Immortal / Marathon/ cities asking for a lot of trouble :)

I wanted to have some fun today, and went on starting an Immortal Marathon game on a huge map.

Now, I have not played marathon since I learned how to play the game, so I'd need some advice here.

I rolled pretty funny starting location - combination of lot of salt and lot of tundra
To make things as interesting as possible, we have Zulu next door.

I just finished my settler, and was going to go to settle the coast, but it seems too poor choise.


On the other hand, we have absolutely amazing stuff south of us:


I am pretty sure if I settle this (its far from Moscow to make things worse), I can get into trouble.

Best place seems to be the hill between Wheat and Sheep, and its 9 tiles away.
A city on the hill north of the stones near the Cotton seems cute too.
The desert coast seems ok too, it lacks lux.
On the western side we can squeeze a mountain city next to the wales too I guess (but it seems rather poor location). I don't mind forest, but thats only forest around there ...

Shacka covets my lands of course, and is hostile (because of a Zulu peasant that was taken by force to work the salt mines in Siberia ). Now if that was standart speed I am pretty sure I can handle this, but now that marathon makes me a bit lost tbh.
For some reason the AI is incredibly poor (I hooked up 2 salts and can't sell any of em). Noone has more than 1 gpt, except Maria and she has salt.

Any suggestions and marathon advices?

I see a good location, but it's right on top of Shaka, and will probably set back your growth big time if you try to back it up with defensive military units.

In the south east there is a forest next to mountain on a river. It is in range of ivory and Mount Kilimanjiro (Mkj). There is good terrain for lots of farms and also mines. IMO it is too good not to try it, although it is so very far away from Moscow.

Mkj gives a permanent Altitude Training attribute to any unit that touches it which is +10% combat strength in hills AND double movement in hills. For example if you have any scouts, they will get 4 hex movement in hills once they touch MKJ as long as the first three tiles it crosses are hills. I'm sure you will get that in a lot of siege situations this attribute is incredible for units which only have 2 movement, for example when an approach to the besieged city is hills. So instead of climbing the hill with a catapult/treb then end turn, it can mount the hill for .5 movement points (MP), use 1 MP to set up, and fire all in the same turn.

I see you went Dance of the Aurora. I think Sacred Waters would be a fine choice also given the amount of rivers.

no need to explain the basics I know what MKJ does. I have already scouts with 4 moves
The MKJ spot is not very good, as its mostly plains. Its some sort of chokepoint, but its way too far. My problem is that this is marathon and building stuff takes forever. There is no need to defend the land from the north on the other hand, as I have no neighbours, still before I build roads getting army to the south will be a nightmare.


Sacred Waters is something I'd never pick in any game. That pantheon is plain useless. It is just a temporary boost of 1-4 happiness and thats it ... Later in the game someone will convert you and you will even lose it, while having a good religion with decent FPT is completely other story.

Dance of Aurora on the right terrain is just slightly worse than Desert Folklore - and I have 7 or 8 good tiles for it in Moscow. I'll probably not chop the deer, but the 3 salts are on the tundra and there are 2 or 3 hills. The eastern coastal expo will have few more tiles as well. I also doubt that I will not get 2nd or max 3rd religion, but thats yet to be seen.

Pff, is noone really playing marathon around here?

This game is becoming a complete joke.
I started a second war with the zulu, so I can enslave another peasant, as I needed workforce.
Since then, I have enslaved 4 more and captured one from the barbs (former japanese). And by the looks of it, Shacka is gonna continue sending me more.

I guess its time to start deleting em. 6 should be more than enough, even with the lot of forests to be chopped This should be way easier than I'd expected. Now its the time to claim some more land before NC. I guess I should just keep that war going. If he continues to waste hammers on workers that would be fantastic )

dragonxxx said:

Pff, is noone really playing marathon around here?

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I've played Epic and Marathon only a handful of times. It was fun actually. You got to spend more time with your army, but I was only playing Emperor level and I don't feel I can help you now.

Uzael36 said:

I've played Epic and Marathon only a handful of times. It was fun actually. You got to spend more time with your army, but I was only playing Emperor level and I don't feel I can help you now.

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Got any idea what the timings are? Seems like its something like 3x standart, as the AIs started getting into classical around T140.

Also, seems like the unhappiness I get from cities is lower. So maybe its a good idea to go 5-6 cities even if I am about to finish tradition soon.

I believe the larger map is balanced to go for more cities with less of a science penalty for additional cities. I'm pretty sure that it is at least 2.5 slower, it may be 3x as you said, but it's been some times since I tried marathon. I spent more time messing with Epic, but this was before coming to the forums, so I didn't really pay attention to that stuff.

yeah, science penalty is lower, I noticed this. But there are other differences too.
And the AI seems to act way weaker tbh (I have 2 unsold salts, noone has more than 2GPT ... ), maybe its because of the awful terrain on the map, there is A LOT of forest from what I've seen.

dragonxxx said:

yeah, science penalty is lower, I noticed this. But there are other differences too.
And the AI seems to act way weaker tbh (I have 2 unsold salts, noone has more than 2GPT ... ), maybe its because of the awful terrain on the map, there is A LOT of forest from what I've seen.

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I tend to exclusively play huge marathon as i just find it most enjoyable and after a lot of experimenting i have found 22 civs and 22 CS to be about the most balanced.

The default of 12 civs and 24 CS means there is just simply way too much room around everyone and you can easily build 10+ cities without even encroaching on another civ. This combined with the relatively passive AI in BNW makes a army pointless past barbarian hunting. Even city spamming you can easily go a couple of hundred turns without being in range of another AI for trade routes especially as in BNW the AI just doesn't seem to want to build any cities especially early in the game.

If you decide to go to war you tend to find yourself having to build a chain of connecting cities to join up your empire because of the huge gaps between empires and because you need to/can build so many cities you soon find yourself with a plethora of resources you simply can't sell because there aren't enough buyers.

With 22 civs and 22 CS's i have found you always start with actual neighbours which means that firstly you can quickly push out caravans but also actually have some competition to worry about on your doorstep rather than half a map away and while there is usually a reasonable amount of space around you to build a decent number of cities you actually have to compete for them and potentially annoy neighbours while expanding so you need to play in a balanced way rather than just doing whatever you want because no one is anywhere near you and won't care where you put your cities.
With so many civs also there is usually at least 1 major competitor for each victory type and often more and diplomacy is generally a lot more interesting as there are a lot more choices as well as a lot more pitfalls, the biggest being it can be hard to actually make a decent block of friends because there is a lot more A likes B and B likes A but B also like C but C hates A so there is usually a lot more risk involved as your friends will often also be friends with someone who hates you and adding to that the fact the DoF's last 150 if you don't pick your friends well you can easily find yourself hated by everyone in a very short period. A lot can happen in 150 turns and your best friend can become your biggest liability.
You don't get that so much on the default settings as there are a lot less variables and no one really ever hates anyone else because everyone is so isolated so there is no friction.

Looking at your map you started 'next to' Shaka but you could probably go the whole game without really building any military and not have to worry about him at all because your so far away even when building 4-6 decent cities that would add resources to your empire and probably another 5-10 filler cities.