Ask tips for deity level on a large map

[vicever]

I had dominated on emperor level in a large map. I tried deity level. But found AI expand two times fast than I did. They likely start with two settlers. Any suggestions? I usually turn the spaceship option off, because I do not like the idea.

[Aeson]

What other settings besides large map, no spaceship? Which Civ do you plan on playing? Here are some of the things I've found to be true on Deity.

Archipelago - Small Continents

Hope you get on a bigger island with 2-3 other Civs at least. If you're all alone on your island, by the time you get mapmaking, the AI civs are going to be halfway through the Middle Ages. Needless to say it will be difficult to catch up. If you do find yourself alone, your best bet is to make contact with an AI galley passing by.

Large Continents - Pangea

Expand as fast as possible, get as many luxuries as you can. If you play on 3 or 4 million year maps, these will tend to be clustered, and one city can sometimes control most or all of that luxury on the map. Send out several scouts (warriors if you don't have them) to make contact with other civs, if you get to them early enough you can trade your civ specific advances for some of theirs. Try to hold off on trading your map for as long as possible, its usually worth an advance or two. I always trade spare luxuries for advances, and if you are lucky enough to have a monopoly, this can really help.

The first advance I would trade for is the wheel or iron working, as horses and iron deposits will be the key for most of the BC's. Researching usually takes too long(32 turns and the AI may have already settled the resources), trade for them as soon as you can. If you start with ceremonial burial, research mysticism first, as often you can get it before most of the AI do. Otherwise research iron working or the wheel, in case you can't trade for it. I usually only research mysticism and then polytheism, and then leave tech at 0% for the rest of the game. After those 2, and maybe monarchy, there aren't many advances you can research before you could get them by other means. Whenever you get a tech through any means, offer it to every other civ you have contact with, try to get maps for tech early on, even just territory maps will make yours much more valuable when you eventually trade it.

I like to try to play without pop rushing, as it can actually make deity too easy on some settings (smaller maps, high number of civs to landmass). Early war is the only way I can figure out to keep up with AI expansion. On crowded maps you will likely have to raze most of the cities you take, so have settlers following your armies to claim the conquered land. Razing cities also will give you huge numbers of workers quite quickly. Getting 4 or 5 maintanence free workers is worth giving up a settler. Its best if you can fight an Industrious Civ first, as their workers will keep their bonus. Every chance you have, make peace with the Civ you are fighting, and usually you can catch up in the tech race this way. Wars on deity are very much like wars on any other difficulty level, just remember they won't make peace as quickly because they have more units and cities.

If you don't raze cities, I find it best to alternate between attacking 2 Civ's. Once you make peace with one AI, the chance of your cities reverting seems to decrease tremendously, and resistance goes away much sooner. Use the time you are fighting your alternate Civ to build happiness improvements in the newly conquered cities, as they won't like it once you go back to war with their homeland. Of course if you are using pop rushing methods, city management is much less complicated, defend with 1 unit, have the roads bringing in luxuries, and rush a unit every couple turns, a grainery first if you weren't lucky enough to be next to the civ who built the pyramids. (always hit that civ first if possible)

Speaking of wonders, don't even try to build them. Its much more efficient to let the AI build them with their 60% production bonus, and then capture them. The only wonders I've ever been able to build on Deity have been the Collosus and Oracle. I came within 1 turn of the Pyramids, that ended up being the Oracle. Of course this came at a HUGE detriment to my expansion. Often the AI will forgo their defenses in an attempt to build wonders. Try to keep track of what cities are building what wonders, and don't take those cities till they have finished. It would be a shame to destroy 90% of a wonder, and they don't seem to switch for any reason. For all intents and purposes, a city building a wonder is a dead city, they can't build military there until they have finished the wonder. If that city has a resource that you don't want the AI using, just destroy the road. The time they spend building the wonder will help you tremendously, as you can advance on and created a "culture gap" between that city and the rest of their Civ. This will reduce the chance that it will revert once you do decide to take it over.

Deity can be a lot of fun, but it does tend to get very repetitive, as only a few strategies are viable.

[vicever]

Thanks for the tips

This really helps. I have never tied this before. In CIV, CIV2, or SMAC I had always used the similar strategy on the highest level. First expand then hold, develop, built most useful wonder first and have leading techs. After finishing the final defense system to prevent nuclear attack, I eliminate all of them with overwhelming force. I use diplomat to prevent early war with AIs in CIV2, in CIV3 I use it to keep par with them on techs. I have always been afraid to be behind AI on techs too much which will making defense much harder if possible. And I usually never lost a single city to AIs. Democracy is my favorite Government type, I use high lux rate keep cities in order when engage a prolonged war. This is no problem for me since I already got all techs by then. I will try your method soon to see the result.

[eMarkM]

Yeah, the main stategies--so far--that work on Deity are Despot Rush and ICS. For rushing see randomturn's "3 Step Approach on Deity". Basically, build nothing but units, maybe barracks and rush the other civs from day one and never stop. Just crank out warriors, horsemen, swordmen in ancient times and never relent. Pop rush at every opportunity to get units in the field.

ICS is a pretty familiar strategy with past Civ/SMAC game and hasn't died with Civ3. Build tons of bunched together cities, don't do improvements, overwhelm AI with all your cities.

Each involves hitting your enemy as soon as you see them. Combined Despot rush/ICS is nearly unstoppable. However, both are unpalatable to many "purists", myself included. But even purists will probably have to resort to at least some features of these strategies to win on Emp/Deity. You can get away w/o resorting to these "exploits" on Monarch.

e

[David Weldon]

One comment about the Despot Rush. While it can definitely be used as you describe, there is another way (don't forget the "vassal" part of randomturn's post). Basically you have to stop beating the poor civs at a crucial point where they are still useful for developing science and giving you gold, but where they are also weak enough to always be afraid of you and give in to your demands. It's a subtle balance but it is definitely more powerful than simply wiping them out or crippling them (unless you're just going to grunt rush the whole world of course).

No way around it, though, you _must_ make contact quickly and you _must_ use some military force early to secure enough tech and gold to stay in the trading ring after you switch to Republic. Because the AI get such huge bonuses, you have to play like a parasite instead of like a true Civ until you have a size advantage to offset their bonuses.

Personally I have a lot more fun at Monarch level. Deity is definitely harder, but quite beatable. For pure fun-factor, however, I have taken to the more relaxed and potentially varied strats useable at the lower levels.