Warmongering on Immortal

Hey guys. Just got BNW and I’m having a really hard time working out a strategy for domination victories. Immortal, Continents, Standard size.

With G&K, I would rush horses and take out my closest rival before pushing for library and philosophy (for National Colledge) to keep me competitive in science while I pumped out more military units to take on the next guy. The goal was always to own my continent before shifting gears away from warmongering to build up my now neglected cities. I generally reverted to warmongering again around the mid/late industrial age to take the next continent. Happiness was always an issue for me and sometimes I’d get bogged down unable to expand fast enough and I’d end up in a draw with another civilization on my continent.

With BNW, I have no idea what to do. I’ve pretty much written off early warmongering. It seems impossible to do. There’s no money for units. So I’ve been rushing Stonehenge so I can get religion, then working towards getting national college as soon as possible. By this time I usually have 3 cities. I also have 2-3 city state allies in key locations to help me with my next war. As I move into the military techs, I’ll get my 4th city down, and begin pumping out units. My first war starts in late classical. At this point, I’m in great shape.

The problem is that by this time, my rivals are equal/stronger then I am. It takes to many turns to grind their armies down, and then all I can get is 2 cities before my empire goes into unrest. At this point, my momentum is lost. If I stop attacking so I can focus on happiness, they seem to instantly rebuild their forces and I’m in big trouble as they eye reclaiming their cities. So I usually stay at war and grind down new units while I build/trade happiness, then attack again when ready. But this pisses everyone off. If I get a second civ DOW (75% of the time) on me, I’m toast as all my units get used to defend a two front war while my cities fall behind economically. I often end up slogging it out through the renaissance, winning a few small victories here and there, and by the time industrial hits the tide turns and I get killed. I’m to far behind economically to compete. My people are always unhappy, I’m behind 3-4 tech levels, and all I can do it produce units to defend wave after wave of attack. As soon as WWI bombers hit, I’m done.

That loss of momentum after taking a couple cities is the biggest problem. I want to KILL these guys while the iron is hot, but I can’t. On Immortal, this means death as they rebuild so fast. In the past, I would foster city states to get luxuries and keep my machine going. Now that works until the UN kicks in, then everyone just banns trading everything. City states are useless at this point.

It feels like warmongering is completely broken. The whole game is now designed around discouraging it.

Any tips for this path?

Bide your time. Get your own two/three cities up and running with infrastructure in all three, NC in the capital, and have lux trades and trade routes on the go. You should have science and cash sorted for closing in on renaissance. You should be able to save plenty of gold, which I would use to upgrade catapults and Cbows that you hard built.

When you have some friends, start goading someone into war, pay other AI to go to war, then get stuck in with your trebuchets and whatever units you have built. I usually smash someone down to one city, reconcile, then see who's next if I still want someone else's land or wonders.

Definitely raze more cities to keep happiness in check.

There are too many important wonders to build in the early game, making early rushing less important. I usually just build a few defensive units and keep to myself until the Renaissance, where I usually launch my first offensive war.

El Caballerion said:

There are too many important wonders to build in the early game, making early rushing less important. I usually just build a few defensive units and keep to myself until the Renaissance, where I usually launch my first offensive war.

Click to expand...

On immortal there are very little early wonders you can actually produce before the AI takes them all. So I wouldn't say that matters much at all.

I've pulled off early wars before T80-100, but the problem is usually about happiness.

I'd get worker/shrine/granary/library first, then just make 4-6 Archers and get them all to Composite Bowman. 4-6CBs can still usually get the job done for 15-20def cities. I'd refrain from conquering cities with a rough surrounding though, especially if it was made on a hill.

I think the biggest change I had to adapt to is I no longer go by the 4-city rule or even the 3-city rule. With Tradition start and lack of gold to spend around, I usually just make one additional settler and proceed to puppet a capital or something. Or have 3 tall cities for a good chunk of 150 turns before I make a 4th.

Tachii said:

On immortal there are very little early wonders you can actually produce before the AI takes them all. So I wouldn't say that matters much at all.

Click to expand...

Yup. They are nice, but none are essential, and the gold you get back is in no way worth the wasted development time if you get beaten to them. Some aren't as hard to get as others, but there's even days you will get blown out of the water on ones you thought you could build consistently.

In my current game, I just had Pacal build Stonehenge FOLLOWED BY GL by turn 42 (immortal, standard speed). If I've gone for Stonehenge, I'm usually looking to have it done by turn 40 with some chopping help, or it's not worth the risk. I'd prefer by turn 37, that's a bit safer. Pacal had it done by turn 27. It's not always like that, but sometimes it's just not worth competing.

Yeah don't war too much too early, it's a bit counterproductive with BNW. You can still do it, but need to manage gold and happy well. Religion helps but I never get SH, just a good faith producing pantheon.

Get one city early and then NC or maybe two if you have happy for it and library will be done in time. Be nice to everyone and trade trade trade On immortal if you are beelining NC and then edu you will have 3-4 beakers per route. Try to get DoFs, use their gold to power up and then save for upgrades. Maybe pay to start some wars you don't need to do the killing yourself.

When you get edu, build archer army and some meat shields, tech to XB upgrade everyone and roll. You should be ok till flight. But yeah this is crucial don't get beat to it badly or they will own you. Trade for 2-3 oil as soon as AI has it then beeline flight and rush few triplanes. Just keep pressing, if you set up your core well and get science up, those four cities can last through a game without much need to annex but you might get few with lots of infrastructure to help out as science penalty will keep adding up.

Raze a lot, or better raze and sell burning cities to other AIs to keep penalty down. All you need is caps and very strategic cities to get around. Take down biggest threat first. When going for intercontinental invasion pick on the weakest guy first, once you are safely established take down number one, two and so on if possible.

just finished a game on immortal - standard speed with Harun. i really had a wonderful start (desert, uluru 2 cities away - went straight for it) i rushed to camel archers, upgraded 3 chariots and bought 3 more and a pike (got some gold from wonder tools). went straight to theodora and conquered all her cities (GL and Colosus). i was struggling to keep happiness high and gpt so i dont lose science. i traded almost all my lux for gpt. next, the mongols decided that moscow should be under their rule moscow was 5 tiles from my 3rd city. by then all my camel archers had march so i said to myself that bows shall splinter. took moscow (halicarnas and the oracle) and went straight to the mongol capitol (i took 2 of their cities in order to reach it). when i took his capitol i decided to put an end to this war because he was spawning longswords and i was last on research. stole my way to economics while researching to military tradition. popped industrialization with oxford, bought 3 factories and went to autocracy so i can steal faster while i went straight to artillery. i built 6 of them (3 promotions) bought some rifles, upgraded my 8 march promotion camels into cavalry and destroyed russia which was a bit in my way to siam which was no.1 in research. when i finally got to siam he met me with great war infantry, elephants and gatling guns. by the time i finished with him i had 6 great war bombers and a triplane. then i turtled in and just bought workers to manage my infrastructure and won a diplomatic victory.

I have found religion to be less important in BNW. In all the games that I have played, I have completely ignored it. Actually, it helps diplomatically since other civs will not be mad at you for having your religion.

The 5-7 turns it takes for the Shrine to build in the early game can be used for worker.

May be they should fix religion so that there is penalty for getting one.

Only got a good religion going one time as Morocco. Otherwise I just got my ass kicked "in a religious way".

Well it is quite easy once you get a good start with 4-5 core cities. Recently I won one with Inca, had amazing cities with Salts, Gold, lots of Hills and Uluru. After you get the early lead and you become the tech leader / 2nd, it's just time to get the victory imo.

I've just finished an immortal domination game, playing as mongol, everything standard. Map was pangaea though (was playing venice before that and sick of water, wanted a change of pace). It was also my first time playing at immortal difficulty, so I wanted to stack the advantage my way a bit.

I opened honor and attacked my nearest neighbor immediately. Built 2 scouts, and then archers all the way. The two scouts and initial warrior yielded great reward from goodie huts: an upgrade to archer and spearman each, a culture boost, and gold. Because of that, after hunting some barbs for culture, I managed to spawn the Khan general from the first honor tree I think in turn 25. By then I had 1 spear, 1 scout, and 4 archers (1 rush bought). Converged all of them on the neighbor's city (I don't even remember who), and it was over quickly without any loss. Puppetted the city (only ever annexed one city in this game, which was much later). I got 2 workers out of this, and soon after that stole another one from a CS.

After that, I turned peaceful for a while. The 3 workers are improving my cities and hooking up my 6 horses and luxuries. Tech are all firmly on the lower branch except for those needed for luxury improvements. I built a barrack, the honor's unique wonder (that give 15% against city), and even heroic epic in the capital. After that, I started pumping chariot archers. Since I never expanded and even took out my nearest neighbor, there are a lot of wilderness around my area and barbarians seem to be spawning non-stop. Because of that, I was keeping up with the leaders in terms of culture, and got more policies than half of the other civilizations. All my units from the first rush are also soon capped at 30xp.

I think I hit the unit cap at 4 chariots, so I started my conquest again after that. It was turn 70 or so. Aztec and Brazil are on next. Aztec only got 1 city, which was huge (size 15 iirc). Brazil got 4 smaller ones. Aztec actually got the highest military rating at that time, but 8 ranged units, half of them moving very fast, is just too much for him. I never build chariot archers much previously, because I thought their upgrade path to knight is crappy (which is of course not a problem with Keshiks now). I now realize the higher movement allows for much better positioning for ranged attack, allowing more units to fire at the city at once sooner. All 4 cities fall quickly (puppeted them all), I think I only lost the scout there. With cover promotions and discipline, between pillaging improvements and healing for 25 hp per turn thanks to the khans, the melee units have tremendous staying power and just won't die lol.

From there it was just mop up operation. I declared war and wiped another civ immediately, and soon after that two the 3 remaining civs declared on me jointly. By then I had keshiks, mostly promoted to logstics, and way too many generals (even after using two to snag key luxury from some city states). The constant war coupled with honor finisher keeps me flush with gold, which I used to bribe 2 key mercantile city states to keep the citizens happy (even then I was hovering between -2 to -10 unhappy most of the time), rush happines building in the capitol, and keep my army up to date.

I won sometime around turn 180. I think 160 should be possible if playing more aggresively focusing only on the capital cities, I was going for complete domination and completely wiped out the first 5. It was quite funny to suddenly got three big notifications that cultural victory is imminent for all 3 remaining civs because we all "only need to be influential with 2 more civs", when in fact no one is even exotic with anyone else .

At the end I had about 5 keshiks with range (turns out having 3 range is not really useful without indirect fire), logistic, march, and cover. These guys, when accompanyed by a khan, just can't die. They can move in, fire twice, pillage something, move back to safety, and then heal 25 hp at the end of turn if for any reason they need to. It was crazy. I don't even need any melee units except to take the city at the end, which is good because they lag behind so much having only 2 movement. I also have about 10 more slightly less promoted ones, only a few of which doesn't have logistics yet. I stayed 7-8 techs behind the leader the whole time, ending with only 1 tech in the renaisance era. But facing much more advanced units is not a problem at all when you have such an overwhelming army.

All in all, I think focusing on honor tree can be very good, but only if you commit to a very early war. Otherwise, the AI would expand very quickly and there won't be much space for barbarians to spawn, making its culture accumulation stunted compared to other trees at the start. Later, garrison units in all puppet cities for 1 happiness and 2 culture, and I find I'm actually leading the policy race (captured wonders helps too, of course).

Get some cities out, build archers, rush to construction, upgrade, capture the city that built Stonehenge. No time for wonders if you want to attack with classical units. Prioritizing wonders over units is not warmongering, if you do that you'll have to wait until the next era and prioritize crossbows then, once again you should have units ready to upgrade when you hit machinery to get maximum window of time to conquer.

Have a look at this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503931

Moriarte is a far better player than I'll ever be. He has some good tips that I'm sure you can make use off at immortal.

I've just finished my own first full game playthrough - immortal, shoshone, continents. I was able to stuff Siam in the first 100 turns. It's true, you're going to be juggling money and happiness and unit upgrades, but on the positive side, most of the AI civs are having the same problem. If you pick your first victim carefully, (scout a little), you can pick a close, wonder-rich neighbour with a small army, and smash them.

The problem I have TBH, is not so much happiness and gpt but balancing the the diplo hits warmaking gets you against the need for DOF's and RA's. Plus there's the tech hit.

Personally I figured, given the tech hit, early warmaking and landgrabbing is best, because that gives you more time in the mid to late game to pull the cities you've annexed up into tech powerhouses.

Moriarte claims that he hasn't experienced any serious tech hits, and being on 600 bpt by turn 200, I believe him. Still, I haven't gone all out domination yet to try.

I like it though. Domination is no longer a no brainer. It requires more thought.

Thanks everyone. Some great tips in here I’ll try.

I’m not naturally a warmonger even though I only ever go for domination victories. On lower levels, I used to focus on my economy/science and only pick off weaker opponents while defending my borders. I used to wait until I was into the modern age to really go on the warpath.

On Immortal, this almost always results in a lost game, so I’m trying to be more aggressive early on. I’ve played 2 games on G&K like this with great results doing horseman rush (although I still fell behind in tech approaching the industrial age). My 2 games on BNW was not so successful.

The only reason I go for Stonehenge is because I want a religion for happiness perks, and building shrines always seemed to difficult to fit in to my build plans. It was easier to delay war and get that in early so I could skip shrines and focus on libraries and units. I’m going to reassess that strategy and try foregoing wonders completely and try some of the other ideas posted here. Pushing towards education is also something I’ve overlooked and I think that would solve my tech issues mid game.