity approach is too conservative. A deity level player should almost never lose a game below deity, but if we do something like GOTM, a greed is important as well. You need to know the barb timings, what can you expect from the AI to research for you, what kind of defense will you face against low level AI and stuff like that.

I am into Realism Invictus atm, to refresh things a bit and I see that the same principles apply although many stuff is different. I can play on Deity very comfortably although the AI is supposed to be better (don't actually notice that). You simply need to calculate what pays of the most from your current position and search for synergies or a leverage. It's all numbers for me, regardless of the game.

This is much faster than my playthrough, I need to learn to split my armies into different groups and attack at several front simultaneously. I usally just have one SoD pushing through.

I'd advise that you initiate with multiple stacks to profit on the element of surprise and then, if the AI is still able to damage you, merge your army back into one or two stacks. This should be very fluent and dependable on your situation. Also, scout the enemy before, count the units, avoid hill cities as much as you can until you need to finish the AI off, and don't over-heal, no need to wait all units to heal. That is a huge mistake. Wounded units can still finish the wounded defenders off. if you have a stack of one movers, bring (much) more siege than shock troops. Don't be afraid that units will die. That is normal. There is a tautology applying to the war: the longer the war, the longer the war. If you give an enemy time to build units, they will build units.

Also, consider building the spy to scout around the enemy land, or have sentry mounted units if you are moving with multiple stacks as you need info to balance the stacks right.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Loaded another game by random. It's BC575 and...

Spoiler :

I see "World Map" on the trade screen.