raging, 7 civs, no restart, eastUS map, me as Romans

had intended to do ICS. Started in St. Lawrence valley.
The river made it possible to lay down cities almost as fast as ICS,
but with more room. So i played perf instead. The river helped trade, and the forests gave strong shields. Weak on food, so went for early republic and celebrated up. Managed to get HG, colossus AND copernicus (those forests really helped!) LAter got Leos, mikes, bachs, and Adams. and ikes.
went demo and pulled ahead in research

Vikings were to my south, in New england and upstate new york.
Sioux in ohio, West virginia.
Spanish in NYC, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
Chinese in Virginia
Babylonians in North Carolina.
(Carthies were gone early)
Vikings were #1, babylonians #2.

in 1840's got fundie, artillery and espionage.
went fundy, attacked vikings. Took 2 large cities then capital.
Capital had STWA. when i took capital, they split. rebel civ (greeks) got UN and western New York part of viking empire. Vikings didnt have enough gold for a new capital. I had a field day buying up viking cities.

proceeded to wars against greeks, spanish and chinese.

stayed in fundie till 1860's when started to lose tech lead.
switched to commie. stayed there till 1900, when got robotics. and went on further rampage. Eliminated vikings, greeks and spanish. Chinse down to one isolated city. took 2 large cities from babylonians. Cultivated sioux as my ally. in 1915 with apollo, peace broke out as me, sioux and babylon
entered space race. Stayed in fundie (till the end) stole any techs i still needed. launched in 1928, landed in 1937.

My earliest AC time on deity.

and reason was because of successful attack on viking capital, which got me a large city, STWA,and split the viking civ, depriving them of a capital and of UN.

So ive learned my lesson. Deity is MUCH easier when you aggressively cripple the AI.

So how hard is deity?
IMHO:

with ICS - easy
with an aggressive perfectionist strat - moderately easy
with a peaceful demo strat - still very hard, as far as i can tell

next must try OCC.

quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark on 05-08-2001 06:04 PM So how hard is deity? IMHO: with ICS - easy with an aggressive perfectionist strat - moderately easy with a peaceful demo strat - still very hard, as far as i can tell next must try OCC. LOTM

Congrats on the win, LOTM. Just curious: on lower levels, what's your playing style? I ask because I would exactly reverse you list above; I find peace-loving perfectionism the easiest way to beat the AI at deity, but I have yet to make a go of ICS. But peace-loving perfectionism is what I know and love from lower levels, whereas ICS is new to me. Anyway, congrats again.

quote: Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly on 05-10-2001 07:23 AM Congrats on the win, LOTM. Just curious: on lower levels, what's your playing style? I ask because I would exactly reverse you list above; I find peace-loving perfectionism the easiest way to beat the AI at deity, but I have yet to make a go of ICS. But peace-loving perfectionism is what I know and love from lower levels, whereas ICS is new to me. Anyway, congrats again.

I used to play generally perfectionist, sometimes more peaceful, sometimes more warlike. This carried me through emperor.

And i never really pro-actively used WLCD's to grow population - let it just happen when it happened. Obviously this is a key to a peaceful strat on deity.

My 2 earlier AC landings were with a peaceful strat, but both were struggles. One was an 8 city small real world map win, going to commie late in the game. The other was a peaceful expansionist game, as Russians on medium map, where ideal starting terrain (the forest/grassland edge, with many rivers) made it possible to quickly start many productive cities.

So far I think it much easier to win if at some point you go ahead and destroy/cripple the most threatening AI civs. havent figured out the best timing or way to do that yet. Also havent found good way to do that without 100 years of war and fundie. (Although i suppose I could reload the above game and try switching back to peaceful at some intermediate conquest point)

LOTM

quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark on 05-10-2001 06:58 PM So far I think it much easier to win if at some point you go ahead and destroy/cripple the most threatening AI civs. havent figured out the best timing or way to do that yet. Also havent found good way to do that without 100 years of war and fundie. (Although i suppose I could reload the above game and try switching back to peaceful at some intermediate conquest point)

I think crippling is the way to go, but I don't think it ever requires going fundy or even commie. I like sending dips out to bribe cities deep in the enemy heartland, preferably those with wonders. Get some walls up, build some vet defenders, and the AI will spend the rest of the game trying to get its old city back, while leaving your civ largely alone to pursu its peaceful scientific inquiries. I call it the "sideshow" strategy, and it works nearly every time. A variation on "sideshow" is the "spreading stain" strategy, where you seize and defend the city deep in enemy territory and then use it as a site to buy other cities. I find a play a lot of games where the AI and I do a little dance: it sneak attacks, I retalliate by bribing a city, it sues for peace. And meanwhile, back home, a ship gets built without incident.

Edit to add this question: On another thread you say you play ToT, and here you say you were playing on a map of the eastern US. Where do you get real world maps for ToT?