Quest for victory with all civs

[notyoueither]

The patch will cure you of such AI abusing addictions. You might quit smoking too.

[Ethelred]

Whats to be jelous of?

Deity with the original game is so subject to pop rushing and AI abuse I doubt its all that much of a challenge for a military victory. Now if those were non exploiting builder games I would be more impressed even if with an unpatched game.

Haven't tried deity yet myself. Still building on Emperor.

[DrFell]

Well, I play the patched version, and it's not THAT much more difficult. The basic tactic of early conquest is just the same and you can still get small cities off the enemy when you sue for peace (I always take as much as I can from them). Also I don't see why a builder type game should be more impressive. Builder type games are rather boring as there is little action for long periods of time (but of course I just love moving those workers around!). The only big difference between patched and non-patched is the way you get your units - in patched you're going to need some cities built in certain locations to get you enough shields for your units asap (for 20 shields that's 5 shields or 7 shields, 30 shields is 6 shields or 8 shields), and units like the war chariot are more effective.

[Ethelred]

I am going on what other people have said. You included, about deity. Most have said its harder to win with a builder strategy on Deity than with a conquest strategy.

Of course I heard that about Emperor as well and I won my second try. Lost the first stuck on a middling small island.

Its my impression that the pop rush tactic was pretty severly weakened allthough not stopped with 1.17f. I know there is the tactic of creating workers or even capturing them for the population to rush with. I thought that would slow things down a bit making Deity more difficult.

Also the AI is a lot less willing to accept peace than in the unpatched game. You have to take more cities before they will capitulate and that means you can't milk them as many times. Again I am speculating on that. I usually go for the kill when I attack another civ. That way I don't have many flipping problems.

In my last game though I did let a civ live. For three whole turns although I wasn't the one that wiped them out. Even after I had two of Russia's cities revert. First time in a long time that I had two cities revert in a game.

The Iriquois were also attacking the Russians and when I had the Russians down to two last cities the Iriquois finnally got a decent invasion force of Modern Armour all in one place at one time. I decided that it would be best if I let them take the two cities so they might not have all those tanks with nothing to do besides choose me for a target. Worked. Sort of. The Iriquois declared war on me the exact same turn I got the Laser tech and launched my space ship.

Yes I find moving hordes of units to be tedious even with the group move command. I don't play on large maps for that reason.

[Jaguar]

I doubt it would be any different w/ the patch. I'd just have a cheapass size 1 city, that always had an entertainer for its one citizen. I'd send my captured workers over and poprush with them. The entertainer couldn't be unhappy, and I'd get a unit for every worker I captured (I usually get about 50 before the middle ages start, because whenever I capture some, more magically appear for me to take ) AI workers are the cheapest units in the game.

[Aeson]

There were a few exploits in the original version that made any difficulty level a joke. Doesn't mean that people who play the original version take advantage of these exploits. Things like pop rushing, peace negotiations triggered by cities taken, and tech trading weren't exploits, they just worked better than intended. 1.17f Deity is more difficult (and annoying) than the original or 1.16f versions.

I've discovered a good trick is to offer a big mainland city for all their island cities and peace. You condense the AI into one poorly defended city right near your troops.

I assume notyoueither was refering to this. It is no longer possible to trade cities, which was a very powerful tactic in the original version. Taken to an extreme, city trading was definitely an exploit. It was possible to conquer all but the AI's capitol at first contact, without ever fighting a battle.

I am going on what other people have said. You included, about deity. Most have said its harder to win with a builder strategy on Deity than with a conquest strategy.

Builder games aren't actually harder to win, it's just harder to score points. Of course you aren't going to achieve Conquest or Domination as a pure builder, but Diplomatic victories are much easier.

[Ethelred]

Its actually the points that I was talking about originly.

I am sure he can win deity with any of the patches.

[tommyd]

I'm interested to know if any of you out there pop-rush military with 1.17f.

I know you can create worker farms and keep the city down to 1 entertainer, you can also use captured workers to turn into pop-rushed military...but you pretty much destroy the pop-rushing city. It becomes utterly useless, for the rest of the game...

I have found it much easier, and harder in the beginning, to concentrate on building the cities up to create the units faster.

How many out there pop-rush military with 1.17f?

Tommy

[Aeson]

I only pop rush temples for the most part. And if I have the luxuries I will pop rush once every 40 turns. I don't use the specialist pop rushing though, that seems like an exploit.

[Jaguar]

Won with Japan.

BTW, my scores are high because I move my workers in to join cities and set my luxuries to 100 before I take the last city.

[notyoueither]

JW. How does that work?

Your score is averaged over the entire game. Cramming on the last turn is not going to increase your score more than 1 or 2 points. At least it shouldn't.

Come on now, admit it. You have a hybrid Civ2/3 model program that the developers were using to explore new ideas. Right?

[Aeson]

NYE is right. There isn't much of a score advantage for increasing your population just one turn. It's averaged out over every turn played. Even if you added a hundred workers that would net about a point overall at 10AD.

I'm just guessing that those scores are all early conquests. It takes a long time to milk a game up to score as high. The bonus on Deity is (2050 - Date) * 6. In that case the scores are mostly from the bonus, population and territory would rarely be more than 1000 points by the time a conquest score like that is possible.

The Aztec score would be a conquest victory c. 800-900 BC. The other two would be c. 100AD. The highest Deity score possible by early conquest is 36060, a 3950BC conquest on an edited map. It should be possible to score 50-60k on a milked huge map.

[Jaguar]

AAAAAH!!!!!! You mean I've been wastng all that time and it hasn't helped!??????

I'm stupid! That habit has carried over from CivII. Well, time to trash that idea.

[Purple]

I do the same thing with workers as a victory approaches--there's usually nothing else to do with a huge number of workers at that point, so it's a matter of convenience. But I admit I forgot about the averaging.

JW: nice color change!

[Inverse Icarus]

is there a max join number or somethign ala civ2? like, can you join workers to any size city?