[long] Deity military victory: 400 AD, tiny world, 3 opponents

[qzw259]

Score: 10358
Happy citizens: 152.0
Content and specialist citizens: 84.9
Territory: 880.7
Future tech: 0.0
Play time: approximately 4 hours

I started as the Romans, but the particular civilization is inconsequential. The Persians also look good because of the early unique unit, but the French is probably the best civilization for non-military victories. I chose raging barbarian, deity difficulty, tiny world, 3 opponents, and the rest of the options as defaults. I was also successful as the French using the same configuration with 16 opponents. There was no save and reload cheating.

These are the basic rules of thumb
- Never invest in research because of the severe penalty
- Never explore your surroundings
- Do not use any government other than despotism
- Never build any improvement except in capital cities
- Build exactly one warrior as militia for each city
- Never create new colonies

With your first city, you should first build a warrior or two, and then build settlers exclusively as long as there is room to expand. Build cities as close together and as close to the capital as possible. If possible, try not to build cities two squares directly north/south/east/west to the capital city. Using your worker, build at least one road next to each city. For each new city, you should build a warrior first. You should be able to build at least five cities before getting hemmed in even in the tiny world with 16 civilizations. Preface each of these early non-capital city names with a symbol like #. You should ask the computer to trade technologies ASAP because of the insane research rate of the rival citizens. If the enemy civilizations make unsolicited demands, then you should agree to them – a war at this point will result in a quick defeat. After getting iron working, you can build swordsmen. With Romans, you will get the Legion unique unit instead which can trigger an early golden age with your first victory. You do not want anarchy during your golden age.

Once you cannot expand any more and there are at least five non-capital cities, move all your militia units onto a road next to the cities. There should not be any units in the non-capital cities. Wait a turn so the militia units would regain their movement points. Select a victim civilization to target first. Open the negotiation dialogue box and offer ALL your "#" cities and ask what they will give you in return; don't bother asking for cities in return for now since they would not agree. You should have a large number of technologies and money in return. Even if they refuse to offer anything, give them all the cities anyway. After closing the dialogue box, immediately attack and retake every single city that you lost. Request diplomatic dialogue with the enemy player before the turn ends. There is no war weariness as long as you end the war before your turn ends. If the computer players lose enough cities, they will respond to your peace overtures. You should be able to request at least one city for each try - initially you would not be able to ask for the best cities. If there is a road next to the new city and the city population is greater than one, then preface the city name with a # symbol or something. After building a militia, this new city will join the list of cities available for trade. Eventually, you can get every city except the enemy capital city. Let the enemy capital city stand for now and pick another target civilization. You need to take out the rival civilizations before they have too many cities; they will ignore your peace overtures if they do not lose enough cities during a war. If that happens, then you can wait until hopefully they come back to the negotiation table. You will probably lose many cities due to culture - just repeat the above strategy to regain them. If the status changes for any of the cities, then adjust the “#” metasymbol in the city names accordingly. You need to try to find unaccountable civilizations ASAP after finishing off the known enemy civilizations.

Once you have all the enemy cities except for the capitals, rush build a barrack for every large city of 4+ populations. You can start force building swordsmen or possibly a few catapults in 2+ cities. Do not be concerned as to the population loss. You must take out most of the enemy civilizations now because the computer can still win later in the modern age through a cultural victory. If you do not have a right of passage agreement with this civilization, repeat the previously mentioned trick and then request this passage agreement as part of the peace treaty. You can station all your swordsmen and catapults right outside their capital city. Capture all the enemy workers that you want before finishing off a civilization though – they can join your cities so you can rush build more swordsmen. You may wish to investigate the city before launching the final attack.

You could easily finish the game with a military victory before 1 AD by following the mentioned strategy. If you rather go for another form of victory, then offer the last civilization a poor transitional city before finishing off the enemy capital. Negotiate a passage agreement with the enemy, and then surround the last enemy city with fortified army and navy units. You can now build your empire at a leisure pace. Later on, you might want to build a science super city and then hand it over to the enemy with guards surrounding the eight immediate squares.

Here is a commentary.

Civilization 3 was fairly disappointing because of the sluggish graphics that was reminiscent of Civ 2: TOT combined with the awkward clicking interface of CTP 1/2. Whatever happened to the fast and clean interface of Civilization 2? The fact that I can't turn off unit slide animation makes the game duration unnecessarily twice as long. Civilization 3 could have used the same engine as SMAC with minor tweaks and a historical setting and it would have been a better game. I am now looking forward to Europa Universalis 2, which could possibly be the best strategy game of all time in terms of game play and historical accuracy.

[Pembleton]

Well this strategy obviously won't work on a larger map. I'll be more impressed if you can beat it on different settings.

You just found a strat for very specific settings.

[Sarxis]

Tiny world and only three opponents is why this worked. It won't work otherwise.

plus- (and this is a big '+') -- what fun is that anyhow? Somtimes I just don't bother with radical strategies, knowing that the AI can't see around them.

[lockstep]

Some fixes for the AI:

- Never accept a city without a unit inside.
- Never accept a peace treaty in the same turn a war started.

Also, when a city is ceded, any units within the city radius could automatically be handed over, too.

Anyhow, this cheat (I wouldn´t call it a strategy) needs definitely to be fixed in a patch.

[yavoon]

fine I'll be the first to say it. good job, very creative approach. =]

[n.c.]

Originally posted by qzw259
Civilization 3 could have used the same engine as SMAC with minor tweaks and a historical setting and it would have been a better game.

Amen to that. Maybe Big Huge Games will pick up the rights to make SMACII and I'll actually have another game to play.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Now, thats a succesful Wobmat Maneuvre.

[Haphazard]

Impressive thinking, but has anyone beaten Deity without using such tactics yet?

[Saint Marcus]

Once you cannot expand any more and there are at least five non-capital cities, move all your militia units onto a road next to the cities. There should not be any units in the non-capital cities. Wait a turn so the militia units would regain their movement points. Select a victim civilization to target first. Open the negotiation dialogue box and offer ALL your "#" cities and ask what they will give you in return; don't bother asking for cities in return for now since they would not agree. You should have a large number of technologies and money in return. Even if they refuse to offer anything, give them all the cities anyway. After closing the dialogue box, immediately attack and retake every single city that you lost. Request diplomatic dialogue with the enemy player before the turn ends. There is no war weariness as long as you end the war before your turn ends. If the computer players lose enough cities, they will respond to your peace overtures. You should be able to request at least one city for each try

I'd consider that cheating. This was clearly not intended.

[Yossarian]

Congrats qzw259. The feeling I get from reading some of these posts is a little bit of envy because those people haven't beaten it on deity. I haven't either because I'm awful at this game, but that's no reason to start with the "cheating" comments.

[n.c.]

Of course that was not intended. But who cares? How can you "cheat" in single player?

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by Yossarian
Congrats qzw259. The feeling I get from reading some of these posts is a little bit of envy because those people haven't beaten it on deity. I haven't either because I'm awful at this game, but that's no reason to start with the "cheating" comments.

Er, no. The maneuver of giving a city away and taking it back immediately is not new. He stole the idea from someone else.

But many of use refuse to use such this tactic. I don't because it's "not fun". It's using a formula and recipe to play the game.

I don't want to stop at depotism and only make military units. I somewhat "roleplay" and want to make a civilization, not an abstraction that uses exploits can no longer be possible to use after a patch.

If they patch this, someone may come up with another exploit. This is possible in any game. But is this why I play games? To find the hole that the AI doesn't understand it and exploit it? It's like finding out that the AI in chess always uses his knight in a certain way and so all you have to do is use this weakness and thus win every game at no matter what difficulty level. The game is no longer fun at this point.

[CivExtrodinaire]

Great job. They said it couldn't be done but you did it. However - I like many others here would probably be a lot more impressed if you had done this w/o the fixed settings and a bigger map. Good job though.

[Diety]

Nice work to beat the game on Deity, you'll definatly the first.
Like almost everyone, I consider this cheating, but at least it's a good-thinking-cheat

[Saint Marcus]

The feeling I get from reading some of these posts is a little bit of envy because those people haven't beaten it on deity. I haven't either because I'm awful at this game, but that's no reason to start with the "cheating" comments.

I don't even have the game yet

[cyril25376]

qzw259, I am deeply impressed. I hope I can read another story written by you.

[samsmithnz]

I used to play a similar method in Civ 1. I'd choose Emperor, Don't restart killed oppenents option, World map, 3 civs, and choose the Romans, or another european Civilisation. If all my foes are all on the same continent then i can build units rush around and kill everyone and win by about 2000BC. This will give you a nice score of about ~150%.

STILL WAITING for civ 3 to be released in my country (NEw zealand)...

[Grim Legacy]

Hm don't know. Sort of spoils the competition. Not the honorable thing to do IMNSHO.

[disappointed]

[lockstep]

Because qzw259 seems to love SMAC (like I do, but I´m rather a newbie):

Was your 'strategy' possible in SMAC? If not, why not?

[kittenOFchaos]

You steal candy from babies.

[Rasputin]

i guess to some people winning is everything!!! i hope this guy didnt pay for Civ 3, after jsut a week he has made it into a boring game.. I couldnt play that way either, civ is to me about empire building and developing, not about winning using any loophole possible...

[Skanky Burns]

You're the first to win on Deity, and also the first to use an exploit to its full advantage. Good job

Disclaimer: Theres no way in hell id ever use this tho, wouldnt be fun at all.

[Hydey]

When this game becomes multiplayer I hope someone tries this strat against a human, I guess it would only be tried once.

[marcuspeddle]

I guess you have to be pretty clever to think of a strategy like this but it doesn't sound like much fun. Sure glad I'm dumb. Hours of fun and challenge in store for me

[JohannesH]

good job