How to win a science victory on Deity

This guide will show you how to win on deity as almost any civ, it won't be the most in depth but it should give you lots of tips to improve your gameplay

Who to play as and Ideal starting position

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This guide assumes that you have brave new world and gods and kings (possible leader packs)

But if you don't there will still be information in here to help you, but quite alot changes like tech trees and social policys in the dlc.
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Who to play as
You can play as pretty much any civ but I highly recomenend babylon because of thier early game great scientist which allows you to get lots of wonders before other civs and help you get the techs you need to advance. Also civs with mountain bias like the incas help because if you can spawn next to a mountain with luxarys, you can make an observatory which is very, very useful, and is what you will need to win on deity. The incas are also a good choice because they have good defence units like thier slingers and the terrace farms give potential to give ALOT of food. Korea is another solid choice but I would rank them, Babylon --> Inca --> korea (babylon being the best)

Ideal starting position
You must have a mountain for this guide, or else i doubt you will be able to win on deity.Why? A mountain is required directly next to your city in order to build the Observatory -- which boosts your city's Science production 50%. Which, when you only have one city, is huge.
Having a river is also cruicial because you can make a garden which will help with great people creation(+25%) and gives more food to the tiles beside it.
Coast in brave new world is very good if you are playing with brave new world because by the end of the game sea trade routes can be the diffrence between -100gpt and +300gpt. They are the best way to fund yourself and they are very good to have, but you dont NEED to have a coast.

The best possible start is: Coast, with a Mountain, next to a river tile. Disable the start bias in advanced options with some non-coastal or landlocked plains civs to get this.

If you get a bad starting position like tundra or snow i wouldnt be afraid to restart but you don't have to spend forever on this.

Social policys and ideologys

Social Policies:
Tradition (full)

Rationalism (full -- go down left-side first to +50% science for RAs if you cant complete it)

Order or Freedom, whichever most people in the world have. If you're first, try freedom.

If you're Poland or have really good culture and finish every science policy off in the other 3 trees, dip into Patronage for the +25% science from City-States you're allied with

Tradition grows your city HUGE. With only one city this is the most important thing, letting you use specialists to thier full extent.

Rationalism gives alot of additional Science. With the Porcelain Tower and Rationalism, your research agreements will get a +100% boost. Get research agreements with 1 civ and if you have these 2 things you are doubling it in effectiveness

Order or Freedom? You obviously don't want autocracy because thats for military They're both good, what is more important is what the majority of the world is. The most important thing is Research Agreements, which requires friendships to trade for, which kinda sucks, so even if it means losing the 2 initial policies you picked if you got there first, convert to keep good diplomatic relations and happiness, its worth it.
I would advise that going for a science victory, that you go for Freedom
Freedom, like order has +25% great people generation but it has "Specialists consume only half the normal amount of Food" which is godly for your city and growing it to hopefully to size 40+ by the time you win

The build order and tech order

This wont be very in depth, like im not going to explain every single choice you need to make but it gives the good basis for it.

You want to build a monument then a granary then either buy a worker with a loan from a civ or make one, then make a library, then if you have time and are doing well make a shrine to get the fertilety rites pantheon then delete the shrine because its costing 1gpt which can be useful at times. Then build a relevent building or an archer. keep building relevent buildings such as markets and stoneworks etc until you get national college, national college is a top priority for this OCC strategy. Whatever you are building (unless its troops and you are at war) or its 1 turn until completion build this strait away

Tech:
Pottery
writing
mining
luxary tech eg calendar or masonry
animal husbandry
calendar
Philisophy
Strait to education

From education
Make sure you have compass and everything leading up to it so you can get astronomy and build observatorys
Make universitys then oxford university and use the free tech on astronomy then build an observatory
Then keep building relevant buildings and tech strait to Architecture
From architecture hopefully you have rationalism by that time and build the porcelein tower ASAP
This is a very useful wonder

Then tech strait to scientific theory and make public schools
Then tech to plastics and build reserch labs
Then get penicillin so you can build medical labs which will give lots of food to your city, then to
Rocketry
Then to satellites, and from there build the hubble space telescope ASAP
From there tech is up to you are your preference

Diplomacy and Reserch agreements

Make sure you have a military thats good enough to defend frome invaders but not so large that you lose alot of gold from it or it delays the build order.

By the time you have education make lots of friends with the AI so you can sign reserch agreements.

Reserch agreements are the KEY to this strategy. Without them you will never win. you want to be friends with everyone and dof them. If they are guarded or hostile against you or surrounding your city then give them gpt or a good deal that they need. If you are giving them 20gpt and 2 lux, they wont declare war because this is such a good deal!

Anyway once you have made friends with as many people as possible you should have been saving gold from the early game and you should make lots of reserch agreements, don't lose out on them because the ai will make loads of them.

Get your neighbors to DoW each other, pay whatever they ask. Help the ai be hostile between AIs as early as possible, try every combination of DoW on every civ. Civs at war don't attack you, and spend resources on military that delay their Science and Cultural victories, this in turn helps you more then 30gpt.

Get embassies in every civ, trade frequently with all of them. If the "We've traded recently" doesn't show up, donate 5 gold per turn and 99% of the time it will hit bright green. You'll get a Declaration of Friendship offer quite soon after
When the World Congress comes, if you're not going to win the vote (or even if you are), vote your closest neighbor or someone you're 50/50 with diplomatically, and pick useless motions in the WC that will please everyone like the world fair or international games, BUT dont do both because you will never win and it will help the ai. I avoided "33% Great Scientist boost" even though it would have benefited me because 6/7 civs would have been angry, and the Research Agreements are more valuable (besides, I had Babylon's +50% boost to GS, +25% from Garden, +25% from National Wonder -- I planted 5 GS's before Research Lab and popped 5 or more afterwards).

Some games, it can be a real pain trying to find Civs willing to DoW others, but many a time it's quite easy and very fruitful. A leading civ on Deity can win the AI a Science victory T280-T290 when left alone the entire game, while a leading civ at war can be delayed until T335-T340. With the money you have from 7-8 Trade Routes, you can easily afford to keep the entire world at war, while signing RAs with everyone (this is why a Coastal start is very, very important).

A few tips and finishing off

What to do with great scientists
Always build accademys, never use them for the tech boost unless you are past plastics

When should you stop planting great scientists down and start using them for tech?
You should do this about when you have plastics unless you havnt got many academys then wait until you think its the right time

Micro-management
Always put your city on food focus unless building the 2 essential wonders(porcelen tower and hubble telescope) or building spaceship parts when the game is almost over
Other than that, your #1 priority is to grow your city, as high as you can get. Buy or build the Medical Lab and Hospital to get the large food bonus. You get a free aqueduct completing Tradition. Ally or Friend Maritime City-States (+2 food if friend, +3 if ally in the Capital.) Put work boats on fish tiles (Don't forget to buy the Lighthouse and Seaport for extra hammers/money on water tiles.)
specialists in all 4 Science slots (University, Research Lab, Public School)
then production ones (Workshop, Factory, Windmill) afterwards to get a Great Engineer to rush Hubble.
Eventually you'll want to fill every specialist slot available for the +5 science per specialist you'll eventually get (that +5 is worth about 16 science with % modifiers)

Spys
Briefly never put them in enemy cities because they will get annoyed and you want to play this diplomatically, you want to put them in city states. Put them in this order
Cultural and Maritime C-Ss, others are a waste of time, if you are at war then maybe ally with some militaristic city states
Later on plant a few in civs just to get intrigue and see which wonders they're building. I then share the intrigue with the civ being plotted against and get a huge diplo bonus. This will help even more with the RA

Buying tiles
early on thisis extremely important! Save all your money for this purpose (and RA). Deity AI are HUGE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and plant citys all around you and steal all of the luxarys you were expanding towards and stop your expansion. You need those tiles to grow, drop Great Scientists as Academies, for production, etc.
Important: buy in large chunks. Get tiles AI would naturally expand towards soonest, try to get 3-4 in one go, because the AI will likely ask you to stop buying tiles (to which you respond politely :)), preventing you from buying for... 30 turns I believe? You'll get a message saying you kept your promise around 30 turns later, then you can buy another swath. This gives a good diplo bonus

Some nice tips
A trick you can't use is the "Once you have 200 gold and at least 5pgt get a 112 gold per 5gpt loan and buy a worker" since you can't trade lump sums without being Friends, so this isn't as useful early on , but can still be done eventually.
You can still trade your luxuries (since you're OCC you can sell most, if not all of them and remain happy), sell them to friends for 240, or if you're desperate and don't have friends sell them for 6gpt, or 5gpt if they won't accept.

Religion
Religion sucks. I hate it, if you dont get one its good. If you are in a jungle, you can get a pantheon to get the jungle culture one, but otherwise religion isnt that good
Moreover, you get a nice diplo bonus when your neighbor comes over and "converts" you to their religion :D


Thanks for reading my guide, and please comment if this guide helped you, and if it didnt what I could do better :)
Feel free to ask any questions and please rate this guide as you see fit :)

[Hyphy]

@Jakuzi More cities means you need more science to advance to the next tech. One city means lowest "pricetag" per technology. Generating more useful cities also takes resources that could be going back into the capital.

[Jakuzi]

being new to the game and having read this I don't understand why you only use one city. doesn't having more cities mean more universities mean more tech? I get that tradition is important for the buffs but still

[The Desert Fox]

I set out going for the science victory, following your guide, but somehow along the way I ended with a diplomatic victory. I'll take it though. Good guide.

[Kelp]

i got my butt inside a toaster instructions unclear

[Voldy]

works wonders

[Arginine]

Difficult to imagine you are never invaded. The AI is very warmongering, whenever I don't expand quickly enoguh and build buildings instead of units, at least 1 of my neighbours declare war on me on turn 50. I can't build workers/settler, I either buy them or steal them.

[HolyMolyOnAPoly]

I found several things useful in this guide, thank you for writing it up! Deity still eludes me, but I felt I got closer with these tips than I had before.

Here's a screenshot of the result of my first attempt with your hints:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=440953716

Did not see that coming lol.

[Barrack Edgell]

You can buy them as a dlc on the steam store

[Coolcrumbshark]

How do you get Babylon and the others anyways?

[Coolcrumbshark]

Ok thanks