Trying to get better at deity, a bunch of questions for people who know more...

As always your advice is awesome @Victoria, thank you for taking the time to write it :) I hope other people are finding it as useful as I am!

A builder gives up to +3 production early in your capital. A great city starts with 8 prod and a poor city starts with 5 prod so the difference of 3 here at the early stage is big but not double. A builder gives eurekas, make you extra money (very important early) and most importantly gives you craftsmanship if you take that route. So builder is vital early. However when you make a builder first you will often have it wait a few turns before you can get animal husbandry or mining. So if you have low production (4-5) then getting that builder going is important to help speed up your poor production. If you have higher production (and often this is the case) then there is room in there for a scout before your builder. Yes you loose 4-5 turns of builder prod but you can often wait around for both mining and AH.

I guess a scout as your very first build can be thought of as a bit of a luxury if you have the kind of start conducive to it whereas getting that builder up and running is much more important if you need to counteract a less optimal start.

Naturally starting on Jungle makes an early builder a problem. So what approach to take then? . Culture is important early and all of the early civics have their uses but craftsmanship is a popular choice unless pushing fast peaceful culture. You are also in jungle with bad visibility and vulnerable to attacks a bit. Getting a warrior out may seem like a good idea but the advantage of jungle is attack’s are slower. As long as you have a few jungle hills you you are 2/2 I would push a monument first. As early culture and inspirations become harder to get, monuments become more important early. Try a jungle start with and without a monument and you really notice the difference in getting to craftsmanship and the Agoge card.

So, if you're (relatively) safe, with high production tiles that you can't really improve for a while, pushing early culture will help shave off extra time. Jungle certainly seems like the main situation in which that comes up. I guess this has a lot of implications for Mvemba and Pedro in particular. Previously in this sort of situation I'd gone for an early slinger to try and push the archery eureka a monument would definitely have been more efficient.

A 3 hill mine / lux start is great, just mining needed and so getting a builder first is more efficient than other builder openings. Naturally many do not use a builder or scout opening but a warrior or sling opening. The slinger is weak early but has 2 advantages. You can get any barb spearman to leave camp to attack a slinger every time. This removes the speamans double entrenchment making him easy meat for your warrior and your warrior or scout can take an empty camp. The slinger also can get an early archery eureka which is great for the early archer rush. The slinger is inherently weak though so unless you have a lot of open ground for a good fast shoot manoeuvre game you archer rush may have issues. A warrior is therefore agreed as the safest start, barbs will attack it to death even entrenched over a river and often when defending you are much better off healing entrenched than attacking.

I'd always tend to go for a slinger before a warrior just for the archery eureka, but when an early slinger dies (usually due to stupidity on my part) it does slow you down so I can see how a warrior is safer.

A scout opening has some different advantages, it is faster to build than a slinger so has a better chance at catching a barb scout before it sees your city but you must send it in the opposite direction to your warrior for best effect. A scout moves 3 so warrior should move over hilly ground and scout over clear or half hilly ground to take advantage of its speed. A scouts first job should be to stop enemy scouts, and also help defending if attacked early, it can lead enemy away and can even defend well entrenched. The scout is also important for the foreign trade inspiration, this alone can make it worth the investment so find some snow and go the opposite way once initial barb risk is mostly nullified. Finding CS early is a huge advantage of scouts, if you can get that first free envoy it is a massive difference for any CS you find. Find a brown one and your monument, granary water mill will be faster in your capital, a red one for faster builders, settlers and units, find 2 red ones and you may be better off pumping out early settlers as you are at +4 which will be nearly as good as the 50% card. Early faith = harvest goddess, one of the most OP features of the game, even in vanilla before golden ages it was. Gold CS +4 gold is a lot early. Science... hmm can I rush knights.... and culture is just great for getting that culture. As important is when you get your first governor, choosing Amani could give you early suze of a CS that can help a lot. Goody huts are great but lucky, you should get a few but less on deity so the scout on deity has less value. The scout will hopefully find a natural wonder and this is great for the age points, you can then also settle the wonder for more age points as well as the bonus. Meeting each civ also gives an age point so if pushing for a golden, using a scout is a huge benefit. Scouting helps so much in being able to plan the rest of your game, it gives you that intelligence and also meeting other civs early helps with CV and DipV as well as increasing your trading. The down side is each civ that knows you or your enemy will know the evil deeds you have done and this alone stops the use of them in many situations. Era points are key though and a scout is great. If you have a civ like Gilga that has 2 ancient uniques so gets +8 era points maybe you do not need the scout. Knowing your era points helps a lot, iron working, building your first sword, first horse.... first ship. Getting the earliest ship is +3 era, the same as a close camp. Killing camps alone can be enough if you are overrun but this is rare...regardless you do not know how many will spawn but do not fog bust to stop them spawning unless you do not want a classic golden.

Since you never know exactly what you're going to get from a scout I find that an early scout plays a big part in shaping how I'm going to play. It can add a lot of variance to a game though. Getting the era score and foreign trade eureka feel like almost guaranteed bonuses, getting lucky with your goodie huts and CS meets though can dramatically change how good a start you have. While it says nothing about efficiency of play, I like that random element from building a scout.

I take your point about knowing your civ... The era score was a huge deal when playing as Canada, but in my last game as Cree it was total overkill.

I thought I would do this post to show that the choice of opening is not simple and depends on what civ you okay, where you are located, what your cities terrain is, what you want to do with the game and how safe you want to play it. I will have missed stuff, people may disagree... it is just my view but welcome all comments and questions.

This is extremely helpful, and also well timed. I've set myself a (long) challenge to win with each leader on GS deity (Wilfrid, Poundmaker and Curtin down, Engleanor next), and it was becoming apparent that I'm gonna need to mix up my openings a lot more. I really do love me some early scouting but that's probably a legacy of playing too much starcraft back in the day and I need to shake things up.

So @Leucarum .. when your scout dropped off that hill at T50 the right thing to think is thank you, you have been a great help... and most of my scouts die around then, if they are still alive I use them in my army for a large variety of useful jobs. Especially sacrificial.

You can always name a city after them as a memorial. Preferably one you captured thanks to their help.
 
I guess a scout as your very first build can be thought of as a bit of a luxury if you have the kind of start conducive to it whereas getting that builder up and running is much more important if you need to counteract a less optimal start.
Perfect.. although see 4th reply
pushing early culture will help shave off extra time.
I think you missed the point. The jungle start often stops you getting the craftsmanship eureka so the monument is catch up not speed ahead.
I'd always tend to go for a slinger before a warrior just for the archery eureka, but when an early slinger dies (usually due to stupidity on my part) it does slow you down so I can see how a warrior is safer.
Safer for not losing the game early on deity, it can happen as I am sure you know.
Since you never know exactly what you're going to get from a scout
But the key is if you do not want a classic golden do not take one. It is not like you can walk past a goody hut. If on T3 you get a relic, that is a huge game changer.

One area I always struggle with is settler then monument or monument then settler.
I guess also, buy a monument or save more and buy a settler, similar thing.
 
I think you missed the point. The jungle start often stops you getting the craftsmanship eureka so the monument is catch up not speed ahead.

Aha, yeah, I see what you're saying. I completely misunderstood that point.

Safer for not losing the game early on deity, it can happen as I am sure you know.

Yup, I had one of those this morning. :/
 
I'm a pretty amateur player but playing on deity does expose you to more mechanics to manage. Since you're playing Canada, I'm going to assume the victory condition you're likely going for is culture.

1) City planning is extremely important, not just the placement of districts, but timing them to finish at the right times to catch early discounts. There are other threads that talk about the district discount mechanism and how to use it.

Example: I want to win a quick hybrid relic/book CV. A possible order of district planning can go as follows...
Start the game off with a 3 city opener - unlock and hard produce 2 holy sites (capital and first expo) + government district (capital), unlock theatre square (second expo) and catch a discount, unlock writing and catch another discount (first expo). Start chopping to finish the districts and the key wonders like Pyramid, Apadana and Great Library.

2) Notice specific great people you want to catch to prevent AI from obtaining eurekas. This can often spike their domestic tourism and prolong your victory at crucial times.

3) Relating to the 2nd point, you want to time your power-spikes for tourism generation to match multiples of the number of civs there are in the game. If there are 7 AI civs, try to cap your foreign tourism cap to multiples of 7.

4) Similarly, ensuring that your early scouts meet all the civs in the game as early as possible to begin attracting tourists is very important. Opening borders and planning for trade-routes can also shave a few turns off your victory.
 
Another specific things to keep in mind are chop values and district/wonder costs. Chop values increase the more science/civics you unlock, and ensuring that your city can realistically chop out the population required for districts as well as the districts and wonders themselves is crucial. Evaluating potential city coverage by resource also forces to ignore irrelevant attributes such as housing or food/starvation. You will often see good civ players harvest an entire city's resources in a turn or two leaving it extremely overpopulated and starved but with key districts/wonders finished.
 
City planning is extremely important, not just the placement of districts, but timing them to finish at the right times to catch early discounts.

I've learned a lot from this thread. Some of the things were easier changes to make while others I'm still working on. Placing districts to lock in costs was one of the things I was semi-aware of but thought was an exploit. Between that knowledge and judicious use of map pins I feel like this had been one of the easiest areas to improve.

Relating to the 2nd point, you want to time your power-spikes for tourism generation to match multiples of the number of civs there are in the game. If there are 7 AI civs, try to cap your foreign tourism cap to multiples of 7.

Presumably becsusr yout tourism gets split between the civs you have met?

Another specific things to keep in mind are chop values and district/wonder costs. Chop values increase the more science/civics you unlock, and ensuring that your city can realistically chop out the population required for districts as well as the districts and wonders themselves is crucial. Evaluating potential city coverage by resource also forces to ignore irrelevant attributes such as housing or food/starvation. You will often see good civ players harvest an entire city's resources in a turn or two leaving it extremely overpopulated and starved but with key districts/wonders finished.

5 year plan eat your heart out... How to best harvest was another thing I didn't know. But I still am working a lot on my chopping game. While chopping sounds like it is something that should be straightforward, making sure you time your workers (in the right place) and the things you want to build to the point you develop requisite civics is something that I suspect will only come with a lot of practice. And that's to say nothing of keeping your eureka game on point and making sure you prioritize correctly for your chosen strategy...

I am moving away from Canada and trying to work my way through the roster of civs. I feel most comfortable with culture victories for sure but I want to make sure I have a good handle on science too. I'm probably not much of a religion or domination victory player. I'd love it if firaxis made diplomacy victory not feel like a trip to the dentist...
 
Presumably becsusr yout tourism gets split between the civs you have met?

Assuming no religion penalty and equal modifiers across the board, the rate at which you attract foreign tourists from every encountered civ is (I BELIEVE, people who know better correct me if i'm wrong lol) the same. The perfect scenario is if you can manage your foreign tourism bursts to match an exact multiplier of the number of civs you have. If you're against 7 AI civs, and you're at 28+ foreign tourists out of 35, you can pretty much guarantee yourself to win within the next 8 turns given open borders and/or trade route access. Another reason why it's sometimes prudent to spend large amounts of gold/faith to buy certain great scientists to prevent foreign tourism requirements from changing before you win.

Granted this is super esoteric stuff that you can exploit to shave off your victory turn count. i only know about it but almost never practice it myself :lol:
 
but timing them to finish at the right times to catch early discounts.
Yeah, I have never liked district discounts, the problem is there is too many other desires and needs in play to stop yourself getting techs and civics that include districts... to get discounts early you need to stop discovering new types of districts until you have built x number of the ones you have. For a start just finishing these districts early is often not a great value thing to do when you could be building a settler or a monument. It is quite gamey and way too much thinking for me and it ruins my natural rythm of what I want, often causing failure.... thats my take anyway.
try to cap your foreign tourism cap to multiples of 7.
Hmmm, unconvinced you can manage this well and the difference is 1/1600 value, seems a bit too micro for me.
the rate at which you attract foreign tourists from every encountered civ is (I BELIEVE, people who know better correct me if i'm wrong lol) the same.
You have on your main screen 750 tourism per turn from cities. This is modified by religion, government, trade route and open borders for each individual civ. Then throw rock bands in now for good measure, they are civ specific.
 
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Hmmm, unconvinced you can manage this well and the difference is 1/1600 value, seems a bit too micro for me.

It's definitely doable but it does take some effort. For example:



Here i made sure to increase lump gold/faith trade frequency (to buy out great people) near 45+ foreign tourist requirement and finished right on 49.

Here's the seed if you want to give it a try. It's a really good map with early Uluru top left from starting location.

Map/Game seeds: 1654791395/1654791394.

Sweden, standard speed/size, Pangea, deity difficulty
 
Maybe i didn't explain properly.

Basically in non relic CV you gather tourism at the same rate (roughly). If you discover all AI before you begin generating any tourism.

If there are 7 AI, your foreign tourists will go up 7 at a time. Therefore it is most efficient to aim for timings where you complete tourist attractions in anticipation of it reaching a multiple of 7.

For example if my tourism is at 42/49, it's fair of me to trade away all my per turn gold or any resources I have for great works because I know there is no longer any need for infrastructure or purchasing units before the game is finished. Hopefully that's a bit more clear.
 
Another question i ask myself often is, if not conquering them, do you build six farms for the feudalism boost?
 
Another question i ask myself often is, if not conquering them, do you build six farms for the feudalism boost?

And also when to build them... Most maps will have something farmable near good city sites. Since growth is best very early on when you have a couple of cities is it best to build farms early? Or since you don't want to stretch amenities do you want to hold on till you're a but more secure before building up pop too high? And there's usually higher priorities for my builders. I have hard bought feudalism sometimes and it feels like a missed opportunity when I do.
 
Great thread! And thanks for the map/game settings, hsj. I prefer SV and DomV and haven't tried a CV in a long time and it showed. I was 60 turns slower than you lol. I built Pyramids and Oracle just fine but did miss out on the Great Library and Colosseum. Once the game dragged on and more civs reached enlightenment I beelined for Cristo but wasn't built till around T180. Shaka surprised war me 3 different times but each time just one crossbow was enough to deal with the AI that got smashed while crossing the water tiles. Got nice gpt each time he called for peace.

EDIT: Got it down to T153 on 2nd try(see post below)

I will try this one again sometime. Really love Sweden now. The automatic theming of museums and wonders that hold art is awesome as well as the Queen's Bibliotheque. Open-air museums come a little late but easily built by a worker. I had tons of diplomatic favor from great people but the proposals were mostly garbage.

The map is really fun and perfectly designed to build 8-9 cities without being forward settled as usual in deity games.
 

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Pretty impressive! It's definitely a cool map to play around with, offers a lot of flexibility and makes up for lack of early city states.

From talking to other players it seems that colosseum was a mistake. 400 hammers for some amenities and 1 tourist is definitely not a worthwhile investment. Some suggestions i've received were to chop out district buildings and then projects near the end of the game, which made more sense to me in hindsight.

As far as diplomatic favor is concerned, my strategy is to just sell them for lump gold. Sweden's diplo generation with oracle+theatre square+pingala is absolutely insane, and you can buy out entire treasuries simply by selling diplo favor and eat up whatever greatworks/relics your opponents might have. This is something else that i didn't manage to do diligently in that game but i'd imagine would speed up the timing considerably.
 
OK much better 2nd time around, CV 153.

This time I used that diplo favor for gold to patronize great artists. I also focused on building the GL asap. GL and Apadana are huge for early CV victory. After that I didn't build any wonders but I was working on Bolshoi Theatre just in case.. Also built CH earlier to get trade routes out earlier than last game. Was amazed how many city states survived this time around.

Lol just noticed Vicky lost a city to rebels...
 

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From talking to other players it seems that colosseum was a mistake. 400 hammers for some amenities and 1 tourist is definitely not a worthwhile investment. Some suggestions i've received were to chop out district buildings and then projects near the end of the game, which made more sense to me in hindsight.

Totally agree and 2nd play I ignored it after I read your reply.

As far as diplomatic favor is concerned, my strategy is to just sell them for lump gold. Sweden's diplo generation with oracle+theatre square+pingala is absolutely insane, and you can buy out entire treasuries simply by selling diplo favor and eat up whatever greatworks/relics your opponents might have. This is something else that i didn't manage to do diligently in that game but i'd imagine would speed up the timing considerably.

Yea especially on deity where civs have a lot of gold. I was able to buy two GAs with diplo for gold trade which was a huge difference maker in 2nd game. And I realized in my 1st game that I built the bibliotheque in my capitol city but had Pingala in my second expo so his Curator promo was not optimized. Second time around I made sure to fix that and built bibliotheque in 2nd city with Pingala.

Two questions for you.

  1. After necessary techs I beelined for printing. It was painful but still seemed shorter than going to education, building two unis just for the printing eureka and then going printing. I still went for engineering and machinery eurekas but that 17 turn wait for printing seemed to take forever.
  2. I went feudalism before monarchy but wondering if getting monarchy first is better so that you can build the bibliotheque earlier?

Also seemed like going Amani then Magnus was the best way. Needed Amani for golden era points and Brussels suzerain for bonus to wonder production. Magnus was needed to chop Oracle, GL and Apadana. Hate to chop too early but getting those wonders is important and gives you the faith you need to buy settlers with goth. Once that was out of the way then Pingala was needed but an early Pingala before Amani and Magnus I don't think would have helped.

Thanks again for all your help in this thread. Been great insight and made the 2nd replay a lot of fun :)
 
Early amani is definitely a legit strat if you have a crappy opening and can't realistically get suzerain with CS missions. It does mean you should try to boost recorded history to ensure you get pingala's 2nd promotion asap after magnus though. It's a worthwhile consideration to make.

My strat is basically the same as yours: beeline for printing press after all key wonders are unlocked. I almost never get the education/printing press eureka. It's way too difficult to get both a great scientist and 2 universities in the cities where you have viable campuses in. Most of my games i end up with only 2 campuses, and both in my early cities. Both cities need enough to chop out wonders (one great library for sure, ideally the capital) and other district so there's no way there's enough leftover for 2 universities.

Feudalism vs monarchy is more interesting. I try to time my bibliotheque with great people. Realistically you can fill it in 2 turns: first turn fill with 2 books from an amphi and 2 arts from apadana and 1 music (either move from capital or make on the biblioteque tile), 2nd turn your last music. But that predicates on you having earned or bought both a great artist well before and also a great musician ready to go. If you think you can get both conditions filled at the same time or befeore you finish the bibliotheque, definitely get it first. However, any other situation i would go for feudalism first and get a worker wave out to finish chopping my cities.

if you find more optimal strategies i'd love to hear them!
 
You should try domination on that map, it's a total riot. :) I wanted to do something different besides the typical knight rush so I started with some swordsman and xbows at first until Carolean were available. Since Shaka and Vicky are so close by you don't need much speed at that point in time. You need swordsman anyway to take out Shaka's impis and Vicki had several pikemen so they are the ideal unit to start your warmongering. Then I headed straight to muskets and then Carolean. Created a lot more later to take on Genghis as he had swarms of calvary.

The downside to Carolean is you have to either buy them for 1k gold or produce them. Through trading luxes and favor for gold I bought two for each army then chopped the rest. Those units absolutely destroyed the calvary of Alex and Genghis. It was very satisfying :)

I still built the GL and QB to get good culture going so I could make corps out of the Carolean, excess works were sold so I was swimming in gold. And of course getting to Nationalism with that culture leads to open-air museums all over the map with those conquered cities which gets you to mobilization really fast leading to armies. The synergy is amazing.

Unfortunately I wasn't aiming for a DomV from the start so I didn't start out with oligarchy so no +4 bonus for my troops but I did build two encampments and finally armory which you really need for the gunpowder eureka since my science was fairly low. So I had a steady stream of GGs.
This civ can do it all except maybe RV which doesn't matter to me since I hate RV. :vomit:
 

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