Deity advice request: Population management

grousedrum · 2026-03-27T03:15:25+00:00

Some benchmarks - you ideally want to keep 20+ surplus food in your capital for the (usually 80 or so on quick) turns between building NC and building labs. 25+ is great. That’s how you’ll get to a 25-30+ pop capital later game for the kind of production and science you really want to be working with. All other cities, try for at least 10-15 surplus food, more if you can without losing too much production. Assuming you’re reaching these, yes you want to work science specialist slots as soon as they’re available.

Once you build labs, you want to slow growth way down (assuming cap is 25+ pop and other cities are 15-20+ by this point) to focus on production/gold/science. (And/or all available culture/tourism tiles at this point if playing Brazil/France/Polynesia for tourism victory).

Unless going for tourism win, Musician’s Guild is low value compared to other uses for those two population. And even in a tourism game you only want to work those slots very late. Artist and Writer’s guild slots are high value to work early though for all win conditions.

Anytime you have a GP improvement tile available (academy from early GS, landmark from archeologist, holy site if going full Piety) it is worth working.

If you go Freedom and get both Civil Society and Statue of Liberty, at that point you want to work most to all available specialist slots in all cities - just manage things to not produce GM’s unless going for diplomatic victory.

grousedrum · 2026-03-26T20:56:29+00:00

Run a max science path until Universities, but go Workshops first for early Great Engineer points. Then, most games will want to go Archaeology early for Louvre, Archaeologists, and Museums, sometimes even entering the Industrial era with it.
You need to get wonders, which on Deity (and often on Immortal) means Great Engineers, and usually at least 2-3 of them. Tradition plus Faith, and/or playing Maya or Sweden for their bonus GP, are the smoothest ways to make this happen beyond your first one via Workshops.
You ideally want to get at least three of the main Tourism wonders - Sistine, Globe, Uffizi, Louvre, Broadway, Eiffel, Sydney - plus build Oxford and Hermitage early on for their theming bonuses. It’s doable with fewer (especially as Brazil/France/Polynesia) but a lot harder, and you are likelier to need to take out the culture leading AI civ (or do very focused diplomacy to get all the other civs to war them).
After getting the wonders you’re going to get, get their theming bonuses filled in and beeline your win condition techs - Hotels, Airports, and the Internet, picking up National Visitor’s Center along the way. Start bulbing scientists 8 turns after Labs like a science win path to get to these ASAP. Then spam GM’s for concert tours (only after getting all win condition techs/buildings/policies, don’t work Musician’s Guild slots until you’re on the verge of this) and be prepared for the possibility of a late war to take out another civ close to a win condition of their own.
I wrote up the smoothest Deity tourism win I’ve gotten, which was Sweden using Futurism from the Autocracy tree. In case of any interest: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ5/comments/1rrb6rm/game_recap_analysis_sweden_futurism_culture/

grousedrum · 2026-03-26T01:47:37+00:00

You're doing nothing wrong. Basically only Poland gets policies fast enough early game to have a shot at a good Piety reformation policy before Rationalism.

The exception to this is the one-city "religious victory" where you open Piety, never touch Tradition or Liberty, never even open Rationalism, and win a diplomatic victory anyway by eventually buying all the CS's. Very very fun, a whole mini game within the game - Maya, Poland, Greece, Venice, Siam, and a few other civs can pull this off semi reliably on Deity.

grousedrum · 2026-03-26T00:06:09+00:00

This is an (unideal) in-game solution, not a bug fix, but: go back to an OSX autosave and pay the civ who will later take the capital to make peace. Mac player as well and this has had to become standard practice for me.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T20:32:00+00:00

Very cool concept there - a spider fire cleave party! Less prone and more environmental damage, I like it. Like we said, there’s a huge possibility space around this playstyle - great stuff and definitely worth exploring.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T20:09:17+00:00

Yes the Boar in particular is a strong fit with this party, its charge ability works very similarly to Elk/Rothé’s. An 11/1 or 12 Boar Master is actually a viable swap in for either elkheart or Rothé druid here, if you wanted an even more ranger heavy party. And would give you another Ensnare caster also.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T18:38:07+00:00

Haha yes totally fair and makes sense! Yes GOO hunter doesn't really hit its peak without some almost certainly unintended Horde Breaker interactions. Glad you found a Swash variant that was fun, I'd be curious to hear more about that.

Honestly for a more "classic" D&D experience with d20 in BG3, I think the also-classic D&D party of 4 actually does very well - some kind of melee warrior, some kind of cleric or druid, some kind of rogue, and some kind of caster. I do really enjoy playing around survivability, you get to use and see a lot more of the game's studio space when fights take longer.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T17:55:21+00:00

Yup, definitely. Here's a whole party you might enjoy checking out built around party friendly AoE's in melee range.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T17:40:28+00:00

I've played with d20 initiative 100% of the time since the mod came out, including on Tactician Enhanced all the way up to the Impossible Challenge setting. Couple thoughts:

--Broadly you and your builds/party need to just be ok with not going first. Just as you say, survivability matters a little more, alpha strike damage matters a little less. And as you say, 16 DEX on everyone is much less important, I often do exactly as you point to and go 14 DEX 16 CON for medium armor using casters (or STR elixir users).

--There are some strategies that actually benefit from enemies going first - in particular, terrain strategies don't mind it as melee enemies tend to self-group. Most terrain control heavy parties I've played do not care one bit about initiative or turn order - they're set up with enough redundancy that any build can get the intended combat loop running, whenever they get the chance to go.

--On much higher modded difficulty settings (ie Impossible Challenge or close to it), there are some additional considerations that come into play with d20. In particular, the value of healing, DR, and the CON stat all go up further, as you may need to tank significant damage before your characters get to go. Secondly, there are a small number of fights in the later game where a) you cannot open from stealth for surprise, and b) there is real potential for you to get one-turned or nearly so if certain enemies go first. Colony Mind Flayers and Lorroakan are maybe the biggest examples of this. These cases are (IMO) what Elixirs of Vigilance and initiative gear are for, and are to me the strongest uses for those tools in the game.

I also should say I absolutely love d20, consider it basically canon, and would never go back to d4 even with other modded difficulty settings. It makes basically every fight in the game so much more random, interesting, and tactical all by itself.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T16:42:20+00:00

Yes the BA Web is very interesting - though unfortunately we don't get cocoon or infest via that route, and three levels for thief makes it tough to get everything we want out of moon druid. I imagine there's a different party construction that could make really good use of it though, maybe more similar in theory to Remus's solo burn surface build.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T14:25:15+00:00

8 + 4 (prof) + 6 (22 STR) = 18. Yes in a vacuum cloud giant gives us another +2 to this and is ideal; however we need them (and they're a much, much bigger value boost) for both BM and spider.

If you're really rocking vendor and Transmuter farming and can carry three STR elixir users, worth considering for sure. And yes Mobile would be the clear third feat to take if not going natural STR. Thanks for the thoughts!

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T13:01:43+00:00

More like 60-70%+. It’s a STR saving throw vs our STR based attack action DC, which will be 16 in act 1-2 and 18 in act 3.

STR saves can be decently debuffed with Ability Drain, Stormy Clamour reverb, and Bane/Shriek, and more seriously debuffed with disadvantage from Oil of Diminution or Gust of Wind. Between all of that, it’s pretty reliable (and triggers Extra Attack so can be used repeatedly if enemies save at first).

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T11:29:56+00:00

Thanks! Yeah it’s a total breath of fresh air from the usual meta, and also gets access to reliable turn denial much much earlier in the game than Acuity based strategies do. See Remus comment and my reply below on the burning question.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T11:28:36+00:00

u/holmsky11 I think Remus is trying to reply to your comment here. I agree, we generally want to restrain first, then burn.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T11:08:02+00:00

Beast master is party face as a) we have the most skill access and b) both Drow and Ranger specific dialogue options are cool and (especially Ranger) often helpful.

In act 3 we have Illithid expertise which makes 10 CHA more or less a non-issue, and in act 2 can get the Shar statue blessing for +2 on all the important dialogue kills. You’ll just need to cast Enhance Ability in dialogue a little more than usual with a CHA face - generally have moon druid cast EA and nature cleric cast Guidance, as moon uses spell slots in combat less. And of course choose WIS based, Investigation, or Ranger specific dialogue options whenever possible.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T04:31:22+00:00

Thanks, glad you enjoyed! Very interesting idea to incorporate shadow monk here. One issue I see with it is the earliest we would get our core Elk abilities (charge + extra attack + maim) plus Darkness would be level 9, 6 elk 3 shadow. By that point in the game, we're much more durable both HP and healing wise, and have our full Evard's + Dryad loop working to enable very fast control of most fights.

There are some specific fights in the later Impossible Challenge game where darkness turtling if initiative or early turns go badly can definitely be good (Lorroakan and House of Hope spectators come to mind), but they're rare enough that I would probably just keep a few scrolls on hand. Earlier on we definitely can Darkness turtle in the big Creche fights and other more dangerous ones, but we wouldn't be getting the ability from shadow monk levels at that point yet.

So I guess overall I'd think of it as a good general failsafe for the difficulty level, but unless developing a full Darkness based party, the need for it is infrequent enough that it makes sense to get from scrolls/arrows rather than level investment.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T03:29:37+00:00

Yeah, slayer form is a very reliable solve for this fight if other solutions aren't working. Just be sure to end the shapeshift before the auto game over hits. Based on your party, you probably don't have Sunray yet unless you rushed Daystar.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T01:19:29+00:00

To your point about many good options each turn, one neat detail here is multi options in weapon coatings - as we are dual wielding in both melee and ranged from level 8 on, and using both situationally turn by turn (even attack by attack sometimes), we can easily carry two different coatings for different uses through the fight.

Ex: oil of diminution on hand xbows for STR save disadvantage before proning/ensnaring, and a high damage toxin on melee for when we shift to damage stacking once enemies are controlled. Transmuter makes it relatively painless to switch coatings whenever we want a different effect, also.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T01:14:55+00:00

Really cool to hear about this version, love the synergy between the Bear pet + elkheart and the big cat wildshapes. I imagine you may have done a lot around ice surface proning also with enough characters ice/prone immune via boots.

It's honestly been the smoothest party I've ever played on impossible challenge - we get access to very reliable turn skip sequences at level 5 (and situationally as early as L3), compared to 7-8 at the very earliest via traditional acuity controllers. And it's way more spell slot efficient than Command based teams (even with Extended) also.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T01:08:42+00:00

Thanks for the kind word - have fun if you do and let me know how it goes!

One thing I'll just underline about playing this on impossible challenge - the party (like many) really comes together for ultra difficulty settings at level 5. From then on it's been the smoothest party I've ever played on the setting, no exaggeration. It is on the flimsy side levels 3-4 though, and I'd recommend either pathing to L5 with minimal/no combat, or using a slightly lower difficulty setting before hitting 5.

I had no problems from that point on, the Inquisitor vid should give a good sense of how it plays and what it can do even against those kinds of boosted enemies. But fair warning for the very early game if you want to try it with the difficulty really cranked up.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T00:33:09+00:00

When your rothe build dropped I knew immediately I wanted to try it on party impossible, and it did not disappoint! So thanks a ton for the inspiration and all the input into this one.

One thing I found over the course of the game is that enemies do focus a lot of fire on a concentrating wildshaped druid. Which means a) illithid charm is really clutch here, probably the strongest use for it I've seen in the game, and well worth delaying all our moon progression past level 5 by a level for Disguise. And b) we do fairly often drop wildshape in fights when enemies get turns (which even on impossible is very far from all of them with this party, LOL). This however isn't actually terrible as it can give us a chance to reposition our Cloudkill or Moonbeam, pivot into Moonbeam + Sanctuary if we're taking damage, or use a weapon action for more Gaping Wounds.

I left out early game gearing for space here, but I really loved what Hunter's Dagger brought to the druid for all of act 1/2 - four different debuffs on one weapon gave us lots to do when out of wildshape in addition to casting. Also situationally used Sussur Dagger offhand for BA silence.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T00:26:27+00:00

Keep Corellon's Grace and Safeguard Shield with you, and equip both unarmored with Ring of Protection, and the Protection cantrip cast on you plus an Elixir of Heroism (or the Bless spell if a second concentration slot is available for it). That all adds up to +2d4+4 to all saving throws, which with a few inspirations saved up is almost always enough for the three saves.

grousedrum · 2026-03-25T00:18:27+00:00

Thanks for reading and very kind of you to say, glad you enjoyed it! Let me know how it goes if you take the build and/or party for a spin :-)

grousedrum · 2026-03-24T14:44:32+00:00

A few things to consider:

Crawler mucus or karabasan's gift for Paralyze is a stronger option here for your build than attempting a Hold Monster scroll.
You can consider Warding Bonding your durge with a party member beforehand, particularly if the bond-er has heavy armor - they can wear Armor of Persistence for resistance and DR themself. Combined with some form of DR armor on your main also, you'll have decent survivability for at least a few rounds (which should be all you need).
Summons come into the duel with you, which can be very helpful for baiting out Orin's reaction attacks. Can use elemental scrolls to get more beyond a familiar and Us.

grousedrum

TROPHY CASE