Joining the Immortals

[Syntax Error]

So, I'm pondering moving up to Immortal. I've dabbled with it a bit already (both science wins) and it's actually in this difficulty that I won a sub-300 game. I'm currently doing another go as Babylon on a Fractal map.

We're 3 civs on the same continent, with Hiawatha and Isabella. I was landlocked without a good coastal spot to settle. I'll probably give it another go from turn 0. Gonna take a feel of the difficulty some more. And probably stay land-locked till Artillery and just take and Annex Spain's cap for my 3-city base. This is gonna go and make me better at ignoring GL.

What are the differences I can expect with the jump from Emperor?

 

[ense7en]

Nearly endless waves of enemy units in wars, and endless city spam by Hiawatha if you don't stop him.

Just be prepared for early rushes if you have close neighbors, so have archers ready, and then composite bows to help fend off early rushes if they happen.

I also pretty much exclusively settle on hills in Immortal unless i can defend the city easily via some other terrain arrangement.

 

[akashsara]

Hiawatha? Kill him ASAP!

 

[The Pilgrim]

Quite few things.
First of all, and probably the most important of em all - you start behind tech-wise and it'll take awhile before you can catch up. Until somewhere in the Renaissance give or take, earlier with Babylon though. Don't let it scare you. It's more than normal. After you catch up the game becomes much easier and not so different from emperor.

Second, of course, the wonders. AI hits all techs earlier and thus you have a very little shot at them. Pick those you want to grab, plan ahead and go hard after them. With Babylon I'd definitely give a try at Pisa, however, depends on your opponents, it might go very early, so it's not a done deal. PT is more reliable, but again, you need to beeline it. Hubble is pretty secured if you hit Rocketry in reasonable timeframe and bulb Satellites with Oxford (and have engineer, obviously). Out of early ones I find ToA to be the best for science games. Half of the time AI overlooks it, and you have a decent chance to build it somewhere between 35-38. So with good productive capital, I'd give it a shot too probably. The rest are either not worth the hammers or not obtainable. Forget about GL. Really. Sometimes (like maybe 15% of the time) you can get it on ~40, but why would you want it as Babylon to begin with? The case would be much stronger with Korea, with any other civ just skip it.

Military-wise AI has tons of troops, although pretty crappy ones. It's too eager to spend the cash on purchasing new units, and leaves almost nothing for upgrades. So you'll see some carpeting with junk. Yet the bonuses are overwhelming and you need to be prepared. Personally I have no trouble to defend with archers early on, and usually don't rush CB's, unless I'm planning to go offensive. However, when pikes start appearing, you do need to upgrade. And yes, settle on hills. It's never bad. In the late game AI will have literally dozens of planes. 40-50 for a runaway is not uncommon. So don't neglect AA. And that's another difference. From mid-game on you can see AI with some cash and ability to pay their share of RA's and full price lux deals. Which, I guess, would be nice and refreshing change from your previous experience.

Also don't expect AI to stay small and tall. I've seen AI going OCC more than once on emperor. Not gonna happen on immortal. Expansion is quick and massive. Pay AI to go to war. As often as you can. Wars slow it down, now more than ever. And gun for pre-300 finish. You are not safe after this mark. BTW, both of your neighbors have a tendency to become runaways, so bribe them to DoW each other and join the party yourself. Trimming them down early sounds like a good idea to me.

Good luck!

 

[Syntax Error]

^ With that, I'd probably romance Isabella cuz Hiawatha is gonna be pretty much a bizzatch to kill off, what with the forests acting as roads bit. Then after they go at each other, I'll finish off the stragglers. The terrible thing with this is that I won't have enough trading partners until turn 150+, unless I spawn an Admiral somehow, which would most likely be a waste of the Pisa Great Person...

 

[The Pilgrim]

On continents based maps I 'd seriously consider entering Renaissance through Astronomy and not Acoustics. Also with enough puppets you don't even need trading partners and early RA's are no good anyways.

 

[Anelyn]

Am in a pretty similar spot, but playing celts. Babylon, Spain, Arabia and Hiawatha on same continent. Hiawatha pretty much spammed cities to cut the continent in half, and now is conquering the lower half (am lucky to be in the upper part haha, but no way to expand because he plants city 4 tiles away).

I have no way to make a comeback from this, I just keep playing more turns to see how it turns out, babylon and hiawatha hate eachother and are both in modern era, spain lost it's capital and hates everyone and arabia is at start of industrial with me ^^.

 

[The Pilgrim]

You have to catch up long before AI hits Modern.

 

[Syntax Error]

I'd really consider going to Renaissance through Astronomy, but I have one problem as I stated in the OP: I'm land locked with the only good coast spots taken by both by neighbors. The only good way to get a coastal city is to snipe an enemy capital.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Sniping a capital is never bad. Although exploring with units is still very viable. Granted, fractals can be bizarrely shaped, but it's better give it a try rather than waiting for other civs' caravels to find you.

 

[smallfish]

You have to catch up long before AI hits Modern.

Well, Syntax Error, can you take Athens in this and still get a win entry in HoF?

Please post screenshots, am unable to continue this game indefinitely.

 

[adwcta]

It's not that bad to be a bit behind in tech. The AI's troops don't match their tech, since they keep really large standing armies and aren't too quick to upgrade (even if they're sitting on 10k gold at 1k gpt). So, the teched up units will only come one-two at a time after you're pretty much done wiping their main army, so they make for pretty easy pickings. Also, there's a tech wall of sorts in modern age where the tech evens out (e.g. marines are only situationaly better than infantry) until the information age. Once you hit those techs, you can launch an attack on the runaway. If there's a runaway, everyone probably hates them, so you won't incur bad warmonger penalties for DoW-ing them multiple times. Use it. Launch focused strikes and take out their key resources (like, oil). They have no trading partners, so you can decimate their air/ships by taking away their oil. As soon as the runaway loses a few cities, they'll pay you off to stop the war. Take it, they're the runaway so it'll be a ridiculous amount of gpt. Now, as long as the runaway isn't winning in the next handful of turns, you can launch another war once you bulk up your army/navy with his money.

No need to win by turn 300. No need to be the first one to any age. Just need to make sure the runaway doesn't hit his win condition (usually science; since you can protect your capital for domination, they're too big for culture, and other AIs actually do a decent job of nabbing a few city states and you can take out city states when you war with the runaway, so they can't get a UN victory), and that you're 2nd in line for the science victory or are strong enough to wipe out both the runaway and your other competitors. In combat (with GPs), each of your ships can take 2-3 of his. In land combat, on offense, it's about 1:1.5, on defense it's about 1:3 or 1:4.

 

[Anelyn]

My problem is I play mostly continent maps, and for a very good portion of game I will have no influence / information about the other side of the map

With one runaway you can generally deal with, but when there's 2 or 3 - for me it becomes a problem (especially as they are on different continents which means you need both air and naval supremacy to clear the way for an invasion force to actually pose a threat).

 

[Matthew.]

Pilgram's summary is good. The one thing I really notice between the two difficulties is I can practically ignore an army on Emperor, but not so on Immortal.

 

[Syntax Error]

I've expanded to four cities and risked settling a crap city near the frozen north for a coastal city. I took a modified four-city approach. Instead of building archers, the cities went straight for libs while the capital churned out the units. Went pretty well. Built a lot of bowmen (no melee units at this point) and diffused two defensive wars. Both of which gave me a heckuvalot of cash and happiness.

3 cities settled so far, will settle the fourth after NC. Managed to nab the Pyramids for workers. Got a massive (?) army of 6 or so CB's. I'll keep building and teching up. Currently researching theology while the cap is building Petra. After getting to renaissance, will tech to xbows and just turtle up. Both caps are behind jungles so getting to them will prove difficult. Let's see if I can fit the Great Wall somewhere in there.

 

[ense7en]

Screenshots?

I'm curious how things look.

If you can steal a couple cities, it's well worth crippling your neighbors somewhat, if at all possible, as they will likely only get stronger as time goes on.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I've expanded to four cities and risked settling a crap city near the frozen north for a coastal city. I took a modified four-city approach. Instead of building archers, the cities went straight for libs while the capital churned out the units. Went pretty well. Built a lot of bowmen (no melee units at this point) and diffused two defensive wars. Both of which gave me a heckuvalot of cash and happiness.

3 cities settled so far, will settle the fourth after NC. Managed to nab the Pyramids for workers. Got a massive (?) army of 6 or so CB's. I'll keep building and teching up. Currently researching theology while the cap is building Petra. After getting to renaissance, will tech to xbows and just turtle up. Both caps are behind jungles so getting to them will prove difficult. Let's see if I can fit the Great Wall somewhere in there.

Sounds good. You don't need melee units for defense. A horse to pick off wounded guys can be nice though. But overall 6 CB's are perfect. Why do you want GW, btw?

 

[The Pilgrim]

Well, Syntax Error, can you take Athens in this and still get a win entry in HoF?

Please post screenshots, am unable to continue this game indefinitely.

Well, I'm not Syntax Error, nor have time to play. But knowing you I can't pass this opportunity. For sure we'll find some unorthodox stuff in this save.

 

[Syntax Error]

@Smallfish: try the other guys first It'll be a while before I play again after this one.

@topic:
Sent the ship to explore the stars on turn 270! My fastest ever victory! Would have been earlier had I known how to properly tech up after getting to Satellites.

Settled 5 Academies, 1200 bpt at end game. SP's were: Full Tradition, full Rationalism, Order until the Factory Science.

I made buddies with Hiawatha. He happily adopted my religion and became my best friend throughout the whole game (after one ill-advised war on his part). Eliminated Spain properly when I got to Dynamite. Turns out Hiawatha hated her guts as well, so I had a lot of green diplo modifiers on him.

After that, I turtled to victory. I forgot to use the Oxford to bulb Satellites, so it was used for Mechanized Infantry. I also used up the two free techs from Rationalism finisher on the techs for Stealth Bombers and the one before it. Researched Future Tech four times (one from my last GS, one hard-researched, twice from the final RA).

Having reliable RA Partners helps quite a lot! And so does ignoring the Great Library!

 

[The Pilgrim]

Well, Syntax Error, can you take Athens in this and still get a win entry in HoF?

Please post screenshots, am unable to continue this game indefinitely.

Turn 510... I'm beyond speechless.
Last screenshot before the game crashed on me. Now I have a clue about what happened to your rig.

Spoiler :

Sent the ship to explore the stars on turn 270! My fastest ever victory! Would have been earlier had I known how to properly tech up after getting to Satellites.

Congrats!
The way after Satellites is pretty straightforward. Beeline all techs for parts. Advanced Ballistics first so you can start on building 3 parts simultaneously, then the rest. Try to time Rationalism finisher to get the most expensive techs possible. Ideally you'd bulb/RA everything but Nano and Particle Physics. You don't need either Stealth or Lasers for SV, but you do need Robotics and Nano. So Rationalism finisher could have been used on these two.