never trying for religion again.

[dylanmeditates]

This is on deity (i don't know if that has anything to do with it, but anyway...) I had an oasis which i worked from the beginning while building a warrior, and as soon as i grew i worked a tile with 1 more commerce. I tried for hinduism from the get go. i thought that this was the optimal $ situation, and in fact with one single less commerce it makes it take another turn, but... saladin beat me. at first i thought oh, it's just bc he also was working those tiles but then i looked on world builder to see that not only did he not have an oasis, he didn't even have a single commerce in his first ring, which means for the first 5 turns he was working no commerce. and he still beat me. what. the. fffff. can anyone explain this to me?

 

[Pangaea]

Deity AIs have massive bonuses. Pointless trying to beat them to religions. You shouldn't go for religions in any case lower down, never mind on Deity.

 

[dylanmeditates]

so interesting how warped the gameplay becomes between noble and deity!! when i first started playing, it was all about axe rush and bee-lining alpha... now it's all about setting up a while for the first war and always trading for alpha. It might seem like the developers 'screwed it up' because for example on deity the religion-founding tech path is (apparently ^) probabilistically useless but on the other hand it's still interesting to watch which AI picks up which religion etc so i guess it's still a cool mechanic.

 

[(Pro)Peanut_P]

Founding one of the earlier religions IS ALWAYS USELESS.

 

[aitkensam]

Founding one of the earlier religions IS ALWAYS USELESS.

Maybe not if you're going for fastest AP victory on low levels.

 

[Seraiel]

Founding a religion is still possible on Deity, it requires to take opponents without Mysticism though, and it often additionally requires to work 2 or 3 :commmerce: tiles in the beginning.

Founding a Religion also isn't always useless, there are settings, where religions become very strong (i. e. Marathon, where auto-spread is trippled, and where one can infect multiple AIs without every building 1 Missionary, to later have a "super-shrine" giving +80 or similar) .

 

[Kallikrates]

I think almost everyone on the board recommended against founding early religions already on prince or monarch/normal speed, so I have not even tried anything before confucianism (often with oracle) because you need CoL and Philosophy most of the time anyway. This is extremely dependent on the opponents, I believe, but one can get Conf and/or Tao often on Immortal, sometimes without even trying all that hard. The AI religious nut script seems to prioritize the three early ones above all and then Xtianity (because AP I guess) before CoL and Phil, although some AI Civs seem to go for CoL if they get the Oracle (more popular AI oracle techs are maybe metal casting, theo and monarchy?)

(As auto-NON-spread is one of the things being more annoying to me than losing 97% battles my fondness of religions has waned even more. I love them when I started vanilla because it was a new feature of CIV.)

 

[Izuul]

You are paying something like 1.7x more for techs than a Deity AI.

 

[Pangaea]

so interesting how warped the gameplay becomes between noble and deity!!

If this means you have jumped straight from Noble to Deity, I strongly urge you to go back down a few levels. Deity is quite simply very, very difficult, and you need an excellent grasp of the game before being able to handle it.

 

[Seraiel]

If this means you have jumped straight from Noble to Deity, I strongly urge you to go back down a few levels. Deity is quite simply very, very difficult, and you need an excellent grasp of the game before being able to handle it.

He's is a new Immortal player pangaea. He'll find out, that "Deity is a totally different ball-game" quite soon .

 

[sherbz]

AIs also get a free settler (and worker) on deity. So theoretically, he could have settled his first city on turns 3 or 4 and have another city on the go which would contribute towards science.

I think on Immortal/emperor you could probably get an early religion with an oasis (certainly on emperor) as long as you had mysticism.

 

[Zacar]

If you don't like the primitive difficulty levels the devs offer, you can mod your own easily, difficulty component by component. Like taking away the tech bonus while keeping other kinds of bonuses. There is no reason to be bound by simplistic universal difficulty component increases.

 

[Lennier]

But that requires work!

I liked the difficulty system from Imperialism II--in addition to the five "standard" difficulties (beginner, easy, normal, hard, and "well-neigh impossible"), there was a "custom" level where you could adjust every possible different bonus differently.

 

[dylanmeditates]

lol yeah no it took me a while to go from noble to immortal. i've only beaten imm a couple times but i figure best way to learn deity is just keep going for it. one thing's for sure though it's not going to involve founding any early religions
btw of course i'm not saying i think it's bad or wrong that deity is not only more difficult, but it's actually a strategically different game altogether; i'm just saying it's interesting how it works that way. some strategies that dominate on noble (eg axe rush) are just trivially useful on deity and vice versa some things like for instance teching aesth to trade for alpha is a terrible move on noble bc you'll b waiting so long until the AIs get it. doesn't even matter how effectively you run your strategy, some strategies just don't work at certain difficulties, and it goes both ways; this is unlike most games where the strategy that works best for the hardest difficulty is the one that is also optimal at lower difficulties

 

[Pangaea]

Totally agree with that, and it's probably one reason why this game has lasted so long. There's always something new to learn, and you sort of have to re-learn the game when moving up the difficulty ladder. Warrior rushing isn't going to bring much joy on Deity

 

[dohh]

I have won Deity cultural with Hannibal from semi-iso.
Super early city planning is a must. Capital goes for cottages, then there´s normally GA farm, which gets culture from specialists and then there is a good hybrid production city, that does pretty much everything and gets boosted with artists...

Imo getting enough land is much bigger issue at deity than actually beating AI with culture production. If You do everything else right, You make up their advantage when switching bulbs 100% at culture. At deity I definitely agree an early religion is a waste (if You don't consider conf as early ofc)

 

[NihilZero]

If you don't like the primitive difficulty levels the devs offer, you can mod your own easily, difficulty component by component. Like taking away the tech bonus while keeping other kinds of bonuses. There is no reason to be bound by simplistic universal difficulty component increases.

Yeah, I made a very fun level that was between Immortal and Deity. It was great, and it really wasn't hard to do.

I always felt that the leap between Immortal and Deity was too great and that there was plenty of scope for a level in-between. My experiments confirmed my suspicions!

 

[Pangaea]

What about a level above Deity?

 

[Seraiel]

What about a level above Deity?

Exists already. Kjotleik was so nice to mod it for me. The difficulty-level itself is called "Seraiel" , and you can find it, if you search the S&T forum .

 

[Izuul]

There's also K-mod, and while I've never played it myself, i hear the AI will archer rush you and stuff which is both amusing and likely ridiculously broken on Deity.