The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #17 Venice

All games in this series will be set to IMMORTAL difficulty. User civilizations, maps, and opponents will change each game, but the pace will always be set at standard and the starting era will always be ancient. We will try for a variety of starts, and not just having a crazy warmonger as your next door neighbor (although there will be that too). This isn't a competition so there will be no predefined victory conditions. New challenges in the series will be posted every other Wednesday.

Who can play?
Anybody can play. The more the merrier. Even if you normally don't play immortal games you are still welcome to try. The games can become great learning resources for the player trying to improve. Even if you don't finish the game, we are still interested to hear about your experience.

Do's and Don'ts
We are going to be using the honor system. Feel free to restart, reload, play the same game multiple times, but don't use the science overflow exploit. Also please don't edit the game in IGE. If you do chose to cheat, please don't share your results in the comments. Also, please use the spoiler tag if you post a picture, comment about neighboring civs, close by wonders, or locations of ancient ruins.

Also, please tell us about your Build Order, Social Policies, Tech Order, and what type of wonders you went after. I know a lot of this stuff seems pretty mundane to the experienced player, but the details are incredibly useful to people trying to learn.

Future Games in the Series
I want users to submit saves from turn 0. Preferably the person submitting the game has played enough turns to know the map is either difficult, fun, or unique in some enjoyable way. Write a short description as to why it is special and email the save to immortalchallengelineup@gmail.com

Important
If you submit a game for the challenge, you must have the DLC map packs disabled. Not everybody has them and they are honestly kind of useless. Having them disabled will allow more participants.

They are a bunch of extremists. I spent a good 4 hours at least looking for what I wanted, but I ended up taking this one anyway. I hope this map is interesting for you. I have played it to turn 103, but I have to take a break for now.

Question here as I need to reread a couple Venice strat guides and slow down and really think (sans cocktail) what to do here.

Alex is in the game. There's almost nothing more of a nuisance. Typical Venetian winning strat involves going Commerce and winning DV with megabucks from a zillion trade routes. But it is possible to ally and keep enough CS with Alex in the game on Immortal.

Also I have little diplo V experience. I've won culture (most of my wins are culture) as Venice on Immortal b4 and you need to buy buildings in your puppets to house your GW and artifacts. I think most experts prefer diplo with Venice.

The way this map turns out, I think sooner is better. I think Liberty should be chosen early here because of the clump of CS that you get right next to you. I didnt do it that way and now I have ot play a longer game.

I got lost with my Warrior and Settler and settled on the Sugar. I am not happy about my Capital placement as I am sure almost all players will not like it either. Anyways... it isn't that big of a deal to me since I am going to try to keep up the Warmongering. I found France when I settled on turn 5/6 and I built 2 scouts to pester him and I ended up losing them both. I built 6x Archers after that and decided to go into Tradition to play it safe and at least get the free Monument. I was thinking about Full Honor but not really sure if I could make it work. I ended up with some pillage gold, 4 free workers, and 100 gold for a caravan raid so far.

Since it is Immortal the earlier I can wage these wars the better so I will see how it goes. I noticed two close CS's so I will try to convert them and get a larger Army asap. I would think I would of actually met these CS's but since I was wandering around trying to find a good Capital spot I actually never met them yet for the gold lol! I am not saying this plan is the best but at least France is gone and I do not have to worry about his Liberty Expanding A--! Also, it is rare for me to take down cities with only Archers and one Warrior but I guess that is because this is Immortal, although I have seen it done on Deity before.

Poor Nappy. Looks like he is gonna be everyone's biatch in this one.

Your comment made me open your spoiler since I was expecting to see Paris was captured in your pic as well but you played it smarter getting a huge gold deal and exploiting France that way. I like that plan better but sometimes I just cant help to wipe a Civ off the face of the Map!

Might of been the worst plan to take out Paris on turn 55 but what am I going to do? I do not like to restart or reload so I will just have to play this out. I am up to turn 110 and everything I am doing is late lol. I did get Oracle on turn 101 go figure with Egypt in the game. I never thought I would make it. So after that I built NC on something like turn 112. It is going to be very close if I get a Religion and you kinda tricked me pretty good with this map since all Civs are a long ways away for any kind of an early rush. I do have my troops blocking Sweden and Alex so they can't expand towards me and I guess Shaka and the Aztecs will go to war on their own I hope. I should of realized this since Venice is usually a ways off from most Civs but I guess I have a little Civ Hangover from the Spain DCL since you were able to do things you can't really do in Civ on that map. This game is going to test me a bit but since the AI is pretty slow on Immortal I should be able to win in the end but it will most likely be over 300 turns. Another thing about this map is it will be tough for any Civ to invade my lands any time soon which is something I need so I can play catch up!

I guess the new plan is to get the MoV and generate more of them and try to take over the CS's late like in the Austria game. You can generate MoVs right?? I forget since I don't usually play much of Venice. I'll have to look it up but I am sure someone will answer the question first! Ahhh nevermind... I guess neilkaz already answered this question in the spoilers!

In a proper true legitimate turtle way of playing, I simply started hoarding every wonder available, most important being Petra and HG, which made Venice close to 30 pop midway into Ren era, nobody else hit 20 yet. I made a mistake of letting Nappy snowball into a big guy but I paid him off to go and fight everyone on the map. Except those two guys on the far west, imagine my surprise when I met them after everyone else

My gpt is already in triple digits but just like every Immortal game, I don't have a clear victory path in mind, I'm just playing this map for the fun of it

Not a difficult game but very interesting and a lot of choices to decide on. I used 2 MoVs to convert Jerusalem and Colombo but I ran into money and happy issues so I sold them to Sweden and a turn or two later I Dowed him and took them back but couldn't hold them. So I sold them to Alex for little gold and Dowed him and took them back and still couldn't hold them. So I sold one to Sweden and one to Egypt for a small deal again. When I converted these CS's I had a nice Army ... close to 1st but 3rd in Demos. Anyways... I rushed over to Sweden's Capital and lost 5-6 units from one shot of city/xbow/galleas attack, they have the GW so it is nice to now have it.

Interestingly enough they always shot the hex with the Iron so I wonder if the AI is set to attack only certain Hexes. I ended up getting in with a pike that I thought would die for sure but Stockholm Falls on turn 197. I am probably not going to give him peace and try to go into Egypt and get all those Wonders since Egypt and Shaka decided to double DOW me on turn 195. This hurt my gpt very much since I had a lot of caravans into both of them.

The AI tech rate is pretty slow this game which is good for me since I am going very slow myself. I also took an expo of Sweden where my original starting spot was and gave it to my only DOF India for free since I need some sort of a trade route partner.I am sure I could of played this smaller and taller but this seems to be more fun even though it will push me into much later turn times.

France

India

Starting location looked kinda too flat and empty... at least this way I get one more crab. Hydro plant doesn't look too powerful in this start; and the starting location has blank desert which would be disastrous is I missed Petra (and it looked like this was not a strong wonderwhoring start at all; you are required to go optics first)


Bought this CS first, because I saw deer and bananas, and it had a granary. The other one on the coast looks not too appetizing at the moment.


Entered Ren via PP; religion was: God of the Sea, Tithe, Divine Inspiration, StP, Messiah


Caught 40k Gandhi super late without any GM bombs used. Planted everything as usual.


Lack of landmarks around cap, and not so many wonders early game means my cpt is only 3 digits max. Managed to get tpt up to 4 digits though... barely.

I will write up more of a story later but I am playing the game right now and just wanted to share this picture. This was the Civ that beat me to the last Religion by building the HS! Now all of Egypt's Wonders are mine !! Ha ha ha mua huh ha ha ha.. or something like that! I have to admit this game is fun from a strategy standpoint for me. The AI is pretty bad at tech rate on Immortal so I can get away with these late turns.

As suggested this game is a little more work than I anticipated so I need some break time! I am thinking about starting a War with Greece in the next few turns and trying to plan it out right. I did spawn another MoV for 3 total now and most likely am going to convert Cape Town as you can see in the picture. No CS really has a nice large army so perhaps convert and sell to Alex and DOW. I dunno that is why the break. I got into Freedom for the FLs and to get SoL and thinking of switching to Autocracy to get out of the Happy problem since Alex and Shaka are in it. However I am trying to win the Olympics so SoL is delayed. Monty went Order and Egypt and India are basically out of the game with only one city each.

What I find comical about my version of this map is that Venice has the largest land mass by far lol! The more I think about it the more I like how I wiped France out of this game early and I don't have to worry about any Civs that are really close to me. That was pretty mean to put the Zulu Nation in that spot. They are easier to deal with since they can't break out and expand more but I guess Monty has been in a stalemate war with him all game which is nice! My biggest problem is no Religion in my capital for faith buying! I had this problem a long time ago with an OCC challenge and you think I would of learned my lesson to buy a missionary or two in the early game when I was converted!

I really made some mistakes. 6 turns ago I got the message that Venice has finished Apollo!! WTF... I don't want that lol... I thought we were building the Manhattan Project! So I fired all my Engineers and hired Greek ones since these refugees have no home and need the work. Fun game but a lot of work and I'm getting lazy so I'll take a long break and finish later. I was going to go Diplo but it seems it will be tough unless I start Liberating some CS's. I guess a war with Monty is in order and I'll nuke him and Shaka to drop in Paratroopers or Xcoms. Perhaps I will go Diplo before that happens... time will tell.