Immortal/Deity - Can't progress, despite a ton of research

Walter E Kurtz said:

Take a look at a domination guide, to get an idea of how to ramp up your military fast for turn 50 or so CB rush.

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Could you tell me which guide you're referring to please Colonel?

Also, can you imagine a Civ based on Kurtz's weird cult from Apocalypse Now?

If you're worried about your Literacy and mid-game standings, have you really tried to master the Tradition start? I feel like you maybe aren't really familiar with pushing growth and science, and so when you're playing OCC or Liberty you might not realize what you're lacking.

I'd start a new game and really, really focus on the Tradition model. 3-city to NC, 4-city core. Using gold wisely to get luxes, and just pushing your population while getting to Education.

Lastly, it's ok to be 5-6% back in Literacy mid-game, so long as you're ready to take advantage of the Industrial era. Don't give up if you're struggling, but be sure you're growing your cities and ready to build public schools, factories, et al. And bulb or Oxford your way up to make sure you get to Industrial era.

OCC is its own challenge by the way. And Liberty will suffer in growth mid-game, so unless you know what you're setting yourself up for, Liberty is harder to play. My advice is really to get the hang of a Tradition game and then incorporate all the extra tidbits you read about.

consentient said:

Could you tell me which guide you're referring to please Colonel?

Also, can you imagine a Civ based on Kurtz's weird cult from Apocalypse Now?

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That would be a trippy civ I (almost can't) imagine.

Here's a nice guide that aims at getting CB's at turn 55. XB's around turn 100.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503931

I took the suggestion and tried a Tradition start rather than a Liberty one in a new game on Immortal. Moved my settler to a better starting location with Grand Mesa and more luxes, was perhaps a bit slow settling my 2nd city, and thereafter took the war to Genghis to pre-empt what was coming while I wasn't too far behind in tech. The war went well for me but seems to have put me behind the others, who, bar Attila, seem to be going for a tourism victory as well, and are snatching up all the culture wonders without which a tourism victory can be a pain.

Please be honest: how well am I doing at this juncture, cuz I'm just getting frustrated by all the mixed advice. Sitting back and playing defensive doesn't seem to work on any difficulty level, yet trying to use war to get things also seems to put me behind on anything above Emperor.

It could be that I should have pushed my religion harder, but was using my faith buys to fuel the battles with Genghis.

I feel as lost as I did before, and feel like somehow I'm missing something.

Sitting back and playing defensively works well on pretty much every level actually.
Grand Mesa is one of the worse NW, its pretty much worse than a regular hill unless you play with Spain ...

Can you tell me the background of the game - when and who did you attack and so on? And since when are u unhappy?

I see following problems:

1) Odd policy choises:

- consulates without scouting and finding all CS.
- 2 in Aestetics? Don't get that part unless you are up for CV, what you are obviously not.
- free thought and no secularism

2) Low BPT - part of this is because you only founded two cities ... But also ST should be researched way before T220. At least 50 turns earlier actually.

3) Being unhappy with such high GPT makes no sence. You could buy easily at least the merc CS
4) Lack of scouting - you have a coastal city, one caravel doesn't hurt that much or at least use the scout to find the other CS
5) I'd raze some of these cities, there is at least one that doesn't have new lux
6) You have unsold luxuries. A lot of em ...

Major mistake besides what dragonxxx says is that you don't work all your scientist slots. Do that for all city and then pick secularism first in rationalism. Also you lack guilds in Babylon game.

For opener, please take a look at Tabarnak 3 city tradition guide. Practice that a little maybe you'll get a better feeling at what should be achieved in the early game.
You could also go to the game of the month section and try the latest game on immortal. Open the opening moves thread and try to imitate some of the other players ideas.

dragonxxx said:

Sitting back and playing defensively works well on pretty much every level actually.

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Ah ok, I didn't know. All of the videos I've watched so far involved at least some aggression.

Grand Mesa is one of the worse NW, its pretty much worse than a regular hill unless you play with Spain ...

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I know it's not that great, but I also wanted to leave room in the desert for a second city. Alas Genghis spammed that area with lots of crap cities.

Can you tell me the background of the game - when and who did you attack and so on? And since when are u unhappy?

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I attacked Genghis as soon as I had CB cuz in every other game I've played and not attacked, he has overwhelmed me. Not sure about the unhappiness. Probably not that long, but I'm definitely open to improving that side of my play. On Emperor and below I am almost never unhappy unless I attempt a serious ICS strategy, which I haven't perfected yet. Funnily enough, the best ICS I did was on King with Mongolia on a Huge continents map (3 massive continents), and I ended up with maybe 30 cities or something daft. Unhappiness is not a problem on king really.

I see following problems:

1) Odd policy choises:

- consulates without scouting and finding all CS.

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Scouting would not have helped. Granted I could have made boats, but I probably had a view that other parts of the tech tree were more important, in particular the military. Perhaps going on the offensive was by entire mistake?

- 2 in Aestetics? Don't get that part unless you are up for CV, what you are obviously not.

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Actually, I did want to win a CV. Maybe my problem then is I am not specialising in one victory path enough. The plan was to just push Genghis back and then concentrate on culture and tourism, but I guess it was just too late by that point.

- free thought and no secularism

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My cities were not large enough to have many specialists. I think growth seems to be my problem. Whenever I try to emulate what I see in videos, growth (and accordingly, BPT) seems to be the one area I do not manage to achieve anywhere close to the same as the expert players.

2) Low BPT - part of this is because you only founded two cities ... But also ST should be researched way before T220. At least 50 turns earlier actually.

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There didn't seem to be any good locations for cities 3, 4 or 5 tbh. By the time I had enough military to fend off an attack, Genghis and Kamehameha had spammed to my East and South pretty heavily. This was very early. The only way I would beat them to it was MAYBE to have gone liberty. What do you think I should have done differently in this regard?

3) Being unhappy with such high GPT makes no sence. You could buy easily at least the merc CS

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Thanks for the pointer

4) Lack of scouting - you have a coastal city, one caravel doesn't hurt that much or at least use the scout to find the other CS

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OK I will try to scout better. Thanks for the tips.

5) I'd raze some of these cities, there is at least one that doesn't have new lux

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Also noted.

6) You have unsold luxuries. A lot of em ...

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They never seemed to have gold to buy them??

Acken said:

Major mistake besides what dragonxxx says is that you don't work all your scientist slots. Do that for all city and then pick secularism first in rationalism. Also you lack guilds in Babylon game.

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What city size should I start to work the university?

For the OCC Babylon, how would guilds have helped? I'm not getting that.

For opener, please take a look at Tabarnak 3 city tradition guide. Practice that a little maybe you'll get a better feeling at what should be achieved in the early game.
You could also go to the game of the month section and try the latest game on immortal. Open the opening moves thread and try to imitate some of the other players ideas.

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Cheers.

And cheers to everyone for reading this.

I know I have a long way to go. I can get so far in an Immortal game and then just hit a wall. Tonight's game was liberty with Poland, after reading the domination guide. I did well to begin with, built 4 cities and took out Alex who was the points leader, took capital and one other coastal city with 2 lux, took all his goodies for peace, as well as another city which I gave back to Inca for diplomatic bonus.

By the time I had upgraded to crossbows, muskets and knights, Rameses on the other side of me was an era ahead

I will go back and study more and then see how I get on. :S

Going to early war isn't a great idea unless you are cleaning up a weak AI that's already been at war for a long time (and losing) and has a juicy capital or high pop city to take. The reason why all good players look so hard a demographics is they understand the zero sum nature of the Civ cycle: Everything has an opportunity cost

Every early war requires you to spend hammers and gold to build an army, and without artillery, it's hard to quickly take out a high-level AI without a large army. All those hammers aren't going towards economy, and working mines and not food means smaller cities.

Really try to think about how you can plan for big cities in the Industrial era and think about matching up bonuses: Growth, plus rationalism special, plus early ideology (freedom is very easy to learn). No matter how 'well' you do in a medieval war, you want to be thinking about how well you'll be around turn 200. The AI gets all kinds of growth bonuses, so you need to think about big, science-powerful cities. Universities, to Public Schools, to Research Labs... always think about what's the fastest way to get there.

Defense only fighting is a reality. Those top players posting domination strategies are pushing a certain technique as far as it will go. For the rest of us, economy is the game.

Really think carefully about not 'wasting' a social policy, or not scouting out all the city-states, or whether how you can best use 500 gold to either cement a cs ally for a long time or buy a science building early and save 15 turns.

When you stop 'wasting' turns or wasting gold, or wasting units, or wasting policies... you'll find yourself playing a very streamlined game, without 'extra' stuff. Civilization is nowhere near as difficult as Chess, but both rely on the premise that you need to weigh the move you're making with the other moves you could have made... and don't move just to react, move to plan for the future.

In addition to all the good advice listed here (Diplomacy, scouting the whole map, internal trade routes for growth, smaller powerful defensive military), always think about what you're empire will look like 50-70 turns in the future, and what you need to build/buy in the next 50 turns to get there.

Explore and build

consentient said:

What city size should I start to work the university?

For the OCC Babylon, how would guilds have helped? I'm not getting that.

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Even if you dont go for culture victory you need the extra culture from guild, to get more policies. Usually people do not make work of art while attempting a science victory but still use the artists for their bonuses.

Also, guilds synergize well with secularism.

I pretty much always work the scientist slot, especially in cap. Just use internal trade routes to get food and growth rolling. Dont use caravans for international routes, they provide not that much gold and still eat one of your slots. Use cargo ships werever possible, unless your cap is landlocked, then you start using caravans for food. I rarely use more than 2 international trade routes and save the remainder of my slots for internals. I manage to get at least 150 gpt in the late game, even with only 2 international trade routes. Growing is priority one. Big cities equals high science output.

I can't load your saves. It misses me DLC. Which one do you use ? I thought I had all civ V DLC before that.

I bought the complete Steam Package so have the lot. I recently played multiplayer with a friend and he didn't have Scrambled Continents. Maybe it's that?

I sympathize. CIV5 is an amazing game as it can be played so many different ways.

I have read most of the above. IMHO my advice is take advantage of the ai's weakness's

1. The ai is weak at battle , you should be able to beat an army roughly twice your size with similar teched troops. If you can't then you need more practice , also try epic/marathon as you have more turns to beat up ai's.

2. The ai is a sucker for diplomacy , particularly persuading them to dow on your target. I try always to get a dow then later dow myself to steal the cities from my allies nose.

3. War is inevitable at higher levels, choose your battles/wars in particular dont give open borders to everyone . Choose allies and support them, you cant be friends with everyone, hate the ai/ai's everyone else does

4. Some starts just suck, I just restart, the ai get lots of perks anyway, this is only a small evener, also choose your opponents at least till you are more sure of yourself. I particularly hate Alexander as he hogs the city states.

5. Expand to 3 cities asap then 4 as happiness allows, pretty much all deity players I see do this. I used to go tradition but now do liberty and get great scientist.As you note population is king. Do steal a worker from city state and from a ai civ if you can , you only get a small negative if this is done early.

6. Don't worry about tech lagging , do get scholars in residence(bribe someone to make sure it passes by putting diplomat there). Once you take a few civs down you will catch up . Note a further ai weakness is you can know if someone has researched a tech by looking at tech tree, look for these cheaper techs .On Immortal I usually can finish Oxford to get indusrtializtion and thus first to 3 factories and ideology.

7. Deity is tough and you need luck to win. IMHO Shoshone is best , Poland and polynesia also great. I tried William a few times and failed miserably.

good luck

razor1952 said:

I sympathize. CIV5 is an amazing game as it can be played so many different ways.

I have read most of the above. IMHO my advice is take advantage of the ai's weakness's

1. The ai is weak at battle , you should be able to beat an army roughly twice your size with similar teched troops. If you can't then you need more practice , also try epic/marathon as you have more turns to beat up ai's.

2. The ai is a sucker for diplomacy , particularly persuading them to dow on your target. I try always to get a dow then later dow myself to steal the cities from my allies nose.

3. War is inevitable at higher levels, choose your battles/wars in particular dont give open borders to everyone . Choose allies and support them, you cant be friends with everyone, hate the ai/ai's everyone else does

4. Some starts just suck, I just restart, the ai get lots of perks anyway, this is only a small evener, also choose your opponents at least till you are more sure of yourself. I particularly hate Alexander as he hogs the city states.

5. Expand to 3 cities asap then 4 as happiness allows, pretty much all deity players I see do this. I used to go tradition but now do liberty and get great scientist.As you note population is king. Do steal a worker from city state and from a ai civ if you can , you only get a small negative if this is done early.

6. Don't worry about tech lagging , do get scholars in residence(bribe someone to make sure it passes by putting diplomat there). Once you take a few civs down you will catch up . Note a further ai weakness is you can know if someone has researched a tech by looking at tech tree, look for these cheaper techs .On Immortal I usually can finish Oxford to get indusrtializtion and thus first to 3 factories and ideology.

7. Deity is tough and you need luck to win. IMHO Shoshone is best , Poland and polynesia also great. I tried William a few times and failed miserably.

good luck

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Thanks so much for all the advice. I started a new game with Random Leader and thought I'd try to make the best of whoever I got. I got Attila. Had never played with him before.

MAN is he powerful. I took all three capitals on my continent by turn 89 with 6 horse archers and 2 battering rams, ignoring everything but military until I had taken them. Then sat back for 50 turns building science and getting Oxford, Machu Pichu and some others. Pichu was lucky I guess because the other continent had fewer mountains.

The pastures bonus allows you to pump units out so easily.

On the other continent I am confident nothing can stand in my way unless Rameses' wonder spam leads him to finishing rationalism first and maybe beating me to Dynamite. However, his is the only coastal capital so with 8 frigates and 3 privateers I think I can take him.

The main thing I've learned this past week is that Liberty is about ten times easier to play than Tradition for a domination victory, despite what some people (maybe not on this thread, can't remember) were telling me.

UPDATE: I won domination victory on turn 272. The last capital was a hard fight because he was still ahead of me in tech, but not by much. What gave me the edge was production and the fact that some of my cavalry were upgraded horse archers with march etc.

How does turn 272, immortal, continents, standard speed match up?

Can I consider myself to have made any progress? Or is that quite a poor speed of victory given the elements involved?

I'm chuffed to have beaten Immortal, but know I still have a way to go.

You won, it's the only important thing.

Speed is good if you want play HoF or GOTM, otherwise have fun.

IMHO, it's slow as you can have artillery T160-180. if capitals are coastal, frigates rules. But without screenshots, hard to say.

I'm generally an Immortal Player these days - I've beaten Deity with SV and Domination, but am still trying to refine some aspects of my game before doing Deity full time. It seems like you're figuring things out but I thought I would reiterate some things others have said, which helped me, and pass along my own advice.

In short, Tradition is the strongest path. Very highly skilled players can make Liberty work better in certain situations, but while you're learning you want to focus on Trad for the time being.

Capital: Scout x2, Shrine (I generally do this - others don't), Worker, then it depends a little on your surroundings. I usually like an Archer or two here - good for Barb hunting and establishing some early strength. Some will do granary for growth (good option if you're hurting on food). Another option is a Caravan to send to a close and friendly neighbor, both for a science boost and to get them to DOF. When your city is turn 4 or 5, work on your first Settler. Then right back into Archers or Granary.

Second city will build Archer or Granary depending on whether or not you want to conquer an early neighbor (if you have someone aggressive near you I would strongly consider building up Archers at this point).

You really do want to push for the National College quickly, and it is possible to have a formidable army and get the NC somewhere between turn 70 and 90. This is a typical goal for the warmonger with any civ.

Trade excess lux's and strategic resources to neighbors - you don't need iron or horses usually (horse specific civs not-withstanding). Try to save at least 400 gold for your second city's library to quickly get to the NC in your capital.

After philosophy is done, beeline to Construction. If you have a DOF with someone, trade your resources for gold and upgrade to Comp Bows.

If you're able to do all this, you can really start to cause some damage and will be well placed for Scientific Growth. At this point, my advice is to just not be afraid of the AI - they may have techs but they're dumb as hell. Take your bows, a couple warriors and go f' someone up. Learn how to pillage their tile improvements to keep your units chugging along. Keep your melee's out of range until you're ready to take a city. Try to have all 6-7 bows rain down on them on the same turn. Grab some early wonders from a neighbor or take out someone you know will be a pain later.

This is a pretty solid and repeatable strategy. Once you get this down you can branch out to other strats.

After Bows you want to more or less pursue science, regardless of your Victory Condition. Education, Astronomy, Scientific Theory, Plastics.


Other early advice: just go ahead and steal a worker from a nearby CS. It helps a lot. Try to go after a maritime one if you have a few to choose from. Also, set your City Manager to Production Focus, and then manually select the tile you want worked when a city grows (that's the extend of micro management I think is absolutely necessary at this level).

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dpaq said:

I'm generally an Immortal Player these days - I've beaten Deity with SV and Domination, but am still trying to refine some aspects of my game before doing Deity full time. It seems like you're figuring things out but I thought I would reiterate some things others have said, which helped me, and pass along my own advice.

In short, Tradition is the strongest path. Very highly skilled players can make Liberty work better in certain situations, but while you're learning you want to focus on Trad for the time being.

Capital: Scout x2, Shrine (I generally do this - others don't), Worker, then it depends a little on your surroundings. I usually like an Archer or two here - good for Barb hunting and establishing some early strength. Some will do granary for growth (good option if you're hurting on food). Another option is a Caravan to send to a close and friendly neighbor, both for a science boost and to get them to DOF. When your city is turn 4 or 5, work on your first Settler. Then right back into Archers or Granary.

Second city will build Archer or Granary depending on whether or not you want to conquer an early neighbor (if you have someone aggressive near you I would strongly consider building up Archers at this point).

You really do want to push for the National College quickly, and it is possible to have a formidable army and get the NC somewhere between turn 70 and 90. This is a typical goal for the warmonger with any civ.

Trade excess lux's and strategic resources to neighbors - you don't need iron or horses usually (horse specific civs not-withstanding). Try to save at least 400 gold for your second city's library to quickly get to the NC in your capital.

After philosophy is done, beeline to Construction. If you have a DOF with someone, trade your resources for gold and upgrade to Comp Bows.

If you're able to do all this, you can really start to cause some damage and will be well placed for Scientific Growth. At this point, my advice is to just not be afraid of the AI - they may have techs but they're dumb as hell. Take your bows, a couple warriors and go f' someone up. Learn how to pillage their tile improvements to keep your units chugging along. Keep your melee's out of range until you're ready to take a city. Try to have all 6-7 bows rain down on them on the same turn. Grab some early wonders from a neighbor or take out someone you know will be a pain later.

This is a pretty solid and repeatable strategy. Once you get this down you can branch out to other strats.

After Bows you want to more or less pursue science, regardless of your Victory Condition. Education, Astronomy, Scientific Theory, Plastics.


Other early advice: just go ahead and steal a worker from a nearby CS. It helps a lot. Try to go after a maritime one if you have a few to choose from. Also, set your City Manager to Production Focus, and then manually select the tile you want worked when a city grows (that's the extend of micro management I think is absolutely necessary at this level).

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Thank you for your lengthy advice, and again, thanks to everyone who responded to what some people might think is a moaning old man.

The problem is that when I try to apply all of the knowledge I'm taking on board, it doesn't pan out for me. Ive been told by many people that tradition is great, but on Immortal I can never get it up and running. I mean, sure, if I have no neighbours I can build 2 or 3 additional cities and make an empire, but if I have no neighbours that means a harder game. And if I do have neighbours, then I simply can't expand quickly enough.

It may be the fundamentals that I'm failing on but I find with tradition I can't expand and get stuck, and when I go liberty on Immortal or above, unless I have great early UUs and am going for pure warmongering, I simply can't keep up on tech, or frankly, on anything.

I started a game a couple of hours ago, using Byzantium, since they are quite flexible, and I thought I'd let the game dictate to me how I should play it, but with a general mind to pursue a cultural victory with diplo as a backup, aligning one of my beliefs towards that.

I was lucky enough to bag Uluru AND Sinai (by going liberty), and had an enhanced religion very early, as well as managing to expand to 4 cities and put myself into the number 1 spot for land, got some DoFs from the right people, good religious beliefs. And then everything just went stale. Cities don't grow properly, CSs get stolen by conquest/Venice/quests I simply can't perform, culture rate falls, and I can't catch up in tech. I saved the game when I finished liberty and might go back and replay it with a GS instead of a prophet, and build NC immediately after, and see how that changes things, but again, even if I bumped my science up a bit, I can't see how playing defensive really works. How can you stay ahead tech-wise of people who are doing so much conquering that their GPT and culture and science rate is outstripping yours? I rewatched MadDjinn's India victory and simply can't understand it. It's like it's a different game to the ones I play. When I try to win a CV on Immortal, I always have the problem of a runaway civ, when I try for SV and beeline everything sciencey I have other problems.

Emperor is so easy compared to Immortal.

I might have to admit defeat soon, which would really irritate me, cuz playing at lower levels is boring once you've 'gotten into' playing at higher levels. You get used to the AIs having enough gold to trade, for example. At Emperor and below, they almost never have ANY cash, and there is no incentive to have spare luxuries except straight swaps, leading to lots of happiness, lots of GAs, but consequently little challenge.

It just seems the leap is too steep between levels 6 and 7.

Going back to tradition, I don't want to sound petulant or ungrateful or a jerk in any way, so please don't flame me, but I've tried the fast 4 city settler x3 method, the caravans method, and a variety of different strategies I devised myself, and can't find a way to get up and running in 'good time' on anything above King.

None of the methods I tried gave me decent science, growth or military before turn 100, in over 20 tries, yet all claimed that they are tried and tested methods for producing growth and science. I understand that timings are not exact, and build orders and tech orders need to be tweaked a bit due to starting conditions, but I've simply found that all the published methods I've found do not work as they should.

So...either I'm doing something majorly wrong in applying the published methods…or...I haven't found the right one yet…or...possibly expert players and innovators are yet to find a truly reliable opening strategy for tall, fast growing empires on BNW. There certainly appear to be far more strategies for liberty.

It would seem that there are lots methods such as this (relies on being able to sell lux for gold, which you can't do on BNW onwards) which are now obsolete.

Symptoms that indicate to me that the methods aren’t working:

-BPT less than 50 for far too long
-Much smaller population than AI cities
-Much less production than AI cities
-Much smaller militaries than AI cities
-Much less gold than AI cities

All the methods I read claim to be able to considerably even things out well before turn 100. The domination methods that claim to get armies of CBs taking enemy capitals before turn 100, the ones that claim education around turn 100, the list goes on.

I’d really like to see a video of someone actually achieving these, who plays on Standard game pace, doesn’t play at 100mph and explains what they are doing, but all the success videos seem to have anomalies that don't resemble the games I play. In MadDjinn's India he had about 4 units for most of the game and wasn't crushed. 'He mastered Diplo' I hear people retort. Well, often, I try to do diplo as per the advice and the AI just doesn't care. What can you do when you're surrounded by 3 aggressive civs that ensures NONE end up crushing you? I've prepared for defence but found that wars can go on for 40 or 50 turns and they come back at you with a new era's worth of troops that you can't handle. Sometimes they just won't give you peace even when you've killed dozens of their units. :S

TLDR: Tradition doesn't work for me at all, and liberty works for a while but not long enough. I'm obviously missing the fundamentals of the game but don't know where I can get visual tutorials of these, because I learn best by seeing things actually happen.

YouTube. Most of the deity players you see post have one. Maddjnn. LightCleric. Don't just look any old video. But the guys here are good