The Immortal Challenge Line-up Game # 39 Byzantium

Try a bee-line for Stone Henge. Pottery>Mining>Calendar.

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.

Game #1 - Japan
Game #2 - Poland
Game #3 - Ottomans
Game #4 - Arabia
Game #5 - Brazil
Game #6 - Denmark
Game #7 - Songhai
Game #8 - Sweden
Game #9 - India
Game #10 - Russia
Game #11 - Germany
Game #12 - Aztecs
Game #13 - Egypt
Game #14 - France
Game #15 - Austria
Game #16 - Siam
Game # 17 - Venice
Game # 18 - Iroquois
Game # 19 - Greece
Game # 20 - Persia
Game # 21 - England
Game # 22 - Ethiopia
Game # 23 - Assyria
Game # 24 - The Celts
Game # 25 - America
Game # 26 - China
Game # 27 - Korea
Game # 28 - Spain
Game # 29 - The Zulu
Game # 30 - The Mayans
Game # 31 - Midsummer special
Game # 32 - Mongolia

Finished out Piety, dipped into Liberty opener and Exploration opener. Original plan was for Tall Peaceful but my natural tendencies have led me towards conquest. I possess 2 capitals besides my own, and wiped out their original owners, so when my GAdm started exploring, no one was none the wiser that there used to exist two other civs in my neck of the woods. Religion is spreading well, and I now have to decide between Frigate rush and wide peaceful culture.

I decided to try to go wide with the bonus belief, since the usual problem with wide is happiness. I went Mining first, then Pottery, then Writing - Masonry - Trapping - Optics - Philosophy. Build order was worker, shrine, granary, settlers, library. I skipped a monument since I hit a culture ruin. I managed to steal two more workers from Kiev.

Unfortunately with the time it took my settlers to place all 6 of my cities and then build libraries, my NC was really late (t130 or so), so I had education before the NC. I had also wanted to get Notre Dame but that went pretty early. The only early game wonder I succeeded in building was Borobodur.

My religion was:
earth mother
tithe
pagodas
+15% production
+2 happiness from temples
25% cheaper prophets

Jesuit Education was gone, so I didn't bother going in Piety past the opener. I went full liberty (GS for academy), piety opener, full rationalism, left side Patronage, 6 points in Order, 3 exploration, commerce opener. By winning the world's fair and bulbing 3 great writers I was able to get a pretty decent amount of culture. The pagodas also helped.

I met Isabella and Pacal while I was settling the continent to the east, and took a long time to meet everybody else. My scouting of the shallow seas was pretty good using a scout, spearman and 2 dromons. Someone (I would later find out it was Ramesses, typical) was building all of the wonders, so I ruled out a cultural victory. All my faith would have to go towards something, so I decided on a wide science victory.

I went Order, thinking it would be better than Freedom with 6 factories in my cities. However, I horribly miscalculated how many great scientists I needed and was able to finish the whole tech tree, meaning I should have started bulbing 40 turns earlier. Oh well. I also faith bought 3 great engineers to rush the last 3 spaceship parts. When I began bulbing I had 15,000 faith saved up. I didn't even need to buy a single GS to finish the tech tree.

I had all the spaceship parts at about t310, but I wanted to spend that 15000 faith I had built up, so I spent a few turns buying great scientists and bulbing them on Future Tech. Unfortunately Future Tech doesn't show how many times it was been researched, but I think I did it about 5 or 6 times. I think if I played properly the finish time would have been t260-t270.

Having to wait for optics to settle the other 3 city sites meant that for most of the game I was waiting for a backlog of buildings to be built in those late expos. Honestly I'm not sure if they contributed to my empire or if they simply slowed me down. I had to feed them with food and production cargo ships that could have been sent to my core cities instead. Also my capital had so many plain water tiles that its potential was pretty limited in the late game.

Things are starting to come together now. Landmarks are being built, policies are starting to push tourism up. It was a tough ordeal losing nearly all Renaissance wonders to the runaway on the main continent (usual suspect) by 1-5 turns. But I have World Religion and FP so I should be OK whatever happens. Next policy is Historical Landmarks. And I have a huge amount of saved faith.

The first half was taking over my half of the world militarily and religiously, the second half building culture, spamming Archaeologists, and - EVENTUALLY - getting my religion into the majority of the two runaway's cities.

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Part 1 - Beeline Sailing, Optics, Iron Working. Build Great Lighthouse and Colossus. Spam Dromon, Conquer Palenque and Madrid (with Scout captures!). Spread religion to CS and extinguish the religions from the captured capitals. Now I have at most 2 religions to compete with, and am already nearing 100 FPT. Lovely stuff.

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Part 2 - Getting pipped to most Renaissance wonders by 1 turn by Pachacuti (due to poor production in cities). Strategy here was to spread the religion for GPT and tourism modifiers, while keeping everyone else at war. Won WF and IG. Spammed archaeologists like never before.

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Social Policies: Full Piety, Full Exploration, Full Aesthetics, Liberty to Representation, Freedom to Media Culture, Patronage Opener for FP, Rationalism opener.

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