Learning Immortal - comments welcome

Hi,
The forum here has helped me a lot to improve my game from Monarch to Emperor, and I think I am ready to try the next step. Since Immortal requires much more thinking and planning ahead and I am nornmally quite impulsive, I decided to play slowly and post my game, explaining what I am doing and why, in the hope of receiving some feedback and improving my game.

I am going to post the saves and screenshots here. If anyone wants to play a shadow game that would be great help to show me how the pros do it under same conditions. All I request is that if you play ahead of me, please use a spoiler tag and specify the turn number outside the spoiler.

I am going to play Mansa on continents map, normal speed and size.

I'll be following, I am about to try and up my level to Immortal as well.

Are you playing BtS? I think BtS emperor was alot easier than Warlords emperor.

Start
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention. BTS 3.13 with Bhuric unofficial patch.


It seems to me like quite a strong start. Riverside plain hills, 2 seafood resources on coast will let the city grow extra fast and yield 3 commerce for a financial leader. Irrigated corn, 4 plain hills, and tons of forest.

Settling in place seems obvious to me.

ParadigmShifter said:

I'll be following, I am about to try and up my level to Immortal as well.

Are you playing BtS? I think BtS emperor was alot easier than Warlords emperor.

Click to expand...

agreed. bts is far easier on emperor

I'd say settle in place at first glance. What does Mansa start with, Mysticism & Mining?

Bronze straightaway in that case I'd say and chop chop chop.

EDIT: After fishing, of course

Mansa! One of my favorites!

I would definitely say bronze straight away. In addition to chopping, you can swap to slavery without taking that early turn of anarchy, and you'll see where your future expansion will be for copper.

Quite a nice location, definitely think about that great wall, but you have plenty of stuff to build right now (worker, two work boats, plus early military). Post again when you've explored!

you can basically catch any starting wonder even on deity if you have the resource; the production bonus on wonders early game the ai receives is 0. So...

now... is it worth stalling your growth for gw or not... that's another story.

what you have there definitelly has the production capacity for one of the early wonders. Which one... mids, gw, glh...

I'd go fishery(that can't hurt under any scenario) followed by bw(both techs are neutral under any scenario, they don't engage your strategy on any particular path) and wait abit to see the surroundings before making up my mind. Rather conservative, but, shrug, I never liked jumping in without some info.

gw - the gs should help with stealing the side techs
mids - obvious; a plus for being spiritual, a tiny minus for being fin. GE can give a window for glib, you capitol has enough food and enough production tiles for being a good gp generator, on the other hand you need to search for a future cottageable bureau capitol or you'll be kinda wasting fin. early and mid game
glh - darn strong no matter what; gms are always good

It's good luck to get the Stone, but take a look...

The early stone wonders are Stonehenge, Great Wall and Pyramids.

Both Stonehenge and Great Wall come so early that most often you will chop these out before you hook up the Stone, if you want to grab them. Pursuing Masonry too early hoping too hook up Stone would be a mistake. Stonehenge is not worth it for Mansa. Great Wall is worth pursuing in many cases but I think with Mansa you have other early priorities. Suppose you research Masonry early, you should start chopping the Great Wall immediately instead of waiting to hook up the Stone first (Quarry takes 6 turns to build).

Now where the Stone is going to help out (besides the hammer bonus) is Pyramids and Moai Statues.

Now, with a Financial leader Representation is not so much a priority, although it can definitely be leveraged. However, where Pyramids could help out is Hereditary Rule, since you have no Happiness resources available yet. You might go for Hereditary Rule early and switch to Representation later, or vice versa.

Generally it would take very specific circumstances to consider building Moai Statues in your capital. Well you have one of those circumstances, with a Financial leader, Stone and two seafood resources in BFC and two more tiles of coast. Obviously explore to see if there is a better location, but the Stone is going to help you with the Statues more than anything else.

Your technology priorities:

Bronze Working (while building Worker, perhaps start working on a Warrior first to grow two size two and time the Worker right before you complete Bronze Working)
Fishing (chop a Settler or another Worker, see if your Warrior can nab a Worker for you)
Roads (chopping a Work Boat, then growing into a second Work Boat)
Pottery (grow to size 3 so you can work the two seafood plus a forested hill or something, working on a 3rd Workboat to scout the coastline, then a Warrior, then a Settler)
Masonry (Start Cottaging, consider Cottaging the Corn first)
Seafaring
Writing (Chop to Lighthouse/ Great Lighthouse)

It'll be helpful once we know your neighbors and find out where the resources (Copper, Iron, Horse) are.

Immortal is not so difficult... just don't try to expand past 3 cities before you get Writing.

Cheers,

Dai

TGW isn't really that usefull for mansa. Even if you have no strategic resourcess, you can still get skrimishers, which can deal with barbarians quite easily. GS-points can be usefull, but I wouldn't take the risk of loosing the early hammers to some industrious civ, just because of them.

I'd go along with settle in place. Start by building a warrior and researching fishing. Once fishing is in swop to WB, work the corn up to pop2 then swop to the seafood tiles, you'll grow a bit slower but the extra commerce will alow to get BW earlier. Once you've got BW you can whip a WB then another WB and two seafood tiles will allow you to build a worker fairly fast while keeping up in research.

It might be worth thinking about about archery soon coz it looks unlikely that you'll have metal in BFC because of all the forests (tho I could be wrong) and Skirmishers will enable you to maintain a reasonable defence while going for whatever you're going for next.

Played until turn 35 (2600 BC). I will put in spoiler in case someone is shadowing.

it's normal speed, so... my experience is nil; however... 1 skirmisher hunting barbs. could be an idea to try to get him to 10 xp for he, though I don't know if it'd work on normal speed(my feel is it wouldn't)

your southern neighbour is damn fast usually; the northern one ain't too slow either; actually very few are slow at this lvl.

the ? I'd go 1s; your current placement has no levee which is key on prod. poor sites.

1e of bronze could be an early decent he; but that really depends on playstyle.(I think - the image can't be enlarged, but that lake should give farms

1s of wine might be bureau cap. or right on top of the wine(again, I think, since I can't enlarge). East of your cap. seems to be another river; might be interesting to see with the next skirmisher

Research - I don't know; again, I really don't have a feel on how things develop on normal speed. I usually avoid iw and backtrade it later; the skirmishers were giving 4k soldiers(maybe, that's what my memory says, but it could be wrong) so you should have an ok power graph with them, plus really... early game nothing can break them anyway. Plus your 2 neighbours are peaceful guys usually.

The neutral line would be agri - pot - mysticism(you need it) - ah - writing, but... at the time I'm used to take such decissions, I know way more of the map since well... many more turns on marathon... Masonry - mids I'd say is meh, but that's another playstyle problem; usually I tend to hog more land than I actually need early game(despite knowing it's inefficient). Hogging land here will require more then 2 settlers. No clue tbh.

@ silverbullet

That south copper is placed perfectly to Axe rush Justinian. You should seriously consider doing it. You'll end up with some gold plunder, some cities you won't have to settle and several workers to build cottages for you. And you'll get rid of Justinian who is a huge pain. You might even end up with a Holy City captured.

That flood plains city is heaven for a Financial leader, but you still have to have a ton of workers to build your cottages, so I would prioritize that after Axe rushing Justinian. The best location as far as I can see is the tile 1S of the lake.

I'm somewhat sad you went with Hunting (without any resources to camp) and Archery instead of beelining to Pottery. If you had Pottery now, you would be in much better shape because when you Axe rush Justinian you'll actually be able to afford to keep more of his cities.

Cheers,

Dai

Wait on IW. Ag-Wheel-Pottery-Masonry. I don't think you need another skirmisher just yet -- I'd get a second worker out, then a settler. Second city should be south of Wine, working lots of cottages. Third could be south of the lake, again cottages (and Gold!). That'll get you through IW, and allow you to support a fourth city claiming Copper and double Sugar.

You can whip the second worker, since you're currently working weak unimproved forest tiles. Then get those hills mined. With Stone, good production, and lots of forests to chop, I think you should try for the Pyramids. Rexing + 'Mids rules out an early rush. But you won't need Monarchy, and your tech rate should be good, so maybe you can get catapults before Justin hits Feudalism? That's the way I'd play it anyway....

peace,
lilnev

Wow, thanks for all the comments, it really makes me stop and think and play differently than I usually do. Hopefully it will also make me win

Wait on IW. Ag-Wheel-Pottery-Masonry. I don't think you need another skirmisher just yet -- I'd get a second worker out, then a settler. Second city should be south of Wine, working lots of cottages. Third could be south of the lake, again cottages (and Gold!). That'll get you through IW, and allow you to support a fourth city claiming Copper and double Sugar.

Click to expand...

Mansa starts with the wheel, but I did notice I skipped mysticism before IW, so mysticism is a must to expand culture. I agree that IW is not urgent yet. I am probably going to settle at least 2 cities before I go to the jungle, and even then I don't need IW immediately.
I agree with the placement 1s of the lake and 1s of the wine.

regarding another skirmisher - all I have is 1 warrior scouting hte jungle up north, and 1 skirmisher defending Timbuktu.

kakitadairu: I don't think I will axe rush Justinian. He is usually peaceful and a good trading partner, and I don't want to be alone on a continent with Hammurabi. My impression is that there is enough land to REX to 3~4 cities and get pyramids, but I could be wrong. Since I didn't even think about axe rushing I went for archery. I don't know how fast it is before barbarian archers show up on immortal, and I didn't want to leave my bronzeless capital undefended.

I think I will go mysticism-agriculture-pottery, so I can get my 2 new river cities up quickly.

Sleepless: I don't know how far Hammurabi is. I just know he came from the north and there is a jungle there. I think he showed up on turn 20 with a scout, so he can't be too far away, but probably not as close as Justin.

As for settling plans, if I can snatch the pigs copper site in time, I would settle 1SE of the copper. (My concern is "our close borders spark tension" with Justin, but with stone I could whip walls there quickly to defend, and nothing will destroy skirmishers). If I lose this site I would go for 2 cottage cities. Settling directly on the wine seems better than 1S of the wine (more cottages).

Snowlywhite:
Unfortunately I didn't see any city site that would make a greate bureaucracy capital. Timbuktu has room for 4 grassland cottages, wine city can have 5~6 and gold city can have 4~5 (plus gold and clam). With no obvious advantage to any city, I will leave the palace in Timbuktu for now, unless I find a great river in the jungle.

To summarize, my current plans are:
research: mysticism->agri->pottery
build: skirmisher-worker-settler
settling plans: 1SE of copper near Justin if I can. On the wine otherwise.
Next city is 2N of the gold mountain.

After that I will post a summary again and will re-evaluate the options (Pyramids, war, jungle REX, etc.)

lilnev said:

Wait on IW. Ag-Wheel-Pottery-Masonry. I don't think you need another skirmisher just yet -- I'd get a second worker out, then a settler. Second city should be south of Wine, working lots of cottages. Third could be south of the lake, again cottages (and Gold!). That'll get you through IW, and allow you to support a fourth city claiming Copper and double Sugar.

You can whip the second worker, since you're currently working weak unimproved forest tiles. Then get those hills mined. With Stone, good production, and lots of forests to chop, I think you should try for the Pyramids. Rexing + 'Mids rules out an early rush. But you won't need Monarchy, and your tech rate should be good, so maybe you can get catapults before Justin hits Feudalism? That's the way I'd play it anyway....

peace,
lilnev

Click to expand...

I agree with almost all of this, except for the pyramids part. Early chops towards workers and settlers are incredibly powerful accelerators. I would immediately whip another worker and use that fella to help chop your first settler.

The wine city doesn't need a monument immediately, I'd tech:

ag->pottery->myst

If you can get early riverside cottages they can be leveraged into a peaceful rex or a nice tech lead. I'd ignore the stone for now. Third city should be as lilnev suggested.

Good luck

If you do snatch the copper/pigs city, I think axe rushing Justinian would be an excellent move. Don't rule it out because he's a good trading partner, you WILL need space with your positioning.

Wouldn't 1 SW of your marked location be even better? Corn, clams, gold...

Don't build warriors, waste of hammers and time

Get a blocking city out ASAP (somewhere near the pigs?)

Get 3 or 4 cities up and running, then worry about the Pyramids or whatever you want to do

You don't need agriculture. You already have Fishing and The Wheel, that's enough to get Pottery. And I still think you should cottage the Corn instead of Farming it. Your capital already has the two Seafood for growth.

Go for Pottery now! And get Mysticism later. You might not even need Mysticism, depending on how quickly you can tech to Writing.

The border pop can be delayed. Your worker still needs to build a road from your capital to the Flood Plains city, that can be done outside of cultural borders.

I think you'll regret leaving Justinian alone. If he doesn't get into a war with someone else, he will be a big problem. Not sure why you are scared of Hammurabi, and Hammurabi can't be early rushed anway.


Cheers,

Dai