The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #3 - Ottomans

I had two goals for this game: First to iron out my peaceful CV strategies, and second to see if I could leverage some early Piety policies into anything useful. Immortal is a good test bed since I don't need to worry about aggression but there is enough wonder competition to develop useful lessons.

So how is that Piety/Tradition opening? I think t150 is a good place to look since by the midgame the empire has enough time to let early benefits/penalties accumulate.

Comparing to full Tradition I have:

++ Faith (Piety Faith + Mosques. CS faith quests are all mine.)
+ Happy (I took shrine happiness - this offsets with the missing Aristocracy. Mosques.)
++ Culture (Mosques)
- Infrastructure (No free Aqueducts, more hammers needed for Shrines/Temples, No bonuses)
-- Population (No Landed Elite, Trad finisher or free Aqueducts. Still the t150 pop is not too bad.)
-- Tech accumulation (The need for early Engineering and lower pop leaves a 10-15 turn gap. That hurts since it costs me many of the Renaissance wonders).
<> GPT (religion gold goes to not-free and extra buildings)

Comparing to Full liberty I have:

++ Faith
++ Happy
++ Culture
-- Hammers
- Pop (Collective Rule is effectively substantial Hammers + Food)
- Tech (no Liberty finisher, both need Eng.)
+ GPT

Even though this is not strictly an inferior opening, those early hammers, pop, and tech progression outweigh the benefits here (as expected).



Thanks to Venice there is still room to expand on this map. I'm going to add two more cities: one in the north and one by Kilimanjaro. No thanks to Venice I keep losing CS allies. I'd declare war and snipe that MoV, but we have a DoF and I don't want the diplomatic demerit.



The 7th city. Worth building? I'm not so sure. This city needs (at a minimum) a University, Opera House, and Hotel to not be a drag on my game. That is a lot to establish quickly.



And now the lesson in humility. This game dragged on far too long (to t280) for a game with t234 Internet.

Mistakes:

- Proposing the world's fair in the first vote. This interferes too much with the need for Schools, Factories, Museums, and Archeologists all at the same time. A Peaceful CV is really a "hammer victory" I think

- Not focusing enough on Archeologists. I had bad luck with digs - despite founding 7 cities only 3 are within my borders and none by the cap! Still, I should have been able to dig most sites and instead only got ~11.

- Poor renaissance tech pathing. Of all the lovely cultural Renaissance wonders I only built the Sistine Chapel. I should have gone Printing Press first. For culture Pisa is probably better than early Observatories. I'll be ahead in the Industrial Era either way.

- Too aggressive International Games timing. Honestly, I expected the Immortal AIs to roll over more easily than they did. France is the problem (more below). Because I had proposed these too early I was again hammer constrained and so missed the optimal tourism peak for Musicians. (I voted down my own Proposal but was outvoted).

Internet in 1 turn:



Why is France a problem? Well Napoleon had a very good start with plenty of land for Chateaux spam. He also had a Wonder Spamming cornucopia in Paris:



All this means that in terms of culture and wonder competition this felt more like a Deity game than a typical Immortal game. A 50k culture hurdle.



I wasn't going to post more about this game after t100, but I learned plenty here for my next peaceful CV attempt.

Nappy wonder spammed in my game too, almost all the same wonders as he had in your game. Thank god there is this cheap way out to win called a DV

I took a look at my autosave because I wanted to see what kind of land Napoleon was working with. I expected the salt, but, wow, is that a nice capital. 5 of the 6 tiles in the 1-ring are amazing.



Also, who in their right mind thinks this is a good place to build?

Nappy started becoming a beast, he knocked Pacal down to one city, got more of his wonders, and now has the GW. He's been over double everybody's score half the game. I finally got SoL, so I am first in prod, but still 2nd in science. Not having any Tradition or Rationalism has made this a challenge. I was/am building late wonders with no Factories - lost Broadway to him but did pound out Eiffel, whew.

I just got World Ideology-Freedom passed, and bumped 10 happy for me and sent everyone else down quite a bit. Nappy and Bill-O are Order, Iroq Autocracy. I almost helped Persia get our (and Iroq's) religion passed to boot, missed by 2 votes. I am hoping Persia goes Freedom, might flip Iroq soon.

My thoughts of a Frigate rush on Khan evaporated as Persia started pounding his cap - I had to race more units to try to block - Persia must have had a GAge because I saw a unit move 3 (pic). Khan didn't hit a single unit of mine for 3-4 tursn, all Persia, LOL. I took it out at 0 health just before Persia did. Meanwhile I bribed France to DOW Venice, going on like 60 turns now. My two units are blocking approaches (pic) enough to keep Nappy from taking Kuala - he took down Hong Kong in no time. My XB is where he is because Venice had a MoV heading that way. He still hasn't puppeted with it - Kabul has been ripe forever.


I have been able to faith buy a couple RLabs, still have 1 to finish and 1 to faith buy. My goal is still to not buy any culture GP's - being the lone Exploration dude there are several artifacts to get. I have built several Civs Landmarks - this map has sucked tho... Only 3 sites in my borders, most of the others in foreign territories and no coal. My crappy Konya city does have 11 Aluminum tho!

Nappy was a beast the whole game. I was able to 6 unit block Venice's Kuala Lampur for almost 200 turns, but I couldn't stop him from nearly wiping Bill-O off the map late game. He was taking down full-size cities in 2 turns with RAs and Copters. He had 99% of techs (!!!) and was building GDR's. I never had the tech lead, and even with Scholasticism I maxed out at only 1200s bpt. I'm pretty sure if I had let him take down Venice he could have steamrolled the entire map.

I hit him with 4 GM bombs between 4k and 7k influence, and it still took forever (I have never needed GM bombs before in a CV, even on Deity). I was gaining less than half a percent/turn, even though I had all modifiers possible, with 762 raw and 1,303 adjusted tourism. His end culture was 105k (mine was 79k).


I should have built CN Tower, but I already had most of my Towers built - once he hit that it really slowed me down. I was only able to get Louvre and SOH for WW theming. I had 21 GWorks/Artifacts, 8 GWritings, and 5 GWMusic. With hidden Antiquity Sites you sometimes pop cool bonuses like culture or GWritings. I had to get multiple Sites from most civs, and it's hard to build precious buildings when you are pumping out Archeologists constantly.

I had full Liberty, Patronage, Exploration, and Aesthetics, and 8 in Freedom. Nappy had Full Tradition, Liberty, Aesthetics, 4 in Rationalism, and 12 Order. I never did get anyone to flip to Freedom, even though I had Nappy, Persia, and Iroq in the hurtbag a long time. I saw multiple spawns of Rebel Infantry while they were warring away from the spawns, lots of pillaging.



Nappy didn't seem to appreciate the 4 A Bombs I hit him with after the GM Bomb, so he returned the favor. Strangely, I never saw No Nukes as a Proposal option the whole game (?).

First city was an immediate forward settle on the Maya. It was the best general spot I could see and blocked off a big swath of land. Given the unique units and ability, the plan was 99% to go for domination, with science victory as a remote back-up plan. The only early wonder was Pyramids, which is perfect for reconfiguring new cities after capture. There were two early worker steals, one from Pacal and the other from Genghis.

Early tech order was based upon luxuries, so Masonry first and then calendar, writing, and then sailing. Fishing boats take a long time to build, so I needed to build up a little production first. See the later section where Genghis destroys them all . The next wave of techs was philosophy, construction (restless neighbors), and then straight to Education. Policies were full liberty, and later full rationalism. This was a slow start map, National College was T93. I took scientist/academy with the Liberty finisher. The timing was off for using finisher on engineer/NC. Education was a little late, it came around T110. Started up cargo ships for early city growth, but transitioned them to production boosts in the mid-game.



I considered a composite bow rush, but instead decided to wait until I was closer to the unique units before going on the offense. After education, it was straight to gunpowder for the unique unit. First, and by far the easiest capital was Mayan at turn T140. He was clearly behind due to lack of space to settle. The original plan was to get Napoleon under control, so I pushed for Tikal so that I could be in contact with French territory. I foolishly thought that it would be pretty easy to start a conflict between William and Napoleon, and then swoop in after most of the carnage was complete.



Unfortunately, taking Tikal unleashed a firestorm of diplomatic hatred toward me, and I was DOWed by William, Genghis, Darius, and Venice simultaneously. This hatred was previously directed at Genghis, fortunately I got the Janissary at this time. The biggest pushes came from Netherlands and Venice, and rather annoyingly Genghis was hell bent on destroying every single trade route and fishing boat that I had. So much for attacking Napoleon next. Instead, I had to pay Napoleon to DOW William as a distraction, while I pushed toward Venice.

This was by far the most difficult capture in the game, most of my experienced Janissaries were killed by a group of longswords, and a bunch of very angry Venetians, obviously upset that I ruined the pleasure cruise they were taking on the large galleas they had in the harbor. The problems started when a fully healed, elite Janissary got killed in a single turn by things I could not see in the fog, which had a domino effect on the front line. Janissaries are an awesome unit, the ability to heal upon kill is very powerful. But, they can&#8217;t sink boats, no matter how hard you try . So, I brought some cannons with me, but Venice didn't fall until T195. You won't see many units left in the screenshot because the entire front line was annihilated. Venice was my primary target, simply because it contained the Forbidden Palace, for the happiness boost.



Back to the original plan, kill Napoleon before he gets out of control. I had several bulbs saved up, and right after scientific theory I used them to get artillery. Artillery made things much easier. Simply bring down city defenses with artillery, and then run in with a mounted unit and capture. Repeat as many times as necessary. Paris was mine on T235, and fortunately Paris was a happy land, as Napoleon had built nearly every happiness wonder in it, including Notre Dame. Napoleon managed to take Amsterdam, but that particular situation was only temporary. Unfortunately, I enraged the entire world again due to my warmongering ways, and got DOWed again by everyone except Darius. William, Genghis, and Hiawatha went into perma-war state on me, nothing but taking their cities would make them stop sending mass waves of outdated units at me.



I proposed and won the World's Fair, and put a couple of these policies into Patronage to keep costs of bribing city states down. I went order, but ideology did not play a major role in this game, I picked the great person boost, all happiness boosts, factory boost, and finally the free courthouse on capture.

The next part of the master plan went into effect, build naval units, use the Ottoman unique ability, and take the remaining capitals, which were on the coast. After all, I wanted the full Ottoman experience. Unfortunately, I neglected to check a major detail, as there was no southern passage at the bottom of the map. I think this happened between play sessions, and I just assumed that I had checked for a southern passage when I came back to the game. Woops! So, the destroyers that I had built in Venice ended up being locked into the wrong ocean. Scout dummy. So, go to back up plan, mounted units and artillery, backed up by bombers with anti-unit upgrades.



The next capitals were mainly an issue of logistics, first Genghis, then Darius, and finally Hiawatha. I got modern armor right before the end of the game, so I just missed the enjoyment of running over top of muskets. Oh well, the game was over the minute Paris was taken, the rest was mainly a mop-up procedure. Except for happiness wonders, almost every wonder went late in this game, due to the state of constant warfare. Everyone was too concerned about my early warmongering.

Getting DOWed by most of the world at once slows you down. Also, a good partner would have sped things up quite a bit, I just could not quite get Hiawatha fully on board with that partnership. Normally he city spams and then gets aggressive, but it just did not work out that way this time around.

My plan was to stay coastal with internal trade routes and go tradition > exploration > ... depending on how the game went. I took god of the sea pantheon early which I immediately regretted after seeing all of the tundra hills. However it turned out to be pretty awesome with cities 3 & 4 having 4 sea resources each. Somehow I managed to get first religion too with only 3 faith/turn.

I wasn't planning on going science victory but when I got 3/4 cities with mountains all connected on the coast it was by far my best bet. The position was super defensible with lots of hills blocking western cities and a 1 tile land bridge to Mongols on the east.

This made for a pretty uneventful game. I only went to war once when France forward settled me then tried to sneak attack at around T75?ish, but I had just gotten composite bowmen and it was an easy defense. From then on I only upgraded my units just enough to deter an attack. Most of my military came from CS gifts. I pretty much stayed Friendly with all AIs throughout the game until the last 20 turns or so. I only made DOF/RAs with Venice and Iroquois to avoid being sucked into the Mongol/French/Dutch neverending war.

Never used a single Ottoman ability or either of the unique units, unfortunately.

I've played up to the first 150turns, which have been uneventful so far. The attached screens show the initial exploration and the buildup to an upcoming war with the Maya.

Build orders etc not very exciting, went for tradition and afterwards for exploration as all my cities are coastal. Moved the settler to the mountain site, and got the stone circles pantheon, which also resulted in getting a religion (didn't record the turns). Tithe, Pagodas, swords to plowshares and messiah.

BO Capital:
Scout-monument-granary-scout-warrior-worker-archer-settler-shrine-spear-library-cargo ship-worker-spear-stone thing-collossus-NC(t106 very late)-water mill-compbow-barracks-swordman-compbow-settler-settler-market-compbow-swordsman-workboat(bought)-pikeman

t60 city2: shrine, library,granary,temple,trireme,trireme,workboat,workboat
t129 city3: wall
t131 city4: library

Judging by the other screens from people I'm really really slow on science buildup:

empire wide \ turn----50----100---150
gpt--------------------1------22----51
bpt--------------------10-----27----68
pop--------------------7------14----30
prod-------------------14-----29----38
happy-----------------18-----21-----34
workers---------------1------3-------3


NC t106, education t134
classical t74, medieval t109

Techs:
Pottery-mining-masonry-archery-writing-AH-BrzW-Cal-Sail-Phi-IW-Dr&P-Phi-Wheel-Construction-Theo-Trading-HBR-Math-Curr-CS-Edu-Eng-MC-Steel

Waiting for steel to finish to upgrade my army and go kill the Mayans.

With respect to the world:
France is the major power in the south, they have been eating up the Dutch, of whom I also killed a lonely settler which came wandering my way. The Maya forward settled their first city on me, and have recently sprung up some spam cities.

On the east Persia is dominating, they have eliminated the Mongols and have an army massing near my 'escape the lake' city. Funny to see such a similar city placement for a lot of us . Persia declaring on me is a major worry, so I'll have to ensure that maybe the Iroquis declare on them first. Napoleon is sure to come after me once I start hitting the Mayans. Happyness will be a problem as I'm at 0 now.

Further remarks upon this game:
funny map with all the inland seas... not much of a map to use the Ottomans special ability though. Another obervation: very few huts! I think I got three in total, and all pretty much useless.

If anyone of you would like to comment on my game, please also find the save attached.


View attachment Suleiman_0150 AD-0800.Civ5Save

But when i had to decide what to do and how to enter renaissance, i saw france and persia culture output and gave up the CV plan, i'm not good enough to deal with this...
So i was going for a DV but looks like i did a small mistake with the proposal, everyone started to hate me and couldnt buy any votes, but i planned this by keeping myself far ahead in science.

ended in space again, i'd really like to learn how to deal with other VC cause the only one i managed on immortal is the france CV which was pretty easy and ended pretty late.

I got my population growing better than ICL2 at the beginning but playing with a Freedom-based SV strategy was SO wrong here. I had major happiness problems due to massive French Order tourism/ culture output which stalled my growth. I also diverted to clear out the Inca who had forward-settled my land and built Big Ben. At that point I should have taken the Domination option that suited both map and leader. Eventually eked out a turn 300 SV.