The INSANE Walkthrough

The Insane Walkthrough

Immortal Level

Ramesses
Continents/Normal Speed


Strategy revolving around NO LIGHTBULBING
& NO COTTAGE BUILDING

Once again, let’s prove the impossible here…

Past walkthroughs proving this located here::

The Unreal Walkthrough
The Impossible Walkthrough
The Impossible Walkthrough (Part II)



P.S. Same disclaimer notice as before. This is for experts!

4000bc

Alright, this may not look like much yet, but hey, it could always be worse, like tundra. Actually we have cows here, and I love cows. In fact, they are one of my favourite resources so I’m happy about that. They give both some ok food but also hammer production when worked proper.

Only two hills present now, and a lot of flatland. I’m not much a fan of flatlands but later on in the game when we get the proper techs, I’m going to try to convert those into something useful. For now though, my goal will probably be farms.

Under no circumstances will we be wasting any precious effort on silly cottages though. No, no, no! We are not doing Immortal Beloved here, this is Immortal Civ IV.

2920BC

Alright, we have scouted a bit, and we have some good and bad news. The good news is we found one other food source (sort of expected), and a few flood plains. The bad news is we only have those original 2 hills. So, our mining production will be restricted to only a couple hills for the entire game. However, that is just part of the terrain generator, and we must deal with what the system gives us and make the best out of it. Actually I think that’s rather the fun part of it too.

BTW, floodplains do add unhealthiness into your city, and this also is going to cause us some problems. Health is a very big issue on the highest levels, and should be dealt with carefully. Not everything comes down to just red unhappy faces.

Notes:
We ran into Musa. Now this is going to get a lot of views cringing in their boots. Why? Because he’s been labeled as the #1 top tech master, and this is IMMORTAL! However, not to worry just yet. I have a few plans in mind to set loose, and as soon as I can gather a much better picture here, of what’s around us, other AI’s on this continent, etc, I’ll then pick what I think is one of the best solutions.

Also note, we are going after bronze working. I like BW early because bronze is an important early resource. It is what fuels armies, and if it’s in your fat cross will aid in production. We are low in production hammers, so every little bit will help. Also, I can take advantage of the chop system, and help to chop-rush some wonders. I don’t think I need to stress the fact that the Immortal+ AI is VERY fast at builds, due to the great bonuses THEY get and penalties WE get.

Hinduism was founded somewhere, we’ll find out more about the picture as time goes on.

Also our first wonder is the GW. I like this for many reasons, as mentioned in my other walkthroughs. It is sort of expensive though, about half the price of the Pyramids. We must pay an investment of 250 hammers. To do some quick math, it is about 20 hammers per chop up to 2 hexes away from the city, and then drops to 16, and so on as you move outward. We’ll also have our city contributing its own hammers during that time, and on top of that, you can also take use of the whip. Keep in mind of modifiers like Mathematics (if you have it) and industrious overlay.

The whip is very IMPORTANT. And is the main reason I hooked up one of the food resources ASAP. I would have gone for the cows first, however our leader Ramesses doesn’t start out with AH, and it would take too long to research up to AH while we were off trying to get BW and masonary up for the GW. Everything has to be judged and compromised according to what leader you start off with, because each leader has different starting techs and this combined with the terrain is IMPORTANT! Prioritise accordingly.

Time to build a mine here, and as soon as that mine is done, BW comes online and we can get down to chopping to ensure our GW is not snatched from us.

P.S. It is perfectly fine to work on stonehenge first, then put it into the que as soon as masonary is available, and work on that. The GW is very important first, for many reasons. Barbs come out very fast at this level, and StoneHeng doesn’t get completed as fast by the AI as some of the other wonders.

2320BC

GW is completed.
Time to shift production immediately towards Stonehenge.
-ni

2160BC

Uhh ohhh. Napoleon greets us. This is good and bad. Obviously it’s bad because he is aggressive. And he is somewhat hard to please. However, he can be bribed, and he can get warmed up enough that he will even trade vital resources like horses if you are a decent war-ally.

This is going to be a very interesting and tricky game for sure.
-ni

2080BC
2 turns left until polyethism is researched.
We have just completed Stonehenge.

It should be noted that GW gives only 1 ppp, while SH gives us double. However, we should still have greater odds of getting a Great Engineer versus great priest because GW was built first. It’s not that certain, but in any case we are happy because we don’t have any artist pollution, and artists are dreadful.


-ni


1320 BC

We had oracle ready for completion, which is great, as often the AI is very, very quick on getting it on these levels. However, I would like to use it to grab alphabet, a very expensive and important tech, instead of using it now for something else. So… we put it into the que to delay it until writing is researched. There is a little risk that the delay may make us lose getting the oracle, in that case we will get some gold. However, it is best to use the oracle on Alphabet or something similar even if there is a risk we lose it.

Writing is just 2 turns away, and we will bring it out of the que on the last turn, as tech research PRECEEDS wonder building (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW WITH THE ORACLE). Thus we are only delaying by 1 single turn here.

Note: Got bronze hooked up obviously. Unfortunately it wasn’t in our fat-cross, but at least we have some which is better than nothing.

1000 BC

Alright, it happened, our FIRST GREAT PERSON has arrived. It was either going to be a priest, or an engineer as our GW, Oracle & SH can only produce one of these two.

Now, this is a very important decision point for the game here. We can do quite a few things with them, and they all could be ok paths to choose from at this point.

I actually had to save here and take a break for a few things, but that was a good thing because it did give me more time to philosophize on which direction I wanted to head.

We could make him take permanent residence as a super specialist. This will contrib. +3h/3b per turn, INDEFINITELY. Which actually is a VERY significant boost at this point. It would really help in pumping out axemen if that is the route we want to go, not to mention the aid in science. By the end of the game, the amount of beakers and hammers this guy will have contributed will be staggering.

Or…

We could use him right now to build the pyramids. At 500 hammers, and no stone near by, and very few trees, this may be the most economical solution. The pyramids is very nice for many reasons. Also note, I am going to avoid the constitution route in this game, as on Immortal+ it becomes a very big hassle to race for Democracy and to get SoL. For this reason, I think going pyramids is much better than if we were on Emperor- where we can skip the pyramids and still get rep from constitution which generally is on my tech path.

Also note, our health cap is even LOWER on this level of play, which again is another factor that makes me want to lean on Pyr here so we can get the +3 happiness boost RIGHT NOW.

Or…

Since we also don’t have any marble… we could use him to rush the Great library, which is only 16 tech-turns away from us now. Or use him on another wonder. Again, you see how complex such a simple GP can make right now at this stage. Many, many paths to take, and I won’t even TRY to dictate to anyone what the best solution is right now.

Myself, I’m very familiar with working with early representation, so I’m going to again take the pyramids route here. And don’t forget, to IMMEDIATELY switch to Representation after building it.

P.S. And another factor for the pyramids here, is because of my settled specialist strategy, which will start to show off power as the game progresses (I hope).

Note: We COULD use him to lightbulb Iron Working, which is somewhat expensive of a tech right now. But why waste such a precious gem on something that can easily be traded for? Tut-tut-tut… That’s not part of my strategy, avoid the temptation.

750BC

3 turns away from researching literature
Note the two foreign cities bordering our capital. Musa just settled one, and the other was a barbarian city which Napoleon just captured. DAMNIT! I was planning to get my axemen up there and take it myself! Oh well…

This leaves two main courses of action, I can either play the waiting game, and get them both to flip over to me peacefully, which MAY or MAY NOT take a very long time. Or... I can go after them NOW with axes, but cause a war. Arggg… tuff choices, and again I won’t try to dictate to you the best course here, just go with what you prefer. Remember though, each decision here in these early phases spawn off into totally different branches by the time the game will be over.

Another barbarian city down south. Wow, is that a lot of archers or what? He must have known the mighty axemen were coming. Maybe I should second think this attack, and go for Munsa’s weak city instead for now…

Note: CoL being researched, that means literature is done and work on TGL is under way.

325BC

Moving axemen upwards to where the front line will be. Because early rep allowed our city to grow more, we have a population of 7 now. That means I can actually execute the whip right now and shave a whole turn off completing it. Again, the importance of food and hammers is what the game is all about. I can not stress this importance enough, and it is no surprise to me that someone who is a cottage fanatic would claim wonder hogging was impossible at these levels. Well that’s sorta right, because cottages don’t let you build wonders!

300 BC

A priest arrives. Time to absorb him into our city. That’s a perm 5g/3b/2h boost. Woohoo!


200 BC

Welp, Mansa deserved to lose that city! He only left 2 units defending it! LOL.

I made an arrogant demand hoping to grab a tech, but he wouldn’t give it to me. You’d think with an army of axemen outside a city, he’d have givin in. Oh well, I probably shouldn’t have demanded a tech now in hindsight, but Musa is VERY tech-trade friendly so… I was hoping there

Our relation is now further hurt by –3 for declaring war. Yes, I could have waited for culture to win, but that is not a sure thing at this point. And if I have a city outside for the taking, NOW, then by all means, I’ll take it if I have axemen on the ready, which I do.

Note: Since Nappy and Mansa founded opposite religions, this is very good for us. We can wait and see which side we want to join in the future. Also note this will cause perma tension between these two, as the AI never likes to adapt to foreign religions if it founded its own. This is a major mistake in the stupid AI, and one which will help us greatly through the use of religious wars.

25 AD

Finally, we enter into the AD years. We made peace with Mansa (no trades), and now I plan on taking the next city in the list. Just one for now… Napoleon’s. And of course, it falls easily to our little stack of axemen.

Currently we are researching after philosophy. Due to grabbing the oracle earlier, I feel very confident the AI has been slowed down enough that they will not beat us to liberalism. We are going to win, even without the aid of any lightbulbing wastage. There are also a few other reasons for this…

- We didn’t trade alphabet, even when the AI tried to offer great techs or demand for it
- We didn’t trade CoL, another important tech needed for Liberalism


Also note, it’s a good habbit to keep checking the tech trade screens. I always do this just to see if someone else lightbulbed something and got a jump over us. If so, then we can just turn on the heat with more research of our own. This can be done by more running scientists & case civic, and also by converting hammers into pure science.

Again, you will find self-proclaimed experts telling you it’s impossible to win the liberalism race without lightbulbing, even on monarch. Well, I’m going to show you the impossible here. It just takes some understanding of the game, how the AI’s behave and follow their tech paths, etc. Now maybe not EVERY time will you win a liberalism race this way, but you will generally do ok. And also the odd times you miss, it’s still fine, and you can continue on your business of winning regardless.

So relax… and enjoy life.

275AD
We sue for peace, giving Nappy meditation LOL. It’s a rather cheap tech, and while required for liberalism, I don’t think we need to worry about Nappy beating us there.

Mansa doesn’t quite have literature yet, though alphabet is under his belt. I don’t like it when the AI gets alphabet because then they can unlock themselves into mass tech trading.

HOWEVER, considering the religion tensions, I don’t expect much trades between Mansa and Nappy. Especially with Nappy being so demanding and hard to please. In any case, while we refused to give or trade alphabet before, it is ok to trade literature. The damage is done now, and literature won’t stop their tech trades. I gave literature in return for 70g, AH, and Hunting which I think is a bargain, despite the AI doesn’t trade unless it thinks IT is getting a bargain. This is because we have cows that I want to get hooked up ASAP and now I save a lot of other beakers, which will continue to go into my beeline for liberalism. We should make it easy now, as long as we don’t make any mistakes between here and then…

Also note, as soon as getting AH, we discover horses inside the fat cross of what once used to be Mansa’s city.
-ni

450AD

We found Taoism.
This is good and bad. Bad because we don’t want a religion, we can’t afford to run it with nappy in charge of his own religion. We want to make allies, not enemies right now. Considering we already caused enough tension as it was with our two early wars already!

But at least we can build some temples to add another happy face, just DON’T RUN THE RELIGION.

Also note, this is good because if we are first to philosophy, then we are for sure in the lead to liberalism.
-ni

P.S. We did change our state to a religion though, we switched to Jewdiasm, This is because not only did we want to run pacifism for a little while to speed up GPs, but also to get better relations with Nappy who founded it. We don’t care about Mansa just yet. He has a very good threshold with relations, but Nappy is AGGRESSIVE. Meaning we MUST try to avoid more wars with him than we really care/need to. He certainly doesn’t need much aggrevation to start them.

Meanwhile, Mansa will even trade techs when sometimes you’ve done almost everything in the book to piss him off. He’s almost as friendly as Ghandi, but he IS CAPABLE of attack when pushed against enough!

450 AD.

Time to look inside our little fortress.

Two absorbed priests now.

We are making a fast run through mathematics… While it seems expensive early in the game, note that with our caste\scientist combo, and GL, and 2 priests under Rep, it doesn’t take too long at this rate, even on Immortal.

You can see how the power of this fortress strategy has significant gains even early, and it will continue to contribute indefinitely unless we somehow lose the capital.

540AD

Another Great Scientist arrives. Notice how we have the option to lightbulb him in exchange to discover sailing.

Buwahaha!!!

As you know, I don’t believe in lightbulbing, and you’d have to put a gun to my head to do it in this spot.

Instead, I’m going to use him to build an academy in our city. While running him as a specialist will contribute 9b, and 1h production, and academy should trim off about 3 turns from researching CS here. 3 tech turns is quite a bit, run the academy for now, and all other scientists I will plan to just absorb into here, except for the small chance of running a golden age in the final years of the game.

Also note, in the top left city we have access to two elephant tiles (you can’t really seem them in this shot). Elephants are very strong early in a game, and in fact have a very long life expectancy. I’m going to start cranking them out now, much more so than the axemen. I’m going to keep cranking and not stop until the rest of the game. That’s right. I’m going to keep cranking out until I deplete the world of ivory!

Note: There is a little bit of stone outside our culture borders… if ONLY that had been in our fat-cross! Argggggg!!!!

600ad

We detoured our mighty axemen and took over the overly-defended barb city down south. Actually we had some help by a stupid local army under the direction of Mansa. He suicided his units into the barb city, allowing us to do a cheap mop-up.

Gee, Thanks Buddy!

We even captured a granary inside!

720AD

Anther GS arrives. Now this gets interesting… we can lightbulb him off to discover paper. Coincidently, I just happen to be researching on paper right now. In fact, I just started researching it this turn, and there is alittle bit of tech overflow from the last, but it is ONLY going to take me 5 turns at the most here.

Now lets see… we’re still ahead of the AIs here from what I can tell. So you honestly think I’d waste such a precious GS to trim off 5 turns on paper?

Are you f#%$ing kidding me????

Rookie move…. Forget it, we absorb him and boost our monster indefinitely even more.

-ni

880AD

Mansa is currently in a religious was vs Nappy. Well, that was inevitable to happen. Earlier in the game Mansu wanted one of my elephant resources, I refused to give it to him, but now that he’s in his religious war (cause he’s too stupid to know it would happen vs Nappy), I am going to give some to him.

Actually, I am getting 7 gold and 1 resource for my elephants. Which is ok, but the main reason I’m giving them to him now is because I don’t want Nappy to crush him too hard. Nappy is aggressive, and has power right now. So I want him to have a decent foe to fight at all times, and keep him in check.

Now yes, Nappy is starting to like me because I am a follower of his religion, and also Rep is his favourite civic (something I took note of the moment I ran into him). But that doesn’t mean I don’t want him to have a rough time even though he is my buddy!

If he has no enemies left to fight, who is to say he MAY just decide to turn on me? LOL

-ni

960AD
Another GS arrives. Yes, a lot of scientists, because we are running so many + GL. I’d prefer +3h from engineers, but we just have to do with what we get. In any case, 3 GS = 3h at least

No questions.. you know what we are going to do with him…

-ni

1100 AD

Ok this one scared the hell out of me LOL.

2 turns left to liberalism… and then suddenly the chong bells went off. Dohhh!

Oh wait, it’s only stupid Huayna who is first to cirumnavigate the globe.

Phewww…

I was wondering what the hell happened there!

Notice I have open borders and one axeman sitting on a hill next to Mansa’s holy city. He’s there so I can watch the show…. Watch the battlefield at all times and see how things are migrating. It’s important to get some pieces of the picture to plan the future. And of course, I am thinking on grabbing that holy city in the near future for myself, despite my religious brother Nappy obviously wants a piece of it too.

One worker is hooking up that stone now that my culture finally took it, unfortunately it is relatively too late I think to make use out of it by now, but at least we can trade it off. Yup, the AI is stupid enough to pay for useless resources too.

1110 AD

A GP arrives. Now… what to do…. Absorb him, or burn him off to discover Monotheism? LOL So silly….


Also note, since we are at the last turn to liberalism, it’s time to do mass trading now with everyone… you can afford to trade liberalism techs now because the AI can’t hurt you anymore. We’ve been holding onto them for dear life until this point, and now suddenly we are free again to trade tech crazily. Also note the AI will start to be worried after we hit the next tech jump by grabbing nationalism. So tech trade NOW while the AI doesn’t know how advanced you will be again next turn.

--

1290 AD

1 turn away from military tradition. I love this tech because it enables defensive pacts. That also allows you to increase relations even more… and gain more defensive power. It works well with personalities like Cyrus, but unfortunately we don’t have Cyrus here, we have Nappy. Which, sad to say is very hard to please, and doesn’t like to trade much either. However, we’ll see what happens…

Also note, we are working on Taj Mahal. Yup, we don’t have any marble which sucks, but I think we’ll do fine regardless. While I don’t like the artist pollution, the Taj will speed up vital units like cavalry production. Even though we only started with 2 hills, we should be able to do ok with the GA in effect.

As a sidenote, Nappy had music earlier, but we couldn’t trade for it, so we had to spend some turns researching it ourself. That puts us a little behind schedule, but no worries, we are still doing fine. As mentioned, Nappy is always not too thrilled to trade techs.

Lets take a look again inside the little fortress. We have a total of 5 absorbed specialists now, (not including 2 scientists from TGL)

The beakers they contribute are ok, though I’d have liked to have more hammers contributed. Nevertheless, we’ll manage. Also note, had we used Ghandi here with his philosophical trait… got the parethenon, and build the NE, as well as run pacifism, we’d have one nice chain of great people right now. However, everything is a trade of and you simply can’t have EVERYTHING your way.

1310ad

The Taj Mahal has been build in a far away land…

God damnit! LoL. Looks like someone got lucky and found marble nearby (not to mention a very fast move on nationalism too). Unfortunately that’s just the way it goes sometimes, and you may not always get every wonder you aim for, even after timing things carefully. But that’s just part of the game, we will move on and compensate regardless.

I’m starting to get a little worried here though, I didn’t expect Taj this early the way things were going earlier. Granted, Huayna is a very fast techer himself, but I’m still surprised… I just hope Ghandi isn’t there hidden somewhere… The tech leader of them all.

-ni


1370AD

One turn away from Gun Power! As soon as this is hit, we are cranking out cavalry baby!

And remember what I said about cranking off war-elephants? Well they are marching now. I have the option for horse archers, but I’m going for war-elephants. That 8 strength and bonus vs mounted is VERY strong. Elephants as mentioned earlier are VERY strong indeed early, but also very strong middle game, and even usable late.

This is because they can still do one hell of a lot of damage to knights. It may feel great having early knights to some people after beeling to them, but when you suddenly run into a bunch of elephants, you’re heart sinks and you know you’re in for a brutal time, even with a movement of 2.

And furthermore, elephants are even capable of great damage chewing up cavalry. Believe me I know… I love cavalry and I still dread on every attack of a cav vs an elephant. That anti-mounted unit bonus really is devastating.

But… we are not planning to use our elephants as elephants here. We are going to upgrade them.

“But how can you afford to upgrade to uber eleet units… lots of them when you said you don’t build cottages you say?”

Well… as you can see I’m doing fine without silly cottages. Get your trade-routes, trades, absorbed priests, and demands right, and you’ll see how you can have more gold than any amount of early cottage spamming can ever produce.

But… before we get side-tracked… Note that elephants getting upgraded to cavalry are cheaper than going the horsearcher or Egypt ub route. So for that reason, we focused on the elephants.

And of course if there happen to be a much earlier war, we were still prepared for it with very strong units in reserve.

Here is a shot of our war elephant production line shipping the raw cavalry material towards the front line. They’re getting stockpiled in the city until ready for war.


Note:

Great Engineer arrives!

1070 breakers he is willing to contribute to machinery.

LMAO!

We have cavalry next round, why the hell would I care about burning off this precious gem on machinery, even if I can get macemen to run off the assembly line.

Furthermore, the lightbulb here wouldn’t even discover the full tech! What a ridiculous waste that would be.

I’m putting him to work as a perm specialist. He’ll help greatly in the war/science effort.

1420ad

I wont even show the power graph results. That is because they are always so misleading, I find them almost useless to pay any credible attention to.

One reason? Well, they showed us having almost no power at all. Funy that, as BOOM I have a bunch of cavalry units now, even though they are the most elite and no one even has any yet.

Always remember this, relations and personality is more important than any power graphs. You can be right off the charts in power but that won’t stop Brennus/Monte/Shaka/Ragnar or even Alex from doing absolutely ******ed suicidal attacks vs you.

On the opposite end of the power chart, you can be stuck with only swordsmen, while Ghandi has unlimited modern armour, and he won’t even dare think about warfare.

1440
GG Arrives


1480ad

We declared war on Mansa AGAIN, and this time take his holy city. Actually we moved onto the local hill just outside it for the +25 def bonus, and let him slam his stupid cats and other junk into us while we held ground. Also we kept attacking other units running behind our lines into our territory.

Whip, whip and whip! We took our other cities and kept whipping cav like a mofu because more units NOW during war is better than a few now, and a few later. The cities can re-heal from whips during peace time, but NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR HAPPINESS!

Too bad Nappy wasn’t still involved in his war vs Mansu right now. But that’s ok, we are doing alright for now.

After this city, we sued for peace, and Mansa gave us even more gold. So who needs cottages?

Unfortunately there was no shrine built inside the new city though.

Note: I don’t plan on wasting a GP on building one in this city either. I had done some rough number calculations in my head, and while true there are quite a few cities under confucasionism, I don’t like the fact that shrines don’t produce hammers or get modifiers. But then again, if for some reason I were to get stressed for cash, and/or wanted to build it to get a look into all of Mansa’s cities, then that is a possibility. But very rarely do I build shrines… There MAY be a small chance I will build one down the road here though.

1565ad

Well, it did not take long for Napoleon to start another religious war against Masa again. That idiot Mansa just never ‘gets it’ LOL. That was an obvious repeat that was waiting to happen. In the meantime, we’ve been letting our whipped & battered cities re-heal by building infrastructure, etc. We actually want library and then universities. The key number is 6… we want 6 cities making these.

Why?

Because I need 6 universities at least, in order to build the Oxford down the road. But we have a little problem. I am 1 city short. That’s ok, because the capital has been still cranking out even more cav during our peace-contract preparing for city #6. Also note, that just incase we can’t, I can also build city #6 in the open spot in the west long the shore. Though that would take longer.

In any case… our peace contract has just recently expired and I think it’s time to declare war vs Mansa AGAIN! LoL. I want to be a bit quick because in a few turns Musa will be able to talk to Nappy again, and then he might vassal over. So let’s try to take another city or two NOW!

Notice how there are defending riflemen, in a city on a hill, with culture defence and fortified. LOL. Now you would THINK that would be impossible to take with cavalry but... I’m going to do it anyway, because I like to prove the impossible all the time. Cav + Pinch = very strong combo, even despite a rifle-man’s built-in defence vs cav. The key, is to have more cav than defenders, as the second wave can finish off the unit. Also about 1 in 4 of the first wave cav should be able to retreat, so the losses are not as bad as one may fear.

This is what I love to do.. stack groups of cav and pummel them against even the tuffest looking cities. It works! I don’t even bother cranking out seige weapons, they take too much time, and are too slow for my taste. I like SPEED!

And the enemy city falls to us…
<grin>


P.S. Another GG arrives now!

2n&#8217;d P.S. 6 is always Obsolete&#8217;s magic number, because it&#8217;s the min cities required for a proper super-fortress. And it is no coincidence, that you must have at least 6 forges before you can unlock the mighty IronWorks wonder in your capital as well <grin>

6 Universities + 6 Forges = 2 Extremely powerful national wonders in a very powerful specialist settled city.

The next magic number after 6 is 8, not 7!

8 because that&#8217;s the total # of cities you need to build a forbidden palace. But if you only can get 6, that&#8217;s all you need to really win on Immortal or Deity. Though &#8216;generally&#8217; more than 6 CAN HELP if they are good production wise, etc.