3-Step approaching for beating Deity

[randomturn]

Tiny maps, huge maps, few civs, many civs -- it works on all, though it will take longer on bigger maps. Thanks to many people here, notably DanS and David Weldon, for contributing to the thinking in this "Vassal State" approach. The basic principle is to use the AI's strengths, judo-like, against it: 1. The AI adds cities and develops land much faster than you can. 2. It is very aggressive about building cities near your borders to hem you in. 3. It aggressively trades science, making it impossible for you to get a huge science lead. 4. Corruption in large empires slows your perimeter cities to a crawl.

The Vassal State approach solves all of these problems and/or turns them to your advantage:
1. Rush, rush, rush your enemies. Build whatever units you need to wage war on your particular neighbors. If you can use veteran warriors, great; if you need archers, horsemen or even swordsmen (if Greeks as neighbors), build those. Renege on treaties. Don’t worry about your reputation since no one powerful will be left near you in the early game, and you’ll do so much trading in the middle game that it will recover. Don't stop to build anything else, even temples, until you have reduced all of your immediate neighbors to Vassals: 1-2 cities each on tiny maps and 5-10 cities each on huge maps. Build settlers very rarely and only to fill in key gaps. Let the AI civs build your cities for you; you cannot compete with them. Follow the AI settler/warrior pairs around the map with vet archers or 2 vet warriors, then attack as soon as they form a city. By the end of the first age you should have the largest empire. By the end of the second age your empire should be 3-5 times larger than that of your nearest competitor.

2. Your Vassals will ask you to renew peace every 20 years. Decline, then before the negotiation ends make your own peace proposal. In the early game, they will give you everything they can each time: lump sum, gold per turn, techs, world maps, luxuries, and communications. In the middle game, they will give you not quite everything they can, but still a lot. Their remaining empires suffer little or no corruption and are thus still proficient at generating cash and tech. In this way you have, in essence, multiple capitals or Forbidden Palaces. Your "empire" (in fact if not in name) will be much more efficient. Congratulations, you've just licked corruption.

3. Get communications for everyone you can. If you have to build a ship early, do so; that investment will pay off when these new trading partners are giving you gold by the thousands. By midway thru the 2nd age, you should be getting to a sweet spot where you are always researching the cutting-edge techs and your rivals are paying you 20-40/turn to get them from you. Their resources are being siphoned off to pay you, which solidifies your advantage. Now you like that the AI civs trade tech so aggressively. In a huge map with many civs, expect to have 3-6 Vassal States and 3-6 other, relatively advanced civs. The advanced civs will give you between 20-40 gold/turn for each cutting-edge tech; with lesser civs paying a little under that when they catch up. That’s 4000+ gold per tech. By the start of the 3rd age, you should have science at 100% and still be netting 500-1000 gold/turn between your Vassal States paying you off for peace and everyone else paying you off for tech and resources. You’ll be behind in city improvements, so start rushing them with your newfound wealth. Be on top of the diplomacy game: get everything you can from your Vassals. Don't sell other civs techs for nothing; when they can't afford more, wait until they can and a few turns later that same civ will be offering you 10 gold/turn more than they were for the same tech. Don't be lazy and forget to contact the civs regularly; you don't want the other advanced civs selling weaker ones the same techs that you should be selling them (unless they weren't in position to offer anything anyway). Don't research oddball techs unless you must, as your vassal states will eventually give them to you when they periodically sue to extend the peace treaty. By mid-late game, you’ll have a commanding enough lead that you can go for whatever style of win you that want.

If you go back and look at the 4 major problems in Civ3, you’ll see that under this approach, all 4 now are working for you rather than against you. Even corruption is now your friend, because you have cracked it in a way that the AI never can, and hence it is a relative strength of your empire.

[Madine]

This strategy seems to rely very heavily on the loyalty of the vassal states.

[Out4Blood]

Great post.

This is almost exactly what my game has evolved to as well as I described here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33894

Things to watch out for:
1. Don't get out of the tech loop during the early fighting. If you get bogged down waging war with one AI, it will no longer have the techs needed to keep you up to speed and the other civs won't trade. You will then have to go to war with the tech leader to get back into it - a risky proposition.
2. Let them settle before attacking as randomturn states. The benefits from taking an AI town are way better than having 2 free workers.
3. Really, don't build ANYTHING but military until you have them under control - even stopping to build a temple can put a serious crimp in your plans. One exception is key wonders with the leaders you get.

[randomturn]

Madine: yes it does. and their loyalty is assured. there is something about the AI code that no matter how you've treated them in the past, a notably weaker civ will do anything to maintain peace with you. Believe me, the Vassal States will be your a$$-puppets pretty much all game long.

Out4Blood: I checked out your treatise; it's excellent. The emphasis on early military action is right on. The key thing that I want to let people know about is the Vassal State strategy: at the right moment, you need to stop your early wars (and start one against the next neighbor). The idea is that once these guys are already beaten, their extra cities do you more good in their hands than in yours, since they will experience no corruption in their hands (since their civ is small) and will produce much more tech and cash for you than if you took them over for yourself. Tribute from Vassal States, plus trading cutting-edge techs and luxuries, will always beat deity

[David Weldon]

Nicely stated, Randomturn. Thanks for the little bit o' credit, even if there was a typo.

One comment about getting out of the tech loop early, I've found this isn't a big problem because of one commodity you can give in the early game which is incredibly valuable: Your world map.

One should be cautious here, but I have found it worth trading. First, because you got your vassal's world maps when they sued for peace, your world map is probably larger than other civs'. Second, if you are on your own continent, or if your vassals have done a good job of sealing up the only non-sea approach to your lands from other states, you don't really risk much by giving up your map. Third, if you wait 'till later, the world map becomes utterly worthless (my experience, anyway). Fourth, since most of your empire was taken from someone else, there's already a map out there for those lands, so you might as well be the one to get paid for it. I find that this helps to get some tech if I don't have anything else to trade with.

Of course luxuries, workers, and less-than-perfect vassal cities can also be traded to get caught up in tech if necessary.

[nato]

This is very clever and well thought out. Thanks for sharing it. Making the problems work for you - good solution!

It seems like the only reason to not totally conquer the AIs is the corruption. Dealing with corruption is kind of dominating Civ3. They used to call Age of Empires "Age of Buildings" as a complaint about how strong buildings were; maybe Civilization 3 will be "Corruption 3".

One thing I notice is the strategy is to rush. Every RTS I have played has eventually gotten to the point where only rushing was viable. I wonder if TBS Civ will go the same way.

Just some thoughts. Again, your strat is really cool ... gives you kind of an overlord feel. I'm gonna try it out.

[Monoriu]

I like the rapid early expansion, develop empire to full, build up a 200 unit army, then crush everybody in one gigantic but step by step battle approach. I play every one of my previous and current civ games that way. But then I have only played Monarch level in civ 3. Maybe you are right, its the only way to win on Deity. I'll have to try it out myself.

A challenge though, can you win on Deity level, huge map, 4 civs?
or Deity level, huge ISLAND map, 8 civs?

Anyway, excellent post Thanks for the very detailed tips.

[liupang]

Brilliant

A little bit rebuff on Military side. I think build 2 cities initially sometimes suits you better. Reasons:
1) 2 cities supports more armies.
2) You can use one to build workers to boost your captiol to 12 during the fight, so your capitol will be cranking out swordman in 2 turns easily(or 1 turn spearman).
3) Sometimes, you really need swordman to conquer a neighbour if it happened to have a great defense unique unit, or it's a militaristic civ. So a little bit delay before launch your initial attack is OK since you will be waiting for Iron working and finding the iron.

I agree you should launch your attack probably before 1500BC, hopefully before 2000BC. but a strong base of 2 core cities can sometimes help in the long run. Also, use some tweaked build I can build 2-3 big cities pretty fast. The key here lies in to force build granary, drive it to size 7 asap. ALso, always try to find a cattle or wheat around a river to base your initial cities.

Now back to your post. About your "Vassal country" idea: Brilliant! I got to try it myself though. In my previous games I always try to finish them asap, because it seems the conquered cities reverts back to the initial nation, even after some 500 years and they have only 1 size 1 city left, and the city revolt has Forbidden City built, with temple/cathe/lib/univ and everything! So, do you experience this same kind of things in your game? Or you have a trick to handle this?

OK, in exchange, I offer some of my little dirty tips. It probably are already known and used by you guys, but oh well :
1) double your speed sweeping an enemy: try to contact the nation you are conquering every turn. At first possible turn, offer peace and ask for one of their cities. Try choose those ones your other front army are approaching. If they are not weaken enough, they probably won't give in. Offer them huge amount of per-turn money, say 100 gold / per turn , they will eventually sign the deal. Declare war the same turn, or rest your armies and ask their troops resting in mountain area to leave for 1-2 turn, then declare war again. DOn't worry, the 100-200 money you paid in those turns, you will get back in next deal. And as they get weaker, you can milk them much more frequently(they will virtually see your envoy after just 1 or 2 turns after you declared war again.
The best part of the deal, is the city get this way don't have resistors-- your army can just march on to next target.

2) The best way to break out of a tech. fall-behind: get the tech leader and cheat him heavily. Offer one of your big siz city on edge of your empire with no buildings, preferrably a newly-conquered one. sell it to tech leaders for lots of goodies. Then if he still have much techs left, sell another one. After all sellable cities gone, try buy all the left techs. Actually, this is better done in reverse order (i.e, buy first, sell cities later). Be careful only offer per-turn money deal for tech though, unless you like the idea to giving up 1k gold for map making...
This better all be done in one turn. Then , declare war and recapture the city. Problem solved.
After several turns , you should be able to contact that poor guy who gave you everything for nothing, and sue for peace. Surprisingly,
you can usually still get some goodie from it! )

This strat is best done while : a. the guy you try to dupe is in a far far far away continent; b. you have a very good +number
gold per turn so they will accept such deals(I've noticed that when I have no + gold per turn, they will decline your offer
like this). c. It's in ancient or middle age , before mutual protection was there, and you are better not in democracy or republic;
d. you don't import or intend to import from that nation.

Well, that's my little 2 cents. Hope it's helpful!

Sigh, seems all the strat in deity so far involves some sort of military conquering... I think they should have make the culture stronger for really "alternative" ways to win in Deity.

Oh as for expanding on your own...My best try so far, use persians, I hand-built 7 cities in a standard deity game, before 1000BC, and my 3 big ones goes to size 12 before 800BC. Well, I vitually pat myself on the back for a job well-done(I did NOT find any settlers in hut), and I am not falling too far behind in city numbers(other guys has an average of 8-15 cities), and I have #1 total population. However, I find myself falling so far behind in tech and nobody will trade it to me (, to even break the tech fall-behind. I eventually build up a huge army of persian immortals, and after I go monarch in 500BC, I declared a war on neighboring nations, and grabed every tech by milking my neighbour and then dupe the tech leader Russia The positive part , though, is now I saved my golden age in Monarch , so I can really grab some wonders(I am wondering : SunZ, Sistine, Bach, which one should I get? Dilemmas arghhhhhhhhhhh ).
And since I have like 5 big core cities, I massed an good size army in no time.(with the help of golden age I can get out immortals every turn in 3 of my size 12 cities).

The downside, of course, this will not be a very good game to test out your Vassal strategy . Well, there is only 2 others guys on my continent, anyway

I guess the best civ to use for your strategy are probably the powerful (religious and militaristic) aztec. which IMHO are too good, though.Chinese are another interesting choice, with their very good advantage(militaristic & industrious), and their special unit rider is just in time to trigger a monarch era golden age.


Will this game make me a better or eviler person? Hmm, I wonder...

[Sten Sture]

thanks rt - just got the game fired up and you just saved my a$$ a lot of time. Very elegant strat. I grant you 100 pieces of Ghiradelli chocolates per turn.

[ChrisShaffer]

liupang, the "give away an empty city and recapture it next turn" hack is a bug that will be fixed in the patch.

[randomturn]

Just won another game at deity using the Vassal state strategy. It's fun for all ages. It's so dominating, I almost wonder if it's a game flaw. But there are some game types it doesn't work as well on -- Monoriu has pointed out a couple of tough ones! In both examples, you will find another civ as late as 1000BC, certainly still plenty of time to make some of them into vassals. In these games the AI civs tend to be pretty underdeveloped themselves, so you're still in position militarily to execute the strategy. In the case of islands, you'll want to research ship advances sooner than otherwise, natch.

nato" corruption is the biggest advantage; no matter how well you manage yours, your vassals experience none. Another, is if you keep your vassals up to speed on tech (selling cheap or even giving them every tech you've just shopped to the other major powers), they'll be researching other techs that you want. I often end up getting the oddball techs that I've skipped from my vassals. In essense, you're researching multiple techs at once. Note: you should be selling (or giving) your vassals any tech you just sold to any non-Vassal, since you don't want your vassals spending gold on it that should be coming to you.

David W: fixed the typo: yeah, the map is a very valuable commodity esp. early. As you mention, Vassals will produce exploration for you and give you a straetgic buffer zone . When other civs start attacking them, it gives you some interesting decisions to make!

liupang -- You are so right about getting the Vassals to give you a city in negotiation. It comes to you at the same size, but full of your citizens! I've found that to get to the point where the AI will give you its cities, you have to be threatening its very existence. So I guess the optimal strategy is to take even more cities than you would want for Vassal state strategy purposes and them give some back.

[Out4Blood]

rt - I just won my Deity game usin this - although I wiped out one civ, rather than making them vassals. Because there was space on my continent, all the other civs came to visit and set up shop, making it fairly easy to plunder them. They don't give too much though when you only take 2 far away cities.

Key point you mentioned is to be generous with techs to your vassals. Don't let them get behind in techs either.

[liupang]

How do you handle defection?

I tried the vassal strat but I am really annoyed by constantly revolted back cities. I eventually give away those cities in between us to another civ to set up a "separation zone.". My question here: Is there a good trick you using to keep your captured cities defect free, if you dont' wipe out that civ?

It seems all too important for the success of this strategy. I think I might just raze those captured city that's very close to the rest of that civ, and bring in a settler . But what if they have a wonder that I really want to keep?

I once even had a big city that has forbidden palace, temple, cathe, lib, marketplace, and everything built defect back a civ that has only 1 city left. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (I would have raze it if not for its Sun Tze School )

Maybe it's because you guys conquered really early the enemy civs doesn't have any strong culture built up yet?

[DanS]

Thans for the mention, rt! I'll be trying some ideas out this weekend...

liupang: try attacking as quickly as possible--as fast as you can pump out 6 vet archers or whatever. Liquidate your population, if necessary, considering that a pop point is worth a vet archer. Be as relentless militarily as the AI is at expansion. It goes against your better instincts (we all like to build), but it's the right thing to do.

[randomturn]

liupang -- conquer as early as possible; you'll have virtually no trouble with defection with cities conquered early in the game. When you conquer later, try over-conquering and demanding cities to end war - they will all be your citizens when you get cities this way. You need to have the AI civ pretty beaten to do this, so you may now want to give one or two cities that you've conquered that still have foreign citizens back to the AI -- especially cities that are larger and further away. For other cities you've conquered, you'll want to build workers and settlers (to reduce pop), garrison units, and rush improvements. The further behind you are in culture (monitor via F8 key), the more likely that you'll lose cities. I sometimes give newly conquered cities from one vassal to another vassal if I need to even things out, and none of them seem to have revolted yet. Rushing cultural improvements will improve your empire's cultural rating and also make those particular cities less likely to defect. When you try again I think you'll see that the strategy does not take long to get good at.

DanS, looking forward to hearing how it goes. Keep me posted.

Out4Blood -- excellent! details?