3-Step approaching for beating Deity

[eMarkM]

I've used a variation of the vassal strategy in my games, having a lapdog civ you can push around is always desirable. But I've never tried it so early in the game. This sounds great. But, I'm still having some trouble understanding how to execute this strategy in Emp or Deity. If I build nothing but military from my one or two cities (since I'm not building even settlers), I don't see how I can crank out enough units to do this. I can see this on a tiny map with bunched up civs where you can get to them quickly, but a huge map? Takes a long time to get units to them and in the meantime they're expanding like crazy.

You'd have to take one out at a time it seems, but by the time you get to the others, haven't they built up to that point that it would be harder to "vassalize"? That and I found they don't let you pick em off one at a time. I tried this by exploring immedaitely and attacking the Americans right when I found them and soon the whole continent was against me. I found myself up against a 3 civ alliance in a 3 front war. Ugh. Tough to vassalize the Americans to the west when a stack of 15 Zulu units are invading your territory to the east and another stack of Babylonians are approaching your capital from the south.

randomturn or someone else who's employed this strategy, perhaps you can lay out how this actually happened in your won Deity games. At what time did you vassalize your first civ? What kind of units did you do it with? How many cities did they have when you first attacked? What was the map size? Do you vassalize one at a time? How large was the last vassalized civ when you first attacked them? When do you stop cranking out military and start building temples, cities and such? Ok, a lot of questions, but I'd really like to employ this strategy and just want some more information.

e

[Out4Blood]

rt - I prefer militaristic and expansionist. They seem the two best traits useful in this strategy. Religious is my next fave since I like the cheap temples (necessary for rush building) and the 1 turn anarchy.
* Industrious is useful only for better workers - I am rush building everything.
* Scientific is a waste - AI researches tech and I don't make libs
* Commercial is not so hot - I am totally corrupt under despotism anyway, although cheaper marketplaces (for luxuries) is nice.

The most important discriminator after bonuses is the UU. I prefer having an early advantage in military. I also zealously exploit the retreating capabilities of fast units, so I do not take losses when conquering. Impi, Jaguar, and Riders all work great. I have not played Persians.

[Chillion]

I use a variation on the strategy... its been called alot of things, pope strategy, tech broker, etc... this is how it worked well for me.

huge map, 10-12 civs is ideal, allows for enough room without too much corruption problems with a decent forbidden palace placing.

I normally absorb my nearest neighbor. this is based on who is strategically viable ; since i normally play on world maps, i have a general idea of whats going to pay off in the long run.

I favor the egyptians. industrius and religious - temples right after modern defenders in siezed cities, this fixes absorption and doesnt let the ai fill in the gaps. the more forward cities are developed into military machines while the ones in the rear send forth settlers exclusively (with maybe a culture imp in between). I tend to try to make friends with stronger neighbors and use them to beat down the enemy too. since the AI enjoys wrecking things so much theres often alot of holes in the former empire of my victime ; these are filled immediately.

you can effectively double what can be a pretty small lot of space on the more civ maps. midway through feudal age i switch to republic, use the extra cash from having no sci to do improvements. you WILL lag behind for a while, but once the empire is running and libraries/univs are running everywhere you ought to be a tech leader. at this point go into cruise control until modern warfare, always taking care to garrision your cities with two of the most modern defensive unit. this will detern the enemy from going after your fringes. fortifications in choke points, such as constantinople/mexico city/ spain-north africa (depends on the map im playing, this is mostly in reference to thaddeusalexanders trippy but fun map) keeps you in control. dominate your region, sell whatever you find there for exorbitant amounts, and always keep the military big stick in the pocket.

it is my opinion that this will be THE higher end gaming technique.

[CyberGnu]

Hey, I didn't see this thread until now... But 50 minutes before randomturn posted this I posted in this thread:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...0&pagenumber=4

I argued that being able to use the AI to seed cities for you is a gameplay bug of the kind that are so common in Civ3... The drive to expand is set so much higher than anything else he just never stops to defend himself.

Just another twist on ICS, is it not?

[randomturn]

CyberGnu, I think having every civ be so aggressively expansionist is indeed a game flaw. But I think having some or even most of the AI civs be so expansionist is the way to go. Soren has jsut taken the most powerful human strategy from Civ2 and turned it against us. I'd just like to see a little more variety between the AI civs' early game.

Out4Blood - I originally rated expansionist the worst civ type, but with the absolutely crucial nature of the early game I am rethinking. Must try.

eMarkM - glad to help. On tiny-small maps, you should fight pretty much as soon as you encounter another civ as long as you can take over at least one city. They only have 2-3 at this point anyway so they should immediately sue for peace. On large-huge maps, you need to have your military poised to take over 2-3 cities at once or within a few turns of one another. If you get in a jam and can only take 1 or 2 before you must stop and retrench, defend those cities as best you can and try to get peace. Then backstab and take more cities as soon as you're able. Probably this second strike has weakened the civ enough that it will now be your vassal. It's okay if it continues to expand - you can continue to sneak attack and the civ will be weak enough that it will have to accept your completely outrageous peace demands. If you feel a little embarrassed continually double-crossing and demanding extortionist peace terms from the AI, try to remember that it's just a game.

If you keep getting the "The foreign civ has refused to acknowledge our envoy" message it's because you haven't sufficiently debilitated the enemy and you need to take more cities. This will happen more on huge maps. Everything about the game takes longer on huge maps, including adding vassals. Whereas on a small map with average luck and good military tactics, you can have 2-3 vassals by 1000BC, on a large map that might take as long as 1000AD -- you still have a big advantage over the remaining civs but it does take longer to get there.

You can make a huge map a little easier by choosing a civ with an early fast unique unit: aztecs, zulu, and egyptian all come early, with chinese and japanese a little later. Most of those civs are military, which also helps.

Obviously, regardless of map size, you just want to fight one enemy at a time. Before and while you are making war on one, keep trading with the others: techs, luxuries, strat resources, maps, whatever. The ganging up is very rare, especially when you keep trading. I have never had a civ declare war on me when they were getting resouces from me; maybe they don't want to interrupt the flow?

The earlier you get your first vassal, the more cities you will have that can pump out units, That is the ideal, and that is why -- ideally -- you don't need to make many settlers yourself. The bigger the map the more you'll need. You will need barracks, and lots of units. If your cities are near good food sources, you can keep rushing units and sacrificing population -- you're going to get to size 6 before you can make many aqueducts anyway. Cheers.

[David Weldon]

I have found a potential snag here. It's not huge, but it is worth thinking about...

If you sue for peace, your peace agreement has a 20 turn duration before it can be "peacefully" canceled, just like most other trades. If you backstab your would-be vassal quickly, it makes other civs less likely to accept anything in trade that happens over time.

I got backed into a corner this way where no AI would accept gold per turn, luxuries, resources, or anything else from me. Since they weren't getting anything from me per turn, they weren't shy about declaring war on me. Life was bad.

The best solution would be to do enough damage with your initial military strike that you can get all you want from your vassal in one peace agreement. Then refresh it every 20 turns as randomturn suggested in his original post. I think you can get away with a few backstabs early on, but if you do too much war,peace+tech,war,peace+tech,war,... then you might have some difficulty later on.

[CyberGnu]

Randomturn, I don't mind if the AI's are aggressive, I agree that they should.

There are two problems though

1) They can't switch from 'agressive expansion' mode to anything else. Especially 'the barbarians are at the gates, time to build spearmen instead of settlers' mode.

2) On Deity the computer can spawn a settler every three turns or so... From a newly built city. To combat the computer, the human player MUST be aggressive in ancient times, or he will be swamped. Personally, I don't enjoy a game where the gameplay is forced on me... If I would like to play a 'perfectionist' game, I think I should be able to with at least a remote chance of success.

Finally, I agree with your first statement that there should be differences in behaviour among the AI's. Remember Master of Magic? Every AI was characterized by two traits, such as 'militaristic', 'paranoid', 'scientific', 'perfectionist' etc. I would love to see this system come back.

[randomturn]

I don't enjoy a game where the gameplay is forced on me...

Boy I couldn't agree more. Another "force" (in addition to that imposed by the AI expansion) is that imposed by the ridiculous corruption. It forces your empire to have a very particular shape and very particular city improvements. Between those two things my game is the same every time. I already find myself playing much less and I really really want to love this game. I really hope they fix it.

They definitely need to:
1) Give the AIs more individual personality. I feel like there was more differentiation in Civ2 for Chrissakes.
2) Tone down the expansionism - playing the Rush/Vassel game every time gets old
3) Drastically reduce corruption. At its core, the point of the game is to build things in cities; they seem to have forgotten that since many of your cities often can't build anything.
4) Fix the Wonders. They're unbalanced, and they need to give you something for coming in second to build a wonder: gold, techs, shields to other cities -- something. It's just too frustrating otherwise; losing 390 shields in a forced conversion to courthouse makes you want to quit games. Obviously the better you get at Civ3 the less this happens, but I don't think it should ever happen.
5) Most important: the tools we need to make scenarios.

[eMarkM]

Thanks for the tips, random.

I think I'm beginning to understand how this works now. Just changing strategy mid-stream in my current 16civ Monarch game. I was 4-5 advances behind leaders, trying to catch up w/ 80-90% science. No chance--and with no money, too. Setting science very low and buying tech with cash hoard is very effective. Like you said, you really have to work it every turn to do this. Shop til you drop and get the best bargain.

In the past I've tried to knock out and take over at least one other civ entirely so I have a bigger empire. I think I like this better. The trick is to keep the vassals just strong enough to produce techs for you. Not too strong that they're a threat, but not too weak that they can't give you anything. A delicate balance. Sometimes you can "drain" the civ and they're not a working vassal, just a weak neighbor that can do nothing for you.

Doing these two things and I'm right there with the leaders in tech, and always have spare cash for upgrades, etc, when not buying tech. Turned my game right around.

I do think backstabbing during 20 turn peace will hurt you, but again, if you keep them just strong enough, you may be able to provoke them into starting hostilities. I've done it a couple of times to the vassal I have in this game withing a few turns of the peace. Then I put him in his place and they paid for peace in tech again.

e

[Plutarck]

Putting the Vassal Strat in it's place

Now that the game can basically be beat without too much effort once you get the tactic down, I wonder how it can be "fixed" to make it viable but not a guarantee.

Most of the fixes that we can do ourselves are medicines worse than the disease, but here's what I think can be done to easily fix this problem:

1) Remove the corruption decrease given from enemy palaces.

Does this make any sense at all? I sware I think it's a bug, but it's definately noticable, and it just doesn't make sense. Corruption is misappropriation because the government can't personally check in on what's going on, and stealing because your away from the main lawkeeping forces.

So why do enemy buildings reduce YOUR corruption, and why do yours decrease THEIRS? I think it is also the cause of the AI trying to build cities as close to you as possible, which would also be kind of nice to fix.

Unless the enemy is kind enough to use their police to arrest criminals stealing from you and helping you to ensure the local governers aren't putting the people to work efficienty, it just don't
make sense.


2) Make reputation count for more. Historically, look at Hitler for a moment. Other countrys placated him to stop a war as he absorbed multiple countrys, but then he invaded Poland and most countrys woke up and realized that when you deal with the devil you're sealing your own fate. The vast majority of foreign powers who didn't join him declared war on him, and thus came WWII.

In Civ3 Japan could have invaded San Francisco and the Americans still probably would sue for peace, even if the Japanese sued for peace after Pear Harbor, Midway, and invading Hawaii...and razing LA.


So after that 3rd war-peace invasion you launch, they should absolutely refuse to accept peace unless they've almost totally been destroyed. One more attack on them and your on the sh** list for at least 100 turns during which you'd be lucky to get 2 gold a turn for peace.


3) When negotiating peace deals the AI should prefer to give gold per turn and pretty much refuse to give gold in a lump sum. Especially the second time they want peace, they should refuse to give things up front.


4) The game otherwise works as normal, but once you've betrayed 2 civs with war-peace 3 times, everyone in the world refuses to make any deal that isn't basically screwing you into a hole in the ground.

When the world sees that you are a backstabbing warmongering lier they should realise that helping you will doom them to defeat.


5) After that 4-5th betrayal the Civ should fight to the death until a certain amount of turns have elapsed, after which they will only accept peace if you're giving them a big pack of good stuff, which they will of course refuse to ever give back.



With this done the vassal strategy will still be excellant early, BUT unless you are extremely careful and shrewd having more than 2-3 vassals at once EVER will be nearly impossible.

And unlike the mod'ing we would have to do, this makes perfect since. The problem with this is simply that the AI is stupid and easy to exploit, and all Civ games seem to suffer from that or the AI is made into such nazis that diplomacy is pointless. People are confusing it's aggressive expansion as intelligent, and it isn't. It's stupid for one reason: expansion is the only thing the AI does, EVER!. Even when it is painfully obvious that you are getting ready to make a death march on their capital the AI still thinks building settlers is A Good Thingâ„¢.

Civ3 could EASILY establish a middle-ground where after they see 2-3 backstabs they catch on to your little game and go midevil on your hiny.

This truly should be easy to fix (as AI rarely is), because it doesn't even have to be dynamic to work. A few hard-coded rules that decide when the AI decides diplomacy with you is a stupid move and boom, the major exploit is fixed.

[David Weldon]

Randomturn:

I agree that forced play leads to boredom. I had a 4 day weekend to play, and I really thought I was going to, but after getting my first game on Wednesday night to about 5 cities, I saved it and decided to use the rest of the holiday reading some books I had been holding off on. So much for replayability.

Another force of game play, the first one I noticed actually, is in the mid to late Industrial age. Generally you have enough production to have every improvement in every city by then, and the 4 turn tech limit prevents you from getting on with the game, and there aren't any wonders left to build 'till the modern age, so the only really useful thing to do is build a military and go attack someone. I know that this is sometimes useful for obtaining coal, oil, and rubber, but if you already have those resources, or if you trade for them, then there's nothing useful to do with all your production!

It saddens me that there's a built-in "time for war" like that.

Yep, every game has a different world and different opponents. And yep, every game's pretty much the same.

[Xin Yu]

A more peaceful way is to put down a city on mountains then immediately trade it to an AI. Ask what the AI can give you in return and you'll get 2 techs plus some gold. Put the city in a place that it will never grow (or even better, will starve to death). Or, put the city just two squares away from your capital, hoping that it will defect back to you (but get ready to wait for a long time for that to happen). Then, whenever you see a 2-tech lead from the AI you repeat the trade. This way you don't need to worry about science anymore.

[randomturn]

eMarkM - glad you're getting the hang of it.

Plutarck - agreed, the game needs to be improved in such a way that does not destory the good things. It's good that some of the AI civs expand aggressively. It's not so good that they all do, and that they cut into you territory to do so. That's just fresh meat to a good civ player, because the AI will never be able to match him in military strategy. It's just a city farm. The expansionist AI civs should still expand, but away from the human player.

David Weldon - good call on the third game force. That seems to be hapening to a lot of players.

Xin, I think the AI buying cities is pretty buggy all around (as with its willingness to buy cities from you that you have troops massed near to retake) and ought to be patch-fixed.

On a general note, some people have been asking about whether the Rush/Vassal strat ought to be used on lower levels of difficulty. The answer is sure: if you have the opportunity to do so, then you will certainly win more quickly. In practice, however, the opportunity to employ the strategy tends to be less at lower difficulty levels, since the AI is less able to plant so many cities so near your territory so early as difficulty level declines.

[MustPost]

hehe, I like how the vassal statagy essentially makes feudalism the most efficient and corruption free form of government .

Just like in real life

[David Weldon]

Randomturn:
A little off topic here, but I have found a small workaround to the forced gameplay issue. Play at easier levels. If I turn it down even to just Monarch, I can generally play however I want and not have the pressure of playing "perfectly" and still stay in the game. The lower you turn it, the slower the AI expansion and research, which gives you more time to do sub-optimal things and still be competitive. You could maybe make up for that by changing the barbs, or the land type, or playing an inferior civ even.

The only downside is that you're almost guaranteed to be in a dominant position by the middle Industrial Age, and there's not much reason to play past that, but at least you can have a relaxing and different game up to that point.