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I'd like to ask the other posters to share their experiences in beating Diety, and I'd like to share mine.
I've beaten all the difficulties of Civ 4 (except Settler, which I didn't try). In my view the game is far more fun on the easier levels, but I just had to beat the harder ones too, just to show that I could do it.
The challenge: two nasty Civs, the French and English on a pangea continent and a Tiny world. I was Rome. Now, the extent to which the AI cheats in Diety is dumbfounding. The civs start off with most of the starting techs, including archery. This is nothing new as they also get this in Immortal and Emperor difficulties. The difference in Diety is they also get a settler to start, and workers, and they develop archers every few turns, so their cities are already defended by them by the first time that you discover them, so your (pathetic) warriors are unable to grab an extra city early in the game like they can in the easier levels. Worse still, their capital cities are located next to iron. Now, I've only tried Diety once, so I don't know if this is a co-incidence, but I suspect not. Of course, if all that weren't enough, their cities get far more health points than you do, and they research much faster, as if the massive head start wasn't enough.
So what do you do when faced with such a massive disadvantage? Play Rome. Sharpen your praetorians' swords really well, and fix yourself a nice juicy archer sandwich ... or well over a hundred of them.
Now, the only way of beating the odds and surviving in this environment is to do some creative saving. (Yes, you could edit the config files and enable development mode too, but that's too obvious. You might as well just play the easier levels.) Whenever I play in the harder difficulties I do a scouting run first before I actually play. What I mean is that I save the gave before even settling my first settler and then make a beehive towards iron while building only warriors. The objective of this is usually to discover barbarian huts and pop them, and also, far more importantly, to discover iron, stone and marble and copper. The obvious strategy is to build your capital right next to the iron, and then make sure your enemies have no access to it. Believe it or not, this works even on the Diety level.
After doing my scouting run I discovered 3 huts, and I also found ... iron, almost right next to my capital. Perfect. Of course, I found that the AI placed iron next to my opponents' capitals and I found that Olreans was built right beside iron as well. I also found a copper deposit more or less in no-man's land and horses and elephants near York.
Knowing all of this, I was ready to re-start at 3000 BC and give it my best shot. If I couldn't win with Rome and iron right beside me then I couldn't win. I made a beehive towards iron working, just as in the scouting run, except that I was intending to also research road building so I could build my road towards the iron. I built 3 warriors, two for defense and one to steal a French worker, which I did after a few turns. (The fools are frequently busy right at the borders so you can make a surprise attack. If the defending archer is far enough away you can then run away towards your city and not lose the offensive unit.) I made the worker start building mines to increase production speed, while I built barracks.
Rome gets no offensive bonuses, so barracks are a must. In the mean time, I popped a hut to reveal a scout. I then used him to get to the next hut, which gave me a tech (if I recall). I then used him to slowly traverse the continent to the third hut, which I reached only about 2 turns before a rival scout. I found that if I popped the hut immediately I would get another scout, but if I waited a turn I would get a tech: roads! Wonderful, that speeded up my invasion by 10 turns, without which I would not have won. I had my stolen worker build roads to my mines, and then I built a road to what would one day be my iron mine. In the mean time I started building Stonehenge.
My plans worked so perfectly you'd think that I won the lottery of Civ 4. I moved my worker onto the iron square just in time to begin building the iron mine after research permitted. A turn before this mine was completed Napoleon built Stonehenge in Orleans, and a turn later I picked up the cash consolation prize... which is what I really wanted anyway because it was just enough to convert my a warrior into an axeman and repel the 2-3 French archers that were approaching Rome. My axeman did his job perfectly, for just as the archers emerged from the forest their heads rolled back into it, and Rome was safe.
Thereafter Rome was turned into a factory for praetorians. During the next thousand years the only other thing I built was exactly one axeman. I did not build a settler until much later in the game. This meant that I fought the bulk of my long war with only one city, because at the much harder levels conquered cities are so obstinately recalcitrant that the only way of making them happy is for Thepsis to come along and write them a play and increase their culture levels.
I first sent my praetorians to Paris, where they made sure the citizens were nice and hungry. I kept one of them right beside the capital for the duration of the game, just in case Bonesy got ideas about rebuilding something. I sent the others to Orleans, where I demolished the stone quarry there, and secured the iron mine. I then sent my newer prateorians to England, where they trashed the horse ranch by York and then moved on to London and destroyed the iron mine there. Because I'd waited so long to attack Lizzy, she managed to research iron working and build two swordsmen and an axeman before I put a stop to her activities.
I then took a massive risk. I sent my London invasion force back to York, where it joined a third praetorian who trashed the elephant camp there.
All this time my research was at 10% at its highest, and I was taking a thousand years to research pottery, while Lizzy already had construction and the potential to build war elephants!
In the meantime I exploited Bonesy's aggression by luring a mass of about five of his archers towards Rome, but on the way they stupidly attacked my praetorians while they were dug in at either forests or hills. In the process, Bonesy left Orleans with only three defenders, which I mowed down with an offensive force of only three praetorians. That was the first major victory of the game. Stonehenge was razed, and Bonesy was significantly weaker. I then focussed on York, which I knocked out with four badly injured praetorians, half of whom were used to intercept the stream of archers that dripped from London. After lots of attacking, failing and going back to saved games I razed York. Now it was time to move towards London, and de-weed the English land of English cities. I started by making sure that Lizzy was nice and hungry, and so as to stop her from researching at as astronomical a rate and building a whole lot. Because she had construction, she was building catapults, which are, fortunately, not a very strong offensive weapon. She also made a very useful mistake at that point because I crushed the settler she sent in my direction, while at the same time she left the rather large city of Nottingham poorly defended. I exploited this and razed it, and moved towards Warwick which was defended by an axeman.
Now while this was happening I wasn't particularly worried about a funny little feature of Civ 4 that I'd never previously experienced: strikes. If your civ cannot pay for its army even when its research rate is 0%, you will start to get disbanded units. I came within the skin of my teeth of getting this to happen on several occasions during my war, but in each case I would crush a city just in time to balance the books on my sprawling archer coldcuts business. Rome grew to a pathetic size of only 5, even though Caesar is expansive! In the meantime, late cities like Nottingham were already larger than my capital, which was my only city, as I said before. To compound these troubles, my citizens started getting unhappy, and my city actually shrank to a pathetic 3! (This was well after 1 AD too!)
I split up my army at this point and sent them towards smaller cities that Bonesy and Lizzy squirted around and soiled the land with while I wasn't looking. I also got really lucky when attacking Warwick, which was defended by Lizzy's only axeman, and razed both it and another (surprise) city at the same time. Thereafter things finally got easy. I sent some of my now huge army towards London, while I cleaned the rest of the world of the more useless tiny cities. At one point I also had to defend Rome from an invasion by sea, as Lizzy had landed a swordsman and axeman right beside my city, but it was no problem.
The only remaining challenge were the two enemy capitals. I was originally planing to leave them and camp outside them while I expanded, but Lizzy was so advanced I was afraid that she'd develop feudalism and put up longbowmen. Now, London was walled (almost since the start) and on a hill, so charging it was only possible with the most experienced units, but I managed. England was dead, and I'd practically beaten Diety... but not yet.
Now, I've won every possible victory in Civ IV except for the diplomatic victory, so I decided to try for that. After all, if you're by far the most populous civilization then it's fairly easy to elect yourself whatever you want, right? The only trouble is making the massive technological leaps required, and at this stage in the game (about AD 1000) I had just barely developed pottery! Ok, so it was going to be a challenge, but so is Diety.
I kept a group of praetorians parked on Bonesy's lawn and kindly crushed whatever settlers he may have been producing. During the next thousand years, my units killed so many French archers and other units that their experience points exceeded 100. I built two of my own cities. One at the spot where London had once stood, and one at the spot Orleans had once stood, just so that the iron resources could be covered once and for all. I then found myself in a rather difficult situation: the empire was way too expensive and my research rates were at 0% and most of my army disbanded! At one point I was afraid that Rome would have no defenders at all, and it would never grow beyond size 3 again.
I got around this by building the pyramids and adopting Representation, which gives every city extra happy points and therefore gets you more cash somehow or other. I also built the Oracle, adopted pacifism and went about my merry way trying as hard as possible to advance technologically. It was probably 1800 by the time that I finally surpassed Bonesy, who in spite of having only one city, and no food at all, was still able to research faster than me for a few hundred years. (That's how much the AI cheats!)
Another thing that I noticed is that even if you build your own city on territory that once belonged to your enemy, his culture is still much more influential there! I had to struggle to keep my city from joining the French.
At AD 2000 I decided that enough was enough. Being just barely in the industrial era I decided I would never build the UN in time, so I decided to slaughter my French rival in favour of a conquest victory. Lame, but I won.
I've beaten all the difficulties of Civ 4 (except Settler, which I didn't try). In my view the game is far more fun on the easier levels, but I just had to beat the harder ones too, just to show that I could do it.
The challenge: two nasty Civs, the French and English on a pangea continent and a Tiny world. I was Rome. Now, the extent to which the AI cheats in Diety is dumbfounding. The civs start off with most of the starting techs, including archery. This is nothing new as they also get this in Immortal and Emperor difficulties. The difference in Diety is they also get a settler to start, and workers, and they develop archers every few turns, so their cities are already defended by them by the first time that you discover them, so your (pathetic) warriors are unable to grab an extra city early in the game like they can in the easier levels. Worse still, their capital cities are located next to iron. Now, I've only tried Diety once, so I don't know if this is a co-incidence, but I suspect not. Of course, if all that weren't enough, their cities get far more health points than you do, and they research much faster, as if the massive head start wasn't enough.
So what do you do when faced with such a massive disadvantage? Play Rome. Sharpen your praetorians' swords really well, and fix yourself a nice juicy archer sandwich ... or well over a hundred of them.
Now, the only way of beating the odds and surviving in this environment is to do some creative saving. (Yes, you could edit the config files and enable development mode too, but that's too obvious. You might as well just play the easier levels.) Whenever I play in the harder difficulties I do a scouting run first before I actually play. What I mean is that I save the gave before even settling my first settler and then make a beehive towards iron while building only warriors. The objective of this is usually to discover barbarian huts and pop them, and also, far more importantly, to discover iron, stone and marble and copper. The obvious strategy is to build your capital right next to the iron, and then make sure your enemies have no access to it. Believe it or not, this works even on the Diety level.
After doing my scouting run I discovered 3 huts, and I also found ... iron, almost right next to my capital. Perfect. Of course, I found that the AI placed iron next to my opponents' capitals and I found that Olreans was built right beside iron as well. I also found a copper deposit more or less in no-man's land and horses and elephants near York.
Knowing all of this, I was ready to re-start at 3000 BC and give it my best shot. If I couldn't win with Rome and iron right beside me then I couldn't win. I made a beehive towards iron working, just as in the scouting run, except that I was intending to also research road building so I could build my road towards the iron. I built 3 warriors, two for defense and one to steal a French worker, which I did after a few turns. (The fools are frequently busy right at the borders so you can make a surprise attack. If the defending archer is far enough away you can then run away towards your city and not lose the offensive unit.) I made the worker start building mines to increase production speed, while I built barracks.
Rome gets no offensive bonuses, so barracks are a must. In the mean time, I popped a hut to reveal a scout. I then used him to get to the next hut, which gave me a tech (if I recall). I then used him to slowly traverse the continent to the third hut, which I reached only about 2 turns before a rival scout. I found that if I popped the hut immediately I would get another scout, but if I waited a turn I would get a tech: roads! Wonderful, that speeded up my invasion by 10 turns, without which I would not have won. I had my stolen worker build roads to my mines, and then I built a road to what would one day be my iron mine. In the mean time I started building Stonehenge.
My plans worked so perfectly you'd think that I won the lottery of Civ 4. I moved my worker onto the iron square just in time to begin building the iron mine after research permitted. A turn before this mine was completed Napoleon built Stonehenge in Orleans, and a turn later I picked up the cash consolation prize... which is what I really wanted anyway because it was just enough to convert my a warrior into an axeman and repel the 2-3 French archers that were approaching Rome. My axeman did his job perfectly, for just as the archers emerged from the forest their heads rolled back into it, and Rome was safe.
Thereafter Rome was turned into a factory for praetorians. During the next thousand years the only other thing I built was exactly one axeman. I did not build a settler until much later in the game. This meant that I fought the bulk of my long war with only one city, because at the much harder levels conquered cities are so obstinately recalcitrant that the only way of making them happy is for Thepsis to come along and write them a play and increase their culture levels.
I first sent my praetorians to Paris, where they made sure the citizens were nice and hungry. I kept one of them right beside the capital for the duration of the game, just in case Bonesy got ideas about rebuilding something. I sent the others to Orleans, where I demolished the stone quarry there, and secured the iron mine. I then sent my newer prateorians to England, where they trashed the horse ranch by York and then moved on to London and destroyed the iron mine there. Because I'd waited so long to attack Lizzy, she managed to research iron working and build two swordsmen and an axeman before I put a stop to her activities.
I then took a massive risk. I sent my London invasion force back to York, where it joined a third praetorian who trashed the elephant camp there.
All this time my research was at 10% at its highest, and I was taking a thousand years to research pottery, while Lizzy already had construction and the potential to build war elephants!
In the meantime I exploited Bonesy's aggression by luring a mass of about five of his archers towards Rome, but on the way they stupidly attacked my praetorians while they were dug in at either forests or hills. In the process, Bonesy left Orleans with only three defenders, which I mowed down with an offensive force of only three praetorians. That was the first major victory of the game. Stonehenge was razed, and Bonesy was significantly weaker. I then focussed on York, which I knocked out with four badly injured praetorians, half of whom were used to intercept the stream of archers that dripped from London. After lots of attacking, failing and going back to saved games I razed York. Now it was time to move towards London, and de-weed the English land of English cities. I started by making sure that Lizzy was nice and hungry, and so as to stop her from researching at as astronomical a rate and building a whole lot. Because she had construction, she was building catapults, which are, fortunately, not a very strong offensive weapon. She also made a very useful mistake at that point because I crushed the settler she sent in my direction, while at the same time she left the rather large city of Nottingham poorly defended. I exploited this and razed it, and moved towards Warwick which was defended by an axeman.
Now while this was happening I wasn't particularly worried about a funny little feature of Civ 4 that I'd never previously experienced: strikes. If your civ cannot pay for its army even when its research rate is 0%, you will start to get disbanded units. I came within the skin of my teeth of getting this to happen on several occasions during my war, but in each case I would crush a city just in time to balance the books on my sprawling archer coldcuts business. Rome grew to a pathetic size of only 5, even though Caesar is expansive! In the meantime, late cities like Nottingham were already larger than my capital, which was my only city, as I said before. To compound these troubles, my citizens started getting unhappy, and my city actually shrank to a pathetic 3! (This was well after 1 AD too!)
I split up my army at this point and sent them towards smaller cities that Bonesy and Lizzy squirted around and soiled the land with while I wasn't looking. I also got really lucky when attacking Warwick, which was defended by Lizzy's only axeman, and razed both it and another (surprise) city at the same time. Thereafter things finally got easy. I sent some of my now huge army towards London, while I cleaned the rest of the world of the more useless tiny cities. At one point I also had to defend Rome from an invasion by sea, as Lizzy had landed a swordsman and axeman right beside my city, but it was no problem.
The only remaining challenge were the two enemy capitals. I was originally planing to leave them and camp outside them while I expanded, but Lizzy was so advanced I was afraid that she'd develop feudalism and put up longbowmen. Now, London was walled (almost since the start) and on a hill, so charging it was only possible with the most experienced units, but I managed. England was dead, and I'd practically beaten Diety... but not yet.
Now, I've won every possible victory in Civ IV except for the diplomatic victory, so I decided to try for that. After all, if you're by far the most populous civilization then it's fairly easy to elect yourself whatever you want, right? The only trouble is making the massive technological leaps required, and at this stage in the game (about AD 1000) I had just barely developed pottery! Ok, so it was going to be a challenge, but so is Diety.
I kept a group of praetorians parked on Bonesy's lawn and kindly crushed whatever settlers he may have been producing. During the next thousand years, my units killed so many French archers and other units that their experience points exceeded 100. I built two of my own cities. One at the spot where London had once stood, and one at the spot Orleans had once stood, just so that the iron resources could be covered once and for all. I then found myself in a rather difficult situation: the empire was way too expensive and my research rates were at 0% and most of my army disbanded! At one point I was afraid that Rome would have no defenders at all, and it would never grow beyond size 3 again.
I got around this by building the pyramids and adopting Representation, which gives every city extra happy points and therefore gets you more cash somehow or other. I also built the Oracle, adopted pacifism and went about my merry way trying as hard as possible to advance technologically. It was probably 1800 by the time that I finally surpassed Bonesy, who in spite of having only one city, and no food at all, was still able to research faster than me for a few hundred years. (That's how much the AI cheats!)
Another thing that I noticed is that even if you build your own city on territory that once belonged to your enemy, his culture is still much more influential there! I had to struggle to keep my city from joining the French.
At AD 2000 I decided that enough was enough. Being just barely in the industrial era I decided I would never build the UN in time, so I decided to slaughter my French rival in favour of a conquest victory. Lame, but I won.
) is about replaying until you get enough breaks to squeeze out a win. The probability can be brought down from 1 in a billion or whatever by choosing the right civs, waiting for a great capital etc, but it will never be anything close to 100% even with flawless play on random starts which you generate.
.
Especially if it's a learning experience.
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