The Divine Request – Deity Walkthrough

[linfeixb27]

I agree with Agriculture -> AH, but I don't want to make any further tech plans before I scout the area. Barbarians start moving into your territory at 2600 BC on deity IIRC.

Agriculture-AH is a dangourse tech route, for you have nothing to defend barbarians, even if you have horse. It takes too long to hook up horse and tech wheel. And you do not need the cow tile early because there are so many other tiles you can work on.

 

[Rusten]

Send the scout 1SE and 1NE and find nothing of interest in addition to a bunch of jungle tiles – I settle in place and pop the hut for 45 gold.

Turn 3 / 3880 BC
Reach the hut visible in the screenshot above and pop animal husbandry—nice! It doesn’t stop there either; I have horses in my BFC. I’m going to tech the wheel after agriculture now in order to hook them up.

Turn 6 / 3760 BC
Run into Peter of Russia and his empire is very close. Too close if you ask me. This is pretty bad as he’s definitely going to grab land in the jungle before me, I’m already starting to get somewhat boxed in.

Turn 8 / 3680 BC
Mayan scout pops up from the west. Pacal should be fairly close as well unfortunately as this is very early.

Turn 9 / 3640 BC
Pacal founds Hinduism.

Turn 15 / 3400 BC
Buddhism has been founded in a distant land. I guess I won’t be seeing Izzy this game.

Turn 19 / 3240 BC
A look at what’s been explored so far. You can see both the Maya and the Russian border; I’m in danger of getting boxed in here.

The area is very good, but the problem is I’m not able to settle most of it. Those gems and other jungle goodies are out of my reach, I’m going to have to put everything into claiming the gold and settle towards Pacal in order to claim territory. You can see pottery being researched in the screenshot, but that was changed before anything was invested. Given the danger of being boxed in I decided to ignore cottaging for now and hurry towards BW for chops and whips—I need production.

Turn 20 / 3200 BC
Greet Hammurabi and he’s the one who founded Buddhism. That’s great as it reduces the odds of me getting targeted early on, there will be religious conflict.

Turn 28 / 2880 BC
Tenochtitlan just got to size 4 and I’m currently getting a second worker to chop forests. The horses are being pastured and it will be connected to my capital when the worker is completed.

Turn 29 / 2840 BC
Stonehenge completed in a distant land.

Turn 31 / 2760 BC
Peter converts to Hinduism. Now Pacal and Peter are annoyed towards Hammurabi and Hammurabi is annoyed towards them—good for me, I should be safe. My scout got smashed by barbarians at about this time which was pretty late actually, I’m surprised he lasted this long.

Turn 38 / 2480 BC
Got a chariot out and started on my first settler. I’m going to whip in order to claim the gold site ASAP. Tencohtitlan is currently size 5.

Turn 40 / 2400 BC
2-pop whip the settler. I will regrow to size 4 while getting some more chariots next.

Turn 43 / 2280 BC
I’m closing in on the gold, but so is Pacal.

He will most likely not settle the coming turn and rather move towards the food resources, but I’m not willing to take that risk. While settling on the river for fresh water might be the best move long-term I don’t want to risk losing this spot, so I settle 2N of the wheat this turn. It does have some benefit as well; it means I will get the cows within my first ring speeding up my overall development a lot. If you’re wondering why he hasn’t settled there sooner that city with its borders popped is not his capital, that’s further off, it’s his second city (Hindu holy) I believe.

My luck with the huts has run out.

Turn 47 / 2120 BC
Pacal finished the Great Wall. The Oracle hasn’t been constructed yet, so I would’ve gotten it if I went for it, but there was no way of knowing that. However, if I had aimed for the wonder I definitely would’ve lost the race to the gold so it was probably not worth it either way.

Turn 48 / 2080 BC
Peter has already settled both jungle gems (expected). I will have to do with a city between the rice and horses or between the fish.

Turn 52 / 1920 BC
I decided to stop here for now. Below is a screenshot of what’s explored. The next settler is ETA 2 I believe so I’m considering where to settle the next city. I’m thinking of going far north to seal off Pacal. As you can see I’ve found a source of stone I can claim easily, but I don’t know if I want to yet. One strategy (again) could be to settle a city there next and chop out the Pyramids, but I don’t think I want to do that, it's kinda boring. I’m more interested in heading for an early war as that's something I haven't done on deity before. I haven’t decided anything yet, but it’s an option one doesn’t get too often on deity—I’ve never had the balls to start one pre-renaissance.

Reason I’m considering early war here is that I have a source of ivory and quite a lot of commerce; I should be able to pay for a lot of units. A war with elephants and siege also nicely matches the marble; I can chop out the GL and the NE in my capital very early without losing much war momentum. The GPP should land me philosophy early, so I’ll have something to trade with. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again but rather take of advantage of what the map has to offer, and while early war is not something one usually does on deity in my experience it could prove quite effective here. I will have to give it a lot of thought. An added reason is the fact that none of my neighbours (and especially Pacal) are known to spam military units. Peter is also looking very tasty. I’m really craving for those jungle sites. I could be wrong about Peter not making a lot of units though, I’m not that familiar with his personality, I rarely face him.

Here’s a closer look at the northern part.

 

[Rusten]

Agriculture-AH is a dangourse tech route, for you have nothing to defend barbarians, even if you have horse. It takes too long to hook up horse and tech wheel. And you do not need the cow tile early because there are so many other tiles you can work on.

Nah, it's not dangerous in this case. I got lucky and popped it from a hut, but I would still have plenty of time.

Situation A: You get horses within your BFC and you tech the wheel to enable them. This should enable chariots at least ~2600 and I have an aggressive civ here which means that my warriors can easily hold off an archer or two in the woods until the first chariot is ready.

Situation B: No horses and you still have time to tech archery (started with hunting).

Tip: I don't know if starting a very early war (with jaguars) is a good idea on deity. Maybe it's better to tech first and do wars in the renaissance.

That's the most common approach yes, and the one I've had the most success with, but that doesn't mean it's always the better choice.

I'm no Deity player, but would settling 1N work?

I really don't want to give up a 6 tile (even if a second city gets it). The sooner I can work it the better.

 

[linfeixb27]

You are lucky/ You have done a great micro-management that I am amazed that you claim the gold-wheat-cow city. I tried myself before your demonstration, and I was too late to claim that city. I even built my first settler before my second worker.
I gave up at around 1800BC, and I am quite pessimistic about your game.

 

[JBossch]

Wow, close call beating Pacal to the gold. Nice job!
I have very little experience on deity but here goes:
Suggest sending the next settler north somewhere and hope Peter doesn't grab the 2xfish/marble (screw un-irrigated jungle rice).
I am not sure exactly where as there is a bit of a food vacuum to the NW. Maybe you will have to settle for a spot that grabs the gold, though if you decide to go for the mids you should probably grab the stone city ASAP as it will require a border pop (assuming you want the fish).
If you want early war I would suggest targeting Pacal. In my experience (again, little on deity) he has a crap army and instead goes for religion and wonders like he has been doing thus far. Both would help you out in the long run, while you let Peter clear some jungle for you.
Are you considering cats and jags like in the immortal game? Personally, I would be far too scared to come at Deity AIs without at least cats.
The mids are tempting but my vote is for war. You are Monty after all.

 

[Rusten]

Are you considering cats and jags like in the immortal game? Personally, I would be far too scared to come at Deity AIs without at least cats.
The mids are tempting but my vote is for war. You are Monty after all.

Catapults are a given. It would be a little different from the last game as I have ivory here, I need more techs but I will have a great SoD for a longer period of time due to the WEs. I won't rush into anything without siege, I can afford to take my time here and get the GL for instance.

 

[linfeixb27]

Is it possible to build the pyramid first? The third city could be the cow-wine-whale city at north coast.

 

[Shurdus]

Is it possible to build the pyramid first? The third city could be the cow-wine-whale city at north coast.

The whale and wine require seperate techs that are not war related, so unless one could trade for them I wonder how desirable those would be.

the safer bet would be the stone spices and gold city i think. the commerce would pay for quite an army, and it won't hurt science that bad either.

One final reason why I would not go for the whale city is that Pacal has a religion, and his cultural borders are close to there already. The cultural pressure can really diminish the worth of that city.

Edit: Your English seems fine to me.

 

[Dirk1302]

Challenging position, i believe you started off well but there's not that much land to settle peacefully. I can understand the idea of an early cat war, the circumstances are right with good production and Phants, still you probably won't have a military advantage as they'll probably have longbows meaning you'll lose a significant number of cats. Hard to imagine you'll have more units than the deity ais also around 0 ad so your war skills 'll be tested.

I think the position's not that bad for a renaissance war as well, as you said settle next city north near cows, you should be able to get 6 maybe 7 reasonable cities up in this case. Since your empire's not that big (so fast research in early midgame) and you have alot of bulbing power (especially if you can get Parthenon as well) you can hit lib early then race for some military advantage. I'd found a city between the fish, rather useless but great for the globe theater as there's enough food here, build it early then spam muskets and trebs. I'd play it this way (also because i'm kind of used to playing this way i guess),unfortunately i can't try it out since i'm going on a holiday soon.

Good luck.

 

[DMOC]

Settling north to block Pacal is OK. Tech to construction and crank out some war elephants/catapults and maybe some jaguars who could be useful as medics in Peter's jungle land. Even with Deity bonuses, I don't think Peter will be able to chop all those jungles before you reach him. AI's seem to be slow chopping.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

You look blocked in; I see you seem to have enough good land to settle 2 more cities. My mental dotmap cannot fit a 5th one in though, so you might have to take advantage of an oppertunistic moment to take the 5th and 6th city from some unfortunate soul that got dogpiled.

 

[ABigCivFan]

This will be a challenging game, but we do have some nice land here with good amount of gold/Gem and health resources.

In my shadow game, I actually raced Peter into the jungles to beat him to the Gem/Rice/Horse city, I think this is better than the gold/wheat/cow city to the West since it has lots of grasslands and the combined 3 resources have higher trading values than the Western city. I turned it into a nice cottage/commerce city.

The capital has very high output this means we can both REX and produce enough Jags to take all barb cities within sight! I actually researched archery for inital REX, but i did not "fog bust" and hoping the barbs will help me with land grab, and it worked very well...

This is what i did:

Spoiler :

Teched IW before Writing, built a Jag army (8) and took captured 2 barb cities settled in desired spots, destroyed 3rd (no culture) but resettled it immediately with my own settler.

I also settled a city on the East hill to claim 2 fish, will build Moai and possibly Gloab here.

Stone and Marble are a blessing, go for GL/Parth in Capital.

I will post some pics and details after Rusten posts another round.

 

[BCampbell]

I don't usually participate in these types of threads, but I love reading them. Interesting game so far.

A little late, but I'm wondering why nobody suggested settling the capitol on the cows? It would have been on the river, kept the ivory, corn, and hills, and grabbed the marble. Though you didn't know it at the time, it even would have kept the horses in the cross. Not sure if this would have worked out now that we've seen more of the map, but it was my second thought after settle in place.

As for where you're at now, you're severely limited in terms of peaceful expansion. Basically, you're cornered up there, and there's not a lot of food. I would think about maximizing the food resources that exist. A city on the hill between the fish gets both of them and the marble... and a lot of water, unfortunately. But it's a coastal city in case you need to send some units overseas (circumnav bonus?), with two good food resources.

In the north, you could settle on the spice which would get those grassland cows and the wheat. You'd have one desert and one mountain, and one desert hill, but two good food tiles and another coastal city... yet no irrigation. This wouldn't grow to be huge, and production would be dicey, but someone else will settle near there if you don't. Other options are 1S of the spice to grab the gold, but that gives you the mountain, two deserts, and two desert hills, not including the gold -- and I don't like cities one tile from the coast. You could also try settling between the cows and the wine to get the whale (eventually), a hill up there, and lots of forest, and leae a bit of room for a small city in the corner to get the wheat. It's too bad all that desert is there as the wheat, stone, gold, spice city would be okay.

Grabbing those bananas would have been nice but the cow/gold city was a very good move. I'm far from a diety player but I suggest getting a coastal city up soon in case you really get trapped and need to find somewhere else to expand. I only have vanilla so I can't shadow, but good luck!

eta: I also second going for an elephant/cat war. I'm a huge fan of using ivory if you've got it, and sooner than later since elephants have a fairly limited window of usefulness, though the fact that they become available at the same time as catapults is awesome.

 

[Dirk1302]

^ Cows is a great tile, why waste it? You don't need marble before parthenon and GL are available. i agree with settling 2 fishes (and build globe there) but settling on spice seems to be a waste, i'd settle 1W and settle another some tiles to the east or maybe even 3 W of spice and settle 2 cities to the east, 6 cities is possible in this case). Getting 6 cities is harder than i thought, one or 2 may be very marginal so maybe it has to be a phant cat war after all.

 

[ABigCivFan]

From my experience, a phant/cats war is doable on Immortal, on Deity, it is a huge risk since the AIs have many more advanced units.

For starters, we will be facing Mace/LB/xbow/pikes/knights by the time we set up our forces.

This also means we will sacrifice lots of hammers for units, lower slider to pay for the army and if war does not go well, science will be hopelessly behind other AIs.

The most reliable method i know is concentrate on getting 6-8 good cities by REXing and from Barbs; whip infrustructure grow population; nurture good relationships with AIs; Get GL and bulb key techs until liberalism and only consider war after Rifling. Sounds boring but it has been the most proven path to win on Deity.

 

[Dirk1302]

^i agree with the boring path you propose, it's the most reliable way to win on immortal and probably also on deity unless you've got enough land to go peaceful all the way. But if Rusten doesn't get 6 decent cities up (neccesary for globe) he won't have much of a choice. My own experiences with cat wars on immortal are not that great, doable as you say but axe or renaissance wars usually work much better in terms of hammers and time invested.

You just miss a military advantage with cats and also the advantage of proper use of drafting/globe theater. In addition human empires generally are not developed properly for huge production around 1 ad, immortal+ ais are more ahead in comparision by this time with all the bonuses they've got than they are around 1200 AD when humans have specialized their empire with the help of GT, HE etc. I assume this game HE is not unlocked which makes a cat war a bit more attractive than it would be otherwise.

Rusten has good research here so i think he can mobilize quickly enough to avoid knights and probably maces (also phants are good against knights) but he'll have to reckon with lbows at least and they're a pain in their own right.

 

[BCampbell]

^ Cows is a great tile, why waste it? You don't need marble before parthenon and GL are available.

I don't think you're wrong, but I do think it would have been something to at least consider and I didn't even see it thrown out there. Going only by what we saw in the first screen, it would have at least picked up one hill, and moving the scout would have given a better look. Plus it wouldn't have wasted a turn, as it would have only taken one move. I have to admit, I don't know what the settled cow would have produced... just the standard 2f1h1c? In the end I think it probably would have been six of one, half dozen of the other, and either city site would be fine.

i agree with settling 2 fishes (and build globe there) but settling on spice seems to be a waste, i'd settle 1W and settle another some tiles to the east

1W of the spice doesn't get the wheat, and I think only one food resource makes that a very marginal site. We're going to have one or two bad city sites, as you say, but we can possibly make at least one of them decent. With two food resources and a decent amount of grassland, a city on the spice could run a few specialists even though it doesn't have much production.

or maybe even 3 W of spice and settle 2 cities to the east, 6 cities is possible in this case). Getting 6 cities is harder than i thought, one or 2 may be very marginal so maybe it has to be a phant cat war after all.

I like a city 3W of the spice better too. There will be some border issues, but I would guess it wouldn't be that bad. I think there's also a possible site 2S1W of the cow, getting the cow, one wine, the gold, and fighting for that wheat. But again, I don't even play near this level (best I've done so far is 33k points on Noble), so maybe there are other issues to consider. I agree that there will be a couple marginal cities, but they should be built anyway because someone will settle those nooks otherwise.

From my experience, a phant/cats war is doable on Immortal, on Deity, it is a huge risk since the AIs have many more advanced units.

For starters, we will be facing Mace/LB/xbow/pikes/knights by the time we set up our forces.

Longbows and pikemen are probably the biggest threat, and we'd need a lot of catapults to deal with them using elephants. Maces can be pretty rough too but aren't as much of an issue. Knights aren't really a problem, 10 strength vs 12 without promotions. Not sure how tough crossbows would be, but I don't think they'd be that bad. What would really stop the elephant/catapult assault would be a city full of longbows and pikemen. or even with just a few. Axes can deal with pikes, but longbows are another issue altogether.

This also means we will sacrifice lots of hammers for units, lower slider to pay for the army and if war does not go well, science will be hopelessly behind other AIs.

Haven't we seen sisiutil make up for tech deficiencies with good diplomacy and trading? I can't see that as a reason not to go to war, otherwise when would you go to war? Isn't it always going to be at the cost of tech? And wouldn't the bonus of the caputured cities help offset the temporary slowdown?

The most reliable method i know is concentrate on getting 6-8 good cities by REXing and from Barbs; whip infrustructure grow population; nurture good relationships with AIs; Get GL and bulb key techs until liberalism and only consider war after Rifling. Sounds boring but it has been the most proven path to win on Deity.

We're not going to get 6-8 good cities. We'll be lucky to get 3. Are we even going to see any barb cities before we take care of the Mayans and Russians? We're entirely boxed in. It's all well and good to keep them happy, but that comes at the cost of throttling our horizontal growth. I totally trust that the above is a great way to win on Diety, but it doesn't look like we're in a position to do any of it. So what do we do?

Note that I'm not challenging either of you, I'm asking honest questions because I'm learning here.

 

[Dirk1302]

^ I use to play on immortal where i can win most of my games, have won deity twice too but on starts that were way easier than this one. I'll try to go into some detail from my experience:

- This start is tough, wouldn't be that easy even on immortal i think where i'd have tried an axe rush or maybe a cat rush because as Rusten mentioned the circumstances are especially favorable for this (phants, sacrificial altars and good research so we don't fall behind too much). Also there would have been more room to expand on immortal so 8 cities and later cannons would have been possible. On immortal there are still good chances to catch up from being behind some 15 techs if you've got enough land (did in the last immortal student game actually).

Now on deity lib'll go around 500 -700 AD and we're talking techs like rifling and steel around 1200 AD if i remember correctly from my own games and these games didn't have financial leaders in it. Playing deity feels like riding a rollercoaster even compared with immortal. Don't trade a tech one turn, opportunity'll be gone next turn. So a cat war that lasts from 0 AD to say 1000 AD is way too long. It can't last longer than 500 years maximum and it has to produce significant gains, otherwise you'll fall too far behind. And that's the problem here, a cat war while winnable will just take too long i fear. A renaissance war on the other hand can be over very quickly because if you get to cannons (or rifles) before the ai and have prepared properly with drafting you can build a huge army ,that is significantly stronger than the ai army, in a short time. With this army you can subsequently fight a war that'll cost only 20 turns instead of most of the time between 0 and 1000 AD. Since due to heavy bulbing you were somewhat ahead at this time in tech you can keep up during the war by trading these techs.

8 cities is indeed not possible from the current situation and was always hard from this start i think.Problem with settling on the spice apart from losing the tile is that 6 cities probably isn't possible either. And less than 6 cities makes a renaissance war more or less impossible as the Globe theater'll produce half of your army generally. Maybe a blitz war with cuirassiers (a favorite of Rusten) is an option in this case but not having the HE and only 5 cities make it very hard to produce enough of them, i wouldn't have much faith in that. Now cities with one food resource and good production are ok, you can't whip them senseless (which i admit is a bit of a shame here because we have sacrificial altars) but they grow to 10+ in a reasonable time, cities without any food resource that grow on water tiles for instance are far worse.

So what do we do?

Well i'm not sure, i'd still lean slightly to settling 3w of the spices and trying to get up 6 cities because i'm used to doing that. On the other hand with the phants and sacrificial altars it might just be possible to whip up a serious army and conquer a significant portion of land in a time frame of 500 years, i don't have as much experience with this as with cannon wars so i just don't know if this is possible on deity. In this case (of cats) don't settle 6 cities but pick 4 prime food/production sites and take it from there with massive whipping.

Indeed it's possible as you say to come back from some 10-15 techs behind on emperor/immortal but hard on deity. If the cat rush failes and for instance you're finally winning the war around 1000 AD having been crippled by WW for 1000 years you'll not recover techwise before say 1250 AD. And by then you're not 15 techs but 1.5 era behind probably with no way to trade yourself back into the game.

There is one other risk attached to a cat war that i didn't mention yet, around 1 ad the political situation usually hasn't stabilized yet so there is a bigger risk you're getting dogpiled as opposed to say 1200 AD. As Rusten already mentioned this risk is not that big here because there's already religious hatred going on.

It'll be interesting to see what Rusten'll do in the end, i agree with him that the situation merits a lot of thought.

 

[BCampbell]

Great info Dirk, thanks for taking the time to go into that. I totally forgot about war weariness too and I see the point about getting so far behind from being entrenched in war. With your explanation I think you have a great point about settling a city closer to the Mayan border in the north, then maybe one can be squeezed in in the NE for the wheat. Then perhaps another city in the latitude of the gold north of the capitol, just to fill in the gaps... maybe 2W of the gold to get the space as well, and there are some grassland and hill tiles there so it wouldn't be terrible. That would get six cities so the Globe could be built, and even if some of them have limited growth potential they can be useful for drafting. Does that sound right?

 

[Dirk1302]

Yes, you don't need very big cities for drafting, since apart from the globe you'll draft 2 maybe 3 units max from the other cities they're big enough at size 8 and they are happier than at size 15. What worries me a bit about the cannon plan is that not all cities are that great and while initial research will be good due to the small sized empire it can be difficult to get the more serious techs in time, around 500-1000ad more cities become an asset rather than a liability for research.

A typical plan on immortal regarding great scientists would be make academy, tech to CS, bulb philo, research paper, bulb half of education, bulb most of lib researching it to one turn left, then bulb most of PP, bulb half of chemistry self researching the rest, take steel with lib. This is 6 GSS and especially with a good food city (the fishes come to mind but GL will probably be chopped in capital) , GL, NE and pacificm this can be done really quickly.Prerequisites for this plan like machinery, engineering, gunpowder can often be obtained in trade, on deity even easier than on immortal.

Now on deity you can win the lib race this way but you can forget about getting steel and with a 6 city empire it might be hard to self research it in time. Same (potential) problems with rifles but very early cuirassiers should certainly be possible, in this case the challenge is to keep up in production so you can really build them but the altars and the globe (for backup muskets) can help here. Earlier i said that i didn't have too much faith in this plan, i think you still need the globe but i had forgotten about the altars. There's possibly an additional advantage here,nationalism'll be taken from lib in this case, with marble it might be possible to build the Taj and this'll help no end with building the army. Fair chance that some ai'll run to nationalism before you get lib though,stealing the Taj.

Well, just some thoughts. In the end my experience on deity is too limited to really foresee what'll happen in each case. One thing is sure imo, war'll be neccessary and whichever route is taken a serious army'll have to be build. Maybe the diplo situation gives some opportunities for a bribe and subsequent backstab against Peter or Pacal in which case maybe a somewhat smaller army will suffice.