[Immortal] Co-op da Whoop #2
- Thread starter Silu
- Start date
To 1000AD
Sorry for the hiatus, the downside of team games is, that, well, it's a team game and playing it requires that both players have time for it.
We also got stuck playing some other games...
Anyway, we left off with Byzantium, Aztecia, our economy and our tech situation in ruins. The most pressing concern is an imminent invasion. Remember GK/Joao going weehorn about 500 years ago when I refused their demand? Well, they got Astronomy now. I'm busy building defenses for the most obvious / most important coastal cities, while my main stack is hungrily waiting for the war declaration to grab the Incan heartlands, along with the Taoist shrine and a bunch of wonders - the Incan/Chinese team is a vassal of GK/Joao if you forgot already.
Sure enough, the horns blaze. And where did the invasion arrive? kwaDukuza or uMgungundlovu, the two most obvious and closest cities by far? Nah, Joao came in hard through the back door (figuratively speaking), in Nongoma. The puny defense force of Archers had the proper response for an action like that: died immediately in the hands of the Portuk Knights. Then they approached Ulundi while my main defense force hurried to get over:
Meanwhile in Sw...Inca-land, I'm approaching Cuzco. It has the Great Wall and Chichen Itza, both somewhat useful immediately on capture. The cheery fellow surprised me by suiciding a couple of Knights to my defensive Formation War Elephants. And by "suiciding" I mean winning at 15% odds repeatedly.
Cuzco was defended by a grand total of 5 units. I didn't bother to bombard the Chicken Castle all the way down, and suicided a few Trebs instead to get...
Well, it will go to American hands of course, but nevertheless the wonders are great, at least the Great Wall to get 50% more GGs from defensive fighting (yeah it says 100%, but there's already a 100% bonus for GGs on your own soil, making the total bonus 200%).
Just for kicks, here's a shot of the resource screen at the time. I'm importing 8 sorts of American goodies, but exporting 51 gpt
I'm giving cash instead of raising my slider since America can better use that cash by distilling it through the 
-modifiers.
After most of Incaland and two invasions (GK landed a puny stack in the formerly Incan tundra) are wiped out, we get them to the negotiating table. Had to actually pay 200g for the peace, but it's still a great deal... They are nearing Rifling already. Teching like speed devils, I've never seen quite anything like that on Immortal to be honest. Even though we have 40% of the worlds land, we're behind by a dozen big techs and our diplo situation sucks.
Not all is war though. Even though she was having skirmishes with the Russo-Burgerian alliance, Victoria had time to arrange the millenial sailing regatta near our new conquests:
And to conclude, the tech at 1000AD. We're ridiculously behind, and GK/Joao have Rifling already. They went weehorn during their forced peace with us, so I REALLY hope they aren't going for us since I would make some kind of revolt if that happened. Most probably they're going for the Russo-Burgers. Hopefully Honest Abe can whip our some beakers fast enough to get us SOMETHING. We did leave the Incan city as an espionage failsafe, and Gilgamesh settled a tundra/ice city as well, so maybe we can utilize some espionage here in a while. If we survive until then.
We could trade a bit with the Russo-Burgers, but we had to stop trading with them just a few turns ago so they'll probably refuse to talk for the next 1000 years.
Really no idea what tech we should pursue. Rifling would give us safety, Const/Democracy would give beakers and EP, Chemistry direction would probably give some trade bait, Communism line would rid us of our ridiculous distance maintenance and boosting my production health-free (I can't build Grocers so Factories are going to be hard to pull off). Maybe throw some dice to decide? Or listen to the readers?
Sorry for the hiatus, the downside of team games is, that, well, it's a team game and playing it requires that both players have time for it.
We also got stuck playing some other games...Anyway, we left off with Byzantium, Aztecia, our economy and our tech situation in ruins. The most pressing concern is an imminent invasion. Remember GK/Joao going weehorn about 500 years ago when I refused their demand? Well, they got Astronomy now. I'm busy building defenses for the most obvious / most important coastal cities, while my main stack is hungrily waiting for the war declaration to grab the Incan heartlands, along with the Taoist shrine and a bunch of wonders - the Incan/Chinese team is a vassal of GK/Joao if you forgot already.
Sure enough, the horns blaze. And where did the invasion arrive? kwaDukuza or uMgungundlovu, the two most obvious and closest cities by far? Nah, Joao came in hard through the back door (figuratively speaking), in Nongoma. The puny defense force of Archers had the proper response for an action like that: died immediately in the hands of the Portuk Knights. Then they approached Ulundi while my main defense force hurried to get over:
Meanwhile in Sw...Inca-land, I'm approaching Cuzco. It has the Great Wall and Chichen Itza, both somewhat useful immediately on capture. The cheery fellow surprised me by suiciding a couple of Knights to my defensive Formation War Elephants. And by "suiciding" I mean winning at 15% odds repeatedly.
Cuzco was defended by a grand total of 5 units. I didn't bother to bombard the Chicken Castle all the way down, and suicided a few Trebs instead to get...
Well, it will go to American hands of course, but nevertheless the wonders are great, at least the Great Wall to get 50% more GGs from defensive fighting (yeah it says 100%, but there's already a 100% bonus for GGs on your own soil, making the total bonus 200%).
Just for kicks, here's a shot of the resource screen at the time. I'm importing 8 sorts of American goodies, but exporting 51 gpt
I'm giving cash instead of raising my slider since America can better use that cash by distilling it through the -modifiers.After most of Incaland and two invasions (GK landed a puny stack in the formerly Incan tundra) are wiped out, we get them to the negotiating table. Had to actually pay 200g for the peace, but it's still a great deal... They are nearing Rifling already. Teching like speed devils, I've never seen quite anything like that on Immortal to be honest. Even though we have 40% of the worlds land, we're behind by a dozen big techs and our diplo situation sucks.
Not all is war though. Even though she was having skirmishes with the Russo-Burgerian alliance, Victoria had time to arrange the millenial sailing regatta near our new conquests:
And to conclude, the tech at 1000AD. We're ridiculously behind, and GK/Joao have Rifling already. They went weehorn during their forced peace with us, so I REALLY hope they aren't going for us since I would make some kind of revolt if that happened. Most probably they're going for the Russo-Burgers. Hopefully Honest Abe can whip our some beakers fast enough to get us SOMETHING. We did leave the Incan city as an espionage failsafe, and Gilgamesh settled a tundra/ice city as well, so maybe we can utilize some espionage here in a while. If we survive until then.
We could trade a bit with the Russo-Burgers, but we had to stop trading with them just a few turns ago so they'll probably refuse to talk for the next 1000 years.
Really no idea what tech we should pursue. Rifling would give us safety, Const/Democracy would give beakers and EP, Chemistry direction would probably give some trade bait, Communism line would rid us of our ridiculous distance maintenance and boosting my production health-free (I can't build Grocers so Factories are going to be hard to pull off). Maybe throw some dice to decide? Or listen to the readers?
Fleme
Obey the Kitty!
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
Sorry about the delay from my part as well. Fitting 2 schedules and moods to play together isn't always the easiest. However, here we go!
My segment is hugely uninteresting when compared to Silus because he's the one doing warring. I am, as usual, being the economy.
I'll explain our techpath chosen here for those who are interested: Education obviously was a no-brainer and at the time we finished it, it even yielded us a trade with the Russo-Burger team for Guilds and Drama (+cash) so on top of Philosophical universities... yeah well I feel like I'm stating the obvious here. Education is obviously strong on it's own and we needed it to get Liberalism. We still decided to pursue it eventhough it was discovered by the AI's before because it'll ease our diplomatic situation to a degree, boost our science and open up techs desirable for such a large empire. We did detour to Banking after Education because we were absolutely hemorrhaging money overseas. Having no Astronomy, the AI nations were just draining free gold from us for no return so we opted to go for Mercantilism. I hardly ever use Merc these days but in this game it makes sense in a big way because the overseas diplomatic situation is volatile at best and all in all you can't go wrong combining specialists with phi... If only I had rep, which brings me back to the Liberalism line. Obviously constitution is a desirable tech to research but as we begin our next set, we'll have to determine which tech is best for us at our current position and how highly must we value homeland security over matter of science.
Back to the actual game:
Used my next GS to fire up a golden age to speed up the research of Education. I deemed it to be more useful at this point and I knew I could force out a new GS during the GA. Here's Washington being starved to produce said guy:
12 Scientists doing their thing + Philo + NE + GA = not too shabby.
Like Silu explained, war broke out. I'm more of an observer than a fighter so the Bozites (get the reference?) just had to succumb to Mongol rule for the time being:
Skipping ahead as really nothing worth mentioning happened in America for the remainder of the turnset. I did fire up a second GA after farming a GM in Washington after the GS you see being farmed in the first screenshot. This GA was used to do an extensive civic switch that would've crippled me for 5 turns and as a result cost us some 3500 beakers and lost production. The civics I chose were FR, Merc, Slavery (just until the end of the GA), FS (Tundra capital of Olympia isn't actually the kind of Bureaucracy capital I'd like to have) and remained in HR. I did extensive infrastructure whipping all across the continent to get basic buildings such as courthouses and forges up. Both holy cities are toiling away on banks which will keep me afloat even after the GA ends.
Said holy cities:
And then some overview shots of the empire:
Washington at the end of the set:
Oxford will come in handy.
GNP:
Victory conditions:
That Replaceable parts research is just a filler for now. Joao and GK have rifling and are wheoohrn, most likely on us. Next set is either going to see our demise or rise to the top - I hope.
My segment is hugely uninteresting when compared to Silus because he's the one doing warring. I am, as usual, being the economy.
I'll explain our techpath chosen here for those who are interested: Education obviously was a no-brainer and at the time we finished it, it even yielded us a trade with the Russo-Burger team for Guilds and Drama (+cash) so on top of Philosophical universities... yeah well I feel like I'm stating the obvious here. Education is obviously strong on it's own and we needed it to get Liberalism. We still decided to pursue it eventhough it was discovered by the AI's before because it'll ease our diplomatic situation to a degree, boost our science and open up techs desirable for such a large empire. We did detour to Banking after Education because we were absolutely hemorrhaging money overseas. Having no Astronomy, the AI nations were just draining free gold from us for no return so we opted to go for Mercantilism. I hardly ever use Merc these days but in this game it makes sense in a big way because the overseas diplomatic situation is volatile at best and all in all you can't go wrong combining specialists with phi... If only I had rep, which brings me back to the Liberalism line. Obviously constitution is a desirable tech to research but as we begin our next set, we'll have to determine which tech is best for us at our current position and how highly must we value homeland security over matter of science.
Back to the actual game:
Used my next GS to fire up a golden age to speed up the research of Education. I deemed it to be more useful at this point and I knew I could force out a new GS during the GA. Here's Washington being starved to produce said guy:
12 Scientists doing their thing + Philo + NE + GA = not too shabby.
Like Silu explained, war broke out. I'm more of an observer than a fighter so the Bozites (get the reference?) just had to succumb to Mongol rule for the time being:
Skipping ahead as really nothing worth mentioning happened in America for the remainder of the turnset. I did fire up a second GA after farming a GM in Washington after the GS you see being farmed in the first screenshot. This GA was used to do an extensive civic switch that would've crippled me for 5 turns and as a result cost us some 3500 beakers and lost production. The civics I chose were FR, Merc, Slavery (just until the end of the GA), FS (Tundra capital of Olympia isn't actually the kind of Bureaucracy capital I'd like to have) and remained in HR. I did extensive infrastructure whipping all across the continent to get basic buildings such as courthouses and forges up. Both holy cities are toiling away on banks which will keep me afloat even after the GA ends.
Said holy cities:
And then some overview shots of the empire:
Washington at the end of the set:
Oxford will come in handy.
GNP:
Victory conditions:
That Replaceable parts research is just a filler for now. Joao and GK have rifling and are wheoohrn, most likely on us. Next set is either going to see our demise or rise to the top - I hope.
shyuhe
Deity
Espionage should let you catch up enough to war more effectively, especially with so many cities.
Fleme
Obey the Kitty!
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
That's actually a good plan. We did plan on spying on HC - we left him with 1 city in an icy peninsula where he can wallow in his misery for as long as we want him around. As far as the espionage goes, we did direct our EP on HC/Mao already but obviously it'd be better if we went all out EP for a period of time and caught up.
I'm definitely going to give that some thought and see what kind of numbers I can pull - would make a lot more sense after Jails are up though.
I'm definitely going to give that some thought and see what kind of numbers I can pull - would make a lot more sense after Jails are up though.
Here that would mean going ASAP for Jails (and Bureaus) and building them (along with running spies) everywhere, and not really using the slider, right (at least before Communism)? You might guess we very seldom use espionage in (Marathon) team games, guess why
Too bad using the holy city bonus will/would be ~diplomatic suicide here.
RRRaskolnikov
Goldfish
How did you dare to post those?
(yeah you are prolly not working corn to get the bank faster 
)Seriously, any updates?
Me and my brother have played co-op games like yours for a while so I find your game ery interesting! I hope the continuation comes soon!
You wrote that sometimes it's difficult that you can't chatt while you need to decide if a city stays or burns. We use teamspeak so that we can voice chat and that makes coordination of wars and everything else that much easier. If you don't have a teamspeak server, or ventrilo or the like you can always use skype, works great with two player coop.
You wrote that sometimes it's difficult that you can't chatt while you need to decide if a city stays or burns. We use teamspeak so that we can voice chat and that makes coordination of wars and everything else that much easier. If you don't have a teamspeak server, or ventrilo or the like you can always use skype, works great with two player coop.
The next round is played, but apparently it was so exhausting (well, it kinda was) that Fleme disappeared from the face of the earth for a few days to catch his breath before we could post a report. To describe the round in a sentence, maybe "Impending doom is hanging on our heads" gets the message across
To 1390AD: The Long Wait
So, we left off in a huge tech ditch. I thought Russo-Burgers refused to talk to us, but seems they didn't. We are so desperate as to make this trade even though they are hated by the whole world. Joao/GK already had -4 WE hate, though. After this, so did Vicky/Gilga.
The big boys waged war against Russia, Rifles against Knights. Yeah, guess how that is going to end. Meanwhile HC apparently wishes he was Ottoman instead.
See below if you guessed right. If you did, you get a free 2 silk + plainscow start for your next solo game! Congratulations!
EDIT: I realized this shot doesn't actually show that they capitulated But yeah, they did.
I'm building anything I can in anticipation of the big boys eventually heading our way. Sure enough, 17 turns later...
Furious unitbuilding and enterspamming commences. I'm placing regiments of 10-20 units every 10 tiles or so, and a fatter stack at each end of the continent. This land area is huuuuge to defend...
At some point GK demands 130g from me. Cheapest point of diplo I ever saw, and I pay... Which brings him to Cautious with me. Coincidentally it brings their team to Cautious with our team, so we get this juicy trade off:
Bad news arrive: THEY HAVE INFANTRY ALREADY. We raced to Rifling when they threatened us with Rifles, now they are already obsolete... And finally the inevitable happens. See! I finally remembered to take a screenshot of it! Notice his plucked eyebrows and what seems to be a constipation-induced grimace!:
And where's the stack of 30 Infantry they landed? Certainly not the most obvious location, stack size or composition... I honestly have next to no clue how they ended up there. I think they may have landed a stack, DoWed to have it sproing there, and then moved to invade. (What do you mean, "sproing isn't a word"? Sure it is. Look it up.)
And thus we leave at this cliffhanger. There's bound to be truckloads of Infantry on the way, and we're many many turns away from AL. The DoW broke so many export trades so the true turn count will be much higher than the 13 turns shown here. Two turns ago I was breakeven, now I'm -55 gpt.
In this ending shot, I really don't know where I was going with that comment of mine...
Will we survive, or will the Portuguese and Mongolian savages trample all over the just-established glorious Zulu-American presence on our glorious northern continent? Tune in next time!
So, we left off in a huge tech ditch. I thought Russo-Burgers refused to talk to us, but seems they didn't. We are so desperate as to make this trade even though they are hated by the whole world. Joao/GK already had -4 WE hate, though. After this, so did Vicky/Gilga.
The big boys waged war against Russia, Rifles against Knights. Yeah, guess how that is going to end. Meanwhile HC apparently wishes he was Ottoman instead.
See below if you guessed right. If you did, you get a free 2 silk + plainscow start for your next solo game! Congratulations!
EDIT: I realized this shot doesn't actually show that they capitulated
But yeah, they did.I'm building anything I can in anticipation of the big boys eventually heading our way. Sure enough, 17 turns later...
Furious unitbuilding and enterspamming commences. I'm placing regiments of 10-20 units every 10 tiles or so, and a fatter stack at each end of the continent. This land area is huuuuge to defend...
At some point GK demands 130g from me. Cheapest point of diplo I ever saw, and I pay... Which brings him to Cautious with me. Coincidentally it brings their team to Cautious with our team, so we get this juicy trade off:
Bad news arrive: THEY HAVE INFANTRY ALREADY. We raced to Rifling when they threatened us with Rifles, now they are already obsolete... And finally the inevitable happens. See! I finally remembered to take a screenshot of it! Notice his plucked eyebrows and what seems to be a constipation-induced grimace!:
And where's the stack of 30 Infantry they landed? Certainly not the most obvious location, stack size or composition... I honestly have next to no clue how they ended up there. I think they may have landed a stack, DoWed to have it sproing there, and then moved to invade. (What do you mean, "sproing isn't a word"? Sure it is. Look it up.)
And thus we leave at this cliffhanger. There's bound to be truckloads of Infantry on the way, and we're many many turns away from AL. The DoW broke so many export trades so the true turn count will be much higher than the 13 turns shown here. Two turns ago I was breakeven, now I'm -55 gpt.
In this ending shot, I really don't know where I was going with that comment of mine... Will we survive, or will the Portuguese and Mongolian savages trample all over the just-established glorious Zulu-American presence on our glorious northern continent? Tune in next time!
Fleme
Obey the Kitty!
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
Another segment that wasn't hugely eventful for my part. Sure, we got DoWed but that's for Military Minister Silu to deal with. So, on to matters of tech:
So, we decided to head towards Constitution for Representation because let's face it - foreign trade is never going to be our strong point and why not make the best of Mercantilism when you're forced to use it. Furthermore, Rep is always bound to lead to great things. I love that civic <3
Rep did boost things a lot and the empire at the end of the segment was, as you can see in the screenshots below, twice the amount it was during a golden age at the end of last segment.
We followed Constitution with Democracy with ambitious plans to grab the SoL which then failed after China/Inca got their hands on Demo and naturally Mao popped an Engineer so game over. Boston did score a fair bit of fail gold so it wasn't all bad. As for my plans to steal techs from the Inca - backfired. After Democracy and Communism were discovered, espionage costs soared. At the end of the segment I was looking at an ep cost of 35000 just to even get a glance at the tech steal screen so that idea was pretty much born dead. America does have Jails all over the place now, though, and some Bureaus as well.
Democracy we followed with Rifling because it became increasingly obvious that we were going to be receiving the blunt end of the GK/Joao stick who by the way have so far played this game as a human team would. They did a miraculous beeline to Lib which they then followed by a straight AL beeline. Pretty crazy.
We ended the segment just after they had declared on us. Joao had gone weehorn before they reached AL so his army was backed up by rifles. Silu slaughtered them in the barren north before they could wreak any havoc.
America proper:
East coast:
Washington:
It's still doing the heavy lifting when it comes to science, but more and more beakers are flowing in from across the land.
SLC:
The Hindu-Mormon priests are hard at work and the shrine (which I stupidly neglected from the screenshot) combined with...
...are paying the bills easily. I have Hindu everywhere and Tao almost everywhere.
Non-GA boosted view on demographics:
So, I'm outdoing the AI's pretty much on everything. America has finally picked up the slack and is the monster that I envisioned.
Tech sitch:
Clearly not as bad as we've been the entire game. Come AL, we'll be pretty secure from anything they can throw at us.
So, here we end for now. We've just been dowed by the top dogs and their 2 vassal teams. Giggles and Vicky have just played passive the entire game.
So, we decided to head towards Constitution for Representation because let's face it - foreign trade is never going to be our strong point and why not make the best of Mercantilism when you're forced to use it. Furthermore, Rep is always bound to lead to great things. I love that civic <3
Rep did boost things a lot and the empire at the end of the segment was, as you can see in the screenshots below, twice the amount it was during a golden age at the end of last segment.
We followed Constitution with Democracy with ambitious plans to grab the SoL which then failed after China/Inca got their hands on Demo and naturally Mao popped an Engineer so game over. Boston did score a fair bit of fail gold so it wasn't all bad. As for my plans to steal techs from the Inca - backfired. After Democracy and Communism were discovered, espionage costs soared. At the end of the segment I was looking at an ep cost of 35000 just to even get a glance at the tech steal screen so that idea was pretty much born dead. America does have Jails all over the place now, though, and some Bureaus as well.
Democracy we followed with Rifling because it became increasingly obvious that we were going to be receiving the blunt end of the GK/Joao stick who by the way have so far played this game as a human team would. They did a miraculous beeline to Lib which they then followed by a straight AL beeline. Pretty crazy.
We ended the segment just after they had declared on us. Joao had gone weehorn before they reached AL so his army was backed up by rifles. Silu slaughtered them in the barren north before they could wreak any havoc.
America proper:
East coast:
Washington:
It's still doing the heavy lifting when it comes to science, but more and more beakers are flowing in from across the land.
SLC:
The Hindu-Mormon priests are hard at work and the shrine (which I stupidly neglected from the screenshot) combined with...
...are paying the bills easily. I have Hindu everywhere and Tao almost everywhere.
Non-GA boosted view on demographics:
So, I'm outdoing the AI's pretty much on everything. America has finally picked up the slack and is the monster that I envisioned.
Tech sitch:
Clearly not as bad as we've been the entire game. Come AL, we'll be pretty secure from anything they can throw at us.
So, here we end for now. We've just been dowed by the top dogs and their 2 vassal teams. Giggles and Vicky have just played passive the entire game.
I guess the real question is did they start shipping units before they finished AL...
If yes, you can demolish a bunch of Rifles and then sue for peace.
If not, it'll cost a few more cannons but you'll probably still be fine as the AI sucks at intercontinental warfare.
Very interesting read, keep it up!
If yes, you can demolish a bunch of Rifles and then sue for peace.
If not, it'll cost a few more cannons but you'll probably still be fine as the AI sucks at intercontinental warfare.
Very interesting read, keep it up!
Fleme
Obey the Kitty!
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
Turns from 600-700 weren't hugely eventful despite the fact that the the eyes of every AI, especially GK/Joao were turned on us. So, we were still in tech catchup phase and finally the aeon-long ep spending on HC paid dividends:
Success was met, and we actually had optimized our research so that on the very turn the research of combustion finished, we stole Sci. Meth., which enabled us to head towards Physics. We wanted Airships because they'd enable us to have fair warning for invasions to come.
War, however, never did come during these 100 turns and the overall result of this segment was tech advancement and in the end we even manned up and started preparing for our own invasion towards Mongolia/Portugal. (My hat's off to them for teching so brilliantly well the entire game with very human tech choices (Lib, AL, Industrialism)
We, however, went towards Flight and opted for air superiority since they had neglected it and our invasion armada would consist of a large number of carriers supporting the invading troops.
Funny that this event should happen to me:
Kitty Hawk spearheading, acting as scout:
I had 26 cities so I could have 26 military units. A lot of my cities were garrisoned with Zulu war veterans so I got to build a couple of carriers and some 10 fighters in Cleveland (it had 2 military instructors from Inca times). I also made a point not to construct any fighters in cities that had Airports.
America, with key cities highlighted:
And to conclude, the tech sitch:
To me, the most interesting part is to compare the technological situation throughout the game. We've risen from a huge ditch and went past the AI on some parts. While we're still behind in the big picture, Flight gives a very decisive edge over the AI's. The next segment has already been played and will shortly be posted. It is also the final segment of the second installment of Co-op da whoop.
Success was met, and we actually had optimized our research so that on the very turn the research of combustion finished, we stole Sci. Meth., which enabled us to head towards Physics. We wanted Airships because they'd enable us to have fair warning for invasions to come.
War, however, never did come during these 100 turns and the overall result of this segment was tech advancement and in the end we even manned up and started preparing for our own invasion towards Mongolia/Portugal. (My hat's off to them for teching so brilliantly well the entire game with very human tech choices (Lib, AL, Industrialism)
We, however, went towards Flight and opted for air superiority since they had neglected it and our invasion armada would consist of a large number of carriers supporting the invading troops.
Funny that this event should happen to me:
Kitty Hawk spearheading, acting as scout:
I had 26 cities so I could have 26 military units. A lot of my cities were garrisoned with Zulu war veterans so I got to build a couple of carriers and some 10 fighters in Cleveland (it had 2 military instructors from Inca times). I also made a point not to construct any fighters in cities that had Airports.
America, with key cities highlighted:
And to conclude, the tech sitch:
To me, the most interesting part is to compare the technological situation throughout the game. We've risen from a huge ditch and went past the AI on some parts. While we're still behind in the big picture, Flight gives a very decisive edge over the AI's. The next segment has already been played and will shortly be posted. It is also the final segment of the second installment of Co-op da whoop.
To 1610AD: The long wait redux
So, we left off at war with Joao/GK, facing an imminent Infantry invasion, our (my) defenses consisting of Rifle/Cavalry regiments. And in 5 turns...Joao is willing to talk and we make peace for a paltry 640 gold. Anticlimactic. Very. Sorry about that
That's a fun detail of team gaming; to end a war it's enough for one AI team member to be willing to talk. Joao got a dozen units killed and is a general pansy I guess, so he opted for peace while GK was still seething with rage.
A dozen turns later, GK/Joao go weehorn again. Waiting, building units and upgrading... And then they go out of weehorn on their own. Le sigh. My defenses are starting to be a bit more formidable and I'm starting to think about actually going on the offensive at some point.
A dozen turns later, they go weehorn again. GK pops by to threaten me with his screaming warriors. Sorry dude, once I noticed you pluck your eyebrows your authority is gone forever. Stick it.
Flight is finally completed for us, along with AL a long time ago. I start assembling a fleet. 40 businessmen, 10 Destroyers, and a planned 10 Carriers filled with Fighters. Should make for an okay first wave to establish a beachhead, though admittedly the fleet is a bit short on businessmen against a Railroaded team of double Immortal AIs with Modern era bonuses ( further -24% on hammer costs). I'm counting on Airlift and Marathon to boost me here. Here's the fleet, lacking most of the Carriers and Fighters yet (even some American Carriers in the mix!). Notice my great His Zuluness' Ship Carriers
Will the fleet fail miserably? Will the Portuk/Mongolian offense drown the home continent with misery meanwhile? Find out next time, which will actually be quite shortly I believe!
So, we left off at war with Joao/GK, facing an imminent Infantry invasion, our (my) defenses consisting of Rifle/Cavalry regiments. And in 5 turns...Joao is willing to talk and we make peace for a paltry 640 gold. Anticlimactic. Very. Sorry about that
That's a fun detail of team gaming; to end a war it's enough for one AI team member to be willing to talk. Joao got a dozen units killed and is a general pansy I guess, so he opted for peace while GK was still seething with rage.A dozen turns later, GK/Joao go weehorn again. Waiting, building units and upgrading... And then they go out of weehorn on their own. Le sigh. My defenses are starting to be a bit more formidable and I'm starting to think about actually going on the offensive at some point.
A dozen turns later, they go weehorn again. GK pops by to threaten me with his screaming warriors. Sorry dude, once I noticed you pluck your eyebrows your authority is gone forever. Stick it.
Flight is finally completed for us, along with AL a long time ago. I start assembling a fleet. 40 businessmen, 10 Destroyers, and a planned 10 Carriers filled with Fighters. Should make for an okay first wave to establish a beachhead, though admittedly the fleet is a bit short on businessmen against a Railroaded team of double Immortal AIs with Modern era bonuses ( further -24% on hammer costs). I'm counting on Airlift and Marathon to boost me here. Here's the fleet, lacking most of the Carriers and Fighters yet (even some American Carriers in the mix!). Notice my great His Zuluness' Ship Carriers
Will the fleet fail miserably? Will the Portuk/Mongolian offense drown the home continent with misery meanwhile? Find out next time, which will actually be quite shortly I believe!
To 1746AD: Clash of the titans
Part one: The landfall
TA-TADA-TAA-TAA TA-TADA-TAA-TAA TA-TADA-TAA-TOO TA-TADA-TAAAAA
What, you don't get the Ride of the Valkyries from that? Damn.
We have landfall! Braga was the only city on the beach with a hill next to it, so that's where I park. Joao's initial counteroffensive wave is quickly decimated, and Braga is taken. We had scouted the fact that GKs counteroffensive wave would park conveniently in the range of our Fighters, resulting in...
... a lot of wounded Mongols. They went to a city to lick their wounds - conveniently one in the range of the Range-upgraded American Fighters (damn, why didn't I get that event?). They are somewhat kept in check for multiple turns, until they decided to...
... suicide themselves at half health. The 2 Zulu deaths you see were the only ones caused by a 19-unit counteroffensive. There was much rejoicing! Though what is worrying is, they got Tanks almost immediately after a DoW. Now, CG3 Infantry is somewhat favorable against a Tank in a city, but still I'm leaking a lot of units to a bajillion Tanks and Arty hitting me every turn. Immortal + Modern era + Marathon costs + AI = a lot of units from nowhere.
We manage to trade for Fascism from Vicky/Gilga. Oh the joy! Never has Fascism been better for me in a game. Paratroopers! Police State! Mt. Rushmore that I am not allowed to build because it generates culture! I switch from Infantry production to Paratroopers. I'll say, getting level 4 Combat2+Pinch+Ambush Paras from multiple cities is great. To boost my production and to switch civics fast, I pop off a...
... with an American scientist.
Now, despite all this, things are starting to looking horrible on the frontier with insane amounts of Tanks rolling in each turn. Evora is captured, but that only amplifies the problem as now I have two cities to defend instead of just one. Airlift is very helpful, but 2 units per turn simply can't keep up with the amount of units I need. The seas are also very dangerous, as the Portuguese / Mongolian fleets are thick with Battleships with the tech advantage they have. I think this picture is somewhat descriptive:
-----
Part two: The staggering balance (now with actual screenshots instead of thumbnails)
Desperate measures are taken. With my golden age, I switch to Universal Suffrage and demand a 1000gold/turn tribute from the Americans. First order of business: A rushed airport in Braga for 2000 gold. There are a lot of Airports back at home. I divide almost all of my homeland security forces into small groups and transfer one to each Airport city. From there, for a while I airlift almost a dozen troops each turn to Braga to take on the Mongol hordes. Defense takes a serious back foot in favor of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the smirking faces of Joao and the Khan. Meanwhile I exploit the fact that the bad boys don't have Open Borders with their neighbors and momentarily deprive them of their few Oil reserves (though I assume they just demand Oil from their vassals at this point):
The kitchen sink did it: Instead of hemorrhaging troops each turn, I actually kill the vast majority of their offenses. This allows me to grab Oporto by sea and finally venture into...
... the inner reaches of their empire. Taking Lisboa is a major step in subduing the Portuguese, and it gives us much needed happiness in the forms of Broadway and Rock&Roll. The Mongol Arty&Tank offenses still take their toll, but I start to make steady progress.
I paradrop a few troopers near Lagos, before noticing that the Mongols have again twenty-some-units to throw against my hard-earned cities. I abort paradropping further troops to ascertain city defenses. But the Khan decides to pummel my hilltop commandos instead! I frantically paradrop more troops to defend them, but with no Medic in hostile territory they are doomed to die in vain. Unless...
... Sun Tzu rides 42 kilometers and then some to inspire my commandos to heal faster! This feat would surely inspire a Golden Age had there just been one moments earlier (side point: on the last turn of my golden age, I revolted back into Police State and let the Americans use their money on something called "science" instead).
This doesn't deter the Khan, really, and he throws multiple Artillery plus follow-up each turn against the hilltop heroes. Finally after years of back and forth fighting, reinforcing, getting pummeled, pummeling enemies...
...Lagos is taken! This morally breaks Joao, though the Khan is still a stalwart opponent, his lands completely untouched so far.
-----
Part three: The Steamroll
At this point much welcomed news arrive: Gilgamesh and Victoria, inspired by our example to fight against tyranny, join the fight against the monsters. I alone have twice the military resources they do, but any distraction helps. And apparently it helps more than I would have thought, or maybe the Mongol spirit had also broken with the defenses of Lagos. The Khan crumbles like a house of cards. Here is a list of dates and liberated cities that joined the Zulu Empire:
- 1712AD : Turfan
- 1716AD : Samarqand
- 1716AD : Leiria
- 1716AD : Tabris
- 1718AD : Ning-Hsia
- 1720AD : New Sarai
- 1722AD : Karakorum
- 1722AD : Circassian
- 1724AD : Beshbalik
- 1726AD : Old Sarai
10 cities in a mere 14 years, or 8 turns! When the Paratrooper + Fighter combo gets going, it really does. At this point Bombers were also available, helping the pummeling a lot mainly due to their great range. Here are some action shots:
All this leaves no mainland cities for the once monstrous Mongol/Portuguese alliance. Their vassals having long since abandoned them, they throw themselves at our mercy. I accept peace in return of a seemingly insignificant sea city, that however contains their only source of Uranium. They do have Fission, so I play it extra-safe and accept it.
So, that leaves my valiant army with nothing to do. Or does it?
After a blinding blast, all that was left was Victoria exclaiming "Dude, where's my Gilgamesh?". This "Operation Sumeri Freedom" started on the very turn the previous war ended, and took exactly 6 turns. We graciously allow Victoria to kiss the ring.
Let's see that in slow motion:
- 1728AD : New Sarai (which Gilga had captured from the Khan two turns prior)
- 1728AD : Ur
- 1732AD : Lagash
- 1732AD : Kish
- 1732AD : Nibru
- 1736AD : Uruk
- 1736AD : Eridu (Gilga eliminated)
Zooming out, we notice a ridiculous 11 cities simultaneously being in revolt due to capturing Coimbra is also revolting, but that doesn't count since it was just a boring regular culture-induced revolt.
After a two-turn excursion into China, the inevitable happened:
Oh boy, the war really went from good to bad to worse to very very good. I think that's the fastest advance by far I've ever pulled off in an Immortal game. Mostly thanks to the fact that our enemies never went Flight, and researched Plastics instead. Fighting against railroaded Tanks with no Anti-Tanks was aggravating at times, but air superiority has it in the final analysis. Some funny statistics:
Units built:
Units killed:
Final result, a score of 133k.
Thanks for following, see you perhaps in a new installment of Co-op da Whoop! Also see below for a somewhat different final report, I'm assuming
Part one: The landfall
TA-TADA-TAA-TAA TA-TADA-TAA-TAA TA-TADA-TAA-TOO TA-TADA-TAAAAA
What, you don't get the Ride of the Valkyries from that? Damn.
We have landfall! Braga was the only city on the beach with a hill next to it, so that's where I park. Joao's initial counteroffensive wave is quickly decimated, and Braga is taken. We had scouted the fact that GKs counteroffensive wave would park conveniently in the range of our Fighters, resulting in...
... a lot of wounded Mongols. They went to a city to lick their wounds - conveniently one in the range of the Range-upgraded American Fighters (damn, why didn't I get that event?). They are somewhat kept in check for multiple turns, until they decided to...
... suicide themselves at half health. The 2 Zulu deaths you see were the only ones caused by a 19-unit counteroffensive. There was much rejoicing! Though what is worrying is, they got Tanks almost immediately after a DoW. Now, CG3 Infantry is somewhat favorable against a Tank in a city, but still I'm leaking a lot of units to a bajillion Tanks and Arty hitting me every turn. Immortal + Modern era + Marathon costs + AI = a lot of units from nowhere.
We manage to trade for Fascism from Vicky/Gilga. Oh the joy! Never has Fascism been better for me in a game. Paratroopers! Police State! Mt. Rushmore that I am not allowed to build because it generates culture! I switch from Infantry production to Paratroopers. I'll say, getting level 4 Combat2+Pinch+Ambush Paras from multiple cities is great. To boost my production and to switch civics fast, I pop off a...
... with an American scientist.
Now, despite all this, things are starting to looking horrible on the frontier with insane amounts of Tanks rolling in each turn. Evora is captured, but that only amplifies the problem as now I have two cities to defend instead of just one. Airlift is very helpful, but 2 units per turn simply can't keep up with the amount of units I need. The seas are also very dangerous, as the Portuguese / Mongolian fleets are thick with Battleships with the tech advantage they have. I think this picture is somewhat descriptive:
-----
Part two: The staggering balance (now with actual screenshots instead of thumbnails)
Desperate measures are taken. With my golden age, I switch to Universal Suffrage and demand a 1000gold/turn tribute from the Americans. First order of business: A rushed airport in Braga for 2000 gold. There are a lot of Airports back at home. I divide almost all of my homeland security forces into small groups and transfer one to each Airport city. From there, for a while I airlift almost a dozen troops each turn to Braga to take on the Mongol hordes. Defense takes a serious back foot in favor of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the smirking faces of Joao and the Khan. Meanwhile I exploit the fact that the bad boys don't have Open Borders with their neighbors and momentarily deprive them of their few Oil reserves (though I assume they just demand Oil from their vassals at this point):
The kitchen sink did it: Instead of hemorrhaging troops each turn, I actually kill the vast majority of their offenses. This allows me to grab Oporto by sea and finally venture into...
... the inner reaches of their empire. Taking Lisboa is a major step in subduing the Portuguese, and it gives us much needed happiness in the forms of Broadway and Rock&Roll. The Mongol Arty&Tank offenses still take their toll, but I start to make steady progress.
I paradrop a few troopers near Lagos, before noticing that the Mongols have again twenty-some-units to throw against my hard-earned cities. I abort paradropping further troops to ascertain city defenses. But the Khan decides to pummel my hilltop commandos instead! I frantically paradrop more troops to defend them, but with no Medic in hostile territory they are doomed to die in vain. Unless...
... Sun Tzu rides 42 kilometers and then some to inspire my commandos to heal faster! This feat would surely inspire a Golden Age had there just been one moments earlier (side point: on the last turn of my golden age, I revolted back into Police State and let the Americans use their money on something called "science" instead).
This doesn't deter the Khan, really, and he throws multiple Artillery plus follow-up each turn against the hilltop heroes. Finally after years of back and forth fighting, reinforcing, getting pummeled, pummeling enemies...
...Lagos is taken! This morally breaks Joao, though the Khan is still a stalwart opponent, his lands completely untouched so far.
-----
Part three: The Steamroll
At this point much welcomed news arrive: Gilgamesh and Victoria, inspired by our example to fight against tyranny, join the fight against the monsters. I alone have twice the military resources they do, but any distraction helps. And apparently it helps more than I would have thought, or maybe the Mongol spirit had also broken with the defenses of Lagos. The Khan crumbles like a house of cards. Here is a list of dates and liberated cities that joined the Zulu Empire:
- 1712AD : Turfan
- 1716AD : Samarqand
- 1716AD : Leiria
- 1716AD : Tabris
- 1718AD : Ning-Hsia
- 1720AD : New Sarai
- 1722AD : Karakorum
- 1722AD : Circassian
- 1724AD : Beshbalik
- 1726AD : Old Sarai
10 cities in a mere 14 years, or 8 turns! When the Paratrooper + Fighter combo gets going, it really does. At this point Bombers were also available, helping the pummeling a lot mainly due to their great range. Here are some action shots:
All this leaves no mainland cities for the once monstrous Mongol/Portuguese alliance. Their vassals having long since abandoned them, they throw themselves at our mercy. I accept peace in return of a seemingly insignificant sea city, that however contains their only source of Uranium. They do have Fission, so I play it extra-safe and accept it.
So, that leaves my valiant army with nothing to do. Or does it?
After a blinding blast, all that was left was Victoria exclaiming "Dude, where's my Gilgamesh?". This "Operation Sumeri Freedom" started on the very turn the previous war ended, and took exactly 6 turns. We graciously allow Victoria to kiss the ring.
Let's see that in slow motion:
- 1728AD : New Sarai (which Gilga had captured from the Khan two turns prior)
- 1728AD : Ur
- 1732AD : Lagash
- 1732AD : Kish
- 1732AD : Nibru
- 1736AD : Uruk
- 1736AD : Eridu (Gilga eliminated)
Zooming out, we notice a ridiculous 11 cities simultaneously being in revolt due to capturing
Coimbra is also revolting, but that doesn't count since it was just a boring regular culture-induced revolt.After a two-turn excursion into China, the inevitable happened:
Oh boy, the war really went from good to bad to worse to very very good. I think that's the fastest advance by far I've ever pulled off in an Immortal game.
Mostly thanks to the fact that our enemies never went Flight, and researched Plastics instead. Fighting against railroaded Tanks with no Anti-Tanks was aggravating at times, but air superiority has it in the final analysis. Some funny statistics:Units built:
Units killed:
Final result, a score of 133k.
Thanks for following, see you perhaps in a new installment of Co-op da Whoop! Also see below for a somewhat different final report, I'm assuming
Fleme
Obey the Kitty!
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
The conclusion:
So, as they say in Futurama: War were declared.
Since I had a total of something like less 20 units (fighters, carriers only) and I actually ended up accidentally suiciding a carrier with 3 fighters to an enemy submarine leaving me with 3 carriers full of fighters, my war was pretty much just small-time air raiding while Silu did the heavy lifting as you see in his report.
So, my report is a compilation of small events from America and some action shots of the war itself. I'll also do a bit of wrapping up in the end.
Zulu Paratroopers storming Portugal. This is actually when the fighting was most intense as their backbone was still very much intact.
National Park finished in Los Angeles, making it my pride and joy:
It's times like this I wonder why I don't always save some crappy forest location somewhere to become this awesome later on in the game.
Towards the end of the war, Joao landed this on my doorstep:
It prompted us to take peace and Silu moved on Giggles/Vicky and later Mao - I have no screenshots of those wars as my planes were rendered useless by Zulu bombers and I had little interest in the game at this point other than pressing shift enter. It did however lead up to this:
To explain my game for the last turns it was pretty much like this: Assign builds, hit shift enter - browse internet for 5-10 minutes while coming back every now and then to exchange a thought with Silu and repeating this for the duration of the war. Game-wise, this variant is not enjoyable atleast for the part of the economy player.
All in all the variant was pretty interesting but not to the point that I'd make myself replay it any time soon. I had a really passive time throughout the game as the functions of homeland security and offensive military were removed from the equation entirely. In retrospect I believe I did a few fumbles with my GS usage, but all in all the end result was just what we needed. Techs did cost twice as much as they regularly do which is a result of playing in team and having your teammate produce 1 beaker per turn through the entire game and I think I did an ok job carrying us economically through thick and thin. I have no illusions of grandure however, but humbly tip my hat off to the shrines that were so kindly provided to us, all three of them.
I produced 16 great people in this game, 15 of which were scientists and one prophet to found the confucian shrine.
The next installment will be a regular deity game.
So, as they say in Futurama: War were declared.
Since I had a total of something like less 20 units (fighters, carriers only) and I actually ended up accidentally suiciding a carrier with 3 fighters to an enemy submarine leaving me with 3 carriers full of fighters, my war was pretty much just small-time air raiding while Silu did the heavy lifting as you see in his report.
So, my report is a compilation of small events from America and some action shots of the war itself. I'll also do a bit of wrapping up in the end.
Zulu Paratroopers storming Portugal. This is actually when the fighting was most intense as their backbone was still very much intact.
National Park finished in Los Angeles, making it my pride and joy:
It's times like this I wonder why I don't always save some crappy forest location somewhere to become this awesome later on in the game.
Towards the end of the war, Joao landed this on my doorstep:
It prompted us to take peace and Silu moved on Giggles/Vicky and later Mao - I have no screenshots of those wars as my planes were rendered useless by Zulu bombers and I had little interest in the game at this point other than pressing shift enter. It did however lead up to this:
To explain my game for the last turns it was pretty much like this: Assign builds, hit shift enter - browse internet for 5-10 minutes while coming back every now and then to exchange a thought with Silu and repeating this for the duration of the war. Game-wise, this variant is not enjoyable atleast for the part of the economy player.
All in all the variant was pretty interesting but not to the point that I'd make myself replay it any time soon. I had a really passive time throughout the game as the functions of homeland security and offensive military were removed from the equation entirely. In retrospect I believe I did a few fumbles with my GS usage, but all in all the end result was just what we needed. Techs did cost twice as much as they regularly do which is a result of playing in team and having your teammate produce 1 beaker per turn through the entire game and I think I did an ok job carrying us economically through thick and thin. I have no illusions of grandure however, but humbly tip my hat off to the shrines that were so kindly provided to us, all three of them.
I produced 16 great people in this game, 15 of which were scientists and one prophet to found the confucian shrine.
The next installment will be a regular deity game.
Wow, quick ending to that one. I guess the amount of land you got earlier really helped once it was fully developed. Interesting war tactics too, once you got that hold on some of their land they just got steamrolled.
I can see how it'd be a little bit boring playing as the non-warmonger, but I've always kind of liked the empire development side of the game.
Nice win guys
I can see how it'd be a little bit boring playing as the non-warmonger, but I've always kind of liked the empire development side of the game.
Nice win guys
Fleme
Obey the Kitty!
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2003
- Messages
- 1,205
I too like the builder side of the game but there's a limit to everything. I mean, building and empire management is just fine and dandy but when you have to wait for an average of five minutes between turns for something you don't have any part in, it's somewhat tedious.
On the flipside, however, you could argue that Silu had a similar time for a good portion of the game so it evens out. All in all I'm glad the game is over but I'm more glad that we attempted and succeeded with it.
On the flipside, however, you could argue that Silu had a similar time for a good portion of the game so it evens out. All in all I'm glad the game is over but I'm more glad that we attempted and succeeded with it.
Kwibuss
Warlord
Ah cool a co-op thread. I like this
Didn't check this forum for almost a year, but I think i'll check your co-op thread every now and then. I allready noticed the new one
Didn't check this forum for almost a year, but I think i'll check your co-op thread every now and then. I allready noticed the new one
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