GORE-01: Immortals of the World, Unite!

Map type: CONTINENTS
Map size: STANDARD
Difficulty: IMMORTAL
Starting civ: RANDOM or TO BE DETERMINED, depending on any comments
Options: ALL DEFAULT
Win conditions: ALL ENABLED, NEED SS OR DOMINATION

I'd like to use this game as one of the testbeds for early rapid expansion (REX) strategy, to see if it works on the higher difficulty levels. When Civ IV first came out, a lot of Civ3 veterans found out that expanding too much early crippled your economy from which you cannot recover, and REX was declared neutered if not dead.

I beg to differ, and here are two reasons why: one two

I believe this strategy can work on Immortal as well, although I suspect it will be far less forgiving to inefficiency and mistakes. I do not foresee a problem as long as we're capable of pulling off the win by late 1800's or early 1900's minimum.

The focus will be on grabbing as much land area as we feasibly can early on, then using our superior size and resources to recover from any early economic struggles to win the tech race in the mid-late game, in order to pull off the SS or Domination win.

A lot of what happens in the early stage will depend on our civ, starting position, and whether any AI is close by. If they are close, our early strategy will most likely be military-oriented. If we have our own continent, we will be able to expand more peacefully at our own pace but may not be #1 in land size for some time. There is some inherent randomness in Continents (more so I think than the other settings) so we'll have to be a bit flexible in our approach.

Ideal candidates for this SG will be those currently capable of holding their own on Emperor, or at least able to consistently beat Monarch on standard settings minimum.

Also, I've left the "Starting civ" option open for now. My default approach is selecting "random" and rolling with what we're given. However this is subject to discussion esp. if there are those who prefer a specific civ or trait to work with.

I think 5 people total would be sufficient to begin, give or take 1. If there is enough interest we'll get started ASAP.

Roster:
{goraemon}
{Shadzy19}
{colony}
{open}
{open}
{possible reserve}

*If 1 more person shows interest we can get started

I have tried similar strategy's on emperor and succeeded but immortal surely makes this extremly hard.
Ive yet to kill 2 opponents on immortal pre longbows without caeser/huaca capac(sp) / cyrus , and after they get longbows and maceman with a production wise economy i had the hardest time catching up on tech and couldnt kill them in other ways failed to win this way.

I would like to give it another go though and hopefully we can pull it off with REX and prove myself wrong

As for civs i usually play agressive or financial civs but random would be ok for me if its ok with everyone else.

1 more question , are we gonna be playing epic or normal speed?
Epic will give us some aid since its quite a help to early warring and frankly i think we are gonna need all the help we can get.
If its normal well , then our win (always be positive) will make it even more special

I'm interested in this but I don't think I'm anywhere near ready for Immortal yet (just check my attempt in your thread), and I suspect you'll want at least 1 player experienced on Immortal.

Anyway I'll be happy to join if you want me


Another Edit: Woops just saw Shadzy's post

Capac has a good combination of traits and imo a very functional UU that's going to help very much against barb archers, so I could go with that. Praetorians imo seem to be a bit overused..

If 1 more person shows interest this can get started. For the records I've tried Immortal only once, and I started on a smallish continent and went the small empire, economist strategy to win by SS in the early 1900's. I have not tried the REX strategy complete with early military rush on Immortal yet, so I don't know for sure if that is feasible but plan to find out one way or another.

Edit: just saw colony's post too, I'm testing uncharted waters as well so welcome aboard Shadzy19/colony

The Inca probably would be a good civ to try Immortal out with, but I still wouldn't mind having a random civ. And I agree about Praetorians, they are just obscenely good

I think I might actually go and try an Immortal level game now, just to get used to the tech pace/wonder building dates, even if I do find myself hopelessly out teched or conquered early on. Hopefully the RNG will give me an average start, ie no gold in the capital's radius.

Shadzy19 said:

1 more question , are we gonna be playing epic or normal speed?
Epic will give us some aid since its quite a help to early warring and frankly i think we are gonna need all the help we can get.
If its normal well , then our win (always be positive) will make it even more special

Click to expand...

I must've missed this question earlier. It's not set in stone but I'm currently inclined to go with normal speed as, you said, it'll be all the more gratifying if we win. I've warred early quite a few times on normal-speed emperor but since I've only played 1 immortal game (and that was peaceful) I frankly have no clue how much more difficult early warfare will be on immortal. Fortunately we're much better war generals than the AI will ever be so hopefully it'll be doable.

Also if we do go early military and successfully employ REX then we're going to have to get used to playing while way behind technologically for quite a bit of time, while keeping the faith that we'll catch up. Some people just cannot stomach this scenario

If we play Inca/Roman/Persian it will help our game a lot .
It seems we are going to war very early and this is where these UU's really shine and we might be able to take out 2 civs pre longbows , giving us at least 10-15 civs wich might be enough in the long run to catch up in tech and grab the win if we dont get attacked by a far more advanced enemy while repairing our economy.

About my second post , i made a double post by accident and edited it later with the question sorry about that.

ignore this

bump

OK, looks like that elusive third candidate is nowhere to be found If both of you are still interested we can leave those spots open and get started ourselves - it'll just mean more frequent turns. If not we'll come back and try this again later sometime when more gamers may be ready to tackle it. Either way

To bad there is so little intrest in this game , im definatly still up for it and playing with 3 players isnt always a bad thing .

I'm still interested, but I think we could really do with a 4th player before starting, although I am surprised at the lack of interest. Maybe there just aren't enough people who feel ready for an Immortal level SG yet (And I know I'm not really, that Immortal game I tried still needs working on. Just wish I didn't have so much other stuff to do as well)

Good luck guys, immortal is hard.

Im sorry , but I think im gonna pull out of this one , its been quite a while and we still havent started and I keep having to pass up on other nice SG's with the idea a immortal SG will take quite a lot of time and planning. This way I can join some other SG's im intrested in .

Still no interest in this?

Maybe it will have to wait a while to find some players

I am very interested in this, but won't have the time to play until the end of March. I can easily win with REX on Monarch. I think at this level you need to take note of alexti's comments in the threads you linked about cities needing to pay for themselves quickly. In this vein, I would suggest going all out to secure the Great Lighthouse, in that coastal cities will pretty much pay for themselves straight away so you can REX as much as you like along the coast.

Well, I am interested to try a succession game.
About myself.
I am reliebly winning solo games on monarch level, but I never try emperor or higher yet. But I do not think I will screw it up mach, I think. We should have alots of discussions anyway.

I am mostly builder. Personally I believe warware is one of my weekest spots.

If for civ, I would advice try Catherine. Comercial/creative. Comercial a strong trat and creative does help with early expancion. Draw back could be an early border tension. Creative does not help mach later game, but early it is a boost.
Piter is a good alternative to. Philosofical/expancionist. Philosofical is good to narrow renesance tech gap and expancionist let you cut trees a bit more.
Bouth trats work all civ live time.

UU is good to, on monarch level anyway. Let one compencate for tech bacwardness for some time.

But I am biased, I am Russian.

But really, I found Catherine is good for early expancion, as creative let you do not warry about culture and financial cussion your money. Cottage on river instantly 3 commerce. Additional flexibility is Dramma tech line. After basic essential tech bee line to Dramma and use culture slide for happiness. Work good for spread out empire. 10% - 1 happy. When you sity limit to size 3-4 it mean you pay 10% for 25% increase in population.

Main problem with infinite city spawn is army upkeep, which hit very early on higth levels. So, increase of population is essential.

This lurker is hoping the game isn't abandoned...

If I might be permitted to express a suggestion as to civ, the organized trait might definitely be helpful for a sprawling empire. Toku probably has the best traits for early conquest sprawl (but medieval UU).

Well, creator of the game did not log in seens 26th.