What Are "Worthy" Deity Settings?

[Itrade]

The description for Deity difficulty is that it's for "the best players in the world", but the consensus here seems to be that certain things disqualify people from being able to brag about their Deity wins: playing on Archipelago, trading before DoWing, playing as Austria, policy saving, etc.

So what settings would be worthy? I've heard a lot of good things about Pangea, so my first non-cheesy Deity game is currently being played on a huge marathon map with random opponents and standard settings as the Mayans. I only rerolled once, and while I'm still not satisfied with the non-coastal start I got, at least it has a desert and mountain nearby. I was DoW'ed really early on by both Austria and the Huns, but much reloading enabled me to fight back their attacks and gain a good amount of veteran ranged units in the process, which I'm hoping to use to begin my warpath soon.

It occurred to me then that people might say that reloading the saves were the wrong way to go, but I think that only counts if you're trying to change the outcome of a ruin or coup. But yeah, what are Deity game settings that you can brag about a win with?

 

[Kwami]

Supposedly, Marathon speed makes the game easier. Reloading is pretty cheesy. Rerolling is, too, but I can understand that one since the map generator isn't very good and playing a bad start isn't always fun.

But who cares? Are you having fun? If so, then you're playing correctly. If not, well, fix it. Why do you care about what other plays think of your wins and losses?

I like to play on Epic and Marathon because those speeds allow me to use units for longer periods of time and because Standard games don't last long enough for me to play them over multiple nights. If that means that I'm not l33t, then so be it. Who cares?

 

[kamex]

Reloading a save isn't cheesy, its plain cheating imo...

 

[ense7en]

You can most definitely play how you'd like, but if you think reloading a save after things don't go your way isn't cheating or cheap, yeah...

That's about as cheating as it can get.

 

[Light Cleric]

The description for Deity difficulty is that it's for "the best players in the world", but the consensus here seems to be that certain things disqualify people from being able to brag about their Deity wins: playing on Archipelago, trading before DoWing, playing as Austria, policy saving, etc.

Meh I dunno if it's worth "bragging" about at all.

The reason Archipelago is treated like that is because the AI is still pretty horrible with water maps and navies and one of its big bonuses, population, gets stuck working horrible tiles. The same can be said for basically any water map smaller than Continents, though.

I don't see a big deal about playing AS Austria; the player actually has to make decisions about using the UA, unlike the AI.

Policy saving....eh. I think the big thing is that takes out an element of planning that you have to do to make sure you're in the proper era in time, because that wasted policy can really delay stuff like the Rationalism finisher.

Basically, don't play to brag; play to do what you have fun with or challenges you.

So what settings would be worthy? I've heard a lot of good things about Pangea, so my first non-cheesy Deity game is currently being played on a huge marathon map with random opponents and standard settings as the Mayans. I only rerolled once, and while I'm still not satisfied with the non-coastal start I got, at least it has a desert and mountain nearby. I was DoW'ed really early on by both Austria and the Huns, but much reloading enabled me to fight back their attacks and gain a good amount of veteran ranged units in the process, which I'm hoping to use to begin my warpath soon.

It occurred to me then that people might say that reloading the saves were the wrong way to go, but I think that only counts if you're trying to change the outcome of a ruin or coup. But yeah, what are Deity game settings that you can brag about a win with?

I usually play Standard and Pangaea when I play Deity(which is becoming more often because I have some kind of masochistic desire to deal with Deity unit spam). I think this does the best job at leveling the playing field between you and the AI. Slower speeds favor the player, and Quick favors the AI and makes things pretty ridiculous.

About reloading...it depends. I think it's acceptable if you're using the game as a "learning experience" instead of using it as a crutch. Like, for example, if it's your first game and you had that situation, reloading would be okay as long as you learned "Okay, I need to do this instead of what I did before that got me killed". If you do it repeatedly, THEN it becomes a problem.

My reloads almost always come from misclicks or a bug such as the annoying bug at the start of turns where you get forced to select a unit and you accidentally end up moving that one instead of the one you meant to, even if you have unit cycling off or the bug where AI units are randomly invisible or display on the wrong tile. This is especially annoying when you get ZoC'd by an invisible unit or there's an invisible Crossbow inside a city and you see the damage log for the .00002 seconds it displays and you're like "...What Crossbow?". I guess you could argue I shouldn't reload on misclicks, but that seems like a really harsh punishment for an accidental mouse movement.

I guess the only "questionable" time I'll reload is a situation like this: I'm trying to attack a city, I've moved my units in and am preparing to bring the siege and backups in...and then a third AI that has Open Borders with my target decides to clog things up with his units. No, seriously, I had a time where I was attacking Hiawatha, and Gandhi was marching his army of Pikes and elephants to launch a brilliant attack against Sejong's Gatling Guns. Well, he gets there and suddenly changes his mind and tries to walk back and his units get logjammed near the city I'm attacking. Well, hey, guess what, Hiawatha has the Great Wall and there's marsh tiles, so any efforts to go around were completely useless, and Gandhi's units kept getting stuck on the tiles I was trying to put my Cannons on. To make things worse, a frickin city-state was behind me and it was near a river, so there was basically no room to maneuver to get my Musketeers in without getting shot up by about 6 Crossbows. For the record, I didn't reload there; I flipped a table and went to play TF2. You might be asking "Why didn't you just blow up Gandhi's units?"...I wanted to but we still had a DoF.

 

[The_Quasar]

But yeah, what are Deity game settings that you can brag about a win with?

To answer the question:-
Pangea or Continents, Standard, Standard, random civ with random AI. No re-roll. All the rest standard, including number of AIs and CSs. No going back to a save, if you make a mistake, swallow it and continue.

 

[Silverfuturist]

The description for Deity difficulty is that it's for "the best players in the world"

That is the marketing descrption - my description is that multiplayer is for the best players in the world. I understand that many will not agree with my description, I don't need them to agree, but this is my opinion.

Let me explain - when you play deity you are playing very stupid opponents that are given huge advantages to overcome the lack of intelligence. Kind of like if you are a good chess player, and you are playing a brain damaged moron (not using those terms disparagingly) so you give him many extra pieces to make the game a challenge. Even if it takes lots of work to win, you still beat a brain damaged moron! Good chess players will seek out other good chess players and seek a game with with no handicaps.

I understand that simultaneous movement has its flaws but... it is much more fun than playing brain damaged morons which show zero intelligence. When playing good humans you can see intelligence in motion with the decisions they make and it truly is an interactive competition.

Opinion out, peace out!

 

[Tabarnak]

That is the marketing descrption - my description is that multiplayer is for the best players in the world. I understand that many will not agree with my description, I don't need them to agree, but this is my opinion.

That's my opinion too. But this is almost a completely different game against humans. Every mp games are usually harder in some way because your ratio loss is way higher and you have ''less control'' of your neighbors

About OP :

Continent might be harder than playing pangea in some cases. Pangea is nice because you can leverage your empire from the AI and you can usually get some really nice land sometimes. And you can contact a bunch of them very early.

Try to roll a start semi-isolated(i.e. with cs in front, kind of archipelago connecting to the main land, mountains, etc), set-up a nice empire, tech hard, sign RAs and try a science victory.

Nothing cheesy here.

 

[Itrade]

So I played that game with those settings. A third of the way in and I'm in a very good spot: my next prophet has loads of tiny cities around that can be converted for Tithe and crazy pressure from Itinerant Preachers, I've got three citadels in between mountains and rivers and hills that force the enemy through choke-points and bleed them out before they can get near my cities, there are three crossbowmen in my territory just a few battles away from logistics and range promotions, and I'm stealing my way across the bottom of the tech tree thanks to the work of industrious Celtic scientists. I decide to try for another wonder since I Oxford'd architecture and I figured the other civs wouldn't be building those wonders yet. So I spend forty turns - which is something like two hours on my computer - working on the Taj Mahal, and right when it's two turns from completion: "Austria has built the Taj Mahal!"

The pity-money wasn't even enough to bribe a CS into becoming my ally, so loaded back to before I begun on the Taj. Right off the bat, Suleiman DOWs me. I go back again and give him all my GPT in hopes that he'll be satisfied with that and leave me alone, plus I can use his cash to make a new ally. The next turn, he still DOWs me and I realize that I am stuck in the cheese.

I think I'm going to abandon the game and just do what was suggested: random everything on standard speed with a standard size Pangea and no reloads. I'll just beeline radar and bomb the crap out of everyone for a domination victory. Looking forward to the smaller everything. It'll be nice not to have to wait three minutes in between each turn for hundreds of turns.

 

[Hercules90]

It'll be nice not to have to wait three minutes in between each turn for hundreds of turns.

For me that's one of the major downsides. I try to put as many units of mine, as possible, on sleep until needed. But something always seems to stir them.

 

[milk steak]

Pangea / standard speed / all options standard / not playing as Spain

 

[Nihti]

The description for Deity is obviously just a different way of saying very hard. Or it is meant to get more people into playing the harder difficulties so they too could be the best in the world

Standard speed, standard size, pangaea or continents I guess would be the normal ones. Play whatever civ you enjoy. Not rerolling the map if you don't get a good start or maybe even rerolling if you happen to find el'dorado first. Not trading luxuries/gpt/etc before DoW. I guess random personalities is an option one could go for too.

Just about anything that seems wrong to do for you is something you shouldn't do. Deity is supposed to be the challenge mode, so don't try to make it easier for yourself. Unless all you care is bragging rights so you could say you beat deity, in which case one might just play a duel map with the huns

 

[headcase]

On top of trades before DoW, selling stuff like borders to the AI without them asking is kind of cheesy.

Rerolling's fine. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? You can only start a new game once a week? Winning on a bad start is more brag-worthy than winning on a good start regardless.

Reloading is good for learning lessons, but stops it from being a clean win (except if the game crashes; even then you should be autosaving every turn).

 

[Lose]

play on all standard/default settings and win without reloading for any reason.

 

[PibbZ]

IMO, you can use whatever settings, civs and cheesy methods you want in combination with Deity difficulty, as long as you are having fun with it. Some settings make it easier than average, and some make it harder, but thats how the random nature of the game works.

The game is about adapting yourself to your surroundings, and counter the different threats in different ways. There will almost always be a harder potential way to beat deity on, it all depends on how much the RNG screws you around, but I for one will say that any Deity win is just as worthy as anyone else's.

I don't get why so many people only seem to play for bragging rights these days. Games are for fun

Reloading to get a different outcome of a bad decision however, is borderline cheating

 

[budweiser]

I'd say continents is 'more legit' than pangea. You can't meet every CS and make 7 friends right off the bat on a continents map, you have to put some effort in to cross the oceans.

 

[Ickey]

Slightly off topic, but: is there a quick way to re-roll your start?
(I mean other than quitting and starting a new game with the same settings?)

 

[ense7en]

Slightly off topic, but: is there a quick way to re-roll your start?
(I mean other than quitting and starting a new game with the same settings?)

No, there is no load-game-with-settings-and-re-generate map-until-desired-map-appears option.

I know i wouldn't mind that option, and i suspect many also would love it, but i also feel that would result in every game always being re-rolled...

 

[Tachii]

I think when I pick Fractal on Immortal it almost seems like an Immortal+ game but not quite Deity yet. The highly random map generation means I might be sandwiched between 2 coveting lands civs, or entirely isolated until Astronomy. It also means making the tireme is kind of useful since large continents could actually be joined by coast shores than oceans. It is a lot less predictability than continents and pangaea. And usually an entirely isolated AI will often give me the biggest problems, since their growth/gold/happiness bonuses will mean they will be ahead in tech for a good early game.

 

[Kwami]

I think when I pick Fractal on Immortal it almost seems like an Immortal+ game but not quite Deity yet. The highly random map generation means I might be sandwiched between 2 coveting lands civs, or entirely isolated until Astronomy. It also means making the tireme is kind of useful since large continents could actually be joined by coast shores than oceans. It is a lot less predictability than continents and pangaea. And usually an entirely isolated AI will often give me the biggest problems, since their growth/gold/happiness bonuses will mean they will be ahead in tech for a good early game.

All of these things can and do happen on Continents Plus, too. Actually, my last Continents Plus game looked very Fractal-like. My continent was sort of shaped like an 8, with very skinny land and large inland seas, and had four civs, there was a giant second continent shaped normally with only one civ, and the last three civs were all competing on a third, smaller, normal-shaped continent. It was a weird game.