The Immortal Challenge 1: Apocalypto

I read somewhere that only asoka and isabella possibly pursue budism off the bat but i have certanly seen asoka not do so before. So unless you are gamign against isabella budism is pretty secure.
 
How often, playing random leaders, do you even get a shot at founding an early religion on immortal anyway?

It's a pretty rare occasion for a fun variant start - and it won't really spoil our game even if we miss the religion. I say let's give it a whirl.
 
I read somewhere that only asoka and isabella possibly pursue budism off the bat but i have certanly seen asoka not do so before. So unless you are gamign against isabella budism is pretty secure.

That was true for Vanilla, not for warlords.
 
The new patch makes it way less likly for ai to found religions though. thats why we saw tokugawa found budism last game for exmaple. Of course if you have brennus, hatty, ghandi, isabelle etc its kinda hard to found stuff still. it totaly dependant on your opponents. that said i would rather go for monotheism cause it is more usefull for building monasteries if you get col(with religion) from oralce and/or taoism from a scientist(and it is a prereq for taoism anyways). without worker techs for quite some time what are you gonna build in your city? scout -> settler or warior -> settler or even scout -> warrior -> settler/worker. teching order beeing some mix of worker techs priesthood early for oracle and writing for libraries(scientist for taoism + pacifism assuming rest of your empire is specialist economy). Of course with all this techmadness you wont have time to war too much... Getting 3 religions means you can split up pretty much everyone if you feel like it though. Of course the aim of this game is mostly expansion through waring right? getting col early is a priority on the higher levels no matter how you expand though and the altars boost your production too.

Of course another angle might just be the standard mix of ag/mining/bw/ah first. That lends itself to early waring but will slow down your progress to col and a tad later waring because your economy probably will crash.
 
I think you should move the scout to the hill to see if it would be worth settling on it. If you settle in place, work the oasis and go for a religion. This will help you get the Oracle for CoL and sacraficial altars.
 
Having seen the wonder building list, I now realize why I am always happy to have Louis or Ramsess as my next door neighbor. They build em, I borrow em.
:D
 
Wow. Even before any round is played, we already have 7 pages of discussion, most of which is about religion :eek: Faith is back in vogue ;)

Well, the good news is the first round has been played. The update will be up soon.
 
I can honestly say that just viewing these challenges i think i went from doing poorly on warlord to having jumped up to possible dominating on noble so i cant wait....although i havent acctually played much on noble but im now confident to play it so thank you aelf
 
I'd go for an early religion as it suits the flavor of the game and you'll be one step closer to priesthood which leads to CoL through the Oracle or simply as a prereq. Sure, it's a bit of a gambit but no guts, no glory.

Playing safe is for wussies ;)
 
Post the freaking update already! Sheesh....seven pages on whether to go for a tech, this is bordering on the ridiculous.
 
He's most certainly sound asleep by now.

I have actually been rather short on that lately :p Last night was the first chance I got for a good long sleep in days. And RL really got in the way this week. I still haven't added the next entry to my UU guide. But, just for you guys, I shall post the update now ;) Enjoy!
 
Round 1: 4000BC - 2360BC

A day's journey from the oasis where we rested brought our tribe to a plain at the edge of a forest. We could see the sacred mountain from there. It was here that Huitzilopochtli gave us the sign. An eagle circled above the plain where we stood and let out three piercing shrieks. The elders met and decided that the land would yield us much if we settled here. So we did:



And it reveals gold to the NE. It's not in our BFC, but I'm happy enough having one so near to us. Our second city should probably grab that gold so that we could work it asap for a great early game research boost.

We worked the oasis and began researching Polytheism as our first tech:



Yes, we are giving early religion a shot, comrades. I followed the general advice of going for Hinduism instead of Buddhism (since Polytheism is more useful in the long run). There seems to be an agreement here that we would miss either religion by 1 turn if AIs with Mysticism decide to research them first, but, hey, it's not going to be fun if we only play safe, right? If we get it, the early culture and happiness bonus would be nice, and it would guarantee us a holy city that we control early enough to be useful.

Our first build was a warrior, since we would need troops for garrison duty soon enough. And we will probably need to build another one later to protect our settler.

As our initial scout made a circuit to reveal the immediate surroundings of our capital, it popped two huts. The first gave us 54 gold. The second gave us another scout:



Great! Now we probably had all the scouts we need without having to build any. There's another hut to the south (the number of huts around our capital is remarkable for this level), which we popped for a map. Ah, well. We can't be that lucky.

Tenochtitlan grew to size 2 and we worked a high food tile to continue growing quickly:



The earlier we can work more tiles, the better it is, IMO. It would give us more flexibility.

And, a few turns later....



So our gamble paid off :goodjob: The world will tremble before the might of the Hindu faith!

Next, we researched Agriculture so that we could farm that corn when our first worker (which we started on after the warrior) is built. The first warrior went off to help explore. One of our scouts had been eaten by lions :(

Agriculture was followed by Animal Husbandry, since we have pigs in our BFC. Hopefully it would reveal horses nearby as well.

Our capital soon grew to size 3. It's at the happiness limit now without a garrison, so we had to build a garrison warrior before the city hit size 4:



By this point I was beginning to fear we had an isolated start. No neighbour had popped up and we seemed to be bordered by sea at least on three sides. Our scouts had all been eaten by animals and our first warrior is left exploring alone. He just popped a hut for experience further to the SE when he met our first neighbour:



Phew! At least we weren't alone.

France was actually quite close to us, but water bodies make their part of the continent less accessible.

Anyway, Animal Husbandry was soon discovered, and look where we found horses:



So far so good. Switched our next research to the Wheel so that we could hook the horses up asap. Barb archers were beginning to appear. And, as you can see, our worker had farmed the corn. This made growth quicker and resulted in a perfect timing:



After the warrior, we started on a settler. Time to get a second city up.

And we met another neigbour:



Yikes, we have Creative neighbours! This is going to be annoying.

I stopped playing after our settler is built. We need to decide on where to place our second city. I have made a dotmap of possible sites:



Blue A would grab both the gold and the stone (as well as incense for later) and get fresh water bonus from the river. However, there would be significant overlap with the capital and both cities might have to share the pigs, especially if we want the second city to work the gold. Red A wouldn't grab the stone, but it would grab corn so that the second city would have a high food tile on its own. And we wouldn't need to build a plantation to hook up the incense later on if we settle here. The brown '?' is a possible coastal site to grab stone (and another corn) if we choose Red A.

Site B is a good spot to settle a city. It's on the coast and grabs horses, another gold and another happiness resource (whales). I'm thinking of settling our third city there. Or should the second city go there?

Here's a map of the lower explored part of the continent:



French lands are situated in thick jungle (good opportunity to attack with Jaguars?). We haven't actually found the location of the Romans, having only met their scout.

The other question is should we try to build the Oracle to grab CoL? To do that, we could research Priesthood after BW (we're in the middle of researching Mining to get to BW) and Writing while we build and chop for the wonder. But would it be too late?
 

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Congrats on getting Hunduism. Is there a reason why you haven't converted yet? It would give your capital +1 happiness.

Site B is not that good as it is poor on food. If you move B 1 south and 2 east on the plains hill you will be able to feed the city it with the pigs, work the gold and work another hill mine for a decent early production city. There is irrigation potential here too, and maintanence will be lower.

You should then choose the Red A (to work corn) since B will be using pigs. You can claim the northern horses latter with another site that works the corn.
 
You need a second worker ASAP.

Don't be afraid to crack the whip, when you have it.

City B is no good, no food for the gold.
 
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