The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #20 Persia

Started with two scouts, put a turn into monument, then built a shrine once pottery was finished. Managed to meet Geneva first, so got a nice first pantheon. Due to abundance of space and many rivers I decided to go for Sacred Waters Pantheon, which net me 5 happiness. I went Liberty due to similar reasons.

I got two nice hill cities to the east and south east (plains hill with ivory and desert hill with cotton), then settled in the jungle near fish and spices. Then settled two more cities southwest with sugar (not on a river) and with gems. I managed to get the last religion and took cathedrals.

Overall, I got pretty lucky with ruins, getting archery, calendar, culture, immortal upgrade, faith and gold twice. Still two ruins net me barb camps and two net me maps.


As for the thematic catch - I think the picture indicates that the Arabs will probably be a huge threat and a runaway in this game, due to their amazing start with salt and desert.

I quit when I realized too late that Rome is after me and I just wasn't able to move my forces to defend the eastern plains hill city. I should have placed my army there as soon as Delhji was taken...

Start location looked good to me, enough hills for good production and a beautiful long river for civil service/hydro plant. Went scout/monument/granary/scout into settlers. Stole a worker from the CS to the northeast and dropped cities to the west, then east, then southwest. Forward settled both Egypt and India, claiming plenty of room for me. I thought about putting a fifth city in the jungle to the north, but I didn't see a good mix of food and production in that area, so decided to stay on 4 cities. All three expansions were two tiles away from a mountain - in retrospect it might have been worth settling right next to them for the observatory. The Grand Mesa at least enabled an observatory in my western city.

I had sluggish growth at the start of the game, but once I got Civil Service that changed in a hurry. I took Goddess of the Hunt as my pantheon, but could tell getting a religion was going to be difficult. Fortunately I was able to get the Hagia Sophia as my first wonder. Egypt took Borobodur before I could get it, and spammed me with missionaries and Great Prophets. Eventually I was forced to buy an inquisitor for my capital and just let my expansions get converted.

In my Venice DCL game, I currently own 60% of the continent and have about 1.5 enemies left to conquer. Due to that game being a long conquest slog I decided this would be a peaceful game. Longer Golden Ages sounded good for cultural victory, and when I met Alex I knew diplo would be essentially impossible.

I was able to get all the Renaissance cultural wonders except the Globe, but for some reason my tourism was pretty bad. I had themed Sistine/Uffizi/Louvre/Oxford and one museum as well as the Eiffel Tower, but only 420 tourism with the Internet/NVC and airports/broadcast towers in all cities. Due to lack of open borders I only got four artifacts, and only had one landmark in my territory. Fortunately I only had to overcome 31k culture from India. I waited a little bit too long - I could have ended the game 10 turns earlier if I hadn't waited to faith buy one more musician that it turned out I didn't need. Ah well.

I did not fight one war the entire game, even though only Assyria followed me into Freedom. Greece went Autocracy and most other civs went Order. Rome basically wiped Arabia off the map, but other than that the territorial changes were pretty minor. I had 4 DoFs going in the midgame pre-ideologies.

I think it is all of the most ancient Mediterranean/Middle Eastern civilizations. I guess India was close enough but China too far away to make the cut.

Well, Carthage would have been a better fit since it is purely an ancient/classical civ, but Carthage is underwhelming overall, and on Pangea it is even weaker.

Carthage because they were too far outside the sphere of influence.

Following Moriarte's Liberty dom strategy. Hard built four cities and captured my first capital, Thebes (Stonehenge and Terracotta Army), around the time of adopting Representation for the first Golden Age. At Turn 83 just about to complete the National College. I did consider going straight after Assyria after eliminating Egypt but decided to play safe to minimise the warmonger hate from wiping out Egypt. Although hadn't yet met Greece or Arabia when I took Thebes so still have a couple of trading partners available.

I have played a few turns since taking the screenshots and have managed to grab both the Oracle and the Pyramids. Currently building Chichen Itza for the GA boost. Policy-wise, I've completed Liberty and taken the Aesthetics opener (for the 25% boost to Great Artists to help with future GAs). Plan is now to head into Commerce and then Rationalism.

I took the point score lead quite early on here for an Immortal game and no-one else seems to be in any danger of running away at the moment. I've already caught up in tech and should now be in good shape. Planning to tech to crossbows and then take another capital before holding out for a final artillery push.

Delhi and Thebes are mine. Now getting into a nice war with Rome but there is every risk that I'm gonna be chain DOW-ed fairly soon for being a menace to the world, and my economy's not in good enough shape to be able to pump out enough units.