Immortal University XXXIII - Ragnar

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Apr 8, 2009
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Hello all and welcome to the Immortal University!

This is the 33rd in the storied series. We'll be playing with the best leader for cultural victories. :mischief:

We will uphold the university's traditions...smacking down the hapless AI!

Our leader this time around:

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Who? Mwahahahaha!!! :devil:

Here's the start:

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Where is the food??? :gripe:

This is the first Fractal map I generated, as usual. Huts and Events are off.

Copy and Paste of the doctrine:

To play, just extract the WB save file into your worldbuilder saves directory, then play it. Use custom scenario if you want some extra settings to tickle your fancy. This series was designed for people learning immortal, so most people here will be at that level or trying to attain it, although deity players are welcome also. Hell, if you want to play this on NOBLE, go ahead, but I'm not peeling off the AI bonuses. The intention of this and any other game thread I post is to get better. Play whatever level you need in order to improve. Just remember, there are immortal bonuses and that's not going to change unless you WB edit it.

If you are aspiring IMM+, try to remember to add archery back to the barbs in WB. Every time you don't, a deity AI will kill a kitten, although there are a lot of kittens so it's not the end of the world if you prefer easymode barbs .

I do request people to list their difficulty and speed. In terms of updates, well nobody follows that anyway. Post in the manner you feel comfortable. Typical comparison dates are 1 AD, liberalism, and victory/defeat, as well as any major events. If in doubt, go with that.
 

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Maybe scout west to look for food? I'm guessing there's seafood to the east, maybe another tile 2E1S of the settler but no idea what it is. There's probably some hidden resources like copper/iron/horses. I just hope it's not some late game resource like aluminum!
 
Been some time that I posted here, and played an IU game, so I will commit do this one again :)

Moving scout 2W, if nothing shiny, will settle 1SE because of rice and coastal + river.
 
Yay! An IU posted! If you didn't do it I was going to soon :p. This works for me.

Maybe a plains sheep/cow/wheat, maybe a seafood hidden in there. I will probably try moving inland to block land since the capitol isn't exactly breath-taking.

Moving scout 2W, if nothing shiny, will settle 1SE because of rice and coastal + river.

A levee or not is +2 :hammers: in this case. Also, non-irrigated rice is pretty poor for a capitol (4 yield) so you'll have to hope you get something else by moving there too, since you're almost guaranteed to be forfeiting a food tile 2N 1W, although that might not be a great food tile either. We probably get seafood either way so it's not a big deal though.

I'm still going to try to move inland. I need practice with the "late start blocking" opening but from early experimentation it's been an OK look.
 
So I am playing a bit, and there is something wrong with the barbarians.

They are all warriors...
 
So I am playing a bit, and there is something wrong with the barbarians.

They are all warriors...

You can't give the barbs archery (or anything tech-wise, for that matter...) in WB saves. If you want the barbs to start with it, you have to add it in manually at game start in world builder.
 
You can't give the barbs archery (or anything tech-wise, for that matter...) in WB saves. If you want the barbs to start with it, you have to add it in manually at game start in world builder.

Ya I know, but they got like villages with warriors in them :(

That shouldnt happen in immortal should it?
 
You needed to give archery to the barbs on turn 0, so that any cities they found come with archers instead of warriors. Otherwise any non-warrior unit will eat up those barb cities.
 
Looking forward to seeing how people play this one, looks interesting...

Immortal/Normal, forgot failbarians on, to 640AD:

Spoiler :

After some deliberation I decided to move SE for more hills, the sucktastic Rice and a cute mini-Levee, even though that risked losing a stratreso in 4 tiles. That was probably a mistake, though.

Quickly found out that it's Pangaea, there are Civs everywhere! Our agenda becomes blocking ourself enough land to be a contender. Most urgent direction is west against WK, second is south towards L/Izzy, third is north - hopefully WK doesn't have time to settle too much of that. Here's the situation in 1280BC as I agonize on the placement of the next city (went northwest in an attempt to block WK off). You might notice that Murphy's law dictated that Judaism had to be founded in Pjongjang...

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And here's how my "blocking" turned out - a total failure. Blech, I hate situations like this a lot, and with a PRO civ to boot!

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With so many contacted Civs the choice of tech was pretty clear, and here's when we got accepted into the Buddhist Group Hug Tech Club (BGHTC).

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WK and Sulevi are the only ones not in our club, so they become natural targets. That's good, because WK is going to be a thorn in our side. On the flipside there's no Iron in our reach, but nevertheless I'm aiming to off a few of WKs cities with Axe/Cat. When I'm ~5 turns from Construction (went Currency first because I had 7 cities) WK gets Feudalism. :mad:

Oh well, we're Ragnar so extreme attack courage fits us (and so does razing those craptastic cities he founded on my back yard). I decide to go with Axe/Cat against PRO Longbows. Kids, don't try this at home. After I DoW I get Toku in with me with Monarchy&CoL. Luckily WK doesn't have that much of a garrison in his cities.

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Razed 2 cities, took 1, took peace for Poly&cash. Here's where I stand. 10 cities with 1 more on the way if WK doesn't ninja that (probably will). Massive vertical growth imminent. I suck in tech, looks pretty scary actually. I never like to be behind in tech, ever - probably one of my biggest shortcomings. So I'm not feeling very comfortable. Quite unlucky to get so big a grouphug club, I'd much rather have a 2-3 sized opposing club at the very least. Some occasional DoWs are much easier to handle than good techer AIs with good techer buddies...

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Looking forward to seeing how people play this one, looks interesting...

Well, it's bedtime for me but I played to 1440 AD so I'll just give an overview of my strategy to date:

Spoiler :


1. I decided to settle in place after all.
2. I expanded to 8 cities peacefully
3. No state religion. Izzy and wang didn't like each other, and Joao went confucian too. Later on izzy asked that I go hindu and since she/sully were the strongest and had the AP I obliged.
4. NARROWLY win lib ~1000 AD (just after) for chemistry.
5. We don't have horses so my target was cannons. I sold tech for cash and got them shortly after. Muskets and pikes are the siege escorts
6. As of 1440 AD, wang is toast. Not a vassal, but wiped clean off the map. Sully has toku as a cap vassal. Neither sully or izzy will declare on me, and Joao still wants RP. Rather than culture (which I briefly considered swapping to after wang, and could still win that way) I'm going to cap Joao, betray izzy to cap, cap liz, and cap sully if necessary. I will have rifles and state property very soon, so this will generally just be a rifle/cannon game from here on.



So actually, not exactly groundbreaking material from me ;). I'll post a full update of my game tomorrow probably.
 
Ya I know, but they got like villages with warriors in them :(

That shouldnt happen in immortal should it?
The hostage villagers huts and such are normal for immortal too. That is, when you get hostile villagers from huts they are warriors not archers. I have not seen archers popping from huts.
 
IMM/Normal

1785 surprise AP win (was closing in on simultaneous dom/conquest and was damned close)

To liberalism

Spoiler :


Settled in place. I dial up the REX here and do my best to block wang/izzy from my land. Early settling priority is the commerce tiles that fuel more expansion, like riverside and gold. From there it's build some axes for D (turned out not to need them), cottage capitol, and whip infra/farm elsewhere. The lib race was very tight, liz actually could research it before me. I got chemistry by trading education around while researching lib, somewhat aggressively but it worked.

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The rest

Spoiler :


The AIs didn't rush to rifles on this map so I didn't have to worry about cavalry vs my cannons right away. Regardless, I bought some help vs korea

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And joined her shortly

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After that it was time to pick on Joao who didn't have rifles right away. He got magic rifles very quickly but that matters much less to cannon-based armies than others, his stack was gone and I was able to wade through his 1 other city needed for capping quickly anyhow.

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No I opt to go after the sully/toku master/vassal job. I declare on them. Even though izzy is friendly with them, she isn't thanks to toku, so once again I get a distraction for my opponent:

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At this point I'm happy with just rifle/cannon and pump culture to get more land. Izzy has machine guns but no infantry. Easy.

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I screwed around or I could have won this quicker. I tried to pop borders for domination, but it didn't work. In frustration, I took my rifle/cannon force against the far more advanced english, but my vassals had power. They actually absorbed her small stack and took one of her cities, I took 2 more, and was pushing through her easily with CR II and III cannons, but...

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Bah. Whatever. I didn't think I'd actually win since I hadn't all game, but I'll take it.

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As you can see, it was just victory a few turns early ;).

 
Immortal - Bah!

Spoiler :

I moved the scout and settler out west grabbing pigs and one of Wang's spices for a good hammer city. Scout sat on the 2nd city site by the horse gold and stone site. Used to deity starts recently so I got archery early had 6 archers out killing barbs and spawn busting. Unfortunately I moved 2 of my spawn busters off my next city sites - one guy just a looksee 1 tile to the SE and a barb city pops up behind him, the other went several away to kill an archer and another barb city popped up. Next 2 of my archers get killed on forested hills - 1 of the barb archers gained 3 promotions from that win as his odds were so bad, took C1,C2 and cover :) After that another couple barb cities pop up completely boxing me in.

Just don't feel like playing this one out. Wang had expanded well into the jungle SE, so was looking forward to getting a lot of good cottageable land from him with HAs. Not much forest, but 3 15+ hammer cities should have been good. ( First 2 cities + starting location)

 
To 1765AD, Religious... Hey, I beat TMIT's end date, so that means my game was better!! Right?! Right...? (feel free to read my avatar at this point)

Spoiler :

THIS IS THE MOST FRUSTRATING GAME IN MY LIFE. During my vertical growth phase I noticed the AIs just taking off in tech with no contest. I also noticed I have a shot on the AP victory. So I decided to go for that. I would have taken out Wang first, but without Iron OR Horses and No1 willing to trade... Well let's just say I didn't feel like taking on him.

So, in ~1320AD I was going to win diplo. Then Joao ninjachanged to Free Religion. Then in ~1460AD I was going to win diplo. Then Sully changed back to Hindu from Buddhism. This went on and on. I got screwed in every conceivable way. I'll enumerate the ways that prevented my victory at the last second (usually 0-2 turns before vote) here:

Ninjachanging from religion
Ninjachanging from fav civic
Getting pissed from enemy trades when bribing someone to change civics
Getting pissed from refusing to join a war
Not having juice to bribe a point of fair trade to someone
Civ losing last AP religion city
A voter losing a city to a non-voter
A non-voter capturing an island BARB CITY 1 turn before vote

I did finally take WK out with... *drumroll* Infantry/Treb. That's a first.

When I finally won, it got down to the wire... Lizzy (my AP opponent) declared war on me 3 turns before a winning vote and captured 2 cities... Luckily I had enough to win at that point, I would probably have gnawed my keyboard in half and quit Civ for life. Here's the money shot and the tech at that point (I was half-expecting Lizzy to research Mass Media and laugh at my face...).

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Well, you were actually AHEAD of me in tech :p. I just kind of used zerg tactics...on the entire world. Our games were very different due to our peaceful expansion though. For example, I had access to resources you didn't!
 
Well, you were actually AHEAD of me in tech :p. I just kind of used zerg tactics...on the entire world. Our games were very different due to our peaceful expansion though. For example, I had access to resources you didn't!

Oh crap...

Spoiler :
Only now I realize there was a damn Iron at the northern tundra :lol: serves me right for slacking on the scouting...
 
Hey, I rarely post here, but I often play IU games, and I kinda feel forced to share this with the forums :)

Spoiler :


Immortal/Normal

Okey the game went crappy. I miss everything I try. Lose city sides by one turn... lose wonders by one turn, lose libralism one turn, only thing I managed was the Great Liberary.

I got tired of being so got damn unlucky and went for a sloppy culture victory. Well I won in 1872. But even though I won, and my city had LEGENDARY culture, I still couldn't get the tiles besides the city, thanks to the apperantly awesome Spanish culture... and btw I had the gold tile for ONE turn in the whole game :-I



How can this happen ?

 

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