Dr kossin #19

Well, the start was rather poor for me. Ok, it wasn’t just poor, it really sucked. There really was hardly any food, and God did that hurt, as I was trying to run at least 1 engineer, which practically took FOREVER to just grow one pop that way. I tried to farm the out of that starting spot. And God help the poor amateur who thinks he’s supposed to cottage his capital every game, LOL.

The production was very bad too. Boy, do I love having half my terrain as USELESS water-tiles that do not EVEN HAVE A SINGLE SEA-FOOD resource. Not even a bloody-Whale. Ughhh.

However, it did at least keep me on my toes, as I was forced to MICRO-MANAGE that capital every damn turn. I had to make every bloody hammer count since we really didn’t have the resources (npi).

I did win the StoneHenge, which I thought my odds were not going to be great, but maybe that’s cause I’m too used to deity. In fact, I managed quite well here, I grabbed the oracle too, which lead down to the Collosus, and etc. I kept building quite a bit, which was nice to know you can still do this on Immortal without Ind, or resources, or even a great production site.

It was a little upsetting to see once again, that my first neighbour I met, (Sitting Bull), has a capital with 3 great hills (two of them plains), has very long nice rivers and fresh water in his capital, with corn, and Bananas, and Gems, and copper, and etc… Ugh!!

At least he founded his other cities in some really bad places, so that’s a wash I guess.

Anyhow, I had a tuff decision here to make. IIRC I moved my initial settler, which did give me an added Silver, which gave me a MC-Gambit. It worked (only half-way). Because I had SH and The Oracle, this dropped me less than 50% for the E. However, it did allow me two shots at the gamble, so I figured why not. Unfortunately we had some bad luck, TWICE, and that was the end of Pyramids for us. Oh well, we’d just have to finish off our SE the old-fashioned way

I was a little pissed because I also had terrible luck with barbs. My first SoD of axemen (all fully promoted and healthy) ALL LOST against unpromoted barb archers on flat-land! Then I sent in a next wave, and the same happened again!

I didn’t dare waste any more precious hammers until I got iron up and then sent in swords. Wouldn’t you know, my one sword wins, so I get him to CR II, and I make sure he doesn’t attack again until full strength just to be safe. Sure enough, he dies too! Arughhh..

Fast forward a bunch of nuisance, and eventually I took that barb city, and as impossible as it sounds, I took another barb city that was on a hill. Though I cheated a bit IIRC by waiting for some other sucker-AI to attack it first

I had some bad issues with religion. Everyone was sharing the same one on my continent! That was bad. Basically I couldn’t do anything to block all the insane tech trading going around, etc.

Eventually I did get a break, and Mr. Carthage decided to go out of his Budhist religion. Haha. I was able to bribe Mr. BurgerKing into a war with him just to try to stir something up. It was a very expensive deal for me, but there wans’t much else I could do with these religion rolls.

I also did a few things new in this game. First of all, I popped an Engineer the same turn I researched paper. I decided to rush UoS with it. I hate burning off engineers, but without Ind, or stone I was in a jam because my production wasn’t where I wanted it to be and there was a chance I’d be beat to it.

And what was very bizarre, due to me being friendly with BurgerKing, I ended up getting a tech that I never got before. I can’t even remember what it’s name is. The useless dead-end one that founds Islam? I noticed that the Shrine was not built yet, so I decided to accept it and go ahead on the shrine. By that point, my capital was in some decent production mode, and sure enough I completed that wonder too (amongst many of the others).

Well, what else to say… Ohh I was very upset to not find a damn source of horses ANYWHERE. So I decided to skip MT and instead go straight to rifling. Now for some bizarre reason, I found myself in a spot where I didn’t feel the need to use my UB during drafting. It just seemed Carthage was so out-dated with units, that I wouldn’t have to rush full-bore like in a deity. So I took it easy and mostly only drafted from my globe city. That way I could keep research way up.

Since Carthage was becoming very strong though, I decided to skip my plans on an SB invasion, and take down the Orange guy before the task would become much tuffer. I then made my second (or was it third war-deal now) to bringing in Mr. Burger King on my side yet again!

Well, it started easy enough, I took down city after city. I absolutely crushed his armies and kept advancing. I also kept checking if he would capitulate to me. I checked this statistic EVERY TURN.

Every turn it was the same answere, “But I am doing fine on my Own”. Hahahaah…. Surrreeee you are!!

And then, I get a very ugly notice that, the bastard vassaled to BurgerKing!


Ok what a cop out! I’m the one doing all the work, and he vassals to the other guy? I got no say in this what-so-ever. Ok so I’m just outside the capital, and suddenly all my units are warped off the terrain magically and end up somewhere else in my other cities at random? Ohhhhh great.

So now I have to DoW AGAIN, yet on both of them and spend many turns getting my units in position all over again!? Even if it literally kills me? And all this after I had just given all those military techs away to Charle just to get him on MY side? You got to be kidding me.

I had stacks of units that were now TRAPPED by impassible culture, without anything I could do about it. And all my nice captured cities were now stuck out of commision and just going through revolts. ******ed.

I then decided screw it… I’ll TRY to vassal SB now. Unfortunately, since all my armies were stuck trapped by culture, I had to assemble a whole new army all from scratch, and send those units ALL THE WAY to the East side just to attack SB.

Fast forward into the future, and FINALLY I have SB vassaled. I made sure no to bribe for help yet I get screwed over by the same broken-vassal mechanic yet again!!

After this I was forced to dig in and DoW on Charlie, letting him suicide hundreds of units against me. Yup, he had turned into a giant with his new vassal and was just spamming billions of them (and his vassal was doing all the teching it seems).

Needless to say, I had machine guns on fortified on hills. And these Drill IV guys soon became level 6 Mgs. And then they became Level 7 Mgs, and then they became…. Well you know the rest.

It is interesting to note, I was not charismatic, so you can imaging all the bloodshed that occurred. Unfortunately I had maxed out my promotions on my Mgs even still. After all, I had high level Mgs but with only 4 promotions. There was no point to using the Ambush since no one had tanks. And I had no point for taking Medic I, I already had medics. And did I want march on my MG? You gotta be kidding!

So sick, my Mgs had maxed out their promotions and all that gained exp was just pure wastage. Sheesh, I hate it when that happens. I wanted things like back in Vannila when you could go down the deeper Strength line, etc.

Oh well…

I continued to DoW on Burger King, slaughter his units, and then force him to give me a thousand bucks every 10 turns, just so I could DoW again and get another thousand bucks, haha. And of course I kept peeling off cities from him each time too.

Eventually we eliminated stupid Carthage, and finally I was able to vassal Burger King. Oddly enough, during his vassaling he gave me a Holy city out of the deal. I never thought the AI was allowed to do that. They seem to rather commit suicide than do it.

Then I DoW on Cyrus, and absolutely crush his whole army on turn #1 of the war.

Turn #2 he is willing to talk (IIRC), but won’t capit for some stupid reason. I think it’s cause he may have pinged off a worker on my border, so now he got a single kill on me, he THINKS he is winning the war. Ahahahhah!

So I move in front of his capital and another city to take.

Well, suddenly he wants to capitulate again. But the problem for him is, now that he made me waste another turn moving in position, I might as well capture his capital and another city for the hell of it.

So I take the capital with ease. Then suddenly he refuses to talk to me again.

Ahahaha! Firaxis is so funny. Who the hell codes this Sh*t anyway?

So then I decide, screw it, I’ll just finish him off like I did Carthage.

Then I find out it doesn’t matter, cause I won an AP diplo victory.

Huh? I thought I had too many votes to count for winning an AP here. My vote count dwarfed everyone else. But I’m not complaining!

GG. Unfortunately what was going to be a quick and early victory-romp turned into something else with this vassal nonsense, but we recuperated anyhow. A lot of my AW experience seems to still pay off sometimes in regular games.

Religious strife will be high as Hannibal founded Hinduism and Charlemagne Buddhism.

That's pretty darn late for SH on Immortal!

Sure, take it!

I'll start building the last settler for the GP farm next turn.
Antioch was settled sooner than I wanted to as Hannibal was bringing in a settler party.


I have a settler sitting on top of the resources marker and a Woodsman II warrior checking if a settler party is incoming. The city could work the corn after a border pop but it'd be a drag financially so I haven't settled it yet.

There's also another settler 4 turns away from the wine/copper/pig/fish spot.

But not Charlemagne his worst enemy... poor ol' Sitting Bull.

410!

The city has 1 fur in its BFC and almost exclusively ice... enjoy!

I was running a different religion and he was Annoyed at me. I didn't want to spare hammers to defend myself so this is the cheapest way to do so. He went to Cautious after that. Also you can see I'm his Worst Enemy on the scoreboard.

660AD seriously? I even double-checked to see this was really Immortal.

740AD???

SB or Charley?

It's on the way to Guilds for better Workshops and eventually Rifling.

I get my horses...

1700 gold

Shaka and Montezuma.... well that explains quite a few things!
They've probably been fighting each other for Sid knows how long.

I focused espionage on Montezuma and I finally got visibility = contact with Shaka.

I lost 57 units all game long... can't be bothered to count how many I killed. I built 8 cottages, all the others were captured.

I don't know how Montezuma found the spare hammers to build those... anyway, everything else was under my control.