Playing Rome on Immortal. Do you take Liberty? Do you war early?

I hate warring early, but thinking of trying ROME since I haven't played them in forever.

How do you play them on immortal level?

If you want to war your start is decent, GL and pop iron working? If not, tech it after you can hook up your luxuries and build warriors to upgrade immediately.

Liberty is good, as it helps you get out a city while spamming units, hopefully there is iron you can settle. Steal a bunch of workers from a CS and your nearest AI. Don't make peace, camp out and take them. Get Legions and go to town? If you take Cover I and II you won't need ranged units for a while. I've started using cover instead of bee lining march, and I think it's a much more effective promotion overall. Cities just can't kill them easily at all.

Honestly, I wouldn't even attempt to grab GL on Immortal. The AI just has too big of a tech advantage on you, and they'll bum rush the GL every time, and even if you do get it, it's too much of a hammer sponge to really pay off in the end. Even though you'll be ahead tech wise, you'll lack the economy to wage a war effectively because you'll have most likely ignored your surrounding resources (unless you were able to snag a worker). By the time you get your infrastructure in line, the AI will be on par with you militarily. It's just not worth it.

Actually, I like Tradition for Rome. Rome doesn't need workers as badly, and that's one of the Liberty SP. Plus in order to use their UA, you have to build the building in the capital first, so you need to grow the capital. A 4-city start with Rome works beautifully, IMHO.

I love warring early with Rome, but then again I love warring early, period. I think Rome pretty much has to, though, because both UU's come out at the same time and they complement each other.

You can go with a traditional start but you have to be respectful of AI sometimes since AIs could be OP in immortal. Be nice to ai and then get a good output of technology for awhile so that you can eventually beat the AI in technology. Then you could build advanced military and defend yourself so that ai won't try to attack you in its jealousy of you being close to a victory.

Here's a strategy I wrote up you might find interesting - not sure whether it's optimal though..

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=528584

The gist of it is dip into Honour tree to get the early general and the Discipline bonus then get to Iron Working and devote one of your cities to Military, Build Heroic Epic quickly then lots of legions and ballista's. You'll have Legions with Discipline (15%), General (15%), Heroic Epic Morale (15%), Flanking (10%) for a 55% strength bonus (before shock/drill promotions!) which makes them about as tough as Musketeers.

Because the Roman UA tends to require Rome to do a lot of building it can be worth rushing a second city out ASAP onto a high productive location, get a food route to it and grow it into a Military City with the Heroic Epic. But there are many ways to play Rome. Tradition will give you a big capital which does let you get your buildings earlier but Liberty tends to be better because the +25% production bonus stacks with Republic and it is ideal for having lots of cities which does give Rome an advantage in playing wide.

LyricalAssassin said:

Honestly, I wouldn't even attempt to grab GL on Immortal. The AI just has too big of a tech advantage on you, and they'll bum rush the GL every time, and even if you do get it, it's too much of a hammer sponge to really pay off in the end. Even though you'll be ahead tech wise, you'll lack the economy to wage a war effectively because you'll have most likely ignored your surrounding resources (unless you were able to snag a worker). By the time you get your infrastructure in line, the AI will be on par with you militarily. It's just not worth it.

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Right, even if you got to iron working early with GL you have already expended too much hammers that you could be used building warriors. So the timing for a legion push will still be late. Getting a library early however is good to help you get to iron working faster.

Rome is the best for going Wide. Whether by going Liberty to expand, or by conquering enemy cities early on with Honor, Rome can do both.

I personally prefer going Honor, because the Legions pretty much double as workers for roads, meaning you don't need to waste Worker time by building roads/fortresses (plus, you can keep a few Legions unpromoted for this purpose).
The other use for Liberty (pillage+repair combo) isn't really needed if Rome's army becomes as strong as Redaxe's (seriously, check the guide he posted).

That said, nothing wrong with dipping into Liberty when in Peace. Republic helps a lot.

Or you could also do an honor start. Legions and ballistas can rank up with honor when going for a domination victory in land. For sea that's a whole different story and becomes ftf where f=fun..