Won my second Deity game, here's tips.

xcaine

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 25, 2008
Messages
41
After Immortal got too easy and I was able to consistently win, I tried and failed Deity about 10 times. Now I got it.

Played as China. Small Pangea, Quick pace. Restarted a few times to get a decent starting point. I aim for domination victory.

Anything larger then a small pangea and your competitors will spam every hex on the planet with military and dozens of cities. That's not fun.


China
I don't think Wu gets enough love on this forum. Every single trait she has is completely AWESOME.

  • Paper makers: free library that also makes you money. Comes early in the game and really helps when money is tight.
  • Cho-ku-nos: Fire twice in the same round. Or fire and retreat. They come in medieval times exactly when you need them for the first or second major war you'll be waging or defending from an uber aggressive neighbor.
  • Better great generals: +45% instead of +25%. Combine this with fast-firing chokunos and your defense will be impenetratable even if your map hasn't been blessed with natural chokepoints!
  • More great generals: CITADELS! *jizz* Saved my ass so, so many times.


Early game strategy:
Deity is tough. You do need to get a bit lucky with terrain and neighbors. I'm always looking for a river spot with a money, food and production resource nearby. This is a prerequisite. I love marble for a wonder bonus or a few gold/silver hills.

First order of business: Stonehenge. If someome beats you to it, restart. It is extremely important in early game. Beeline Calendar, build scouts meanwhile to grab huts and explore. It really helps to get lucky with early culture points, population boost or gold. Use your first warrior to defeat nearby barbarians, otherwise they will make your life very miserable very soon. Use your scout to steal workers from nearby city states. No problem going to war and declaring peace shortly after, your reputation will climb back until you're ready to start allying them.

After stonehenge, I immediatelly go for Pyramids. +50% worker speed is absolutely essential to me. It's doable with Aristocracy, but someone might beat you to it.

Then beeline Iron working.

EXPAND AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. I buy my first settler because I'll be busy building early wonders. By this time, you should've already researched iron working so go found a new city nearby. Ideally, you also want a new luxury resource so your citizens won't sulk because of the expansion.

At this point, you might already be getting attacked by an overwhelming force. Hold your fort with spearmen, an archer and maybe swordsman. Adopt Oligarchy for a +33% home turf advantage. If you tackled enough barbarians, great general is very close. I had one pop up just as Gandhi stormed me with his elephant archers. +45% GG and +33% oligarchy will give you the defense you need at this point.

If you have maritime states nearby, do NOT adopt other social policies than Oligarchy and Aristocracy. Save your stonehenge culture points for mid-game Patronage domination. Otherwise, use them on Honor, especially double experience.

If war is tough, go straight for Steel and upgrade to Longswordsmen.
After that, go straight for Machinery for Cho-Ku-Nos. This is when you finally get an edge and are able to stop defending and instead attack your neighbor. Raze their small cities, keep their capital, repopulate with your own settlers.

Hopefully, you conquered some very nice territories because now you'll have different priorities.

Mid-game

At this point, you're facing 1 or 2 other major competitors with a vast, technologically superior army. You can't take them on with your 5 chokunos. Set up a strong defense perimeter in the city nearest to them and hold fort. If terrain permits, create a chokepoint with a citadel or two, declare war on them and just keep defending. They will likely keep coming at you forever and your armies will get more experience and more GGs.
Always build your citadels on hills and always hold the higher ground so they can't bombard you from two squares away.

Your sole mission now is to get to artillery and infantry/mech infantry before them.

For this, you'll need a specialized science city. Could be your capital, but not always. I plan my science city wherever there's the most food, so that means farmed river+grassland tiles and ideally, a mountain nearby for Observatory. Research the techs needed for tech buildings, but don't bother with anything else.

Other cities should not bother with farms, instead TPs everywhere for money. Employ citizens in your paper makers in every single city for great scientists. Early, on, I personally like to build academies around my tech city, but you can also save them to insta-discover later. Expand your cities, keep happiness up, just get as many beakers and GSs as you possibly can.

Don't build buildings you don't need. You should only have one military city with barracks & armory, others can generate science after market/bank/papermaker/university/colosseum have been built.

If your competitor is warring any city states, ally them and gift them strong non-promoted units regularly.

I try to go for other wonders such as Himeji and Hagia Sofia, but I'm not always able to get them.

Late-game

Your competitor will be technologically superior for most of the game, but they didn't beeline Electronics like you did.

If you make it to mech inf. before your opponents: upgrade, attack and conquer. Tanks are crap, don't bother with combustion.

If not, you might need GDRs. I haven't made it that far yet.

That's it. :)
 
"Restarted a few times to get a decent starting point"

lol

reloading to win battles and wonders is another great way to win on Diety

i refer to this as "how to win everytime- a reloaders guide to victory"

lol
 
The other alternative is to play 20-30 minutes to get steamrolled and then restart. What's the point of starting in tundra and non-river plains?

and I don't play with random seed, so reloading to win battles DOES NOT work.

lol
 
lots of alternatives

lower levels

trying to put yourself in a bad location on purpose to see if you can overcome the odds

what is being suggested is that in order to win diety you have to tweek everything - map size, location etc.

and i am Man, in the Atomic Age , walking around tall and nuclear like, don't need to reload or to restart

don't mind losing - no big deal - like playing better then cheating and winning

but i know i am in the minority

not many Atomic Men people
 
Civ needs a 'regenerate map, button after starting a new game.
 
While I agree and I was able to pull that off in Emperor, it just doesn't work for Deity. Too unforgiving. I failed 10 times playing it fair.

But if you have specifics tips on winning a deity game starting in a disadvantaged location, I'd really love to hear and try it.
 
agree with troy. there's no point winning if you're only able to win by favourable startpositions+wonders.

pretty much the same like in civ4, regenerate until you get 2 wet corn + cows + 2 gold/gem and can build great wall before any of your competitors.
 
Wouldn't say it's cheating. Nothing wrong with restarting until you get a good location. Granted, you can't do that in multiplayer.
 
i am playing king level and will probably get to emperor in about a year or so

right now i try to move my settler to a desert dune and most often it takes about two turns to get there and then i have to struggle to get even let alone win

never in a rush to figure out numbers, calculations, procedures. that would be counter productive to playing it seems like

but i appreciate the post. You could do a walk through with pics for those interested

Course you can lie like heel on those as well. Which reminds me- i need to make a walk through
"Desert Attack in the Sands of Forever" or something
 
Interesting. i just finished a deity game with Wu. Was doing well, but then got attacked by my best friend and died instantly.

I agree with you that Wu is fantastic, and that citadels can be extremely useful if you have enough GGs. I've found that warfare on deity is mostly about defense- when war first starts, they will pour into your lands with an unholy number of units, so you need to be ready to defend. Once you kill of their initial wave, it's pretty easy to take over their cities. Citadels can help a lot with this. I've also experimented with taking oligarchy, for the +33% bonus in friendly lands. It sucks that it forces you to take tradition, but it's quite powerful. Goes well with aristocracy, also.

the worst is when you get attacked by 3+ AIs simultaneously. I still don't really understand the diplomacy in this game very well, so this happens to me a lot. I guess what you have to do is to just always keep a strong defensive position against all your neighbors, because you never know when they might attack. Unlike Civ IV, you don't need a super fast tech rate to keep up on deity.

Do you really think stonehenge is that important, though? It's basically the same as 1 culture CS alliance. Sure it's nice, but I don't think it's essential, and you really need to get lucky to build it on deity. If Ramses is on the map then forget about it.
 
Ah, diplomacy. There is none :) AI will attack you if you're close and weaker. No way around it.

Stonehenge is important because in the beginning, I never have the time to bother with any other cultural buildings so it's responsible for the bulk of my border expansions and social policies early on. Oligarchy, early in the game when you're defending against overwhelming forces, is a godsend and you don't have to feel bad about unlocking Tradition. Besides, what else would you build that early? A worker? A warrior? A monument? :)

To get the equivalent of stonehenge, you need 4 cities with monuments or a good ally and neither of these come as early. I'd rather spend my bribes on Maritime and I prefer to build paper makers / markets in my new cities. Walls/units if it's a frontline city, which on Deity, if very often is.

Good idea on the screenshot walkthrough. I'll post one next weekend when I'll play again.
 
"How to win on deity without cheesing archipelago turtling" :D

I'm trying for my 2nd deity win with China also. Still alive at 70 AD, but so vastly behind on tech and been stretched so thin from defending vs. 3 AI's that I havn't been able to mount any offensive action. Feels like I can probably turtle for a very long time, but actually winning seems unlikely...

You've been able to successfully steal workers eh? I was afraid to, since the AI had so many units seemingly instantly. And it feels like once the AI declares on you, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to get peace since they will always have more soldiers than you. I had to kill god knows how many Japanese soldiers before I could get peace with Nobunaga, over 1000 years after the war started :/

There is some diplomacy. They are more likely to attack you if you do stuff that pisses them off. But yes, someone who you thought was your buddy will turn on you in an instant...have to assume every neighbor is a threat.

As for China's bonuses, they are amazing. Free 20% promotion to all my units, thanks, + more citadels. Citadels are ridiculous vs. the AI, they don't really seem to understand them. I had AI suiciding on an ungarrisonned citadel because they couldn't be bothered to pillage it, apparently.

PS: well you probably figured it out, but don't take troytheface too seriously.
 
You said that you buy your first settler. Couldn't you use that gold to bribe a cultural city state instead, and skip stonehenge? Then, instead of building stonehenge, build a settler.
 
Good strat. China is one of my favorite civs, the only thing I dislike is how the cho ko's transition badly into riflemen (upgrades become useless).

pi - one of the big downsides of building settlers is that it stops your growth, and oftentimes you can't afford that on deity.
 
I'm able to steal a few city-state workers if they're not too far. They appear really soon, before alliances / protection pacts are made with AI.

In early game, it saves quite a few turns & quite a lot of gold. I spend all my gold on settlers so my capital can keep growing or an emergency unit / land buy.
 
:D
i am playing king level and will probably get to emperor in about a year or so

right now i try to move my settler to a desert dune and most often it takes about two turns to get there and then i have to struggle to get even let alone win

never in a rush to figure out numbers, calculations, procedures. that would be counter productive to playing it seems like

but i appreciate the post. You could do a walk through with pics for those interested

Course you can lie like heel on those as well. Which reminds me- i need to make a walk through
"Desert Attack in the Sands of Forever" or something

Hi Troy!

Oooohhhh the first Attacko guide for civ V ... cant wait !!! :clap::woohoo:
 
Good strat. China is one of my favorite civs, the only thing I dislike is how the cho ko's transition badly into riflemen (upgrades become useless).

pi - one of the big downsides of building settlers is that it stops your growth, and oftentimes you can't afford that on deity.

well to have any reasonable chance at stone henge you need be working max production tiles, which slows down your growth just as much as spending ~8 turns building a settler. I don't think growth is that important though, you can easily catch up as soon as you ally with a maritime CS. Not much point growing faster than your workers can build improvements.
 
I considered not going for Stonehenge, but really, what are the better early alternatives? Great Library for one free tech, ideally iron working? Maybe. Pyramids? Nice, but not better. In my average 200-250 turn game, Stonehenge will give me a total of 1600-2000 culture and plenty of land expansion around the capital. That's a great bang for the buck for 10-14 turns with a small early city with a good hammer tile. I'm able to get a few scouts out before so they're doing exploring / worker "recruiting". :)

Alliances aren't cheap to maintain early. I don't know what you guys are doing, but it takes me a while to stockpile 500 gold and I hate to spend before I can get Patronage in.

The thing about deity on quick is that it's really unforgiving. Mistakes are harder to correct so it really forces you to get strategic. I'm really open to other ideas though. Deity is ruthless and even if you survive early-game, there aren't any guarantees you'll catch up.
 
the alternative is to build a settler instead of buying it. As you said, 500 gold is a lot, i'd rather not blow it on a settler.
Also, I'm starting to dislike patronage on deity. It commits you to focusing heavily on city states, and the problem is that on deity just conquers them so fast, you often can't get much benefit from them after taking patronage.
 
Good strat. China is one of my favorite civs, the only thing I dislike is how the cho ko's transition badly into riflemen (upgrades become useless).

Don't upgrade.

Choko 10 str + 45% gg + 33% oligarchy + 15% discipline + Barrage 3 + two ranged shots a turn = ranged Rifleman. Perfect defensive until you get offensive tech lead.
 
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