Best way to win on Deity?

[Strategikal]

Can any experts out there tell me what's the best way to win on deity? I haven't won on immortal yet, but I really fancy having a go at winning on deity soon, but I'd like to stack the deck in my favour.

What are the easiest civs to win with, and why? I'm guessing that a military civ would be necessary in order to capture other cities.

What's the best type of victory condition to go for? I'm guessing that domination would be the obvious one.

What type of map would be easiest? Would a mostly land based map be easier than one with a lot of water? I used to like the highlands map which was very easy for defence, but of course harder for attack.

What size of map would ideal? I'm guessing it would be easier to win against just 4 or 6 players rather than more.

What game speed? I usually play quick but I suspect standard would be better. I don't really have time for long games.

Any strategy tips? What units/buildings to build first? Scouts to explore? An early worker? Monument for an early culture boost? Should I try to build the Great Library and aim to get Iron Working as a free tech? What policies should I grab first? Honor for combat or tradition/Liberty to grow my empire?

What about wonders in general? Should I let other civs build them then just try to capture their cities?

I did try a quick duel game on deity recently and it was an unmitigated disaster, I couldn't believe how fast the AI built cities, units and increased their tech. So I really need some help with this. I have my favourite playstyles and strategies from playing on king level, but I suspect that I'd need quite a different approach on deity.

[happypumpkin]

If you are just looking to get the achievement.
Huge Map
Continents - (ensures you wont be interferred with)
Use any Leader
Starting Age - Information
Pace - Quick
Legendary Start
No Barbs
No city states
1 other civ team
Go for science victory

Build only 3 cities you have settlers for
Do not explore, just build asap. as long as theres decent production tiles around (avoid desert)
If you get aluminum and coal thats bonus
if you dont get aluminum, build recycling depots.
For policies, just complete Rationalism
dont forget to build Apollo
if you arent building spaceship parts yet, build production/research buildings
its super easy probably dont need much help beyond this. Takes maybe 20 turns?

[Strategikal]

No, I'm not interested in the achievement, I'm interested in winning the game properly, but thanks for the suggestion. Seems like it might be a viable way to do it.

[Blazing]

Not an expert, but I beat quick play Deity on my first (and currently still last) attempt on a duel match. I believe I randomly picked Shaka, but it worked out because his passive reduces promotion requirement. Enemy and map were randomly selected, and we ended up with Portugal as enemy on a archipelago map (I think). The speed limit was marathon because I like it most, but it also makes every single unit more valuable.

This is the last turn before I finished it:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/954100682820689009/B6B7E608A3A847A5C88215D5A4E5EE3C2C3BCCB3/
I believe I had built a total of two buildings: A monument (probably made while researching the boat technology) and a lighthouse (huge mistake, no value), both in my capital.
My technology was just going for boats (because I needed to find my enemy) and the technology required to work my land. Afterwards I went straight for improved archers and afterwards I wanted to build a market, as you can see.

Once I got like 3 archers and my, upgraded from exploring, spearmen, I decided to be creative settle a city right next to the capital of Portugal, so that I could heal my units much faster.
I tried to bait any enemy troops into the choke, and later on placed a fort there (the most left one). I switched the unit in that location nearly every turn and farmed experience while killing their units. Eventually my first units, that survived, got range and I put them on the side island above my city where I'd just keep firing at any units or the capital itself to get them logistics. Then my new units were trained by placing them in the fort and I got them (including the spearmen before btw), 66% missile defense and auto healing. I placed more forts east so I could potentially attack with more archers at the same time. I did lose one eventually (I also lost quite a few archers).
Either way, eventually my damage output surpassed the auto regain of the capital and I took it with my spearmen with 66% missile defense in fortify stance in a fort.

In my opinion, beating deity militarily is just baiting and cheesing the ai in a creative manner.

Either way, from my experiences with high difficulty large matches, more civs is going to be much more difficult, and they'll very likely attack you if you don't have an army comparable to theirs (which is barely even possible). From my experience, the ones on your border are most likely to attack you and a civ will usually only declare war upon you if they are not at war at that point of time.
So the thing I personally do is focus the essentials, build units that can withstand the first attack of the closest civ. Then if you can counter attack (basically if you have the troops to take a city), you take as many as you can without taking too many losses. Afterwards you'll give him peace (only if he offers you money, though, otherwise you wait until he does and keep threatening him unless someone else starts posing a threat.

Another nice thing I noticed is by being friendly with cities that are usually on the other side of your border civs, you can pay them off to declare war upon your border civ so that your enemy will send nearly half his troops to fight/defend against him while you attack the other side. You could also try pay off border civs to attack someone when you believe they're trying to backstab you (it basically makes them lose men and and the backstab will be delayed at least). I usually pay off factions with spare luxury goods because money is often scarce, though.

Also the biggest threat I usually face are the city states - just try to keep your cities a bit further away from them so when your enemies ally them (they will, because they make 100x more gold than you), the city state won't take your city because a city state has like ~10 troops if left alone on deity.

[Strategikal]

Fascinating! Nice one! I guess the style of map has a lot to do with it. I usually play maps with plenty of land and the AI armies become overwhelming.

[Fletch343]

Originally posted by Strategikal:

Fascinating! Nice one! I guess the style of map has a lot to do with it. I usually play maps with plenty of land and the AI armies become overwhelming.

I am currently in a match on immortal difficulty. After playing immortal for a while I have found that just rushing to catupults and building a crap ton of warriors/archers is an effective strategy. Go for the honor tech tree and get the great general bonus. You can use settlers to found next to your enemies cities and use spare great generals to take over a chunk of their land. This way you will be fighting from your home turf and get the healing bonus. Hopefully this will transfer well on deity.


I am playing on Pangea, against 3 AI. I have wiped out one and I am at the second ones capital currently.

[Strategikal]

I'm currently playing on Immortal too, but on Civ 6. I haven't played 5 for some time.

One of the new game mechanics in 6 is loyalty pressure, which makes settling close to enemy cities a bad idea. Strong loyalty pressure from the enemy cities will cause your cities to rebel unless you also have nearby cities to support them with positive loyalty pressure to counteract their negative pressure.

[zxcvbob]

I won my first legitimate deity victory recently (and several more since) trying to get the Greek Fire achievement. (had to keep increasing the difficulty to get Alex to build more than 2 ships)

Theodora on an archipelago or large islands tiny map at epic pace with raging barbarians. I went Tradition opener, then straight Honor. Build lots of Dromons and try to get the range promotion on most of them, then logistics. Go straight for logistics on a few. You can use an embarked scout or other melee land unit to capture the cities after your dromons wear it down to zero health.

[Arsenius]

To win Deity you just have to actually try, ie. Manage your workers manually inside cities. Get up 2-3 cities (if you get 2, then try to force a 4th city by conquest once u get xbows or something or comps if you're killing a CS). Then focus on getting mininum 1 worker per city, so a total of 5 would be nice, steal a CS worker if possible. Send trade routes internally for growrh, and focus tech to get NC and then shoot for Universities, and then straight into schools which at this point should get you even in science with AI. To avoid getting killed by AI, learn to trade with AI for gold etc, so you can then spend some gold etc to have then busy warring each other. At thjs point you now will win a deity on science victory.

If you're looking to win with domination, then you baaically need to do same thing, but look to war 1 civ per age starting with xbows.

Tourism victory is hard, I'd recommend winning science victory first so thar you get good experience.

By far the easiest is the congress win, you just need to watch for CS quests, although if you don't have at least 3 CS nearby that you can ally, this is a situational type of victory.

[Rotney the dreamer]

I finally succeeded on Diety level. It took some experimenting to figure it out. After numerous failures, I decided on Spain for my civilazation. I also used Earth, Large with 20 City States and began in the atomic era. I found that two oposing civilazations worked best. Rationale: Spain because oposing civ's begin stronger, richer, more starting cities and more technologically advance. Spain leveled the money and starting cities by discovering wonders quickly. Large Earth set opposing civ's far enough apart that I could get a solid start on 8 cities, minimal army but advance quicklly in tech. I went for Hubble Telescope first for the extra two tech bonus. then I went for atomic to discover where to find the uranium. Oh yes, i put the game on Time Victory only. I kept getting beat by tech or culture. two opposing civ's worked best because they then had more than one target. but three was too much. Once i was financially stable and had at almost least an equal amount of cities i began buildling my army. then i focused on taking over oposing civ's cities and got to the captials and took their oil and uranium. then i destroyed their supply lines. enough city states were my allies so that they drew fire away from me. however, when i finished and beat the game on diety level, no new achievement medal poppoed up saying so and the closing scenerio was same as always. i expected some short video since it was diety level. oh well, at least i did beat it. have fun, a lot of actual strategy is needed to win it.