Always War Challenge #2- China Immortal

Good Luck to you. Please feel free to post it as AW #3 to keep an AW series going. I have no doubt of the ability of players and the rules are flexible. I have played AW quite a bit on all the Civ versions and am not half bad myself and I do not think this is possible. If you want to use the pillage repair exploit feel free it may be the only way esp. for the $$ support I still don't think anyone does it.

Mark1031 said:

If you want to use the pillage repair exploit feel free it may be the only way esp. for the $$ support I still don't think anyone does it.

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Huh?? Sorry, did I miss something? What is $$ support? Gold?

I won't make MUCH use of pillage repair, but it's sometimes handy

I'm an Honor-Commerce guy for war, and never have troubles with gold. Pillage-repair is a last resort for me.

consentient said:

I'm an Honor-Commerce guy for war, and never have troubles with gold.

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It has been pretty crazy in the China game. Often literally making 500+ gold in a single turn just by killing units, sometimes more.

The problem for everything in deity AW is the early game (I have never gotten to the late game). The flood of units before you can get yourself up and going is just crazy. Think of being next to Oda and Shaka at the start. Now declare war on them on T5 and tell me you won't get crushed. By T80 if you survive you can be facing longswords and trebs or Xbows in great quantities. If you pumped only units what is your $$ situation. Do you have the $$ to upgrade even 3 archers. You can take out 1 civ early but I find you get bogged down really fast and good luck finding the $$ for upgrades. It takes quite awhile to complete honor and even then the $$ is a trickle for early units. On what turn do you complete honor and enter commerce? You won;t get there. I've seen people write well if I'm next to Oda or Shaka on deity I just quit or "tell me how to keep them from attacking". Well any civ you declare on and don't make peace with is going to build up units and come after you just like those 2, and they will be more advanced and in huge numbers. I think it could be done if you got the right map. Say you and 1 other on a continent. Take him out early and build up economy/science. I also think you would need all other victories disabled or you will lose to a launch before you can get domination.

Mark1031 said:

The problem for everything in deity AW is the early game (I have never gotten to the late game). The flood of units before you can get yourself up and going is just crazy. Think of being next to Oda and Shaka at the start. Now declare war on them on T5 and tell me you won't get crushed. By T80 if you survive you can be facing longswords and trebs or Xbows in great quantities.

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Well, even if you don't DoW them T5 you'll be facing the Impi/Samourai flood before T80
DoWing them will simply make it so they don't come all at once
I've already said this : when you are close to a big Warmonger it's often better to DoW them yourself as they tend to throw smaller groups at once most of the time and you can defend better. Conquest is another story of course as i'm not such a great warmonger

Bob Morane said:

DoWing them will simply make it so they don't come all at once

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Not necessarily true. I did that to Shaka once and was fending off his spearmen with composite bows -- goal was to avoid them all turning into Impis. I thought was I doing fairly well, picking a unit off every turn or two with no losses and nearly pushing to take a city of his.

Then like 10 Impi appeared out of nowhere.

Yep, but maybe you would have had 20 if not for this
It's true that Shaka and Oda are the worst of the warmonger neighbors. Shaka tends to spam cities like crazy (always goes liberty) so he can produce a lot at once (probably what happened in that game) while Oda seems to be pumping nothing but units all game long from his (often fewer) cities and can cripple you quite badly while he often does poorly against other AIs.

Turn 391 victory.

Processing/uploading 4th and 5th videos, will hopefully be done by tomorrow for the full playthrough.

Anyone else beaten this yet?

Congrats on your win LordBalkoth!! I know how you feel since I have been in some long war games on stand/stand Diety taking around 5 mins or more per turn and not winning until very late around turn 396. After I finish this game it will be fun to go and watch your whole LP of this game. I commend you for making such a long LP. I know the game was time consuming enough but to compress and upload all video files to youtube!!! Just WOW... I mean WOW! Just so I am clear you can pillage once but not repair correct? Or is it that you can't pillage at all??

Turn 0-19



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Edit: Up to Turn 92 ... I had to hard build Petra since cpt was too low and I did not try for Oracle.
I did not pillage/repair but I did pillage one hex since I think that is within the confines of the rules. You should be allowed to pillage in your enemies territory but I understand not being able to repair and pillage over and over and over. It makes sense that you could do it the first time only. If I am wrong about this rule I will change my tactic to No Pillage on the next AWC # 3 Ethiopia Deity.



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Fluphen Azine said:

After I finish this game it will be fun to go and watch your whole LP of this game. I commend you for making such a long LP. I know the game was time consuming enough but to compress and upload all video files to youtube!!! Just WOW... I mean WOW!

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The whole Let's Play is about 10.5 hours long overall, though, so you may want to skip around a bit. Very long game.

Most of the compressing/uploading is done automatically, it's only 5 videos overall. I just leave my computer running overnight -- the catch is that it takes about 3-4 hours to process every hour of recording, so that's over 30-40 hours of processing total that eats up 100% of CPU (or as much of it as it can) so I have to pause the job if I need to do something else. The uploading takes a bit but still significantly faster than processing and doesn't hog CPU.

Fluphen Azine said:

Just so I am clear you can pillage once but not repair correct? Or is it that you can't pillage at all??

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If you pillage a tile, you cannot pillage it again unless another civilization repairs it.

Best of luck in your game!

Game seems easy to me but that is because I usually play this type of style anyway but I never have tried a game where you insta-Dow the Civ as soon as you meet them. I have had this idea though for a long time and it is nice to see some players giving it a go. I wanted to get into Honor but I think Commerce might be better for me.

Up to Turn 127



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Can annex anything you like, it's your empire!

Curious to see how your game goes from there, you cleared your continent 21 turns faster than I did. Science is about 20-25% better at the same turn. I did go full Honor, though, which wound up paying dividends later in the game, I think, on gold for kills.

Up to turn 170

MoG is nice for some early spt when you are going to go wide and have a lot of roads (IMO).

WC has now been founded. I traded embassies for a lux and DOWed same turn on all Civs met. I like that because you find your CS's instantly ! However I am being very lazy and just deciding to turtle to get the lead and go kill all Civs with things like Rocket Artillery, Nukes, and Paratroopers.



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Yeah, my science on turn 170 was...75. Didn't even have education yet. Was banking on basically rolling everyone with the Chus before realizing that I was blocked by ocean.

I didn't even break 220 science until 214...at which point I got Secularism it seems and jumped to 270.

I also never exchanged embassies and luxuries in the spirit of the challenge..."I CARE NOTHING ABOUT YOUR CIVILIZATION OTHER THAN THAT IT WILL BE CRUSHED BENEATH MY HEEL!"

Am I doing it right?

LordBalkoth said:

"I CARE NOTHING ABOUT YOUR CIVILIZATION OTHER THAN THAT IT WILL BE CRUSHED BENEATH MY HEEL!"

Am I doing it right?

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That is the general idea but you can trade for embassy if you like. Not much else you can really do.

I have not finished yet and will not be able to for a couple of weeks but I am in about your situation. Took the available land early with CB and spears. Then built and defended. I just invaded the other land mass and it will be a slog and take a fair amount of time but I think I should be able to do it.

BTW the always war idea has been around for a long time. I have played it with Civ2-Civ 5 and you can find some very exciting games in the succession game sections of civ2-4. The highest level beaten on 4 was I believe Emperor. On civ3 I won an AW OCC on Sid level

Mark1031 said:

That is the general idea but you can trade for embassy if you like.

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Yes, I know. My point was that I thought it was against the spirit of the challenge to do so, so I didn't. Not against the rules, technically.

Well I don't think the embassy exchange is needed for this map but it was allowed in the rules so you know I am just kinda following how the OP formatted the challenge/series. However, I understand that you did not take them to be more true to the spirit of the challenge. Perhaps I could do it in the future or with Ethiopia.

I think you are doing it Perfect!!

Edit: I did not trade Luxes... what I did was trade a lux for an embassy and after that when I went back to the trade screen I DOWed and got my lux back which I didn't need anyway since I had many copies of each. It would of worked the same for 1gpt but it was faster to just click on a lux and click on an embassy instead of typing in 1gpt.

Up to turn 235



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Edit: Up to Turn 272



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Edit: Thebes Falls Turn 286

Yeah, I didn't even launch my attack on Egypt until probably around turn 325 (with Battleships, Great War Bombers, and Carriers), got Thebes on turn 342. You have a large tech advantage that I didn't have, though, due to cascading effects of you not ignoring science early on like I did.

Why did you raze the western city, though? Going to have difficulty connecting Thebes to your capital now without a harbor there. Or did he not settle there in your game?

Fluphen Azine said:

Time to take a break as I think the end of this game is just a matter of next turn next turn but since I am going to post up a Leaderboard for this series it will be fun to see what turn I finish on although I am sure it is going to be over 300 but I think this map is doable pre 250 perhaps other stronger players can finish pre 200 for sure!

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Yeah, my time was pretty terrible due to my low science and not realizing I'd need to invade overseas initially.

@ Lordbalkoth & Up to turn 317




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Deity was too hard for me, but i knew it before trying so if you can post another Immortal one without DLC maps i'll be interested to try it.