Virusmonster's optimal strategy at Deity difficulty for a huge map

[Huggy Bear]

Great thread, VirusMonster.

Have looked at your Quechua Rush saves, and would like to follow your strategy through from the beginning of the game so could you please post your saved game at the start 4000BC so I can follow it through from the very beginning

Thanks

Huggy Bear

 

[VirusMonster]

Great thread, VirusMonster.

Have looked at your Quechua Rush saves, and would like to follow your strategy through from the beginning of the game so could you please post your saved game at the start 4000BC so I can follow it through from the very beginning

Thanks

Huggy Bear

Here you go: View attachment 127732

And this one is extra. I could not put it into my first post, because there is a 5-file per post upload limit. View attachment 127733

As you should remember from my article, I settle on a plains/hill for quechua factory.

I am a frequent saver; I have most of my other saves up, but don't want to spam the forums with each turn of my quechua rush

 

[godotnut]

Is culture victory easier or harder with the new patch?

Harder, because chopping is nerfed.

And harder with the new HOF rules too, because there is now a higher number of minimum opponents required for the HOF, and because the easiest map--balanced--is no longer allowed. This isn't relevant to non-HOF games of course.

 

[Jaelstruth]

This strategy is so dependant on the luck of the map. I have spent hours regenerating maps to get the right start conditions. EVERY time I have started with a hills/plains founding with a hill/plains/forest next to it, ALL the closest civs also start on hills. 3 or 4 Quechua is a pointless argument if you have to fight up hills. Also, the AI seems to know I'm powerful early so the civs placed next to me are also. Mansa Mansii with their skirmishers before 3600BC, Romans which don't spread out in the early game and keep 4 units in their capital until sometime after 3300BC are just two examples. So even if I do get 5 Quechuas out before 3500BC, there's never been a single city I could capture in any of the maps I've generated. How many days am I supposed to sit regenerating the perfect map to play at Diety?

 

[DaviddesJ]

How many days am I supposed to sit regenerating the perfect map to play at Diety?

Zero. What's the point of cranking up the AI handicap and then looking for a perfect map so you can beat it? Just play on a worse map at a lower handicap.

 

[Kalleyao]

Zero. What's the point of cranking up the AI handicap and then looking for a perfect map so you can beat it? Just play on a worse map at a lower handicap.

Or try Deity guide.

 

[Drakan]

Great strategy Virusmonster.

 

[VirusMonster]

This strategy is so dependant on the luck of the map. I have spent hours regenerating maps to get the right start conditions. EVERY time I have started with a hills/plains founding with a hill/plains/forest next to it, ALL the closest civs also start on hills. 3 or 4 Quechua is a pointless argument if you have to fight up hills. Also, the AI seems to know I'm powerful early so the civs placed next to me are also. Mansa Mansii with their skirmishers before 3600BC, Romans which don't spread out in the early game and keep 4 units in their capital until sometime after 3300BC are just two examples. So even if I do get 5 Quechuas out before 3500BC, there's never been a single city I could capture in any of the maps I've generated. How many days am I supposed to sit regenerating the perfect map to play at Diety?

Jaelstruth, Thank you for your feedback. I will update the article based on your experience. But keep in mind I am trying to make a strategy for a huge deity map where no one else has a good strategy yet, at least as far as I know from Civ4 forums. It is not my fault that some settings (i.e. plains/hill start) work out much better than others for a quechua rush strategy. Perhaps, Firaxis can fine tune this feature for us.

Until then, I will tell which settings work best, IMHO, to beat deity. Keep in mind , I still haven't beaten deity Even with this strat, after I capture 6-8cities and even after discovering alphabet, I am still having trouble to continue my warmongering expansion against the AI bonuses. So maybe, yea, beating deity requires too much luck atm. But don't blame it on my article plz, if we have any better strategy, I would gladly follow it. I am recently testing out persians with Immortals. They work great too, but you need to capture a worker and have a horse resource around your capital.

Here is what I think should be done to reduce the luck component of the strategy:

1) Settling on hills/plain is a huge bonus early on for the extra 1 hammer you get, but you don't necessarily need the hills/forest/plains, because once you grow size 2, you can pump out quechuas in 6 turns easily. Thus, I would say move your settler ontop of a plains/hill even if you lose 1-2 turns, you don't need the 3 hammer tile anymore. Produce quechuas at 4 hammers per turn or even 3, but once you grow size 2, you can switch to a 5-6 hammer per turn quechua build. If you read my article carefully again, you will see I updated the first capital capture date to 3310BC. I don't think the 3500BC capture works just as good.

2) To capture cities on hills, use the worker lure out trick. Declare war by capturing enemy worker working around target city, preferably capital. Next, wait sufficiently until enemy archer sacrificies himself to your quechua hiding in the forest outside enemy city. At this stage, there should be only 2 archers left inside the target city. Let your damaged quechua heal. Now, place the captured worker right next to the target city, but undefended. 1 archer will come out to capture the worker, but make sure this square has no roads or the archer will go back to city defense same turn.

Now, only 1 archer is defending the city at +%20 cultural defense and +25 hills terrain defense bonus. Hopefully, you can capture it with 4-5 quechuas. I don't think 1archer vs 4quechuas is luck.

In my test game saves I uploaded, I mean the ones you can download from the first post, the first 3 cities I captured were not placed on hills. The 4th city I capture is places on hills, but at that time, I had 7-8 quechuas some of them already highly promoted.

I would say to capture a city places on hills, you need to have 3 unpromoted quechua per archer + 1 archer extra. Using the worker lure out trick, you would need 4 quechuas+1queucha to capture the city.

 

[VirusMonster]

Mansa Mansii with their skirmishers before 3600BC, Romans which don't spread out in the early game and keep 4 units in their capital until sometime after 3300BC are just two examples.

Skirmisher are the only archery unit quechua can't beat. You can wipe out Romans or any other civilization assuming they are nearby.

R u sure romans keep 4 units in their capital? In my experience, if you wait long enough outside target city, they will sacrifice until only 2 archers are left defending. R u sure all 4 wait defending?

 

[VirusMonster]

2) To capture cities on hills, use the worker lure out trick. Declare war by capturing enemy worker working around target city, preferably capital. Next, wait sufficiently until enemy archer sacrificies himself to your quechua hiding in the forest outside enemy city. At this stage, there should be only 2 archers left inside the target city. Let your damaged quechua heal. Now, place the captured worker right next to the target city, but undefended. 1 archer will come out to capture the worker, but make sure this square has no roads or the archer will go back to city defense same turn.

Now, only 1 archer is defending the city at +%20 cultural defense and +25 hills terrain defense bonus. Hopefully, you can capture it with 4-5 quechuas. I don't think 1archer vs 4quechuas is luck.

I am sorry, but I just tested worker lure out trick, but it did not work with Romans I am not even sure whether it works with other races either. They do let the 3rd archer attack against my quechua tough, so only 2 remain, but none of the remaining 2 archers attacks the worker, so your best bet again is to bring more quechuas to capture cities on hills.

Hmm, so I think 8-9 archers should kill 2 archers on hills pretty securely. Try to capture non-hill cities first so you can promote your quechua, then you can do more damage to archers on hills. Having all enemy cities on hills is just huge bad luck, I rarely have all enemy cities on hills.

If you don't like the quechua rush, try rushing with Immortals. They are much better vs archers on hills, but they cost more and require horse. Thus, you would have to make a settler first on the worst case and road connect the resource. Cyrus can even chop down some early wonders if you have stone nearby.

 

[Masterul]

Nice post VirusMonster, and very good discussion thread. I finnaly got my first deity victory! I have to admit your guide was very usefull (as were many other guides on this site), especially in the first part of the game.

The settings were as follows: HUGE Balanced Map, 18 civs, Marathon speed, No Barbarians and Permanent Alliances checked.

I played with Inca for the initial rush and it turned out to be a very good choice.
In short, I used a LOT of diplomacy and trade, and pretty much everything I learned until now. Ofcourse, the only time I was at peace, was after a war, or when getting ready for one. I took out 4 civs with the initial quechuas, which provided me with 5 "capitals" from start. I eventually allied with Saladin near the end, just to speed things up. But he was much weaker than me. I won a domination victory in the end (but could've been conquest too).
I do save a lot and load sometimes. I guess the better you are, the less times you need to load. But if the alternatives are load or restart, then I think the choice is obvious. For example, I once had to load 20 turns earlier, stop researching, and simply build+buy units in all cities in order to avoid being defeated. But it worked.

If anyone is interested, I could describe more about this game or about the strategies I used. I could also attach saved games.

Again, nice post VirusMonster.

 

[DaviddesJ]

But if the alternatives are load or restart, then I think the choice is obvious.

If the alternatives are edit the map with world builder or lose, then I think the choice is obvious.

If the alternatives are give yourself some extra units or lose, then I think the choice is obvious.

If the alternatives are give yourself some extra techs or lose, then I think the choice is obvious.

If the alternatives are give yourself some extra gold or lose, then I think the choice is obvious.

 

[Kalleyao]

Nice post VirusMonster, and very good discussion thread. I finnaly got my first deity victory! I have to admit your guide was very usefull (as were many other guides on this site), especially in the first part of the game.

The settings were as follows: HUGE Balanced Map, 18 civs, Marathon speed, No Barbarians and Permanent Alliances checked.

I played with Inca for the initial rush and it turned out to be a very good choice.
In short, I used a LOT of diplomacy and trade, and pretty much everything I learned until now. Ofcourse, the only time I was at peace, was after a war, or when getting ready for one. I took out 4 civs with the initial quechuas, which provided me with 5 "capitals" from start. I eventually allied with Saladin near the end, just to speed things up. But he was much weaker than me. I won a domination victory in the end (but could've been conquest too).
I do save a lot and load sometimes. I guess the better you are, the less times you need to load. But if the alternatives are load or restart, then I think the choice is obvious. For example, I once had to load 20 turns earlier, stop researching, and simply build+buy units in all cities in order to avoid being defeated. But it worked.

If anyone is interested, I could describe more about this game or about the strategies I used. I could also attach saved games.

Again, nice post VirusMonster.

IMO you don't win if you reload. Why not give you some extra units with worldbuilder to save your time?

 

[VirusMonster]

Nice post VirusMonster, and very good discussion thread. I finnaly got my first deity victory! I have to admit your guide was very usefull (as were many other guides on this site), especially in the first part of the game.

The settings were as follows: HUGE Balanced Map, 18 civs, Marathon speed, No Barbarians and Permanent Alliances checked.

I played with Inca for the initial rush and it turned out to be a very good choice.
In short, I used a LOT of diplomacy and trade, and pretty much everything I learned until now. Ofcourse, the only time I was at peace, was after a war, or when getting ready for one. I took out 4 civs with the initial quechuas, which provided me with 5 "capitals" from start. I eventually allied with Saladin near the end, just to speed things up. But he was much weaker than me. I won a domination victory in the end (but could've been conquest too).
I do save a lot and load sometimes. I guess the better you are, the less times you need to load. But if the alternatives are load or restart, then I think the choice is obvious. For example, I once had to load 20 turns earlier, stop researching, and simply build+buy units in all cities in order to avoid being defeated. But it worked.

If anyone is interested, I could describe more about this game or about the strategies I used. I could also attach saved games.

Again, nice post VirusMonster.

Great job man, you make my day. Don't listen to those who practically "hate" save&reloaders. I used to save&reload too 20-30 turns earlier, just to defend againt a huge upcoming AI stack attack, but eventually you learn that you need a massive army to defend in almost all situations. Skip the tech and infrastructure buildings and just try to build the strong army first that will defeat the stack with minimal casualities. I always wait inside my walled base with my axemen and when enemy arrives, they just suicide on your city if you have sufficient troops to defend. After I defeat the stack, I go on offense and capture some of their cities. Yea, get more troops on your next game

Yes, I would love to see your saves up. If you can post the beginning saves (ie 4000-3500-3100-2900-2700-2500-2300-2000BC), I think it would be helpful for others as well.

If you have any specific strategy tips that are not in my guide or you think deserve better attention, let me know and I could update the guide based on your experience as well.

 

[Masterul]

Like I said, the better you are, the less the need for save&reload. I am a casual player, I don't play civ all day every day. I don't care if you don't like save&reload. If you preffer to play on a tiny map with all options tweaked only to get a win on deity, good for you. I don't. I only play on HUGE maps and considering the kind of advantages the AI has on deity, a few reloads here and there will go unnoticed. The thing is that you will never learn if you restart 100 times.
Save and load, and in time you will get better at anticipating enemy's moves. Eventually, you won't need to save anymore. This is a thread for strategy and tips for deity. Let's keep it like that.

I attached some saves. Unfortunatelly, my later saves are too big to attach so I cannot give you a sample of my tech race. If anyone knows how to upload 1MB files, please let me know.

VirusMonster, here are some of my thoughts on the strategy for deity. Feel free to comment on them

Most of them have been pointed out already, but I think they deserve more attention in a deity game.

I think researching Alphabet should be one of the initial priorities. Most of the time you will be the first one to get it. Even if you ignore many of the other cheaper techs, once you get Alphabet you can trade it for every tech out there and much more.

In a deity game the AI has HUGE amounts of gold. You can use that on your advantage. Trade resources for gold and also check regulary if the AI has more gold available for trade. If so, cancel your previous trade agreement and make a new one for more $. Exchange good techs for lesser techs+gold, and so on. In a 18 civs game, the AI will be your cash cow. In this game, I managed to stay at 100% research most of the time after getting Code of laws and Curency. I was loosing 100 gold per turn, but the AI is rich and it doesn't care about money
I even managed to lead in research, I got Music, Liberalism, Economics and Physics first. I also managed to build The Taj Mahal and Great Library thanks to my 5 capitals
Since I had 100% research, I didn't build any banks or markets until late in the game. In a way, libraries were "generating" gold for me.

The trick I like to use before I attack a nation, is to bribe someone else to go to war with them first. Someone who is on the other side of the targeted nation. I wait a few turns, around 6, and then I attack. This way the bulk of their forces will be on the other side of the country, fighting the other enemy. This leaves their cities poorly defended.

Check the power graph regulary. If you notice that one civ's curve is going straight up, that means they are building tons of troops and getting ready for war. Consider their strength as opposed to yours, how much they like you, if they are neightbors with you, etc. Chances are that they will go to war with you, so be ready for a tough defense. In this particular game, Washington declared war on me. I knew he would, so I waited behind my city defenses with 50+ infantry. After 3 turns I only had 30 left, but most of their army was gone.

Ah, the most important one: gunpowder units with City Raider III are OWNAGE. It doesn't matter what level of difficulty you are playing on, a stack of riflemen with City Raider is unstoppable. Ofcourse, City Raider promotion cannot pe applied to gunpower units, so you need to upgrade those veteran quechuas, axemen and macemen. But they are worth the price. I don't know how to emphasize this enough. Those units will probably have +100% or more against cities. A few catapults to lower the defense even more and you'll take the city with minimal or no casualties.

You should also upgrade a unit after a promotion. For example, if you have a macemen with 23/26 exp, don't upgrade it imediatelly to riflemen. Kill a few weak units with it and then promote+upgrade. If he had 18/26 exp, then I would upgrade and forget the promotion.

Besides these, the usual: chop, cottage spam, diplomacy, quachuas rush, steal workers, etc.

All civ games are different so you need to addapt your strategies to the game. Everybody talks about luck in a game, but I think we should see it from a different perspective. Luck is the randomness in the game. From the way this game is built, there is a high probability that most games will have about the same difficulty, only that they will be TOTALLY different. This is the beauty of CIVILIZATION.

 

[mudd]

You won't get any attention from me.

 

[Kalleyao]

The rating shows how good this thread is.

 

[DaviddesJ]

The rating shows how good this thread is.

Really?? I thought you endorsed the thread and would consider the low rating to be inaccurate.

 

[VirusMonster]

Like I said, the better you are, the less the need for save&reload. I am a casual player, I don't play civ all day every day. I don't care if you don't like save&reload. If you preffer to play on a tiny map with all options tweaked only to get a win on deity, good for you. I don't. I only play on HUGE maps and considering the kind of advantages the AI has on deity, a few reloads here and there will go unnoticed. The thing is that you will never learn if you restart 100 times.
Save and load, and in time you will get better at anticipating enemy's moves. Eventually, you won't need to save anymore. This is a thread for strategy and tips for deity. Let's keep it like that.

Well said. I looked up the saves, but I think you overexpanded a bit With 9 cities at 2350, you were running on deficit -7 gold per turn at %0 research. Personally, I would not keep the tundra cities even if I had the chance.

You also had some trouble capturing cities on hills from what I can see

I attached some saves. Unfortunatelly, my later saves are too big to attach so I cannot give you a sample of my tech race. If anyone knows how to upload 1MB files, please let me know.

There is a 5 file per post upload limit. Try uploading on a different post, I think you should be able to upload on a different post, but there could be an additional 1MB per file upload limit. Still, try to upload until 1000-500BC.

VirusMonster, here are some of my thoughts on the strategy for deity. Feel free to comment on them

Most of them have been pointed out already, but I think they deserve more attention in a deity game.

Alright, I will try

I think researching Alphabet should be one of the initial priorities. Most of the time you will be the first one to get it. Even if you ignore many of the other cheaper techs, once you get Alphabet you can trade it for every tech out there and much more.

After my latest attempts of researching Alphabet first and not CoL, I totally agree with you that Alphabet quickly is a much better choice. You get to trade everything, including bronzeworking and some other cool high lvl techs. My research path is usually Wheel->Pottery->(maybe a basic tech(fishing, mining or masonry))->Writing->Alphabet.

In a deity game the AI has HUGE amounts of gold. You can use that on your advantage. Trade resources for gold and also check regulary if the AI has more gold available for trade. If so, cancel your previous trade agreement and make a new one for more $. Exchange good techs for lesser techs+gold, and so on. In a 18 civs game, the AI will be your cash cow. In this game, I managed to stay at 100% research most of the time after getting Code of laws and Curency. I was loosing 100 gold per turn, but the AI is rich and it doesn't care about money
I even managed to lead in research, I got Music, Liberalism, Economics and Physics first. I also managed to build The Taj Mahal and Great Library thanks to my 5 capitals
Since I had 100% research, I didn't build any banks or markets until late in the game. In a way, libraries were "generating" gold for me.

Trade, especially resource for a few gold per turn ones, bring in a stunningly high amount gold. I also knew to cancel and remake the deal for a higher return, but now after your recommendation, I will do my best now to crank the gold out of the AI.

I have found tech trading can be profitable, but you always give out a much valuable tech for what it is not really worth it. So unless you are selling the same tech to several civilization, you won't get much back. Again mass trading is the way to play deity!

The trick I like to use before I attack a nation, is to bribe someone else to go to war with them first. Someone who is on the other side of the targeted nation. I wait a few turns, around 6, and then I attack. This way the bulk of their forces will be on the other side of the country, fighting the other enemy. This leaves their cities poorly defended.

I have so far had a hard time bribing for war, but I pick a religion so late usually to avoid angry fights. Perhaps I should pick a side, hopefully winning one, and bribe for war.

Check the power graph regulary. If you notice that one civ's curve is going straight up, that means they are building tons of troops and getting ready for war. Consider their strength as opposed to yours, how much they like you, if they are neightbors with you, etc. Chances are that they will go to war with you, so be ready for a tough defense. In this particular game, Washington declared war on me. I knew he would, so I waited behind my city defenses with 50+ infantry. After 3 turns I only had 30 left, but most of their army was gone.

That is very good tip. I will try to put it somewhere in my article. Very crucial if you want to foresee enemy attack. You either guess the attack coming or you lose many cities.

Ah, the most important one: gunpowder units with City Raider III are OWNAGE. It doesn't matter what level of difficulty you are playing on, a stack of riflemen with City Raider is unstoppable. Ofcourse, City Raider promotion cannot pe applied to gunpower units, so you need to upgrade those veteran quechuas, axemen and macemen. But they are worth the price. I don't know how to emphasize this enough. Those units will probably have +100% or more against cities. A few catapults to lower the defense even more and you'll take the city with minimal or no casualties.


You should also upgrade a unit after a promotion. For example, if you have a macemen with 23/26 exp, don't upgrade it imediatelly to riflemen. Kill a few weak units with it and then promote+upgrade. If he had 18/26 exp, then I would upgrade and forget the promotion.

Yea, we all know imba city radier III infantry or rifleman I also agree with your upgrading strategy.

Besides these, the usual: chop, cottage spam, diplomacy, quachuas rush, steal workers, etc.

All civ games are different so you need to addapt your strategies to the game. Everybody talks about luck in a game, but I think we should see it from a different perspective. Luck is the randomness in the game. From the way this game is built, there is a high probability that most games will have about the same difficulty, only that they will be TOTALLY different. This is the beauty of CIVILIZATION.

Deity is pretty difficult, gj on beating it, don't forget to put up some more saves in a different post
P.S. If you have MSN, we could arrange to play multiplayer some time

 

[VirusMonster]

Really?? I thought you endorsed the thread and would consider the low rating to be inaccurate.

Hahaha

I think my article is just as good as some of the other strategy guides on this forum, but the reason for low rating are, I think,:

1) Many people vote 1-2 stars, because they don't like my views on save&reloading. They most likely haven't read or tested out the article, just vote based on my views.

2) Many people don't appreciate my effort in trying to beat deity and blame the strategy is too much luck dependent. Well, deity is hard bro, some setups are better than others and I can't lie to you about which one works best. I am telling you which one works best, but it is Firaxis's fault if you don't like what works best.

3) Some might have voted low, because I want to have lowest rated strategy article IMHO, neither rating nor the number of views is much relevant on the quality of an article. I think those who want to beat deity on a huge map could learn much from my article. I trust my article and can listen to critics about it as well. I think that is what matters

4) I think those who like the article forget to vote Those who don't like it are more likely to vote

P.S. I was 2.42 with 12 votes (2.42x12=29), now 2.62 with 13 votes(2.62x13=34), thus someone just voted 5 stars