When advising, show your skill

[Smokeybear]

This wasn't 100% clear in your first post but this is absolutely true. Besides, just as some advice for King doesn't work on Deity, some advice that works on Deity doesn't work on King; pretty much anything involving AI gold (rush buying settlers/workers, research agreements) has to be thrown out the window on lower difficulties. A beginner who looks to the high level players for advice will often times find that much of what is standard on Immortal and Deity isn't even possible on King and Emperor.

Exactly. And frankly, most of the people *needing* advice here are not playing on immortal or deity. And if a player at that level is asking for advice, they will almost always mention that is the level they are asking advice for- "I've moved up to deity recently, and I need help with...". If I don't hear that, I will (pretty much safely) assume it's somebody playing at Emperor or below.

 

[teqofc]

I don't think non diety players even realize how easier the game can be on deity compared to lower levels. I still have issues with warmongering because I take too damn long to kill off civs or just get overwhelmed by impis but if I have peaceful neighbors I can almost always get a SV. Throw in Poland for a guaranteed SV. Hell I haven't even tried Babylon or Korea which are just as OP as Poland from what I've read.

I think the rapid way in which civs expand in your face turns a lot of people away and it did to me initially but if you can get 3 cities down and have friendly neighbors you are golden especially if at least one city is near a mountain.

Things that actually make diety easier are this.

1. Caravans/Cargo ships to rapidly catch up in science and gold
2. RAs to catch up in tech
3. easy to obtain wonders like Oracle and PT
4. Wealthy civs which make RAs and trading easy
5. Civs start with workers right away which can be stolen.
6. Civs are too obsessed with culture and not enough with science

You can't wonder spam like in lower levels but you can almost always get Oracle, Pyramids if going liberty and PT because civs are stupid not to go rati. And once you get on a roll some of the late wonders are pretty easy to get too.

I think what needs to be done to make diety truely diety is the following:

1. If you steal workers from CS you should not be allowed to make peace right away. Should be a delay until you can and a huge diplo hit for a long long time or making friends with them nearly impossible.
2. Do something to make it harder to steal civ's workers.
3. Civs should go rati and you should be sweating the science race all the way to the end. They should aggressively be tyring to build the PT.
4. Nerf consulates on diety. Too easy to maintain friend status with CSes otherwise.
5. Rich civs with 30k should not be sitting on that money

IMHO, diety should be a struggle from start to finish. Right now it's a struggle in the beginning but once you get your caravans going, RAs going and policies you reach a point where you overtake the civs in science and can breathe easily. Once in a while the ideologies can throw you a curveball but otherwise the civs are so busy killing each other from midgame to endgame that you can escape their wrath with trading/bribes/etc. Then you build your spaceship and fly away and wave at them as they are still killing each other while you sit there with a handful of units protecting your lands

Anyway, just my thoughts. I've gotten my ass kicked with multiple warmongering neighbors like Zulu/Mongol/Huns but that is not the norm thankfully.