The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #3 - Ottomans

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.

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t39 damn it, the capital is sitting on a big ass lake not a coast. Well I suppose other cities can be build on the coast and as luck would have it there is a single tile landmass to the north about 6 tiles west of Karakorum. I might drop a city there just to ferry my units in and out.

291 Sloppy Dom victory I got cheeky and dropped two cities in the late game in an attempt to get my frigates out of the land locked mess after capturing Venice (Pic Related) But unfortunately i single ice tile blocks the way so instead of a frigate powered victory I had to wait on battleships.
Social Polices were Honor/Exploration/Rationalism to Secularism and Free thought and a Autocracy as my Ideology. Was a slow game but I turned alot of culture by getting the Hidden Archeology Sites

The Mountain was a good choice, 2 crab, 1 sugar, 1 marble

see old faithful to the north, can settle on the coast, and catch 3 sea resources.. food will be a problem for city 2... Went an early sailing, after pottery... maybe the prize ship will help.


Pacal forward settle on me, and the Mongols have blocked the prime spot to the north, on the tundra, but I can still settle beside the copper, fresh water, and the city will act like a canal. 1st settler from the liberty tree, second is 6 turns away.



I will finish National College (NC) late, turn 98. Funky map, Large inland sea, small inland sea, Pacal is my buffer against france, and the mongols and persia are at war... Hiawatha is a friend. city 4 will be to the south by the gems...



Pacal decides to send a settler for the gems, I declare war and take the settler, we exchange blows for a few turns, and then he offers a white peace... I accept.

Perisa has taken the mongols capital, and france is pounding the Netherlands, while Hiawatha just sets there with his four isolated cities.

I have been selling my iron to france. He has been on the war path since, but he has had every single WLTKD resource, that Istanbul wants. So it has made that cheaper and easier...



Tech path has been just a little different, education around 120, then to optics, then navigation for frigates, since I have all that iron, then to machinery turn 162. I am preparing for war that is coming...

France has all but destroyed the netherlands, Perisa is growing, and Hiawatha still sits at 4 cities and venice has started taking city states.

And prize ships has yield exactly 2 galleys, both destroyed before getting them back to my territory.

Go to war with pacal, with france, I am about to take Tikal, when Pacal offers up a peace deal giving me Tikal... I take it, a size 22 city, but it makes me slightly unhappy... France will have Pacal's capital soon, as I tech for Dynamite...



Artillery are up, Scientific theory in 4 more turns, turn 226, France owns the western region, Persia and venice own the eastern region, and Hiawatha, sets with 4 cites still... maybe because he went full piety, then full aesthetics, and has finally entered liberty. Time to try and take france down, just look at all those wonders... I have artillery, Janissary and siphias... France's army is off finishing off the netherlands..



time for sleep...

I think the only reasonably way to play Piety is either to mix it with Liberty or Tradition. I chose Tradition for this game. Might go into a peaceful culture victory.

t100 Policies.



I went for a 5 city NC (t97). Religion was founded in the late 60s (Stone Circles, Tithe, Mosques). So far I've bought a missionary and a Mosque. Seems weak to me, but certainly playable. I'm getting 8gpt from religion which I guess is alright for this point in the game.

I think the direction of the game is pretty clear - I'm not gonna win a popularity contest nor will I be buying votes for DV. Meet & DoW is the way to go - last DCL was so much lacking early wars so I though I'll start a few. DoWing when meeting and accepting no peace deals obviously prevents any trading in the game but to avoid still excessive income I'll play with some other rules as well.

- no navy nor sea trade routes
- no roads at all, existing ones will be removed immediately
- I'll stick with one self-built city, capitals may be annexed

I might also convert the world to my crappy religion and/or go for total domination. It depends on how long this game is about to become. The start wasn't too bad but moving without roads may be too painfully boring.




Palenque down T63. Not much of a Mayan opposition anywhere nor any buildings apart from library but the 2nd city is in so crappy place I'll head for France instead which is the point leader and more conveniently located than the Netherlands.




Not too many troops here either but Nappy just build GW for me, good man.



T94 Paris down after a siege that took longer than expected. Swordmen hurt and I had to take tech detour to see his iron which apparently came from someone else.




T135 & Amsterdam down - Parthenon & Terracotta but not a single other building while Rotterdam had a Uni amongst other things. I just think that there's not enough happiness to keep cities apart from capitals Orleans being an exception as I needed it for a citadel bomb.


Policywise 3 in Tradition, then very sloooow left side of Honor as I seriously lack culture and oddly enough Legalism only gave a Monument in Istanbul - I had to hard build monuments/amfis elsewehere.
As expected money is a luxury here and not something to give away to CSs. Only trade route was established @T105 as there wasn't a safe route available.
T12 pantheon, T68 religion, T83 NC, T90 Mausoleum of Halicarnassum for the money, T113 Statue of Zeus as it was available and it'll be handy, T123 Machinery & Education on T135

Teching has been slow and will be slow but I hope spying will compensate that the problem being that I don't know where the capitals are as the DoW on sight resulted two very dead scouts.

Somehow this looks like a dom game again but one must (re)learn that, too. France was dead T113 and I probably will kill William & Pacal before heading East so my side of the continent is cleared from others. Genghis tried to settle a troll city but haven't seen others.

I decided to go Liberty, because I really should get better at using it, but I don't know that I progressed at all this try. I got all 5 city sites I wanted, even though the 5th is a piece o'crap so far, my guess is it will have oil. There is a cool island way to the W - years ago I would always love to settle islands with lots of fish and get to Seaports and all 3 production buildings. In that vein I am going Exploration for all the nice coastal bonuses. I took a GE for finisher, and built Machu, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

I built the Artist Guild in Edirne because that city will become a behemoth when it expands further. Forward settling Khan caused no problems - since he allied the nearest CS he had to march a looong way S to take his first kill, then he backed up and took another. Lots of war suggestions against him, but no DOW by anybody yet. He didn't kill Persia, which surprised me, and hasn't built a 2nd city yet. Nappy is getting pretty big, and is warring Pacal, who again has the GW, so nothing much there.

I am contemplating a Frigate rush (which I've never done) on Khan - I took God of the Sea, and spent a lot of the early game building FBoats (which is slooow), then semi-bee-lined Compass for more gold. T92 NC as a result with 3 cities, and really late to Education, t136 I guess. I got the first pantheon, hit a Faith ruin, and was 1st for some Faith CS meets, so I just derped along and forgot to build Shrines or anything, so no religion. I thought I would finish Liberty with a GP, or build Hagia Sophia, but Venice beat me to it. Khan's religion has Pagodas, so if I take it I can maybe spread it hard. Nobody is spamming Missionaries yet.

I am not entirely in the mood for a DomV, but it is tempting to take the lower tree after Frigates and see what the UU's are made of... For now I am happy to be a fisherman. I may try a CV with no Aesthetics - just rely on my snazzy pith helmet and come bursting through the saw grass...

The game itself is @T250 as I decided to out of curiosity finish the game with Xbows which aren't very effective against 80+ def cities but the incompetence of the AI is spectacular as ever.

Capitol was really nice but the expos all had problems of either low production or low food.

Genghis did his typical idiot move of taking over a CS which angered everybody so once I denounced him everybody was my buddy. But after a spy was caught by Nappy and I started stealing CS influence from him he wasn't happy and wouldn't trade with me once he went Order.

I won WF, IG and passed as many cultural things as possible to suck up to all the cultural freaks. Good thing I did because I'm pretty sure the whole map would have gone to war with me as I was slowly losing friends once the Order gang was in full gear and Venice denounced me. Happiness was good till the last 15 turns then it dropped like a rock and I had to battle rebels but no matter.

Policy was full tradition + full rati + 4 in pat + 7 in freedom.

Only wonders I built were Oracle, SoL + CN Tower.

37 votes to win it.


As typical most went Order ugh


Final map

The pathway to Venice included taking Hong Kong & Riga and I really wished I could raze CSs - life would've been so much easier.




T246 finally captured Karakorum as it the population seemed stuck in 17. 3 GG bombs at least gor it down from 33 which was a bit too much for my (lack of) happiness besides xp from killing units around it was welcomed.




T249 Onondaga. The land around cities offered greater resistance than the Iroquois units. After 3 GAs turned into a Golden Age I actually had the cash to ally Praha - the only other option would've been to capture it.


T267 end with Persopolis which is located in too friendly place but taking nearby CS, cutting the forest and bombing twice it went down in a reasonable time. It was helped by the fact that Darius had more missionaries than other units combined. I also saw my first amphibious missionary near Onondaga.





Severe lack of culture especially in the early stages resulted far fewer policies than usually but the deal history is nice and clean. Autocracy was chosen randomly as it was irrelevant at that point. Order would've solved my happiness problems but I wanted to stay away from it for once.

Nothing too surprising unless one counts the AI incompetence as such - it just seems to reach new hights everytime.

Lack of happiness & money controls the pace though I deliberately slowed down my tech pace by not building PSs or Observatories - I wanted to see if I could finish the game with Xbows before AI learns to fly. Only the Mongols had a proper army and CSs were in general far more dangerous than anyone else. All 4 GAs were used for golden ages as it was the only time I could get a positive gpt and ultimately allowed me to ally with Praha for some culture but mainly to give easier access to Hiawatha & Darius.

Religion didn't give me much as Darius converted everyone with endless missionaries. I bought two engineers and few Pagodas but I had a prophet watching the scenery for the last 150 turns so it was hardly a great effort of me.

Hard build BB and Eiffel & Brandenburg by GEs - none of them was badly needed but I had to build something and I didn't wanna build money all the time. The lack of roads made it pointless to build any late units. Half a dozen extra Janissaries would've been nice but instead of meat shields I needed spots to from.

Pretty much pointless excercise, again, but managing the # of units without money or happiness was somewhat interesting though moving troops without roads was even more painful I expected which wasn't helped by the AI's lazyness what comes to clearing marshes etc.

Game was not hard nor interesting.
i tried to get a CV without knowing which factors were important.
So my tech rate was poor but still always #1 in literacy (immortal AI really is not very good..).
I build a lot of wonders after expanding to 3 cities and NC by Turn 100 (too late as well) including Sistine Chapel, Louvre, Eiffel Tower (no Uffizi, Pisa, Forbidden Palace, PT, ) but alle the modern wonder which are interesting because the AI teched to slow.
Won Worlds Fair, Lost the Games by 10 Hammer to Darius and Lost ISS to France by 50 Hammers.

In the end is only had 650 Tourism with internet and all the possible theming bonuses so it took like 40 turns and 6 musicians to get the victory. Meanwhile i nearly fnished the tech tree even though the poor bpt.
Aaaand i had a "bit" too much culture to make us of.