What Now? (Deity Game)

[dowish]

I am trying to beat the game on Deity for the first time before they improve the IA and send me back to playing on Prince.

I am playing as the French, standard size continents maps. It is turn 44, and I have just finished Iron Working and have taken out the Chinese (annexed one city, puppet with the other) with a warrior rush. (Lost one warrior taking the capital due to a archer/city combo shot.)

Getting this far is kind of a surprise to me so I haven't thought much about a strategy for the rest of the game. What kind of victory is easiest at this level?

What should I do next? Am I in a good enough position to win, or should I start over and do something else?

What tech should I head for now? Go for libraries or get something to add more luxuries or happiness buildings?

I have a little over 500 gold, what should I be spending that on, or should I be saving it up?

I also have not adopted any social policies yet, should I start one, and which one, or keep saving them for something else? I also keep reading about the Meritocracy branch, but I don't see that listed. The benefits described make it sound like the Liberty branch. Is that it and should I start working on that?

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

 

[Thantanos]

Hey friend I just posted a "How to be diety in under 30 turns" post in the same forum you posted this question in. Read it fast before the new patch, and please give me a bump =). Its a very fast strat, Good luck!

 

[JJDR]

I'm going to preface this post with saying I haven't won a game on deity yet either. I'm trying myself though and I'm also trying to help

I'm impressed you flopped a capital city so soon in addition to a second city. Generally, the warrior rush strat is used to capture a second city, use it as a settler pump, then raze it - giving you essentially "free" production of settlers and additional resources from the computer in the peace deal. Martin Alvito in a post "Deity Spaceship in under 200 turns - a brief guide" and "Warrior rushing Deity (with pictures!)" outlines his Science Victory Strat that is similar to Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) and uses Meritocracy (+1 Happiness for trade routes connected to Capital) from the Liberty Tree. While you probably won't win in 200 turns, it's still a good guide for good science/rushing deity play. I think this would be the best option (might be a little weird with 1 puppet). The reason I like this strat is you have 5 resources visible that are settle-able, lots of hills, lots of room to expand, a maritime, and 2 cultural city states.

You've teched Ironworking, but there's no iron... Unfortunate. Warmongering is still an option at this point, but you're going to need a strong force to fight Alexander to the east (I'm guessing based off the worker) and some magical source of iron. This option means going straight for steel and then backfilling writing or vise versa depending on when you plan to invade. Warmongering is tough to keep pace scientifically so explore the world so you can get as many RAs as possible, but on a continents map you need optics unless there's a lot of civs on your continent. IDK I wouldn't recommend this.

Don't do culture or diplo because it's really hard, especially on deity

My advice to you at this point in the game is expand. You're already way behind most AIs (sadly) and you need to counter this by expanding. Tech what's necessary for the lux resources and get writing, buy the maritime city state, switch cities to production to keep pops low, and pump out workers (If you dont have enough) to start connecting roads. Take Liberty -> Worker Production -> Meritocracy Social Policies and your economy and science will boom. Good Luck

 

[boehj]

You seem to have a load of room there so I would expand aggressively. Getting Construction ASAP is vital for this plan to work tho' as you don't have many luxuries that I can see so building Colosseums will be key. After that you could research Writing.

 

[iggymnrr]

Try Alexander on a duel diety map. Shouldn't take too long.

 

[LDiCesare]

Don't do culture or diplo because it's really hard, especially on deity

I totally disagree.
Don't try culture, ok.
But diplo is THE EASIEST victory condition as you have no competition for it: The ai doesn't out-buy city states despite its having loads of cash.

The strategy to achieve it (OP says the easiest victory) is:
Try to rush anyone else that may be on your continent. You don't have to kill them, but make sure noone else sets foot on your continent. Keeping one alive with very few cities is ok as he'll be abusable for research agreements, but you'll have to keep a military in such a case.
Horsemen are the way to go. They explore fast, attack and retreat.
Once you've secured your continent, all you need to do is wait, mass enough gold to buy city states.
So you want to find the city states so you can gift them gold later, which means you need to do some scouting, particularly by sea.
Do not gift them gold immediately. Hoard it. You can ally yourself with one or two maritime city states, but that's not even necessary.

The social policies you want are the patronage tree, particularly the one that gives you a minimum relation of 20 with the city states. It basically means that 500 gold will be enough to ally with them even late-game. Whatever else gives you money is good too.

You want to sell everything you can to the ai. Just avoid open borders IF that would mean the ai can settle on your continent. Otherwise, it's worth 50$ for 30 turns. Each luxury is 300$ every 30 turns.
Produce many small cities with colosseum. Trading posts, markets. Libraries to try to get to United Nations, but an ai will probably build it before you. When it's built, just the turn before the election, spend 500, 750 or 1000 gold, whatever is needed, on enough city states to win the game.
If you don't have enough gold right now, you should just wait and mass more gold. You don't need units. You don't need production. You don't need science. You definitely don't need culture, so get rid of all these. The only things you need are trade posts, markets, banks, great merchants, and luxuries to sell. Of course, you want to keep some units in case someone wants to land an invasion on your coasts, but a small fleet of moderately modern ships can usually sink all that would be sent your way.

 

[bryanw1995]

um, that could work, IF you have enough cs's on your continent and the ai doesn't take out the rest. deity ai is notorious for whacking any and all cs's the minute they ally with a rival, or another CS has a quest to kill them, or they get bored with conquering everyone else etc etc. One of my deity wins I had to liberate 4 or 5 CS's just to get the 10 votes. This strat could still work, just be aware that it's not a slam dunk by any means.

@OP: you should ICS immediately. pursue liberty-meritocracy branch and get colosseums and writing asap. you have enough room for it to work. however, be aware that alex will dow you soon if his borders are close unless you can get him involved in a long-term slogfest with somebody else AND you don't settle in his direction. you also should get hbr soon, just be aware that alex's UU's both counter an early hbr rush very effectively.

 

[The Great Apple]

Try Alexander on a duel diety map. Shouldn't take too long.

He probably wants to play "proper" diety.

Looks like a good start to me. I'd recommend expanding agressively onto luxuries. Get that marble, and those gems. I'd also recommend targetting writing as a tech so you can get some libraries and great scientists up. How easy do you want to make it for yourself - ICS? I, personally, have avoided it in my Diety wins given it's both broken and a bit silly, but it works...

I'd give your gold to Ragusa. Keep selling luxuries and try to get as many city states as possible.

 

[trueblue]

He probably wants to play "proper" diety.

Looks like a good start to me. I'd recommend expanding agressively onto luxuries. Get that marble, and those gems. I'd also recommend targetting writing as a tech so you can get some libraries and great scientists up. How easy do you want to make it for yourself - ICS? I, personally, have avoided it in my Diety wins given it's both broken and a bit silly, but it works...

I'd give your gold to Ragusa. Keep selling luxuries and try to get as many city states as possible.

this ^^^



'proper diety', i like that.

 

[dowish]

Thanks for help.

Well, its turn 61 now. I've got libraries, and calender, and am now going toward horseback riding. I had Ragusa as an ally, but that just ran out, so need to give them more cash. I also spent some on Soul to get a luxury, trying to get my happiness under control.

As you can see, that didn't help much as I'm -15 right now. Part of that is I sold Alexander silver for 250, not 300 which I take as he isn't to happy with me, and that was before we warned me to stop grabbing land. I am preparing myself for a butt kicking from him pretty soon.

On the plus side, I found iron (6) and have settled a city by it so I'll hopefully have iron soon from a worker I just stole from a militaristic CS. I've also got some horses so getting those going should help.

Right now I have 3 goals, 1) Get my military up so I can withstand Alexander, whenever he decides I should be taken out. 2) Get my happiness under control by getting coliseums and developing luxuries. 3) Science, which means build more libraries and expand into the empty space you can see.

Anyway, that is where I'm at now. Further suggestions are very welcome.

 

[elthrasher]

Alex has a settler just south of Shanghai. You need to block that guy and stop him from settling. Maybe you knew that, but I don't see anyone too near by. That should be the top priority because if he's running around trying to find a home for that guy, you'll have more time before hostilities start.

You need to scout Alex so you can see what's coming and you really need to get your happiness up to -9 at least by the time hostilities start (and they will start, as I'm sure you know). Any hope of getting somebody else to go after Alex to buy you more time?