Want to know if my match is still worth playing.

ON my second Immortal game I accidentally random civ'd. I got the Ottomans and have been battling happiness problems all game and wondering if I could still catch up at this point. If it is, tips would be appreciated!

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: making a video with commentary and playing it out.

I half take it back. I think this is still winnable but you've managed to put yourself into a very uncomfortable situation on many levels. At a minimum I'll upload a video explaining some of the issues you're having -- and winning the game at this point involves better than Immortal play, if that makes sense.

LordBalkoth said:

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: making a video with commentary and playing it out.

Click to expand...

Oh man, you're better than me. I played a few turns' worth and went, "nope. I'd try a new game."

For what it's worth, I found that hand picking my opponents when starting on immortal was less important than getting them to fight each other. At this difficulty, war is going to break out at about turn 90. If you haven't gotten the AI to DoW each other by then, they are going to come for you. This was a big change from emperor. At immortal and above, it is well worth your while to go into debt or unhappiness to get your hostile neighbor to DoW someone else. Hopefully they then become the worlds pariah and you can attack them later when you're stronger.

Well the first time around I tried to be stubborn and stay Order...even though no one else was Order. But the general situation was bad enough to the point where that was rather difficult. Second try I just switched to Freedom and thus only have to worry about Rome to the left (with Venice/Ethopia loving me because they're both Freedom, DoFs, tribute to them, all of us denouncing Rome, etc). Going much better now.

Primacide- I did that and that was what made Rome so huge If you look closly you can see some Greek peasents still crying about their lost nation.

LordBalkoth- Really? I could have sworn that Russia was Order, might have to check again and better than Immortal play? Thats a long time coming friend (for me anyway )

Wizard452 said:

LordBalkoth- Really? I could have sworn that Russia was Order, might have to check again and better than Immortal play? Thats a long time coming friend (for me anyway )

Click to expand...

Yeah, apparently Russia is...but Russia is on the other side of the world so whatever. First attempt wound up with Rome, Venice, and Ethopia all declaring war and invading. I could hold off Venice and Ethopia easily enough but Rome just had swarms of units and some critical techs.

This second time I just switched to Freedom (took both Venice and Ethopia going Freedom to let me switch to that rather than Autocracy) and it's going far, far better. No happiness problems, DoFs with those two and we're best buds with like 5028948932 positive modifiers, and I have an army in place ready to hold off Rome and actually invade relatively soon.

It's like a night and day difference, really -- will have video up tomorrow I hope, maybe Tuesday worst case. Still need to be careful with Rome looming over you initially but far more recoverable. So I take back what I said about Deity level play...that's if you try to stay Order.

I congratulate you in the switching ideologies part because sometimes you find out better about what ideology people want after you have chosen one and failed. The other ideologies become more favorable and sometimes the change ideology guides you through that smoothly.

Original goal was to wipe the smug look off Augustus's face by conquering his territory and then winning a Science victory (didn't think I'd possibly have time to do full domination at that point in the game). Wound up not managing to do that due to the sheer unit spam from Augustus, had to settle for conquering several of his cities and then winning Science on turn 548 (so basically turn 365 on Standard speed).

Processing videos but here's the main things you need to do:

1. Immediately denounce Rome and pay 5 gpt to Ethopia, Venice, and Arabia. This is basically bribing them to like you. If you do both of these you should get enough positive modifiers to avoid the chain denounce from THEM.

2. As soon as Venice/Ethopia pressure you enough to want Freedom, switch to it. You three will be the best of buds from then on and you can take out emergency loans from Venice (can obtain instant gold in exchange for gpt at an 85% ratio -- useful to promote units on a new tech or rush buy key units/buildings).

3. Russia is...irrelevant. Other side of the world. Rome is your problem and you need to prepare for him to attack. I highly recommend putting a citadel from a Great General one tile west (across the river) from Persepolis. This is the only tile that can be used to attack the city without crossing the river (which eats up the rest of the movement. You basically want a line of defensive units with artillery behind them -- and you will need at least 3-4 AA Guns/Mobile SAMs. Basically the more the better of those because fortified they can stand up quite well to enemy forces (a Mobile SAM is basically an Infantry/Paratrooper/Marine/Tank -- won't be outclassed in melee until Mobile Infantry and Modern Armor. Give them Cover to protect against artillery and plains and Shock for Open Terrain Bonuses and that's your defense).

4. When Rome does attack, it's going to be massive amounts of units that just keep coming. You probably won't believe how many he'll throw at you -- as you get more Great Generals keep throwing down Citadels scattered across your defensive line. He'll also send a small fleet to attack your capital. If you can manage to ally with Antwerp and get a Submarine or three down to help, you can stop his fleet there.

5. If you can survive that onslaught you should be fine eventually -- just focus on pumping up Science with growth/rationalism/Freedom specialists. If I wasn't trying to invade his territory I could have won like 25-50 turns faster, I think -- lost a lot of units trying to push too fast through his horde.

So, funny story. I replayed it to see how going more peaceful went. Despite royally screwing up several things along the way, I easily shaved 18 turns off my victory (with minor problems like not being able to finish Freedom to buy Spaceship Parts...totally minor). 25-50 seems pretty reasonable overall if I had played better.

That said, after beating back Rome's initial invasion I accepted peace...which then caused him to go gobble up Arabia and Venice. So that made me sad -- I was literally a shield against him for the rest of the free world! I even could have stayed at war without any real issues too, that's the funny thing -- kept his units marching into a meatgrinder and using up his resources.

Serves me right for being "nice."

Here's the first two videos -- third one wound up throwing a blue screen error while processing so I had to start the 30 hour processing again from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoXdIxCtXxWcBvQ1_6LalWMKwum6IUwfW

This is the "sloppy" win where I half conquered some stuff and majorly annoyed Rome but resorted to winning Science.

Nice, a lot of micro management (not to good at that myself) and it really opened my eyes to what I missed (aka the benefit of denouncing Rome, and going Freedom among others) Thanks a lot Balkoth!

Well turn 446 Rome declares war

Turn 452 Persepolis Captured

Turn 455 Damascus and Pasagardae Captured

Turn 465 Edirne Captured

Turn 469 Traded Ankara to Rome For Peace

Turn 469 Russia Declares War

Turn 471 Russia Captures Istanbul

Russia is totally Irrevalent

Pre-War statistics- Science 1234 per turn Culture `170 Gold 134 20 happiness

Yeah, Russia becomes relevant when you have basically no army and only one city You're just hosed at that point, period.

You really cannot afford to lose a city -- and in six turns Rome should not have been able to capture Persepolis. I never lost the city and you can see my preparations up through turn 442 on the two videos I uploaded. And that's poor preparation with no Citadels/Forts set up which meant I actually came a lot closer than I'd like to losing the city.

When the third (and final) video is done processing you can take a look at our wars and see why I didn't lose the city at all (and in fact eventually pushed into Rome's territory and took some of their cities) but you did lose the city quite quickly.

It was mostly his rocket artillery, he had dozens of them that I could not damage with mine,(I was 5 turns away from rocket artillery at the beginning of the war and did not have mobile SAMs) I did have 5 anti aircraft guns though

5 turns away shouldn't have been the end of the world. Did you have that Citadel down where I suggested? Did you build any forts for other sections of your defense? Did you have a few "spare" Infantry/AA Guns to rotate out to heal whenever one got too damaged? Did you take Shock I (Open Terrain defense) and then focus on Cover I/II to help protect against all the ranged attackers?

Good news, bad news:

The bad news is that I'm needing to travel this weekend. The good news is that gives me the opportunity to just my computer processing the video over the weekend and I can upload it Sunday night or on Monday.