Advice on what to do? Babylon, Immortal, Pangaea

[meteo63]

Hey, what should do in this situation? I was going to upload screenshots, but I could not figure out how to take screenshots in Civ V, as I know Steam uses f12 but that's the Civ V quick load function, so I don't want to mess with it.

Anyway, I'm Babylon playing on an immortal pangea map going for science victory, and I got my second city up fairly early. But I know three to four is really the optimal number (it slows your culture just enough to get to the Rennaissance for rationalism, among other things), so I got out a settler and tried to expand, but right at that moment Theodora settled a city right in the path of my settler! Luckily, I had just saved the previous turn, since I had seen her settler as it was moving into position, so I reloaded and demanded she not settle near me, but of course that failed. What should I do now?

Look first at the turn 69 save: see her settler there? I'm trying to settle on that spot to the east with the copper, the cattle, and Mt. Sinai. Then, look at the turn 70 save, after I demanded she not settle near me (and failed). What should I do? Do I expand elsewhere, like the jungle with the spices to the southwest? Do I settle where I wanted to anyway and risk angering Theodora? Or do I use my science advantage as Babylon and smash Byzantium?

 

[Tich]

Without loading up your saves, my advice would be to settle in your ideal location and prepare for the worst. You have your walls and archers to fall back on, which are probably close to becoming Composite Bows at this point. 4 of those and a couple of Spears should be more than enough to defend your cities, especially if you are grabbing Walls on your forward locations. You'll probably want to steal some of her cities anyways to puppet, and it sounds like the one that she just took will be easy to surround and conquer. Still, that spice + jungle position doesn't sound half bad either. You just want to grow your cities as fast as possible, and jungles are great for that. Once you drop/rush buy a University in there, well, you know. Still, you'll probably want to nab both locations eventually. You're probably not going to play the entire game without going to war at some point, so abusing an early tech lead is never a bad idea. If you can power up to cannons and muskets after Education, before she can she get there herself, you can probably wipe her out with ease. From there you can work towards Public Schools, maybe grab Artillery, and beyond that you can just sit back and beeline Research Labs, Hubble Telescope, etc. It might not be the fastest science win, but investing in some military techs is probably required in an Immortal game on Pangea. Still, Artillery + Gatling Guns (more reasons to build archers early on and to get them upgrades) from Industrialization should be more than enough to keep you alive until your RAs + GS bulbing kicks in and you win a fast and easy science game as Babylon.

 

[Ribannah]

Send a unit ahead of your Settler and park it where you think the AI wants to settle. Chances are that they won't settle nearby but will hang around with their Settler, waiting for your unit to leave, and will eventually move away to an entirely different location if it doesn't.

 

[meteo63]

This game was a total fail; the next turn, the Celts dowed me with a giant army and I had only one Composite Bow that died instantly. I knew I couldn't hold them off, so I just gave up.

 

[Tich]

You shouldn't be losing to early rushes as Babylon. Rush buying walls is straight up broken early on, especially since yours are significantly stronger. As long as you have 4-5 Archers and/or CBs (depends how late the game is), you should be fine. Walls + Archers can fight off throngs of enemy units, even if you're massively out-numbered and out-teched. You just have to be willing to pump 2 archers out of your first expansion (Archer-some building (Shrine usually)-Archer) and find the time to have your Capital squeeze one out. You can always buy the 4th, and your 3rd city will produce a 5th after it builds a Shrine or Monument. Eventually you'll get another one by the time your 4th finishes, and once you have 6 Archers + Walls on your forward bases you can stop. From there you can finish Construction, make them all CBs, and 6 CBs can kill pretty much any army for the next 100 turns. Even if it seems hopeless, they'll just crash units into you and get slaughtered without doing any damage at all. It's pretty pathetic how bad the comps are at fighting, especially fighting against ranged units.

 

[meteo63]

Yeah, I know. It was one of my first immortal games and I guess I'm just not used to having to build that many archers yet. I think I'll go back to emperor and only do immortal after I can consistently win on emperor.

 

[Agent Cooper]

I can't load your saves, I'm guessing you have DLCs or mods I don't have, so I can only give this generel advice:

Babylon is one of the strongest civs in the early game, because of the free GS they get with Writing. My approach with a 4-city opening strategy would be

- beeline Writing
- settle GS as Academy - your research rate will explode
- grow capitol to size 4, then focus on production for a while
- research techs needed to work your luxuries, if you haven't already + archery & masonry
- declare war on nearby city state that has a worker - steal worker and make peace
- work luxuries and sell them - buy settlers and settle asap at desired locations
- if close to another civ (grabbing land), settle on hill/behind rivers etc for defense
- build archer as first thing
- whatever your capitol is producing, make sure to throw in an archer now and then

Whether you chase down some of the early wonders, is entirely situational. Given how strong their research rate is so early because of the academy, I'd pass on the Great Library and focus on Stonehenge/Oracle or Hanging Gardens, but that's me...

If you have a natural wonder close by generating a lot of faith (as an example), don't bother with Stonehenge - settle a city there asap instead and grab that tile. Perhaps you have Pantheon beliefs available, generating a lot of faith based on the terrain around your capitol - again, you don't need Stonehenge to secure a religion.

Don't worry about some momentarily unhappiness when you settle city 3/4. When you get more workers and work the extra luxuries, it'll pass. You can keep the newest cities at pop 1 or 2 for a while if needed. What's important is that they are settled early and get a free monument via the Tradition sp.

For warfare - make sure that your most exposed cities have at least a couple of bowmen close by and have either enough gold or a lux to trade off instantly, if you need to buy city walls in a city in 1 turn, because of a DOW. With a walled city on a hill, defended with 2-3 bowman and perhaps added by the Tradition SP that gives a 50% city defense bonus (you wanna complete the Tradition tree asap anyway, right?), it should be almost impossible to lose that city

PS: I don't know what speed you're playing at - settling the fourth city at t70 is imo too late on standard speed - it sounds more plausible on epic speed.