Some observations after beating the diety level on a small map.

[jolburke]

I read on this site about the big shield bonus for cutting down forrests, and used that to beat the Diety Level on a tiny map, using the Incans. Here are a few observations.

1) The AI (Germans and French) never did try to invade my land. They only made feeble attempts to kill off a copper mine.

2) The Quechua were great for taking the first two cities, where only archers defended. But beyond that, I was facing defenders with a mixture of archers and spearmen and axmen, so I used axmen.

3) I cut down every single tree I could (it reminded me of the evil wizard on Lord of the Rings), and simply used the trees in conquered territory to replace my troops.

4) The Financial trait of the Incans was helpful in supporting my large army.

5) I took over somones horses, and could build chariots even though I did not have the animal husbandry tech to build a pasture.

6) Some conquered cities started producing culture for me without any improvements --- I do not know why?

Regards, P Maximus

P.S. What are the required techs for trading with the AI? And how do you intiate communication?

 

[Sybot]

Well done!

I don't have the nerve to try Deity yet.

On your questions. You need Alphabet to trade with the AI and to initiate communications either left click on their name in the main screen or go to the foreign advisor and right click on their leaderhead.

 

[vinstafresh]

Nice one!

Re culture: Did you capture stonehenge by any chance?
Re pasture: Horses are required to make horse archers, not chariots, right?

 

[jolburke]

Nice one!

Re pasture: Horses are required to make horse archers, not chariots, right? No, you need the pasture on horses to build chariots.

 

[Astax]

5) I took over somones horses, and could build chariots even though I did not have the animal husbandry tech to build a pasture.

Thats pretty genius actually hehehe.

6) Some conquered cities started producing culture for me without any improvements --- I do not know why?

Hmm sounds like holy cities or cities with obelisk? You said some so it had to be one of the two. One thing people dont know, well not all the people, if you have no state religion, each founding religion will give you +5 culture in that city. So lets say you had 3 cities each had a different foundign religion. Not adopting a religion would mean no +1 happiness in the cities with state religion, but it would mean each of those cities was making +5 culture per turn, which is pretty good. Another thing, and this I doubt, maybe there was a great person in there? I dont know if they transfer and if you checked. It coudl be a bug that they do transfer but there just isnt an indicator of it of any kind.

 

[Gufnork]

5. It always bothered me that Chariots required The Wheel and Horses but not Animal Husbandry. Now I know why.

6. If you have no state religion every city with a religion gets +1 culture. If you have one only your cities with state religion gets the +1 culture (holy cities gets +4 for holy city and +1 for having the religion, totalling +5 culture).

 

[alexti2]

Played as German against a lot of AI.
Rushed for Oracle, picked Monarchy, Hereditary rule took care of unhappiness.
Researched to Writing for open borders, immediately signed with everybody (except Tokugawa, of course), researched alphabet, tech traded with everybody to get all technologies currently known to the world (without trading away alphabet of course), kept researching toward music while building up my capital (research + culture buildings). Culture bombed with an artist. Converted to buddism which was religion of most of my neighbours. Then went for civil services and bureaucracy. Built up the capital some more, then startes to mass catapults (twice city attack + some twice collateral). All the while I was actively trading with everybody. Tech for tech, resource for resource. I didn't mind trading away my only resources too. Something like fish for crab makes no difference, but AI seems to feel better. As I got musketman, I've upgraded bunch of older units and went to war. Took off 4 neigbour AIs (by the time my borders were already pushing theirs) using the same strategy: bombard off defense with city attacking catapults (later canons), sacrifice 2-3 collateral catapults, use musketmen to take off coupe of strongest defenders, then attack with city raider catapults.

After that I've just build up conquered cities which I got in pretty good shape because my culture was strong and patched up relationship with other AIs. Eventually I've won space victory.

 

[Not_Bob]

I also won on diety, with incas, but with three AI....(randomly selected)
and i got tokawuaga, montezuma and munsa masa...
Tokawuga and montezuma were pain in the buts(obvious), and i took only one of munsa masas citys until he passed the "skirmishers age..." so a warning if you are gonna play against munsa, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A (no more like an endless reserve" OF UNITS THAT CAN KILL HIS SKIRMISHERS.... (goddamn annoying little things)

 

[Batvanio]

I won on deity with incas too.
18 civs small continent map.
Won domination by 1000 AD

Some comments on that game:

1. Incas and quecha rush are too powerfull - should be balanced with a patch. After that game it doesnt make sense for me to play any other race.

2. having 6 cities by 3500 BC while ai is building their second ones, stealing all their workers and chopping all the wonders made me a tech lead in 3000 BC.
Means AI miserable archers are no match for quecha

3. After I captured the cities that founded the first three religions, it was no problem to discover the other 4 first and had all the 7 holy cities on my continent of 10 cities before 1 AD. This should not be possible on Deity - at least on theory - it is too powerfull to have all the holy cities.

4. By the time I invaded the second continent in 700 AD I had upgraded quechas to Macement with 6 promotions to each macemen. The promotions were won in in the quecha rush as it is a huge experience gain when you kill archers, the game actually counts as if a warrior killed an archer. Enemy civs fell like flies I was not able to take the whole second continent when I won.
The third continent survived. By the time of victory I have erradicated 10 of the 17 AI's. Again the reason was the promotions and the quecha experience bonus ATTACKING archers.

Game is too easy now - I wait for a patch/mod to give me some challenge.

 

[Dakhor]

Game is too easy now - I wait for a patch/mod to give me some challenge.

Then dont play as the Incas dude!

Oh the game is SOOO easy im bored ( oh by the way im using an obvious exploit ) - gimme a break man...

/DaK/

 

[Batvanio]

Then dont play as the Incas dude!

Oh the game is SOOO easy im bored ( oh by the way im using an obvious exploit ) - gimme a break man...

/DaK/

well I dont play incas anymore of course.
But I disagree it is an exploit. It is working as it was designed and intended and I dont cheat in any way.

just think how this rush can damage an MP game

 

[KAuss]

1. Incas and quecha rush are too powerfull - should be balanced with a patch. After that game it doesnt make sense for me to play any other race.

They're only powerful because you stacked the odds to your favor...

18 civs on a map that requires no navy... That means no room to expand, so the one with the best early unit is going to win...

Try to do the same thing with 18 civs on a standard map... And maybe continents... If you have to have navy to win, it'll make those "overpowered" rushers a LOT more balanced... If not "underpowered..."

Generally, every rush startegy requires a small map... I wouldn't mind seeing a strat for huge map domination though... However I think thats impossible...

Anywho, for warmongers, small maps are the only way to go... Cause this game will not allow someone to play a bigger map and still think domination... The AI is just too efficient when it comes to army building...

 

[Gufnork]

Each map size is balanced for a certain amount of civs. If you change that by a significant amount, you won't have a balanced game. On small maps with max civs early rushing will be overpowered. Try a Huge map with 18 civs or a small map with five and I'm willing to bet that your Incas will get their arses handed to them on Deity.

 

[Batvanio]

yeah I know I manipulated teh AI with small huge sea map and 18 civs
I admit it - this way the AI had 2 cities on average and one settler which he was not able to start build.
Tha cumulative effect from caputring close cities early , plus lots of workers from turning setlers and so on..

Yeah I gues I stacked all the ods in my favour. At least i did it on small map, not duel

 

[Islandia]

You have to remember that in multiplayer the Incan Quecha is not very useful for rushing because smart opponents (i.e. not the computer) will just build warriors (and later axemen) to fend off your rush instead of wasting resources on stacks of archers that will die easily to the Quecha. I really do not think the Quecha is overpowered, but it is certainly one of the easier civs to beat deity on.

I have now beaten deity (standard size map 7 civs once on continents and once on pangaea) twice now (out of about 20 attempts) using Incans though it is more the result of the combination of the aggressive financial trait than the quechas which get outdated after you take out one civ at most. On a standard map that first civ you take out gives you 3 - 4 cities and let's you start off with a nice 5 city empire that you can then use to take out one more civ in the medieval age and then slingshot towards artillery right away. I'm working on a game now that I think I will win as the Greeks, but other than that I am having a very tough time winning deity with the other civs. This leads me to believe that if nothing else, the financial, aggressive and philosophical traits are unbalanced, but more testing needs to be done. Oh that and the computer has no real counter to a stack of 100 artillery (so much for combined arms) since they don't defend individual cities well enough though their overall forces are way higher in number.

 

[alexti2]

I have now beaten deity (standard size map 7 civs once on continents and once on pangaea) twice now (out of about 20 attempts) using Incans though it is more the result of the combination of the aggressive financial trait than the quechas which get outdated after you take out one civ at most. On a standard map that first civ you take out gives you 3 - 4 cities and let's you start off with a nice 5 city empire that you can then use to take out one more civ in the medieval age and then slingshot towards artillery right away. I'm working on a game now that I think I will win as the Greeks, but other than that I am having a very tough time winning deity with the other civs. This leads me to believe that if nothing else, the financial, aggressive and philosophical traits are unbalanced, but more testing needs to be done.

I don't think it's an issue with traits. I've won relatively easy with Bismark (ind/exp). I think that AI has at least 2 critical weaknesses:
- it doesn't know how to defend against a large army: it just builds fixed number of units and sits idle, ignoring how much units the human player is cranking out
- it doesn't know how to defend vs cultural aggression. I was pushing back their borders, taking away their resources and starving out their cities, but they still were sitting idle and staying nice to me. I expect that AI should recognize this kind of aggression and do something about it. For example, I'd take their resource away and then give it to them as a gift. As a result their attitude toward me is improving

Those weaknesses doesn't seem to be much of an issue on the island maps. Has abybody beaten deity on island map, in particular, with high sea level?

 

[Rhymes]

They're only powerful because you stacked the odds to your favor...

18 civs on a map that requires no navy... That means no room to expand, so the one with the best early unit is going to win...

Try to do the same thing with 18 civs on a standard map... And maybe continents... If you have to have navy to win, it'll make those "overpowered" rushers a LOT more balanced... If not "underpowered..."

Generally, every rush startegy requires a small map... I wouldn't mind seeing a strat for huge map domination though... However I think thats impossible...

Anywho, for warmongers, small maps are the only way to go... Cause this game will not allow someone to play a bigger map and still think domination... The AI is just too efficient when it comes to army building...

Depends, on standard maps its still very feasable. Might be another story if you keep playing Emperor and above though....

If you want a real challenge, try starting a game on PRINCE in archipelago standard, and turn off spaceship and diplomatic victory. You'll see its a lot harder then on a small pangea on deity.

Edit: I meant, to make it a real challenge, I often start the first game i try, I dont restart to improve my starting location, etc.

 

[alexti2]

If you want a real challenge, try starting a game on PRINCE in archipelago standard, and turn off spaceship and diplomatic victory. You'll see its a lot harder then on a small pangea on deity.

My prediction would be that you will either win or the game will crash. If nothing else, you'll get time victory. If you don't like time victory you can win culturally. Domination should be also makeable, but you will need a lot of units. Probably better wait for the patch before trying that. Along the same lines I'd rather suggest deity on islands (probably small to be safe). Islands map is preferrable to archipelago because you're getting more or less equal starting position. On Archipelago I was occasionally seeing starts on a 3-tile mini-island. In another game I've got pretty decent island though... So on that map luck with starting location makes too much difference. Though I wonder if it's possible to change difficulty after the start. That 3-tile island start might be interesting on Prince...

 

[Control Group]

I didn't mind trading away my only resources too. Something like fish for crab makes no difference, but AI seems to feel better

The AI seems to feel better, because it came out ahead on the deal.

If the AI's got two fish and you've got one crab, it's distinctly to the AI's advantage to trade you fish for crab. You're right in that you don't lose anything, but the AI gains a Health from you.

It may well still be worth doing the trade for diplomatic reasons, but the AI is gaining a relative advantage over you.

 

[anton_z1]

Did anybody won a Deity on Large or Huge ?.