Immortal University 64 - Victoria

[Habitus]

Greetings, Immortals and would-be Immortals (and indeed any other players of any level), and welcome to the Immortal University.

Here is our Leader:



Here's the opening scene:



This is the first start with the following settings



Have fun all

 

[Habitus]

Rolled afew Oasis starts but didn't like any so settled on using a Fractal map. Hopefully its not too bias to any one AI

 

[Habitus]

Don't see anything to make me not SiP, warrior could maybe find seafood but it should be able to be picked up by other cities from look of coast

 

[vranasm]

don't like fractal lately much... you either get pangealike or semiiso, iso which isn't fun at all

start looks weak, hoping for some hidden strength from nonvisible BFC

 

[GGracchus]

Well, at least it isn't a plains cow glitch start. No reason not to SiP, warrior 1W or 1NW.

 

[Habitus]

4000BC - 3000BC (Turn 25)

Spoiler :

I moved the warrior NW to check around the plains hill. Seeing nothing I settled in place and got some dry rice. Not best tile but good enough for me to go Agriculture rather than Hunting to get to AH for the cows. Agri - AH - The Wheel, due to horses being in my BFC

Meet my first AI, over the next turn or so i see several scouts come best, guessing his NW and boxed in by coast for them all to come this way.



Not best person, had no espionage on him for abit so was worried about semi-isolation but around turn 20 i started gaining some on him so atleast 1 more AI around.

My warrior bravely died to a panther after i moved out of the jungle square stupidly This is all i got to see

I'll continue on later

 

[Regas]

this map is a b*tch to me, tried 3x but couldn't gain decisive advantage.

 

[Regas]

managed to win on 4th try

Spoiler :

all in all it was a struggle.
the jungle really slows you down, meh.
won lib race very late, around 900 AD or so, had 9 cities at that time I think.
teched gunpowder and engineering and started to mass musketmen + trebs, while teching to steel. I feel that cannons are more important than rifles. built/whipped army until I had like 30 musket/rifles + 20 trebs/cannons and went for Pacal, as he was running away.

Pacal capitulated when I took 4 cities from him. Next - Asoka. This war lasted longer, until I took 5 cities from him, then he capped.
War Weariness was a real problem.
Didnt really tech at all at the time, and took advanced Asoka with redcoats + cannons.

Next was Willem. This was a very long and frustrating war. He didnt want to cap at all, until he was left with 2 cities (started war at 11 if I remember correctly). Took his tanks/marines/artillery out with redcoats got AL at that time.

UN votes were nearly misses, as I was lacking 10-20 votes to win. So went for GK after Willem. Took 3 cities from him and diplo-won while still at war.

One last line - this map is no good

 

[Tempesta13]

4000 BC to 1 AD

Spoiler :

Looks like a tough map and I made a pretty bad mistake to make it worse - moved worker to chop the forest I was going to settle on. As I move him I realize i'm still 10 turns from Bronze Working. To make matters worse (a lot worse!) barbs do a worker steal so i'm down to 1 worker. Not the best start here. Also find Genghis close, a lot of crappy jungle and only 3 or 4 spots i want to settle.


Really wasn't sure what to do with this start until i noticed an interesting trade opportunity. Need more than 5 cities (and a couple pretty bad ones) to win (just took barb city up north on shore). Horse archer rush would be an option except the land isn't great for a quick timing on that and i lost that stupid worker. Also Genghis has better Horse Archers than I would have anyway. Decide to go Elephants since they crush Keshiks and Genghis builds lots of Keshiks. I gave my copper to Persia for the ivory i needed for this plan. Didn't get too many Catapults because it looks like none of his cities are on hills which is nice.


Tech at 1 AD.


The key trade.

1 AD to 1000 AD

Spoiler :

Elephants crush his UU. If there wasn't a spear in the city i started out with over 90% odds. Really like how he didn't settle on hills this game.


Got his capital. (need to retake the city to the south due to allowing a Keshik to pick it off) Has mids and hanging gardens in it. I ran Rep for a little while after this.


Took awhile to finish off Mongolia because I didn't build too many units after the war started because i was trying to not fall too far behind the tech leaders. Best thing possible happens the turn before i finish off Genghis - India declares war on Pacal. This is great because they are right next to each other and are the the leaders.


Got a great spy from the great wall that Genghis built. Since Pacal isn't trading with me i intend to steal Gunpowder and Chemistry from him.

1000 AD to 1500 AD

Spoiler :

Apostolic Palace votes to stop trading with Pacal which ensures he'll fall even farther behind.

I steal Gunpowder (think it failed this time so had to use another spy a turn or two later. Chemistry will be in in 4 turns and that is stolen too. I'm set up perfect for a Cuirassiers war on Pacal other than missing Iron.... It's right there so i could maybe declare war (since he's still fighting India) take that city first for the iron then build up units. That seems like a bad plan since i'm close to my UU and more importantly Cavalry. Decide to wait and use Cavs to take a few quick cities since i know he will Cap to India when i start taking him out.


This is what India wants for their extra Iron... no thanks.


Going to use the GP coming next turn for a GA to switch civics to HR/FS/FM. I'll buy/whip cavalry through the GA and attack at the end.


Declare in 1430 - i have another stack of Cavalry up north.


1470 AD: As expected he caps to India. At least i got 4 cities before it happened.

I decide to conquer the two civs in the west while teching to mass media with the goal of giving it to Willem, he builds UN and India votes me winner. Seems easier/faster than going to war with Pacal/India

1500 AD to 1735 UN victory

Spoiler :

Monty probably isn't going to have rifles so a quick cavalry war should be pretty effective.


1590 AD I take the last of his cities.


Give Willem Mass Media. I might have been able to just build UN myself and have Willem vote me winner but i wasn't sure if we'd have enough votes. Decide to just stick to the plan and hope Willem builds it quick.


1700 AD Sure enough Willem got it built.


35 years later vote is in. I could have done a tanks/bombers war for domination or gone for nukes to probably get an earlier finish date here but the UN is just so much easier.


Interested to see if anyone else uses Persian ivory for a war vs Genghis. Ended up working out well because he loves his UU so much. Not sure how i would have played it out if i couldn't have done the copper-ivory trade. It was a tough start where most usual tech beelines or rexing strats didn't seem like they would work. I was kinda scratching my head looking at the Mongols and all that jungle until the ivory came in.

 

[ben-jammin]

I think maybe this game is getting overlooked because of the fractal setting. I'm not putting this in spoilers because i dont think it really spoils anything but people will want to know before they play it:

This is not a pangea, but the distribution of land is just fine.


I'm playing this through a second time after an inexplicably poor tech path on my first try. Good map.

Spoiler :

It becomes obvious early that Genghis doesn't have metal...IMO turning this to your advantage early and decisively makes for the easiest win as his land is nice, and the financial trait really shines here.

 

[Harv]

No game here yet but just an inquiry.

As my current avatar indicates I am in the middle of an Emperor Charlemagne game from which I am taking a vacation and am planning on wrapping up one way or another as soon as I am finished with my diversion. (An Aztec Earth18 Monarch18 roflstomp)

How far away am I from trying one of these Immortal games?

 

[Regas]

it's harder than Emp but not really THAT harder. you should give it a go though.
but IU63 has much better starting surroundings imo than this one. didnt like this map at all.

 

[m00n]

Man this map is giving me hell. Seems like I still can't win Immortal starts that are not so favourable.

Spoiler :

There's enough land to settle and its pretty good eventually but the jungle really stops me from wageing war early. I tried to take out Pacal with Cuirassiers but he magic rifled when I was half way though. So I made peace and backstabbed Genghis who was in war with Asoka. Asoka gives in the SODs are rolling in on my backside. Now I'm toast because I couldn't vassal Pacal. I think I'll give this another shot some day.

 

[ben-jammin]

Man this map is giving me hell. Seems like I still can't win Immortal starts that are not so favourable.

Spoiler :

How does the jungle stop you from waging early war? let your victim clear the jungle for you, you don't even need iron working! On my first try on this map I mistakenly chose to self-research IW early what wit hall those jungle gems and the jungle pigs. Then Genghis took one of the gems spots before I got there...and promptly cleared the jungle. That's when I knew I had made an expensive mistake. This map is actually very favourable for an HA rush, you don't even need a second city (though it would be prudent to block Pacal at least somewhat). And right around the time you're hooking up the horses, you should also be recognizing that Genghis has no metal.

 

[Yuri Lilovme]

@Ben-jammin :

Spoiler :

I agree that the map is Horse Archer friendly. Taking out Genghis early is very tempting and following with Pacal is conceivable. These are quite long distances to move an army around.
The map is also favouring a GLH based expansion. You can expect to get 10 coastal cities if you block Pacal.

I've played it to 500 B.C.

Spoiler :

Basically, I stole him a worker and then I tried to choke Genghis with warriors and chariots. I couldn't kill many archers due to the jungle but could regularly disconnect his resources (I lost 4 chariots in the field and have 4 others).
Meanwhile, city 2 by the wheat focused on building the GLH and completed it on 1160 BC. City 3 went inland by the horse + plains hills to help with the expansion. Barb cities spawned far east and I settled agressively the southern coast, towards Pacal. I'll probably move the capital in Hastings since London isn't coastal and Hasting is a killer city (fish, copper, pigs, rice, grassland).

The techpath went something like : Agriculture, AH, The Wheel, Sailing, Masonry, Bronze Working, Writing (late Writing !), HBR, Alphabet.
Maybe I should've gone Alphabet before HBR, I don't know. Pottery, Archery and IW are much needed.
I'm not sure what tech I'm going for, next. Maybe Metal Casting, even though Pacal already has it. Knights and Banks are appealing. Getting Monotheism soon would also help. So maybe I'l research a cheaper tech to trade, like Aesthetics. Trading Aesthetics to Pacal/Asoka can't be a bad thing.

I'm still settling cities and lacking workers badly so I don't know at what rate I'll produce HAs. Not sure either of what units I'll go with against Pacal...

Among good things,
Cyrus has planted a city on our landmass and it will make a prime espionnage target.
Genghis has built the Great Wall and the Pyramids.
Pacal is spreading buddhism to us (but no other AI, yet) and has shrined his city.

View of the Empire :

Spoiler :

Genghis :

Spoiler :

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Mostly mashed end turn after ~500 AD

1 AD

Spoiler :

Teched obvious AG ----> AH, met GK, and had BFC horse.

0 hesitation. Let's get this a-hole out of contention right away.



Except it wasn't that easy. His gem city had 4 archers when I declared with 7 chariots, so I did a run-by and took his 2nd city. This created logistics problems for me but it still crippled him. From there his capitol had 5 archers () so I pillaged the hell out of it and took his eastern city with 7 chariots vs 3 archers across 2 turns (sounds dicey, but I had good promos so won fairly easily actually).

From there it was a matter of spam. With his capitol crippled and his jungle city minimized, he couldn't reinforce those 4 archers which had neither walls nor 20% culture, so I snuffed that city. The fight for the capitol was epic. I had ~14 chariots vs 5 archers (looked like 3 before I rolled up), and he had archers all around it. I lost a lot but left it with a single archer...and on the next turn he built another and healed a bit, but I nudged in there with 3 chariots. Strangely, he never attacked the damaged chariots with the wandering archers, instead retreating them to his last city, which unfortunately sported another metric ton of archers, this time on a hill as you can see. The plan is to seal this city off culturally and take whatever he'll give me for peace, then leave him to rot. AI won't declare war if it has no strat resources at all, so I don't actually have to take it.

Lulwut lib?!

Spoiler :

Shouldn't have, but did. Squeaked out a bulb on edu (got some unlucky spy guy which I just used for GA), and when pacal got the pre-reqs for lib I quickly traded for philosophy and then nationalism (also opening lib to asoka), brokered for more gold, and built research to scooch in a turn early, managing constitution also (not bad) en route to democracy. No points for guessing what I'm going to do with demo.

1814 UN

Spoiler :

Shortly after lib I had some options, opted bio. I then noticed that Pacal + Asoka really liked me. I bribed monty into pointless war vs GK just to distract and went corp/railroad (for mining inc), then straight to mass media, then to AL en route to computers. Gifted techs to cyrus so he'd build UN for me...allowing my bio farmed pop lead and slight land disadvantage to carry (Pacal getting that little island made it close-ish, sorta. He had more demo pop but I had more actual pop by a comfortable margin as you can see).

Pacal stayed a step ahead of me in tech, but with my production he was nothing a pre-emptive nuke strike of mech inf + mobile arty couldn't have handled easily enough. I was too lazy with an easier VC available in a won game though...

Note on final kills/deaths statistic:

Spoiler :

I killed 43 archers, yet somehow lost only 30 chariots . Chariots are such good rush units. Force concentration + picking archers off outside of cities carried the day. Without metal GK's traits did him nothing to defend and I wasn't going to let him get metal!

 

[yanner39]

Spoiler :

How does the jungle stop you from waging early war? let your victim clear the jungle for you, you don't even need iron working! On my first try on this map I mistakenly chose to self-research IW early what wit hall those jungle gems and the jungle pigs. Then Genghis took one of the gems spots before I got there...and promptly cleared the jungle. That's when I knew I had made an expensive mistake. This map is actually very favourable for an HA rush, you don't even need a second city (though it would be prudent to block Pacal at least somewhat). And right around the time you're hooking up the horses, you should also be recognizing that Genghis has no metal.

@ben-jammin

Spoiler :

How do you figure the map is favourable for a HA rush? I was under the impression that time is of the essence when doing a HA rush, and with limited commerce, how would you get to Horseback riding quickly enough? To put in another way, what specifically makes this map a good HA rush map?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@ben-jammin

Spoiler :

How do you figure the map is favourable for a HA rush? I was under the impression that time is of the essence when doing a HA rush, and with limited commerce, how would you get to Horseback riding quickly enough? To put in another way, what specifically makes this map a good HA rush map?

Spoiler :

GK doesn't have metal, although you wouldn't know that on 1st attempt usually. When I hit with chariots I did it soon enough to deny metal as GK JUST settled city 3 or so (capitol fat cross horse is very powerful for chariots because usually you learn of horse by researching for cow/sheep/pig early).

 

[ben-jammin]

@ben-jammin

Spoiler :

How do you figure the map is favourable for a HA rush? I was under the impression that time is of the essence when doing a HA rush, and with limited commerce, how would you get to Horseback riding quickly enough? To put in another way, what specifically makes this map a good HA rush map?

Spoiler :

Several things.

-Your nearest neighbour is a warmonger/worthless tech trader
-Map dictates that you research AH early which reveals horses in your capital's BFC
-Genghis has good land and you can safely assume he has no metal even without full scouting (building only archers) by the time you can get started on horseback riding
-All the target's best cities are on flat ground
-Opening commerce isnt bad with the financial lake, and being financial with all the riverside plus the gems means economic recovery is always within reach

In my game Genghis is wiped off the map in the early ADs, and that's with a very leisurely pace after taking his capital because of course at that point he's crippled and more-or-less reduced to an XP farm for your HAs. It also turns out that with the stone in his capital he builds the mids and the great wall, as well as improving a lot of land for you. I took about 10 of my dozen total workers from him.

 

[Yuri Lilovme]

To 1000 AD :

Spoiler :

Ending a golden age and just beginning to power up some research. I'm up to 23 cities / 21 workers and still have room to expand...
GLH + Colossus funded most research. I've gone heavy on infra and have long been short on workers, trying to multitask correctly the Empire.
I took the Mids + G Wall from Genghis between 1 and 300 AD. I've just begun to invade the Mayans. Pacal has lost 2 cities and the next target is his capital. After that I hope he'll capitulate. Mutal hosts a crazy number of marble wonders.
With all the cities to expand to, the unit count has stayed small and the wars are slow. Some HA from the war against Genghis were upgraded to knights cause I couldn't find the hammers to get an army...

I don't either have an academy in the coastal capital. The first GP was a merchant the GLH city. And it's taken forever to get a second one from a coastal, library city. That one was a scientist but was used for a GA (switch to caste/pac).
The GA will net about 3 scientists. 1 will do an academy in Hastings. 1 will bulb Education. And one spare, I guess.
I've followed the Guilds line and I'm going for Economics next. I'm not decided on the Lib pick, yet.
The first great merchant funded research to Civil Service and then the Machinery->Guilds thing was slower with neighbours "fearing I was too advanced".


1 AD war :

Spoiler :

And 1 AD Empire :

Spoiler :

I've been lucky with the 2 barb cities in the east. Pacal took one down to 1 wounded archer and Genghis captured the other with a wounded archer... Easy picks for 2 chariots.

Finishing Genghis with a lone catapult (will be 2) :

Spoiler :

1000 AD war :

Spoiler :

And Empire :

Spoiler :

I have a knight and a settler on the island, so there will be 4 cities soon

Top5 cities :

Spoiler :

Ours :

Spoiler :

Academy-less capital


Got lucky enough to get the HG in Karakorum. Awaiting an interesting GP from the place


GPF1


GPF2


Courtesy of the GLH