@elitetroops thanks! Tried to make good use of the playground you provided
Spoiler:
Wow, 1900!? Yes, ToA was in Mecca. Here's a load of probably-mostly-irrelevant data about the TM values in my game:
---------------
860AD 1300
Mecca pop 14, Ulundi pop 11
value: Not sure how to read this. Ulundi has with Carthage and Cherokee (Hannibal), both at 4.48 . Those cities are both pop 16. Pasargarde has with Mecca @ 3.85 . Pop 6.
Diplo with Saladin +4:
+1 years of peace
+2 OB
+1 fav civic
+4 fair trade
+1 you gave us help
-3 heathen
-1 first impression
-1 DoWed our friend
1140AD, the turn I noticed the reduced value - 900 . He is my vassal at this point.
Mecca pop 16, Ulundi pop 11
in Ulundi: Cherokee 5.4 , Utica 4.48 , Carthage 4.20 . Pop 18, 16, 15 respectively.
kwaDukuza has with Mecca @ 2.09 . City is 9 pop.
Diplo with Saladin +10:
+2 defensive pact
+1 mutual military
+2 civics
+4 fair trade
+1 gave us help
+6 liberated cities
-1 traded with worst enemies
-1 first impression
-3 DoWed us
-1 DoWed our friend
Don't have a save for 1190AD, the turn I did the TM for 1100 . But the following turn:
Mecca pop 16, Ulundi pop 12.
Ulundi to same cities, values 5.13, 4.56, 4.56 listed in same order as before. Carthage grown to 16, other pops the same.
KwaDukuza-Mecca 2.38 . Pop 10.
Diplo with Saladin +11:
+1 religion
+2 defensive pact
+1 mutual military
+2 civics
+4 fair trade
+1 gave us help
+6 liberated cities
-1 traded with worst enemies
-1 first impression
-3 DoWed us
-1 DoWed our friend
----------------------------------
So the lack of "years of peace" diplo bonus definitely seems to be a significant factor. with Mecca itself significantly lower after the war, despite being in a city with 50% more pop. Suggests that ToA is not always the deciding factor in most profitable TMs. Probably would have got more from Cherokee. Didn't know that!
Also interesting to see in black and white how much smaller my cities are than the AI's. Shows the power of I guess.
@BornInCantaloup
Spoiler:
Thanks for the detailed explanation! Yes, all makes sense now. So the left column would have been empty (except CS) before that round of trading? Must have been a pleasure to see that screen . I realise now that it would have been possible to figure that out by reverse-engineering your description from the screenie. Interesting to see how much further the Deity AI have settled by that point too.
Since it's determined by the value of the trade route the target city would get with your capital, I think size of your own capital matters even more than size of target city. My capital was probably close to pop 20 when I did that trade mission for 1900.
If you play with BUFFY you can see all the modifiers involved by hovering over the trade routes. Late in the game there is a ton of them, which reduces the relative value of ToA.
My game to 1500AD:
Spoiler:
Last update was 1110AD right after I libbed communism. After this I went State Property and teched to Rifling. When I reached Rifling, I had 6 turns left of the golden age and revolted to Police State, Nationhood, Slavery and Theocracy for a 5 turn war buildup. Right at this time Saladin was kind enough to tech MT, which he immediately traded to me at friendly, and didn't get much use of himself as he didn't have Gunpowder. I went on to tech Steel myself to upgrade my old cats and trebs.
When the 5 turn war buildup was over I had 30 rifles, 20 cavalry and 15 cannons, plus my old stack of CR maces. I switched back to Rep, Bureau, Caste and Paci and attacked Sal. The war was a massacre. His medieval units didn't stand a chance and he was dead in 7 turns. My army was very much overkill, but I didn't feel like playing another tight micro war where I have to carefully consider every move. Just move in with force and run over him. The army was enough for all the wars that remained in the game, didn't build any more units after this.
Mecca was a nice catch:
Spoiler:
48 gpt shrine with grocer and bank already built. I went on to build Wall Street there, not sure if it was worth the investment. Had one bank already in the other shrined holy city, but building all those other banks just for Wall Street...
While this was going on, I had been directing Sury's research by gifting him what he was teching, if it was something I already had. This way I managed to get him to tech Constitution, Corporation and Astronomy to trade to me. After Astro it was apparent that he wouldn't be of any use anymore, so my army went to work. Once again it was a massacre. Cavs, rifles and cannons vs medieval units is so much fun. He was dead a few turns later. Razed 4 cities to stay safe from the domination limit, kept the rest.
Ramesses was Sury's vassal so this meant war against him as well. Took one city he had built north of the large lake and another he had built on the pig/fish peninsula, which was stealing too many tiles from me, then took peace.
1500AD I'm 2 turns from completing Apollo Program and doing slightly over 5000/turn. This will go up as more cities become fully operational, some are still getting up factories and power plants. Most of Sury's cities are online, only capital still in revolt. I have enough workers in place to convert every single tile into whatever I want on the turn the tiles get workable, so they should be up and running very quickly. 47 cities, currently 55% of the land owned, should go up to about 60% with the last cities coming out of revolt and some border pops that will happen before the end of the game. Domination limit is 62%.
@BiC: Thanks! It was fun, I think I'll keep doing it.
So, I finally won the game, it took me all the way to 1850 AD, because I made several mistakes: putting the NE in the wrong city, losing the Taj... I even lost my capital during 1 turn because there was 1 Mongol unit I didn't see and it was defended by 1 warrior only (this meant losing Oxford). Still, it's only my 3rd victory on Immortal, and I had never played Shaka before, so I'm happy with the result.
I got a diplomatic victory when I was just about 2 turns away from a domination victory. As it always happens, Hannibal was the strongest rival (the AI seems particularly good at playing him IMO). If you want to see the state of the world when I won the game, the final video is here:
Teching from last 1500AD update until I had all space techs:
This was a lot faster than I had expected. Gotta love 1 turn Fusion!
I have no idea if this order was optimal or not, didn't look up any guide, figured I'd learn from my mistakes instead. Composites was late, but I had a plan for that. Unfortunately I messed that plan up, forgot about one part and messed up another, so it took me another 4 turns after Genetics to finish all space parts. Without those mistakes, I could have 2 turned all Casings and 1 turned Life Support to launch 3 turns earlier.
For the casings I set up overflow chains by part building several builds to a couple of hammers from completion, then completing them from smaller builds to larger, with a Thruster being the largest. This gave me a ton of overflow into the Casings to finish them in two turns. Didn't do any exact calculations and even overdid it in Mecca to almost 1 turn the casing:
Spoiler:
First time I ever workshopped corn and pig.
Mainly I wanted to try if this was doable, and as it turns out, it is. Just have to calculate better next time and remember that I also need to build a Docking Bay somewhere, then this tech order should work pretty well.
Some screenshots from after the launch. Empire NE, my own core cities:
Spoiler:
NW, former Persia and Byzantium:
Spoiler:
SW, former Arabia and Suryland:
Spoiler:
In the end I was at 58.7% land, domination limit was 62%. Could have kept one or two more cities, but I didn't bother counting tiles and wanted to keep it safe.
Capital:
Spoiler:
Ironworks city:
Spoiler:
Moai:
Spoiler:
Tech situation on the turn I won:
Spoiler:
(Did I tell you already they were all quite backwards... )
Score graph:
Spoiler:
Hammer graph:
Spoiler:
Last graph shows the power of State Property and workshops. The first drop around 1200AD was when the first 2 golden ages ended, the drop in the end is when the final chain of three more golden ages ended. That was 7 turns after launch, should have started the final golden ages earlier. But as said, I was really surprised by how fast the endgame went.
Researched maxed at about 7000/turn when I teched Fusion, then dropped a bit as my most hammer heavy cities started building space parts.
All in all I'm very happy with the result. Haven't played space in years, so I didn't really know what to expect. I have been reading about lots of space games in the HoF and GoTM forums, and following threads like the legendary G-Maj 137, to pick up lots of info from there. This was the first time I tried to put that knowledge into use. Needless to say this was by far my best space game ever, was a CivFanatics noob last time I played for space.
Oh, also probably first time I played Shaka. Absolutely love this guy, awesome leader to play!
@DrCron: Well done on the victory! Winning a big map like this when you are still relatively new to immortal difficulty is a great achievement!
Watched the last video and a bit of the first.
Spoiler:
Getting the first settler out fast is good, but then you should make sure the city gets immediately productive. Because you built the road first, you didn't start improving the wheat until 7 turns after the city was settled. Getting a trade connection is good, but you have to weigh the benefits. My rough guideline is 1 = 2 = 2 (actual values are more situational, but it's a rough guideline when choosing what to improve and work). By building the road you earn 2/turn once it is completed. But every turn you spend building the road you delay wheat and lose 3/turn, which according to the rough guideline is worth 3 times as much as the commerce you get from the traderoutes. You also delay improving and working the gold tile, which costs you way more than what you earn from having the trade routes earlier. Most of the time the correct decision is to improve food and other strong resources first, then build the road. The exception could be for example some case where you need to build only one road and the extra commerce from that helps you get some key tech earlier.
You fortify the first warriors you build in your cities saying barbs can attack at any time. They won't attack before the average amount of cities/civ > 3. On immortal this gives you time to send the first few warriors outside your borders to spawnbust. In general, you should never aim to fight barbs inside your borders, especially not to defend against them by having units fortified in your cities. Fight them outside your borders and don't let them in to pillage your improvements.
Unlucky miscalculation with the copper... I didn't watch the first video any further from that point, but apparently you did still survive the incoming barb onslaught somehow.
In the last video, it's hard to tell exactly what is going on and how you got there without seeing what happened in between, but the general impression I get is that your empire is lacking a clear plan for the industrial era. Your cities are quite small for the time, I guess this is because you've been at war very long and have kept whipping them. In the industrial era and beyond, you get much stronger tile improvements with biology farms and boosted windmills, watermills and workshops, so it often makes sense to grow your cities big and put down the whip. In a conquest/domination game, State Property+Caste with workshops and watermills is almost always the best, unless you have extremely favorable circumstances for corps, which is unlikely on a lakes map. SP also greatly helps you with city maintenance cost by removing distance maintenance.
I would also recommend that you'd pillage more. Sal has a ton of towns and you have lot of cavalry that often don't do anything or use only one movement point. Pillage all the towns/villages and you can earn hundreds of gold/turn. At this stage of the game it was apparent that victory was close and you would not tech any further after industrialism, so it wouldn't have mattered if you have those towns in your captured cities or not. But getting Industrialism a few turns earlier thanks to gold from pillaging could have made a difference.
Anyway, great job on doing the video with commentary and all!
DrCron great with videos! I have uploaded some myself.. diety/immortal games.
I find watching civ 4, is great substitute from playing civ 4!
BTW! Absolutezero (chri34252 something), uploaded a video of this game, with a Diety attempt! Its actually that game that inspired me to try this game again.
The Game:
The map size is a little to big for what my civ 4 skills could handle at Diety. So I went With a Immortal attempt! I wanted to do some early elephant/medieval warfare With Shaka. Looked like a perfect map for it!
After some planning and calculations, I made a game plan:
1. Stifle the Ai's as much as possible.
2. Making a good production base, of 4-5 cities
3. Get a good snowball running, and enslave the world
My attempt:
Spoiler:
Teched for a fast alpha, and after some nifty trades, I was Tech leader by a good margin. Managed to drib Ramses in on Hannibal @525 BC. @ 500 BC sury joined aswell Eventually kubla got tangled up as well, at 560 AD.
It was a good spread of Ai's in different religions, and everyone just kind of did their own thing, so the Tech game was really slow. So I dident push for more warfare with Justin or Saladin.
I was building up an army.. of elephants and catas/HA and super Axmen/Impis (actually start to like the agg. trait).
I was wondering if I should backstab sury/hannibal.. or where I was going with the game. When Cyrus @200 BC built the MoM. He already had the GW, Mids. The route of war was a no brainer.
I attacked him at 100 BC.. and then started to roll over everyone.
Cyrys (cap 350 AD) -> sury (cap 800 AD) -> Kubla (cap 1070 AD) -> Hannibal (cap 1160 AD) -> Ramsess (1200 AD)
So I got a 8 City Justin and a 9 city Saladin left.
I have lib loaded up.. and I can pick MS and curissuar rush the last two guys. but wondering if I should go for rifling in stead..?
I think this is one of the better Immortal games I have played And I'm looking forward to finishing it
Let me know if anyone have some tips, on how I could get some nice/amazing finishes
@elite: thanks for the comments, that's helpful! A few answers:
Spoiler:
Didn't think about how the road delayed me getting the food! Thanks for the tip. Also I didn't know that barbs would take until average pop 3, I will keep it in mind.
Re:copper. Yes, I mentioned that later in the video, because I took too long to get it I had to build many warriors, big mistake with that city placement. It was the 1st of the mistakes I detected in this game.
Re: small cities. Yes, I kept slavery until the end of the game, lots of whipping. Communism came rather late, so at that point revolutions were expensive in turns, and I only used 2 turns to turn to police state and nationhood (same turn I got assembly line, I drafted many infantry units, my GT city drafted 1 upt almost until the end of the game). Tech was a bit slow this game, in general, but after this game I realize slavery until the end isn't so good as it sounds, I'll keep the CS+SP idea in my mind for future warmonger games.
Thanks for the tip on pillaging, I hadn't thought about that either!
@imploding: cool, feel free to share a link to your channel, I'd like to see more immortal/deity players out there (especially if you have some peaceful victories, which Absolute Zero never does).
Re: your game...
Spoiler:
Wow, that sounds like a very fast warmongering game, only 2 rivals left by 1200 AD? Amazing. Why don't you start with Cuirs and then tech to rifling? That's what I usually do, to get the 1st enemy with cuirs and the 2nd one with cavalry. It doesn't need to be one way or the other. They should both be far from rifling yet, so it looks like you are in for an easy victory at this point.
Yeah.. after some consideration I agree! I can get a new snowball, or avalanche lol going to the western part of the world
My calculations are, 3250 beakers for MT and rifle is approx 3500 (?). Not a big enough difference to wait 6 + turns to lib it. And I already have a lot of good production cities that waits for something to do
Did the currisair to cavalry thing. Thanks to the amazing production capabilities in my empire :love, I rolled over Justin easy in a couple of turns. He folded after me taking a city every second turn. Then went directly to Saladin which did the same.
The first cavalry unit managed to se enemy terretory when Saladin capilutated 1320 AD. So the tip was well wort it.. and shaved off at least 6-7 turns
Ended up with a Conquest victory @ 1320 AD, 301313 score, NHNE.
Great Game! I Doing NC CLXXV - Bismarck of Germany next
ps. I liked your videos DrCron I also subbed to your channel
Let's say they all have a special relation to your civ... Or maybe 'relation' is the wrong word, since I'm not talking about relation as in diplomatic relations. But the connection is there.
And congrats on a very nice conquest game Imploding!
Let's say they all have a special relation to your civ... Or maybe 'relation' is the wrong word, since I'm not talking about relation as in diplomatic relations. But the connection is there.
And congrats on a very nice conquest game Imploding!
Yup, put our Impis up against all the civs that have pre-gunpowder mountes UUs. Not that it will have any great effect on the game except against maybe the first AI you attack, your not gonna fight Cataphracts with Impis. But I noticed this made a nice varied bunch of AI.
At first I was thinking Darius instead of Cyrus, but then I felt he would be too much of a wimp. As it turned out, Cyrus also was a complete wimp in this game. Him having both marble and stone, and having lots of room to expand, made him only build settlers and wonders. I was hoping for him to be more of a unit spammer.
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!? Yes, ToA was in Mecca. Here's a load of probably-mostly-irrelevant data about the TM values in my game:
value: Not sure how to read this. Ulundi has 
. Those cities are both pop 16. Pasargarde has 
I guess. 
He was dead a few turns later. Razed 4 cities to stay safe from the domination limit, kept the rest. 
/turn. This will go up as more cities become fully operational, some are still getting up factories and power plants. Most of Sury's cities are online, only capital still in revolt. I have enough workers in place to convert every single tile into whatever I want on the turn the tiles get workable, so they should be up and running very quickly. 47 cities, currently 55% of the land owned, should go up to about 60% with the last cities coming out of revolt and some border pops that will happen before the end of the game. Domination limit is 62%.
= 2
= 2
the western part of the world
