Spectral Sequences I: LeftAdjoint's Immortal Shadow

Wow for some reason or another between the pyramids and the huge happy cap and the diplo situation, this might be the easiest immortal game I've ever played.

LeftAdjoint said:

I'm curious, what makes you think of an HA rush? My mind tends to go there if I see someone I want dead immediately, and/or hate my land.

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Get two chariots first and own your potentially unpleasant neighbor. Small investment, excellent return.

Then decide between Wonders or HA rushing. Both are fine. Depends on style.

Radio silence on my question so I'll just assume that means "shut up and play the game".

Hi Left - I neglected to answer your question, sorry!

I would have teched writing (library to get research going) --> HBR (start building stables in 2 main prod cities) --> archery (to get HA's started) --> pottery (to get cottages online for eventual recovery phase).

However as you have gone a bit further - a few queries I had with your game. Posting these more to learn myself rather than try to knock you down, I appreciate the time and effort it takes to post your game on the forums!

1 - are we planning to chop and whip HAs? Our capital is at health cap and needs worker turns to hook up agri resources once we start chopping forests. I think too many farms built in Lyons, could have used those turns to road all our resources.

As a side note I think you will need to go really heavy on chops and whips to get enough HA for the war??

2 - why did we settle tours now? Just to work gold tile? As we are going for HA rush would it have been better to use those hammers for extra HA's and save a bit more on maintenance?

3 - GS in three turns - what is plan for him? I see no immediate use, he will bulb math, we dont have the $$ to build an academy and research at 100%, settling is best option at this stage IMO. Would it have been better to delay the first GS (or generate from say Lyons (which has poor hammers/food) and focus Paris on hammers to get HA war started faster?

4 - we are two techs from Currency and have 5 cities - once we start warring how do we pay for city/unit upkeep? are we going to raze all of Stalin's cities? Other option I can see is to research math and bulb alpha with GS to get to currency faster?

I quite like the look of this map, so I might play my shadow to the same date as your game. If you prefer shadows left out please PM or post in this thread and I will withhold until your game is done

1 - are we planning to chop and whip HAs? Our capital is at health cap and needs worker turns to hook up agri resources once we start chopping forests. I think too many farms built in Lyons, could have used those turns to road all our resources.

As a side note I think you will need to go really heavy on chops and whips to get enough HA for the war??

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Good point about health. Yes, I'm planning on leaning heavily on production to catch up to where the rush would be if I had gone with fewer techs and fewer cities. You're right that there may be a very slight shortage of worker turns. In particular, I may not realize my dream of building farms in the capital to assist with whipping.

2 - why did we settle tours now? Just to work gold tile? As we are going for HA rush would it have been better to use those hammers for extra HA's and save a bit more on maintenance?

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Also a good point. Tours will not contribute much until the fish is online, but the rush will be mostly over by then! I lost a couple of turns on archery by accidentally turning scientists off for a bit, and ended up with extra hammers around. But I see now that the city is really not urgent.

3 - GS in three turns - what is plan for him? I see no immediate use, he will bulb math, we dont have the $$ to build an academy and research at 100%, settling is best option at this stage IMO. Would it have been better to delay the first GS (or generate from say Lyons (which has poor hammers/food) and focus Paris on hammers to get HA war started faster?

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The GS should have come a little earlier, and then settling would have also allowed for faster HBR+archery. Generating from Lyons is a good idea. I think I tend to build my first library in the capital by instinct, not strategy.

4 - we are two techs from Currency and have 5 cities - once we start warring how do we pay for city/unit upkeep? are we going to raze all of Stalin's cities? Other option I can see is to research math and bulb alpha with GS to get to currency faster?

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Why not bulb math and research currency? In any case, I suspect that the slider will have to go to 0 after fishing, and for some time, so I'll probably settle the GS and try to stabilize the economy before currency. The gold and seafood will help us, and transitioning the capital into cottages is probably a good move. The cash from conquest should prevent economic collapse, with some planning.

I do plan to explore Stalin's territory with chariots to come up with a plan. Hopefully he only has one source of metal. I will certainly raze any city that I don't think I can support.

I quite like the look of this map, so I might play my shadow to the same date as your game. If you prefer shadows left out please PM or post in this thread and I will withhold until your game is done

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Go ahead and post whatever, with spoiler tags of course.

Next session.


In some of the screens, you may notice me building a palace. This is because of an interface bug plus the fact that I click too fast when building wealth. A bad habit I'm trying to correct...

This is a little late, but it is possible to go for the Oracle in a HA rush. The idea is to Oracle HBR. AZ and Obsolete have discussed this, along with Yanner, in his Diety game with Genghis Khan, though I think for the most part they try to avoid it for obvious reasons.

I saw the map too. It made some sense, the reason being that the surrounding land is so bad there was no point in building a second city.

Edit: I think a really important part of civ IV is picking your fights and knowing what to go for. All good players do this. Don't you agree?

I'm not sure I see the point of doing a 1-city horse archer rush.

You may want to look up how to spell "diety". Unless it's a mod where you eat salads.

Gave this one a quick spin today, went the long-route...



Doesn't feel like immortal at all, something more like settler.

Doing this too atm to take a break from all the Deity stuff, good lord this must be the easiest starting area i ever played. Seriously, there is no need to even stop a second to think where to settle or what to do next oO

Fortunately I've posted more than one blatant fail-game in the past, so hopefully I have some credibility when I say that I picked this one at random.

Or maybe I did accidentally set it to settler...

Alright, I'll try a second run this time... but go for a quicker rush type style and see what happens...

Well, that was a little... too easy again.

Knocked out one leader asap.. then took out the other while I left just one city so I could extort stuff, ahah. And after chewing off the front door of the third leader, while still using my HA's, I decided to retire from the game.

Well, the Joao situation was more serious than I realized. He will declare in two turns.

The loss of my eastern city is guaranteed, and then it will be a tough war. I think the right move here is to trade for monarchy, then research feudalism, but I may lose multiple cities before longbows.

I think the game is still winnable, as I can stay competitive in city count, and later capture the two western barbarian cities. (and make cities in the north, one just for the fur)

I'm a bit discouraged from continuing this game without some input on the position, and whether I completely botched my "rush", but I'll start another game soon that will hopefully be more fun for the readers.

Yep JoaII looks like he is in war mode!!! I think you will probably need to draw a line of defence. if he has a big stack you have no real force to hold him back.

You need to whip a few units and a city wall maybe? Pends what he throws at you. In any case he will only be taking recently captured small cities at best.


Oh that stone/fish/ gold city really does suck!!

LeftAdjoint said:

I'm not sure I see the point of doing a 1-city horse archer rush.

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I did a really fun HA rush from just my capital in my last immortal game. Granted I chose unrestricted leaders for Hannibal/Mongols and had a very nice capital. Peter gave me 7 cities that I used to whip out enough extra HA's to take out another civ and seal the win. First game I can remember that I never built a single settler.

I gave this one a go and it turns out I built the same second and third cities as the OP although in different order. I didn't need to get the horse city up quick as I had cultured the horse by building stonehenge in quick time. I kinda got distracted and didn't even build a stone city until about 700AD.

Probably going to abandon this one. The position is certainly winnable, but it's awkward, and my city management has improved so much lately that I'm very annoyed at how I left my empire, and the slowness of my "rush".

Not like there's been a huge amount of interest anyway. I'll try to make current and future games a bit more viewer-friendly.

LeftAdjoint said:

Not like there's been a huge amount of interest anyway. I'll try to make current and future games a bit more viewer-friendly.

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Don't worry too much about replies, look at number of viewers to gauge interest.

Probably going to abandon this one.

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Come on Lefty, we don't want to see any more Immortal FAIL threads this week. And remember, Quitters Never Win!