The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #5 - Brazil

Spoiler :
(1) Hit the Worlds Fair on first proposal. I proposed Arts funding, which was fine, but with the Worlds Fair, I would have powered through more policies faster.

(2) Didn't tech Astronomy fast enough - met other AIs relatively late, WC wasn't founded until the 160s.

(3) Delayed starting Golden Ages until after Universal Suffrage. I had Chichen Itza and ended up leaving 10 turns of Carnival on the table. Wasted in an effort to outsmart myself

(4) Should have gone Autocracy, as the biggest cultural AIs weren't really running away. The 250 for Futurism actually would have gotten me home faster.


Spoiler :
(1) Yeah, in retrospect WF would probably have been faster than Arts Funding. WF on Immortal is pretty annoying though. When you are that far ahead you will end up building nearly the entire thing yourself, which is still worth it but it always feels miserable to delay all the other stuff you were doing.

(2) I think I went Printing Press or Acoustics but on this map I think it actually might be best to enter Renaissance with Astronomy, to get those WC proposals, Observatories, and extra trade gpt rolling as fast as possible. Prebuild Triremes and upgrade of course. Just as long as you are far enough ahead to do that and still get LToP, GT, and SC.

(3) I did the same. It's just really tough to gauge 60 turns in advance how long it will take you to overtake the AI's culture. You don't want to run out of carnival later on, when you have so much more base tourism for it to multiply. Still, I way overdid the GA stockpile. I ended with 6 turns of Carnival left + 1 GA already spawned = 18 turns on the table, and hadn't faith-purchased any GAs yet either (I had used the faith on GE/GS/GMs instead). Based on the current faith and FPT I could have easily bought two GAs before those turns ran out. So thats 42 turns. Figure in one GA to spawn naturally somewhere in that time, and that's at least 54 more straight turns of Carnival. So in retrospect it definitely seems that the GA spam should have been started earlier.

(4) I hadn't thought of that. I'm not sure that I agree, particularly if you pass WF to steam through Aesthetics/Rationalism. That way you can beeline Media Culture as soon as you hit Radio. I haven't done the math but intuitively it shouldn't take too long for the BTs to overtake what you could have gotten from Futurism.
 
Soffacet:

Spoiler :

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure about the Futurism thing either. Media Culture is really sweet normally.

I was reading through some other guides - I've literally never taken Autocracy before, LOL - and noted that Futurism is supposed to be affected by tourism multipliers. If it's affected by Brazil's 100% modifier, that's 500 tourism a pop plus open borders / trade routes, which is not insignificant in a world in which the top AI ended up with a little more than 7,000 culture.

I think I burned through 5 great people (1 writer, 2 artists and 2 musicians) in the time I was in Golden Age, which would have been 2,500 - 3,000 tourism per AI depending on open border / trade route status.
 
I replayed from T185, right before selecting Ideology - already locked into Arts Funding at that point.

Taking Futurism got me to T224 CV, 14 turn improvement. I generated four Musicians, two Artists and a Writer. They did not benefit from the +100% from Carnival. Futurism wasn't the only thing that helped though - I did it in concert with hitting my Golden Age / Carnival early instead of waiting.
 
Go easy I am new.

t100:
Spoiler :


Spoiler :
Settled a little NE. pop ruins @ 2pop, 4pop, archer upgrade.. BO was scout>scout>shrine>settler>library>granary>caravan>settler>petra (@t79)>NC(@t94). Oracle popped at t99 in an expo, lol. Techs were pottery>writing>mining>AH>currency for petra>education. Stole worker from Poland @t16, stayed at war with him but that didn't seem to yield anything besides killing another warrior of his.
Settled on hill on coast near both salt+gold @ t32, and on gems next to sheep + 2x mountains @ t61, then south just underneath the mountain range on the coast @ @ t91. Petra popped @ t79 i think. Went library>granary in expos. Growth in cap blew since I was pushing for important wonders - how do I balance this or should I not balance it at all.
Other random things:
Got desert folklore but didn't get to found my own religion even though I was at 209 faith. :(
Salvador settling location was probably bad, probably should have settled on that gems for obsservatory. oh well.
I can't remember the last time I played continents, esp. in such a cramped area - is earlier optics worth it to discover other people?

Probably tons of other little things I missed too.
 
Seems like this has wrapped up but I'll put in my input anyway.

CV @ 256. Could have been easily <250 (if not a lot more with the lack of runaways my game) but pretty happy for first CV emperor+.

Spoiler :


Spoiler :
Pretty slow, hit modern @ 192, once I got radio immediately beelined to hotels then airports (even burning through 4-5 GSs it still took awhile.)

Full trad, asethetics opener+1, 3 rationalism, completed aesthetics/freedom to the broadcast towers ideology. Snagged in order Sistine, Machu Picchu, LT, Uffizi (GE'd it with LT GP), Taj Mahal (surprised this didn't pop), PT, Eiffel, Broadway, Statue of Liberty, Louvre.

Had 200 tpt/first influence by 242, IG finished at 247, endgame tpt wasn't even very high everything considered (only had hotels, not even airports/NVC), just worked theming bonuses and opened borders with everyone, also worked off a natural GA/one from an artist. Just needed 2 GM bombs, had a third but it was wasted.

I guess it really helped that there was no real culture runaway this game, poland was the largest at t200 with ~8600 culture and didn't even break 20k at the end. Sucks to those who needed to break through 30k+ :(

Lots of mechanical errors in the game like forgetting to work GM slots for ~5 turns, build railroads for 20+(!), and I'm pretty sure I'm not optimizing growth/science early and not enough culture later. But that comes with practice.


poland really didn't like having 20+ unhappiness due to ideology pressure:

Spoiler :


Was fun, thanks!
 
Finally found some time to play this map.

There was a lot of trolling going on in this game. Was there some sort of unusual setting in play with this map? Or, did I provoke it somehow with my play?

Spoiler :
The first 100 turns were about containing/harassing Poland, which involved killing a lot of protected settlers with minimal units, while trying to get my settlers in position, while also navigating barbarians. The best settle spots were only really possible due to a spearman upgrade rune, and quick settler production through forest chopping. Two early scouts also gave population, culture rune, and a writing tech. The writing rune posed a dilemma, early philosophy through Great Library? I was 100% certain to get the wonder on Immortal, but I decided against it based upon the amount of settler spam coming out of Poland. If I was not careful, one settler would surely get through, as barbarians always seem to intervene at the wrong time, and usually troll the human player, if given a choice.

So, instead I used a 3 city national college start, with the 4th settler under construction during NC. Despite how badly I wanted Chichen Itza to prolong Carnivals, I missed it by a couple of turns. But, I was able to get a number of early wonders, including TOA, Peta, Oracle, Borobudur, and Notre Dame. Education came at T109. Also managed to get Desert Folklore by prioritizing a shrine after building scouts.



The tech pace was very slow, and I had a lot of happiness issues around turn 100. I wanted to enter Renaissance through Astronomy, but happiness pretty much forced my tech path through Notre Dame, despite Pagodas. I ended up paying for this decision later, when my two caravel where unable to locate Pocatello in a timely manner, thus delaying the first world congress vote. There was only one real world congress vote, World's Fair. Sadly, international games passed just as the game was ending.

Throughout the game, multiple AIs attempted to force convert my capital to their religion, despite agreeing to not send missionaries into my lands. Is this diplomacy option broken? They agree to leave me alone, but continue to convert my cities, which does not seem right to me. This prompted an early war declaration against Morocco when he approached my capital with a great prophet, but it was absolutely necessary, as I just did not have time to play keep away from my capital with precious workers. I let him walk the prophet up to my capital just to be sure, and yes he was going to bomb it. I probably should have dealt with my now aggressive neighbor, Poland after getting some happiness reserves from Notre Dame, but he had a very large military, and I had just gotten some of my trade routes up, so instead I decided to just regularly bribe him to go away.



Around Turn 190, I start wondering what the heck was going on with my tech rate? Why I am I not building Research Labs? This seemed really odd, as I had planted two academies before scientific theory, especially when usual tech milestones were coming up short. Fortunately, the AI culture rates were pretty low, compared to Deity, and I only needing about 10,000 tourism to overcome India and Morocco’s culture. So, it really did not even look like a National Visitor Center was necessary. Instead, I went for a 4 GM bomb, one from Broadway, one natural, and 2 faith bought. I did have a great engineer and multiple GS at the ready, but it just was not necessary. Decided to use the trick of selling one of my cities, just to bring India closer to me. One of my archaeologists was nearly killed by a Barbarian caravel, so I was not up for sending a GM convoy across the water.





Carnival is ridiculously overpowered.
 
Wasn't even planing domination game at first, wiped out poland fast just because he was too close. Its moroccan guy fault he was spreading some nasty religion with "Unity of the Prophets" reformation belief in my lands so had to declare "holy war" on him. ;) Couldn't just stop after that with my frigate fleet.
My so called friends Gandhi and Ashurbanipal backstabbed me while I was landing in shoshone lands, despite the fact that ashur pal was fighting shoshine before and gandhi didn't liked shoshone either, gandhi even stole Goa from me, really enjoyed enjoyed killing them. :D

Spoiler :

Final capital is mine

 
Spoiler :
My early turns in this game were different than for some others here. Of course, I had to try to play fairly and not take advantage of knowing roughly where things were based on reading this thread for a couple of weeks.

I settled in place and moved my warrior north passing thru the city to open looking terrain. He soon hit a weapons upgrade and now I had a spearman which is a reasonable early unit. Warsaw's western boundary was sighted and I moved my spearman towards it and next turn their worker had just finished a farm. A spearman can certainly take a shot from an early city and a warrior should one be able to get to him, so I grabbed that worker and sent him south to work in Rio. I stopped production of my own worker expecting more to steal from Uncle Cas.

Well, Poland is too close to me and we'll be competing for the same land forever, I thought. Therefore, they have to go completely! I then researched archery and hard built 4 archers, and bought the 5th and went straight to take Warsaw. In the mean time my spear and then scout were preventing Cas from settling south of Warsaw, and while it cost me my scout (which I didn't really need any more and which had recently hit a faith ruin so I could finally get DF pantheon) I captured a settler. 4 archers and my spear would've been adequate to take Warsaw, but I didn't know that and since all my suffering on Immortal has been do to poor military play and lack of units, I am happy to have extra. Warsaw fell on turn 40 and that was the end of Uncle Cas. A settler hiding in Warsaw became my 3rd worker. I could just handle the happiness to annex Warsaw and as Brazil, I want not pop the early GA til I have some tourism anyhow so I didn't really mind sometimes later being slightly unhappy.

Wu had made it east and wasn't terribly pleased about me killing Cas. She'd just taken out a barb camp (probably a quest as soon she allied Mombasa) and had three vulnerable units. I simply couldn't resist and DOW'd her and killed those 3 units and headed west where she'd come from. Rather than try to pass by Mombasa, I just captured it, noting its luxury improved so happiness wasn't awful.

Onward to Beijing and I had to use an insta-heal and lost one archer anyhow. I annexed it soon after it came out of revolt. Shanghai was south of Beijing and terrain was less favorable for easy attack. It fell on turn 74 and that was the end of Wu. I'd lost two more archers, but maintenance costs were killing me. I now had 5 workers (all captured) and soon disbanded one to to help finances. Shanghai with 1 pop was burnt to the ground.

As one who plays peacefully (often too peacefully for Immortal) I was happy to kill two civs and clean off what seems to be a small continent by turn 74 with just an archer rush.

Now to win this game from here which I should be able to do, and which a better player than me (ie Deity folks) would be able to do lots quicker than I'll manage.
 
Spoiler :
My early turns in this game were different than for some others here. Of course, I had to try to play fairly and not take advantage of knowing roughly where things were based on reading this thread for a couple of weeks.

I settled in place and moved my warrior north passing thru the city to open looking terrain. He soon hit a weapons upgrade and now I had a spearman which is a reasonable early unit. Warsaw's western boundary was sighted and I moved my spearman towards it and next turn their worker had just finished a farm. A spearman can certainly take a shot from an early city and a warrior should one be able to get to him, so I grabbed that worker and sent him south to work in Rio. I stopped production of my own worker expecting more to steal from Uncle Cas.

Well, Poland is too close to me and we'll be competing for the same land forever, I thought. Therefore, they have to go completely! I then researched archery and hard built 4 archers, and bought the 5th and went straight to take Warsaw. In the mean time my spear and then scout were preventing Cas from settling south of Warsaw, and while it cost me my scout (which I didn't really need any more and which had recently hit a faith ruin so I could finally get DF pantheon) I captured a settler. 4 archers and my spear would've been adequate to take Warsaw, but I didn't know that and since all my suffering on Immortal has been do to poor military play and lack of units, I am happy to have extra. Warsaw fell on turn 40 and that was the end of Uncle Cas. A settler hiding in Warsaw became my 3rd worker. I could just handle the happiness to annex Warsaw and as Brazil, I want not pop the early GA til I have some tourism anyhow so I didn't really mind sometimes later being slightly unhappy.

Wu had made it east and wasn't terribly pleased about me killing Cas. She'd just taken out a barb camp (probably a quest as soon she allied Mombasa) and had three vulnerable units. I simply couldn't resist and DOW'd her and killed those 3 units and headed west where she'd come from. Rather than try to pass by Mombasa, I just captured it, noting its luxury improved so happiness wasn't awful.

Onward to Beijing and I had to use an insta-heal and lost one archer anyhow. I annexed it soon after it came out of revolt. Shanghai was south of Beijing and terrain was less favorable for easy attack. It fell on turn 74 and that was the end of Wu. I'd lost two more archers, but maintenance costs were killing me. I now had 5 workers (all captured) and soon disbanded one to to help finances. Shanghai with 1 pop was burnt to the ground.

As one who plays peacefully (often too peacefully for Immortal) I was happy to kill two civs and clean off what seems to be a small continent by turn 74 with just an archer rush.

Now to win this game from here which I should be able to do, and which a better player than me (ie Deity folks) would be able to do lots quicker than I'll manage.

Give your self some more credit, a T74 archer rush is nothing to sneeze at!
 
May give this a try since Emperor Challenge won't be for a while. Is it even worth avoiding cultural victory with Brazil?
 
Give your self some more credit, a T74 archer rush is nothing to sneeze at!

Thx..not my usual style of play, but felt it was needed here. I didn't want to fight over the same lands all game with Cas and wanted his workers and didn't want him to settle any more cities for me to worry about. I was happy he didn't head north and settle some arctic wasteland. Turn 40 was the end of him.

Then there was Wu, and it would be a LONG time before she'd like me, if ever. Her 3 units had no chance to survive in my lands and then it simply was march west and conquer.

Other civs can do the same thing and some have improved early units like Babylon. There's Mayans who don't need to bother to research archery and who save 10% on there archer replacement. Some other civs could do nasty stuff with chariot type units.

I was concerned that I'd be too late to take the two Chinese cities with just a spearman and 5 archers, but those cities weren't tough yet.
 
T268 CV, Tradition, Order. Yeah I know Freedom has to be better for Brazil for the longer GA and free GA but I had quite a few cities and wanted to try Order.

Here's the save from my turn 74 when I cleaned my continent off if anyone wants to play from there. I'd expect a pro level player could win in less than 240 turns from here. View attachment Pedro II_0074 BC-1040.Civ5Save

Spoiler :
I soon built three new cities for a total of 7 when I could handle the happiness. Mombasa was good for sending cargo ships to trade with Morocco. I progressed nicely towards CV. India was the toughest nut to crack and they built a city on my continent on top of the coal I'd just discovered. Ouch..I took Order and need an 8th city for coal and sure enough there was 7 coal on a decent nearby Island.
Having India near me now, saved me several turns since my Musicians got to him quickly
 
Spoiler :
I settled one tile up to the NE. Didn't think to explore to the coastline as a few other people did. Rio has a nice long river for plenty of Civil Service tiles, but cargo ships would also have been nice. The spot obviously demands Petra, but running into Casimir immediately above me made me decide that he needed to be taken out ASAP. I teched Pottery, then went straight to Chariot Archers. Using a spearman I had upgraded by a rune and a couple of archers, I managed to intercept and steal all of Poland's settlers. I took Warsaw on turn 58, and promptly disbanded almost all of my units to save money. At this point I had only met China, so the warmonger penalty didn't do any damage to my future trading with the rest of the AIs.

Looking at other people's games, leaving Poland in peace after some worker/settler stealing is also an option, and it seems to result in faster finishes. It definitely crippled my early game to be spending research and production on archers and chariot archers. I went Liberty to free settler - full Tradition, and I think it might have just been better to go Tradition. I did get a culture rune early, but it took a long time to finish Tradition and I didn't really need the second city for my war efforts anyways.

Overall, although it slowed me down, I don't regret taking Casimir out. For starters, he's one of the strongest AIs and very prone to starting wars. If I didn't deal with him early I think I would have had to actually keep up a military. As it was, my military for 60% of the game consisted of the three archers that I didn't delete after I took Warsaw. Eventually China and Assyria DOWed me in the modern era, but at that point I just built some artillery and pracinhas and went over to beat up on Wu. She gave me about 80 gpt for peace, and I didn't really want her cities anyways, so I just marched back to my territory and left her to lick her wounds. Assyria gave me 15 gpt for peace after I destroyed his pathetic navy of privateers and ironclads with a couple of great war bombers.

I did get the strongest GM I have ever spawned to date. 18310 strength. This includes just about every modifier available, except that I didn't get a chance to propose my world religion. I didn't build a single brazilwood camp, but then jungle is more of a liability than an asset anyways, so I was happy to be in the desert/plains/grassland.

I missed out on desert folklore because I was building archers in stead of a shrine, so instead I got the +2 faith from gems. I added +15% growth and +2 faith from wonders, as well as religios texts, but I think the cheaper prophets would have been better so I could plant more holy sites. I ended up with 17 wonders in Rio. I've been taking the +2 faith per world wonder belief whenever I go for wonder-spam CV, but is it worth it? Maybe the +15% production bonus would be better. I am never sure what religious beliefs are the best ones to take.

For some reason the AI tech pace was very slow this game. I caught up in the late Medieval era despite the fact that my growth and bpt was terrible. To give you an idea of how late the wonders in my game went, these are the turns I built a few of them:

85 Petra
110 Hanging Gardens
123 Borobodur
127 Pyramids
178 Leaning Tower of Pisa
179 Sistine Chapel
185 GLobe Theatre
207 Uffizi
218 Taj Mahal
226 Louvre

I think the main problem with my gameplay is that I'm not growing enough. This game is unusual because I did an early rush, but when I compare my cities to other people's screenshots, it always seems like mine are smaller. I need to work on getting that growth up so I can tech faster and finish faster.

 

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T312 CV

Spoiler :
Yay 3rd ICL win in a row, i 1 shoted this one and i'm a bit tired now ... poland was so annoying in this game.

Was my 2nd game that was likely to go for a culture win.
so i did go for tradition and started to settle like in my science games, but what the hell, poland settled 3 cities while i was building my 2nd settler and blocked all the land.
So here we are forced to war, cleaned the 3 poland city and kept krakow that was in a spot i wanted to settle and was growing nicely without annexing at start thx to salt.
My mistake was not to finish him cause he was so annoying whole game long.
1 turn he want to be my friend, and 3 turn later DoW me.

with this battle for land my game didnt go so well, managed to get petra while wiping the poland cities at least but NC came turn 103 and missed globe theater by 1 turn and didnt get broadway aswell which left me with musicians that had nowhere to work for a long time.

but then hostels came, international game and bulbed a great artist for golden age + 2 musician gave me a huge boost and won just after by building NVC before the internet.


If someone could help me and answer some questions about culture game games, what is the strategy? should i work scientist slots? or should i just work engineer ones to get wonders?
do you rush guilds and work them immediatly even if your capitol hasnt a great food/pop?
which wonders are the most important?
how much you invest in ratio? (i just took the opener + specialist +2 science early on and finished aesthetics)
do you spam archelogist or just make a few? are landmarks worth it(they work with hostels right?)?

thx all for thoose games.
 
Turn 317 DomV

Spoiler :






My first Domination victory on Immortal so I'm quite pleased with this.

Found Warsaw on turn 10 with a unprotected worker so I couldn't resist grabbing him and from that point on it was clear we would be at each others throats so I churned out a few archers and took him out.

I then allied Zanzibar by rescuing one of their workers which gave me plenty of happiness but for their next quest they wanted me to demand tribute from neighbouring Mombasa. I've never done this before with Civ so I sent all of my archers across to be menacing. It still wouldn't let me demand tribute from them :( but given all my archers were over there I took them out instead (which I was disappointed to see didn't earn me any credit from Zanzibar.....

Wu immediately denounced me for taking out a CS which they were protecting so China paid the price with my newly promoted composite's. Beijing and Shanghai were both taken out by circa turn 80 with Guangzhou following a few turns later.

At this point I still hadn't met anybody else so I sent my army exploring to the south - along the way one of my composite's picked up a free upgrade in a ruin to a xbow and when we did find Morocco my xbow and 4/5 composites made quick work of Marrakech with my first Galleas turning up just as the show finished.

India then found me, just before I attacked Rabat, so with an unblemished diplomatic record I made peace and went exploring with naval units.

At this point I had a choice to pursue a peaceful existence on my lovely big continent to myself or go war mongering. With nicely promoted units there was only one choice! Assyria were already attacking Songhai when I found them so I swiftly joined in and captured Gao and Jenne to use as my beach heads to attack from.

A Great General was planted right next to Mumbai to really p**s off Gandhi as soon as I'd reached Dynamite and 3 artillery units made short work of Mumbai and Delhi.

Assyria was then tough given their considerable navy and the narrow neck of land that I had to navigate between Gao and Timbucto; they also were just tech leaders so they were helped by Great War Bombers. I just secured the crucial neck of land before they really started to pound me and they foolishly allowed me to negotiate peace. That allowed me to reconsolidate and line my now considerable number of artillery into an offensive line along their border. 10 turns later I also managed to convince Pocatello to declare war on them and I shattered them between a rock and a (not very) hard place.

That only then left the Shoshone who were protected behind another neck of mountainous land. Avoiding this difficult option I crossed the sea from Timbucto whilst launching a second naval army from Beijing as a feint attack. This was a sensible option as Pocatello sent his navy towards Beijing, leaving a soft underbelly unprotected to my Battleships, GWB's and a couple of lone Great War Infantry to knock on the door of Moson Khani and then blow it wide open!

A good fun map!
 
Yuck! I made a complete dog's breakfast of this challenge. Eventually scraped through at T328.
Spoiler :

After falling behind to both India and Morocco in CV stakes, I decided to use this game to gain the "Dark Horse" achievement (the only non-scenario achievement I did not have).

 
MMMmmmmmm, I forgot how tasty this map is. I was procrastinating last night and banged out 85 turns with ToA, HG, Petra, 4 cities and something like 4 deleted workers from Poland. Oh, what a lovely lovely map.
 
Puh! What a deceptive map.... Fun though! Another epic game! :goodjob:

Spoiler :


I started with the plan to go wide. Moved north and settled on the gem next to coust and montain. Met Poland soon afterwards and he was very close so I got 5 archers and took his capital.

Then I went for the second AI (China) och the starting continent and wiped her out. I also captured two city states for more luxuries and to make my empire connect. (One of the CS was mainly to get out of the northern inland sea.)

t115 screenshot:

Spoiler :


I killed off Poland only to realize his crap city in the snow was a holy city that could not be razed... this slowed me down since I had already problems with happiness.

I scouted some more and continued to conquer Morocco in the south before entering the deep seas. This is were it started to get complicated.... The map was extremely deceptive with small landmasses and ice and I had a very hard time reach the capitals with my naval forces...

Full tradition, full liberty, 2 in rationalism, 2 in commerce and some good stuff from order:

Spoiler :


I liked this Brazilian empire very much. If I knew how the map would look I would have gone for culture instead after conquering the first half. A shame to let their tourism-buff go to waste.
 
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