The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #14 France

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The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #14

Welcome to the Immortal difficulty version of the biweekly The Deity Challenge Lineup-event.

ICL Game #14
You - France
Total Civilizations - 8
Total City States -16
Map – Pangea
Settings – Quick quick combat(turn it back on if you would like). Raging barbarians is turned OFF. Everything else is set to default.
Game Version -
Downloadable Content – G&K, BNW, Conquest of the New World Deluxe, Genghis Khan's Mongolia, Harold Bluetooth's Denmark, Isabella’s Sapin and Pachacuti's Incan Empire, Kamehameha's Polynesian Empire, Nebruchadnezzar's Babylon, Sejong The Great's Korea, Wonders of the Ancient World. The map pack are intentionally excluded.

Starting location:
Spoiler :


Schedule:

Game #1 - July 23th as Japan
Game #2 - August 6th as Poland
Game #3 - August 20th as Ottomans
Game #4 - September 3th as Arabia
Game #5 - September 17th as Brazil
Game #6 - October 1th as Denmark
Game #7 October 15th as Songhai
Game #8 October 29th as Sweden
Game #9 November 13th as India
Game #10 November 26th as Russia
Game #11 December 10th as Germany
Game #12 December 24th as Aztecs
Game #13 January 7th as Egypt
Game #14 January 21st as France

Information & rules cut, pasted and slightly changed from The Deity Challenge Lineup:
Spoiler :
All games in this series will be set to IMMORTAL difficulty. User civilizations, maps, and opponents will change each game, but the pace will always be set at standard and the starting era will always be ancient. We will try for a variety of starts, and not just having a crazy warmonger as your next door neighbor (although there will be that too). This isn't a competition so there will be no predefined victory conditions. New challenges in the series will be posted every other Wednesday.

Who can play?
Anybody can play. The more the merrier. Even if you normally don't play immortal games you are still welcome to try. The games can become great learning resources for the player trying to improve. Even if you don't finish the game, we are still interested to hear about your experience.

Do's and Don'ts
We are going to be using the honor system. Feel free to restart, reload, play the same game multiple times, but don't use the science overflow exploit. Also please don't edit the game in IGE. If you do chose to cheat, please don't share your results in the comments. Also, please use the spoiler tag if you post a picture, comment about neighboring civs, close by wonders, or locations of ancient ruins.

Also, please tell us about your Build Order, Social Policies, Tech Order, and what type of wonders you went after. I know a lot of this stuff seems pretty mundane to the experienced player, but the details are incredibly useful to people trying to learn.

Future Games in the Series
I want users to submit saves from turn 0. Preferably the person submitting the game has played enough turns to know the map is either difficult, fun, or unique in some enjoyable way. Write a short description as to why it is special and email the save to immortalchallengelineup@gmail.com

Important
If you submit a game for the challenge, you must have the DLC map packs disabled. Not everybody has them and they are honestly kind of useless. Having them disabled will allow more participants.
 

Attachments

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I'm posting pretty early because tomorrow is a Holiday for some people.

If you can swing it, I'd like to see Notre Dame, Louvre and Eiffel Tower all in Paris.

Bonne chance mes amis!
 
Turn 97

Spoiler :
Things are going pretty smoothly. This map suits my play style. Just hope I don't mess it up. I've left it a bit late to attack, but the empire is in place. 6 cities, a ton of luxes. DoF with everyone except my first victim, who was the neighbour to the West who I had to pay to attack people that weren't me while I set up my little republic.

Full Liberty, hard built Oracle, used policy to make a GE to finish NC. Delayed upgrading to CBs so I could spend money on other things, but now have 5 CBs, 2 horses, 2 spears. Probably enough for the first two victims. The AI has no money as usual (something I never get used to after Deity).

More to follow.
 
Yes, I hope I don't mess up.

This on Turn 110
Spoiler :
I have a 3 city empire going. Tradition > Full Liberty.



Here is a few turns later, Turn 147.
Spoiler :

I'm putting all the hammer buildings up in my three cities. You can't see, but I have the Heroic Epic up in Paris. The other two cities have Armories.

 
What is HE?

P.S> Image link not working.
 
France HAS to be CV of course! On Immortal will be like taking candy from a baby!
(however to get Notre Dame... I will need better terrain than the starting location)
 
Spoiler :
Glad to see I'm not the only one that took the gamble to move to the hill to settle.

62 turns in, Attila already spreading like a disease. Unfortunately already planted two cities in my path to the capital so I'm not too sure what to do there. City #2 1 tile NE of the forest for Uluru in range. Pacal settled a city between it an the capital he may (see will be) providing me city #3.

Apparently Attila stole every one else's ability to spawn Settlers as he has like 6 cities and Maya/Morocco only have two cities. :confused:

Going to go Full Tradition/Left side honor. Kind of wishing I would have done the Honor/Commerce just cause. With only Morocco east, it would be easy enough to grab his Capital, then head West for Attila/Dido/Pocatello. A little concerned about Pacal's territory, all the jungle around is going to make it rough to get through, may have to wait on it.
 
I might have over extended too soon. One of the AI might get Louvre before I can.

Turn 147 740 AD
Spoiler :


Spoiler :


Spoiler :


Spoiler :


T182 1220 AD
Spoiler :


And just one more picture...
Spoiler :
 
T169 Update

Spoiler :
I took Attila's Court, Palenque, then Marrakesh, and replaced Attila's crap 2nd city with a decent one that has KSM in it's workable hexes. Next will be Pocatello, then Cathy. I may stop at that point and win by culture or finish them off with artillery and bombers.

The only part of Napoleon's uniques I've used is the Chateaux. I have put them literally everywhere. I have a huge empire, probably 80% of all the luxes in the game, bags of money, some good CS alliances. Impossible to mess it up from here, I think.


Thanks for this map! Perfect for Liberty Domination.
 
T169 Update

Spoiler :
I took Attila's Court, Palenque, then Marrakesh, and replaced Attila's crap 2nd city with a decent one that has KSM in it's workable hexes. Next will be Pocatello, then Cathy. I may stop at that point and win by culture or finish them off with artillery and bombers.

The only part of Napoleon's uniques I've used is the Chateaux. I have put them literally everywhere. I have a huge empire, probably 80% of all the luxes in the game, bags of money, some good CS alliances. Impossible to mess it up from here, I think.


Thanks for this map! Perfect for Liberty Domination.

I'd love to see some screen shots! I see one problem for Dom:

Spoiler :
Russia is protected my a mountain range. In my game she has Great Wall and Himeji. I hope to finish her with Range Artillery. That's why I put all those Trfebs out. My version of the vaunted French 75mm. LOL!

Now that I just won World's Fair, I will have Honor finished in a jiffy.
 
@Budweiser

Spoiler :
After the rush of the DCL#17, I'm taking things more leisurely on this one. Plus Immortal is way easier. But this map is real fun. Therefore, I'm going to probably nuke Cathy and Dido, or rub my sweaty blue jeans in their face and force them to listen to Immortal Technique (excuse the pun). Or both.
 
consentient
Spoiler :
Yes, this series is for fun. Most Immortal maps cannot compare to a deity game.
 
There really needs to be another difficulty in between Immortal and Deity. Immortal is more fun but not really difficult minus the odd game here and there but Deity can be boring at times having to turtle, beeline and puppet master the AI to catch up 90% of the time. Anyway:

Spoiler :
Settled one tile to the south because it seemed like nothing to the north and got lucky with the stone and marble in range. Settled my next 2 cities in the exact same spots as budweiser did in the same order. Mausoleum of Halicarnassus T80 and the Oracle T100 in Paris, nobody went tradition so I built the Hanging Gardens in Orleans T114 and I'll make it my guild city(built National Epic there as well). NC also up in Paris T114. Went for Notre Dame in Orleans needing 20 turns but Russia built in with 3 turns left, pissed because I could have had it in 13 turns in Paris but though an army was more important.

Attila settle exactly where I wanted my 4th city(west on the rive beside the wine) and was coming for me so I sent him off after the Shoshone(Great Wall) and Portugal for 5 horses and 1GPT lol. Got my religion and took +2 faith per wonder and monasteries(I believe). Money is rolling in with cargoships to Morocco so bought University, Workshop, Garden and Windmill in Paris while building up an army for Attila. Took "my" 4th city from Attila and I think it actually had a French city name with Attila's city name steal thingy. Tried to liberate Tyre but had to peace out. Now at t170 with his capital about to fall but I'm down to a trebuchet, longswordsman and 2 crossbowman and damn Dido is looking to snake it from me, she all ready has Lisbon and all of Shoshone cities except capital

Also on the fence about settling another city to get King Soloman's mines, far from home if I don't capture Attila's court but so tempting
 
There really needs to be another difficulty in between Immortal and Deity. Immortal is more fun but not really difficult minus the odd game here and there but Deity can be boring at times having to turtle, beeline and puppet master the AI to catch up 90% of the time.

It's true that there is a huge gap between the two. However what you say about the limited gameplay of Deity is what some say about Immortal. It's just a matter of perspective meaning Deity is where the challenge is at for you so you feel you have to bring a very safe game to win. With more wins and experience you'll see that Deity still allows for a lot of experimentation if you want to have fun rather than finishing fast. There's no denying there are more limitations of course :) Just as Immortal has more than Emperor.
 
I have to say, Acken, that I disagree with you if you are saying that Deity is not as narrow as Benzy is suggesting.

Is it not true that there are only really a handful of strategies that work consistently? For example, if you want to grow and get ahead in tech, then everyone knows that you HAVE TO do certain things - NC, Education, Public Schools, Guilds, blah de blah. Or you can de-prioritise that but go all-out military.

I feel that the games that deviate significantly from this and still have a victory, are usually sub-optimal to the point where they would not work a good portion of the time - i.e. the player got lucky. I LOVE Maddjinn's videos but the Venice and India ones he was really lucky to have won.

For alternatives, I've tried that Piety-Small Civ strategy and it's really situational. SS is obviously ludicrously unsuitable for Deity. In testing Tommynt's Trad/Lib mix with Poland I've personally only had success about 25% of the time.

Sure, one can always get better as a player, but to be good at Deity you have less options than you do at Immortal, and I agree with Benzy19, that at Immortal level, those of us who can win 50% of the time or more on Deity (which I'm at the lower end of) generally find Immortal too easy.

After all that is said,and to return to the topic, this map is really fun, even if it's a bit too easy for me. I just like the layout and having the space for a real empire.

Screenshot of aforementioned empire attached (SPOILER)
 
Well that's why I still said that you still are restricted somewhat and more than on immortal. What I mean is that no it's not like there is some sort of dichotomy between the two. I agree that it is narrowER but not TOO narrow. Unless you want best finish times, but in that case even Prince is restrictive.

You cannot play randomly, that's not what I'm suggesting, you can't do that on Immortal either anyway which is why I'm saying it's a matter of perspective, as some people feel immortal is already too exigent. I've seen people say they prefer to play at Prince because they don't want to learn a build ! So you still have to play well, I'm not denying that, but you do have options. Hell even DCLs are a proof of that as players often achieve victories using different ideas.

If I can give you an analogy, think of it as 2 Dark souls players. One will feel the game is too restrictive and only one or 2 playstyle is allowed because it's the one that works best for his current mastery of the game. He feels he can't use this or that weapon, must upgrade it and soul levels are important. On the other hand another player can feel the game can be beaten using any strategy (even the craziest crappy weapon + naked + SL1) because the rest of his mechanics compensates.

And yes I recognize that the gap in difficulty between Imm and Deity is big and the game could probably have gone away with Emperor, put Immortal at 6 ans then an intermediate between the 2.
 
I have to say, Acken, that I disagree with you if you are saying that Deity is not as narrow as Benzy is suggesting.

Is it not true that there are only really a handful of strategies that work consistently? For example, if you want to grow and get ahead in tech, then everyone knows that you HAVE TO do certain things - NC, Education, Public Schools, Guilds, blah de blah. Or you can de-prioritise that but go all-out military.

I feel that the games that deviate significantly from this and still have a victory, are usually sub-optimal to the point where they would not work a good portion of the time - i.e. the player got lucky. I LOVE Maddjinn's videos but the Venice and India ones he was really lucky to have won.

For alternatives, I've tried that Piety-Small Civ strategy and it's really situational. SS is obviously ludicrously unsuitable for Deity. In testing Tommynt's Trad/Lib mix with Poland I've personally only had success about 25% of the time.

Sure, one can always get better as a player, but to be good at Deity you have less options than you do at Immortal, and I agree with Benzy19, that at Immortal level, those of us who can win 50% of the time or more on Deity (which I'm at the lower end of) generally find Immortal too easy.

After all that is said,and to return to the topic, this map is really fun, even if it's a bit too easy for me. I just like the layout and having the space for a real empire.

Screenshot of aforementioned empire attached (SPOILER)

Well indeed I agree deity has much less options than immortal (in immortal you can pretty much do anything as AIs will NEVER win until t350-400 or even after!) but I doubt being just a little suboptimal means you have to get lucky to win... (myself I don't open rationalism first when entering Rennaissance, I don't beeline plastics, going for fertilizer or archaeology first... sometimes I don't even beeline education, etc. you can still win easily; it's easy enough to sit still and bribe AIs to war while you sign RAs after RAs and cheesily launch before t300)

But perhaps we feel it's too restrictive because we ourselves are lacking in skill; I.E not being creative enough/not having the skills to pull off less conventional strats... or rather... not knowing/being able to discern when the landscape allows for conventional strats and when it doesn't.

For example why doesn't someone try going liberty and then selling cities to AI? Going domination without worrying about happiness and using heathen conversion? I'm sure if we open our minds we can think of outrageous strategies that can work with some tweaking...
 
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