The Immortal Challenge 3: The Gathering Storm

aelf said:

The mines can come after the pasture. I think it's still more effective to build the pasture earlier, especially since we can have 1 extra pop before reaching the happiness cap thanks to Charismatic.

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I tried to say the same above, but I was a bit verbose.
The short version is:
A) This early in the game there are only a few things you can produce: Workers, Settlers, Warriors, and Barracks.
B)The most important ones are the workers and the settlers - with enough warriors to protect them (and improvements they make).
C) The most productive tiles are the wheat and the pigs.
D) Workers and settlers can be produced with food.

Growing to reach the cap is another good point. Once you are there, and there are more things to build in the city, priorities will change and you may want to work other tiles, or rely on whipping (which should be available by then).

I vote for Agriculture -> AH, then BW. The barbs can't suprise you from west and south, I think it's a pretty safe location

It's definitely a good city for a GP farm (and for whipping ).

smartus said:

I vote for Agriculture -> AH, then BW. The barbs can't suprise you from west and south, I think it's a pretty safe location

It's definitely a good city for a GP farm (and for whipping ).

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Huh? A GP Farm is the last purpose I'd pick for this city TBH. It wouldn't be bad per se but I reckon it would be most suited for a production city. 5 hills +3 forests that can safely be kept (little risk of invasion from the west) makes for a solid hammer base.
An early production city is a fantastic boon in my experience. It can cover your military needs for quite some time by itself (esp with HE in place) and you can always rely on it for wonders with empire-wide effects such as Stonehenge or Hanging Gardens.

I'd be inclined to take the Agri -> AH -> BW path too however. Early BW is good but this city won't have to rely all that much on whipping with so much production about. There are few trees as well and I would keep rather than chop most of them, i.e. half of the benefit of early BW is more or less lost on us.
Agri and AH on the other hand would allow conversion of 2 tiles to 6 food yield, which offer a huge boost to settler and worker deployment (more so with the low happiness cap)

i would advise Agriculture - animal husbandry first. In the meantime warrior-worker-barracks -settler

Why Barracks? On the lower levels, maybe, but remember, this is Immortal, one step away from Deity. As the AI is already miles ahead of you in research, military, and production, The only way to fight back is to grab what resources you have nearby and plan to conquer your nearby neighbor.

when i said ag -> bw i was thinking of farming -> mining -> chopping

EEE_BOY said:

"Settler can be whipped to save even more turns..."

this is a good point, but if u have pig hooked up, the city will regrow back much quicker than working only farmed corn.

people talked about chopping for setter. that is less efficient, remember in warlord, chopping only converts to 20 hammers (30 on epic), which is likely 2 turns of settler production. 100% food converts to production of settler. while u building wonders, u get 50% penalty if hurry wonders. so trees shall be reserved to wonder.

"The monuments from Stonehenge dissapear when you research calendar, and the happiness boost too. To the best of my knowledge if you build each monument individually it stays after calendar and continues to give culture and happiness."

is that true?? well if that's true i vote No to stonehenge. because in the very early era, the quicker we assemble an army, the better result of a rush (either axe rush or chariot rush). stonehenge seems to be diversion of hammers from units, which is not good. Instead, we build monument where we need culture or when we need happiness. later when the city tiles are improved , a monument easily gets built.

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That +1 Happiness is quite insignificant as by that point in the game you should have Monarchy and Plenty of Happy Calander Resources to recover from the lost of that 1 Happiness from Stonehenge.

Besides the earlier we get Stonehenge, in the short term future, we won't need to worry about culture in our newly settled cities by forcing them to build Monuments 1st, we can go to straight to Ganaries and other builds and we get a GP to boot for a late religon or a Shrine if we capture a holy city.

also note that Stonehenge cost 120H and Monuments cost 30H each, If Aelf builds/Capture 4 or more Cities before Calander he's actually saving hammers per city by not building monument in that new city.

Although this is at the sacrifice of another Wonder he could possibly build but Stonehenge is ALOT more beneficial to a Charismatic leader then a Non-Charismatic Leader, Therefore under the right conditions SH should generally be pursued by the Charismatic leader most of the time.

Also note by the time we reach Calender, Monuments are no longer necessary for culture as most cities have been settled, Cities that haven't gotten settled by this point in time should be able to get culture from Threaters and Religons.

I would definitely go Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry. As said before settlers and workers are the primary early builds in the capital. It is important to use your best tiles while producing these early units. Working the pigs will provide +2 production over a mine for the first settler each turn. Not sure on the numbers for epic speed but this should cut at least a turn or two off the build time.

Additionally, although chariots are not the best city raiders they rule in the early battlefield. If going to war use them to deny the enemy strategic resources early on. follow them in with a later stack of Axemen.

Ag -> AH ...7 8 9 10

the thing about stonehenge is not = 4 monuments have to build individually each city. it is about timing. if u spent 20 turns (say 10 turns aid by chopping) u propably miss the window that u can quick rush an AI sucessfully without much loss. It is immortal,(sorry, i have to emphasize it again) ,i think we shall hit AI neighbours fast and furious.... one by one. so only barracks, granaries, courthouses are really needed. the rest should be units... the only wonder we shall try is the oracle( for courthouse). we have to win in this IMC.

Round 1: 3970BC - 2470BC

Agriculture was clearly the first choice for research initially, so we went for that. Our warrior, meanwhile, went off to explore the surroundings. First he headed north and found a hut. It gave us a map:



Oh, well, better than barbs. Anyway, you can see what looks like a potentially excellent choke point there. I'm a little two-minded about choke points. On one hand, they mean an easily defensible border. On the other, why would we want to be so defensive? And when you going on the offensive, a choke point might only mean it's more difficult to bring troops to the front from cities behind it, since there's only one route they can take no matter how near the front is as the crow flies.

Since we had pretty much got an idea of what lies north, our exploring warrior headed SE to see if there was anything there. After a near-death encounter with some lions, he found another hut. It gave us another map



It seems we're bounded by the sea in the SE too. I increasingly suspected that it's a peninsula we're on, but we could only be sure after exploring NE to where the warrior was. That didn't prove to be an easy task, though, as there were a couple of lions roaming about and our warrior was forced to play hide-and-seek and heal for a while.

After Agriculture, since we had not seen any evidence of a close neighbour to rush, we went for AH.

Our first neighbour appeared some time later:



He must be quite far away to only appear now.

And it turned out that we were indeed on a peninsula. Our warrior came to another hut at the tip of the seahorse-shaped land. Fortunately, it didn't give us yet another map:



It's not as great as getting BW for free, but, hey, it's not a bad tech to get

And, yes, you are asking why we were researching The Wheel instead of BW after AH. Horses were discovered near the choke point, and I thought it's better that we hook up a strategic resource sooner than later. We've seen how barbs can be detrimental in the last ALC. There's plenty of fog-of-war around us (which had spawned many lions) and this is Immortal. Better not take any chances.

Another neighbour appeared soon after:



We don't have horrible neighbours so far, and that's good.

I stopped after The Wheel was discovered. Now, we need to decide whether we really want the Stonehenge or go for BW first. I think the best chance we have of getting the wonder is to research Mysticism (12 turns) next and slow build it. We might still fail, however. If we get BW (24 turns) first, we would be able to chop and whip earlier, which makes a lot of sense on this level. And we could possible chop and whip for the Stonehenge, although we might be too late after 30+ turns more of research.

A map of the land we've explored so far:



Looks like we have a Britain-like situation here, but with both the benefits of a defensible heartland and an (albeit restricted) access to the mainland. Sounds pretty good. However, I shall reiterate the point that defensible might mean nothing when you can't be defensive and win. And we have two huts safely isolated by our capital's borders. When we pop them, it would raise the number of huts we popped in this game to 5. A rare treat when you don't start with a scout

Settling at the choke point near the horse and hooking the latter up seems like the best course of action to take next. I've made a dotmap to illustrate that:



Too bad we can't get the fish in the first ring. That site has access to fresh water and both sides of the coast too. The third city's location would probably be determined by where copper appears, if there's any.

So, what do you think? Your advice is crucial in determining how we would proceed next, which in turn is probably crucial in determining how this game would pan out.

site A is perfect :
- choke point
- canal
- horses in the first ring
- fish later (needed to feed 2 scientists )
- a peak in the first ring providing better fogbusting
- reasonnable cottage land for later

edit : do you want the pyramids? stone+crab site can be settled next, while you research masonry

The 2nd ring is unfortunate but the possibility of navies going around your island is priceless. So with horses, despite the jungle, that city is a no-brainer.

I agree with occupying the choke point; not only does it give early acess to hosses but equally importantly it denies the site to an AI. It would be not-good to be trapped on the peninsula (and gives you plenty of space to backfill).

aelf said:

Too bad we can't get the fish in the first ring.

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well, you can if you place the city on the jungle 2S1W of A; this would give up the canal but give the city access to 2 hills which A doesn't have. The big drawback is it delays horses so overall I would personally go for A.

I think this would be a good time to research mysticism and play for Stonehenge, since there are 2 city sites that will remain safe for a while in the south, and it is quite likely that you will get at least two more in the north due to the late contact. York will be able to train a quick chariot for defence.

the RNG goods are on your side, once you hook up the horses your capital should be able to build the Chariots immediately as you have Sailing from a hut.

Stonehenge is a difficult one. Since there appears to be no one close enough to rush I Think we should aim for SH. I don't know how it should be constructed. It's to hard to decide which method, I'll let your skills and experience decide for us.

Go for site A!
Go for Stonehenge!

As your neighbours seem to be far away, it looks like early rush would be hard (both for logistical and economic reasons). On the other hand, your traits are military, not economic and your starting peninsula seems far too small and poor to bottle up there.

So I vote for a long-term decision of getting the choke point to save your backyard for later and see if there are any good city sites on the mainland. Looks like the first land grab should be peaceful, backed with culture from Stonehenge. And GP points so early are nothing to sneeze at! Your rivals aren't creative, so freebie monument could give you an upper hand for a while.

Very lucky start. Suggested city site is almost perfect, and you have enough room to expand later. I'd go for mysticism and Stonehenge next, then BW. You have growth potential, so you should be able to whip 3 pop in the end just to make sure.

I'd definitely say go for city "A" and backfill quickly (before some greedy AI plops a city in your backlines). Hopefully you'll have copper in your little section.

site A is perfect. it secure the whole peninsula and grab horse as quickly as possible. AI can't found a city down there as u can close border when u see a setter or a galley. but it needs culture urgently. the city lacks production so u need to whip some infrastructures when u get fish hooked up and assign two scientists when whipped a library.

next tech would be mysticism. it is about 12 turns, 4 turns left for settler and another 7 turns for the second worker. then slowly build stonehenge. two worker is better , one going to improve the 2nd city, another build mines in capital. there is only one calendar resource and no obvious gain from a REX or rush,the stonehenge would be good investment. then go BW-> pottery-> writing. forget about any other wonder even we have stone. the stone maybe useful when we want walls and castles in every city. obviously no great library this time. since we won't go REX or rush, so courthouses can wait, then the oracle is out . i think we shall tech to Alphabet and trade it for Maths and go construction for catapults. then go MC(forge for GE?)-> Machinery(crossbows)-> engineering(castle and treb)