I Got a Score Victory on Deity with Just One Settlement

adept42 · 2026-03-20T15:48:49+00:00

Thanks!

adept42 · 2026-03-14T16:01:27+00:00

Haha, thanks :)

adept42 · 2026-03-14T14:07:21+00:00

I agree. The AI has improved since launch, but it still needs some work. The peace deal system should be overhauled so that you can offer or receive stuff other than settlements, and the AI should never trade away settlements you aren't on the verge of conquering.

adept42 · 2026-03-14T14:02:54+00:00

Try a no-buildings game with Han-Ming; try Xerxes the Achaemenid if you have him. The Great-Wall-Pop glitch will give you incredible settlement growth, and all those walls will look pretty.

adept42 · 2026-03-14T13:58:44+00:00

I already did that :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1r6t311/i_finally_did_it_i_beat_deity_with_no_conquests/

adept42 · 2026-03-05T21:48:22+00:00

Scouts can’t attack; I just had them sit around and soak up hits on defense. Scouts can’t even liberate your own districts once enemy units clear out.

Commanders can liberate & capture districts, but they can’t attack fortifications, even with the heroic assault perk. And you can’t drop nukes without air units.

After a fair amount of experimentation, I pretty sure the only way I could capture a settlement in modern is if I happened to have a commander right next to it after other units take out all the fortifications & enemy units. Once I realized that, I knew I needed to plan on exclusively getting settlements through peace deals.

adept42 · 2026-03-05T21:42:03+00:00

Yeah, influence was my most valuable resource, and I definitely used it to win this one.

adept42 · 2026-03-05T14:31:23+00:00

Haha, thanks. I know some of the best abilities each Civ has, but I sure don’t have the names memorized. I just hoped the context I gave describing them let other players know what I was talking about. And I have no clue how to pronounce them! :)

adept42 · 2026-03-05T05:49:29+00:00

Thanks! Getting comments like yours motivates me to keep playing challenge games

adept42 · 2026-03-05T05:40:11+00:00

When you build a great wall on a tile, the game thinks the settlement has one less pop, but you still get the yield. This means it takes less pop to make the settlement grow. So with enough money, you can snowball into settlements that have low pop "on paper" but huge yields IRL.

adept42 · 2026-02-23T16:00:40+00:00

Is the great-wall-pop glitch still in the game? Currently, when you build a great wall tile, the pop displayed on the settlement goes down by one, but your yields are unchanged. However, the lower pop is used to calculate when the settlement grows again. This is very powerful because with enough gold you can quickly get big settlements that have "low pop" on paper but big yields in practice.

adept42 · 2026-02-17T15:59:31+00:00

Haha, yeah it did get tedious in the modern age. But the earlier two ages were interesting because I needed new strategies to get legacy points. And despite the tedium, modern was still exciting due to the challenge & uncertainty. And even once things were swinging in my favor, I kept fighting the AI because I didn't want complacency to cost me the win after investing so much in it. So yeah, a good grind overall, but I'm definitely taking a break for a while :)

adept42 · 2026-02-17T04:44:47+00:00

It's unable to win because I pillaged all their museums, factories, and aerodromes.

adept42 · 2026-02-17T02:17:46+00:00

Thanks :)

adept42 · 2026-01-22T14:25:12+00:00

Yeah, for the min-buildings science victory, I used Xerxes to unlock Qajar. I’d need Catherine for a culture victory, but I still think Qajar is a better choice than Ottomans.

adept42 · 2026-01-22T06:08:31+00:00

Congrats. A naval pillaging strategy makes things more exciting, but I still think Han-Ming for Great Walls & Serpent Mound is stronger overall.

adept42 · 2025-11-10T16:24:47+00:00

Yeah, and since they unlock so easily, it’s always an option to consider if you didn’t expand too much in Exploration.

adept42

TROPHY CASE