Viable dom strat for Immortal?

[Bad_Viceroy]

Hi, any advice gratefully received...

I've been trying to get better at Domination (i.e. actually win doing it and not get bored of the endless war of attrition and quit to cry myself to sleep )

Set-up: Vanilla / Standard / Normal / Prince level

Been winning on Prince (I know, I know, I have a few SVs on Immortal but like I say I'm terrible at DomV).

Civ: Songhai currently.

I basically go for Ironworking (possibly taking Pottery/Calendar first) and if Iron is not reachable then restart.

That said, I go Tradition opener / Lib opener / Lib Free settler then either fill out Tradition or take the Free worker. (I now hard build monuments so delay that Trad point until done). I try to get both Notre Dame and Porcelain Tower, in that order.

Basically, the question is, if I have a four city NC up by about turn 111 AND an army of two to three catapults plus 2 swordsmen (prob. with spearman/archer backup) on the move at that time is this sufficiently fast/strong to take a neighbour on Emperor/Immortal?

 

[Wild_Woojsha]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547630 Follow this, it works.

Catapults are not worth it btw, they are too weak and die too easily. Trebuchets are another story, but even they take a backseat to crossbows or their medieval Unique Equivalents like Keshiks/camel archers/etc. There is no collateral damage like in CIV 4, and cities are powerful enough to shoot right back and destroy your catapults and trebuchets in one turn. Cannons are as low as I would go with Seige units, but artillery is even better because it can fire outside of city defense range.

 

[Browd]

The OP says he is playing vanilla, not BNW, so that guide will be less helpful (e.g., no composite bowmen, different tech tree, different combat systems, significant differences in the policy trees, etc.), although still useful in a directional sense.

 

[Acken]

I can't even remember vanilla :/ Make a ton of mounted units ? It's the wintersale though and you can get all Civ5 dlc for 13$.

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

I picked the whole lot up for £8.50. It was £34 the other day. Now I just to learn about religion, tourism and whatever.. thanks to all who commented.

 

[Wild_Woojsha]

No problem, keep coming back and posting, if you read all of the best of the best threads on this forum you'll be kicking this game's butt in no time flat. Play the GOTM's and eventually the Immortal and Deity Challenges (And their offshoots) also so you can see the way everyone else plays this game stupendously without devoting hours to watching LP's. I've found it to be the best learning method, and has improved my ability to play this game from barely winning prince to decimating the AI on emperor and below regardless of settings. Still working on improving Deity and immortal, I win sometimes on those settings but its never a "Matter of time" like it is on Emperor and below. Eventually it will be...

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

Well, I have been getting to grips with BNW and I must say it's considerably more complex, in a good way. Also where's my frackin gold?

Been fiddling around at various difficulty levels and with various new civs. Just started and won my first ever Deity game in Civ! Played as Korea, large map, standard speed and got an SV at turn 332.

It was a damn close run thing though. Felt like I was carrying a lit match through a howling gale the entire time. I definitely made a bunch of mistakes. I wonder if some of the veterans here could help with a question or two:

I went Tradition / Rationalism / Freedom. Long and short of it was this:
(I had coast on three sides but one city without a lux)
Three City NC at turn 90 (had max of four cities throughout, cleared a total of one barb camp and stole precisely one worker, then pretended I wasn't there for four thousand years).
Education by turn 118 (via Engineering for the ducts)
Plastics by 228

I panicked and bulbed my five GSs too early in order to get Hubble, which I felt I would certainly lose without. I did before having labs up everywhere (including my cap). I had delayed RL in my cap to get Neufstein, which I knew was a mistake at the time. I guess I made it harder for myself right there. In the event I managed to buy tons of alum but the free spaceship factory did probably save my ass. (I had no oil or alum). Murica and India were both one part away when I launched.

A few main questions:
1. Is it ever feasible to get to Scientific Method without taking that extended brown-trousered detour/upgrade frenzy through the bottom of the tree? Or having started do you need to take Fertilizer anyway so may as well get Dynamite?

2. Also, one particular moment of fear/joy. Poland had a colossal civ and had killed my nearest neighbour Pacal. I had the normal intrigue warnings about Casimir and he suddenly went Hostile (different Ideology - Autocracy).

Then Gandhi popped up to tell me Poland was marching on my second city, which I could actually see him doing. Then just as his army was about to reach my territory, some bright spark made the World Ideology Freedom (which I had) and not only did Casimir stop marching but he instantly became Friendly (though he still showed the red modifier for different Ideology). A few turns later I had him trading nukes with Washington who was two parts away from finishing the rocket (I had not completed any at this point). WTF?

3. My Special Agent was killed on his fifth or so steal, bad luck? Do you just keep stealing until you've promised everyone you'll stop or do you bring him back and try get a CS allied?

Apologies for the rambling post...

 

[Browd]

Lots to react to, but others can weigh in. I just want to comment on one item -- "via Engineering for the ducts". You should note that the Tradition finisher gives you free aqueducts in your first 4 cities, even if you haven't researched Engineering (heck, even if you never research Engineering). So there's no need to detour to grab Engineering in a 4-city Tradition game.

 

[Bad_Viceroy]

Ach! I thought they only popped if you had the tech... thank you, that will speed Edu up!

 

[claudiupb]

I'm not really a good deity player but here is my opinion:

1) ST can be easily beelineed. Chemistry is important because you want the production (at about that time your build queue starts to pile up), but Fertilizer can wait a little. It's all about timing, if you feel that growth is going to decelerate get Fertilizer.
2) From what I remember the AI has a grand strategy that it reevaluates at certain times, sometimes it will choose an entirely different path and it may or may not be obvious for you. I don't really know much about this maybe someone that has looked into the code can say more, but this sort of situation has happened to me also: I see a carpet marching towards me, and I am unable to bribe civs into starting a war that would spear me the trouble, so in the 1-2 turn window I have, I rush some units in preparation, but the war never happens.

3) It's not really bad luck, if your spy is detected, probably the AI will post a spy in that city, and then there is a chance of getting caught. After a while it's not worth stealing (unless you get autocracy with the double steal rate so you can realistically steal from expos) so it's best you put the level 3 spies to CS duty.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

Congrats on your Deity win! There are so many good resources on the forum - when I first started to play Deity I followed Tich's Shoshone Guide for SV. You have to hump around a bit at times on the page as you go, but it really clarified so many base ideas for me, most of which I still follow.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=506043

 

[ShakaKhan]

1. Is it ever feasible to get to Scientific Method without taking that extended brown-trousered detour/upgrade frenzy through the bottom of the tree? Or having started do you need to take Fertilizer anyway so may as well get Dynamite?

Yes, yes it is. The gamble we frequently take is to get Sci Theory, then Electricity, then Oxford-Sling radio (which only has Electricity as a prerequisite) to get modern age, an ideology and two free tenets, all before researching steel. Big gamble since I'm laughably outclassed by Deity AI's military, but between war-bribing neighbors to keep them busy and having pikes near borders in rough terrain with Xbows on hills behind them just in case, they'll usually hold the line long enough to redirect to rifling if I need to.

2. Also, one particular moment of fear/joy. Poland had a colossal civ and had killed my nearest neighbour Pacal. I had the normal intrigue warnings about Casimir and he suddenly went Hostile (different Ideology - Autocracy).

Then Gandhi popped up to tell me Poland was marching on my second city, which I could actually see him doing. Then just as his army was about to reach my territory, some bright spark made the World Ideology Freedom (which I had) and not only did Casimir stop marching but he instantly became Friendly (though he still showed the red modifier for different Ideology). A few turns later I had him trading nukes with Washington who was two parts away from finishing the rocket (I had not completed any at this point). WTF?

Sound like Poland considered America a bigger threat to beating them in the game than you were, and if he was only two SS parts away, seems he was right. I've had some close games at Deity, but never had an AI get 4 SS parts. Maybe you should have made some bigger moves earlier, but maybe it was just one of those games where you weren't going to win - that happens from time to time on Deity.

Also note that the quick change from "hostile" to "friendly" is often an (ineffective) deity AI trick to try to lull you into a false sense of security so you'll move your military somewhere else. If someone goes "friendly" with you and it doesn't seem to make sense, see how much he'll pay for one of your luxuries - if he'll pay full price then he's changed his mind and legitimately sees you as a friend. If he claims friendship status but will only pay 5 or 6 GPT for a luxury, he's plotting against you.

3. My Special Agent was killed on his fifth or so steal, bad luck? Do you just keep stealing until you've promised everyone you'll stop or do you bring him back and try get a CS allied?

Apologies for the rambling post...

Yeah, it stinks losing a level 3 spy, but I find that they die about 1 in 5 times, pretty much regardless of their level. My rule of thumb is that if it's going to take my spy 5X as long to steal a tech as it would to research it myself, that's when I'll move him from tech stealing to CS rigging.