Askia, you pissed me off

How can he

1. Have an army bigger than me

2. Be ahead in tech

3. Be ahead in social policies

4. Befriend all city states with hundreds of favour

5. Have a reformed Religion

6. Have more money than me

WITH ONLY 2 SELF FOUNDED CITIES??

He killed a CS, has 2 cities of his own. I have 5 cities, 1 is called Bablyon, the other are my 4 core cities. I'm playing the Aztec, Tenochtitlan is huge (21 pop in the late Renaissance Era).

I have NC, and University in all my cities. I also grabbed rationalism. I stole at least 3 techs from him.

I am on Immortal.

I can uderstand everything except for the city state buttbuddy friendships. Now that he has all the CSs on the Island I can't even trade with anyone. I can probably kill him within 50 turns or so, but the other continent is a diplomatic Haven with 0 wars going on, 1 of them is Korea and while this d***head is forcing me to train units they will just snowbal out of control.

This is just so annyoing. The only way to make this game challenging is to make the AI cheat like crazy.

Can somebody just analyze the situation please? I can understand the massive Army, it's Askia after all. But his Religion is a mess, he's not getting anything out of it, he shouldn't be making half as many CS friends as he does and for the love of god, at the very least, he shouldn't have a tech advantage by this point.

Did I mention half his Capital's territory is on Tundra? -,-

Sorry, but the Immortal AI gets sufficient buffs that none of what you describe strikes me as being all that unusual. Good for you that you are confident in your ability to kill him in 50 turns!

I think you will be fine in the long game, just be sure not to kill any of his CS allies and to liberate the CS he conquered.

Since it sounds like you want to get along with Korea et al., be sure to leave Askia with at least terrible tundra city.

No, I want to kill Korea asap before he snowballs out of control. And like I said, Askia only has 2 cities of his own and he can still come up with all this...frustrating....stuff.

Okay, tech, policy, all that advantage...I read the Wiki, I know what the AI is getting at Immortal, at least I have a vague idea.

But the CS allies...!!! He has absolutely no excuse for 5 CS allies while pumping out a huge military. It's either this or that.

Jinavajra said:

But the CS allies...!!! He has absolutely no excuse for 5 CS allies while pumping out a huge military. It's either this or that.

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Is he allies with any militaristic, cultural, or religious city states? The city states are probably helping him a lot more than you think they are. If he destroyed a few barbarian camps early game and got and maintained these bonuses from the start, that can certainly explain a lot of why he is ahead.

No, he was actually bullying city states (at least as much as I did). There were 3 of us on this continent: Me (Montezuma), Nebuchadnezzar and Askia. He asked me if I want to DOW Babylon with him, and since he forward-settled in my face I decided to go for it. Than I killed him and went on to imrpove the economy.

In the meantime Riga kept crying that he is being bullied by Askia. He also Annexed a CS.

And yes, those CSs are helping him. 1 cs in particular zerged one of my rear cities with 0 defences and almost captured it (the city was on 0 hp, but I killed the melee units.)

Furthermore, I can't trade, and that's the worst of it. There is nobody else to trade with: It's Askia, City states and me. They help him just by denying me money and burning my caravans and cargo ships.

He's allied with all sorts of city states. Cultural, Militaristic, Maritime, Religious. You name it.

And also Riga. He is allied with the CS he bullied the most.
If he had gunboat diplomacy than I would understand. But he hasn't.

It sounds like Askia may have gotten the perfect storm of city state quests at the right times.

Like, 'Cultural city state wants you to destroy a barbarian camp!'

'Cultural city state becomes ally. Religious city states starts a race for culture!'

'Askia wins race for culture using cultural city state. cultural and militaristic city state ask for Askia's religion.'

'militaristic city state becomes ally. Maritime and cultural city state wants militaristic city state bullied.'

'additional income from the bullying goes towards getting another city state'

'militaristic city state gives a bunch of troops, cycle continues.'

Once you get a few city states, it's easy to get more city states just from quests. Just requires a nice scenario to come up to get a few, and the effects can snowball.

grrrrrrr....I left that game to rot. I'm just gonna stick to playing Emperor for a while. It's getting a bit dull though.

Jinavajra said:

grrrrrrr....I left that game to rot. I'm just gonna stick to playing Emperor for a while. It's getting a bit dull though.

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I find I end up doing the same thing. Emperor is a little too easy and Immortal is too hard. I'm like a AAA baseball player....not quite good enough for the majors.

I like Immortal for the challenge, but I only win about half the time.