How do you stop an AI from running away in score on Immortal?

[Arksa]

Just wondering. On immortal it seems very hard to launch any kind of invasion force to the other side of the map when you got your own borders to worry about. That's excatly what happened, and when I realised that Washington is becoming a powerhouse, it was pretty much too late.

My last effort was to attack him with all I got (cossacks and artillery).

Only problem was that he had rocket artillery, around 25 B17 bombers which annihilated my attack force in 4 turns after first bomb dropped. I didn't have even tech to get some AA guns in the army to mix it up but waiting for them would've been too late (well it was too late already) since he would've just teched up for even better military tech.

Any ideas on how to prevent certain AIs from becoming an ultimate powerhouse and being out of reach in the later game (can't out science them, destroy them or anything else)?

Here's a little pic of how the world map looked when I went to war against them, met a couple dozen B17s, and lost my offensive army.

Spoiler :

You might go "omg you don't have oil yet" but I specifically went for dynamite, railroad, plastics approach.

 

[Adjuvant]

Discover them earlier. Work harder to establish potential for a presence expeditionally (expeditionarily?). Support the underdogs. There isn't always a runaway, but if you aren't working to have some hand in it, you're relying on luck, and luck won't win above emperor.

 

[Zezima]

My experience is mostly with Emperor, since I've only ever played two Immortal games (and I've only won one of them).

The disparity in score between you and America isn't nearly as big as I've seen on some games. I recently had a game as Denmark on Emperor where by the time I had taken out Mongolia and Siam, Babylon was over 600 points and 20% (according to the demographics) ahead in tech (literacy). There was absolutely no hope in beating him in the space race, but to my surprise he popped out the UN around turn 300 and by the third election I was able to snag a diplomatic victory by getting friendly with the CSs.

I'm not sure how Washington plays in the late game, but this might be a possibility for your game as well. Just play defensively and let him set things in motion for you.

 

[Arksa]

My experience is mostly with Emperor, since I've only ever played two Immortal games (and I've only won one of them).

The disparity in score between you and America isn't nearly as big as I've seen on some games. I recently had a game as Denmark on Emperor where by the time I had taken out Mongolia and Siam, Babylon was over 600 points and 20% (according to the demographics) ahead in tech (literacy). There was absolutely no hope in beating him in the space race, but to my surprise he popped out the UN around turn 300 and by the third election I was able to snag a diplomatic victory by getting friendly with the CSs.

I'm not sure how Washington plays in the late game, but this might be a possibility for your game as well. Just play defensively and let him set things in motion for you.

My score is so high because I managed to cap a capitol with like 10 wonders . Washington has such a high tech lead it's not even funny. And they fixed that issue where AI builds UN building for the heck of it. + EVERYONE hates my guts. I mean to the point where city states will not speak to me .

 

[Fluffball]

In regard to score, that is at best a guideline comparison and unless your holding out for a score based win i wouldn't be concerned too much about it.

For dealing with runaways in general you need to spot them early and take care of them as soon as possible.
With a large empire yourself, as you seem to be, you should be rolling in gold and spamming RA's to everyone you don't think is going to DoW you or be wiped out before it runs it's course. Doing that it's not hard to get a tech lead or at least some sort of parity then you should aim to knock them out before they get out of hand.
In most of my immortal games i am usually 6-10 techs behind around 1/4 way through then pull myself back in the second 1/4 so i am at least equal to the top civs and often starting to overtake them.

With a big runaway i tend to build up for an attack as soon as i get a military tech lead of some sort then pounce before they catch up.

From the look of it you may be too late but if you wanted to try then i would aim to hold out until you at least had a decent airforce and then try go for the kill

 

[Sidor1982]

In this situation I wouldn't go for war, only concentrate on teching up. Then get loats of fighters / anti air for defensive purposes and triy out building the spaceship sooner than him. But seeing the situation it might be too late for that (I don't know the tech difference).

Other option is to go massive nukes and try catching all his airforce in the first turn after DoW in one city. But the war to be successful you'd need a huge backup army and doing that will cause you most likely to loose the tech vict to America. So in this scenario I wouldn't follow with an army only go for spaceship, even if it would mean loosing a couple of cities after the initial DoW and concentrate on defense only. Additionally you can destroy some spaceship parts of his with nukes (use spies to have vision in 3 - 4 of his top cities)