Quick paced immortal strategy?

Barefoot2013

Chieftain
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May 17, 2013
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Copenhagen
Hi.

I'm the kind of player who likes to sit down and play a game from start to finish. Thus I always play tiny map (4 players) and quick pace - sometimes continents, but mostly pangea.

I've beaten the AI at emperor [G&K] several times and in several different ways. So I decided to move on to Immortal. Here I get my ass kicked!

So I decided to watch some videos with Deity victories and read up on strategies on this forum. The problem is though, that every game I've seen on YouTube and every strategy guide I've read is based on standard pace and often also standard sized maps.

I think there is a huge difference in the game depending on which game pace you use. Right now I'm trying a strategy with selling of luxuries to get to upgrade an army of archers (like 6 or 7) to combosite bows as fast as possible and hope to beat at least the first first other civ with that. I start with one city, tradition to get the policies rolling, spawn a settler near the end of National College, and found my second city. Usually around this time an AI civ attacks and I can fend it off and get one of its cities.

I've seen this strategy work on Deity on standard pace. But at this time at quick speed the AI starts spawning musketmen. I might be lucky enough to break one civ and get their capital before they start spawning musketmen and later cannons with my low tech army, but even so in the mean time the others have just run away tech wise and I can see their riflemen patrolling the borders of my land. And now I'm so far behind that I'll get crushed by the AI.

Do you have any good tips for playing quick paced game on tiny maps? How can I improve my strategy and tactics?

Are there tips that can be used in these types of games that can also be used in multiplayer and vice versa (same pace and map size)?

Cheers from Denmark
 
Quick speed makes fighting a lot harder cause the movement speed of units does not change with the game speed. Meaning you can build units and tech faster, but the troops still move slow as hell. In other words, by the time you get to the other side of the map, they're like a whole era ahead in the game. I think you'd have more fun with standard speed standard sized maps, but yeah they take longer to play out.
 
Quick speed makes fighting a lot harder cause the movement speed of units does not change with the game speed. Meaning you can build units and tech faster, but the troops still move slow as hell. In other words, by the time you get to the other side of the map, they're like a whole era ahead in the game. I think you'd have more fun with standard speed standard sized maps, but yeah they take longer to play out.

Yeah. That is kind of why I like it. It is quite a challenge. Also if you build an army of 6-7 composite bows the tech development goes so fast, that when you reach the capitol of an AI you're met with catapults and soon pikemen.

I won't just give up. There must be a way to beat it! :)
 
this one works at deity (I use a modified version of this for deity that includes building pyramid before t33, but for immortal you don't need it), so it works for immortal, especially if you play smaller map size. This strategy is similar with multiplayer strategy, as both of them are for quick speed.

SP: liberty open - left side to get free settler - citizenship - liberty finish.

cap BO: scout - monument - granary/worker - archers - one settler after getting free settler policy - archers - spear or horseman - units

tech: pottery/mining/archery - lux tech - beeline to construction - horseback riding/bronze - beeline to machinary if needed - get writing sometime after horse to check other civs' cap locations and get lib at your cap

Goal is to start 7-8 CB rush before t40.

Even though you don't get any culture ruin, you get free settler at t26 (or earlier if you have high prod starting). Build one settler right after that - it will mostly take 4 turns with cap prod and 50% bonus. You can settle 2nd city around t30 and 3rd around t34 at least. Sit on (mining) lux or river hill if you can.

Steal worker from nearby civ if you can. If not, just get one from nearby CS. Two workers are enough to improve lux and get mines.

Don't even think of library till you get like 10 CBs. Get archers at cap. 2nd and 3rd city are for mainly supplies and for additional units. You should be able to get 4-5 pop cap even without pop ruin at t26, and after that you can get one archer per 1.5 turn at least. Hammer for archer is 26 and your cap would have at least 17 prod.

Sell lux to get upgrade cost. You would have 7-8 archers and enough money by t40.

DoW nearby civ (if you haven't done that already for worker stealing). "Def" for 4-5 turns and kill around 2 units per turn when AI sends his units - you just wait for them to come. If he cannot send more units, it's time for you to go. You should have at least 2 melee units to last hit. preferrably horses.

If you can attack cap right away, it's good, and if not, get 2nd city and go for cap. By the time you reach the cap you should get your first general. Use citadel if necessary.

You will be able to get cap before t60. Keep going. If game takes long, you get machinary (maybe using liberty GS to get it faster) and upgrade your units to Xbows. It's over then.
 
Like glory7 said, a CB rush with 7-8 of them by turn 40 is enough to kill 1 or 2 civs. Then tech for Machinery for the turn 75ish(build NC in cap for around the turn 60) and finish last civs(below 100 turns if everything goes well).

In fact, in mp games this is almost exactly the same thing, excepted that instead of selling luxs to get gold for upgrades you only have to bully some cs(which is pretty hard against immortal AIs, at least in the beginning). If you play larger maps you should counsider an artys/cavs rush for the turn 115-120.

In my best mp games i can get 6-7 CBs by the turn 35 with 2 cities and Xbows by the turn 70(a dozen).
 
Apparently using a worker to 1-turn-repair pillaged enemy improvements is the stone nuts.
 
Thanks guys for the excellent ideas. I'm definitely gonna try those.

Just one question. How should I interpret the "pottery/mining/archery" - should I only research one of them before Calender followed by beelining to construction? Also the "granary/worker" - is that build granary then worker or build both?

Cheers
 
Also. A lot of you prefer building a city on a hill. Does that goes for the capitol as well? Because I rarely start on a hill (if ever) and moving my settler to a nearby hill means losing my first turn for science and construction.
 
The theory is that the loss is compensated by the 1 hammer/turn for a faster scout (by 1 turn - counting the cost of moving) and faster everything else. You do miss out on one turn of growth and science.

Still, I don't always do it, but it is always something to consider.
 
Thanks guys for the excellent ideas. I'm definitely gonna try those.

Just one question. How should I interpret the "pottery/mining/archery" - should I only research one of them before Calender followed by beelining to construction? Also the "granary/worker" - is that build granary then worker or build both?

Cheers

sorry that if it was unclear. "/" means that depending on the situation you change the orders bettwen them.

For example, if your starting has 2 wheats, you go pottery first and mining/archery later. Also, you go granary first and worker later.

If your starting has salt and lots of forest with no wheat or dear, you go mining first and pottery later. You go worker first, granary later (or actually skip).
 
Also. A lot of you prefer building a city on a hill. Does that goes for the capitol as well? Because I rarely start on a hill (if ever) and moving my settler to a nearby hill means losing my first turn for science and construction.

For cap, it depends. If you can get lots of important tiles by moving 1 turn, you should (for example, if you can settle on a (river) (mining/masonry lux) hill with 3f at the first ring, you should.

Cap already got +3 hammer from palace, so addition 1 hammer for settling on the hill is less important. And for expos, settling on the hill is not only important for hammers but also for defense - you should build cities close to your first victim and use cities as healing place and defence/killing line before you move into enemy territory.
 
Hi Glory7.

Thanks for the explanation. Excellent stuff. I've tried a couple of early game to night to sort of get the feel of it and I've begun to see why it would work. Haven't finished a game though yet. But now I definitely have a base to work from :)
 
Which civs are best to do this with, out of curiosity?

Also, if you only manage to kill off one civ (I ran into an Alexander behind mountains who took an inordinate amount of time to subdue -- took until t107 to get his cap because he kept siccing city-states on me) -- what's the transition after Machinery and a full Liberty tree?
 
Which civs are best to do this with, out of curiosity?

Also, if you only manage to kill off one civ (I ran into an Alexander behind mountains who took an inordinate amount of time to subdue -- took until t107 to get his cap because he kept siccing city-states on me) -- what's the transition after Machinery and a full Liberty tree?

any civ with archer/horse UU (England, China, Maya, Greece, etc) or early UA/UB (France, Spain, Ethiopia, etc) works better.

For usual pangea map, you can find at least one civ nearby with "attackable" terrain to kill at t40 8 CB timing, and after that you should keep going for the next victim with easy terrain.

If you are isolated and have to go through a narrow path (for example, blocked by mountain), it means that you'd better off by defending (it will be really easy) so you rather go tradition 4-city and aim for cavarly - artillery timing or just go for sci/diplo win.

If you go for domination, you can go for commerse right side or rationalism after liberty finish. Techwise, if you think you need more than Xbows/knights, you should get education and go for dynamite.
 
Will this strat work for larger map sizes than Tiny? e.g. Huge? Or would it fail there?
 
Will this strat work for larger map sizes than Tiny? e.g. Huge? Or would it fail there?

For immortal level, you can win the game with CB/Xbows up to standard size pangea for sure (many GotM games confirmed that).

For deity, it is possible but it needs practice. One needs to know when to stop warring and catch up tech. For map size bigger than standard, I recommend tradition teching.
 
I'm still struggling at this level.

Maybe the strategy needs to be refined for BNW?

I usually face two major obstacles for this to work:

1) Barbarians!! I need to protect my workers, lux and other improved land and settlers from the hordes!! This makes it impossible to reach the rush with 6-7 CB at turn 40

2) When I've defeated the first civ - then the other civ usually have CB's and swordsmen. And often the two last civs are a long way from home, meaning, that when I've traveled to them I have no easy way of getting back-up troops. Conquering a CS usually just make the other civ even better prepared tech-wise.

How do you manage this?

So far I have only one victory on immortal (diplomatic).
 
Hey barefoot

I'm in a similar position to you, working on domination victories on Immortal and Deity.

I tried Quick Pace and found that it favours the AI too much. There could be players out there who could win a Dom victory on Quick Pace, but I've not seen it yet. I get that you want the game over with relatively quickly, but realistically the only way you're gonna do that is to play at a lower difficulty level.

If you watch this video you can see some fast-paced Deity warfare, almost continuous:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13387601

But most players take a break at some point to tech towards a more devastating set of units.

On my only Deity domination victory so far, I took one capital then sat back and grew my 3 cities (not counting the puppet) til around T200 when I got my Panzers, and then using a combination of diplomacy and switching my economy to full-time war footing, swept the other six capitals in pretty much one big push, paying the next victim to DoW people, then denouncing and attacking. By the last 2 capitals the AI had figured out the trick, that I was a global threat, blah de blah, but it was too late.

You either need to hit them fast and keep going, like Acken in the above link, or spend some time out-teching them.

For an example of the latter, here is a great video by Moriarte using Korea to dominate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWNhA6rcins

[EDIT: As for the Barbarians, they are almost no problem at all on Deity, as the AI deals with them very quickly. They are much slower to do this on Immortal. I've gotten used to Deity now and almost find myself wishing there were more barbs about so I could get some more XP :D]
 
Hi Consentient

Thanks so much for the input. Interesting to know that barbarians actually are less on a problem at Deity :D

Yeah it is the quick kill victory I'm after and I think you need to push on. But it is difficult - especially if you meet someone aggressive with early UU's, there are a lot of mountains or narrow passages or a long way to some of the civs.

The strategies proposed earlier in this thread just don't seem to work for me. Maybe they are very dependent on terrain, which enemies etc?

The "below turn 100" victory seem totally impossible to me :S
 
Update: Just won my first fast paced immortal victory: 133 turns with Babylon.

I attacked Portugal with 6-7 CBs and took the capital around turn 50-60 or so. In the mean time Assyria was getting a huge army and was a bit away together with England. So I paid Assyria to attack England - and they eradicated them. I waited a couple of turns so I could move my army across the map - then backstabbed Assyria with XB's. Took their capital and then London from them as well = victory :D
 
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