Pacal of the Mayan empire (fractal map)

The start:

http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk162/silverbullet_sz/Pacal/PacalStart.jpg

Pre-game discussion:(if you started playing, please don't participate in pre-game discussion)

Not a great start in terms of food, but a lot of forests to chop is not bad either. I hope there is another seafood/food resource in the dark.
Would you settle in place or move inland?
I am not sure how to use the UU of this civ, but the UB is nice for a big happiness boost.
I guess one advantage of the UU is that it is resourceless and immune to first strikes, so you could rush an opponent with no metals even if you don't have metals. If you opponent has axes, you can forget about rushing though.



Please remember to post your reports in spoilers and specify the year outside the spoiler.

If you are new to the immortal difficulty level, this thread is just for you! Grab the save and play a game.
I recommend posting short turn sets and then asking the experts for advice.

It's a pretty average start. I'll probably settle in place...what happens from there depends entirely what information scouting brings us.

Financial again. :(

The river seems to go on to the north so moving in that direction is a possibility. I'd probably move the warrior 1E and if there's seafood I'd settle in place. If not then moving north might be better.

Edit: After looking closely at the image it seems the river ends where we see it so settling in place is probably better regardless of seafood. I thought maybe it was a split, but it seems to bend in the shadowy area.

Financial again. :(

I know. I was really hoping the RNG would pick Gengis Khan for you ;)


The river seems to go on to the north so moving in that direction is a possibility. I'd probably move the warrior 1E and if there's seafood I'd settle in place. If not then moving north might be better.

I am afraid it's all plains up north and not green, and the plains hill to the south is probably a resource, but even then without extra food it would still be a food poor capital which makes a tough start.
Let's hope for fish.

Financial again. :(

i always thought financial was one of the better traits but anyway... :p

From what i see i like this start, lots of green land about. It's coastal so i can go for my latest addiction GLH again, see how it works out this time.

@TheMeInTeam, following the discussion we had in the Hannibal thread, Pacal is one of the best leaders for a cata rush, a bit because of the Holkans which can be built without metal but mainly because

-beelining construction is very attractive for the ballrooms
-Pacal is financial meaning we can get to cats early and maybe quick rush a civ

If we find metals or even better ivory i may go that way for a change, see how it works out. I'm a bit fed up with only fighting renaissance wars.

i always thought financial was one of the better traits but anyway... :p
The trait is good--no arguments there. I just don't like using financial due to the constant pressure of how to arrange my tiles to play optimal. In general I find it to be the least fun trait.

Signing in. I'll start playing this one on Sunday.

Last game I deliberately scorned an early rush; this time I'm going to avoid GLH. Almost certainly sub-optimal, but I want to see how I fare on this level without it.

Edit:

Although we've got another Fin leader, I like Pacal's combination of EXP and UB for a health/happy boost. That pushes you towards early construction (good for war) and makes him reasonably versatile.

Another Immortal U? I'm in.
I don't know much about Pacal but I'll give it a shot. His UU seems pretty situational but if there is an opportunity for early war I'm sure I won't be able to resist sacrificing piles of his special spearman.
I am thinking I will move the warrior 1 W and then settle in place if I don't see anything crazy.
It looks like mining and mysticism for starting techs. Not sure exactly how to proceed here but I hate to have unworked seafood. Maybe something along the lines of fishing->hunting (to unlock uu, cant remember if i still need BW as well)->then either AH or BW. Or maybe BW first would be better then chop out WBs? Not really sure here.
All these forests make me want to consider an early wonder. Starting with mysticism I am thinking Oracle perhaps?

Btw, the bonus for building workers with expansive only applies to the hammers right? Assuming I am correct I may have to MM this a bit early on.

on a separate note, do we really need pre-game discussion? this isn't the ALC, for christ sake.

on a separate note, do we really need pre-game discussion? this isn't the ALC, for christ sake.
I'd always say the more discussion the better.
I'd probably settle in place--while its a little light on food if the rest is forest the plains hill should be a resource. That's a lot of hammers for an early rush if that's how it goes or for a wonder if not.
Not sure when I'll get to this tho.

The trait is good--no arguments there. I just don't like using financial due to the constant pressure of how to arrange my tiles to play optimal. In general I find it to be the least fun trait.
why is there more pressure that way with fin?
that's one of my issues with spiritual.
I would've guessed fin as one of the easier traits to play--cottages play easier than farms/SE.

i'll probabely try my luck with another leader I've never used.

... after I finished my shadowgame of rusten's "Aztec walkthrough" (btw really nice game (map + opponents) you rolled there rusten. It's clearly been one of the easiest immortal games so far for me but also one of the most enjoyable I just can't resist rushing with a strat resource in the capital bfc :evil: :satan:

why is there more pressure that way with fin?
that's one of my issues with spiritual.
I would've guessed fin as one of the easier traits to play--cottages play easier than farms/SE.
Yes, it's extremely easy. What I mean is that I feel pressure to cottage "everywhere" for the commerce bonus and can't really relax when I'm playing. If I farm instead of cottaging I get uneasy. :) Financial gets so repetitive and passive for me--spiritual is more of an active trait.

... after I finished my shadowgame of rusten's "Aztec walkthrough" (btw really nice game (map + opponents) you rolled there rusten. It's clearly been one of the easiest immortal games so far for me but also one of the most enjoyable
Yes, unfortunately the game got a little easy. I think I'll do the next one on deity as suggested by some posters to make it exciting until the end.
on a separate note, do we really need pre-game discussion? this isn't the ALC, for christ sake.
It's not like you have to wait or participate, feel free to play and report whenever you wish. At least that's how I understood it from earlier threads.

on a separate note, do we really need pre-game discussion? this isn't the ALC, for christ sake.

I am sorry for not making this clear earlier. Pre game discussion is not a must.
You can start playing whenever you like and post your progress. Since everyone is posting the game in a spoiler tag, you don't need to wait for others. All I am asking is, don't take part in the discussion if you have information that is not available from the first screenshot.

Personally, the only reason I initiated the discussion is that I don't have the time to start playing yet... so it's just something to kill time :)

So to clarify:
Everyone can play and post as little or as much as they want to. You don't need to wait for others.

4000BC-2440BC: Lets kick this thing off

A short turn set but I have a big decision to make.

My initial build order was: worker(partial)->WB->worker(finish)->WB->worker->Holkan
Initial teching was: Fish->BW->Hunt->AH->Wheel

4000BC - I settled in place after moving my warrior 1W as planned.
3760BC - Meet Huayna Capac. I also pop Ag from a hut. Fishing is in and I switch build to WB.
3680BC - I could see what looked like American borders on the previous turn but now it is conformed. Lincoln, and he is super close.
3640BC - HC founds Buddhism and revolts.
3200BC - BW is in. I can start chopping out my second WB and worker but there is no bronze in in sight. My scouting is still a bit weak though as my warrior ran into a panther and got waylaid for 10 turns. I start on hunting to unlock UU and give me a discount on AH.
2880BC - I switch EP to HC since I figure Lincoln is going down.
2500BC - HC builds the Henge. I hope he doesn't get too rich building wonders before I can take him down and use them for my self.
2440BC - Ok, heres the situation:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn114/JBossch/Civ4ScreenShot0161.jpg

Decision time.
If i am going to attempt some kind of hair-brained holkan rush I have to make the call now.
As you can see, Lincoln has NY up on the river, not a bad spot I think. However, this means that, because of the lake, an invasion stack will have to spend an extra turn marching through enemy culture before attacking Washington (assuming I went directly for it).
He has horses but I don't think he has bronze. I actually hope he wastes time building chariots, my holkans can shred them.
Speaking of holkans, they are immune to first strikes and resource-less. It would seem like they are meant for just this situation - no bronze and no enemy axes, plenty of trees to chop.
Someone else mentioned a cat war. Believe me, I would prefer to back these guys up with cats and am more than a little nervous about building a glorified spearman Stack of Disappointment. That would mean REXing 3 or 4 cities though and I don't really see where. Granted, my scouting to the south is crap but it looks like jungle to me and that means IW which is not helpful to a construction beeline.

So, yea or nay?
If yea, any help with battle plans is good. I would figure on whipping a barracks ASAP and chop/whipping Holkans for awhile. Lincoln only has 2 archers in Washington for now but that will change soon enough. How many holkans is a reasonable number to go in with? He will probably also build walls soon. Should I try to keep an eye on him with EP or is this pointless?
If I had bronze this would be a piece of cake but I am a little nervous about these untested holkans.

EDIT: After playing a couple more turns, it looks like NY is 1W of where I had it marked and its borders have already popped. I don't think this changes anything.

I am sorry for not making this clear earlier. Pre game discussion is not a must.
You can start playing whenever you like and post your progress. Since everyone is posting the game in a spoiler tag, you don't need to wait for others. All I am asking is, don't take part in the discussion if you have information that is not available from the first screenshot.

Personally, the only reason I initiated the discussion is that I don't have the time to start playing yet... so it's just something to kill time :)

So to clarify:
Everyone can play and post as little or as much as they want to. You don't need to wait for others.

sorry for the misunderstanding. downloading now!

I played up through 40 AD:

Moved warrior onto hill, settled in place. First tech is BW, then going fishing. Early chops are good times

3875 Met lincoln. Has to be close.
3825 Met HC. I'd rather him close than far but this is cozy.
3450 Religions are going LATE. Buddhism founded :eek:. Wish I'd have gone for one.
3425 Revolt to slavery, start chopping!
3350 Herbalist event. +2 health.
3225 HC has a 2nd city already and it has gold. I hate immortal right now :rolleyes:
3125 2nd worker is out. Going settler...
2975 Hindu founded...wow. America gets their 2nd city. I guess taking a site on immortal is downright impossible unless you just make a settler first, which is inefficient. There's another way to deal with this though...
2800 Lakamha founded 1W of wheat. Holkan rush I guess.
2600 Finish hunting, going AH, pottery, writing
2400 Starting production of holkans
2000 Judaism founded...all these are in "distant lands"
1950 Lincoln converts to Judaism...nevermind.
1700 Judaism spreads and I adopt it...there's no other religions around...
1475 I'm the least advanced civ...surprising!
1175 Declare on Lincoln with 14 holkans
1150 New York captured
975 Washington captured
875 Was heading for boston, spotted axeman. Queueing up chariots and picking a different target for now - like the one NE of washington that I cut off from resources by taking washington :lol:
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Immortal%20Pacal/850bcmidwar0000.jpg
800 Philly actually has swordsmen :(. I capture it anyway.
725 GG emerges. Given how my units are surviving/needing replenishment, I settle him. Healing isn't the problem in this one.
485 Atlanta captured
440 HC won't trade me gold for corn, even though he's pleased (I'd declared before he would get pissed for me warring on Lincoln)
425 HC declares on lincoln. AI opportunism...:rolleyes:. The good news is that this early there can't be any capitulations.
275 HC completes the apostolic palace...what the?
260 I lose by 2 votes :(
245 Boston is heavily garrisoned with 5 archers and an axe so I just ignore it.
170 Visgoth has 2 archers and a chariot, which is more to my liking ;). I take the city.
35 Another look at Boston. This time, its garrison is 3 archers, 4 workers, and a settler :lol:. The computer is so smart. The city does have walls so I lose quite a few units taking it. I still take it with 4 holkans and 6 chariots left.
5 Chicago is garrisoned by 5 archers and an axeman :(. It has 12% culture d though, so although I can't see it HC likely has catapults bombarding that city. I'll just try to hang around and snipe it first :p.
25 AD HC damaged chicago down to 5% defenses. The axe has 3 health, and the 4 remaining archers have health of 3, 3, 1.4, and 2.2. I think 5 chariots and 4 holkans can do it so I try for America's last city! I take it with my 2nd to last unit remaining with a movement point, ending the war.

40 AD summary:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Immortal%20Pacal/40adeast0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Immortal%20Pacal/40adwest0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Immortal%20Pacal/40adtech0000.jpg

I'm in a tech mess. HC is teching wildly and he's my only neighbor. At least he is friendly so I don't have to worry about getting declared on in the near future. As a rookie player I'd have considered this game lost but now I'm just uncertain. I have a good # of cities for this early in the AD's, and will probably improve considerably once I hit currency. I'm obviously going to have to tech for things HC doesn't have and use them as trade bait.

I'm also going to use a work boat to scout. With the kind of war I just went through I kind of neglected it, but rushing with spears basically every hammer counts :(.

I note that I have iron. It's probably already hooked up (though I lack IW), because Lincoln was putting swords on me (and an axe or so). This means I HAVE to have iron. I also have ivory, so in terms of strat resources I'm ok. I need to check the power graph to see if I can attack HC, but the answer is probably not, at least until I'd get construction/HBR for elephants and catapults. Maybe I'll go the medieval/hammers/military over tech route in this one (emphasis on getting to caste/guilds, probably via trades on this difficulty, then using numbers to get lots of land not unlike our friend Monty prefers).

I'm still very new to Immortal so any help/suggestions/criticisms are welcome ;). Even if you just want to know my reasoning for something stupid.

180214

@ JBossch:

Although note that I switched the game speed to epic.

I didn't want to do it but I didn't see any other way than rushing Lincoln ASAP. I did find some copper but I'm not sure it's in realistic range to use for a rush - it would take a long time to road it back and I figured the delay from that would be so bad I'd be better off with spears.

I do have experience rushing with the dreaded impi - but shaka is aggressive and combat/cover or combat/CR are much stronger than first strike immunity with C1 or CRI...as is the ability to capture a city on turn 1 like it's nothing with 2 moves and mobility. The holkan is a bit weaker IMO but doable. Once they start getting CR promos you can often clean up an archer after suiciding one (but not always). Perhaps the best thing about them is that they're like the jag - resource-less means they can instantly be started in captured city for snowball-class #'s.

I certainly went the rush route but in the interest of not spoiling your game thus far I'll stop with that. Besides, advice from probably the weakest player in the Immortal U at the moment is iffy to begin with ;).

Chapter 1 - to 825BC

I decided to settle in place and build a worker first while researching fishing/bronze/hunting/AH/wheel/pottery/writing/agriculture.

Since Washington and Mutal were only 9 tiles apart, rushing Lincoln seemed to be by far the best option in the early game here, especially since he had marble in his capital. Rather than settling a second city, I simply chopped forests around Mutal into a barracks and a stack of Holkans, declaring on Lincoln in 1240BC (with a stack of 10) and capturing New York a couple of turns later, before pressing on to Washington. I lucked out somewhat as he only had two archers defending his capital, so was able to press on to Boston before taking a break from war. I waited one more turn to snag a couple more workers before declaring peace in exchange for alphabet and should be able to finish him off when the 10 turn treaty expires and I've got some more Holkans.

Huayna appears to be the only other neighbour and has already expanded to 8 cities which means he's going to be a headache. He's also founded Buddhism and built Stonehenge.

I'm wondering whether I should embark on what's likely to be a protracted jumbo/cat war against him to secure the remainder of the continent, or whether I should use religion and HR to make a friend. More war would leave me incredibly backward when the other AI show up, but that'll be easy to recover with so much land and a financial leader. I'm currently using loot money from the first American war to race through maths with the intention of beelining those units and the UB - the alternative approach would be to head for literature/calendar to exploit the marble.

@ JBossch:

The main advantage with Holkans is that they're resourceless so you can spam them everywhere early on. Washington's got horses, but they're also the perfect counter to chariots, so you've no problem there.

I went in with a starting stack of 10 and more on the way, but I got slightly lucky with Washington being lightly defended; another 3-4 would be plenty for an initial surge here I think. You can generally get away with 2 per defender unless the RNG is cruel to you.

With Jungle to the south, the only quick way to expand early is through Lincoln so that's what I did: he built the cities and I built the units to capture them. I'd be interested to see how a different approach plays out if anyone chooses to go that route instead.

1400BC and disaster:

I don't know how you guys pulled off this holkan rush. I DoWed Lincoln in 1400BC, earlier than TMIT or Patagonia, (granted, I only had 9 Holkans but they all had CR1, 1 had CR2) and I used a little road to get as close to Washington as possible. As soon as I moved in, however, he already had axes. I am assuming he hooked up the iron to the west of Washington. When I attacked he had 2 axes and 2 archers. My SoDissapointment was massacred without killing a single defender! (first 2 were blanked and even my CR2 lost at 80%.) How did you guys get away with waiting until later and still not facing significant numbers of axes?
Maybe I will load up my save and try to whip a couple more Holkans but I don't know if it will do any good.

@ JBossch:

New York didn't have axes, and Washington had an axe and 2 archers :) iirc. The RNG didn't screw me but I also attacked both cities with 14 or so. From that point on I realized axes to be a problem but had no means of knowing where Lincoln was stashing his iron (or whether or not he had bronze also somewhere in the fog). After the initial push I started mixing chariots in ASAP since New York captured horses. My final city-capture force was 1/2 chariots 1/2 holkan. I think I lucked out in taking his iron city as he mostly made archers after taking Washington. I didn't know this but either way chariots are barely worse than holkans on the offensive.

2 different times in my war against him I saw large garrisons of archers and axes, and simply ignored that city and moved to another one. The AI is stupid and will eventually move such forces in an attempt to settle new land if there's any at ALL. Lincoln did just that allowing me to capture the walled up Boston *relatively* easily.

up to 125AD:
settle in place, research fishing, ah, bw. Build worker (queue) WB, worker, wb. I have to say this starting build/research order didn't flow too well but I wasn't quite sure how to go. Maybe just BW/worker then chop boats would've been better. Neighbors are too close so seems like we have to rush. I decide against the holkan rush and claim the bronze. This also allows me to get to writing to scout the opponents. HC looks too strong--he's got a bunch of axe and the first couple of cities are hills. Plus with SH the capital will be a 60% hill:(
So its Linclon. By going later (825 I think), Lincoln has 6 cities but has not hooked up his iron yet. Since we have axes the odd metal unit is not a big deal. I research alpha, leave him standing but take IW and math for peace after taking 4 cities. I then get calender then HR in trade. I settle the E by the fish/iron and go for Glib which I should get despite the late date as no aesthetic wonders have been built. I'm a couple of turns away from redeclaring to finish off Lincoln--with luck I can partially research con and get that for aesthetics from HC.
HC is a monster but hopefully I can take him down with a rifle rush. HC has founded conf and we are on our way to becoming best of friends.

@ JBossch:

It sounds like the RNG screwed you more than me. I was also slightly fortunate in only facing archers/chariots. I think Lincoln must have detoured to alphabet before IW in my game, since he's currently researching that at the stage I stopped. Had I been up against axes (and maybe walls), life would have been much tougher.

I am thinking to go fishing -> bw then work the clams when fishing comes in... so the worker finishes right before BW so i can imeadiatly chop a workboat(work the clams one more turn to get in bw then work a plains forest + chop to get the workboat 3 turns after that...), then chop the second workboat...

Up through 1485 AD

85 I'm still relatively new to this, but I moved the palace to Washington by chopping it there (I'm not cottaging it while chopping remaining needed infrastructure). It looks like a strong cottage bureaucracy site, and it also gives a very nice short-run boost to gold...which I need.
160 HC won't trade anything even though I have currency and he doesn't :(. He is choosing to hold tech monopoly. It's not a choice anymore - I MUST get construction/HBR, and I MUST wipe him out. First I get IW and CoL however, for units, jungle-clearing, and a serviceable economy.
205 AD I win the AP vote, meaning I have more pop than HC :devil:.
235 HC wants to give me alphabet for currency. I tell him to shove it (why is alpha the only tech he'll trade?)
250 IW reveals iron near atlanta that was never hooked up...how was washington getting axes?! Was HC trading iron to him?!
370 Chicen Itza founded on my last piece of good land.
400 Currency to HC for construction/40 gold
430 HC adopts vassalage :(. It's not like I could have hit him prior to now though.
520 GL built elsewhere. I'm trying to get ball courts up then start pumping units.
610 Switch to HR
730 Calendar should be a huge boost
910 Compass to HC for MC and 15 gold
1100 Willem bumps into us
1120 Calender and 280 gold for 2/3 of machinery (willem)
1160 Burn GS for golden age
1190 Willem circumnavigates
1220 Distant civ gets lib
1340 Declare on HC and camp
1345 Knights charge into my territory - I'm ready with elephants and leftover holkans
1355 Game-breaking battle outside chicago, the aforementioned SoD shows as expected. Strategy matters here - I decide to catapult his SoD down a bit, then hit with knights. I flank and kill all his siege, then end turn.
1360 As expected HC suicides some of the stack into the city, and reinforces it somewhat with cats. I remove the rest of his stack without loss
1380 The AI is seriously messed up. HC wants chicago for peace :rolleyes:. Mobilize the garrisons then?
1400 HC galleys over the western mountain ridge to take a city with only a chariot defending. But wait...his invasion force is 6 catapults :rolleyes:
1410 HC has muskets on defense now :(. But I have gunpowder so starting with pinch promos.
1420 Seattle captured. Gunpowder and 500 gold for CS and paper to Willem
1485 Captured Vilcas by overwhelming cuirassers. Paid 200 gold for peace. How did HC do this?! He lost 30 + units in a hurry to me losing maybe 8. What does the computer have, 20% WW or something? Nevertheless, I have to try to claw out of this.

I will have save/screen shots up later.

Blown game for me, rifles don't do so hot vs tanks :(. I might try again from y 40 AD save later if I can stomach it.

Blown game for me


same thing. HC simply monster:mad:

Chapter 2: to 125AD

This game is doing a great job of reminding me why I hate HC so much as a neighbour...

At the end of my last round, I'd just brokered 10 turns of peace with Lincoln in exchange for alphabet. In the intervening years before I could declare again, I finished maths and masonry and started on construction. Some spy action had given me insight into Lincoln's research and I knew he'd finish IW just before I could declare again.

Fortunately he's a charitable sort and I was able to broker this deal right before I declared to finish him off:

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2783/civ4screenshot0002le3.jpg

I had maths on Huayna too, but didn't want to give him any kind of boost.

This trade showed Lincoln had two sources of iron, neither of which was hooked up. I had my Holkans in place to declare immediately and captured Atlanta before razing Philadelphia to wipe out the Yanks in 325BC. My first GG was born and settled in Washington as a future military city (I'd already started chopping and cottaging around Mutal), so I immediately trained a couple of woody-2 units to scout out the Incan empire. This took some time since a glance at the victory screen revealed he already had 20% of the world's land under his control.

From here on I lost focus somewhat, having a million things to research (sailing for trade routes; currency/CoL for the economy; HBR for jumbos; Monarchy for a shared civics bonus to bump the Incan up to friendly; and aesthetics/literature for shiny wonders or gold thanks to the marble and ivory). I tried to compromise between these (often a mistake; beelining is generally more productive), getting sailing for the economy and then heading for aesthetics since other wonders were being built relatively late and the marble made the Great Library attractive. I was also thinking of getting the Heroic Epic built in Washington and using that city as a major military pump, rather than relying on a trickle of units from across the empire.

Had I beelined HBR rather than getting distracted by all the other options, I might not have been in such a pickle when Huayna declared in 125AD. As it stands, my army is still 100% Holkan, most of whom have CR promotions. The first catapult is about to come online in Washington, but I don't have anything that can compete with his axes/swords in the field (or in cities, most likely). The first jumbos are probably 10-12 turns away (if I divert to HBR now), by which point things are likely to be dire. There's no significant Incan SoD at the moment, but since there's nobody around to have bribed him, I assume one must be on the way.

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/3383/civ4screenshot0003ij3.jpg

@ TheMeInTeam and Rumata:

I think this is a very hard map. My early game against Lincoln went pretty well, but HC's a beast in this game and likely to squish me like a bug if I play on from my latest save. Either that or effectively stall my development while he continues to race ahead.

I'll be interested to see how other people fare against him.

@ TheMeInTeam and Rumata:

I think this is a very hard map. My early game against Lincoln went pretty well, but HC's a beast in this game and likely to squish me like a bug if I play on from my latest save. Either that or effectively stall my development while he continues to race ahead.

I'll be interested to see how other people fare against him.




HC rushed me at 775 BC when I was ready attack Lincoln.
You can see his first stack, second arrived 4 turns after first, with 2 cats :crazyeye:

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/rumata_2008/Civ4ScreenShot0022.jpg

@ TheMeInTeam and Rumata:

I think this is a very hard map. My early game against Lincoln went pretty well, but HC's a beast in this game and likely to squish me like a bug if I play on from my latest save. Either that or effectively stall my development while he continues to race ahead.

I'll be interested to see how other people fare against him.

My early game went well too. I had 9 cities by 25 AD and had wiped lincoln out, but then HC out-raced me (he has too much land peacefully IMO, he needs to die soon also). I'm going to replay this, probably not today (maybe tonight but my schedule is tough) but definitely by tuesday or wednesday. I mis-judged the copper, it's plenty close for an axe rush (after a border pop a city can capture both the copper and the rice in spite of the jungle, allowing for a halfway decent city even pre-iron).

I've been experimenting with hit and run crap tactics. I had an emperor game about two weeks ago where I used impi to capture an entire continent, wiping out 2 civs. I'm going to try a similar "anger rush" this time, attacking both civs early in an attempt to deal out grievous damage to both civs, alternating war between potentially to keep their tech down as I grab more cities.

It worked on emperor and easily with the impi. I'd declare, take a city, rough the AI up some, then take a cease fire, move my troops, and do it again (I actually cut through axes this way against the second civ). I was pretty backwards but once you have 25+ cities it's not impossible to catch up!

I'll probably take 2-3 american cities this way, then do it to HC, desperately whipping libraries out to get research for currency. From there I'll probably chip at HC first to finish him off!

HC is indeed tough because of his access to gold early on. 3 gold mines at least from what I could see in early scouting.

@ anyone dumb enough to try this one:

@TMIT and Patagonia: I don't even know how you guys got past the initial rush. I reloaded twice to try to get it. First, I did like TMIT and waited a few extra years to get about 14 holkans. By 1100BC Lincoln had iron hooked up and was building axes and swords (this seems a lot earlier than in other games and I don't know why). I took NY and then got crushed at Washington. Second, I tried the opposite, going really early with a worker grab followed by a trickle of Holkans as they came online, pillaging all of his good tiles. Lincoln was still sneaking settlers out and when the time came to attack he had built a massive garrison in Washington. The result was the same - failure. I am waiting to see the experts make it look easy. In the meantime, screw this impossible start.

Till +/- 1 AD

Settled the copper site and prepared to rush Lincoln , would rather have taken on Huyna but all his cities are on hills, not good for the axes. I squeeze in a third settler to settle the south eastern rice crab site, i whip it with one axe overflow, this'll delay my rush by some 2-3 turns because mines in the neighbourhood get worked a bit later but it's a crucial site blocking the jungle peninsula, settling this or leaving it to Huyna can make a 3 city difference and it's not as if the land isn't good, takes time to develop but it's all grass with a crab/rice and a fish to let the cities grow. Declare on Lincoln 825 BC with a stack of 14 axes and 2 Holkans, taking New York 800 Ad racing through to Washington, taking this city 700 AD. Could have declared earlier but this opponent is not creative so most of his cities'll be 20% anyway. I always see the AI whipping like mad when you're at his gates so i want to make sure that i take the first 2 cities in one go. i heal all my troops waiting for reinforcements before moving on to Boston directly south of Washington, i make sure i have no troops in Boston territory because this also brings the AI into whipping mode. Boston is taken 575 AD. I could sue for peace now since my goals are met, not much reason to do this, i didn't lose much troops on Boston, Washington is culturally pressured by a city in the north west (Atlanta) and i don't have alpha yet. I capture Atlanta and have a nasty decision, it's rather worthless (only a mined plain iq iron) and it'll cost me a ton on upkeep. If i raze it however i probably can't trade with Lincoln anymore after peace. Since there are more cities i want to raze i choose to raze it effectively shutting Lincoln out of the game , i'll probably take America out blocking all tech trade with Huyna but it's unlikely that Lincoln can contribute much anyway. I also raze a city that is build near one sugar northwest of Seattle. Seattle is an american citiy that has 2 ivory and crabs, i have to keep this city because it blocks off Huyna. In the meantime i have Alpha and i sue for peace getting Math and IW a very good deal imo.

Kudos to the student threads, i used to kill AI's outright in these rushes keeping all the cities and fighting my way out of the overexpansion pit afterwards, i know now from looking at numerous games here it's smarter to take only the core cities, raze some and extract techs for peace after researching Alpha. Take the rest later but watch out for others getting Feudalism.

America now has 2 cities left, one on the ultimate west with fish, wheat and cow, it's a marvellous city and i'm sure to keep this one, the other one is in the north of the map with cow and a desert iron, i'm not too enthousiastic about this one but i'll probably keep this one too. For the moment i let Lincoln develop this cities for me, ill take them when i have built some cats.

A good start but it'll be a difficult game as Huyna seems to have an enormous chunk of land.No way that i can take him out with cats, probably not with trebs either. I think i have to get as much research as possible trying to keep up with Huyna and at least win the lib race. Huyna'll probably go for things like demo and physics later so there must be a chance, i said at the start that i was a bit bored by easy cannon rushes but this one might not be so easy. Since i'll have a lot cottagable land i might try with tanks/bombers too but i don't know if i can beat Huyna to that. Probably beating Huyna wins the game unless there are surprises on the other continent.

I read that some of you tried a Holkan rush. Especially since you can see the copper this seems like an enormous gambit to me, there's really no reason to assume that Lin hasn't got metal hooked up, i saw axes running around in his lands 1400 bc and that is not uncommon for an AI on immortal. You need an enormous amount of Holkans to take out axes, a waste of hammers i'm afraid. Even against entrenched archers axes have a far better chance than Holkans.

@ Dirk:

Any chance of a save? Sounds like you're in a good position (well, as good as can be against Huayna).

I think some of my problems stemmed from not scouting down into the jungle before my starting unit got eaten, meaning that I missed the copper completely. Getting some axes out would have made things go much more smoothly. Even CR3 Holkans get mediocre odds when attacking archers; they wouldn't have a chance against axes.

@ All concerning rush and copper:

i did see the copper but wasnt sure where to settle it, so i went holkan. in hindsight the wrong option. i will possibly give this a third (!) go later this week.

Played till +-400BC and gave up. Took a bunch of screenies but I don't have the time to write much down atm .. so short recap.



- Settled in place.
- 2nd city grabbing copper.
- Dow HC, who had a lot of land & buddhist shrine.
- Capture and keep 2 cities, raze 1 and replace 1.
- Sign peace.
- Settle another city near 2x gold.
- Capture eastern barb city.
- Settle another city near eastern iron+fish, which gets me 8 cities around 400BC.

- Lincoln switches from buddhism to taoism.
- HC dows me, which I expected.
- Lincoln dows me, which I didn't expect.

I could've probably pull a win out of it but the game would be sooooo tedious and slow .. I prefered to just trow in the towel. I had a pretty rough start by attacking HC and I think going for Lincoln would've been the better choice. I guess I got too greedy for the buddhist shrine (and the amount of land HC had available).

I don't have time to replay the game as I'll be out of the country for a few weeks + working .. But good luck to all you guys with this game.

I play some more (1000AD) and catch a major break(or at least I think I do):
At the last save of 125 AD I had launched a 2 city axe rush against Abe and crippled him. I had alpha so I'm able to extort a few techs and trade a bit so I'm not too far behind HC. I let Lincoln live long enough to trade me monarchy while I build the Glib and parth but when I declare to finish him off I don't bring enough troops and I get bad RNG and my initial attack fails and HC gets to feud.
The break I catch is that he doesn't vassal to HC. Now I'm friendly with HC, but I have had a friendly AI DOW me taking a vassal.
Anyone know if that was somehow an anomoly (its only happened to me once--in the last immortal uni) or if that is normal?
So I should be in pretty good shape--I'm a bit behind HC on tech but not too bad and I've got some good real estate and resources to trade later. I also have the luxury of another 100 or so turns with only a friendly AI. Late game fin+exp+ UB is pretty sweet.
Not sure if I can bring this home peacefully--I'll plan the usual rifle/cannon rush just in case.

always forget the save:

Until 900 AD

After alpha i beelined construction for ballcourts. I'll need them when i finish Lin off because ww will be crippling. In the meantime i build some extra workers in cities at happy cap. I don't go for the usual 1.5 worker/city since my cities will be small anyway for quite some time. I prechop and road all the forest around my american cities waiting for constructrion to come in. Around 400 AD i get construction (way late of course, i'm already backward compared to HC). In the meantime Lin settles 3 cities again pressuring Washington so i have to take out 5 cities now instead of 2. Didn't expect him to build so many so quick.

Chop 7 cats quickly out of the prechopped roaded forests. Declare on Lin around 500 AD with some 12 axes and 7 cats so i get my cat war after all. The war is not really difficult but my stack has to cover alot of terrain, defences have to be bombarded. I fight this war a bit different from other siege wars, i usually sacrifice some cats to soften defences, in this case i have several CR3 axes and their odds are so good that i use them to take out the defenders, a level 3 healer heals them up quickly enough while the cats bombard the next city. The war takes 20 turns, last american city falling around 900 AD.

In the meantime i have built more workers to clear out the jungle in the south east peninsula, Mutal gets unhappy once in a while but each time i can whip something useful. Same goes for the other cities, they have to stay small during the war but gradually infra gets whipped in. After construction i went aesthethics, literature. Not that i really think i'll get GL but i can use the money from part building Part and GL, i also need the NE badly. research during this period averages about 60 beakers/turn In the meantime HC is just running away, one turn i get to see his research he is busy with banking. He's more than 10 techs up now. I lose the Parthenon getting some 200 gold for it but strangely i win the race for GL around 900 AD.That'll help NE'll be built in 10 turns in Boston also , then i can run a load of specialists abd get 4+ GS's very quickly.

Situation now (well i'm not behind the game atm so i may have some of the details wrong), i'm researching CS atm, i have none of the advanced techs not even MC. building courthouses and bureaucracy'll help in the near future. Huyna is very advanced, he can research replaceable parts already.He doesn't have edu and philo yet so i may still have a chance for lib, Tao has been founded on the other continent so it's not impossible i'll lose lib to a civ over there. I have a huge amount of land, same size as Huyna. I can fit in some 16 good cities, if i get infra up and cottages spammed everywhere i'll get back in the game easily i think even if i lose lib. I'm not planning any immediate military action anymore, maybe i can beat Huyna to tanks but in this case i'll probably also win the space race. In itself tanks isn't good enough, i'll also need bombers. Huyna's friendly so i don't have anything to fear from him.

About the war:

I was enthousiastic about razing some american cities suing for peace getting Math and IW. I never had to climb out of a situation where you lose money with slider at 0%. Essentially my research averaged at some 40-80 beakers/turn from 200 BC until 900 AD.
My estimate is that i could have taken Lin out around 0AD and that it would have taken me till +/- 300 AD to get to currency using alpha production-research conversion in this case. I still would have needed math, IW and contruction in this case but i could have concentrated on workers and developing all the cities instead of building cats and having to sustain WW again in the second war. On the other hand Lin delivered his 2 core cities in a reasonable state in the second war.

So this move helped me in the early game but it evidently cost me between roughly 500 AD and 900 AD. What are your views about this? Maybe i replay between 200 BC and 900 AD for educational reasons to see which is best because this is a standard situation that comes up time after time. At least i got to cat rush this game,that was long ago really.

I'll try to get up some saves this evening.

Question to the high level players who've played at least through 1 AD:


I tried a re-run where I attempted to axe rush both lincoln and HC. It would have worked if HC wasn't camped out on hill cities having used his large quantity of gold mines to REX more than normal. However, after that failed I gave it some thought:

HC isn't particularly aggressive. In my first game I had him at friendly in my 40 AD save, and I'd wiped out Lincoln using holkans (!) pretty easily. I don't remember if HC will declare at pleased, but let's pretend for a moment he won't. I guess I should have played this one peacefully? After those 9 cities I had space for 2-3 more.

My thoughts on this game was that an AI with gold and a lot of land like HC could be useful to steal from and broker techs around with. I'm thinking of going back to my original 40 AD save and prioritizing peace, courthouses, espionage, and tech steal trading. I'd imagine HC to out-pace some of the others, meaning I'd eventually get enough of a "lead" on some AIs to get some more cities. Is this approach viable? Can you compete at immortal with just 11-12 cities?

MeIn Team: You can win a space race at immortal with 11 or 12 cities if they are pretty good--which they would be here. Financial is a big boost for this. HC can backstab tho. He has a high religion mod and HR as favorite civ, so assuming he's founded a religion and you get it friendly should be easy. If you eliminate Lincloln on your first rush, you will dig yourself a pretty big tech hole with HC. The trouble with stealing from an AI that has only you for contact is that all their EP go to you--he'll have a dozen CH long before you have COL so it's not ideal. You'll also pick up the - mods which could knock you out of friendly.

Started but soon quit again...
Gave it a go, but unsuccessful. Teched fishing > bw, no copper near (only in jungle area) so thought a bit and decided to try EE in SP (which I wanted for quite some time now) so masonry after BW. Linc and HC are so close I need to rush to get some place. no copper, no horse (and holkans are bad for rushing) so I went IW for swords.
Settled near the northern iron.
Built the GW, and two SODs, each consisting of 2 holkans, 3 axes and 5 swords. Since honey's cities mostly were on hills I picked linc. Took NY and washington after two turns of war easily. Went on, razed two more cities and had to give up since all those axe partisans killed nearly every unit I ever built... :(

Started but soon quit again...
Gave it a go, but unsuccessful. Teched fishing > bw, no copper near (only in jungle area) so thought a bit and decided to try EE in SP (which I wanted for quite some time now) so masonry after BW. Linc and HC are so close I need to rush to get some place. no copper, no horse (and holkans are bad for rushing) so I went IW for swords.
Settled near the northern iron.
Built the GW, and two SODs, each consisting of 2 holkans, 3 axes and 5 swords. Since honey's cities mostly were on hills I picked linc. Took NY and washington after two turns of war easily. Went on, razed two more cities and had to give up since all those axe partisans killed nearly every unit I ever built... :(

That sucks. The partisan event is buggy and partisan axes in the BC's are ridiculous. I've replayed this map several times and (without the partisan event) had no trouble wiping out lincoln in any of them. You've probably scouted enough to see that HC becomes a problem with all that gold.

My first play through I rushed with holkans (somehow this succeeded pretty well), but my other attempts I just settled the copper. It has a rice and some non-jungle farm-able land, allowing you to work the copper, rice, and the farms then whip. Experimentation with optimal hammer strategy seems like even for a micro-poor guy like me you can get 9-10 axes and a couple holkans before 1000 BC, and that's enough to take a few cities while making more.

Are you also of the opinion that this is winnable if you wipe out lincoln and have all his land? I seem to get so far behind in tech on immortal I can't do anything.

Pacal is another excellent candidate for the GLH based TRE. I lost with Hannibal, but it was my own fault. I think I will have a go with the same style here, though. GLH, REX as much as possible while doing it.

@Bleys
spoiler until +/- 2500 BC

^Not a hope with that strat here Bleys, i love GLH but here it's just a no go. Scouting reveals this before 3000 BC iirc.

Dirk, no kidding, LOL. I gave up pretty quickly. This is one I would probably have trouble on at Monarch, so Immortal is right out. Very difficult starting position with the speed of those 2 AIs that are so close.

I may WB it and try it at Emperor, though.

@Bleys
spoiler until +/- 2500 BC

^Not a hope with that strat here Bleys, i love GLH but here it's just a no go. Scouting reveals this before 3000 BC iirc.


Since I slowed it down to epic, I'd say scouting revealed it by about 3700 BC ;).

4000BC -> 1090AD



Finally, from 3rd try :blush:

invaded Lincoln with ~12 axes 2 spears about 700BC, took 3 cities, settled GG in Washington and made peace. 10 turns after declared again but this time with 4 cats chopped in Washington, and slowly finished him. Slowly coz stupid HC built AP and after capturing every city proposed peace with Lincoln
I think I can win Lib race and go for rifles. Washington can produce 1 CR2 mace every turn, and it not problem upgrade them to rifles with fin trait
here some screens

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/rumata_2008/Civ4ScreenShot0024.jpg


http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/rumata_2008/Civ4ScreenShot0025.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/rumata_2008/Civ4ScreenShot0026.jpg

? i don't know if others have the same problem atm but i can't upload any saves. Normal procedure is fine progressbar runs and and i get the message "ready" but no save is uploaded. Can't find them when i look under "my account either". My internet provider has been having problems all over the weekend even making it to the national news but atm i can download files so i don't think it's their fault this time. Anyway i'll try again later.

Up to 200AD or so

I teched fishing and BW, revealing the copper.
I settled to grab copper, banana, rice, elephant. Great production city, but a bit hard to use before IW. Even worse - a jungle spread to the rice.
I tried to get a 3rd city on the eastern fish and hills, but HC was ahead of me.

HC built the oracle and founded Confucianism, to which I converted, and so did Lincoln.
After writing I teched Alphabet and unfortunately also Lincoln. HC had mathematics but wouldn't trade for it, so i had to chop my axe army inefficiently.
I next teched Aesthetics to trade around, but Lincoln was ahead of me.
I feel like I have wasted precious commerce. I could have teched mathematics->construction by that time and unlock the great UB.

After massive chopping I get around 15 axes and 3 holkans and attack HC.
Big mistake without catapults. I capture his capital and a few more cities, but both him and Lincoln run ahead in tech. They are both close to Feudalism and HC won't make peace.
I finally got catapults, and I might be able to capture the holy city before HC gets longbows.

I feel it could have been a great start if I beelined construction instead of going for Alphabet. I didn't know Lincoln favours early alphabet.
If I manage to make peace with HC, I think I will be fine. I already have +6 for shared religion and if I remember correctly HR is his favourite civic, so he should be a good friend in spite of the war. The UB would help overcome motherland unhappiness.

Oh.. I also got a random event that gave me +3 relation boost with Lincoln, so with shared religion and trading we should be fine.

I haven't played this map, but looking at it, doesn't it seem better to block off HC early instead of warring with Lincoln? HC is normally such a monster anyways, warring with Lincoln will just give more time to peacefully expand and grow.

Johnpecan: These kind of comments need to be in spoiler tags.
Thanks,

It looks like he tried, but used < > instead of [ ]

My apologies.

I guess I didn't feel what I said was a spoiler. More of a general strat / inquiry.

@Johnpecan,

I could only block HC off the peninsula, it's not possible to block him peacefully totally. And he didn't seem to be a good rushing victim because Cusco and another city that i could see the faint outline of were on hills, also he was a bit farther away.

Still can't post any saves, i saw Ungy's save, my game is roughly similar, so that'll give you some idea of how things are now.

4000BC - 75AD



[Edit] just checked early saves and these were my build orders.

Build order: warrior(partial), Fish Boat (whipped after fishing and BW), FB, Worker, warrior

since there was nothing for a worker to do initially so this build order made sense, this is prob the fastest way to start working on the 2 Clam tiles which yield 8 food and 6 commerce in total.

Tech order:

Fishing-BW-Agri-Hunting-AH-Wheel-Pottery-IW-writing

Since my second city (designated HE city) claimed Bronze+Rice+Ivory+banana, IW allows clearing jungles over Ivory (+1 food) and farm over jungle covered banana (4 food). Also in a early rush, it is very important to reveal Iron so you can pillage enemy Iron and finding more suitable spots for my early cities.

As a result, I quickly settled the Iron+Clam+rice city to the South East of Capital before rushing Lincoln.

725BC: Small Axe force invading lightly defended NYC the Jewish holy city. Captured Jewish Shrine! This will really help with the war effort and research.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/4/6/17/f_725BCNYCSpom_9963ef3.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/4/6/17/f_725BCNYCSpom_9963ef3.jpg&srv=img33)


350BC:

Pillaged Lincoln's Iron, switched to Swords since he had mostly Archers defending cities.

Washington has Marble, so quickly switched to Aes/Literature route to build all those early Marble wonders. Look at this 6 city network, have very high production capability to snatch all those wonders (Parthenon, Statue of Zues (Ivory), GL, HE and NE)

http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/4/6/17/f_350BC6citynm_5b839b8.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/4/6/17/f_350BC6citynm_5b839b8.jpg&srv=img28)


250BC: Swords are very effective taking down Lincoln, WW hitting hard, sign peace with America. focusing on wonders (Zues, Partenon, HE). 9 city network. Going for Const and Ball court.

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/4/6/17/f_25BC9citypem_bc75347.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/4/6/17/f_25BC9citypem_bc75347.jpg&srv=img33)


25AD: Chopping GL in Washington, this will become my GP farm given Corn, Suger,river grasslands, numerous wonders and high prod potential for U.of Sankore and other wonders.

http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/4/6/17/f_25ADWashingm_1e2de9f.jpg (http://www.picoodle.com/view.php?img=/4/6/17/f_25ADWashingm_1e2de9f.jpg&srv=img26)

75AD: 10 city network, just plunk down Uxmal to fight for addition good riverside land from HC.

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn5/yy18836/75AD_10_city_network_Uxmal_fight_HC.jpg



Now have a good infrustructure up, will explore HC lands.

next priority will be Currency, COL and Calendar. Lots of River side tiles for cottages. Run some Scientists; Prob will move capital to Washington. HE city (1 settled GG) will dedicate to Troops to deal with HC threat. Wipe out Lincoln. Bulb to Edu, get Optics to explore sea; rush to Liberalism, probably go for a Rifle/Mace/Treb/Cav/Cannon based war against HC. and let WW kill him...

Was finally able to upload the saves, probably the internet provider again.

@TMIT

You've probably scouted enough to see that HC becomes a problem with all that gold.
Yeah I've seen this but HC built the henge, had buddhism and terraces. This makes his newer cities reach 40% very quickly, his cap was even at 60% soon. Also most of his cities were on a hill which makes it nearly impossible to take them.

Are you also of the opinion that this is winnable if you wipe out lincoln and have all his land? I seem to get so far behind in tech on immortal I can't do anything.
This is definitely winnable with that land. Beeline rifling and take HCs wonders + shrine. Either settle for space or go on to DOM. To help catching up I built the GW, settling the GSpy. This went well and I think I built enought units in time. I had no problem capturing the first 4 cities (even though 40% + walls - swords are really nice :goodjob:).

@ABigCivFan

Good start, remarkable that Lin didn't field more metal units, he probably researched IW relatively late. I prioritized writing and then moved in. Never felt the need for swords because approximately half of Lin's units were words/axes. I wonder if i made a mistake earlier on, i see you kept Chicago which seemed like a useless city to me (razed it), this'll cost you a ton on upkeep but it prevents Lin from settling there again, he did in my game which was a big nuisance.


@TheMeInTeam

Definitely winnable, it's not such a big deal to be some 10 techs behind midgame as long as you have the possiblity to raise research in the future. Until SM Ais trade alot with each other and also with you, after that tech roads diverge and some AIs get a lead, that's the time you shouldn't fall behind too far. Important not to wait too long with optics, astro is also very important on this map.

300AD to the end

And the end is in 350AD when I gave up facing longbows and catapults from HC and he started to take back the cities I have conquered. :mad:

So far it seems I lose every Immortal University game that requires a rush against someone who is not Louis.

Some conclusions:
All good games so far rushed Lincoln instead of HC. I guess I should have more respect for hills. My early 15 axes army would have crushed Lincoln, but I was tempted by the option of getting a temple.

I might try to restart the game and choose Lincoln as my target. I didn't reveal much about the rest of the world, so I think it could still be fun.

Up to

I was hoping I could win this without a later war against HC, but it looked like he was just teching too fast. So i hurry to do the rifle/cannon thing and I get there just in time. I attack the turn before he gets rifling, which lets me wipe out his SOD before it upgrades to rifles/cav.
I don't play it particularly well and I keep thinking I'll be able to trade for MT and never can so my army is a bit cumbersome. HC has a lot of units and had physics for a while so I get bombed relentlessly.
Still the AI cannot resist the draft rifle/cannon attack so I get him down to 4 cities and he still won't vassal. :smoke:I don't bother to check why--it's surely because I'm at war with Toku (without astro). Anyway after peace he offers vassalization and I take it.
I think it's an easy ride to space here--lots of great land and fin. Not sure if I finish it. I've got good relations all around, more or less tech parity and just about to explode economy wise.

A general thought on this game:
obviously we had to rush. HC was too strong, as some found out the hard way. Lincoln was doable but it was more complicated than usual due to having such a strong other AI on the continent. I think the early knockout strategy would leave us too far behind economically.
I think I dropped the ball early by missing the blocking city at the rice/clam--I was lucky to get a good city on the peninsula anyway.

ABigCivFan:I'm wondering about where you put the second city. You picked the best spot, but I was worried about 2 things: the delay on getting the copper for waiting for the border pop and the risk of HC settling next to the copper before I got it in my culture and stealing it.

@Dirk



Chicago was the Christian Holy city (Lin prob got Theology from Oracle), so I build the shrine using my first poped GP (a priest from Washington). The Jewish and Christian shrines really help my early-mid game allowing a big empire to survive the dark ages with decent research.

I revealed Iron early, pillaged Lin's Iron in Philadelphia (the desert tile) early into the war, my holken pillager got killed by an Axe right after he complete the pillage job. Turned out that was the only metal Lin hooked up. I was surprised he did not even try to mine it again later. So my invasion force did not face large Axe defenders later. only then I started to swith from Axe to Swords for mop up.




@Ungy

I wasn't worried too much about culture pressure in my second city. It was close to capital, by river, has great hammer potential (10+ river tiles! + food and hills), so it can rush out all culture improving buildings in a hurry + HE.

@ABigCivFan, spoiler until 1 +/- AD and a remark about research until 1000 AD which probably doesn't spoil much

Holy christian city,in that case you can't raze it for numerous reasons, apart from the shrine it may help you for reasons i pointed out. Personally i don't mind if Ais get iron hooked up (better than copper) because i hope they build swords, i take out swords more easy than axes or archers. Then again Swords vs archers is the ideal situation. It's strange though that Lin didn't hookup the iron in the neighbourhood of Chicago, he probably founded that city very late.

That shrines'll really help you, my game went ok but there was noway that i could get up any decent research (meaning 100+ beakers) until 1000 AD due to having a large but not too developed empire. Did you delay the whole axe thing to give Lin a chance to develop some goodies (could have been wonders too)?

@silverbullet,

Try again rushing Lin, this is a very interesting game, challenging also, i don't think the map knowledge'll give you any advantage apart from not rushing HC. Even more interesting would be to see you following your first plan (rush to construction) and then take on HC (not Lin, axes'll do for him), i didn't dare too and i don't think it'll work out totally satisfactory but interesting none the less.

@Dirk


No intentional delays on rushing Lin. think i started with 7 Axe + 1 holken around 750BC since his first city was lightly defended. I delayed a bit for settling the Iron/Rice/Clam city. I do tend to having at least 2 good prod cities for early rushes.

Ball court + HR + Expansive allowed me to have very high pop mid-game. Ample suger/banana/river grass and resource trades let several cities hit happy pop-cap quickly to work many cottages. Research rate explodes when you get Edu, PP, meet other civs for inter-conti trade routes. Gift/trade them Astro to make sure trade routes start kicking in.

It was amazing to watch HC researching everything(PP,Rifling, Democracy) within 3-5 turns mid game.

ABigCivFan: I thought it was only if you had astro that you got intercontinental trade routes--you have no benefit from the AI having it. I generally hoard it if possible to keep the AI down.
I'm also curious about something elseI generally don't research IW before a rush but I admit I'm a weak rusher. My theory is that you are generally so hard up for beakers and so needing HR and COL that better off not spending precious beakers there. I'm with Dirk in that I usually don't mind the AI with iron--better swords, axe, and spear than nothing but archers for the axe rush. Now obviously knowing where the iron is helps but you can see the AI's iron anyway once mined unless it's a city.
Did the relatively good commerce start w/financial and the jungle tiles swing you here or is IW more of a basic strategy?

@Ungy

About self research IW before Writing



I am more often to research IW before writing these days if I run a determined early rush for the following reasons:

1. Swords are much better than Axe at taking cities. Especially in cases the AIs have 60-80% Archer defenders. in this game, Lin had around 4 archers + 1 Axe for large cities, so 6 CR Swords have much better odds than 6 CR Axe taking these cities.

2. before hooking up copper, my capital produced 3rd settler. So revealing potential Iron is logical move.

3. my second prod city had several river hills, grassland, Ivory covered by jungle. It was my top priority to remove those jungles to make it a 17-18 :hammers: per turn city than saving the beakers on anything. Early rush is difficult, it is a raw numbers game, so having 2 military prod cities are always my #1 priority.

4. reveal Iron for pillaging, without IW, you will not know if an Enemy Iron is on a hill. I mind if AIs have metal, since we can never assume they will use metal for swords but not Axes. AI's Axe defenders are usually the biggest problem for a human rush. So I pillage every metal I can regardless copper or Iron.

Under these circumstances, IW was the most important tech than anything else I could research at the time.

about Astro for Inter-conti trading. In my game, it only opened up trade routes when AIs on the other conti got Astro. I am not 100% sure but it d be nice someone can confirm that.

@ABigCivFan

Interesting

1. Ais don't always have so much archers in a city, against that you can mix your army accordingly so having the possibility to make swords is a rather big plus as they're almost sure to take out archers

2. Agreed but not terribly important imo.

3. Certainly, removing jungle especially if like me you settled the peninsula early is great
this is more important than 2. i think

4. I'm not so sure if axes are a bigger problem than archers, i often saw this rush that while there were axes, archer was the first defender so i assume that that they're not much weaker than axes on defence. You can move around more freely though because enemy axes tend to attack your wounded units where archers won't.

I'll add 5, later rushing gives you more benefits (like the 2 shrines here) and better developed land.

As opposed to all this, later rushing is imo more of a gamble, you'll face more cultural defence and a defender can have twice the number of units 500 BC compared to 1000 BC. I may try to do it this way in a later game, one question left, do you research writing before the rush? I'm always somewhat afraid i'll be left with 0% science and not being able to research in any other way, if you limit the number of cities you take you can afford this and then writing might not be neccessary.

@Dirk

Entrenched Shock and combat Axes in AI cities are beasts. These guys are much tougher than CG Archers vs. our Axe rush. They can stop a rush cold in its path. That is why I like to do anything i can to remove that potential threat.

@ABigCivFan, Dirk:
I agree with pillaging metals ASAP. On a side note , I think pillaging horses is not a good move. The AI will then just spam archers, and with horses they will build some chariots which are poor defenders. What's your opinion on that?

Just read through the posts without going into the spoilers. :rolleyes: Honestly. :)

It seems like we have a tough game here eg tanks v rifles, 1400AD and disaster. RL hasn't given me any time to play since the last university :cry: so I'll try and find time for this one somewhere.

Now just have to resist looking at the spoilers again. :lol:

@silverbullet,
Interesting, i have no firm opinion on pillaging horses. Sure they defend bad but i find them to be a nuisance, chariots contribute greatly to the human WW in a rush and for that reason alone i tend to pillage horses. I usually don't see the AI defending massively with them but it does happen. If the opponent has horses you have to make some more spears, also sometimes have to keep a spear in your conquered cities, if you can put up with the extra MM i guess leaving horses intact might be better because defending or not the chariots'll be harmless. There's always a chance of course the enemy gets HBR during rushing, not disastrous but nasty.

When rushing Cyrus i'm sure, definitely don't pillage the horses. .

In general, I would pillage Metal and Horse if I could not capture these tiles quickly. Besides the main reasons for deny certain unit types, these are high :hammers: tiles, combined with AI's deep discounted units, they help the AI to churn out more defenders faster.

The best scenario imo is deny all Strategic resources to the AIs ASAP and leaving them building nothing but Archers for defending. This means less surprise for you and more options for the human attacker.

940AD - 1886AD


Teched straight to space spamming cottage on all the tiles around my 14 cities, had some 90 beakers/turn 940 AD, raised it to around 1k beakers /turn around 1500 AD in effect gaining 20 beakers every turn. Transformed almost all the cottages to workshops in the end as i missed out on mining co. Ais were pretty competitive until industrialism then they stalled. Internet sealed it but wasn't even necessary as i only got satellites and a bunch of rubbish from it.

In general, I would pillage Metal and Horse if I could not capture these tiles quickly. Besides the main reasons for deny certain unit types, these are high :hammers: tiles, combined with AI's deep discounted units, they help the AI to churn out more defenders faster.

The best scenario imo is deny all Strategic resources to the AIs ASAP and leaving them building nothing but Archers for defending. This means less surprise for you and more options for the human attacker.
these are both good points. I confess I often leave the AI horse to encourage chariots but I hadn't been considering the hammer value of the tile.

I think there is synergy between getting IW and building swords and pillaging.
Swords are a lot better vs archers, but it gets muddled when you face a mix, especially if you have a mix. I see how there's a big advantage to getting the AI down to archers if you can field swords--even if you face a lot of them. The difference between 5 and 6 +10% is huge.

I went through another playthrough on this. I did pretty well, would have lasted the whole game and may have won it not for:


The monster HC to the south of me. All that gold to him early is too much power :(. He has WAY too much peaceful land, the starting position in this is very hard. The ideal approach would be to rush HC but he has metal and his capitol and several other important cities are on hills. Truly annoying. I wound up wiping lincoln off the map quickly, got 12 cities peacefully, but HC went culture and was undisputed tech leader on top of that. I captured 2 japanese cities and was stealing off HC to keep up in techs BUT, HC's culture got so powerful important tiles and cities started getting flipped :(. The terrace is an early advantage and between that, his 2 religions, and him getting free speech before me I couldn't do anything against the culture. Militarily he was too strong. IMO the best way to win this game would be to somehow rush the !@%# out of HC, box lincoln in (lincoln isn't too agressive actually, so it's not like we'd have to worry much there) and then have the PLAYER be the person with 30ish % of the world's land and pop. Tech would be poorer than an immortal AI but HC was seriously the only major threat in any of my games. He liked me but I couldn't prevent him from winning :(. If I can take a 3rd or 4th retry (I forget) I will constantly work on methods of successfully rushing and wiping out the imba civ.

Third time is the charm. Beginning until 1925 - Space Victory

Attempt 1: popped fishing from a hut, build worker, chop build worker, build work boats, hook up bronze, and rush HC. This was a horrid mistake, 40% cultural defenses on hills blows. I pushed him out of his capital but finishing the bastard would not give me peace and was now running swords/axes. He also had the balls to rebuild two razed cities. Lincoln nabs Oracle and theology and I'm not finished with HC. I might be able to salvage this but it’s unlikely.

Attempt 2: popped wheel from a hut, chop built a settler, linked up bronze, rushed Lincoln. I killed Lincoln off in the late BCs. The problem was that HC has almost as much land as I do, a tech lead, and culture from hell. I block off the iron/clam site which eventually reveals itself to have HC's only possible source for oil. Unfortunately the bastard founds a crap city and proceeds to use his wonder base culture spam to take it. The spy brigade is unable to keep the well burnt. And HC's tech lead just keeps growing (he handily lead all players). Called this one quits in the mid 19th century as HC is the cultural and tech leader with oil.

Attempt 3: Balls to the wall rushing here. We build the rax, swap to worker at pop 2, chop build boats, chop build worker, chop build rax, chop the entire BFC for about a dozen holkan (2 combat 1 to get medic and the rest CR 1). Tech path was BW -> fishing -> hunting -> agri -> AH -> pottery -> masonry; wheel popped from hut along with cash.

New York falls with the loss of 3 Holkan (1 of the Combat 1's) and generates 2 CR2 Holkan. We heal, reinforce, and then march on Washington. Washington is lightly defended with 3 archers; 3 holkan die and we take the city. While waiting for all our four CR2 holkan to heal we scout a new city with a worker mining the plains. We detour from out planned course and raze Seattle to the ground. Next target Boston, in attempt 2 this was a . .. .. .. .. . to kill, thankfully it is busy building a settler and we get inside with 4 dead Holkan. The locale is not bad, but we need to quickly tech construction and riding so it is burnt. Philly is taken in a poor placement, but we keep it to block Incan expansion. We can't see any American cities, but Lincoln is still alive. We see has only one city and opt to take peace for sailing, archery, meditation, and alphabet. GG settled in Washington.

We whip out granaries and libraries in all the new territory and then run science specialists. Tech path is math -> construction -> riding -> currency -> CoL. Our first GS is used to build an academy in Mutal. Convert to Buddhism as HC has popped Christianity and we have a Buddhist AP. We don't care about a barb hoard; we have the GW thanks to Abe.

We find Lincoln on the far side of HC next to the southern sheep. We declare war and kill him just to get the happy bonus.

We mass about 12 pults 5 for accuracy and the rest are CR1 suicides. Washington and Mutal make stables and churn out shock elephants. Burning those nice American cities has paid off as HC is deep in the top path teching to wonder spam, no LBs stand in our way. We invade on a SE heading taking Corihauyanchina, keeping it only because it is the founded Taoism and built the Paya; no losses (only an archer and sword inside). We see the capital is still building the Great Library, so we elect to be nice to HC and let him finish it for us. Instead we take Tiwanaku for the price of 3 suicidapults. We spawn a GSpy out of Washington. We use this for the instant spy point advantage vs HC. Philly stops building reinforcement suicidapults to slowly grow spies.

Cuzco finishes our GL for us, we stomp it into the ground for the price of 3 suicidapults and an elephant (lucky spearman with 7% chances). We capture the GL, Stonehenge, and the ToA. Our economy is going to own now. For two suicidapults we take Machu Picchu; HC's only metal city and home of the AP. Swap to FR. Next turn HC finally gets LBs up and running. We take one city in the south on the fur river and keep it; we sitzkrieg in front of a crappy city in the central jungle with a medic elephant and woodsman two ax (quickly promoted to III from catapult defense). We mean to burn the oasis city on the east coast but misclick. Unfortunately HC's four remaining cities are poorly placed and stocked with hoards of whipped LBs. We expend numerous pults losing only one elephant and unlock West Point. Spies rob HC blind we steal Feudalism, Metal Casting, Philosophy, Aesthetics, Theology, Paper, etc. (spying is more efficient than researching at this point). We burn all of HC's cities and leave him with two (Vilcos founded Christianity on the SSW coast) and some crappy city just on top of the city. In the peace we get almost all of HC outstanding techs. Education -> Liberalism is our goal. We steal the last of HC's technology and then declare a 3 turn war. We actually are short on pults, but we need to thin the herd of elephants anyways. HC dies in 1410. All four of our GGs settled in Washington giving us the option of massing CR III rifles/infantry if we want. Otherwise CR III tanks sounds good to me.

At the tail end of the war with HC the Dutch and Koreans stopped by. The Koreans are significantly more advanced, but they appear to be running to democracy. The Dutch are hard on our heels to Liberalism (this was discovered after the fact when they valued the tech at 135 gold + WM). Cuzco pops us a timely GS to partially bulb education. On the turn we discover liberalism, Wang Kon demands we swap to caste, we decline, but find we can trade him liberalism for civil service before the bonus tech is taken. We take nationalism as our free tech and swap with the Dutch for printing press. We tech gunpowder to trade and meet Sitting Bull. Unfortunately SB has a galleon with a settler that claims the vacant clams/rice/hills spot. We trade him lib and other techs sequentially to get to banking and replaceable parts. We revolt to HR, FS, Slavery, Merc, and FR.

We take a barb city on the western edge of the continent and fill out the rest of the coast with settlers. (Beating the Dutch to the double ivory/iron spot by one turn). At this point tech is going chemistry -> steel -> science in order to trade for all the other tech paths. WK is tech leader having eaten most of Japan for lunch, SB and the Dutch are about equal, with SB being ahead in tech. I opt to best friends forever with the Dutch (they are FR and I want FR with my three religion mix/need to tech quick). At this point I'm thinking space victory; I have about a 10% land area lead on WK and am far more heavily cottaged. Everyone else made rifles before me and I highly doubt I can do an amphibian take down of one of the two big guys without letting the other run away while my tech tanks. I might be able to beat SB to infantry or beat up WK with CRIII infantry, but I'm doubtful it is all that practical. Science shows that SB has exactly one oil source, directly under a city.

I elect not to power tech to infantry, while I could likely take and hold that city and then roll him later with airlifted tanks, domination will require killing everyone and then at least razing several Korean cities (Korea has about 30% of the land area). I somehow think I'm going to have to make a desperate nuke/chopper attack followed up with a commando/morale cavalry sacrifice. As Seoul is not coastal, this type of cheese may be required.

We tech out along the biology -> medicine -> refrig path; trading with the Dutch for techs on the industrialism and combustion paths. We push out along the genetics path while industrializing; Sid's sushi is founded at our Wall street city which also has Taoism. SB completes the UN and we are elected both AP head and UN SG. We force votes on single currency (benefits us more than them), emancipation (good for the newer cottages; bad for SB's massed workshops), and banning nukes. We hoard our tech line; these give us a major science bonus and a major health bonus (average city size is now 17). We tech up to rocketry and then work our way through composites, satellites, etc. until we have only computers, fiberop, and fusion left that we care about. SB manages to score Internet, this could be a problem as he has by far the highest production; I can only beat him if I swap to SP and workshop over my capitol in order to get a second engine same turn as the first. We trade ecology and satellites to the Dutch for computers and communism.

We opt for a hopefully brief war with SB to take his one city and more importantly to get him to stop building spaceship parts to instead to focus on units. This doesn't work so well. We do take the city, but out stack of battleships is unable to stop his invasion force (which has mech infantry and choppers). We spam tanks and race them city to city along the coast until SB eventually takes a filler a city on the NW corner. We are still screwed, until we call the vote to the end war (bombers + choppers keep destroying my defenders, so I have to freshly restock the garrison with 3-4 units while he has a small SoD coming with mech infantry and choppers. This war does not appear to dent his space ambitions as he finishes the space elevator and begins building engines the moment we get fusion.

We tech up to fusion and pop our first golden age (all previous GP have gone towards bulbing tech or settling). We swap to SP and evict the townspeople around Mutal. Spies prove ineffective at slowing SB's spaceship progress. In 1915 the Mayan ship is launched, the same year as the Native American one. However our ship has two engines, their ship only one.

We spend the rest of the game caving to demands for resources, researching our way through stealth, and mass producing CD III mech infantry for Mutal (SB has an armada just off the coast with 5 transports). In 1925 we stun the world be beating SB's ship to the stars.

Mistakes made:
1. Not burning that one Inca city. It was good later, but I almost lost Liberalism from it.
2. Attacking SB at the end. I would have done better to have just sent a pack of spies in to keep dicking with him. I did swap his religious civic for him once.
3. Not getting settlers up faster to block off the coast. All told letting SB settle cost me in the neighborhood 5-10k beakers. I should have spent the hammers to either get the settlers prebuilt and waiting to found a city or to get ships out to watch for incoming galleons.
4. Not spy bombing SB's copper. I had intended to go after his aluminium, but he founded the otherwise useless corp (and ethanol as well). I could have rather good odds of keeping him copper deprived and maybe buying a turn from a slow cockpit.

I did get rather lucky with WK's demand that let me get nationalism via civil service and on HCs choice of wonders.

The key to me seems nerfing the economy just enough to prevent HC from expanding to several more cities, keeping NY and Philly, but not so much you can't hit him with the elephapult army before he gets to elephants and knights of his own (like my second attempt). Likewise burning enough of HC's territory in order to win through to liberalism is traded off against the other AIs settling your land.

When will the next immortal university thread start?

Probably this weekend

Today please. :)

I missed the last 2 or so but I'm looking forward to the next one.

^Agreed, just back from vacation and i'd love to have a go :goodjob:.

Yes, I'll try my luck too me thinks. Random leader / fractal map??

Yes, I'll try my luck too me thinks. Random leader / fractal map??
Yes, and I think you will like the selection of the random number generator this time :)