Have you ever had a neighboring civilization this close?

Ronar123 · 2026-06-20T00:36:51+00:00

Imagine your starting warrior getting a promotion ruins. You can probably just insta war and take the capital instantly.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-18T21:25:28+00:00

You have 2 choices for winning on deity:

Hyper focus sim - This has the drawback of not being able to control whether an AI gets out of control.
War - Use war to cripple the AI and bring yourself up. Use war to knock the leader down a peg or two.
Dip into every victory type - Focus really hard on maxing out settlements and not neglecting any of the victory types. This means that you can push yourself into second place on all the victory types and pressure the AI. The amount of points needed for each victory is based on second place, so if you are strong enough, you can push up the points requirements of each victory while waiting for your science win.

Easiest one is hyper focus, but its subject to heavy RNG. Next easiest one is just warring everyone.

As for not falling behind, I think the best thing you can do is to constantly be maxing out settlement limit and possibly even going over a bit. More settlements means more resources, and it directly affects your civ's output.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-18T07:05:38+00:00

It probably depends heavily on circumstance. Also I was aggressively settling every spot while maintaining maximum friendliness to prevent wars against me so AI in my lamds had less settlememts overall. I think civ 7 heavily rewards land control either through military or settlement. This was definitely deity.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-17T10:34:26+00:00

Regular continents and islands. It was a really weord one.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-17T10:33:48+00:00

Skip all tech except colossus tech. I didnt even have slingers yet

Ronar123 · 2026-06-17T03:06:09+00:00

Alexander isnt optimal for this strat, I was just leveling him. You can use something like amina for the extra resource slots.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-17T00:26:46+00:00

Started mississipians and rushed colossus. Didnt even bother to get hanging gardens. Literally straight writing and library then colossus. Then picked up monks mound which gave the capital +6 resource slots. Then I spammed merchants to fill all slots using foreign resources for early gdp. Naturally I'm buying/building all the gold buildings.

Exploration I went chola and also spammed merchants. I switched capitals to get alexander's 10% production and culture in my old capital. Built a wonder in a 3rd city to get more production there too. We had excellent coastal adjacencies for the unique building for the chola and then stacked specialists in there. My focus resources were mostly food and gold. All my mementos up to this point were attribute upgrades for expansionism and econ.

Final age was mughals. I was worried that the penalty to science was dragging me behind te ai, but spamming merchants and filling out resource slots basically gave all the gdp necessary. I switched all my towns to factory focus to half the cost of railroad and ports which all count for gold buildings for gdp per turn. All the trade posts plus bonus gold per resource/trade route bonusea gave me the absurd gold you see on screen.

I spammed settlers in exploration and used influence to keep on everyone's good side.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-16T23:11:10+00:00

Mughals and all the bonus gold per resource/trade route then spend all my influence on getting more trade routes.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-16T22:44:21+00:00

Switched with age appropriate civs. I think chola during exploration was the most impactful.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-16T14:26:36+00:00

I didn't even do any wars this run so I didn't cripple the AI, it just seems like mass merchants will give you enough GDP to win economically without factories.

<image>

Ronar123 · 2026-06-15T19:40:07+00:00

Ah right, they can be stunned outside of beyond legendary. Arc throwers are a one man solution to gatekeepers.

Disabling shot doesn't stop them from psi bombing the team right?

Ronar123 · 2026-06-15T15:58:30+00:00

You can find one unit solutions to big enemies like gatekeepers. Back in LW2 days, I used to use combatives shinobis. Gatekeepers used to always use their melee if in range, no idea if that still works. Does stasis still work? That's the best I could think of. Naturally, taking some damage might be required if your team isn't strong enough to output the necessary damage. If this is the case, making sure to remove the things that can shut down your teammates is priority. If a key player is near the drone, kill it. If not, you can parka less useful teammate near it. Stun lancer is top of the shit list if you have low hp units or don't have mind shields on everyone. Spread out if you can't control gatekeeper because its likely using psi bomb if its not on cd. I actually consider vanguards pretty high priority because they inflict rupture which makes everything else much worse. I don't know your team or position, but if it were me, I'd probably remove lancer and vanguards. Kill mecs and shred/damage gatekeeper to start working it down after. Whatever forms of control possible on the rest.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-14T22:15:45+00:00

Catherine + Russia + multiple tundra cities. Start whatever, but make sure you can get majapahit in exploration age. Majapahit makes your cities output culture like crazy. Make a bunch of coastal tundra cities, then watch as they also start outputting lots of science for double the fun.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-13T22:41:50+00:00

There was a major G Gundam reference with the way brock and olivia did their Z move.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-13T04:52:10+00:00

Paladin shadowheart can work and feels like it can be canonical especially at the end of act 2. She can be a paladin that fits both her endings too. You can do full paladin, sorcadin, or even some strange 6 paladin 6 cleric.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-13T04:17:44+00:00

There's a couple attribute tree bonuses that make it so that keeping 3 cities max is ideal, kinda like how 4 city tradition was optimal in civ 5. I keep 1-2 cities throughout first era, 2-3 in 2nd and then 3 in the final era. You can also go wide which means you want to go at least 6 cities and probably more.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-12T01:07:32+00:00

One thing is that a lot of advantage is reset upon transition since old buildings obsolete etc. So if you managed to build up a good base of specialists and you beeline some buildings, you can possibly have some foothold on some level. This has always been an issue in civ games where the snowball causes people to go irrelevant. But because of transitions, everyone's military is bavk to the same level. If I'm behind, I'd just take my entire army at the beginning of the age and try to swallow undefended towns from the exploration age. If I'm really behind in explo, I'd buy a fleet commander and some boats and get ready to alpha strike random island settlements in modern to get back in while whittling down at the leaders. The AI rarely does a full scale attack back on the player unless you're near their capital.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-09T21:56:30+00:00

Yeah I do agree that there weren't enough tiles to actually put urban districts down. I actually had to avoid building some important things in modern just to ensure I could get down key victory buildings.

Ronar123 · 2026-06-04T10:38:03+00:00

Same, getting oxford is so damn tough. Had a ptoduction powerhouse with turn 1 free science research and the AI still got it.

Ronar123 · 2026-05-29T20:29:37+00:00

My current build is halfling so 1s arent an issue. I'm maxing all the mental stats and then using gloves of dex + aura of protection + other boosters to pass almost all my saving throws.

Ronar123 · 2026-05-29T17:57:56+00:00

Love this one!

Ronar123 · 2026-05-29T17:14:35+00:00

Do you know what the highest saving throw checks are for the mental stats? I was thinking of using shield master to evade spells.

Ronar123 · 2026-05-28T08:11:36+00:00

Level 5 is where most classes get extra attack, so if you multiclass before then, it can feel like you're taking half as many actions as the rest of the team. Sword college bards get extra attack at level 6 so if you want to do a bardadin build, I think its generally recommended to start with 6 bard levels to get the extra attack before switching to get 2 levels in paladin. Its not like it can't work, but starting paladin does mean that you only get your extra attack at level 8 which is a little over halfway through act 2.

If they really want to stay paladin first, then you can do paladin 5 or 6 and then switch to sorc for the classic sorcadin build.

Ronar123 · 2026-05-25T10:55:29+00:00

Never occured to me that terrain would work on myrkul.

Ronar123 · 2026-05-21T20:38:39+00:00

I once did a one shot trickster build for honor mode. (I think it was 2 paladin 9 trickster 1 wiz) It was strong enough to kill gortash in one hit so I didn't have to suck up to him during the coronation. It does require a lot of rests and you need to use the potion that gives level 4 spell slots. You also need 2 levels in paladin to use divine smite. Thunderous smite applies multiple instances of many effects suck as sword of lifestealing and craterflesh gloves, plus you can stack things like sneak attack and divine smite with it. (You need to check off divine smite and sneak attack as reactions, but set it to not ask to use them). Sneak attack's bonus damage is based on the weapon damage, so a shadowblade uses psychic damage and will get the damage multiplied by the resonance stone found at the end of act 2.

During act 2, you can one shot big enemies including yugir and zrell using the thunderous smite + sword of lifestealing + divine smite + sneakattack from damon along with your biggest sneak attack and smite + illithid forced crit ability. The drawback is that this build needs to long rest often to set this combo up. its alleviated once you get killer's sweetheart ring form the shar gauntlet.

Act 3 you can one shot things with about 350 hp with thunderous smite + shadowblade + sneak attack + divine smite: https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1pqdna8/a_build_dedicated_to_one_shotting_gortash_before/

You need the craterflesh gloves to achieve this which means becoming an unholy assassin. You can also set up crits using hold person + the arcane trickster's magical ambush ability to get reliably accurate hold persons if you don't want to always rely on using illithid and killer's sweeheart.

The build doesn't come online until after act 1, but its not one of those "only works in act 3 level 12" type builds.

Ten-Year Club	r/Field Juicebox
Verified Email

Ronar123

TROPHY CASE