A few observations on immortal

I finally decided to give an immortal game a whirl, at quick pace, and had some observations that may be relevant to going immortal in the TGS.

Playing China, did my usual balanced build approach (mix of units and buildings), founded two additional cities. Assembled my longswords, archers, horse and a cat to go attack Monte who was city spamming like crazy (and warring with Mongols).

March up to his empty border city, start to bombard it. Next turn, he has a CANNON in it Well, that is one dead unit of mine per turn it lives. Took the city next turn, and that is where the game stands now. Have to see if the AI can't fight even with that tech advantage.

Other less than happy discoveries about immortal:

City state influence crashing at -1.8 per turn, hard to keep them on your side early. No such problem for the AI, who appear to found each city with 2 pop from the start?

Trade route only worth 2 gold, which doesn't even pay for the minimum 3 tiles of roads to make it.

Even thought the patch tries to make tall empires compete with wide ones, my first forray into immortal suggests that early rush may still be the best (if not only viable) approach on that level.

Thoughts?

dV

da_Vinci said:

Playing China, did my usual balanced build approach (mix of units and buildings), founded two additional cities. Assembled my longswords, archers, horse and a cat to go attack Monte who was city spamming like crazy (and warring with Mongols).

March up to his empty border city, start to bombard it. Next turn, he has a CANNON in it Well, that is one dead unit of mine per turn it lives. Took the city next turn, and that is where the game stands now. Have to see if the AI can't fight even with that tech advantage.

Click to expand...

Well, I actually managed to take two more cities, holding my own with cannon+muskets vs. his cannon+rifles, with the chokos doing great service in city defense with the double ranged attacks. But when I got to rifles and he now had artillery and cavalry, the range advantage (getting shot by stuff I couldn't even see) turned the tide and I am down to three cities and no army ... this one is done.

Numerical advantage plus power advantage plus range advantage could not be overcome with tactical prowess ... with equal range, I could overcome numbers and power with tactics. So the key is not to let him get that big to start with.

dV

Well, I've just finished my first successful immortal game and made it almost without an army. It was an archipelago map, so it was easy to defend my only two cities.

Actually, it would be easy - noone attacked me throughout the entire game and not a single shot was fired between the other civs as well.

A cultural victory !