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Have been slowly moving forward in this war while not really suffering any problematic losses. The tank armies are causing me headaches. Have to say though that displaying 102 military strength while seeing a tank army and a singular tank on screen is pretty interesting...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3164269887
I think I will lose this run (deity difficulty) again due to a science victory from one of the AIs though.
Out of curiosity, did you continue the war that you showed in your first screenshot, or make peace and regroup until you could organize the better shot whose results we see in your second screenshot?
That said, your calculation misses accounting for one of the trebuchets being a corps, and it is possible, because Bandar Brunei and Nodwengo might be hiding corps symbols for both men-at-arms and one of the knights, that the missing points would make your calculation work. This must be (grudgingly) admitted.
I can't say that I've paid careful attention beyond never being terribly surprised and embarrassed by relying on the reported strengths being a roughly accurate reflection. I have certainly never checked the reported strength using math. I'll have to try that next game I play. That said, I do pay the reported strengths some attention, and I am sure that they deflate across the board from time to time, including well before anyone has corps and armies. Of course you see individual AI strengths go down, presumably due to losses, frequently to zero, because a common pattern when the AI goes in for conquest seems to be to go all in, and not stop until they or the defender have no army left. I'm talking about a general deflation, all the civs all at the same time, including my strength value, when I know for a fact that I haven't had any losses, or formed any corps or armies. I will definitely have to keep track of this in my next game, because doing the math on my age opens up all sorts of grim possibilities here.
Sure, but to do good maths, you need exhaustive data :D
And all I had was a non-exhaustive screenshot ^^
Feel free to test the maths in one of your own game if you want :)
Unfortunately I still lost the game overall due to a science victory by England. I tried to keep block the space districts by using spies and sabotage but I failed multiple times with Rome and in the meantime England pushed ahead and finished it so quickly then that I couldn't do anything anymore. By the end her spaceship went 8 light years per turn while I was just barely finished with the project to start the space mission.
The diplomacy victory also failed due to India constantly outvoting me....
Deity difficulty seriously makes me mad at times...
- You can weaken your opponent economically by trading them resources for their gpt. When they get lower gpt they cannot maintain their army, rendering the AI passive. Doing this also slows down their advances as they can no longer buy any buildings. In particular trading them horses, iron and nitre can be very profitable and the AI will spend them on high maintainence units, which it will have to disband without the gpt to maintain them. And even if it does keep them if it has no excess of the resource then it will fight at half strength. Trading strategics is a poisoned chalice for the AI. Use to the degree you want to make things easier for yourself, just do not trade oil or uranium.
- For Diplomatic victory it is best to vote yourself down for diplomatic points. If you are leading then AI will spend lots of points to get you negative two diplo points. If you vote yourself down you get 1 point back for no cost. Then you can win the other agenda items so you should gain at least 1 diplomatic point per session or at least not go down if you fail another one. On top of that you can be winning any noble prizes or aid requests to gain extra diplo points while you bee line for the two diplomatic point wonders.
By the by Diety is almost always won on Science or Culture.
But I finally managed to beat deity though with my last run with Dido. I barely made it as it definitely was less than 5 turns until the AI would've gotten another science victory but I managed to have my spaceship arrive first. I tried to get the diplomatic victory done first but only got to 19/20 when I reached the science victory.
Did it with a mostly pacifist game (war was only used to "free" my city states from Suleiman) and 8 cities on a large map. One of those cities was only created late on a small island in the ocean to provide me with oil (I had nothing and that 1-tile island had 4 oil wells around it...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3165415844
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3165416575
I think for other victory achievements on deity difficulty I will have to disable conditions like science victory. Otherwise I will always be locked into certain approaches from what I'm seeing.
Something I noticed in some of my previous runs though is that the AI seems to enjoy burning city-states to the ground once they have death-robots. I saw England running around with a death robot in one of my city-states and was waiting for the queen to take over the city so I could initiate another emergency and take the city back for a diplomatic victory. But when she defeated that city she just destroyed it altogether leaving me with no real option to retaliate...
While early conquest is much more needful the higher the difficulty because of the yield bonuses, because it is the only across-the-board yield equalizer, the starting bonuses the AI gets at higher difficulty make it much harder to achieve.
I find that at Deity I can only succeed at a warrior rush under unusual circumstances mostly beyond my control (say, if a neighbor launches an attempt at conquest that leaves it without an army and me with the unusually large army I had to build to achieve that result). I find a swordsman rush is often only viable if I'm a civ with a swordsman replacement unique unit. The default man-at-arms or musketman conquest is only manageable if I plan really carefully to blend all the possible combinations of bonuses (from uniques, policy cards, govts, pantheons, dedications, suzerain bonuses, etc.), and to beeline ruthlessly to what I need and only what I need on the tech tree, to carve out at least the brief window needed to make conquest succeed. I had to learn to rely on a pillage economy to supplement the economic development that you have to shortchange in the ruthless pursuit of making that army of conquest on time.
The problems I've also encountered with early wars is that it's very difficult to hold any city that may not be in the immediate neighborhood. There simply is not enough pressure to hold these cities which leaves me with the only option to burn them down and re-settle afterwards which costs a lot of resources and time again though and defeats the purpose for me to do an early rush.
Anyway I wouldn't claim my approach in the game is a sure way to win. I just gave it a try though while attempting to maximize research and culture in the cities that I had. As most of my cities were on the coast I also had to deal with the problems of rising water which threw me back a little as some of my districts were flooded for a while. The one thing I completely ignored in this run was religion. The only thing I used faith for was buying flood barriers and some other buildings and units.
But as I wrote - it was a close call. I think in one or two more turns I would've seen the game over screen.
The higher the difficulty the less well this works. It takes longer to catch up to the AI in techs and civics, much less surpass it, and the later the eventual roll out of your conquering army, the less benefit to your economy from adding captured cities to your empire that late in the game. You sputter instead of snowballing.
Earlier conquest is definitely harder on higher difficulty, but is almost always the only way to break out of the trap that results from following the "economy first, then conquest" strategy that works so well on lower difficulty. The higher the difficulty the more it seems you have to be ever more ruthless about pruning away anything extraneous to the economic development you need in your ever more difficult task of keeping up with the AI. You feel you can't stop at any early point in the game to divert resources away from developing the economy and towards units that you know, from how advanced your neighbors are, couldn't take their cities.
What has to happen is that you have to abandon the safe "economy first" strategy, and instead manage to acquire more land (thus more cities, thus more districts) as your means to advance your economy past the AI's bonuses. The strategy becomes more individualized, tied to the combinations you can form around your civ's uniques to give you a temporary edge in conquest large enough to allow some conquest for even a short interval before your army becomes too obsolete to continue the advance, at least until you can put the conquered cities to use boosting your economy so that you are ready for the next burst of conquest, or you are so far ahead in districts that you can stop conquering and win any type victory.
How and exactly when you go in for this earlier conquest is highly individualized to what factors you have within reach to form combinations with your civ's uniques. I mean factors like policy cards, govt types, govt plaza buildings, suzerain bonuses, beliefs, pantheons, dedications, governor titles, the occasional highly selected wonder, etc. -- all the variable little bonuses you can mix and match to augment each other into huge bonuses, or you can put in to compensate for specific areas of your economy you shortchange to do things like build an army. Back when I was playing at Prince I always chose the same govt types, mostly the same policy cards, the same govt plaza buildings, the same dedications, and mostly pursued suzerainty of the same narrow set of city-state types -- all focused on improving economic development, especially of science and culture. Now, on Emperor to Deity, I go in for a much wider range of choices, tailored to the particular game state I find myself in at the moment. I even get a religion from time to time because some of those beliefs are generally quite useful as economic equalizers, and many of them form wonderful combinations, with the right other elements. Aside from civs that demanded a religion, I never bothered with getting a religion on Prince. Not necessary, not as beneficial as another campus or settler, so why divert resources?
The other area to look at, and excuse me if you are already doing these things but I'm trying to be encyclopedic, is to the general tricks and stratagems to use in all situations that make conquest a bit more doable without any sort of quality or quantity advantage in the units themselves.
You can almost always get other AI civs to join your war against your victim civ. The AI tends to hold too much of its strength in reserve anyway, and having other enemies usually prompts it to hold back even more from the crucial theater of war where you are taking its cities -- even if your co-belligerents pose little actual threat.
Using a pillage economy to compensate for shortchanging your own economic development is another basic general equalizing measure. The opportunities rise the later you are in the game, because your victims have more districts and buildings. Pillage can be thought of as equalizing economic development advantages, as a way to compensate for their being ahead of you. If you can't make science or culture so well as the competition, steal it from them! Policy cards can make this even more useful, as can light cavalry.
You want to drain your victim's treasury just before going to war with them, because the AI tends to keep a big war chest to use to spam defensive units as soon as you declare war. Sell them absolutely everything you've got, even strategics (selectively!), for gold up front rather than gpt. Almost always (unless they have denounced you already) go with surprise war so they won't have time to use their 100% production and gold output advantage over you to spam walls and defensive units, as they will if you give them the warning of a denunciation.
Every now and then, a city state located in a suitable location will build an army more advanced than you, or your potential victim civ, can build at the moment, so you have to be open to levying possibilities.
Generals are huge, and most especially at taking walled cities. This is mostly because of the extra movement point, and not the strength bonus, which is nice but not critical. The extra movement lets your units escape wall attacks that might otherwise kill them,but even better, lets siege artillery use a mvt point to get in range, then still have two points left over to launch an attack before the wall gets to shoot back. Encampments and their buildings let you get generals for free, but of course are yet another diversion from developing your economy, so you can pick one up by faith or gold purchase at your convenience or need,
Add these stratagems to combinations and you can get huge equalizers that let you succeed even if your units are outdated by an era. Add 10+ from Crusades, to Shaka's corps-in-Medieval-era benefit of 10+, to Oligarchy's +4, to Wars of Religion's +4, to a Military Alliance's +5, and you have to pity the fool AI that tries to stand against you. Add to that a general's +5 strength bonus, the +4 any levied units get if you have the foreign ministry, and the +3 from each level of visibility -- and it becomes almost unethical to do what you are planning to do to that poor defenseless AI civ that is only one era ahead of you. Of course you will never be able to pull all of these factors together, because they all require trade-offs to acquire. Many of them have an expiration date, but you only need a few of them for as long as it takes to steal the land and cities from just one of your neighbors,and if that theft happens early enough in the game, you have stolen enough to put you on easy street. You can fall back on the basics of having more districts as your way to get and stay ahead, after relying on these combinations for short intervals of conquest to get you that increased number of cities.
You can always combine enough of these factors for long enough to find a way. However, unlike the safe Prince strategy of economy first and conquest later, the constellation of factors you will combine at Deity will always be different, from game to game and as time advances within the same game. You were able to get to an almost victory from that really dicey first screenshot, and that is good evidence that you can always find a way using the ad hoc strategies you need to (most often) win comfortably at Deity.