The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #10 - Russia

I'd take Rome at this point, personally. You have a good number of composites but I'd make a few more, just in case, and at that point he shouldn't be hard. I'd leave him in the game though, so the penalties aren't to great.

I agree with you here. In my own game, messing around with quick honor for raging barbs and attacking Rome. One Scout then Monument...Tradition Opener then full Honor.The Deity pros can make this work, but I don't think I am good enough at Immortal for this and Rome is a tough nut to crack early. Even if I can fend off their counter attacking carpet of doom, I will likely reroll for a new plan.

Thanks for the feedback! I did go ahead and take Rome in only 2 turns of battle. He offered Cumae in the peace deal, plus some gold and gpt. So far no additional red modifiers, but already strategics are only going for 1 gpt from Liz. I did get a DOF mid-way thru the war from Iroq, which was nice. I have 2 nearby CS allies now too, so happy is doing well. I'm way behind in tech and my cities are puny. But once again I have a wide-ish 7 city empire with Tradition. For some reason I just can't pull this off as well with Liberty.

I think it's funny that I have the 3rd largest military with only 7 CB, horsey, Spear, and Scout - but I think that city strength gets added in the mix somehow. It is very nice to have a lot of breathing room and no more strong Rome!

I wanted to try something new with Russia - take every capital by nuking it. Well, I managed to get 4 because I did not have uranium in my territory and other civs on my continent were kinda aggressive, so I captured their capitals with regular army.

Started with 3 cities, NC around T90. Rome fell first around T110 since they were rather aggressive. After that I played a regular science game till around T200 when Mayan and Iroquois (got 16 uranium this way) capitals were captured. Then moved onto the 2nd continent and to the far side north east to London on my continent. Meanwhile Dutch have already taken out Siam and Indians.

So the final strike. Dropped 3 nukes on London. Some 10-20 turns later dropped 4 nukes on Amsterdam, 4 on Delhi and 3 on Siamese capital. Cities were taken the next turn with the help of death robots which are fun to watch when they move

Policies: Full Tradition, full rationalism, patronage opener, several commerce policies.
Ideology: Order, happiness tenets, and 25% boost from factories.

I stopped growing around T230 or so because happiness was becoming a problem.

Religion: Pantheon - 10% growth; only AI's religion which was spread to my cities.

Thank you for the map.

Settled on copper and since first ring had no food I decided to build early settlers at 2 pop.

THE PAST

BO Capital: Scout, monument, settler, settler, settler, library, worker, granary, krepost, national collage.

BO Expo 1 (St Petersburg): Monument, library, worker, krepost, spearman, archer spam...

BO Expo 2 (Novgorod): Library, monument, krepost...

BO Expo 3 (Rostov): Library, monument, krepost...

SP: Honor opener, right side first, then left side. Finished around turn 80 maybe? Didn't keep track.

Teach: Pottery, animal husbandry, writing, (got mining in ruin) masonry, bronze working, calendar, philosophy, trapping, horseback riding, drama.

I'm going for theology only because i want to open commerce when it's time for my next policy.

NOW:

I'm currently spamming archers that I'm going to update for composites before attacking Rome. I had to buy some tiles for hammers in my expos and a archer for culture/happiness and barbprotection so I'm a bit short on gold...

Since Rome took down Pacals capital I'm taking a shot at a late Oracle. If I get it, I get a free policy in commerce - if not - I get some gold for my army!

I'm going for domination btw...

Screenshot:

Things are going very smoothly. Once I met the other continent my happy issues disappeared. I annexed all 3 Roman cities, but still don't have Courthouses in 2. I am noticing some weird stuff post-patch, like the governors were not prioritizing markets, even in Antium which has 3 wine (it started building a Uni after Library!). I've also noticed you can't wayfind in the fog or non-visible tiles any longer, which makes scouting or coastal sailing a pain, even if you have enough movement to get to an open hex.

Was finally able to get some WLTK's, so with happy my pop is finally growing. I missed a religion, which surprised me as I had pretty good early fpt with Earth Mother, Pacal spammed his religion like crazy (Mosques), and Ram (Monasteries & Cathedrals) and Iroq (SS) are floating some GP around, so I am doing alright with fpt w/o many Temples. It was funny to see Iroq go Piety and Aesthetics, so nobody city spammed my vast land areas.

Founded WC and proposed WF, which I will win easily. Science finally got rolling, so I should be in 1st after I hit Radio and then catch up on Ind and top tier. Will go Order, of course. I should nab most of the late-game wonders.

I ended up with 3 in Patronage before getting 2 in Rat. 3 Patronage AI's, but I am still able to have 6 CS Allies so far. Iroq has had DOF forever, Pacal for a while too, offers from Ghandi and Bill-O which I declined, as I wasn't sure I wouldn't Frigate-rush Delhi with the GW.

After I revealed most of the coasts I realized this would have been an amazing Frigate rush game. Is anybody going Dom? It might be fun to try to reload this map in WB and play as Liz (if that's possible).

I saw the chance for the Frigate rush, but could bring myself to put in the effort, so I just sat back and did science.

Settled on site without too much thinking which was trend through whole game - only time I bothered to stop to wonder something was why I couldn't build Stoneworks in Rostov while Marble & 2 Stones in range; it just never appeared in buildings list.
Stole a Roman worker on T6 which ended my only period of peace in the game. CSs were not harmed by my own initiative but I GG bombed Valletta for messing up my movement while taking Antium. Augustus had few Ballistae but no Legoes so taking late capture was more of a happiness management than anything else.

T37 Dance of the Aurora, T42 DoF with Pacal but since he didn't have any money it pretty much a wasted friendship. T72 4th religion and 2 were founded while I was waiting the shy prophet. No happiness buildings left so +2 from Temples seemed mandatory otherwise the usual stuff.
T94 Oracle for Piety opener and T98 Liberty finisher for G Adm.





T101 DoWed Pacal and he build GW with a GE next turn - always nice to get it in the beginning of the game. T109 RIP Rome, T110 CS, T111 enhanced way after the others who went Piety and T119 Palenque with interesting mix of WWs & a building.





T127 DoW Hiawatha as he was gathering troops near my border, T128 RIP Pacal, T145 DoWed Lizzy & T149 took Onondaga - Hiawatha's army was supposed to be larger than mine but I assume most of them got lost in the woods.





Peeps on the other continent were not really suitable for trading partners so I gave Will & Ram quite a few luxes each to DoW Gandhi and unlike usually the city ownership wasn't set on stone. Meanwhile I finished Hiawatha off T162 and took London T164 defended by a single Longbowman but the defense was equal to the city's value, sadly.






T166 founded WC, T168 Lizzy was... no more, T169 Rammy cruised to Delhi, T175 after short swimming lesson I DoWed Rammy instead of Gandhi as the plan was few turns earlier. Troops in London area lost their compasses & burned the maps and ended up running circles few turns before becaming brave enough to dive into the cold ocean heading for Sukhotai - this bunch included all the logistics XBows so capturing Delhi needed some naval assistance. T181 LToP was a bit of surprise but a welcomed one.





Like the caps before Sukhotai wasn't really welcoming to the ranged XBows but the defending troops were still mostly in India so it wasn't too bad. Hong Kong managed to capture Lampang but burned it down which was my plan as well so no harm done.
William adopted the rest of the Gandhi's careless cities by T183 and while being hostile still valued my luxes enough to DoW Rammy when asked. Not that I needed help but I assumed at least some lost TRs both ways. William was becoming too rich & too keen on my CSs.

T197 first to get Industrial but the rest followed quickly. Rammy was for long only short of coup de grace but I needed to gather some money to ally two heretic CSs of his before entering the Kill Will saga.





T214 Order solved most of my happiness issues and William's army was pathetic - few XBows & few more swordsmen, no LSM even though he had more than enough money & iron. Navy was much more up-to-date but sadly immune to switching sides - I hate loyal vessels. T221 Himeji just build something and good time to quit playing with Rammy.
The conquest could've faster but I needed time for fat prophets to convert the last cities and without roads the fatsos got stuck in between the trees or sunk into the marshes.





Not the most glorious of capitals but decent enough.






Liberty start but Piety opened few turns before Liberty finisher. Two fillers in Patronage without any practical influence and the rest in Order.

Pacal build Borobudur for me so I got better missionaries early enough and the endgame ftp was way more than I needed. If I had been playing my eyes open I would've noticed that William didn't have an own religion like usually and converted his cities before the war. Another oversight was neglecting the Petra's location - Mumbai would've been easy to capture before the Dutch and it'd have given a solid stepping stone city instead or with Delhi. The WWs on the 2nd continent were nicely scattered around.

Very simple build slow, tech slower & still kill with decent rate exercise. The land didn't seem that bad but the AI just didn't know what to do with it until the very end when William started to spam wonders; troops would've been a better option at point, though. Hiawatha didn't spam cities and Pacal really took someone else's medicine before the start - Honor opening but playing like Piety. Lizzy was abandoned in a lonely corner and Augustus got scared by the early DoW. The 2nd continent was in better order but not that much.

I accidentally backed into a DV. I passed the Order proposal when only Ram had an Ideology (Freedom), and somehow only 2 extra votes was enough??? I burned about 5 GS in a row, so I could have had Globalism had I bee-lined. My SV might have been delayed a bit as I was building almost every building in every city for funsies.

I have never seen so many faith quests in a game, and I even won one, which was very surprising.

Full Tradition, 3 into Patronage, Rat to Secularism, Scholasticism, then a bunch of Order (6th much later), finished Rat and finished Patronage after the cup appeared as I spawned a GW. I was like a kid in a candy store with Policies - saved all GW, won WF, forgot Intl Games had started until 1/2 done and still got silver and would have won gold but I had stuff to build! Got all the late wonders either built or GE'd. Didn't even upgrade my army (Pentagon was almost finished) and I was still 2nd near the end. I must have deleted 8 or so gifted units. Having 2 Mil CS allies most of the game really adds up. The double resource bonus really brought in the cash. I haven't played Russia for years - it was quite nice.

Lots of warm fuzzies on my continent, even with Liz after she went Order (everybody but Ram did). Bill-O took an Indian city when I bribed all I could into war before WF, and he took Delhi just before the win. Iroq had like 3 wars with Rome and didn't even come close to taking his new cap. The unit moves I saw were so terrible. It seems like rough terrain messes the AI up so badly, other than Impis or Persia with their extra movement.

The Roman rush makes me think about all the games I used to quit with 1/2 as many units coming. It's unbelievable that I killed almost his entire army with just Archers and city fire.

I saved the map and may try to reload as Liz to do a Dom V. Or maybe just reload from earlier and do a Friagte rush instead of going for Sci Theory early... I think this map had some very interesting features. It only had the one polar route blocked with ice, which obviously worked to Russia's advantage defensively.

...a major, boring slog. Basically, in my game, Rome settled Antium in a way where it blocks the path south to the Maya. That meant having to redeclare on Rome and fighting tons of units. Meanwhile the Maya are allied with the two city states right there. So to declare means dozens of boring turns using my superior fire power to slog through. IMO not worth playing thru. Decent opening action but with so few luxuries or anything of interest on the map I lost interest.

Did that, didn't work. Haiwatha is also at war with the Maya. But the Maya are aligned with both of the City States right there. Even with Rome out of the way (I slugged through a portion of that war well after capturing the Roman capital) the angle of attack is too awkward. There are way too many units to bother with. I have zero doubt I'd win... eventually. I'm just not interested in spending a ton of time needling the AI to death.

Did Liberty-Commerce-Autocracy at the very end so it didn't matter-and Exploration opener. Marched on Rome with CB's, was easy. Pacal was running away and had XB's, so I waited for Machinery and took his capital, then 2 Iroquois cities. His capital was in such an annoying location that I signed a peace deal and then brute-forced it with cannons and Cossacks (who are op). While I was at peace with Haiwatha, I moved my XB's to capture 2 England cities. While that was happening, I had been building Galleases->Frigates and Privateers. At the end, I had 20+ Frigates chilling around and waiting for command, and in the last 15-20 turns I captured the three remaining capitals. Should have done it sooner because everyone feared me. I kind of expected to be DoW'ed by everyone, but it did not happen somehow.

Long war from startup with GW-defended Rome Ended up with mega-promoted units but small cities and poor science output. Over-extended to conquer home continent and had major happiness problems until reaching Order. Found myself with significant tech deficit to other continent (battleships, submarines and GWB vs frigates, ironclads and gatling guns) but my elite units prevailed once I discovered flight and my triplanes cleared the skies. I also managed to capture a Siamese submarine with a privateer just at point of victory!

The captured GW was extremely handy right up to victory as I avoided researching dynamite.