Immortal; Alex SE. What am I doing right, what should be different?

We have an Immortal game, running a specialist economy. A PHI leader, and stone, made for early Mids and representation.

Here are the screenshots.

The entire world




My starting position (I picked up a couple of islands to the west). I settled as much as I could and the first city was the blocking city. Now in trouble due to culture




Victory conditions - nothing noteworthy, but someone asked last time




Relations - I have to say, I prefer this to a lovefest where you can never DoW on anyone cause everyone's in love with each other




Tech situation - I would definitely like input there. Tech choices seem to have the most influence on the way any game develops, after DoWs.
I won lib and picked up Astronomy previously. But they're too fast for me. My beakers per turn aren't stellar.




Trades




Civics. Rep, Bureau, Mercantilism, Pacifism




Domestic advisor




And, Demographics.




I'm interested in how we should be evaluating this position.
Primarily -
Which goals we think we did achieve, what are our strong points here
Which things we probably should have gotten, but did not

What do we do about the tech situation

What our immediate plan of action should be
What our long term plan of action should be.


I have attached a save; it uses BAT 4.1 Mod.

To the question of the thread, what you did wrong:

You post a game at 1500AD that was lost in the 4000y 1500y before you posted and ask for advice.

You also hang on an oudated type of economy.

Without having analyued the screens with detail, I'd suspect though that winning Diplo would be possible.

Looked at the screens closer. Your BPT are a real problem and what's worse is, that you didn't go to war earlier to get more land. Seeing your amount of cities, you would have needed to as early as possible, I also believe you didn't settle aaggressively enough.

Seraiel said:

You also hang on an oudated type of economy.

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What did I miss?

Winth said:

What did I miss?

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Hybrid Economy.

If Korea is smart, they will target Egypt to stop its attempt at cultural. And once they vassalize Egypt, you are the logical next step.

Is there any way that you can get the world (Rome and Mali and Egypt & anyone else vs Korea) into a stalemate type war? I think that might be your only slim hope. If you were to win space or UN I think you would need more land &/or a large tech lead at this point. Anyway, good luck...

Consider :
Cottages yield increasing returns.
Specialists yield constant returns.

A riverside hamlet yields
A scientist yields

--> The yield of a riverside hamlet is much higher than the yield of a scientist (now what about a town ?).
Even a Representation scientist hardly competes with a riverside hamlet.

--> The true reason to run specialists is to raise Great Persons.

--> The cost of Great Persons is increasing.
Great Persons yield decreasing returns.

--> Great Persons fit in burst type of strategies. Non-linear.
Where you reach a key point and profit. Typically, GPs are used to bulb techs towards a military target.

Running specialists isn't a long term plan or a plan in itself. It's a means to an end.
If you're constantly running specialists, then your research per turn will reach a plateau, due to a limited amount of food.
Meanwhile, you'll get less and less Great Persons, which are the primary reason to run specialists. Thus, your effective research will even flatten.
The risk is that AIs will eventually outrun you.

So, all in all, you've been too passive with what happened in the game.
Surely, at some point, you were in a good position but let the opportunity pass.
Learning to recognize opportunities and valuable tech targets should help you.
If you want to leverage specialists, you need to learn how to shift your city management from research to production. This is key to many games.

In many games, specialists are just a component, even marginal. They can fit a role that other things can fit, too. And sometimes they fit it best, especially early, when Great Persons are at the cheapest.
The more general questions are :
- how to maximize research ?
- how to maximize production ?
Specialists may play a crucial role to research but their contribution to production is close to none.
Problem : to win a game, you need production. Hence the need to shift the focus of your Empire, at some key point, and burst, leveraging the short term advantage GPs brought you.

Don't take this too harshly, it's hard to learn how to react to the game and be pro-active. I've had this type of game before, where an advantage slips by and goes away.




Final point :
The map is whole and wide. From the beginning, even when it's dark and frightening and you feel very lonely. Things are happening, at all times.
Whether with reason or infravision, you should know : there are resources all around the map. Tiles, food, rivers, grasslands, gold. And they're being worked or unknown forces are competing to work those.
The reason to expand is to use these resources, those tiles that offer the same returns as a riverside hamlet or a representation scientist.
If you don't, AIs will exploit them and the returns from those tiles will be lost for you. They will work against you.
On the opposite, doubling the size of your Empire equals doubling the output in commerce, food and production of your Empire.
This is the very nature of a map-based strategy game. And the reason why you should long for expansion and pro-active play.
The earlier, the better.

Very nice post BiC

I especially like the final point, and it reminds me of something somebody said early on in my Civ career, paraphrasing:

Land is Power. This game ultimately comes down to your acquisition and control of land. More land means more commerce, more cities to produce units. You use those units to take more land. Repeat. Then you win.

Essentially there are two ways to get land.
1. Early. Expand peacefully by building settlers and found cities.
2. (Usually a little later). War. Either by rushing or at crucial military points, like Cuirassiers or Rifles.

But what essentially the whole gaming experience comes down to is how you can grab more land, and how you can use that land best to ensure you win the game. Therefore it's important to expand in the early game and get cities. If you get boxed in, you quickly need to look at plans for how to claim more land militarily.

I can't see what resources you have on the islands, but I do see two golds, stone and iron. That means you have some very good options in your arsenal. Gold for quick early teching, stone for pyramids and failgold, and iron for war. If you had horses and/or ivory, even better. But even with 'just' iron, you can go to war with catas, swordmen and later maces.


BiC already covered this well, and Seraiel hinted at it, but a pure Specialist Economy simply isn't going to be very competitive, even with Rep. It's a good complement to your normal economy, but it shouldn't be your whole economy. The main use of specialists is to get your Great People, and those you can use for bulbing techs and starting golden ages. Usually you want some cities that are cottaged, in particular your capital, and then you want some hybrid cities that can produce both commerce and hammers, and then at least one pure hammer city, that you can make your Heroic Epic city. Later on, if the game goes into the later eras, you need to transition to a more hammer based economy at some point, typically with many caste-driven workshops. This is what people mean when speaking of a Hybrid Economy. You take the best from both and get a sum that is greater than their parts.

Iron in the capital and gold+ivory in convenient place just scream for conquest/domination. I would not even consider other way to win this game. Even if you are determined to play peacfully, a little war in the beginning wolud give you great advantage. I beleave this is even more important than economic issues that were pointed above.

I think from your land overview screenie, Pyras and then using mainly Rep + Caste and so on was good. There was so much food and stone.

This setup brings huge early gains for getting tech leads, esp. if you also have Phi you can bulb many techs and also research well with those +6 scientists.

Then you of course need to make something out of that superb early situation
With some strong military techs, you can turn your Rep. into Police State and take over AIs.

SE yep that's an old word, but Pyras + much food really works well to gain those advantages you need (let's just use Cuirs again, even if they are boring by now).
What you cannot do is turtling and thinking that you can keep up forever without stronger long term commerce (good old Bur. Cap example).

@Eagle777
I agree with others that you did not play the game well, you simply missed the good opportunities to gain more land by war.

However, I cannot agree that the game is already lost. This will be a tough game but that is an ideal opportunity to learn something new.

I don't believe that you can continue running specialists and hope for a miracle. It is probably too late for cottages, too. So what is the best alternative? Hammer economy (fueled by watermills and workshops)! Do your best to research the key techs which boost workshops and adopt state property (and also caste system if you can manage the unhappines). Then build wealth (and research) until you gain the key military techs. Then try to win the game by means of a cruel nuclear war.

I agree, that that game is not lost yet, but its gonna be hard. You could gamble for the UN, produce a GE if possible to 1-turn the UN. Don't know if the others maybe couldn't build it now already I suspect not, because AI doesn't go for Electricity early.

Seraiel said:

I agree, that that game is not lost yet, but its gonna be hard. You could gamble for the UN, produce a GE if possible to 1-turn the UN. Don't know if the others maybe couldn't build it now already I suspect not, because AI doesn't go for Electricity early.

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Game is definitely not lost yet, though he'll have to play markedly better than the play that got him to this point.

JC is probably a bit too close to rifles to press them, but Monty can be killed with draft rifles easily. He's still 3 techs short (GP, RP, rifling). Medicine, if traded carefully, can probably be brokered into steam power/corp/assembly line. With monty land he basically just has to wheeze to infantry/arty and spam the map with droves of infantry/arty until the game ends. It won't be pretty, but it would win. Other than vassal spam domquest, diplo might be in play too...I suppose everything is technically in play if you can kill everyone.

That's my advice though. Nationhood --> draft rifle and crap on Monty --> state property (trade medicine or electricity to nations that won't trade it first, then to others to get as much as possible) --> infantry/arty in mass quantities with CR II arty --> vassal spam.

If they start getting bombers, you should at least be able to cough up 5 xp SAMs with 70% interception. 10-15 of those alongside 100's of infantry/arty and a great general medic won't flinch much from...well...anything short of nukes or massed quantities of offensive siege, and the AI won't do the latter.