3-Step approaching for beating Deity

[hanZ]

it was discussed in several threads here, but i think its the right time to add some thougths about the right tribe here.

i have to agree with all suggestions from the 3-steps-to-win-post.
attacking early is the key, fro the biggest chance of winning on deity. on smaller maps i would suggest to take the egypts. war cahriots are cheap and quick, and masses of them will turn down every spearmen defense.

industrious is important for building roads und the feet of your attacking forces (quick supplyroutes are very important).

build some swordsman for better defended citys than switch to knights lateron. religious is importat for rushbuiling temples in only two turns. i destroy everything on my way - i just keep one good city in which i rushbuild a forbidden palace with my first leader (you get one this way, im shure). this is a supply base for the citys that are not so near. when you dont like pangea youll need same boats and two or thre harbor citys. then it works the same way.

ive tried alot of tribes but at the end i think for a quick win egypts are the best.

some other point:
my quickest win on deity was 360 ad (could have been quicker but i coulndt find the last two citys) it was over 10000 points worth - i wonder if i would have got more points when i let a few citys to the enemy and tried the space race ....
in old civ2 days i never made more points with going to the last possible date than to take an early victory. in older civ1 days it was the other way. i crached my 386sx every time cause of too many citys .-))


/hanZ

please ignore misstypes and bad grammar/wrong words ...

[DaXX]

yes this strategy has been working very well for me as i am dominating the map and have made everyone i met a vassal. my tip that goes along with the strategy, become a slave driver in your newly conquered cities!!! rush temples within the first 2 or 3 turns and you will never lose the city to revolt!

[liupang]

Randomturn---I guess the key to your strat is the earliness of conquering. Since I am trying this strat in current game, which was an abandoned effort of a peaceful expansion, I guess it's just too late to incorporate it .
Those guys already got too much culture , they will keep revolt no matter how many culture buildings I rushed there. I think I better try the "vassal" approach in a new game. In my current game I will just wipe out everybody (or at least everybody on my continent

BTW, I know how to rush early---used that in my first game in deity ., and my fastest record was by 1500 BC a clean sweep of my whole continent and eliminated 2 civs(they respawned though ) But, I Just think this "vassal" idea is cool: Instead of wipe out the whole enemy nation and put effort in managing their cities by yourself, you make their entire nation as a slave nation working hard for you

[solo]

A brilliant strategy and I'll have to give this a try, after having done it the hard way in a peaceful game.

[Kriton]

I was having trouble in deity until I read this strategy. I've tried it with various civs and it seems to me that a militaristic one is a must. In the beginning, you accumulate money that does nothing. Why not build a barracks and make veterans?

I had the most success with the Chinese. They are also industrious which gives me a mine, a road, and one lumberjack job in 10 turns. They also have a later UU which I believe is the perfect time to go GA. Every city I captured, I rush built a barracks and made more units. But like somebody mentioned earlier, if you are stuck on an island with only 1 or 2 others, you may experience problems.

[dexters]

I just realized Civ 3 has created a true Imperial system with the tribute system reffered to as the Vassal system in this post.

In previous Civ games, diplomacy was pretty much a one time affair. With a tribute system where vassal states essentially pay you off to keep the peace means you control their assets and their territory. I had gotten the Aztecs to give me all their 4 Size 1 cities except for the capital for a peace treaty I know I would break. That's how much they wanted peace.

Brilliant. I haven't thought about it that way.

Now, I regret killing off the Aztecs. They WERE my ass puppets


One question. How about Containment? I was placed on a supersized pangea like continent with 2 other civs so there was plenty of room to expand. I was worried my Vassal state would build up and challenge me in the future, hence I felt the need to finish them off.

[sunshine]

Can you please post a save game in which this works for you? Maybe my copy of Civ III is making Deity work differently, but I tend to meet an enemy civ in about 2250 BC, when I have one city or MAYBE 2, if I land in a flood plain, and he has 11 with 20-30 military units. not to mention iron working, horseback riding and a half dozen other techs, while I am still researching Alphabet or Iron working or whatever my first 32 turn tech is. Attacking under those conditions would be almost ludicrously stupid, since I have at best warriors or archers(if I get warrior code from a pod) and he has a 1/2/1 and a warrior in each city... plus a dozen or more just wandering around randomly in territory I can't see.

I've been playing on Huge map, 8 ai civs, pangea, standard temp, age, and climate, with sedentary barbarians, if it matters.

And I've had no problem beating the game on lower difficulty levels, using conventional strategies (tech brokering, etc).

--shiny

[hanZ]

in the beginning of the game: dont make research! only 1 point to reach some techs in 32 turns. than try to earn as much money as possible. buy the techs from others, or try to destroy two citys and get them for free as a tribute. works fine for me. to have succes in early battles you have to build units like crazy (rush by reducing poppoints)

[randomturn]

dexters - don't worry about containment too much; usually the problem is that you want your vassals to grow more rather than less. If they do get too big for their britches or start offering you less than you want in peace talks, just take a couple more of their cities. They fall right back into line. This usually happens with your bigger vassals in the third age. It's no big deal.

sunshine; it sounds to me like you're getting your military rush started too late. 2250BC is very late to be meeting your first other civ. Try playing a game as the aztecs or zulus - both of whom have early UUs with 2 moves. And we mean it when we say don't build anything other than barracks, units, and maybe 1 or 2 settlers (at most). If you start taking over neighboring cities early, you don't need to produce any settlers until late in the first age. As for your perception of being so far behind: you really aren't. You actually should love that the AI has so many techs and cities. It's the size of his army you need to worry about, but a well planned military strike against 2-3 cities will capture them and bring him to the peace table especially if you have a unit or two within attack range of one more city. Now you get all of his techs and some of his cities, and you've reduced his ability to pump out units. Then keep building your units, put them in position, and sneak attack until you've reduced him to 1-2 on tiny maps/3-4 standard/5-9 huge. Don't worry about your reputation. You can make barracks, archers and horsemen early. That will suffice to take out the pikeman (1.2.1) defended cities you describe. If you're a militaristic civ, some of your units will be elites (from barbarians as well as war). Try to use fast units (that can retreat) like horsemen, chariots, jaguar warriors and impi to take a hit point or two, and archers or warriors to clean up. I'm out of town for a week for Thanksgiving and don't have save games hwith me, but I'll start one here. LMaybe one of the other guys here can post one? Let us know how things go!

Kriton - I've used the Chinese and they worked splendidly. I used the Aztecs and that was a very easy game, though it was slightly painful to go to Golden Age so early. On a bigger map, it probably makes things a little easier to have an early UU with a high movement rate. But really any civ can execute the Vassal state strategy with barracks, warriors (densely crowded map), horsemen, archers (and the odd swordsmen for very tough cities). Being militaristic helps you build barracks early which is nice and the promotions definitely help. So anyone trying the VSS for the first time might want to start with a militaristic civ; then fight your Civ2 impulses and rush like mad.

[solo]

It's too easy this way. Even with relatively slow Babylonian archers, there was plenty of time to subdue the Zulus on a tiny map game. The AI focus so much on just founding cities early on, that their cities are weakly defended and easily taken. It's especially easy by following AI settlers with a few archers and attacking the turn after they set up shop. Even the Zulu capitol of Zimbabwe was weakly defended, easily taken by 5 archers.

[Achnor]

Wow! I think we all should bow before firaxis to make such a game. I mean, what other sequal forces you to think up all new strategies and let you experiment on so _many_ strategies! I think this game is well balanced, I'd be disappointed if it was just as easy as civ II. Ok, enough brown-nosing :-)

I will really try the vassal-strategy in my next game even though I am using it now "Without me knowing it" :-)

Another strategy I've found useful (If you really like those three-letter names I will call it EAT, the Evil Achnor-Trick). It only works with religious civ's. Go as fast as you can to monarcy/republic what ever fits your civ. Get your cities to expand to the current limit (6/12), switch to despotism and build, build build. Take them down to 2-3 and switch back and make them grow back.

You could also use this with the vassal-strat. Since you don't need money, go to monarchy/republic and max the happyslider and make units and wage wars. You'll get the money back at the peace-table (or war-table).

Achnor

[Ray K]

Re: Brilliant

Originally posted by liupang
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.

Strategies similar to this have been around since Civ1. They are really more of an exploit than a strategy. There are a lot of holes in the AI that need to be fixed, and I wouldn't be surprised if Firaxis just disabled the whole "gold per turn" option on the trade screen.

[Enigma]

He he, I unintentionally used the "vassal state" idea when fighting France, but my main problem is that I usually take too much land from the AI.

How much does razing AI cities affect their mood? They don't seem to offer me very much for peace...

Very nice strat though, and from what I have seen of AI behavior it seems practically unbeatable.

[LarryM]

Great thread. While Vel's thread has lots of good general strategy advice, this thread is the place to go for advice on winning at the highest levels. I had been playing on regent level; my first game on emperor level, following the advice on this thread, I'm kicking butt.

[randomturn]

Is anyone using an expansionist civ in the Rush-to-Vassal strat? I still haven't played a full game with one, but am tempted to play Russia on a huge map. I think that this strat makes commercial less valuable, since it manages corruption already, and military more valuable since you're doing a lot of early fighting. What are people finding to be other useful traits?