Technology on Demigod

[MonkeyBusiness]

Hey there. After trying my first Arch and Demigod game simultaneously, I copped a beating.

I usually go for a domination victory although have retired after a Zulu Battleship and Transport sailed past my Frigate.

As far as territory goes I was doing alright, and keeping up with tech with the crapper civs (spain and egypt) but the two larger civs (zulu and portugal; the rest are dead) were kicking my ass.

My question is, how on earth do you catch back up with the leader civ's once you're behind? I think, somewhere relatively early I missed a bunch of negotiating chances and then was so far behind i couldn't catch up - i.e. if i paid for the tech, i had no one (at least no one with money) to sell it to.

Any tips if you're in this situation?

Here's a link for the saved game:

http://rapidshare.com/files/267062869/PreWat.SAV

Which will hopefully work, since I use a mac (Complete). Its a rapidshare link since the max file upload for .sav is 2MB and the file is like 2.2MB. Anyway.

Any feed back from the status of the game/game history would be appreciated.

And as a tangent - how good is the Beserk as a UU! Played as the Scandinavians; that unit is golden for ages - up until replaceable parts.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

 

[Donny Brook]

Didn't look at your game save, but I'm guessing you didn't make enough early contacts. So the trades you made were passed around among everyone you didn't know. You need to get a curragh out early to cruise the coast and meet tribes. That way you can trade a tech to several tribes at once instead of just one or two. Also, you can gamble and wait a bit before trading a tech. You don't need to trade it as soon as you've learned it.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Honestly I haven't played as the vikings, but the Beserk is a good unit on the right map. It's expensive and upgrades to guerilla (blech) but is powerful, need no resources to build and with fast boats you can do a surprise amphibious attack! I'd imagine it'd be murder on the AI on an archipelago map, especialy if you've got the lighthouse wonder.

As to catching up with a runaway AI, I'm no master. Early on letting the runaway AI's fight each other through alliances if they share a border while you sit safely on the other side of the ocean can slow their advance. Concentrating all your income on raising cash and buying non-monopoly techs rather than researching them yourself. Pointed stick diplomacy-getting techs as part of peae treaties in short limited wars. Give up on tech parityand hope for a UN victory if you can stay alive that long. All are techniques I've heard suggested here on the forums. I once lucked out with the great library ladder where I was way behind, isolated on a continent and finally got a curraugh across the ocean to meet some AI civs that rocketted me from mid ancient to well into the middle ages.

 

[TheOverseer714]

At DG, you might just try to hang on until you can get Replaceable Parts, then you build lots of Artillery, Cavalry and Infantry, start razing their cities.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Couple of tips for dealing with a level you aren't good at:

1) Build no wonders. None, zero. They aren't worth it.
2) Build more workers than you think you need
3) Consider being scientific - free techs really help.
4) Build a lot of seige. Archers and enough cats can kill pikes, even muskets.

 

[vmxa]

First the easy part, zerks, not my cup of tea. I played an SG where we were vikes and could not build any two move units, so I got familiar with them. The weakness, 2 defense and they need protection.

Slow and knights are already in the field and muskets will be soon. Biggest strength is amphib, but how often will you use that? At DG or better, probably not so much.

Cost 70, same as knight, so I prefer knights with the two move and retreat. So not awful, but you are welcome to them.

The game, first thing to me is the spacing. I am fine with the towns close to the capitol, but after that you need to pack them in. You are playing on an archi map right? So you look to be on an island right off the bat.

That means limited space and you will need as many towns down as you can get for support and beakers.

Next thing is a casual glance of the towns, they seem to be making the right structures.

Then I look and see all the marsh still around at some 340 turns into the game? So we do not have or did not have any where near enough workers.

I would suggest preferences be change to at least use color blind as it help us determine the nations, rather than relying on their colors. Not a bad idea to use ask for build and I use build previous.

We see a number of places are still towns. Yes they are getting aquas now, but that should be a priority. Yeah you could not feed them, lack of workers as much as rivers.

The best way I know of to close any research gap, is to get bigger. More land, more towns, more specialist. You probably need about 30% more towns than the best AI at DG to match them.

This depends on how good your land is and how good you run your empire, but it should offset their discount.

Trading will be much harder by and large as you will need a long time to make the contacts, in most cases. Your isolation hurts you more than them, as they have their bonus.

Once you make some contacts, then you have an advantage, until they have contacts. If they are very isolated, that means Navigation, Astro only for non ocean nations. IOW, if they cannot reach anyone with out crossing ocean they are stuck till Nav.

You had at least three Seafaring nations, that is a bad break. They will get out sooner to make contacts. If you are playing this level for the first time, consider selecting the nations and leaving the Sea guys out.

 

[vmxa]

BTW if you did not use the auto save you would have had less than 300kb file and could post it here. Those host sites are some what discouraging to some people to down load from.

 

[MonkeyBusiness]

Thanks for the tips.

I did neglect the workers. Although with the Marsh, I'd kinda meant to left it there since resources (oil I think) can appear there. I dont really know how resources appear- i.e. if its set at the start and thn revealed, or its random. But I didn't clear all the marsh becuase I wanted to leave it 'available' for new resources to appear. Does it work like that? or not?

The more cities thing is surprising, I thought I'd jammed them in, but obviously not. On easier difficulty levels I would generally skip communism, although with communism, the corruption is so low. I might just play a bit longer and setup even more cities to see how that helps.

And thanks for the UN Vicotry tip. I might give that a try an see what the forums have to say about tips there.

But thanks heaps for the tips.

 

[vmxa]

I have not run any test, so I am not positive. My understanding is that if oil is on a tile at start time, it does not matter, if you clean that tile. It will only matter for new discoveries. IOW say an oil was exhausted, it will only reappear on a tile that allows that resource.

Basically I will always clear tiles, especially on an island start. Chances are I will not need oil.