The Immortal Challenge Lineup #35 - Babylon

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
Game # 33 - Rome
Game # 34 - Shoshone

I have enjoyed several games with the Mesopotamia map. There is less water than a normal map, so capitals are further apart and Barbarians are much more active. I would encourage opening Honor early.

I'm seeing the problem with Mesopotamia maps, just like the other map packs, the map it gigantic. Turn 82 and I've only met one AI so far.

Also Nigel, is this map cooked. 6 Bison in one city is just crazy and there are several other city locations like it nearby. Most likely a click next turn Science Victory with how big the map is.

It is actually standard size, I loaded it in World Builder before I posted to check. Since there is a lot less water it feels really big. Barbs spawn constantly, often just 1 tile from borders. I always build 3 Scouts on this map to meet neighbors earlier, and they tend to spawn in the same areas. No cooking - I have noticed like 4-5 wine or cotton clumped in every game.

Every time I've played a Mesopotamia map I am either short of food, or short of hammers, and spend all my cash on hills/forests.

There were a lot of river tiles with little productions but lots of lux grouped together. Feels similar to the ones you describe. It basically forces you to use the gold from the lux to buy tiles. Or settle cities in suboptimal spots with higher production.

First time playing on a Mesopotamia map. Let's just say I should have built more than one scout in my opening. Early-middle game was a bit lonely apart from the frequent appearance of barbarians. I dived in negative happiness for a few turns, because of my lack of trading partners for luxuries. It was my first game where I found ancient ruins just after the discovery of satellites. I did not open Honor, but I retrospect, I should have considering the large number of barbarians on the map. This would have made it superfluous to ally cultural CS and would have made Space Procurements worthwhile (I didn't have enough gold to buy any spaceship parts). Zulus where pretty aggressive all game. They took out Askia's capital. (Songhai was subsequently wiped out by Gengis Khan.) Shaka (in a clever move??) citadel bombed my aluminium and was about to citadel bomb my marble next to it. I went into preventive wars twice to kill his Great Generals, each time Shaka begging for mercy after a few turns. Near the end of the game, Zulus were at war with Mongolia, Denmark, Portugal and myself all at once. Only 9 of the 16 original CS were left standing at the end.