Prepping for first deity game

Ozymandias9891

Warlord
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Jul 26, 2012
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Montreal, QC
Hey all,

So I'm preparing for my first deity game and I just wanted some advice and tips from seasoned players to help make it a good experience for me. Some questions I have:

1) What's the best Civ to use on my first deity game? (I was thinking of going with Venice or Byzantium)
2) What should I focus on early game? (i.e. production line, social policies, etc...)
3) What to do in the event of a war?
4) What science path should I take? Should I focus more on the top of the tech tree or the bottom?
5) Any other advice you guys can think of!

Thanks! I look forward to reading your replies!
 
What Civ you choose depends on what type of game you want to play.

1) I used Poland in the only Diety game I've ever won. Korea or Babylon are great if you want to focus on Science
2) Scout & Growth Growth Growth. You have to expand quickly if you have a close neighbor or you will run the risk of losing city locations
3) You need to preempt wars. If you have a warmongering neighbor, you need to a) build units early, or bribe him to attack someone else. If you are DoW early, chances are you are dead, if you don't have a good sized army.
4) Lot of variables there.
5) Scout early on. I've been trying Scout-Scout start, and it's making quite a difference actually. You need to meet lots of people as quickly as possible, and hope for good goodie huts.
Farm barbs with your units early to get them promotions.
Tradition is the only real option for Social Policies.
 
1) General opinion seems to be: Babylon, Korea, Maya, Poland, Inca, Austria, Arabia and Ethiopia.
2) It depends on the civ you take, the start you get, and ofc on your neighbours. My advice is: whatever you focus on at start you have to stick to it to the end. You can't be going all in science, for example, for 100 turns and than expect to make a good war at turn 110, it won't work.
3) Be prepared.
4) At start pick the tech you need for whatever luxuries you have, than go for writing. If you want an early war you should rush to composite bows, chariot archers or useful unique units. Make sure to kill all or at least most of enemy units before entering city bombardment range.
 
Deity games are difficult. Have you tried the immortal difficulty yet? Immortal isn't as difficult as Deity but it still is difficult, too.
 
1. Any civ in the top 2 tiers on the deity tier list thread. Or the Huns, boom boom pow battering rams never fail.
2. Growth. Growth allows more tiles worked which gives you production, etc anyways.
3. No worries, AI isn't too good at war.
4. Depends how you play
5. Go for Animal Husbandry or Sailing early, because of the AIs tech start you can easily get 5 :c5gold: 5 :c5science: from a trade route.
 
early trade routes matter a lot.

quoted from someone else "there are many ways to win, but one way to lose, and that's falling behind in tech"

poland korea babs maya are all solid choices. also don't neglect internal trade routes for food if you go tall.
 
All I have to contribute to this topic is:

Good luck.
 
Short answers:
>1) What's the best Civ to use on my first deity game? (I was thinking of going with Venice or Byzantium)
Poland, Babylon, Inca, Maya

>2) What should I focus on early game? (i.e. production line, social policies, etc...)
Growth, go tradition 4 cities.

>3) What to do in the event of a war?
Have 3-4 archers/CB and walls in border cities where enemy is. Try settling on hills or behind rivers so that enemy attack you over river. Try not settling too close to AIs.

>4) What science path should I take? Should I focus more on the top of the tech tree or the bottom?
Top of the tree, focus initially on Education, then get workshops, then scientific theory and then plastics.

>5) Any other advice you guys can think of!
Send 1st caravan to AI and 2nd food caravan to the capital. Try getting NC before T100 and education before T110.
 
I think the most important part of winning the first Deity games is to learn how to make your opponents hate eachother, while making sure that none of them gets too big by conquest.
 
1) I let the game pick the civ I play, so I can't help you here.
2) Growth, as people have said, and put a pretty high premium on science. Get libraries and NC up as quick as you can.
3) For a while, focus on just having an adequate defensive force. Two land troops and 3 or 4 archers/CBs can defend against most early attacks.
4) Top of tech path, for things that keep you increasing your tech capacity.
5) Pick your victory condition early, as has been mentioned, and go all in for that. Be patient. On the demographics screen, you'll show up as 8th in every category for 100 turns. But through the hundreds, you'll start turning that around, and by around 200, you'll start pulling into the lead. Fulfill CS quests; the bonuses they give can be relatively quite substantial.
 
For some good fun, you can do what I did for my 1st deity game, England on Archipelago map. T250 domination win :p Good to practice growth/science strategies while also giving you some breathing room as AI is kinda bad at naval combat.
 
I, personally, think that Venice on Archipelago map is a good choice for Diety. Sure, there might be better civs, but Venice is just so much simpler to play as, much fewer variables to manage. As such, I think it's easier to do as well as possible with Venice on Archipelago.

Actually, I just finished my first BNW Diety game, as Venice. This is my general strategy idea:

Of course, aim for diplomatic victory, you have all that gold for a reason.

Don't make any Merchants of Venice. Use the one from Optics to ally the closest city-state as soon as you're able to take the unhappiness. Since puppets produce MoV's on their own with their gold focus, you can get any more you want from there while your capital focuses on the more important GS's. I generally use a second MoV for another puppet, then plant any others to boost Venice's base gold further for trade and to avoid running out of Delegates in the WC.

Prioritize cargo ships, of course.

The way I see things, in general the main purpose of puppets as Venice is to a: serve as forward-trading bases when cargo ship distance limits are smaller, and b: to grow your capital even larger with food boats. As such, I generally recommend replacing any improvements on tiles without strategic or luxury resources with trading posts, or failing that, maybe even just delete improvements to avoid unhappiness.

Venice is made for freedom: you really appreciate those tall empire boosts, and the 3rd tier ability is amazing for diplomacy victory; you pretty much are just guaranteed every city-state alliance (as long as AI doesn't pass Embargo City-States. In my game, they managed to keep that one in play for about 50 turns until I repealed it, which seriously, seriously hurt.) On the other hand, the fact that a: AI loves order and b: the fact that you have only 1 city really producing defensive culture means that you will be hurting with unhappiness -- thus, why I recommend avoiding growth in your puppets.

You don't need to worry about AI's taking your cities all that much, as AI is terrible at naval, but with their tendency to have their fleets spread out everywhere, war will frequently result in the loss of many trade routes. Use your superior gold income to bribe them into warring amongst themselves, as well, to prevent them from attacking you in the first place. Eventually, though, I find that in late-game, between Ideology and World Congress, they will probably eventually get angry enough for someone to bite the bullet and attack you. In that scenario, I really recommend privateers, as the AI's massive but slowly-arriving navies will provide perfect fodder for building your own fleet.

Also, I can't emphasis this enough: focus on science. You only have one city to reliably make it with, so it's even more vital. Settle next to mountains if possible(as long as Venice remains costal, of course. Actually, that's why I selected 3 billion years in advanced settings, so I could be more sure of a mountain without re-rolling.) Beeline Education, Scientific Theory, and Plastics. Always run Scientist specialists when available. Don't use engineer or merchant specialists, or if you do, make sure you don't get enough points to actually pop a great one in your capital and increase the Scientist cap further. You really want to get to Globalization and finish the game at the first WL vote.

With only one reliable city, you really shouldn't expect to get a religion. You can try and pick up a pantheon, though; God-King is really nice for Venice. If by some miracle, you get one, I'd recommend picking up World Church for founder, as the flat culture goes well with Venice's lower culture requirements and weakness to tourism.

As nice as they are for Venice, Colossus is a bit off your tech route, and Petra has a tendency to disappear early, so I wouldn't really aim for them unless you have a desert blessed capital.

Also, a little tip -- you can look at the diplomatic menu to see how much gold people have for resource trades and RA's on your next turn between turns, for more efficient usage of time.

Finally, good luck! You'll need it.
 
More questions:

1) Just won on Prince, Science, turn 398.
Do you normally go up 1 level or 2 levels?

2) Aside from Korea/Bablon (who I was)....are you at a disadvantage if you want to be:

America/Aztecs/Greeks/English/Germans/French?
I get tired of the same old same old.

I presume being Denmark or the Huns is a no no.
 
Rover,

I've recently been working my way up, too. I've won as high as Immortal (just recently), though I did go step by step.

There's not a huge difference between Prince and King or King and Emperor. So you might be able to jump straight to Emperor from Prince. There's a pretty big difference between Emp and Immortal though.

I only just won my first game as Immortal. Literally, Alex got within two votes of the Diplo Vic and even then I had to forcibly "reason" with some of his allied city states....

Yes - there are some disadvantages to playing with the slightly weaker civs and you have to pay more attention to your own Unique abilities and units. If you plan to go science again, perhaps stick with Babylon and try Emperor. However, If you step only to King, perhaps try a new playstyle? Play the Greeks, open Patronage and go for Diplo, for example.
 
Thank you to everyone for your advice! It's very much appreciated. I'll be starting a new thread with updates as soon as I get this started.
 
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