Immortal Challenge 14 - Carthage

Starting Position:


Notes on the Start


Turn 0 save attached.

Settings
Map: Pangaea
DLC: All Civs and Wonders of the Ancient World.
Mods: None
Speed: Quick
Size: Small, 6 Civs

Here's how my second attempt ended.

This is a wildly entertaining cage match with one of the most uniquely terrible starting areas I have ever seen on a Civilization 5 map.

turn 70 spoiler:

I see that you both settled at the "ocean/lake" when there is no water ressources.
Even if it was an ocean i would not settle there because 30-40% of you possible tiles are useless 1food tiles... just walk a bit inland along the river and settle there.
Will play this later

My third attempt:

I have YET to get science victory in BNW, well done sir

Typical mp Tradition approach excepted no cs bullying this time.

Well done glory. I didn't play for the best time possible or i would have beelined Xbows and finished around the same time. I just wanted to show that a 3 cities Tradition start is faisible with this kind of start

With a regular CB rush--->Machinery timing(70ish turns) with either 2 cities Trad or 3-4 Liberty can work for sub 100 turns finishes. All you need is to have 2 or 3 cities that can pull off archers/CBs before upgrading and, get NC, and/or use science caravans/gs(Liberty) to jump to Machinery fast enough.

Better, we can probably kill everyone with CBs and horse UUs...

Wow. Impressive. Thanks for posting glory7 and Tabarnak.

glory7 (or anyone else who knows), can you elaborate a bit on your tech path for the liberty CB into xbow opening?

Various questions while I attempt to play through this with liberty dom:
- Why settle on gem? Is it for "Settling on a hill (and, especially, a hill with mining lux beneath it) gives one extra hammer at the very beginning of the game"
- What is your worker improvement priority order? Hard to tell from your t43 screenshot to see what you've improved. Looks like you chopped some forests? Roads?
- I presume food locked with production focus in cities? (Or, for the lazy, just food focus?)
- I see you got a GP. What religious beliefs did you go for, apart from +2 Faith from Gems?
- After archers, you get libraries? Or just keep spamming units? (How not to sink into gpt issues?)

e.g. in the attached screenshot at t57, I was marching toward Thebes (had been at war since I took his settler, having refused his peace) when both Neb and Napoleon declared on me just now. I had taken a worker from a CS and from Theodora (but no trade route plundering). And a few turns later I think I'm not in a winning position, as I'm losing HR to France. Where did I go wrong? I seem to have taken a lot of damage from Babylon and not done much. Maybe I'm coming in wrong? And Walls of Babylon probably isn't helping...

alcaras said:

Wow. Impressive. Thanks for posting glory7 and Tabarnak.

glory7 (or anyone else who knows), can you elaborate a bit on your tech path for the liberty CB into xbow opening?

Various questions while I attempt to play through this with liberty dom:
- Why settle on gem? Is it for "Settling on a hill (and, especially, a hill with mining lux beneath it) gives one extra hammer at the very beginning of the game"
- What is your worker improvement priority order? Hard to tell from your t43 screenshot to see what you've improved. Looks like you chopped some forests? Roads?
- I presume food locked with production focus in cities? (Or, for the lazy, just food focus?)
- I see you got a GP. What religious beliefs did you go for, apart from +2 Faith from Gems?
- After archers, you get libraries? Or just keep spamming units? (How not to sink into gpt issues?)

e.g. in the attached screenshot at t57, I was marching toward Thebes (had been at war since I took his settler, having refused his peace) when both Neb and Napoleon declared on me just now. I had taken a worker from a CS and from Theodora (but no trade route plundering). And a few turns later I think I'm not in a winning position, as I'm losing HR to France. Where did I go wrong? I seem to have taken a lot of damage from Babylon and not done much. Maybe I'm coming in wrong? And Walls of Babylon probably isn't helping...

Click to expand...

for liberty fast settler CB rush build... you can find threads that I wrote before. Some of them are for GnK, but most of the parts stay same. Basically, except for the lux tech you beeline CB tech, and wait till you get 5-6 archers and upgrade golds, pop CB tech, upgrade and go. For BnW, if you don't get DoF then you won't have enough gold, so you upgraded 2-3 CBs and get 2-3 more CBs from pre-builds (build archer till 1 turn left, change queue to something else, pop CB tech, next turn change queue back to CB) and go. If you can get CB tech earlier, no need for pre building.

I tend not to move settlers a lot when I play quick speed, but this starting position is too much.. you don't have any sea resouce and only jungles in 1st ring. settling on gem is good as you get 3gpt from the beginning and 1 hammer (as it is on the hill) and you can save time to improve that tile (removing jungle takes ages) so that you can sell/use that resource asap.

workers should improve lux/resourses asap so that you can sell/exchange/use. After that, just make sure that you improve tiles where your citizens work.

always micro-manage your citizens. I assume you know setting production focus before pop increase trick. Depending on your happiness, after hitting pop 2, you may want to work your citizen at the sheep tile (1f2h) instead of food only tiles, for example at HR.

initiation rites and church property. Tithe is good in the long term, but you don't need long term. For this game, I got church property+ascestism (+1 happy from shrine) and later got 30% more spread + pagodas.

For libraries, unless you want to GE rush NC soon, do not even think of library if 1. before pop 4, 2. you don't have monument and granary, 3. you need more units. In many cases, I just build library at cap and reach machinary.

For gpt, you should do pilliage/repair all the time. And this one got lots of gem start, gpt is easier to deal with. For DoF, make sure you sell embassy for 1gpt asap and sell lux/resourse to far civs that are likely to ask for DoF. While selling at normal price won't give you green "we've traded recently" modifier, from my experience they are more likely to ask for DoF.

For your game, it seems that you forgot to bribe. If your army is strong enough and your diplo situation is not really bad (yet), then they usually don't try to attack you. If not, now you need to check F9 every turn and check price for #1 army civ to attack your neighbor. For this game, it is France vs Russia you aim for. As long as they are at war, they seldom attack you.

And don't forget to protect CS whenever you meet them - this will give you 10 free influence and when you get quests done you can enjoy much longer friend/ally status.

Hrm. Playing this again -- another attempt had me slowly attacking Egypt's capital at t75 with CBs, and only doing plink-worthy damage. Perhaps I waited too long to attack? Had to hard build a bunch of CBs.

This attempt is at T46, when France and Babylon both simul declared on me.

Here's the situation.



I've attached the save.

Here's the plan I was trying to follow, mostly based on http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501030, though without science caravans since those seem Deity specific.

Capital

• Scout
• Monument
• Granary
• Archer
• Worker
• Shrine
• Settlers
• Pyramids
• Archers
• CBs
• Horsemen and Attack

Tech

• Pottery
• Mining/Archery/Animal
• Masonry
• Lux Techs: Trapping, Calendar, Sailing
• Bronze
• Horseback Riding
• Beeline Construction
• Beeline Machinery?

Policies

• Liberty Opener
• Collective Rule
• Citizenship

Expansion Cities

• Monument
• Granary
• Shrine
• Units
• No library until pop 4

Worker Priority

• Lux to sell/use
• Resources
• Tiles used by citizens

Religion

• fpt/food/culture
• Initiation Rights / Church Property
• Asceticism
• Pagodas
• Religious Texts or It. Preachers

Diplomacy

• Sell embassy for 1gpt
• bribe for war
• Protect CS
• pillage/repair (not sure what this trick is -- is this just bringing a worker with your army and then pillaging and repairing an enemy tile? since it's banned on NQ, I'd rather not use it)

I've attached the save at T46, right when the double war declaration occurred. I didn't bribe anyone yet, because I wasn't expecting war this early.

I am just setting cities to food priority, because I don't particularly enjoy the lock food/focus production trick (feels very very tedious). But if you think I need to do that to be successful on Immortal, let me know. My understanding was it was more a Deity-requirement than an Immortal one.

I stole one worker from Byz. None from CS. Had to settle third city one tile west of mountain because France had a city within 4 tiles of that spot.

If you want to take a look at the save and see how I have my cities set up and the like and if you see anything horribly wrong with it or with the path I'm trying to follow, I'd love to hear it. And if you can recover from the double war declaration at t46 (which seems anomalous), that'd be impressive.

I just opened up your save (well, if you write a thread in detail, I feel like I should try this one) and realized that you have -9 happiness. maybe I forgot to mention this, but try to keep happy at all times.

For example, build Gades later when you have enough happiness and got workers ready to improve silver (and got 170g to rush buy work boat for whales).

Also, always press F4 every turn and check whether they got extra copy of lux. I exchanged gems with copper and incense and got to -1 happy even before doing anything else.

And your army rank is 6th... you only got 2 archers so no wonder neighbors attack you.

Lastly, you did not scout east and north at all - you've met only 4 CS so it's difficult to get quests from them (and meeting gold is missing too)

I played like 20 turns more and both France and Bab offers sweat peace deal - I think I will take them and rush to Egypt - he got GW, but he got lots of wonders and cap looks nice.

so here's what I have done:

1. exchanged 2 lux (as I wrote in the previous one) to make -1 happy. Sent workers to improve ivory and wine asap. Switched to archer at utique and HR.

2. Next turn, GP - initiation rites and shrine happy +1. now happiness is zero and growth resumes. Buy one banana tile (3rd ring of cap, can be worked at utique too if needed - I forgot to do this and did this at like t60.. mistake).

3. France sent some units and they became XPs for my units. No way he can attack that city as long as you have like 2-3 units there.

4. wine and ivory improved - now you have enough happiness and your cities are growing fast. improve iron and horse there. another worker should be sent to 3rd ring gem (at cap). Buy that tile, as you can sell it to Byz for 200g anyway and that tile gonna give you 3h 4g 2faith.

5. Pyramid done - connect cap and utique and send one worker to improve silver at 4th city. 4th city should make work boat (or you can rush buy - your choice). cut forest if you choose to hard build work boat.

6. With 2 archers+warrior at HR, you can defend France easily. with 2 archers at utique, you can defend bab easily. Now it's time to pay them back. make 2-3 more archers and get 2-3 UU. When you have like 6-7 archers (you should have enough gold by selling gem and irons to your 2 friends), hit CB tech (meanwhile, just research other techs to Xbows) upgrade them. You will get #1 or #2 army at the next turn.

7. Keep making units. Connect your cities - 1 turn road building gonna let you do this really quick. improve iron and ivory at HR. Before improving ivory, make sure you build roads on nearby tiles (including ivory tile) and one UU. Worker is a bait - if French unit takes it, you can kill it with 2 CBs + city attack + UU attack. Retreat your UU back (on the roads) and repeat if necessary.

8. When you got 6-7 CBs + 3 UUs, you can make 2 catapults + more CBs and just attack anyone you'd like.

9. With your liberty finisher, rush Petra (or Machu Pichu). Make peace with at least one of them and send the caravan to that guy.

I attached t57 screenshot.

some more thoughts:

1. if you don't want to micro, it's fine, but do not set food focus any single time. Especially when you are unhappy... what's the point of working on 2f tile?

2. NQ? I have no idea what rules they have (when I played - long time ago - the only rule was no -shift click and people made tons of end of the turn moves and whined about fast clicking when they lose), but you can play by any rules if you wish. You don't need pilliage/repair for win, especially for non-deity level.

Btw, banning this would significantly favor tradition players as 1. They cannot repair in 1 turn, 2. It favors defenders a lot.

Thanks!

If you ever have some time to stream or record yourself playing, I know I wouldn't be the only one who would learn from your play.

Thanks for the game.

Thought it was deity and standard speed. Was shocked with your screens