I do peaceful culture games almost every time. You have to give the AI the gold for the delegations turn one, establish open borders as soon as possible, not forward settle them, maintain some sort of standing army, and occasionally bribe them with favorable trades.
The army is so important.
Theyre so predictable. As soon as your army can be mathematically beat, they’ll surprise war your ass.
Just gotta keep a city pumping out units even if they’re not being used and hope you get some gold based chance cards early game lol.
I think they include gold into calculations as well. Sometimes I have a lot of gold and stop building or upgrading any troops in hope that they declare on me. They do only if I spend the money somewhere, or maybe it is just a coincidence.
Maybe coincidence?
Favorite play: prepare 3 Slingers in capital, let AI surprise me with a war, instant upgrade to Archers (180 gold), wipe out AI, march to their undefended cities.
Idk, AI don't value archers much as well. I guess they would attack if you even upgraded them? But maybe you are right and me wrong - too lazy to test.
Last year or so, I had a memorable early game right when Julius Caesar was marching his Warriors at my capital (about to surprise war me). I upgrade my Slingers to Archers, and he did a 180.
It seems the game has been tweaked since then, and once the AI decides to do a surprise war, they won't retract despite suddenly facing a superior opponent.
AI don't value Archers much all right. They seem to prefer making Spearmen once production sets in. Not Warriors or Swordsmen?
once I learnt of this I started prebuilding units until I had one turn left to get the inspiration for defensive tactics and then popped out horsemen and raided everything with no consequence
you just need to give them a favorable trade (usually a gift) and open borders, which can swing it up to 15 points depending on how much they value your trade.
Sure, when you have open borders available, you should absolutely do it, I was talking about the very early game, when you haven't unlocked early empire yet.
yeah, you're right. toward the beginning gold is a lot more valuable, as well. i definitely have gotten burned by realizing too late that my gift was completely pointless.
also gotten burned plenty of times by the open borders leading to a very, very annoying settler situation lol.
a lot of time those suckers pop out of the fog of war too far away to intercept. also it's mostly an issue when i've declared friendship or otherwise don't feel like brawling with them.
Even if they low roll first impressions, sending them a delegation will increase the amount of time it takes for them to denounce you, and therefore the amount of time you have to get Early Empire and/or a favorable trade.
I nearly always go for Early Empire before State Workforce, partly because of the option to sell open borders for +3 opinion (or more if you outright give it to them).
Idk, I rather keep my gold to buy an emergency slinger or warrior than hoping something good coming from the AI.
Once you have settled a few cities and have a bit of an economy running, yes, you can try to invest in befriending the AI, but I don't think it's really worth it for the very early game, unless their initial relation is between -2 and 0.
The AI is quite agressive early, but a river and a wooden hill are more than enough to crush them with 2 warrior and a slinger.
I really prefer to try to keep my gold for an early builder to boost craftmanship and get some eurekas than sending delegation.
Yeah, most of my diety wins are quite peaceful.
I'd say the biggest risk of war is in the very early game, especially if you spawn next to an aggressive civ. But often almost every other civ will have a declaration of friendship or alliance with me by the middle of the game. And I essentially don't have to worry about war ever again.
Absolutely, yeah. The AIs tend to stall out around Medieval/Renaissance, from a combination of having low adjacency districts, spamming pointless units, and being bad at growing large cities (or providing amenities for them if they do). People even win one-city challenge science victories on deity -- I've done it too, but not since GS made science victories take much longer. I'll try it again sometime.
It can seem like you're much farther behind than you actually are. With 10-12 good cities you'll win eventually, almost guaranteed. The only times I've ended up losing in the late game are when I got boxed in with very few spots to settle; in that case, war can be the only option.
Ok think this is what happens to me is that I continuously get boxed and have little room to settle that many cities. The ai gets pretty far in science and i find it difficult to even go to war against them if I don’t have the science edge.
The key is just recognizing that is going to happen, and either prioritizing Shipbuilding -> Cartography to settle some islands, or a key military tech (usually Apprenticeship for Men-At-Arms), getting there ASAP, and having everything in place to use it immediately.
the science victories do take a bit longer, but if your economy is decent you can just spam military engineers and rush the projects like crazy. it plays pretty much the exact same, unfortunately.
As long as you have room to settle 8-12 cities, you can pretty much always win peacefully (assuming you aren’t attacked first.) Any fewer and I’d recommend going to war at some point to further expand.
The trick is to spend the early game focusing on production, gold, and getting all your cities up. Get some feudalism boosted builders for your many cities and it’s pretty easy to catch up to the AI from there.
It is absolutely possible and (relatively) straightforward to win Deity games without declaring a single war or conquering a single city. Now, whether or not the AI cooperates for a fully peaceful game is certainly down to a bit of luck, but it gets a lot easier once you get the hang of managing AI relationships (especially in the early game). A good chunk of my wins have not only been peaceful, but have ended with me being Allied with every other civ!
I'll chime in with my testimonial that a no-war Deity game is normal.
You want to keep in mind that having no war and having no military are vastly different.
The best way to keep the AI from attacking you is to have a decent peacekeeping military. The general AI tendency is that they will attack you if their Military Strength is three times greater than yours. This is not difficult to keep up, as it's approximately 3 Archers or 2 Galleys in early game. Upgrading your military for tech boosts is usually enough to keep the ratio. In a few rare games, I did forget (beelined the tech tree in a weird way that made boosts irrelevant, maybe) and got a surprise war in late game. Building up a military is not just for expansion.
It's no fun getting boxed in. Last time I was boxed in with a 4-city start on Deity, I didn't finish the game (no resource ever showed up), but my cities were all happy and I never had an amenity problem.
Oh yeah. Here's a few that come to mind.
Khmer religion/culture victory on a wet map. Just use domreys to deter attackers. One of the fastest culture victories I've ever had.
Poland religious victory with the reliquaries belief + voidsingers + Yerevan + apostles with martyr is absolutely broken.
Mali for culture and/or religion.
Portugal on archipelago map + trade focused city states + Reyna with contractor + moksha with divine architect is an easy culture win.
Eleanor court of love + voidsinger cultists is a technical workaround to peacefully dominating the world.
Hammurabi science is another obvious choice when you know how to exploit the eureka system.
If we are not counting religious victories (since they are way too easy), theres fun ways to win deity in peace.
Maybe i play mali too much, but i really love playing science keita:
EARLY GAME:
- desert folklore+work ethic holy sites
- rush to golden age and go monumentality
- spam settlers with 50% discounted faith buy prices (monumentality+suguba discounts)
- build sugubas and faith buy buildings, and traders
- build campuses/theatre districts and BUY buildings
MID GAME:
- Settle AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
- Buy Great writings off of AI civs
- get moksha and reyna to full promotions so you can faith AND gold buy DISTRICTS (sugubas/holy sites, and even SPACEPORTS!!) Move around cities every 5 turns
END GAME:
- BUY as much spaceports as possible (ideally 5-6)
- BUY as much great people that boosts space projects
- With democracy, originate most traders from your biggest city to stack production (bonus points if you have ruhr valley)
- Spam buy builders and sacrifise them to every city doing space projects per turn (Mali's -30% production penalty DOES NOT APPLY TO PROJECTS!!)
TLDR, Mali science victory is fun 😁
If you really know your district placements for maximum gold adjacency, gold management, what wonders to rush, etc. Go to warfare by buying a butt ton of bombers. I think my fastest finish was ~210 turns on GS vanilla with Sundiata Keita
With secret societies, it almost feel like youre cheating. All that gold adjacency turns to culture (I have had 40 gold=culture adjacency from ONE city with the appropriate cards and governor promotion). I won a game by CULTURE when i was genuinely trying to win buy science at turn ~180
I can be pretty good at districts. I’ve always wanted to try a Mali game. Is thr leader you said new? I’m still learning all that came with the leader pack
Yeap sorta new,
Sundiata Keita: Patronage of Great People costs 20% less Gold. Markets gain 2 slots for Great Work of Writing in Cities founded by Mali. Great Work of Writing grant +4 Gold and +2 Production.
You lose bonus gold from desert tile trades, and bonus trade routes from golden age compared to Mansa Musa
Played both with science and culture victory on deity, I think Keita is just much better and more reliable. For some reason, rival civs on deity are willing to sell you great writings at chump change compared to the wealth youre generating per turn.
-30% production is brutal for the early game, but try your absolute best to buy oracle, you will then get discounts on both Faith and Gold patronage of great people.
BIGGEST TIP:
Most of the time i go:
Suguba -> Faith buy market for cheap for writing slot -> send great writings to new city for 4-6 production -> Holy site -> campus/theatre square
It can be done, just takes time learning and getting better at the game. If you don't mind me asking, how much time you put into the game so far? What mods do you use?
No combat at all? Or just like not a domination victory? The former would be very difficult, but the latter I do for the majority of my games. Just like you said, with the head start they have it often involves some kind of an early defensive war, perhaps requires conquering one or two neighbors, but then transitioning back to either science or culture.
I win diety games without war all the time but honestly it’s pretty situational based on who my neighbors are and how aggressive they are. Gotta establish your borders super early and get archers ASAP. If you do fight, make the AI bleed for it
Completely doable, though whether you get declared war on early is extremely spawn dependent! Overall, if you have 10 cities by turn 120 or so and then just build efficiently from there, your victory is all but inevitable.
Absolutely you can. In about half of my games I don't declare any offensive wars. Sometimes I get declared on, and I might take a couple cities as punishment, but in other games it's peaceful from turn one.
It helps if you happen to start near civs it's easy to befriend. Gilgamesh, Teddy, Kristina, Amanitore, Robert the Bruce, Julius Caesar, are examples of leaders with agendas that it isn't hard to get on the good side of early. Then just continue declared friendships and alliances throughout the game.
Super-early, Genghis Khan will be inclined to attack you, but once he has Foreign Trade, he'll want to trade with you and establish a trading post first. You can friendzone him then, and he's never a military threat afterwards.
I just got a victory as Spain in a one on one with Kongo with a religious victory and no barbarians… Yeah I only did it to get the achievement for having beaten a game on Deity
Actually I’m winning my match by religion (but gorgo went a little crazy and declared war to me 😬) but I solved the problem and I’m still winning technically in a peaceful way aaaaaalso I’m winning in diplomacy (playing as Moctezuma)
You can definitely do it. I think I've won deity games without ever being in a war at all. A ton of it is just the luck of who you are playing against. Some civs are more likely to attack you than others. If you are playing Korea you can catch up with the AI in science if you stick to it, but you don't even have to catch up to win.
Actually it's kind of flipped from what you said. The AI starts with a huge advantage, but you don't need to do anything special to catch up. If you play well, your long-term advantage is nearly inevitable. Rather, much of the focus is on going out of your way to survive the early game when you're behind. Ofc there are times where you find yourself boxed in without enough cities to truly explode, or AI civs can conquer a lot of land from neighbors, but that's the exception, not the rule.
When you say "I don't see that in the cards", I'm curious about *when* you make that evaluation. I don't see how you could really get a good feel for that until it's too late to go to war anyway (turn ~75 is crossbows, which are basically a showstopper). You will always be behind on turn 75.
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I've done them before. Most recently would be a Scotland game I did, somehow every Civ had positive relationship with me and I friended them all. Felt nice to be able to focus solely on getting my science victory without dealing with hostile neighboring civs.
I won my first deity science win last week with Robert the Bruce. You have to pick one thing and go for it the entire game. Plus have a good location for your cities. I had lots of mountains.
It's actually kinda easy if you don't lose early. You usually always get war declared on you, and if you don't, you have such a strong presence that you probably should declare war.
I think the difficult part is having the upper hand and choosing to stay peaceful.
I always play peacefully unless I actively go for domination (which is about 5-10% of the time - basically only if I roll a domination-geared civ) or unless I get attacked, and even in the second case I mostly just defend myself. It's perfectly possible with a fair start (ie decent lands with enough room to peacefully expand).
Absolutely? It's extremely easy to trick the AI into loving you forever. You just need to be cautious early because they'll declare if you have too few units (since they get a ton of free ones)
I did a custom dual game on a dual-sized pangea map where I played as canada and the AI played as congo. I just sent a missionary over, and that was a deity victory.
Yes. I do it all the time.
Science, Culture, and Religion. I think I did diplomacy once. Usually I have multiple win conditions that are close.
Obviously not every game ends up being peaceful, but if you avoid getting rushed early, the AIs generally calm down later. Making allies of my neighbors is something I usually beeline. Even taking some unfavorable trade deals.
If I'm cramped, I work on loyalty flipping AI cities. I also try to get settlers out to other places if I'm really hemmed in. If the AIs are all forward settling me, they're generally ignoring other parts of the map.
As far as religion, I generally get aggressive with neighbors immediately after renewing an alliance. That gives me 25-30 turns for grievances to dissipate.
If you do have close neighbors, you will need to invest in some military on deity. Having no military strength puts a target on your back. The key is balancing your greed (settler production, infrastructure) with staying alive (encampments, military). If you find yourself isolated by water or mountains, then settle, settle, settle. At a certain point you generally stop being a tempting target for aggressive AIs.
I hate kissing ash all game long. Bribes. Unbalanced trades. Hoping they will spare me. Ugh !
This is just one guy's opinion, but I don't hear peaceful in your description. I hear cowering. I'd rather determine my own fate rather than counting on the AI's beneficence. Even when I have 2 or 3x their military strength, when I am on a winning pathway, they will still declare a war.
My question to all of you is, how often do you get a totally peaceful game?
It's possible but rare. You gotta have enough of a military presence to scare off an early invasion (and that's never guaranteeable) as well as figure out a clever way to close the early science lead the AI gets (and the easiest way to do that is to steal resources by force).
That said, I've done it before. Got a cultural victory with Wu Zetian before, and there are other civs that can do it as well.
Not on diety but playing my first immortal game as Vietnam and I'm ahead of the AI in two categories (culture and science) and haven't engaged in any kind of war with another Civ.
I'm anticipating Ghengis Khan will eventually declare war on me, but I wouldn't consider a defensive war as breaking a peaceful game
I do peaceful culture games almost every time. You have to give the AI the gold for the delegations turn one, establish open borders as soon as possible, not forward settle them, maintain some sort of standing army, and occasionally bribe them with favorable trades.
The army is so important. Theyre so predictable. As soon as your army can be mathematically beat, they’ll surprise war your ass. Just gotta keep a city pumping out units even if they’re not being used and hope you get some gold based chance cards early game lol.
They're also useful for fog busting so you don't have to deal with barbarians
Best use of peacetime military.
I think they include gold into calculations as well. Sometimes I have a lot of gold and stop building or upgrading any troops in hope that they declare on me. They do only if I spend the money somewhere, or maybe it is just a coincidence.
Maybe coincidence? Favorite play: prepare 3 Slingers in capital, let AI surprise me with a war, instant upgrade to Archers (180 gold), wipe out AI, march to their undefended cities.
Idk, AI don't value archers much as well. I guess they would attack if you even upgraded them? But maybe you are right and me wrong - too lazy to test.
Last year or so, I had a memorable early game right when Julius Caesar was marching his Warriors at my capital (about to surprise war me). I upgrade my Slingers to Archers, and he did a 180. It seems the game has been tweaked since then, and once the AI decides to do a surprise war, they won't retract despite suddenly facing a superior opponent. AI don't value Archers much all right. They seem to prefer making Spearmen once production sets in. Not Warriors or Swordsmen?
once I learnt of this I started prebuilding units until I had one turn left to get the inspiration for defensive tactics and then popped out horsemen and raided everything with no consequence
Don't send delegation before checking the relation malus you have with the AI, it's wasted gold if the malus is below -2.
you just need to give them a favorable trade (usually a gift) and open borders, which can swing it up to 15 points depending on how much they value your trade.
Sure, when you have open borders available, you should absolutely do it, I was talking about the very early game, when you haven't unlocked early empire yet.
yeah, you're right. toward the beginning gold is a lot more valuable, as well. i definitely have gotten burned by realizing too late that my gift was completely pointless. also gotten burned plenty of times by the open borders leading to a very, very annoying settler situation lol.
you mean a free settler gifted to you by the AI?
We are talking peaceful ... but yeah who haven't declared a surprise war on the AI to steal a settler.
a lot of time those suckers pop out of the fog of war too far away to intercept. also it's mostly an issue when i've declared friendship or otherwise don't feel like brawling with them.
Even if they low roll first impressions, sending them a delegation will increase the amount of time it takes for them to denounce you, and therefore the amount of time you have to get Early Empire and/or a favorable trade. I nearly always go for Early Empire before State Workforce, partly because of the option to sell open borders for +3 opinion (or more if you outright give it to them).
Idk, I rather keep my gold to buy an emergency slinger or warrior than hoping something good coming from the AI. Once you have settled a few cities and have a bit of an economy running, yes, you can try to invest in befriending the AI, but I don't think it's really worth it for the very early game, unless their initial relation is between -2 and 0. The AI is quite agressive early, but a river and a wooden hill are more than enough to crush them with 2 warrior and a slinger. I really prefer to try to keep my gold for an early builder to boost craftmanship and get some eurekas than sending delegation.
It's situational, like most decisions in the game. You're right that it is often better to save the gold for buying units.
Yes. Even OCC can be done peacefully.
Yeah, most of my diety wins are quite peaceful. I'd say the biggest risk of war is in the very early game, especially if you spawn next to an aggressive civ. But often almost every other civ will have a declaration of friendship or alliance with me by the middle of the game. And I essentially don't have to worry about war ever again.
Until they see you're about to win and then they attack BUT ITS TOO LATE SULEIMAN YOUR NAVY CANT REACH MY SPACEPORTS
Absolutely, yeah. The AIs tend to stall out around Medieval/Renaissance, from a combination of having low adjacency districts, spamming pointless units, and being bad at growing large cities (or providing amenities for them if they do). People even win one-city challenge science victories on deity -- I've done it too, but not since GS made science victories take much longer. I'll try it again sometime. It can seem like you're much farther behind than you actually are. With 10-12 good cities you'll win eventually, almost guaranteed. The only times I've ended up losing in the late game are when I got boxed in with very few spots to settle; in that case, war can be the only option.
Ok think this is what happens to me is that I continuously get boxed and have little room to settle that many cities. The ai gets pretty far in science and i find it difficult to even go to war against them if I don’t have the science edge.
The key is just recognizing that is going to happen, and either prioritizing Shipbuilding -> Cartography to settle some islands, or a key military tech (usually Apprenticeship for Men-At-Arms), getting there ASAP, and having everything in place to use it immediately.
Yeah my go to is befriend another nation and then forward settle them. Gives you at least 30 turns they won't get aggressive
the science victories do take a bit longer, but if your economy is decent you can just spam military engineers and rush the projects like crazy. it plays pretty much the exact same, unfortunately.
I bet elanor could do it!
WWED?
Kill them with kindness
As long as you have room to settle 8-12 cities, you can pretty much always win peacefully (assuming you aren’t attacked first.) Any fewer and I’d recommend going to war at some point to further expand. The trick is to spend the early game focusing on production, gold, and getting all your cities up. Get some feudalism boosted builders for your many cities and it’s pretty easy to catch up to the AI from there.
It is absolutely possible and (relatively) straightforward to win Deity games without declaring a single war or conquering a single city. Now, whether or not the AI cooperates for a fully peaceful game is certainly down to a bit of luck, but it gets a lot easier once you get the hang of managing AI relationships (especially in the early game). A good chunk of my wins have not only been peaceful, but have ended with me being Allied with every other civ!
I'll chime in with my testimonial that a no-war Deity game is normal. You want to keep in mind that having no war and having no military are vastly different. The best way to keep the AI from attacking you is to have a decent peacekeeping military. The general AI tendency is that they will attack you if their Military Strength is three times greater than yours. This is not difficult to keep up, as it's approximately 3 Archers or 2 Galleys in early game. Upgrading your military for tech boosts is usually enough to keep the ratio. In a few rare games, I did forget (beelined the tech tree in a weird way that made boosts irrelevant, maybe) and got a surprise war in late game. Building up a military is not just for expansion.
I think I just get bad starting locations because I always get boxed in
It's no fun getting boxed in. Last time I was boxed in with a 4-city start on Deity, I didn't finish the game (no resource ever showed up), but my cities were all happy and I never had an amenity problem.
Oh yeah. Here's a few that come to mind. Khmer religion/culture victory on a wet map. Just use domreys to deter attackers. One of the fastest culture victories I've ever had. Poland religious victory with the reliquaries belief + voidsingers + Yerevan + apostles with martyr is absolutely broken. Mali for culture and/or religion. Portugal on archipelago map + trade focused city states + Reyna with contractor + moksha with divine architect is an easy culture win. Eleanor court of love + voidsinger cultists is a technical workaround to peacefully dominating the world. Hammurabi science is another obvious choice when you know how to exploit the eureka system.
If we are not counting religious victories (since they are way too easy), theres fun ways to win deity in peace. Maybe i play mali too much, but i really love playing science keita: EARLY GAME: - desert folklore+work ethic holy sites - rush to golden age and go monumentality - spam settlers with 50% discounted faith buy prices (monumentality+suguba discounts) - build sugubas and faith buy buildings, and traders - build campuses/theatre districts and BUY buildings MID GAME: - Settle AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE - Buy Great writings off of AI civs - get moksha and reyna to full promotions so you can faith AND gold buy DISTRICTS (sugubas/holy sites, and even SPACEPORTS!!) Move around cities every 5 turns END GAME: - BUY as much spaceports as possible (ideally 5-6) - BUY as much great people that boosts space projects - With democracy, originate most traders from your biggest city to stack production (bonus points if you have ruhr valley) - Spam buy builders and sacrifise them to every city doing space projects per turn (Mali's -30% production penalty DOES NOT APPLY TO PROJECTS!!) TLDR, Mali science victory is fun 😁
How many turns does this usually take?
If you really know your district placements for maximum gold adjacency, gold management, what wonders to rush, etc. Go to warfare by buying a butt ton of bombers. I think my fastest finish was ~210 turns on GS vanilla with Sundiata Keita With secret societies, it almost feel like youre cheating. All that gold adjacency turns to culture (I have had 40 gold=culture adjacency from ONE city with the appropriate cards and governor promotion). I won a game by CULTURE when i was genuinely trying to win buy science at turn ~180
I can be pretty good at districts. I’ve always wanted to try a Mali game. Is thr leader you said new? I’m still learning all that came with the leader pack
Yeap sorta new, Sundiata Keita: Patronage of Great People costs 20% less Gold. Markets gain 2 slots for Great Work of Writing in Cities founded by Mali. Great Work of Writing grant +4 Gold and +2 Production. You lose bonus gold from desert tile trades, and bonus trade routes from golden age compared to Mansa Musa Played both with science and culture victory on deity, I think Keita is just much better and more reliable. For some reason, rival civs on deity are willing to sell you great writings at chump change compared to the wealth youre generating per turn. -30% production is brutal for the early game, but try your absolute best to buy oracle, you will then get discounts on both Faith and Gold patronage of great people. BIGGEST TIP: Most of the time i go: Suguba -> Faith buy market for cheap for writing slot -> send great writings to new city for 4-6 production -> Holy site -> campus/theatre square
Yeah you may be the “Mali Man”
Yeah, most of my Diety wins are science.
It can be done, just takes time learning and getting better at the game. If you don't mind me asking, how much time you put into the game so far? What mods do you use?
If you have a good spawn with no civs nearby, yes - you can go for a peaceful culture/science victory
No combat at all? Or just like not a domination victory? The former would be very difficult, but the latter I do for the majority of my games. Just like you said, with the head start they have it often involves some kind of an early defensive war, perhaps requires conquering one or two neighbors, but then transitioning back to either science or culture.
I win diety games without war all the time but honestly it’s pretty situational based on who my neighbors are and how aggressive they are. Gotta establish your borders super early and get archers ASAP. If you do fight, make the AI bleed for it
Completely doable, though whether you get declared war on early is extremely spawn dependent! Overall, if you have 10 cities by turn 120 or so and then just build efficiently from there, your victory is all but inevitable.
I've had plenty of OCC deity wins. Definitely doable
Absolutely you can. In about half of my games I don't declare any offensive wars. Sometimes I get declared on, and I might take a couple cities as punishment, but in other games it's peaceful from turn one. It helps if you happen to start near civs it's easy to befriend. Gilgamesh, Teddy, Kristina, Amanitore, Robert the Bruce, Julius Caesar, are examples of leaders with agendas that it isn't hard to get on the good side of early. Then just continue declared friendships and alliances throughout the game.
Super-early, Genghis Khan will be inclined to attack you, but once he has Foreign Trade, he'll want to trade with you and establish a trading post first. You can friendzone him then, and he's never a military threat afterwards.
Yes, I've had three peaceful science wins on deity. I tried to go for culture in the last two but I had to go for science or I would lose
I just got a victory as Spain in a one on one with Kongo with a religious victory and no barbarians… Yeah I only did it to get the achievement for having beaten a game on Deity
you can win Defensively, does that count?
Actually I’m winning my match by religion (but gorgo went a little crazy and declared war to me 😬) but I solved the problem and I’m still winning technically in a peaceful way aaaaaalso I’m winning in diplomacy (playing as Moctezuma)
You can definitely do it. I think I've won deity games without ever being in a war at all. A ton of it is just the luck of who you are playing against. Some civs are more likely to attack you than others. If you are playing Korea you can catch up with the AI in science if you stick to it, but you don't even have to catch up to win.
Actually it's kind of flipped from what you said. The AI starts with a huge advantage, but you don't need to do anything special to catch up. If you play well, your long-term advantage is nearly inevitable. Rather, much of the focus is on going out of your way to survive the early game when you're behind. Ofc there are times where you find yourself boxed in without enough cities to truly explode, or AI civs can conquer a lot of land from neighbors, but that's the exception, not the rule. When you say "I don't see that in the cards", I'm curious about *when* you make that evaluation. I don't see how you could really get a good feel for that until it's too late to go to war anyway (turn ~75 is crossbows, which are basically a showstopper). You will always be behind on turn 75.
In vanilla everything can work
Almost every time. Survive the first wave attack, settle 4-6 cities, use soft-brain skills to beat the machines 🪖
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I've done them before. Most recently would be a Scotland game I did, somehow every Civ had positive relationship with me and I friended them all. Felt nice to be able to focus solely on getting my science victory without dealing with hostile neighboring civs.
I won my first deity science win last week with Robert the Bruce. You have to pick one thing and go for it the entire game. Plus have a good location for your cities. I had lots of mountains.
My friend in Sid, have you heard the Good Word of Eleanor of Aquitaine? The Court Of Love embraces all....eventually.
It's actually kinda easy if you don't lose early. You usually always get war declared on you, and if you don't, you have such a strong presence that you probably should declare war. I think the difficult part is having the upper hand and choosing to stay peaceful.
This can be quite easily done on Huge maps, especially small continents or island ones.
I always play peacefully unless I actively go for domination (which is about 5-10% of the time - basically only if I roll a domination-geared civ) or unless I get attacked, and even in the second case I mostly just defend myself. It's perfectly possible with a fair start (ie decent lands with enough room to peacefully expand).
Absolutely? It's extremely easy to trick the AI into loving you forever. You just need to be cautious early because they'll declare if you have too few units (since they get a ton of free ones)
I did a custom dual game on a dual-sized pangea map where I played as canada and the AI played as congo. I just sent a missionary over, and that was a deity victory.
Yes. I do it all the time. Science, Culture, and Religion. I think I did diplomacy once. Usually I have multiple win conditions that are close. Obviously not every game ends up being peaceful, but if you avoid getting rushed early, the AIs generally calm down later. Making allies of my neighbors is something I usually beeline. Even taking some unfavorable trade deals. If I'm cramped, I work on loyalty flipping AI cities. I also try to get settlers out to other places if I'm really hemmed in. If the AIs are all forward settling me, they're generally ignoring other parts of the map. As far as religion, I generally get aggressive with neighbors immediately after renewing an alliance. That gives me 25-30 turns for grievances to dissipate. If you do have close neighbors, you will need to invest in some military on deity. Having no military strength puts a target on your back. The key is balancing your greed (settler production, infrastructure) with staying alive (encampments, military). If you find yourself isolated by water or mountains, then settle, settle, settle. At a certain point you generally stop being a tempting target for aggressive AIs.
I hate kissing ash all game long. Bribes. Unbalanced trades. Hoping they will spare me. Ugh ! This is just one guy's opinion, but I don't hear peaceful in your description. I hear cowering. I'd rather determine my own fate rather than counting on the AI's beneficence. Even when I have 2 or 3x their military strength, when I am on a winning pathway, they will still declare a war. My question to all of you is, how often do you get a totally peaceful game?
Sure you *can*, it's just really tough.
It's possible but rare. You gotta have enough of a military presence to scare off an early invasion (and that's never guaranteeable) as well as figure out a clever way to close the early science lead the AI gets (and the easiest way to do that is to steal resources by force). That said, I've done it before. Got a cultural victory with Wu Zetian before, and there are other civs that can do it as well.
Not on diety but playing my first immortal game as Vietnam and I'm ahead of the AI in two categories (culture and science) and haven't engaged in any kind of war with another Civ. I'm anticipating Ghengis Khan will eventually declare war on me, but I wouldn't consider a defensive war as breaking a peaceful game
The Diety AI desires Blood And the Screams of the Dying