How to win on Deity easily

This will be a relative short guide that will help you win on Deity so you can get the achievement for it.

I will explain 2 ways to do so:
- One involves using the power of a overpowered civ in a ideal map.
- One involves save/reload exploiting

Win method 1: Save/Reload Exploit (THE CHEEKY WAY)

Ok. First I will tell you the simplest victory condition.
Diplomacy victory

All you need for a diplomacy victory is 20 votes. It's easy enough, but with save/reload it's almost impossible to lose.

In order to win that, you need to vote for what the majority votes for. Meaning everytime there is a vote process, you save before you vote. Watch what won the voting and reload to vote the same as the one that won or you can also tip the favor of what you want to win (if you have enough diplomatic favors)

In order to speed up the process, you can build certain wonders or participate in national emergancy crisises.

If you decide to speed the victory up with emergency aid, you should have disaster intensity 4 or/and just play appocaplypse mode. It is important to win the emergencies for winning diplomacy victory.

Always use your production to send aid from your cities, and use the gold you have as gift to the AI in need. If you are the one that need aid, try to make it so the one that is closest to you in winning the diplomacy victory does not contribute most gold to you. Even if it means turning away free gold.

I recommend playing Continents on this, because it's much easier to defend over sea than it is to defend on a Pangea or similar map. Just build a few gallies early and settle your island normally. Save all gold for emergencies and never sell your diplomatic favors. Play peacefully and try making friend with everyone. You only need to survive to late game to win.

Every vote session will get you at least 2 points. Only spend your diplomatic favors if you find something you really want to win the voting or neglecting a AI points that are close to you in terms of diplomacy victory points.

You can play any Civ for this, but defensive ones with high chance of making lots of money and are also good on water maps are prefereable.

Recomended Civs: Greece, Germany, England, Brazil, Kongo, Poland, Rome, Georgia, etc.
Focus on defence and commercials (trading)

Win method 2: Using a ridiculous overpowered Civilization

So you would like to win a game on Deity in Civilization without cheating/exploits

Well look no further. The easiest and strongest Civ are available to you. Often in every tier list put on the very bottom. NORWAY. Yay!

From the start Norway have always been ranked low. Berserker are a weak unit (worse before), weak bonuses and no real useful strategy at all. Untill a certain date it recieved a major buff. Now you can plunder the coast with your gallies (Longboats) after inventing Sailing in the Ancient era. Now, plunder was common before as well, but the difference is, you can plunder mines, districts and resources for Culture and Science, not just gold and faith. That is a massive difference.

Norway are one of the only Civ that can win a early science victory with less than 4 cities. You can even do it with only one city, but one city challenge are usually no fun. With the plunder tactic they can get so much Science that domination victory are also easily achievable. You just need to speed boost your tech to Bombers and Oil (through plundering) and you can take down everything before the AI have managed to build anything to resist it. You can also win Religious easily with all the Faith you get from plundering, + Norway might have mediocre starting bonuses, their early faith bonuses makes it possible to get a religion early. Cultural victory is obtainable because of all the culture you get, but a bit harder to achieve.

Win conditions 1-10. 10 is the easiest)
Domination: 10/10 (Very easy to win)
Science: 10/10 (Just as easy, takes a bit more time)
Score: 10/10. (Almost impossible to lose this one, but why wait so long?)
Religion 7/10 (Requires finding a religion and avoiding getting your priest killed all the time can be a hassle)
Culture: 5/10 (Tourism and religion makes a culture victory, so this is not easy to do with all the war going on)
Diplomatic: 3/10 (With all the war you have, getting diplomatic favors are difficult) Note: You can always use the exploit. But nah. Lets win with style.

SETUP

Game difficulty: Deity (ofc)
City-states: Max (sorry for not showing in pic)
Map: Archipelago (Or other water maps, but Archi is the best one for this tactic)
Map Size: (Really does not matter, depends what you want. The bigger the easier, but more time demanding.)
Game speed: Standard is good. (Longer games will make it easier late game, but harder at the begining. Shorter games will make your plundering less effective.)
Resources: Abundant (we want tons of resources to steal)
World Age: New (Hills yields mines, and mines are better to plunder than farms)
Start position: Standard (Legendary is also nice, but requires a bit restarts to be happy - just preferences)
Sea Level: High. (important, because we wan't more coast-lines to plunder)

Add 2-3 extra players for whatever size of the map you chose. More players means more plunder posibilities, but too many means less chance of your own private island.

Victory condition: I always remove Diplomacy victory (personal preference), mostly becuase I have played this game so much that I know what the AI likes to vote for. Though in this game we will be focusing on a aggressive playstyle and diplomacy victory is not the easiest to achieve, it's one less thing to worry about since the AI have the advantage here.

Civs to play against:
If you like, you can pick civs that are not aggressive, but I like the randomness. Only civ you should kinda worry about are strong early game navy Civs like: Dido (Phoenician), Basil (Byzantine) and Suleiman (Ottoman). Indonesian and Maori can also be a bit hassle, but usually not.

Strategy (step-by-step)

The start of the game is the hardest part. I recommend to restart if you start at the same location as a AI. It's best to have only the sea to defend against invaders. Since it's a naval game, obviously you don't want to waste time building land units.

A Ideal starting location have following:
- Hills (2-4 minimum)
- Forrest (2-3 minimum)
- A coast.
- River or lake.
- Sea resources nearby
- Majority of Plains (or grassland)
- A natural wonder close by (ideal, but not required)


This start is decent enough. Not great, not bad.

TIMELINE:
1. Start by building another Warrior. (Maybe 2, if you have 3 access points to your city, beside the coast.) You need it to defend against barbarians from early push. Don't let barbarian scouts see your capitol. Scout with your warriors and locate potential places to settle. You need 3-4 cities before going on the offense. Clear out any barbarian encampment on your island as soon as you can.

2. Build up you cities normally. (like you would in any island map)
- You can focus on getting 2-3 settlers, harbor and holy site. In the order you feel are most natural to your starting location. I recommend to prioritize settlers and harbor, but to found a religion makes the game more fun. Recommend getting the Fishing boat improvment as a Pantheon. If it's taken, faith over mines or some millitary pantheon are nice.

3. Focus on the Foreign Trade Civics for increased naval production. It opens up the Maritime Industries policy card.

4. When you have settled your 3 or 4 city start producing Longboats in your capital and (other cities if they have decent enough production) Remember to have the policy card Maritime Industries in place. It cuts the production time in half. Start queue up 7-8 boats right away.

5. Explore with your ships. You need to locate your closest AI so you can start plundering. Once you have found one, get 3-4 longboats in position and declare Surprise War or Formal War if you/them already have been denounced. Plunder everything you can and defeat their naval units. You can retreat back when injured and heal up or plunder farms or fishboats to heal faster. Promote your boats when you can, and be aggressive. Continue producing longboats like never before. You need 15-30 Longboats before you research Cartography for getting Caravels.

(Don't be afraid of any retaliation, if you are on a lone island, you should have enough naval units to take down any invaders from the sea with ease.)

6. When all the coastal resources are plundered you move to the next target (Next AI or/and city-state) Repeat step five. You can make peace with the AI if you get something nice for it. I recommend only to do so if the offer is really good and you want to move elsewhere, but don't expect a long lasting peace anyway. Declear war again once they have repaired their buildings. I prefer to keep the war going and only keeping a few longboats outside of sight for a 6-10 turns. Then they most likely have repaired most of what was damaged so you can repeat the plundering. Also try to always have a few ships standing between you island and the one you are at war with, incase of retaliation attempts with land units. It's also nice to have a few ships together in case they suddenly get Caravels and destory your longboats. Recommend to not capture workers, as they are needed to do the repairs. Capture any settlers if you find one. Note that you need 4-5 longboats to kill one Caravel on 1 turn.

NOTE: Important to aim for the Military Training Civics as soon as possible, because it have a card that are called Raid. It doubles the pillaging yield. Equip it when you have it.

7. Your science and culture should start to improve and when you feel you have enough Longboats, get the Cartography Tech for Caravels along with the Mercenaries Civic to get the Professional army policy card. Now you can upgrade all your Longboats to Caravels for 50% reduced price.

8. Continue plundering City States and the AI. Don't be afraid everyone hating and declaring war against you. You are unstoppable at sea. Don't capture cities unless they are easy to take down and you feel you want to expand. Keep building naval units and plunder every improved tiles you can find. Keep a few City-States as allies so you can get bonuses and trading from them.


This is how it will look like when your fleet are dominating at sea. The AI creates max 6-10 ships and they are easily destroyed by a Carvel horde

Now. do whatever you feel like. It does not matter. You are so far ahead in Science, Culture, Faith and Gold that you can do whatever you want as long as you stay aggressive. Expand, capture cites, spread religion, build wonders, it does not matter. I personally prefer to rush for Bombers and Oil so I can capture every city I want. You will be so ahead of them in Science that the time you have Bombers, they would just have discovered Cavalery. You will surpass the most heavy science focused civ by around mid game. Once you have ships outside every AI with war in your hand, you can steal everything.


Thanks for reading this guide. I hope you enjoy playing the most overpowered Civ in this specific playstyle. (My apology for any spelling errors, happens and I'm tired now.) :)

[1437852080]

nice

[bartlams]

Thanks great idea will try immediately. Deity is the one difficulty I still need.

[TasteNficker]

thanks