Hello all and welcome to the Immortal University! This series was started a long time ago to move a group of the forum's players to the next level. It is now hosted by professors Ignorant Teacher (on sabbatical) and myself, TMIT. Are you ready for the U?

This is the 48th beatdown on the AI, in case you're keeping track.

We will uphold the university's traditions...smacking down the hapless AI!

Our leader this time around:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/IU%2048%20Sal/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

A repeat appearance, though it's been over a year and he's not seen action in the forum lately.

Here's the start:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/IU%2048%20Sal/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

This is a random fractal start with 1 extra civ in it.

Huts and Events are off. If you don't like it, just plop 4 warriors somewhere in world builder and give yourself 60 gold to simulate huts, and just delete your capitol and put 3 archers there to simulate events.

Copy and Paste of the doctrine:

To play, just extract the WB save file into your worldbuilder saves directory, then play it. Use custom scenario if you want some extra settings to tickle your fancy. This series was designed for people learning immortal, so most people here will be at that level or trying to attain it, although deity players are welcome also. Hell, if you want to play this on NOBLE, go ahead, but I'm not peeling off the AI bonuses. The intention of this and any other game thread I post is to get better. Play whatever level you need in order to improve. Just remember, there are immortal bonuses and that's not going to change unless you WB edit it.

If you are aspiring IMM+, try to remember to add archery back to the barbs in WB. Every time you don't, a deity AI will kill a kitten, although there are a lot of kittens so it's not the end of the world if you prefer easymode barbs .

I do request people to list their difficulty and speed. In terms of updates, well nobody follows that anyway. Post in the manner you feel comfortable. Typical comparison dates are 1 AD, liberalism, and victory/defeat, as well as any major events. If in doubt, go with that.

The save!

253774

253775

The initial autosave for those who want to duck having to add barbs or possibly use proper colors. It's IMM/Norm no huts/events.

and just delete your capitol and put 3 archers there to simulate events.

:lol:


Thanks for hosting! I guess I'll try it...how can I add Archery to the Barbarians (preferably without seeing any hidden resources in worldbuilder)?

Why add the extra civ?

Did you move the starting location?

What's that name you wrote for the civ? I can't quite make it out.

Hey TMIT - Do you have any idea what IT is up to? (he's on our SOTM team)

Good to see this series starting up again and helmed by you

Why add the extra civ?

Too many gaymes of "one guy gets 25% land". If I must, I'll do it to balance the odds.

Did you move the starting location?

What's that name you wrote for the civ? I can't quite make it out.

WB re-roll for a little shenanigans for you guys. I changed nothing though, so it's still a 100% legit random fractal start.

There's something horribly wrong with the AI on this map:


settled in place, eventually built the lighthouse very late and this is the tech screen at 1000 AD:

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd161/shyuhe/Civ4ScreenShot0515.jpg

I doubt I'll bother finishing it from here. I guess it was a bit of a waste to have taken astronomy from liberalism :lol:

What's that name you wrote for the civ? I can't quite make it out.

It says Cherry Tapping

..

is it set to immortal?

is it set to immortal?

Yes, including in the auto save.

They're slow in my game too, but not THAT slow. It probably has something to do with the map layout and where religions fall.

@lymond
I'm sorry to be off-topic, but... what is SOTM? And for that matter, if you know, what is BOTM? I see people talking about these and it seems like they're games from which one could learn some. :D

@lymond
I'm sorry to be off-topic, but... what is SOTM? And for that matter, if you know, what is BOTM? I see people talking about these and it seems like they're games from which one could learn some. :D

There games of the month and succesion game of the month. There are different ones for Vanilla/Warlords/BTS. SGOTM is a team game against other teams. There is a seperate forum for these just look under game of the month.

@lymond
I'm sorry to be off-topic, but... what is SOTM? And for that matter, if you know, what is BOTM? I see people talking about these and it seems like they're games from which one could learn some. :D

Actually, I mis- typed. It's SGOTM and stands for Succession Game of the Month (although it actually lasts several months). It's a competitive team game.

BOTMs are part of the Civfanatic Games of the Month. Is the BTS version. There's a GOTM for vanilla, Warlords and BTS. The GOTM team puts out a game each month (Warlords about every 1.5 months). The games and maps are pretty interesting and sometimes have a theme or specific goal. They range in difficulty from Noble to Deity - cyclically. The team then scores your submission and ranks the players over time.

The BUFFY mod is specifically designed for the GOTMs and Hall of Fame series.

Here's the link to the home page although you can get their through the menu:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/index.php

Thank you both! :D

up to 10AD - advice from the experts welcome:

Well, I think I do an okay job of getting the 6 cities that I got. Charlie popped down a city to the north there fairly early in the game and I thought he would expand more in my direction, but he had a good bit of land in his direction, plus the jungles probably helped. Charles has pretty decent land, not spectacular, but a lot of resources.

Warriors took care of barb-busting - barbs were never an issue.

My concern of course is Ghandi who is just running away with tech right now. HRE and I are actually about on par and if I get Monarchy in soon, I can probably make some trades. Alpha took forever, but was able to trade it for IW, Sailing and other backfill techs from both AIs. Good thing because BK soon asked me to cease all relation with Senor Ghandi. I chose to side with BK for obvious reasons and soon adopted his religion. (I waited for some time for a request but decided to do it anyway for the needed happies)

Land is pretty marginal here but may be somewhat productive after the jungles. I only have 6 workers and usually try to have more but improved quickly and never worked unimproved tiles.

My focus now is to churn out some units/qallies/settlers in the cap to settle/conquer the island to the SW. Fighting BK seems ill advised at this point and well Ghandi is going to be very tough for some time until I can somehow get an advantage.

Really interested in pointers and thoughts on how to play this. Culture seems vialble although wonders have not be forthcoming. (I missed out on Oracle although the gold was nice)

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/161/iu4810adov0000.jpg



http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9228/iu4810adtech0000.jpg

To 75BC:

Not much to say here except that I'm in a pretty solid position thanks to getting a bunch of madrassa's up early. SIP, Early tech targets were Alpha and Currency, the only major trade i've been able to get was for monarchy as Gandhi is whoring peace techs and charlie cant research anything!

Only other major things of note are that I've got too many workers (yes its possible) and no IW yet.

Anyway I set up a "blocker city" to the north of charlie then filled in quickly to 4 cities. My placement hasnt been ideal but the land is good so eh. Just created a beachhead on Gandhi's land, he's been wonder whoring(Glib in 350BC! SoZ and oracle) and needs to go, shouldn't be too hard... I don't care how well he does early on, he's ALWAYS a pushover so i'm happy to let him build all the shinies he wants.

So anyway i'm building some settlers to fill in my space and colonize that southern island. I'm a bit peeved that I wasn't a bit more daring with my early block. Charlie expanded the wrong way and I could have gotten that marble, oh well. HR plus religion will keep him happy. Early diplo is all too easy in this game.

Here's the pic of the situation, heading maths-calendar for much needed happiness, Cap will probably be moved to damascus as original cap has almost no cottageable tiles and is better off a GP farm.
http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/ad63/bobbyboy29/Civ4ScreenShot0101.jpg

This game is going well. 2 GS's by 1AD is a PB for me with a non philo leader(1 was settled then the next acadamied in Damascus). I like the UB, its no powerhouse but you notice the culture difference and the priest slots are nice (you can run a priest for a bit together with the 2 scientists to get a GP quicker that will still have a good chance of being a GS).

Just a note on overlap. I really like the spot 3N1W of the cap. It's a great example of how helpful overlap can be. On a map with no other great production sites, this one has 5 hills! But the real bonus is that I can switch between the cows,clams and corn to feed it as necessary.

@lymond

2 things:
1. You wasted a perfectly good fish tile.
2. You're underestimating the Madrassa. It's a beast to steal tiles. Najran should have settled the corn in first ring.

@lymond

2 things:
1. You wasted a perfectly good fish tile.
2. You're underestimating the Madrassa. It's a beast to steal tiles. Najran should have settled the corn in first ring.


@kos



ha...if you can believe it, I'm just noticing that fish now. I think it was revealed with a border pop and I must have never stood a warrior on that spice which would have revealed the fish early. Woulda totally changed my city configuration.

Vienna was already setup when I sent the settler up there so the idea of settling right on his border didn't gross my mind. BK can be a nasty neighbor. I agree it's a better city though.

375 BC

I went Ag AH fishing sailing mining masonry for the Great Lighthouse. Stonehenge went at 1800 and Great Wall went at 1200 or so.. So I got an extra settler out before finishing the GLH late. I didn't workboat the fish in the capital - I sent it out to see how much land the HRE had. Doing this I found and camped on a great food site behind his land which I settled. GW went late right? So I grabbed the pyramids as well.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm149/grashopa2/Civ4ScreenShot0767.jpg

Liberalism at 1150...

I'm really not used to normal speed - I thought I had a pretty good economy going on, but that date is very late for Immortal. I probably made many mistakes because I thought I was teching fast when in fact it was just the game speed :rolleyes:.



Early tech: Agriculture, Animal Husbandry. Find the horses next to Mekka. Normally I would rely on warriors to keep such a small area clear of Barbarians, but my scouting warriors already saw two Axes on turn eight and fifteen (in different locations)! No Archers seen at all, but Axes from the beginning...? So I needed Chariots, and founded a not very good city for the horses.

I steal a Worker from Charles to keep him from expanding into my territory and slow him down, and works due to that nice choke-point near his capital...of course, reading the other posts it seems that he would expand the other way anyway, but couldn't know that. Not needing to block off land, I go for fast tech instead of early expansion. Polytheism (I nearly founded Hinduism - strange game, no-one went for a religion), then Priesthood, because I thought I had a shot at the Oracle, but it went early - in fact, it was the first wonder built, before the Great Wall or Stonehenge! Mining, Writing, then Caste System. I decided to go for specialists off my two food-heavy cities, both because Spiritual is nice there (Caste + Slavery) and because I wanted to try it. Then beeline Liberalism (having to research some techs I could have traded for if there were more partners around, Charles was teching too slow).

Just before Charles starts invading my cities with Axes and Spears - I didn't have Bronze - I found a city in the desert near his capital and gift it for peace. I get Confucianism from Gandhi, make a Missionary and convert Charles. Gift him some techs, open borders, and he never attacks me again (a good thing, because I don't think I would have been able to deal with the massive stack he had in his border city until a bit later).

I have space for six cities - two production cities near the border (in the loose sense of the word - there are almost no hills), two specialist cities, a cottage city and a not-so-good city which gave me horses.

http://s920.photobucket.com/albums/ad43/georgjorge/?action=view&current=overview.jpg&newest=1

I only found out about that island south-west when Mekka's culture expanded for the third time just now (couldn't trade Optics before) - flatland barb cities with only archers, a nice present for Horse Archers, three additional cities I think. I guess the other players built some wonders to get to the island before?

I got lots of Great Scientists - first settled, second Academy, then bulb Philosophy + Paper + Education + Liberalism. I still don't know why that strategy was so slow this time...but I guess it's a good deal faster if there are more trading partners around, Gandhi went for lots of other techs before Alphabet and I had to research some techs myself that I surely could have gotten from other AIs if they were around.

Anyway, I took Gunpowder from Liberalism because Gandhi will give me Nationalism soon as well as Literature + Music, and then I'm one tech away from Cuirassiers and going after Charles. Production is bad (not even forests around), but I'll make lots of Horse Archers and a Great Merchant to upgrade, and whip away my specialists.

My two beloved specialist cities:

http://s920.photobucket.com/albums/ad43/georgjorge/?action=view&current=Mekka.jpg&newest=1

http://s920.photobucket.com/albums/ad43/georgjorge/?action=view&current=Wissensstadt.jpg&newest=1

Tech situation (I also got Liberalism on all of them, doesn't show yet):

http://s920.photobucket.com/albums/ad43/georgjorge/?action=view&current=tech.jpg&newest=1



Any helpful comments on what could have been done differently are welcome...


@Grashopa:


Making a beachhead on Gandhi island is nice for later invasions. He was expanding so slow that I was even thinking about making three quick settlers for a colony on his island, abusing AI bonuses while not paying maintenance, but decided against it - could have been interesting.

georgjorg

Interesting idea about a colony by ghandi, perhaps I didn't explore around him early enough, dropping a settler on him was just an afterthought. I'm thinking I probably should have closed borders with him which would have slowed him considerably I'm sure - since I have my own overseas cities the trade route loss for me would not have been that big a deal.

Well, here is my experimental save.

I went with experimental strategy...


Map creator did everything in his power to prevent early worker steal and choke..

Even such strategies are difficult to implement on normal speed.
My exploration reveal some strange shapes of continent :)

Ok, this crunch out, analysis, what strategy I can do on this map? No happiness resources.. only one left, GL.

So, I do not remember tech order, but I expand and build GL in capital..
After that I decided to expand some more.

So, on 1 AD I am a proud owner of 8 cities and 1 more settler in place. A bit creasy I know, with no happiness, no monarchy yet, no currency... Gandy teching a lot.

Up to 1000AD


Basically GL works, the only problem was not to go to war with any neibors.
Did some begging to prevent Charlie go to war.

I still keep some units on border cities. Up to 10 cities now and 1 settler.
Liberalism in a few, well with my help my neibors tech well..

Played to 425 BC, what do you even do with a Great Merchant this early?

SIP and teched Agri->AH, saw horses close and got a settler over there, but in retrospect I should have probably settled north to block charly, as barbs never became an issue with the small amount of land on our continent. Decided to make a run for GLH, so I went fishing->mining->sailing->masonry->BW.

Slowly got the GLH up, whipped for 3 pop in 1225 BC, pretty late especially given that this seems to be a pretty watery map.

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/1490/civ4screenshot0005w.jpg

OB with Ghandi as he had teched writing for overseas GLH trade routes. Settled more cities (Charly had blocked me from the north pretty much so I settled back and just went for coastal cities. Teched pottery->writing and got some UBs up in the cap + cottage city w/ the corn and lots of riverside grassland. Ran 2 scientists but eventually got a merchant in 425BC which is where I stopped.

http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/5404/civ4screenshot0006q.jpg

Plan from here is to settle that nice eastern island, I'll close borders with Ghandi if need be, he's already settled right next to Charly so I'm hoping if anything he'll get mixed up in a war while I peacefully settle more cities to abuse GLH overseas trade routes. Really need some diplo with Charly to avoid a DoW, but I got all Judaism spreads and he's not sending missionaries my way atm.

Really not sure what to do with a merchant this early . . . bulb MC maybe? Seems like a waste using it on currency. Trade mission worth it this early? I forgot to check if Ghandi or Charly got ToA, but I don't think they did.

@TCMIV

You either settle it. Or you send it on trade mission (recommended). Trade missions means you can rapidly fill your land with cities while running at 100% slider. Normally the accelerated start is > long term investment (assuming you plan to war eventually). You may also end up using all your gold before currency (to avoid tribute demands for gold).

25AD

Used the GM for a trade mission as suggested, 1650 gold is a good chunk of change this early on. Went straight for currency while getting some granaries/madrassas up. Happiness is low until calendar, so I went IW after that as it wasn't available for trade and would help clear some jungle. Also teched CoL during this set. The tech situation looked ripe for the picking at this point, I put some turns in to monarchy/math and then traded alpha to Ghandi for Monarchy + gold, followed by monarchy to Charly for math + gold. I think my SS shows Charly offering hunting too but I didn't take it as I have no use for it right now and he seems like he has a pretty low trade limit in most games I've played.

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/4215/civ4screenshot0008b.jpg
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/9472/civ4screenshot0009r.jpg

Traded for fur as well, and sold corn to Ghandi for gpt. Swapped to Buddhism + OR + Monarchy to please Charly, don't care how Ghandi feels about me. One source of iron finally got me metals so I'm building lots of axes/settlers/workers to get that island settled, I imagine I can make 5-6 cities out of it easily. Long term plan is looking like Ghandi will need to be relieved of his island, then I'll see where to go from there.

I'm going to settle the island pretty rapidly I hope, lots of resources + trade routes to be had. Teching compass for harbors + trading options, I'd really like calendar to hook up 2 more happiness resources as well. Charly is going construction and Ghandi already has calendar, so I'll probably use compass to get some techs from both of them. Holding on to currency for now as it would only help their economies, though I could benefit from their trade routes as well so we'll see.

Tech and land:

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/1391/civ4screenshot0010a.jpg
http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/6074/civ4screenshot0011k.jpg

@TCMIV:

Any reason why you didn't found a sixth city in the jungle to the north? From your screenshot, it looks like Charly still left you some place there, and the ressources are very nice there...

I see you already marked city spots on the southern island...don't get your hopes up too much though, it looks better from the coast than it really is :p.

@TCMIV:

Any reason why you didn't found a sixth city in the jungle to the north? From your screenshot, it looks like Charly still left you some place there, and the ressources are very nice there...

I see you already marked city spots on the southern island...don't get your hopes up too much though, it looks better from the coast than it really is :p.


I haven't scouted the actual city, but Charly dropped one on the peninsula area with the sugar before I could, so there aren't any resources to be gained there. If I conquer Charly at some point I'd possibly drop an extra city in there, but for just a bunch of jungle tiles I didn't feel the need to yet since it has no food source, if I were zoomed in closer you could see his culture has much of that area already.

The island may not have great land (lots of desert for sure) but it gets me more GLH overseas trade routes, and since I'm not relying on many cottages atm those will be a large economy boost. Also the resources will be nice to have to either sell or use for more health/happiness.

So I heard on one of the recent polycast episodes that you can build a palace to within one turn in one city, then start building it in another city and the hammers are carried over to the new city, is this true? Trying to move my capital to a commerce rich/hammer poor city via building 99% of it in a hammer rich city, which seems cheesy but I don't care as long as it works :lol:

So I heard on one of the recent polycast episodes that you can build a palace to within one turn in one city, then start building it in another city and the hammers are carried over to the new city, is this true? Trying to move my capital to a commerce rich/hammer poor city via building 99% of it in a hammer rich city, which seems cheesy but I don't care as long as it works :lol:

I have not confirmed this for myself, but MLS said it so it's probably true :/.

That sound more like Civ3 trick

Tested it out and the hammers don't seem to carry over :(

I don't usually play forum games, but I decided to try this one, and it's looking fun. Though I have to ask, has the map been tempered with? The city placements just look so obvious to me (and so many of them follow the formula - Fish+something). Also, every calendar resource seen to be available.

One more thing... what's up with this Ghandi AI? He simply refuses to expand? I just grabbed 2 cities in his island and pretty late in the game.


As for my game... first of all, how do you guys take prints of the game screen? Is there a shortcut for it in CIV or the BUG mod or do you have to do it manually? I'll add some once I know how to. So, for now, just text.

Up to around 1040 AD and looking good. I started by settling two cities agressively in Charlie's direction and broke my economy. TGL saved me and I started spamming coastal cities. Grabbed some extra cities in the other islands and just started a golden age that will lead to 2 GP out of starving cities and hopefully win me Lib (trades have been way slow so far, and just recently got better. I got a Philo bulb that did not pay off. But it looks like it won't matter much, in the end). I'll problably be able to grab Astronomy, which is pretty much my plan.

I'm not planning any wars right now (but in case I do have to war later on, I should be able to do so even at tech parity, with the drafting abuse potential of Sal and the not so big neighbours... I don't know how the unknown AI's are faring, but this two here I should be able to beat eventually, by whatever means. I'm thinking of peacefully expanding to as many cities as possible (don't know how many I can get without colony expenses murdering me) and then beelining to medicine, so that I can abuse Sushi with just so much fish. That should be interesting, as I never use corps (something I should problably change in my gaming).

Let's see how it goes.

Tested it out and the hammers don't seem to carry over :(

screenshots please?

So I heard on one of the recent polycast episodes that you can build a palace to within one turn in one city, then start building it in another city and the hammers are carried over to the new city, is this true? Trying to move my capital to a commerce rich/hammer poor city via building 99% of it in a hammer rich city, which seems cheesy but I don't care as long as it works :lol:

the way i understand it is that the hammers do not carry over, but that you can build it to within 1 turn in a number of cities, then complete it in the new capital and receive failure gold for all of the almost build palaces.

Did anyone even finish this game? I tried but lost my culture attempt.

I abandoned it when I got Liberalism so very late because I'm currently working on getting my early game right, and I just made too many wrong decisions in this one. Basically, after playing Marathon for so long I really can't play Normal well anymore - I keep judging my tech rate and production potential very wrong ("wow, I can build that Library in only twelve turns, I don't need to whip it" - but twelve turns can be a lot on Normal, and so on).


I'll definitely give the next IU a try on Marathon or Epic if someone tells me how to correctly give Archery to the Barbs (I tried it myself, but must have made some mistake because I got Barbarian Axemen showing up right from the beginning of the game).

I abandoned, being in a winning position (ends up I went for wars - capped Charlie after getting his best cities, capped ghandi, capped hammy). From there I just had to cap the others or go for space. But what made me quit was the use of corporations (Sushi). Found out I was right for never using them. They are boring as hell. Too much micro for me. I'm sticking to SP in the future, so I can actually bear to finish my games.

^how are corps too much micro? you spread to your most important 5 cities first, then just pump out execs somewhere and autospread to the rest of your cities. No micro involved whatsoever.