Winning on Deity?

[Giaur]

This strategy was developed long ago, but never was submited. It's very unperfect, but proves that deity is beatable.

Settings:
Vanilla
No barbs
Copper (we will find out while playing)
Pangea (more trading possibilities, but also more danger)
Huge map (more cities for you and your rivals/however more units/cities means that losing a city won't hurt you so much - safety is the base of every strategy)
Marathon speed
Leader: Ceasar (Org/Exp/Praet); Toku(Org/Agr/Samurai)

Here we go ...
Before we found a capital we move into the tile, which produces 2 shields(plain/hills). If the sea is visible, we are running away of it. We are securing some land this way (as Snaaty does). We start producing settler first, cause there are no barbs. Both leaders start with mining, so we are heading for Bronze Working. Bronze is in and settler is in. It would be good to grab Copper at the first place. It would be great if center of second city gave 2 shields. In both cities we start producing settlers. Then 2 of our cities produce warriors and 2 other workers. Try to be sure that your cities are connected by river - it will eliminate commerce loss. Before spamming more settlers grow all of your 4 cities to pop of 2. Tech path Mysticism/Pottery/Writing/Alpha. You will get some free tech from tribal village and some gold which will help you avoiding upkeep problems for next 20 turns. If there are no Aztecs on the map you are quite safe. Alex could attck you but you can always whip warriors or axes. Remember to turn the option "Show Friendly moves" on and send enough warriors. The hills you planted cities on will provide you with additional defense. If Huana approaches with settler escorted with 1 archer and 1 archer behind him, declare war on him and get free worker. Remember - it is Pangea - trading options are not a problem. If there is hunting on, you can train one scout which has 2MP and is cheap. If there is one defending unit in a city, move a scout there. If the battle is lost, whip next unit. You won't lose a city cause, there is also scout in. If the battle is won, move scout into another source of danger. After researching Pottery spam cottages everywhere and connect you cities. Do not work food tiles. Happiness is a problem anyway. Chop the trees - rely on it, but save some for military units (it was tested in 1.67 - nerfed chopping). Send some destroyers - warriors who damage enemy's roads. You should be able to reach Alpha around 1000BC. Then choose which player is to be attacked first. Sell Alpha to everyone except your victim. Adopt HR, OR, start working food tiles and grow your cities. Befero Alpha you should make coastal or road connections with your opponents and sign OB as fast as connection is profitable to you. You should have 6-8 cities with pop of 3-4 at 1000BC. After Alpha, head for Drama - it's quite useless but is valuable trade tech and you are quite sure that it won't be researched by your rivals. Critical techs are Currency and Construction. Usually you have to self-research both of them, but sometimes you have some luck. Do not be worry when your rivals get Feudalism - longbows are only dangerous when standing on hills. Sell as many resources as you can. If you have Iron, sell Copper. If you do not like horses, sell them. For gold at the first place. Do not build libraries. Game can be won without building a single library. Start producing/chopping units. When unit upkeep reaches 20 it's start to declare war. Praets (Caesar) are slightly better than aggressive swords (Toku). You should also have some cats. Civics - HR/OR/Slavery. You are organized. You are playing with stupid AI, which attacks the nearest unit, so try to pass trough rough terrain. One or Two cities should be taken before enemy gets Feudalism. Next turns require only more patience and more cats. I played these games without building a single mounted unit, but in Vanilla harchers were extremely weak. But you should have one or two of them, You can grab the city and leave it in the same turn. Next turn enemy receptures the city. It's cannon fodder for your CR praets/swords. He won't build any unit in one turn anyway. Secure the city only when your units are healed. After your first war you can usually match with your rivals. Try to bribe them into wars one against the another. If you are afraid of Izzy, convince Cyrus to stop trading with her. That way she won't pass through his territory and won't attack you. Get as many 'Our military struggle' points as you can. Watch the stats/demographics. Do not bother about GNP - watch production and military graph. Next civic switch - Vassalage. It would be great if you attacked peaceful builder at athe first place. You gain some wonders. Buildings - granaries/forges. In newly conquered cities whip courthouses or/and forges. When Music is in build culture in these cities. After critical techs research Feudalism. And go for Education. Research techs not were attractive. Rely on military alliances.

These settings are quite secure - especially No barbs and Pangea. Huge map ensures you that you that there will be always a trading partner. In my last game I declared war on Caesar who send all of his Praets far, far away from home (on some crusade). When he returned, he lost 2 cities.

This is no-brain strategy and proves that Huge/Pangea is beatable. Explanation above.

Toku game ...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/70897/ROBBO_BC-3265.Civ4SavedGame
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/70897/Robbo.Civ4SavedGame

Caesar game ...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/70897/romans4000.Civ4SavedGame
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/70897/ROBBO_AD-1150.Civ4SavedGame

Toku game ...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/70897/ROBBO_BC-0980.Civ4SavedGame
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/70897/ROBBO_AD-1736.Civ4SavedGame

I hope they work. I do not know why no 4000AD saves were preserved. It was written that no reloads were made. One reload in these 3 games. and never after first attempt, but second one was quite enough. I guess it's the reason I'm still immortal. I have plenty of saves anyway. I can zip them and send to you cheffster. PM me. These settings are easy, but I am sure that are fair. We have no barbs, but also AI's do. On start it would be the best to play someone's game from the beggining.

BTW. Robbo is a name of Polish popular game on small Atari ...
Sorry for being a bit egocentric, my intention was only to help ...

 

[mzprox]

Recently I'm trying to win with this settings:

difficulty: deity, mirror-continent map, only one opponent and the same civ as me (I have chosen Gandhi), all victory enabled, speed epic
so everything is equal.

(somehow with this setting we got starting position absolutely crap, no resource at all, no fresh water just ice land etc.. so i started many games.) The barbarian invasion cause much trouble too.. after a few turn they start invading.
only one game went so far till the end, and i got the technology lead!, i was preparing to build tanks in 20 turns when i checked the victory options and saw that my chance for victory is nothing... Gandhi has 3 city close to legendary and they got 1000 culture/turn... I was too late to attack...
Not the first time Gandhi wins with culture maybe i should disable that option or try an earlier war, but riflemens not really good to take cities..

in this game I (we) have stone, and building the great wall b4 the first settlers was critical for survive i think. (i have also build the pyramid which helped a lot) However Gandhi (the other) beat me with all the religions :/...
At least with liberalism I could switch to free religion.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

I'm starting to think winning deity (normal settings) consistently on BtS is possible. I feel a lot more comfortable than in Warlords.

 

[uberfish]

Unconquered, I don't doubt you're a good player but to me a consistent winning strategy would have to be able to deal with these common situations, how do you handle them?

- stuck at the end of a continent with only enough land for 3-4 decent cities, boxed in by an AI which already has 10+ unit stack in 1000 BC
- AI declares war in classical or medieval age, producing as many new units per turn as you have cities
- the only viable conquest target is running the AP religion, and you get unfavourable AP resolutions to stop war and/or return cities

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Maybe it's the luck of the draw. In my last three games the AIs were pretty vulnerable in classical/medieval.

I agree axe rush is not as good as before. That's why in my latest game I'm back to Praets. Besides, Augustus is good in GW chopping.

What bothers me more is I always seem to get some crazy peacemonger doing cultural on exactly the opposite side of the globe.

 

[darrelljs]

Well, its only Immortal but I'm having the opposite problem, finding BTS more difficult. I'm now only 2/7, last game was a perfect example of something that felt like I would have won on Warlords/2.08 but got beat. I play random leaders, got Gandhi, started just south of the northern tundra region. Nice start, plains forest Deer, grassland Bronze, river Wheat in BFC. Just south of me a nice floodplains with some desert Gold. West was a bit barren but a few decent sites. Unfortunately about 20 tiles south was Shaka's capital, and on the other side of Shaka was Isabella (this was Hemisphere's map). Ran an SE, but I overexpanded south in an attempt to match Shaka. Feel way behind Izzy but kept up with Shaka, was even able to get him to declare on her early on, but eventually he declared on me. I was able to defend myself but have fallen out of the tech trading game, and that's usually death.

Having Shaka at a tweener distance is a problem no doubt, you can't effectively rush him so you'll have to deal with him later. The main problem I had was despite fairly efficient whipping his promotion and unit mix was better than in Warlords and I was almost purely in a defensive stance the entire war.

Darrell

 

[BronzeAge]

Deity not diety.

In Civ III, Firaxis used both spellings of the word in their interfaces.

 

[Giaur]

I tried playing in BtS and my third game is going to be Domination Victory. Snaaty was right saying that AI's teches more rapidly in Warlords. Besides improved AI in BtS bothers me less than in Vanilla (military movement). AI is less likely to attack when city is well defended.

edit: However ww is upseting ...