Need tips for my deity game

[ville-v]

I'd like to get some tips on my current game (saves attached, patched vanilla), since I don't have much experience on playing deity. I am the last in scores and power and everything, but not in very bad situation (yet). I have control on the islands I live in (except I have one Iroquous city on the main island).

I have just had war with Japan (fourth civ, I am fifth) and conquered one island they possessed. I ended war because of unit upkeep costs after my golden age ended (I think everybody has had their GA by now, since all the world has alliance against my former ally Zululand) and disbanded my 50 catapults to rush buildings in the newly captured cities. I am currently 3 techs away from industrial age (GL expired, but I managed to buy 5 techs from Japan in peace negotiations), but everybody else has riflemen, so I really cannot attack anybody else before I get nationalism, because they most likely have cavalries too and would rape my musketeers.

My income isn't really big because my government is despotism (I tried going monarchy during the war but unit costs jumped with 100 so I reloaded), so I can't buy techs from anybody. So the main thing I wonder is which government I should jump into. I don't really have experience on benefits of governments. Republic would give extra commerce per tile, but wouldn't my citizen riot because military police wouldn't work and wouldn't upkeep costs be so high that I should disband most of my army and be defenseless? I think communism could give highest income if it decreases corruption still granting acceptable amount of free units, but I am too far from getting the tech.

Once I get riflemen (hopefully fast with your tips), I think I should attack very soon or the enemies will get infantry (conquest and domination are only victory conditions enabled, by the way), but I really have no idea who I should attack or how. Aztecs are second highest, but they are my closest neighbour and the only polite civ so they are most likely out. I thought I could attack Iroquous (top civ and controls most of the territory) mainland with army (since AI doesn't like to attack armies) of riflemen and loads of cannons and hope I could capture some cities fast so that it would be easier to bring aztecs into alliance. Or should I try to try crush Japanese and Zulu out of the game? I don't know if I could do it without Iroquous as an ally because they are kinda far from me.

 

[The Professor]

Do you have Civ Assist II? This is a helper program that has an economy tab that will calculate your income and expenses for each government type--even the ones you don't have the tech's for yet. That may help you pick a government.

If your unit costs are extremely high, you have to prune your military, especially since you seem to be on an archipeligo map, and the AI is pretty bad at invading. Just leave some good offensive units (knights, maybe?) on each landmass that have the speed to kill any invaders.

Someone with more experience at Diety may have better suggestions for you, though. I'm just now trying my first Conquests Demi-God game.

 

[Spoonwood]

You don't have to prune your military. You can just take the tradeoff of paying for more units.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I think in order to play or beat Deity, you need to get several basics about the game straight first.


For example, using the governor to do anything much is a big no, no. I am not entirely sure what the governors in the cities are exactly allowed to do, but you definitely have them set to control happyness. Which is a fairly bad idea, except in one, once in a blue moon and only for this interturn case. You need to control happyness that by yourself if you want to play and win deity.

Also the emphasis is set to Commerce, but this serves absolutely no purpose. Either you set "emphasize production" or "emphasize food." However, for most intents and purposes "production" is by far the preferred setting. The reason is the order in which commerce, food, and shields are collected during the interturn: First commerce is calculated, and this happens even before the game cicles through each of the cities to complete builds etc. The next thing that is 'harvested' is food and this happens during the 'production phase' of the interturn. And lastly the shields are collected and added to your builds. What this means, is that if your city grows during the interturn, the only things that can be had from the newly worked tile is shields. For example, you have a city that works six tiles and is about to grow to work a seventh tile. The commerce that you get during the interturn, will come from those six tiles. The same goes for the food. However, the food means that your city just grew, and you will get the shields from the seventh tile as well.

Now the "emphasize" setting steers the game what kind of new tile to select. And since shields is the only thing that is gained from the new tile during the interturn, the game should be set to emphasize production in the hope that a shield rich tile (forest for example) is picked.

During the turn proper, you are the one to pick and select tiles, and not the governor though.


Another thing is that your military is in a fairly bad shape. You have far too few workers and consequently you land is woefully unimproved. You have lots of MP units where absolute none are needed. And I am not sure what you are planning to do with all those musketeers. Sure they have an attack of three here, but against Riflemen or Infantries you are not going to make any big dents.


The build orders of your cities and the improvements also leaves much to be desired. You really do not need two MP units, a temple, and a cathedral in corrupt tundra cities.

 

[ville-v]

I had set governor to commerce so that I could maximize my income to buy techs. At the time I posted the save I had no idea how to check corruption of individual cities so I had not taken any action on that

I was building cathedrals to get some culture so that my cities would not flip. However, I decided to change my most cities to build courthouses and workers. After switching to monarchy I disbanded lots of warriors and left fewer military police in the cities. I was saving musketeers so that I could upgrade them to riflemen, was that a bad idea?

Since the others were quite ahead in techs and refused to sell me any of them, I decided to start a new game with same settings but a new map. I attached the last saved game, please tell me if I was doing something wrong in fixing my situation.

 

[Spoonwood]

Generally speaking, a temple and a library seem sufficient so that a city doesn't flip. A library and a university would work better even. If you want extra commerce, you can do this by selecting tiles as efficiently as using the governor. The only way the governor can outdo you comes as using "emphasize production". See LordEmsworth's note. I haven't looked at the save, but in general... even at higher levels, you want more offensive units than defensive units. What sort of victory do you want?

All that said... don't fall into the trap of thinking there exist "right" and "wrong" plays in civs. Some plays will have better results *for the type of game you want* and some plays will have worse results. But, civ doesn't work as a black-and-white sort of true/false test. That said, from LordEmsworth's comments (and he usually knows what he's talking about), you'll probably need to retool a host of strategies before you do as well as you'd like to at Deity level.