The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #36 The Dutch

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.

Game #1 - Japan
Game #2 - Poland
Game #3 - Ottomans
Game #4 - Arabia
Game #5 - Brazil
Game #6 - Denmark
Game #7 - Songhai
Game #8 - Sweden
Game #9 - India
Game #10 - Russia
Game #11 - Germany
Game #12 - Aztecs
Game #13 - Egypt
Game #14 - France
Game #15 - Austria
Game #16 - Siam
Game # 17 - Venice
Game # 18 - Iroquois
Game # 19 - Greece
Game # 20 - Persia
Game # 21 - England
Game # 22 - Ethiopia
Game # 23 - Assyria
Game # 24 - The Celts
Game # 25 - America
Game # 26 - China
Game # 27 - Korea
Game # 28 - Spain
Game # 29 - The Zulu
Game # 30 - The Mayans
Game # 31 - Midsummer special
Game # 32 - Mongolia

First time using the UU. The double attack they get is so powerful and they can still move away after. Some of the army was rush bought but most of them had to sail down from the old country at 3 tiles per turn. I should have gotten steam power a little faster.

I had a rough start being isolated (except India), and I built a trireme for exploration pretty late. I discovered Poland and Assyria soon, but Assyria were wiped out fast, and only later I found the Ottomans and the others at Astronomy. The capital has good terrain but it takes a lot to set up: Lighthouse + all those work boats, not to mention that polders come pretty late. All this added up for a late 90s NC and because I beelined Guilds before Education, I think I got Navigation a little late. Anyway, once Navigation was online, it is all easy. This game is just broken on water maps. Capitals Started to fall one by one, first Poland because they were becoming a runaway, then India, and after that the Indonesian capital. I even liberated Assyria.

I am currently in a DoF with Persia and Ottomans, but I think I will break them, at this point it really doesn't matter. Paris is going to fall in 3-4 turns maximum, and then I'll split the armada, for Istanbul and a coastal war with Persia. I will probably have wait until I get a decent land army to go for the Persian capital, but I will weaken them in the mean time.

Policy wise, I went with tradition, started honor opener because of the raging barbs, but there weren't enough camps. Then left side honor, 2 in exploration, and I opened rationalism because it's going to get me faster to the military techs, which I ignored up until now, trying for an ideology (which won't really matter). I don't think I'll be able to do this pre T250, maybe if I use oxford for artillery and save a lot of money for rush buying units, I might get lucky and get Persepolis in the T250s, I'll just see. I did some silly mistakes trough the game, so all this added will further delay the finishing time.
Here are some screenshots with the current situation:

I started off as I do in most of my games with the idea of going for a cultural victory. However, this start is pretty slow and production light, and I didn't hit Education until about t115 or so. I got the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Globe Theatre, but missed the other Renaissance wonders. I then decided to give the Dutch UA a try and sold all copies of my luxes for cash to start buying up city-states for a diplomatic victory.

I was happily turtled with my 3 citites, gaining city-state alliances and took the tech lead in the early Industrial era. I had had DoFs with India, Poland, and Assyria for most of the early game. However, as usually happens, ideologies messed all that up. I think the designers put ideologies in specifically to cause diplomatic problems and wars in the midgame. Which is good, because having everybody be friends all game would be really boring. I went Freedom, Poland went Autocracy and the Ottomans Order.

Casimir denounced me and I could see that things weren't going to work out well between the two of us, so I started building great war bombers, ironclads and great war infantry. Casimir DOWed me when I still had a pretty small army, but with the city bombard and the incompetent naval AI I was able to destroy his fleet of riflemen/frigates. When I hit battleships/bombers about 5 turns later I took the fight to him and easily took all his cities on his main continent.

While I had been doing this, Suleiman had just wiped out Assyria. Suleiman then denounced me and since I already had troops in the area, I just DOWed him and steamrolled his army/navy in short order. I took Assyria's former empire from him and then headed northeast to liberate the Turkish people from their Communist oppressors.

After reducing Poland and the Ottomans to a few one-tile island cities, India decided he didn't like my warmongering and denounced me. Well, one of those was a defensive war and the other was, err, um, a pre-emptive defensive war. (Yes, that's it!) I decided there was no reason to let a pissed off Gandhi have time to build some nukes and give me a nasty surprise, so I brought the troops back home. I moved into position on the Dutch/Indian border and within 4 turns all of India's cities on my continent belonged to me. For some reason India had sent his army and navy over to the Ottoman's continent and took undefended Erdine from me. However, I was able to get it back in the peace deal after I took all of India's important cities, again sentencing a rival to exile on a tiny island.

I now controlled 5 capitals, with only Sukothai, Paris, and French-occupied Persepolis remaining. However, I was a little bored with troop movements, and decided to simply vote myself as the freedom-loving, benevolent overlord of the world.

I continued the game and got the last 3 capitals, I broke an RA with Persia, but I did not have to brake a DOF with Suleiman because he back stabbed me. All 3 capitals were fairly easy, Persepolis took a little longer because it was landlocked, but by the time my army was there I already teched dynamite and upgraded my canons. Ottomans didn't even have navigation, I took Istanbul with 3 frigates and 2 Sea Beggars.

Probably could have done it faster if I had timed things better, but still I am satisfied with a sub T250 win.

Not my greatest game. I DOW'd India early and got 4 Workers/Settlers, and almost took his expo with Archers, but only had one Melee who was wounded. Delhi looked too hard to assault from my side. Eventually I took peace just to have a trade partner, I was running red on gold (with science penalty) a lot of turns. Neither India or Cas had any money, so the early game was terrible.

I took God of Sea for pantheon, and it bit me hard as I didn't get a religion. It really saps your early game to build so many boats for almost no return. Cas is swimming GPs around like no tomorrow. I met everyone a while ago (bee-lined Guilds then Astronomy), and just this turn met my first CS who didn't have Whales, sheesh!

I've had lots of units due to early build-up (I didn't realize it was raging barbs or high sea level until too late, haha). I've spent cash to buy production tiles, so my units mostly suck. I am too far behind on tech to do much of an efficient war push - or maybe I'm just too lazy. I'm not even sure I will finish this one because it seems silly to not use the UU fully. There must be something wrong with me, as I am more inclined to play ModAcken games in which Assyria always spawns next door and I just try to stay alive.

This became a very strong game eventually (typical Immortal difficulty curve due to science explosion and creaming WF and Intl Games). I was one turn from a DV too.

Sul started making trouble, so I decided to spam Sea Beggars to go with a bunch of BBs I had - I ended up with like 18 of each, and GE'd Pentagon for DD upgrades in the t320s. Man, those double-tap DDs are fun! Just took everything I wanted, I only kept 2 of his core cities, I tried to knock every city down to 0 for my CSs and Poland to take, but Poland made peace. I considered taking on the world, but that seemed like a slog, and I teched up top way too much to keep the edge I would have wanted. If I had had a mid-game warmonger mindset there were so many juicy wonders in Warsaw and Assur.

I had been denounced by everyone [edit - but Poland], all starting with a DoF backstab by India based on my buying tiles in the first 80 turns, WTF? I have never seen that warning come so late.

Typical full Trad with Honor open, 2 in Exploration (later 2 more), 3 in Patronage left side, full Rat (I forgot about my Immortal ban past 2), 6 in Freedom, 3 in Commerce. I bought 4 SS Parts. Everybody went Order except Autocracy Poland, and my tourism sucked most of the game, but I barely had any pressure.

I hope to wrap this up over the weekend. I felt on this map that there weren't enough barbs around to bother with Honor so I just went Tradition as usual. My plan was 4 nice big cities aided by cargo ships and fishing boats. I couldn't get a religion so i lost my fishing pantheon. While Dom V may be easier I am going for CV. I went for early ToA, MoH (CS wanted) and HG.

The Poles took a city spot on my continent so I only had 3 cities for a while, but Ashur then took Warsaw and sailed across and raised this Polish nuisance city for me. So I could have 4 decent cities.

T230 now and am into Freedom. Ashur has just attacked but this has been repulsed and a Frigate captured by my Sea Beggers. I'll soon make some more ships and will get 6 free foreign legions and have my revenge on him for all the dead fishermen.

I expect a CV around T300. Empire is very capital centered with everything in Amsterdam.

I had an awful start. I did not notice at first that raging barbarians were enabled and by T70 I had only built one archer to go along with my starting warrior. I was not able to steal any worker due to constant barbarian pressure.

I chose +1 hammer from fishing boats as pantheon, but by T74 all five religions were already founded. India and Poland both founded, but were not particularly aggressive at spreading their religion, so I was able to keep my pantheon for a little while longer.

Both neighboring civilization grew very rapidly into monsters early game. At T107, Warsaw was already at pop 20 (compared to my pop 10 Amsterdam) and had about a 7 times bigger population overall. Poland was wonder spamming all early game. On my side, the cities were really slow to set up. However, once I had all fishing boats set up and reached Guilds for Polders, the cities turned out to be really great, especially for production and gold.

My initial plan was to go for a peaceful 3 city diplomatic victory, however once India beat me to the Forbidden Palace, I thought why not give the Sea Beggars a shot? With M'banza-Kongo as ally, I DoW'd India. India wasted all its ground forces on the CS (but eventually took it) and had virtually no naval military. I took all India's cities and then liberated M'banza-Kongo to erase all warmongering penalties.

Taking cities with Sea Beggars was so much fun that I decided to for a Domination victory and see how much damage I could do with the Sea Beggars, despite Warsaw having already built the Red Fort with 100+ def and scouting that Persepolis was an inland city. I knew I could probably finish the game much earlier by simply going for a diplomatic victory, but chose otherwise.

Sea Beggars built in a city with Armory can get Logistics right off the bat which is great (if not over-powered). By going Exploration, naval units gained +1 movement point, which meant that Sea Beggars could sit 3 hexes away from a city, attack them twice then go sit back 3 hexes away. If you are careful and rotate units carefully, you can take on cities with as much as 75-90 defense without losing a single Sea Beggar. However, a Great Admiral, the Statue of Zeus and Coastal Raiders III are a must if you want to attack such high def cities with Sea Beggars. Late game, by going Autocracy and Total War, I could produce Sea Beggars each 1-2 turns from each of my three main cities.

I went
(1st army) Assyria > Siam > France > Persia
(2nd army) Ottoman > France > Persia
(3rd army) Poland
Poland was my ally pretty much all game and also went Autocracy. I sent all my trade routes to Warsaw for a high amount of GPT per trade route. I went to Siam before the Ottomans, because the Ottomans had by far the largest army. I first bribed Poland into DoW them to soften them up. I also bribed France into DoW Persia later. I finished off Warsaw with a freshly built army of battleships and destroyers. Overall, I overestimated the naval fighting capability of the AI and could probably have split my armies earlier for a faster win.