performance measure on Deity?

[Taxi Driver]

I'm seeing some posts where people talk about some crazy things like "building EVERY wonder of the world, not just the good ones"....

And I'm wondering what difficulty level people are doing this on.

How "well" can a player reasonably do on Deity?

I am playing the Chinese on a Huge map with 16 civs and Raging hordes at 950 BC, 13 cities, #1 in population, just got construction, about to get monotheism, approximately 56 units pretty much evenly divided between warriors and spearmen (with a handful of archers and horsemen, and one army). I have the Pyramids, Heroic Epic, Oracle, Great Library, and I have a leader sitting in a city waiting to build the Hanging Gardens as soon as it's available. Since I have the Great Library I currently have science at 0% and I'm taking in about 30 gold per turn (550 in treasury).

How does this compare with other Deity players? Does anyone have tips for staying ahead of the AI in the medieval age? Other than lots of Riders..

Thanks!

 

[Taxi Driver]

oops, I almost forgot.. I have all the victory conditions except "conquest" and "space race" disabled.


double oops!

"about to get monotheism" should read "about to get monarchy"...

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by Taxi Driver
How "well" can a player reasonably do on Deity?

I am playing the Chinese on a Huge map with 16 civs and Raging hordes at 950 BC, 13 cities, #1 in population, just got construction, about to get monotheism, approximately 56 units pretty much evenly divided between warriors and spearmen (with a handful of archers and horsemen, and one army). I have the Pyramids, Heroic Epic, Oracle, Great Library, and I have a leader sitting in a city waiting to build the Hanging Gardens as soon as it's available. Since I have the Great Library I currently have science at 0% and I'm taking in about 30 gold per turn (550 in treasury).

How does this compare with other Deity players?

Taxi Driver,

I don't want you to think you are being ignored here but this game does not even sound remotely credible for a deity level game.

My guess is that you ar playin gin PTW and have a number of other game distorting and setup features enabled that renders this game not even remotely a Deity level game.

This is not necessarily your fault, because Firaxis has confused all the new players by dumping a number of relatively untested multiplayer features into the single player game where they do not function well and effectively reduce the pay difficulty by two or three orders of magnitude. Many PTW players are posting questions about Deity level difficulty that are just impossible and also which indicate that the game is severly broken when any of the non-standard Multiplayer features are enabled.

On Deity level it is rare for the best players in the entire world to be able to build more than just one or two ancient age wonders.

Post a compressed save file of your game and I will confirm things for you but my first impression is that you may have been the butt of a cruel joke here in your perception of how the game should work.

 

[anarres]

Cracker,

You can get Colossus, Great Library, and Pyramids on Deity, on CivIII v1.29f, and I am sure there are people who have got them all at some point. You can even get 2 or 3 Ancient wonders in a One City Challenge game.

It is not impossible, and PTW doesn't make it that much easier, especially in the Ancient times when the city improvements are not available. Also, if wonders are rushed with leaders, how can this be a result of PTW changes? I was not aware that leader generation was different in PTW, but I am happy to be proved wrong (as always).

Apart form Accelerated Production, what 'non-standard Multiplayer' features are you refering to? I agree that if AP is turned on then it can hardly be called a Deity game in any traditional sense. It does not seem that Regicide and those other MP options are relevant to a single player game.

I understand your attitude to PTW completely, but shooting down a newbie seems a little harsh, especially when the facts are not known...

Edit: On reading this I may seem a little harsh myself, for which I apologise, but my points are valid and should be answered please.

 

[Taxi Driver]

Laughing at your skepticism.. :-D

I am not a newbie, I have been playing Civ since 1997. I am a Mac user which means NO Play the World. And I am not using a single non-standard setting or feature... in fact, I believe I am using the absolute hardest settings possible in the game (except perhaps for some of the geography settings).

I am playing a Huge Archipelago with maximum landmass, temperate, cool, 5 billion years old, Raging Horde barbarians, all random civs, allow civ-specific abilities, disallow culturally linked start (i think??), no accelerated startup (er, is that a Civ2 or Civ3 feature)... no cultural, diplomatic, or domination victory allowed.

It should be fairly obvious how I've achieved this without using an editor or modified rules.

 

[DaveMcW]

It's certainly possible to get a lot of ancient wonders with the Chinese in a lucky game, on any difficulty. The huge map and flat terrain make it even easier to farm Leaders. My personal record is all wonders except the Oracle in the same city (5-cow start on Emperor).

Try to get a second core around the Forbidden Palace before the GL expires, that should keep you in the tech race for the rest of the game.

 

[Taxi Driver]

Wow that's a lot of wonders!! Coolio... sadly I only have 2 cows around Beijing in my deity game... but LOTS of rivers and grassland nearby.

 

[Taxi Driver]

I forgot to mention that I spent the first 2500 years destroying the Indians and reducing the Japanese to one crappy city. I got the combined benefits of getting great leaders, clearing out the continent for settling (altho the Brits and Germans keep landing settlers), AND got two of the most annoying Civs out of the way early on. No stupid War Elephant or Samurai is gonna harsh my buzz!

 

[Cartouche Bee]

I don't think that many Great Leaders in ancient times is all too uncommon, especially with barbarians to generate elite troops (that can almost be classified as an exploit) . I think Erikk had a deity game were he had 2 GL by 2900BC, I have not been that lucky. Sounds like you will have a good run, getting Pyramids, Great Library and Hanging Gardens in ancient times is usually a good indicator that you have a good deity game on your hands (I've got a deity English (no barbs) run on the go with those 3 right now).

 

[Taxi Driver]

No WAY promotions from barbarian battles is an exploit!! When the uprising happens you can be looking at upwards of 150 horsemen attackers depending on how good you've been about dispersing huts!

Also.. I don't have the Hanging Gardens just YET. I am assuming I will get it because I have a Leader ready and the Great Library, and one civ already has monarchy so the next can't be too far off...

If it turns out I can't build the Gardens.. welll.... I'll just have to go back to the save where I got the leader and build the Lighthouse instead...

EDIT: from my savegames it looks like I got Leaders in 2310, 1990, 1175, and 1050 BC (those last two only 5 turns apart!).

And for the record, I built the oracle all by myself.. no leader

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Didn't say barbarian uprisings was an exploit but in the right hands and situation it could be too. Having conscript barbarians around to promote troops to elites is a bit exploitive.

 

[Shillen]

If it turns out I can't build the Gardens.. welll.... I'll just have to go back to the save where I got the leader and build the Lighthouse instead...

Oh...that's the trick to beating deity games.

 

[cracker]

Taxi Driver,

I did not even remotely mean to apply you were a newbie but your extra information exposes why you need to be more specific about what you are doing and what game you are playing on.

You should not be too smug as in the quote below when I was only try to identify why it seemd that you were "playing in a cave":

It should be fairly obvious how I've achieved this without using an editor or modified rules.

As it turns out, it is impossible for you to play a deity level game on the MAC without specific external intervention. Your game is permanently trapped in the v1.21g patch that was obsoleted almost nine months ago when the software was upgraded to v1.29.

The difference is that the tech rate progression in you game is artificially skewed at about 1.5 times the tech rate progression of the rest of the world and this is due to the lack of support you have received in having the updated software available to you. This difference is most extreme on the Deity level games and will create quite a shock for you when you do make the step to upgrade your play.

It is definitely possible to get lots of wonders in a deity level game but my sixth sense had your game pegged as having something wrong with it in the tech and wonder progression arena. You have confirmed that by revealing that you are playing at a down revision level of the game.

We are working on a solution that will let you play Deity level games that will match the rest of the Civ3 community and we have begun the first step in implementing that process with the gotm17-Carthage game for this month. I encourage you to join the games and help us with your experience. In the interim, please be careful to make sure that you reveal you are playin gon v1.21 whenever you discuss any issue of technology progression or wonder construction because you will be operating on a different timeline than most players.

 

[Taxi Driver]

I hadn't realized this. Why isn't this change documented anywhere, for example in the list of changes included in Patch 1.29? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

EDIT:

Your whole first post was smug, so to you..

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Taxi Driver
I hadn't realized this. Why isn't this change documented anywhere, for example in the list of changes included in Patch 1.29? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

EDIT:

Your whole first post was smug, so to you..

Don't sweat it, GOTM now engineers maps that are not in the realm of normal play either. For example, GOTM15 on Monarch there was at least one person already in the middle ages at 1000BC and that is played on 1.29f. Hmm that's even a faster pace than you are running on deity. Have fun with what you got. Check out the Mac forum to better judge your skill against those playing the same version that you are.

 

[Taxi Driver]

Hehe, thanks.

Y'know, call me a skeptic, but I've been looking and have yet to find a shred of evidence that what cracker says about tech differences in 1.21 and 1.29 is true.

Not that I feel he's trying to trick me, or anything.. but you'd think information like that would be clearly and even *conspicuously* documented, and I don't see it anywhere in the long list of changes, additions, and fixes in 1.29.

 

[Shillen]

I don't know anything about the difference between the patches, but if you're reloading in order to redo things that go wrong then you're not really playing deity anyway IMO.

 

[Taxi Driver]

Well, it's the only way I can think of to beat max civs on a huge map on deity with raging hordes via conquest, which is what I want to do.

Sorry to sound arrogant in that last post, I realize that people here, cracker included, have put a lot of work into these issue.. it's just that I've looked through all the patch documentation I can find and I'm not seeing what he's referring to.

 

[cracker]

Taxi driver,

Unfortunately you are looking for no existent documentation that falls into the "Soren zone" of under the hood changes that Firaxsi has never documented well when releasing software patches or changes.

Unfortunately for us both we got off on the wrong foot here. I saw your first post in February 25th, and just assumed it was one of the two or three posts that are cropping up almost daily related to the "Deity confusion" domain that has become very prevailent in recent weeks.

Fortunate for you, I am freshly experienced with trying to solve the problem were most of the rest of the world has left you and the rest of the MAC world trapped in a world that deprives you of good opportunities for comparison of skill and/or strategy. We, the rest of the player community, are partially to blame for abandoning you in this realm.

In your specific game, the tech rate progression difference is found by dividing the base human tech rate of 10 by the the percentage cost advantage for the AI on the difficulty level you chose to play. In the game you are playing, all of your tech decisons cost A x $10 while on Deity level in the current version of the software, tech decisions for all the PC human players cost A x $16.67.

Another difference between your game and the current version is that India would have been about 10-12% stronger in the current deity level game while your version of India still played under the older more handicapped commerce implementation.

I know you will want to address the performance differences in your software once you recognize that the performance difference is solvable with some adjustments that will then put you on the same level of play as your peers. I'm pretty sure you do not think that you need a 67% cost advantage to feel comfortable in comparing your strategies with other players since you have been playing civ since 1997.

 

[Taxi Driver]

I see. How was this discovered? More importantly, how can I verify it myself using a copy of 1.29?

..as an aside.. all the gold and cheap marketplaces in the world wouldn't have stopped me from whupping India's butt in the second millennium BC.