The Immortal Challenge 1: Apocalypto

That's a good point. I suppose they're cost effective as long as you can ensure they don't get metals hooked up. One fortified spear on a hilled city can make it nigh impossible to take. Of course they probably won't have all of their cities in this situation...
 
That's a good point. I suppose they're cost effective as long as you can ensure they don't get metals hooked up. One fortified spear on a hilled city can make it nigh impossible to take. Of course they probably won't have all of their cities in this situation...

You can often bait the stoopid AI to attack a lone Chariot out in the open if this is the case. Anyway, I haven't seen Louis adopt Slavery yet, so I don't believe he has Bronze Working (not guaranteed of course), so again if you move quickly you can deny him metals.

Mutineer said:
you have space and accessable resource to expand, so there is not mach reason to go to very early war.
In addition, if I undestand correctly, Franch capital is across the jungle. So, There is not mach point to atack them, they are just tooo far away.

From the one screenshot of Louis (haven't opened the save) he looks pretty close. There also seems to be a lot of non jungle tiles around his forward city, so it should have some value. You can be sure that the starting point normalizer will not stick Paris with a lot of jungle. You aren't going to be able to keep up with the AI building at Immortal unless you have fantastic starting land, and we don't. Well at least I can't keep up ;). I still think the best path is to remove him as a threat early before he gets off the ground. A good war nets you a forward city or two and Paris, that's enough to cripple him permanently and justify the hammers and bloody losses.

Darrell
 
If Louis is the only other AI on the continent are we attacking our only trading partner???

It would be a shame not to leverage the UU and the UB but with no trade opportunities don't we run the risk of a love-fest on the other continent and ending up very behind in tech once we meet the rest of the AI around 800AD or so???
 
If Louis is the only other AI on the continent are we attacking our only trading partner???

It would be a shame not to leverage the UU and the UB but with no trade opportunities don't we run the risk of a love-fest on the other continent and ending up very behind in tech once we meet the rest of the AI around 800AD or so???

there is augustus somewhere near, too.
But an AI won't trade with you if it doesn't know a third party, so if we kill France, we must kill Rome too.
The alternative is to leave out a few french cities. Hindu monastery (1 for religion + 2) will be > to creative culture, so it's doable.
 
Oh, great. Now is the time when I actually have to make difficult decisions on my own or wait for 4 more pages before there's a consensus :mischief: To rush or not to rush? Red A or Blue A? Arrgghhh!!! :p
 
Red A was considered superior by most. I still disagree, but I bend to the majority (all the more so when the majority is composed by immortal level players, and I'm not), so you have a consensus for this.
And rush isn't optionnal, it's the variant for the game!
 
I don't think you'll get consensus, too many people with different playstyles. You've got enough input, it is up to you to pick the most compelling arguments and make a choice. Plus, I want to see the next update sooner rather than later ;)

Darrell
 
If you're chariot rushing or particularly want to build Oracle in 2nd city, settle 1 NW of blue A which is the fastest way to get a city with mines up and running.

Otherwise, settle red A and just enjoy the speed at which the capital can pump out settlers/workers and whip things by keeping both its food specials.
 
aelf why not move city b one more space to also claim both incence and make it a good commerce city when its running and also get the bonus?
 
I tried the strat of oracle for col before axerush here the other day. I got marble in the second city and actually had col before ah and pottery(had to research writing after priesthood) to get it same time as oracle. I actually took 1 city before building oracle since I built axes while waiting for marble to hook up(and waiting for research of priesthood). Rushing with chariots is kinda weak as you need tons of them to get anywhere. With bronze you can at least attack with cover axemen(which actually are quite nice).
 
Settle red A. On monarch or emperor i'd be inclined to say wait til jags to attack but seeing as you're playing immortal and the french are very likely to get metals by then i'd suggest attacking ASAP with chariots. :whipped:
 
aelf why not move city b one more space to also claim both incence and make it a good commerce city when its running and also get the bonus?

I'm not sure if this is what he was thinking, but I thought of that at first and realized that to add the two incense tiles, you also lose some hills and grassland (production and food) and replace them with two more unimprovable coast tiles and one more desert tile (also probably useless unless oil pops up). The net result is losing grassland improvements for food/commerce/production (farms/cottages/workshops) and a nice hammer-producing hill for a few extra commerce - commerce which would reduce the max city size because the incense tiles don't support the citizens working the tiles food-wise. It's better to have an extra grassland or two with cottages - they'll support the citizens by producing 2 food/tile, and eventually the towns will be doing at least as much commerce as the incense would have been. :goodjob:
 
Round 2: 2360BC - 0875BC

Alright, the die is cast. I decided to settle on Red A:



It built a monument first so that its borders could expand and it could work the corn asap.

Meanwhile, our capital was set to build a chariot as quickly as possible:



We needed to do some urgent exploration to the southwest to find another route to France if we're to know if we should attack. Besides, barbs were beginning to encroach on our borders. After the chariot we could build our second worker to help improve and hook all those resources up.

Our south-bound explorer stumbled on Roman lands:



It looks like we're on a very tall continent again, my friends. Anyway, our warrior soon found himself stuck in the south as French borders expanded and closed the gaps that he had used to get this far. He had to wait until we could research Writing and get open borders before he could get out.

We discovered Bronze Working soon after. Look where copper turned up:





Well, we could have gotten corn-copper-cold city in the south if Teotihuacan isn't where it is :p Ah, well. And I guess there's no hurry to hook copper up, since we have horses and we can build JAGUARS! :D

Anyway, you can see the barbs coming in. Yes, they came quickly and furiously. We actually lost one chariot to them (it took down 1 archer and 1 warrior before falling to another archer), but we managed to prevent any improvement from getting pillaged.

And, as you might have noticed, we researched Priesthood after BW. I think you should know the reason ;) Early CoL is just difficult to resist. Not only would it unlock our UB early, it would also allow us to expand through conquest without crashing our economy. Looking at the distance between our lands and France, we might need it.

So we chopped and we built, and we got ready to get some overflow from whipping:



I love rushing temples. It gives you 1 happiness after being built so you can start growing back immediately.

And, yes, it's Writing after Priesthood so that we could get CoL from the Oracle (working the gold mine in Teotihuacan really sped up our research; at the cost of quick growth in that city, but it's worth it). After Writing, I had to choose between Alphabet for tech trading or Iron Working for our UU. Given the fact that chariots wouldn't get us that far when we invade France, we would probably need some Jaguar reinforcements, so I decided on Iron Working first. Why not just hook up copper and build axemen? Well, we didn't have copper in our borders yet. Besides, with all those jungle, Woodsman II Jaguars would be able even faster than the chariots. Nothing like a lightning war in the BC era.

Anyway, I sent a chariot to explore the northern shores, and it stumbled on a hut:



Wow. Let's see if it would give us a tech... Nope, it gave us experience :rolleyes: Well, better than barbs, I guess.

And then we completed our wonder:



Of course, we took CoL as the free tech.

As you might have guessed, Confucianism was founded in Teotihuacan:



I didn't really care about founding a second religion, but since it came with early CoL, oh well. It did give us a free Confucian missionary, with which we can spy on France. You'll see ;)

Well, I'm afraid I've run out of time for today. I'll post the second half of the update tomorrow.

[to be continued in the next post...]
 
Good work getting CoL from the Oracle for the Sacrificial Altars. :goodjob:

What promotions did you give the Chariot? Combat 1 and Medic 1 would be ideal. You could then pair him with a Warlord later and give him Medic 2 and 3 and Morale for 3 moves per turn--instant MASH unit! :cool:
 
I'm surprised the AI didn't build the oracle sooner on immortal. I've seen it go earlier than that on emperor :lol:

Good stuff so far though. Early sacrificial altars ftw!!!
 
[continued from previous post]

With the Oracle, we began to earn prophet points. It's just as well, since we have two holy cities in which we can build shrines. I decided to run a priest in our capital to boost GPP generation:



We needed to slow growth down anyway while waiting for whip unhappiness to go away. Two birds with one stone.

Meanwhile, with open borders, we managed to scout our neighbour's lands out:



Nothing scary there. The city does have walls, though. Quite a few chariots will fall if we attack.

And then it was time to build another settler for our third city:



I fired the priest for now to help with settler production. But why settle a third city? Why not just capture French cities next? There's still a distance between our territory and French territory, especially in the east, where our borders have not even met. Besides, I like Unconquered Sun's idea of settling a city between the coast and the large fresh water lake so that we can build a lighthouse there. Several oasis tiles (plus a gold mine) in a city is indeed an appealing idea. And this city would provide an eastern connection between our cities and the French ones.

We completed our survey of prospective lands with a look on Tours:



A single archer? :lol: And it doesn't look like Louis has any metal. Maybe he has iron somewhere, but I have not seen a single metal unit so far. Chariot rush, anyone?

But before that, we had to get rid of this barb city that was in the way of our third city:



And we did:



We lost a Combat II chariot in the process, but I think it's worth it.

Our settler is built shortly after that, and this is where I stopped. I need your opinions on where our third city would go. Do you agree with my plan? A copper source is already within our borders, so grabbing one with our third city is not really urgent.

Here's a dotmap of the planned third city site:



The green arrows are planned invasion routes. We would attack Orleans with 7 or 8 chariots (we have 4 right now) from our third city. If there are still only 2 archers in Orleans, we should be able to take it. Rheims would be pretty much cut off after that, giving us time to bring in enough reinforcements to take that city. While the attack on Orleans is launched, fresh Woodsman II Jaguars from our capital would run to Tours and capture it, after which they would head east and reinforce the chariots at Orleans. What do you think of the plan? Do you think we need more chariots to begin with?

Here's the map of our continent:





With the capture of the three French cities, Louis would be finished, sandwiched between our empire and Rome. We could then wait for catapults and take his capital and the rest of his empire.

Anyway, we have used our free missionary to spread Confucianism in Paris. We can switch our state religion now and gain intelligence on the French capital. This will also have the benefit of making Louis happy with us, so he might still be willing to trade even after we invade him. The downside is we would lose the happiness bonus in our capital until Confucianism spreads there (it won't become unhappy immediately, though). Should we do it?

Tech-wise, we're still researching IW. It will be complete in a few turns. What next? Alphabet is the most obvious choice to me, but maybe you guys have different opinions?

We already have CoL, so we don't need to worry so much about crashing our economy. When should we start building Sacrificial Altars, though? We will probably need it in our outer cities to keep upkeep down, but should we get them up in our core cities asap? They take time to build, and if we're to attack France soon we need to build more troops, fast.
 

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