Ancient Blitzkrieg – Cyrus’ Immortal Rush Guide

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This guide will provide you a step-by-step guide on how to make a successful rush with Persian Immortals.

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Ancient Blitzkrieg – Cyrus’ Immortal Rush Guide
Civilization IV, Warlords Expansion, Patch Version 2.08

The Leader

Cyrus of the Persians is your glorious leader, a born warmonger. He starts Imperialistic and Charismatic.

Charismatic grants happy faces (+1/city, +1/monument), but most important is that promotions require 25% less XP per level, resulting in more promotions and stronger units. Its XP bonus has a nice synergy with …

Imperialistic and its 100% bonus to Great General generation, resulting in more Great Military Instructors (+2XP). As an added bonus, although small, is a +50% hammer production to settlers.

The Unique Unit

The Immortal is a chariot-unit available with The Wheel, requiring horses to build, with 4 strength, +100% attack versus axmen, 10% withdrawal chance and 2 movement points.

What makes it special is its 50% bonus versus Archery units and the fact that, unlike normal mounted units, it receives defensive bonuses from terrain. It is a solid choice against most units.

The Unique Building

The Apothecary is a Grocery, available with Guilds, with an added +2 Health bonus. You will notice this goes nicely with Cyrus’ Charismatic trait. In the Industrial ages (if the game lasts that long!), you may even keep yourself from researching Medicine or Refrigeration, in favor of Fascism, Flight or Industrialism.


Preparations

You usually favor a temperate map with a lot of flat land and little water. This will make your conquest easier. Personally I flag for No Barbarians, No Tribal Huts and Aggressive AI. Game speed is Marathon, naturally. Huge maps are a favorite, for maximum mayhem and challenge.


Technology path

First, you need to see if you can locate any horses nearby. This will have a major influence on your strategic decisions. Therefore, start researching Animal Husbandry immediately. Your starting technologies Hunting and Agriculture will help with this, as they both give a small research bonus.

If you find yourself with a lot of hills, Mining should be next priority. Likewise, if you have a one or more sea resources, research Fishing. When you have found horses, start researching The Wheel, essential for both hooking up resources, rapid movement and unlocking your unique unit. Pottery allows Cottages, the gold to fund your troops and research, as well as the Granary building.

Continue with Bronze working, Mysticism, Writing, Alphabet, Iron Working and Mathematics (not necessarily in that order). Avoid technologies giving access to Wonders or Religion, EVEN if you start with stone or marble. Instead, you will let someone else do the heavy work, and then take it by force.


Build Orders

In Persepolis:

1. Warrior – your scout has hopefully located another civilization after you have finished building this. Send your warrior out to them and steal a worker or two. How do you steal workers?
2. Barracks – until city has grown to size 2, when you switch to...
3. Worker – unless, you have stolen a lot of them already. In that case, good work! Continue with your barracks! Either way, improve any food resources in your city radius. If you start near the sea, build a work boat instead.
4. Warriors – For protection and Settler escort
5. Settler – When your city has grown sufficiently, working some food resources, or, even better MINES (remember, +50% hammer production from Imperialistic). Found your city next to Horses, almost regardless how bad the rest of the terrain is. City size should be around 4 or 5 when you make your first settler. Chop it if you have access to Bronze working.
6. Immortals – when you have hooked up horses. Make plenty of them, and send them immediately to the battlefield! Speed is of the essence.
7. Granary – when you discover Pottery. Essential for the health bonus, rapid growth and most importantly: whipping.
8. More Immortals – naturally.

In Pasargadae: (chop/whip if possible)

1. Monument - If you really need it. Note that the Horses should almost always be within the closest 8 squares of the city
2. Granary
3. Barracks
4. Immortals


General Tactics

Until you get Catapults, your army will consist of only Immortals. No Axemen, Spearmen or Swordsmen. They rush head-on, crushing the enemy in numbers, strength and speed.

There are two promotions you should concentrate on when upgrading your Immortals: Strength and Flanking. Generally, if your odds are greater or around 50% chance to win, use a Strength-promoted Immortal. If they are lower, use a Flanking II-promoted Immortal (+30% withdrawal chance, Immunity to First Strikes). Depending on your enemies’ unit composition, you will use both more or less. Remember to leave your Immortals UNPROMOTED until you know what you are up against. A “scout” (with Flanking I + Sentry) may provide you with that information.

If a target city is on flat ground you will mostly bring at least twice the amount of Immortals as defenders. Factors such as Cultural Defense, Walls, Hills and Strong Defenders should influence your decision. When your opponent has Longbowmen, you should probably abandon your Immortals in favor of Catapults, Elephants and Macemen.


Enemy Units

Archers are what Immortals are meant to kill. This is your most frequent target, although not the weakest. Mostly Strength-promotion unless odds are ugly; use Flanking II-promotion in that case, to soften them up!

Axemen are easier than Archers, because of Immortals’ inherent +100% attack bonus. If you see Axemen, your opponent has access to Copper or Iron. Pillage those immediately! You don’t want to encounter…

Spearmen, which are hell. Although not impossible to defeat, their +100% bonus versus mounted units will slaughter you if you aren’t careful. Use Flanking II-promoted Immortals to soften them up. Expect greater casualties than normal, so bring bigger numbers. Note: You may be tempted to bring Axemen or Swordsmen to kill these guys, BEFORE your Immortals come. This will not work the way you thought. Spearmen are usually targeted last, because of their low strength and vulnerability to axemen. Therefore, you will have to do it the hard way.

Swordsmen are like Spearmen, although slightly less powerful and slightly more expensive. Treat them as such.

Chariots are your equals, unless yours are better promoted. Chances are that is the case, so move in for the kill! They do not receive defensive bonuses as the rest.

Unique units you should be extra wary of, especially Phalanx, Praetorian, Impi and War Chariot. Pillage the resources required to build them as soon as possible.

Warriors I shouldn’t even have to mention. If you are fast and/or lucky enough to face these, smile and dispatch of them quickly.


Target Civilizations

Some Civilizations are better to conquer early, because it may become much harder (or even impossible!) later on. Other civilizations will be better to conquer a little later: they may found a religion or build a wonder that you would like to keep (you won’t do the heavy work yourself).

This list will most likely not go perfectly with your map’s geopolitics. Use it as a reference.

Attack before they have Metal: Alexander, Shaka, Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar

Other Threats: Washington, Montezuma, Ragnar, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Peter, Mehmed II, Hannibal, Brennus, Elizabeth, Victoria and Frederick

Let these develop Wonders and/or Religion: Louis XIV, Huayna Capac, Qin Shi Huang, Bismarck, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Asoka, Isabella, Mansa Musa, Stalin and Ramses II

Save until Catapults: Saladin, Mao Zedong, Tokugawa, Churchill, Catherine, Kublai Khan, Hatshepsut and Wang Kon.


Your First Great General

After a few battles you will hopefully receive a Great General, thanks to Cyrus’ Imperialistic trait. You now have two options:

1. Settle him as a super specialist: Great Military Instructor (+2XP)
2. Create a Medic III-promoted Immortal* to speed up recovery

*If you have BtS you may want to attach your GG to a Woodsman III meele unit instead. Your choice.

If one of your cities is a good or perfect production city, then go ahead and settle your Great General right there. Units from that city will now start out with 5 XP instead of 3. If none of your cities are good production cities, consider option 2 for the time being. Hopefully you can found or conquer a better city for your Great Military Instructors and Military Academies to come.

Note: if you give your Medic a Leadership promotion, you gain twice the amount of XP from a battle. If you attacked with a normal unit at, say 99.9%, you would only get 1 XP. With the Warlord, you get 2 XP. This will not only reinforce your Medic's combat capabilities, but it will put you directly on path for more Great Generals, as every XP fills up your bar.

Promotions for Super-Medic: (Warlords)

Combat I -> Medic I+II+III -> Morale -> Leadership -> Combat II+III+IV -> Commando -> Combat V+VI


The Impact of Gold

A hard-earned lesson at higher levels is that your treasury doesn’t last for ever. At some point you will need to concentrate on those cottages, because believe me, you will need the gold, if you don’t want your Immortals suddenly disappearing due to Strike!

Do not keep any city of size 3 or less, if the city is surrounded by worthless terrain, or is too far away from the rest of your empire. Capitols are often worth keeping, but keep eye open for other spots.

For short: Keep the best and raze the rest!


Other

As long as you are successful, keep on warmongering. If your opponent is too strong, you were unlucky in an assault or similar, then sue for peace, lick your wounds and attack some other nearby target. You could also wait 10 turns for the Peace Treaty to expire, and then concentrate your forces for another attempt.

When you have Alphabet, you will most certainly want to squeeze your opponent out of Techs when s/he is down to one city. This will help you keep up in research somewhat.

When the time is right, consider building some peace-time buildings such as Market, Library, Aqueduct and Forge. That will prepare you for the Middle Ages and beyond. Hopefully, your early initiative gave you the leg-up to win later in the game by either peaceful expansion or (more likely) conquest and world domination.

Have fun!
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Your feedback is highly valued and welcome. Rudeness is not, and is frowned upon.

Working on: Save games. I totally forgot.
 
I can summarize it for you:

find horses, plant 2nd city, built immortals, conquer world
 
not everyone might have winword or antivirus installed.. why don't you spend some time and post your article to here?

Fixed. Thanks for the tip.

vanatteveldt said:
I can summarize it for you:

find horses, plant 2nd city, built immortals, conquer world

Please take your time to read through the article, and you will find it much more detailed.

More feedback is welcome.
 
I was being mean to prod you into putting it online.. sorry for that :)

I tried immortal rushes before (on immortal level, seemed appropriate), but I ran into two kinds of problems:

- taking cities: immortal AI gets spearmen pretty quickly, making it very expensive to capture cities. I should probably be more aggresive in pillaging copper, but that is not always feasible (don't want to start war with everybody at the same time). Also, archers on a hill city are pretty tough to beat, from the top of my head they are strength 3 * (1+.25 fortify + .25 hill + .25 hill bonus + .5 city bonus - .5 bonus against archers) = 5.25 (6.5 w/ 40% culture defense)) plus a first strike against 4 * 1.2 (combat I&II) = 4.8, meaning losing three for every two archers or something around that...

- maintenance cost... nothing is quite so frustrating as conquering the world and finding out you can't pay for it. Even only capturing two or three cities sufficiently far away from the capital is quite a drain on resources since building all the immortals implies not building libraries and marketplaces...

I'm tempted to try another immortal rush game and see whether razing one empire to the ground to pay for capturing another empire is a good strategy :)
 
I was being mean to prod you into putting it online.. sorry for that :)

That's forgotten now, don't worry.

I tried immortal rushes before (on immortal level, seemed appropriate), but I ran into two kinds of problems:

- taking cities: immortal AI gets spearmen pretty quickly, making it very expensive to capture cities. I should probably be more aggresive in pillaging copper, but that is not always feasible (don't want to start war with everybody at the same time). Also, archers on a hill city are pretty tough to beat, from the top of my head they are strength 3 * (1+.25 fortify + .25 hill + .25 hill bonus + .5 city bonus - .5 bonus against archers) = 5.25 (6.5 w/ 40% culture defense)) plus a first strike against 4 * 1.2 (combat I&II) = 4.8, meaning losing three for every two archers or something around that...

As mentioned in my aritcle, I use Flanking II-promoted Immortals against tough odds. Maybe I wasn't clear on the reasons, so I will add a clarification:

- A high withdrawal chance means a higher chance for your Immortal to survive, while still inflicting damage to the enemy.
- Flanking I + II not only gives +30% withdrawal chance, but also Immunity to First Strikes. This gives a higher chance to damage particularly Archers.

Problem with rooting out spearmen is that they will usually be targeted last in any other attack group than cavalry, because of their low strength and weakness to Axemen. So if a city has 4 archers and one spearman you are most likely commited to bring at least 10 axe men or swordsmen. This has two disadvantages:

1. You need metal (specifically Iron for Swordsmen)
2. They can't keep up with your Immortals, because they are slooooow (this is a Blitzkrieg, after all)

Still, Immortals are cheap (25 hammers, 50 on marathon), so its not a big loss if you lose a few for a good cause.

- maintenance cost... nothing is quite so frustrating as conquering the world and finding out you can't pay for it. Even only capturing two or three cities sufficiently far away from the capital is quite a drain on resources since building all the immortals implies not building libraries and marketplaces...

That's why you should get Pottery even before getting Bronze Working, so that you can spam Cottages! Also, don't keep most cities unless they're very good and doesn't cripple you finacially.

As for the marketplace, library-part I have to quote myself: "When the time is right, consider building some peace-time buildings such as Market, Library, Aqueduct and Forge. That will prepare you for the Middle Ages and beyond."

I'm tempted to try another immortal rush game and see whether razing one empire to the ground to pay for capturing another empire is a good strategy :)

Well, why not? Can't see any flaw in that, as long as the gain is bigger than the loss.
 
Another Q: you recommend Cyrus, who is the better warmonger, but I would think that Darius gives a much better try at paying for the new empire. My idea behind immortal rushing was always to conquer a great deal of land very early, and use the org+fin to build a monster out of that. As soon as most AIs have their copper/iron hooked up the warmongering is a lot less fun anyway...
 
Another Q: you recommend Cyrus, who is the better warmonger, but I would think that Darius gives a much better try at paying for the new empire. My idea behind immortal rushing was always to conquer a great deal of land very early, and use the org+fin to build a monster out of that. As soon as most AIs have their copper/iron hooked up the warmongering is a lot less fun anyway...

This guide was for Walords Expansion, but I have no doubt Darius I in BtS would be a more flexible choice. That he is a monster at Economy is without doubt, especially at higher levels (with increased returns from Organized).
 
Do you find cottage spam to be enough to sustain this much early warfare? I've been playing a lot of Persian games lately and the economy is really the thing that tanks the Immortal rush... Even though it is easy to knock out the first couple opponents, by the time you get to the 3rd you are falling way behind in tech. My latest game I'm experimenting with a Pyramids->Representation fueled specialist economy to try and sustain research levels. It has the effect of weakening the first war into more of a pillage/choke type of skirmish, but once the mids are up and running, the next wars start really rolling along as even your settled generals are generating 3 beakers/turn. By the time you get caste system you are able to actually generate the cash needed to upgrade/transition into Knights and keep up with the research (at least enough to start trading with other civs your not fighting) while smacking your neighbours around. It's a delicate balance that I haven't perfected yet, but while the immortal rush is really fun I have had a lot of trouble transitioning it into an actual winning game in the long run, due to being totally backwards by the time you finish off 2-3 neighbours.
 
fear the Holkan! They can be built without copper/iron. Found this out the hard way :D
 
An early game walkthrough up until 1000BC-500BC with screenshots and saves at Immortal or Deity difficulty would make this article much more plausible, but don't listen to me, because I only play Immortal and Deity difficulties. This article is good summary for difficulties below, and I agree with almost all of your observations. Darius is better than Cyrus on Immortal and Deity, also it makes sense to upgrade Flanking II over a combat promotion when the odds are rather low.
 
Do you find cottage spam to be enough to sustain this much early warfare? I've been playing a lot of Persian games lately and the economy is really the thing that tanks the Immortal rush... Even though it is easy to knock out the first couple opponents, by the time you get to the 3rd you are falling way behind in tech. My latest game I'm experimenting with a Pyramids->Representation fueled specialist economy to try and sustain research levels.

When you switch from your mines to cottages, you should be fine, as long as you have made priorities about which cities to keep or not to keep.

Pyramids are excellent when you get them. Try to take them from Louis XIV or some similar wonder addict. I have no big experience from SE, but if you get Pyramids it is worth a try, as long as you ain't a defeceit at 0% science (when gold is obviously more valuable due to risk of strike).

Oh yes, another thing. Alphabet -> Tech Trading -> AI gives Tech for Peace.

fear the Holkan! They can be built without copper/iron. Found this out the hard way :D

Obviously you will want to avoid the Mayans until later ;)

An early game walkthrough up until 1000BC-500BC with screenshots and saves at Immortal or Deity difficulty would make this article much more plausible.

I don't know what you mean with plausible, but I have tried this guide on Immortal once and it works out fine. Will see if I can dig out some save files.

Darius is better than Cyrus on Immortal and Deity

This is not an optimal win-on-deity guide. I would recommend trying both leaders out.

This article is good summary for difficulties below, and I agree with almost all of your observations.

Please, submit your opinions here. I value feedback highly
 
The thing with posting saves and early screenshots is people get realistic expectations on how many Immortals to build for the inital rush, when to conquer the first civ, the 2nd, when to stop, when to shutdown research, when to research what etc.... It makes the article more detailed and more useful, and somewhat more trustworthy.

If you have saves at Immortal difficulty, even if for Warlords expansion, post them :)
 
The thing with posting saves and early screenshots is people get realistic expectations on how many Immortals to build for the inital rush, when to conquer the first civ, the 2nd, when to stop, when to shutdown research, when to research what etc.... It makes the article more detailed and more useful, and somewhat more trustworthy.

If you have saves at Immortal difficulty, even if for Warlords expansion, post them :)

I will, but it may take some time though. Have patience ;)
 
Two points, from multiplayer perspective:

1. This is strat would not work on any land multiplayer game with anybody but total noobs playing.

2. As stated before, this stat could be summarize: use Cyrus, make immortals and kill. I can write 20 such strat guides, using the following template: Use X leader, make Y unit, and kill.

Let me elaborate.

Ad. 1. In any multiplayer, or at least the ones I play (FFA landmap, CTONs, Earth maps), you will see that people are wary of one another and they will be watching your power score, scouting you out, and set up sentries. When I play Pangea map, I assume that everyone is enemy unless proven otherwise, and I react accordingly.
First of all, you're making a big assumption that you will actually GET early access to horses. In FFA Pangea games, I say I get early access to horse only in 75% of games. To get early access you have to make early settler, walk him over, protect him, etc. If you gamble and make a settler upfront, and give him no protections, I will kill your settler/first city with my initial warrior.
Finally, What makes you think that I will sit and do nothing when I see your power score go through the roof and my sentries will see your immortals?
what makes you think that I will give enough time to crank out immortals, and I will not make any spears? Or even chariots? My sentries will see you coming from miles ahead. I will put my cheap upgraded archers on hills and chokepoints, I will road up all pathways, and I will strike your immortals first as they invade my territory. They have no defensive bonuses, right?
 
I do this all the time - It's nice when you want the whole continent to yourself
 
I would build a worker first... I have an issue with research X first, build X first lists. You have to specialize to each start.
 
Great idea, with the double movement rate on a continents map you could wipe out the other three guys and it game over. I just wouldn't keep anything but a close capital/industrial city. :nono:
 
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