Demi God Blues

[jshelr]

I was hoping that Demi was the level that would provide a good end game without making me ill during the early game. To a modest extent, that has turned out to be true. I would be interested in other experiences.

As a decent Emperor player, I've gotten into the rut of moving ahead at the turn into the industrial era and having the game all over before the modern era. On Demi, I have not managed to do well in the ancient era with two exceptions

1) Persia, where I adopt the subtle strat of building the UU and breaking things to extort tech

2) Egypt, where I adopt the subtle strat of building the UU and hitting anything that moves to extort tech

Persia works better since the UU lasts well into the middle ages where it is a really cheap 4-pt attacker and the science trait really helps. Egypt with a bunch of closely packed cities can get out of the early squeeze a bit more easily, however.

So, I'm happy with the fact that the Demi games are far from over heading into the modern era but I have not got a clue how to manage the ancient era in anything other than total-warmonger-all-the-time fashion.

In that sense, the Demi level trades an interesting late game for a rigid and, perhaps, strategically less interesting early game. What I'm doing is playing three or four games in order to get past the start once. That's not really a successful approach.

So, the questions are, do others who were successful much of the time on Deity level believe that Demi level is appreciably easier? Do they agree that you can't play Demi without all out war and are there ways to make non-industrious civs get the job done?

[nbarclay]

I'm not really a Deity player, but with enough restarts, I've come up with starting positions on Demigod that make a builder-style ancient era possible. You might think about using restarts to work from especially good starting positions at first (playing out the early game just long enough to see how badly you'll be crowded) and then working up toward harder starting positions. Note that agricultural civs with plenty of river are unusually easy to play, as are seafaring civs on archipelago maps where you get a decent-sized land mass to yourself. (Getting a land mass to yourself eliminates the problem of AIs grabbing too much land before a player's REX can get going, and curraughs with seafaring civs can still provide fairly early contact.) Also, if you're not expansionist, playing with no barbarians can provide a bit of an edge in the early game (since humans can adjust better than AIs can).

Granted, such "adjustments" mean that you aren't getting the full impact of playing on the harder level. (Under exactly the right conditions, I can even get an ancient tech lead on Deity - something I've been experimenting with a bit lately and plan to start a thread on sometime.) But picking what kind of starting position you play out for a full game can be a good way of adjusting the difficulty more precisely than the difficulty levels alone allow.

Nathan

[Dominae]

jshelr, how far into your peaceful Demigod games do you get before you call it quits and start a warmonger one? The Industrial era? The Modern era?

I'm guessing here, but could it be that you stop to assess your peaceful games, and stop playing them because you're still not at parity by the end of the Medieval era? If so, what's the problem?! That's exactly the kind of challenge you're looking for!

Have you ever played a game where you did not get parity until the Modern era, but then pulled ahead for the win? Admittedly it takes patience to trudge along for so long (but in-game and in number of hours).

There's no question that warmongering is better than building in Civ3. Players who think that they can accomplish the same as the former with the latter are simply wrong; you can win the game without a fight, but you'll win the game faster and more convincingly if you get your swords bloody. Demigod and Deity do not require warmongering, but since warmongering is better, it's easier to win on those difficulties when you engage in it.


Dominae

[vmxa1]

So far the only non warring game that I did well at was with AG civs. Rexing hard and using the exploit of curraghs to find civs early. If the map does not allow me to get the contacts with a decent lead time over the AI, then it is war time.

I suspect that Dom has a point about not being required, but it is so tempting. Also what does warmongering mean? Does it include attacking once in the ancient age, but not starting others or does it mean going to war over and over?
IOW do you have to not be in a war at all in the ancient age to avoid being a warmonger?

[Catt]

Maybe this sounds a little negative, but I think the game plays out the same overarching way at any level -- you may or may not secure parity or a lead at some point, but once you do, it is likely over from there. In your own words, at Emperor the turning point for you came around the end of Middle Ages / Beginning of Industrial -- I would be willing to hazard a guess that a step up to Demi-God would not appreciably change the face of the game, but might push the "turning point" further out a bit (provided you maintained the patience to play from behind for a lot longer time - don't know how often you played Deity and whether you were generally successful or not).

I wasn't a beta tester and therefore have only played a half-dozen or so epic games through, perhaps 3 of them at DG level. Feels a bit like the old Deity level (free AI settler; slightly faster pace than Emperor). But based on previous experience on Monarch-Emperor-Deity and limited experience with the new Demi-God, I'm still not expecting a more challenging late game -- I'm simply expecting the turning point, if it comes, to come at different points in my civ's development (which has its entertainment value, but does not equal a game-long challenge).

Originally posted by jshelr
So, the questions are, do others who were successful much of the time on Deity level believe that Demi level is appreciably easier? Do they agree that you can't play Demi without all out war and are there ways to make non-industrious civs get the job done?

I didn't play Deity a lot - I preferred Emperor - but I like to think I gave Deity a fair shake. I've played only 3 epic Demi-God full games (2 since the 1.12 patch), and it feels quite a bit more like pre-C3C Deity than pre-C3C Emperor; due principally, in my own speculation, to the free AI settler at the start.

But I don't think all-out war has ever been required. My very first v1.12 patch game was Demi-God, standard map, all random. I drew the Germans (Mil / Sci). I had some good and some bad early luck (good=free hut settler for my fourth or fifth city although popped pretty far from home; bad=disease in city 2 early and an early settler lost to raging barbs). Didn't get Philosophy (and its free tech) first. The start terrain / circumstances was average, IMO. By pure happenstance, I ended up playing the game without any of the following: (1) war, of any kind, for the entire game; (2) an FP; or (3) a golden age. It had been a long time since I played a pure peace Deity game pre-C3C, but the experience here reminded me of it very much; and reminded me that war is not required in the vast majority of situations.

If you didn't play Deity much in PTW and you're finding the Demi-God early game to be too strategically straight-jacketed by the need for early warfare, I'd suggest you stick with Demi-God for a while longer but don't rely on early warfare as an equalizer -- play peacefully even when it means you're entering the Middle Ages as someone is building Copernicus' Observatory. I suspect you're far beyond the skill level needed to win at every level but maybe you just haven't had enough experience with playing from behind (far behind!) and come to a conclusion (erroneously) that warfare, now!, is needed, when more experience might allow you to conclude that your position didn't require that warfare.

All of that said . . .

Originally posted by Dominae
There's no question that warmongering is better than building in Civ3. Players who think that they can accomplish the same as the former with the latter are simply wrong; you can win the game without a fight, but you'll win the game faster and more convincingly if you get your swords bloody. Demigod and Deity do not require warmongering, but since warmongering is better, it's easier to win on those difficulties when you engage in it.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

Catt

[Aeson]

I've noticed a tendancy of the AI's to play better through the end of the Middle Ages in Conquests. Getting a tech lead on Demi-God is somewhat easier than PtW/vanilla Deity, but maintaining it is harder. Probably due to the changes to the FP and resource distribution. I seem to usually miss out on either Iron or Saltpeter when they would be most effectively applied, while a couple of the AI at least have them both.

Once the Industrial age comes around though, the game pretty much falls apart. The AI was never very good at utilizing Factories (or making plays at ToE, even if you didn't use a pre-build), so Industrial was the turning point in difficult games. Now you add their inability to use Irrigation and Specialists properly and it's a very large advantage to the player.

[jshelr]

Thanks for the posts guys.

Dom may be right that I'm not only whining but whining inconsistently. Some of the Demi games were stopped when the AI tech lead made it stupid to continue warmongering and it might be the case that simple persistence will pull you out of a seemingly deep hole. Aeson certainly suggests this is so and his view of the post-industrial game squares with my experience that a democratic government and adequate civ size are enough to permit the human player to compete favorably on Demi in the late industrial and modern era. I think I'll take Nathan's and Catt's advice and look for good starting spots to try to rex from and see if it's possible to play more flexibly. (Good starting spots seem relatively rare, apart from isolated islands, however.)