2. open game:easy immortal space-race (easy = great starting position)

[druidravi]

The three baba cities/
Culture Bomb/
Gp factory capital/

Current position/
Heroic epic city

 

[lilnev]

Spoiler :

Settle in place. First hut popped the Wheel. Wow, no kidding this is a nice map. Food, Gold, more food, more Gold, flood plains, more Gold....

Seafood starts without Fishing are always tricky, and I never know if I'm doing them right. Worker-warrior-settler is so often so good, but here we don't have the worker techs for our best tiles. The Fish is actually the best tile, followed by Sheep, then Crabs and Clams, then mined hills. But AH is too far. So: research Fishing-(popped the Wheel)-BW-Masonry-Ag-AH. Build warrior-workboat-worker-workboat-Great Wall-settler.

Yes, you read that right, a Wonder before the first settler. Why? I didn't feel any pressure to get my second and third cities founded in a particular hurry -- Peter wandered up from the south, but he's not close, and there's no shortage of good spots -- so I built vertically on to good tiles. The GW will let me build in peace, including postponing the Copper city. It's cheap with Stone, fast workers are efficient choppers (3 forests spent, still plently for the GL), and I could funnel some whip-overflow into it. And most importantly, I want to try the GW-GE-Pyramids gambit. Here's my capital at its completion:

Settled Bombay 3E of Horses. Not sure this is correct (2E maybe? That has a lot of overlap with the planned Clam-Wheat and Cow-Gold cities. Here, I'm afraid I'll lose a flood plain, but I gain a hill). But it's reasonable, and I was being harassed by a barb archer, so I did it. Research Writing, build a library in Delhi. Part of the GW gambit is running scientists for a few turns for the gpps. Yes, it's a risk that you get a GS instead of a GE. That's why they call it a gambit.

1680 BC, Ghengis declares on Peter. Fine by me, have at it. Third city founded to wall off the south:

The barbs have built a city of their own that occludes my natural spot (Cows + double Gold), but it's fine for now as a blocking city.

The key to this gambit, at least the way I do it, is to use a few turns of scientists to push your gpp total. 29 turns of GW + 7 turns of a scientist = 100 gpp, but >80% chance of a GE....

... and it worked. Pyramids in Delhi in 1080 BC. Switch to Representation.

The barbs have built another city, claiming the Copper. Guess I should have posted a fogbuster, eh? Industrious buggers. I settle the Clam-Wheat site I've reserved. Tech to Alphabet in 800 BC, trade for IW and Math. Nope, the only Iron is just inside Monty's borders. Literature, and hope.

Monty declares on me in 600 BC. So much for hope. I (mis)play a couple of turns, hoping to fight him off proactively, and the Horse city falls. I write a despondant post conceding defeat.

...

Thinking about it over the course of the day, I think I misplayed the defense. Trying to whip up a barracks first instead of maximum units, fighting in the field instead of giving him the opportunity to waste turns pillaging.... I go back to the autosave when he DoWs me, and replay from there. Yes, this game will go down in the annals of civ with an asterisk next to it. I'm not setting any records anyway, and I want to see if I could have fought him off, and stayed competetive.

Pick up Hunting and Archery, whip like a fiend. With just a few more defenders, my cities hold. He pillages me savagely, however, almost to the gates of Delhi. Peter has spare Iron, but won't trade it to me even for Stone + 3 health resources. Bastard. No one will join the war on my side, either. My workers retreat from the front and chop out the Great Library in Delhi (I spawned a 33% GS, which became an Academy). Maybe I should have chopped out a whole bunch of archers and tried to fight with them, but.... no. Archers vs jaguars on open ground is not a good idea. Another GS is settled, as Philo is still a long ways off.

Construction finally comes in, and I whip out a couple of catapults. Also, Construction allows me to bribe Peter into the war. Finally, in 1 AD, Monty is willing to talk to me, and I give him Alphabet for peace. My tiles are wrecked, and I'm down to 2 workers (sacced one tactically, to divert a dangerous unit). But I didn't lose any cities, and I've got the Pyramids and the GL to claw my way back, plus Catapults for revenge.

The barbs are really something on Immortal, eh? Looks like I need more catapults. 10 turns to Civil Service.

I pick up Monarchy, Calendar, and Currency in trade for CoL, Construction, Lit, and Drama. I put a GE to sleep (hoping for a GS now for Philo. Peter beats me to Taoism).

600 AD. I get the GS for Philo, and I've got a monopoly on CS. Monty declares on me again, so I trade CS + Philo to Ghenghis for Feudalism + war on my side. I trade Horse+Stone+Fur+Crab to Peter for Iron. Hurray, metal! Build spearmen. Monty seems to have a horse fetish.

He pillages, I kill his guys. He has a lot more guys, of course. But a few turns later I bribe Peter into the war, too. That should start to hurt. Trade with Peter is cut off, so it's back to longbows and catapults.

1000 AD. The tide is slowly starting to turn. I've razed one city and am about to capture one. Liberalism is still 5 turns out. I have no idea how advanced the other continent is, but this one is very backwards -- I still have a monopoly on Paper, and I've just started to see Pikes. Monty is still the most powerful, but with a three front war. If I win Liberalism, I'll take Nationalism and head for cavalry.

With no metal and two defensive wars, it's been tough, and I'm sure my position is far behind where others will be. But Monty is slowly yielding, and everyone here is so backwards that cavalry should clean up the place. I think a space win (well, one reload) is still in order.

peace,
lilnev

 

[shyuhe]

Spoiler :

I died from an early Monty attack the first time around (more or less the same as lilnev's situation - DOW around 1000BC or so and I didn't have metal). I restarted and played some gambits. Buddhism first, then fishing-masonry-bronzeworking. I basically alternate between boats/GW and worker whips at size 4 (plus a settler thrown in there). I get the GW, then head for writing. I chop out the oracle in my second city for COL. I pop a GE from the GW+library combo and rush the pyramids. I continue to settle a few more cities but Peter and Monty are close to my borders. I rush some settlers to block them from going north but MOnty eventually grabs a barb city on the east coast.

Some wars start to brew as Monty attacks Peter (Peter got one of my bad religions and Monty doesn't like heathens ). Genghis joins in the fun ~10 turns later but Peter manages to hold them off. After the dust clears, I have engineering and construction (I should have gone straight for liberalism in hindsight but I wanted to attack Monty with a dogpile to grab some more cities - he's growing too strong and he's too unpredictable). I declare on Monty earning a -1 from both Khan and Peter (who is still pleased after being attacked!) but I bribe the other two into a dogpile. I've taken two of Monty's cities, but I need a lot more troops to take any more cities. I've been running caste system/representation ever since I've gotten the pyramids so my production is very slow. But my research is pretty good. Delhi (original spot) is running almost 200 beakers.

Unfortunately, I ended up with a lot of GE points in Delhi until the scientists got running so I got two more GE's (slowed down liberalism a lot - couldn't even bulb education!). I rushed GL and University of Sankore (ya I know. No state religion adopted... I need to convert Peter before I can adopt a state religion).

LIberalism is a few turns out but Hatty has shown up at my shores with education but no philosophy. Liberalism is in 3 for me though so I should be safe. I will probably trade around to get optics so that I can take astronomy and setup oversea trades.

 

[Snaaty]

@ All:

So I close the first round now.

...

You can submit now saves up to 1700 AD (next check point). Please dont forget to add another save around 1500 AD.

I will do the writeups of this round ASAP (but I have to do it in a more general way compared to first game, because we have so much saves in)

...

Next round will close on Monday

 

[Snaaty]

Well, we have saves in from:

Giaur
shyuhe
Dirk
Galileo
druidravi
Mutineer
lilnev
mrchadt
Winston Hughes
jamuraa
ungy
Snaaty (me)

Thanks for participating everybody

...

The start in this game proved to be extremely good. Not only did we have stones and fur, we also had lots of gold and floodplains inland.

There was also quite a lot of space to expand, so some players have managed to build up to 8 cities for themselves.

Concerning the starting place, there had been two preferences:
Settling in place (or one tile north/est/south/west) or moving inland for about 4 turns. Both starting moves had their goodies, because settling in place almost garantied to get the pyramids and/or the GW. Moving inland was great for the early research, because it revealed some gold.

The best way to tech up extremely fast (think it was Giaur who had lib the earliest, around 400 AD) was to build only about 4 cities and to concentrate on generating GS.

Another interesting move was, to build the GW and to use some GE to build the Pyramids, GL and some more wonders (I found this move extremely good, bad luck I haven´t concidered this myself)

Some players started o beat upon Monty quite early, to be rid of a possible threat. Some even had bad luck and were attacked.

...

Some tips from my side for playing agressive AI´s:

When starting near an AI like Monty, your first moves are essential. When you get alpha around 1000 BC, gift him a tech ASAP. Don´t accept any religion other then Monty´s. In fact, Monty isn´t a bad neighbour when doing so (like most other agressive AI´s), because they are extremely preditable:
When the are pleased or friendly with you and have another civ they hate, they will go for 99% for the other civ. You can even take advantage out of this, like I did in my game:
I never built any units, I used Monty to clear my whole continent (he vassalized all others) and I helped him with tech and resource-gifts.
Next step is to sent him over to bring war to the other conti, and to cruise to a save and sound space-race victory without building any units and doing a single war...

...

Some general tips:

Always try to get 6 cities before Lib. You can do so via building them or via war, but getting 6 cities is crucial, because on higher levels, you need to build the Globe to draft units to produce your army fast enough.

Use diplo... ...use it alot. Only when you are in control of the actual diplo situation, you are in control of the game (=you should decide from 1000 AD on, who attacks whom at what time). Like that you stand a chance in most higher level games. Therefore it´s very good to have some agressive AI´s arround, because they are influcenced the easiest (like Monty at friendly: Monty, would you do me a favor and attack all civs on the other conti?... ...Yes, of course, but I insist of you giving me Drama for it...)

Very important is to use the special traits of your civ. In our case, this is generating a ton of GP´s and to switch civics very often

...

I will try to max out this diplo thing in my try, by winning without building any troops and doing no war all the game (except of "fake" wars). For slowing others down and doing some wars I will rely on Monty completely (I think this will work out fine, because I already played up to 1800something AD with my actual session. I will post the 1500 and 1700 AD saves soon)

 

[Giaur]

Snaaty: I never thought of such ingenious use of Globe ... drafting. I built globe, gotta test it.

Snaaty: The problem with being peacful the entire game is the fact, that one day there is no building to build and you have to build troops.

I played till 1700AD in several short sessions.

 

[ungy]

Well unfortunately I lose.

Spoiler :

I had taken about half of Monte inc capital and took a break to build infra and my plan was to get to rifles and draft an army to finish him off.

He DOW'd me 15 turns after peace and had just upgraded to knights--I'm probably toast as he has around 20 attacking units which seemed high for so quick after the last war. Turn 2 of the war Genghis who was pleased DOW's me with his vassal Peter and I concede.

It wasn't a very well played game but I thought I had a good chance to bring it home until the final war.

I really enjoyed this and I hope this is not the last of these.

As usual I think I learned a lot from my mistakes and from other peoples' strategies.

 

[Snaaty]

@ Giaur:

When running out of buildings, you can always buid science or commerce. btw, when exactly was/is your birhtday?

concerning globe:
I was hinting for those, who didn´t get 6 cities (or more) out before lib

 

[Giaur]

7 March ...

 

[Dirk1302]

I agree with you Snaaty about getting Lib 400 AD with 3 cities. You're in no position whatsoever in this case to use it to your advantage and if you haven't room to expand at this moment you'll basically have to watch the AI's catch up.

Important thing of lib is to get it first but it doesn't have to be 800 years before Ai's. At least 6 good cities seems like a good guideline, it's minimum i think and you have to be ready to be expand shortly.

 

[Snaaty]

My game up to 1700 AD:

Spoiler :

Well, not much has happened in my small peace of the world. But the rest of the world has changed quite a lot during the years:

Monty grew into the superpower on my conti and vassalized all others (except of me) and has a score of almost 5000 points (I had to bribe Monty to war against the Mongols twice, because the Mongols fought longer and better then I had expected and managed to get a peace deal before loosing to much gound. But it was very important for me, to have only one warmonger left on my conti, so I simply waited until the 10turns peace period was over and unleashed Monty again).

Brennus is the superpower on the other conti, and like Monty, he has vassalized the other nations there (Korea and Egypt). He has a score of almost 4500 points (I bribed Monty and Brennus to war fist against Egypt and then against Korea... ...well, so I´m more or less guilty of this development. Again I thought it better to have only one power left there, so I could keep Monty and Brennus fightig without having to worry of some smaller nation running of in tech/score).

…

In general, there is a big world war going on no:. Monty against Brennus (I inflicted this war of...). The fronts are more or less stagnated, but I think that Monty will prevail in the end (thanks to my technological aid).

…

I’m not very high in score, I rank only about 2500 points (only a little higher then the vassals of Monty and Brennus), but I’m right on track to a space-race victory. I’m more or less equal in tech to the techleader (Monty) and I’m keeping up in research also small in size. Only major setback is that I’m lacking coal and therefore cannot build railroads…

…

So far, I still have my 8 cities from the beginning and not a single new unit built (my army consists only of some city defenders: 4 warriors, 3 archers, and 4 axes)

pic removed

I have played in one go from 1350 AD up to 18something AD and think that I can bring this game home without too much trouble

 

[druidravi]

I know about those 6cities. I had 5 cities till the 1000ad save. I wanted to built globe theatre 6 theatres required. Ok i will build oxford , 6 universities .

 

[Giaur]

Spoiler :

I wanted the entire continent for myself, but I am not feeling very well. I'd rather leave G.Khan. It's 1720AD. Just vassalized Peter. His favourite civic is beaurocracy. I will adopt it too, just to exchange some tech for Flight and end this game as fast as possible. Or maybe I will find strength to finish Khan.

 

[Dirk1302]

Spoiler :

Things continued to go well, I took out 3 russian cities myself while Ghenghis and Monty fought for the other russian cities which they razed. I was ready for this with settlers immediately founding cities where the former russian cities were. Monty took Moscow and kept this so i let a GA do a culture bomb in Lahore and Moscow was soon revolting. In the meantime i had bribed Monty to war with Ghenghis who took Moscow next. 5 turns later it revolted again and joined my empire soon after.In this way i doubled my empire size without breathing hard. Letting nearby civs fight each other is always a good trick to get large portions of extra land, i generally save GA's to take advantage of this sort of situation. It turns out we don't have coal so i will join the war against Monty shortly.

 

[Snaaty]

@ all:

This round will close tomorrow night. So far, only 3 players have reached the next milestone (Giaur, Dirk and Snaaty (me))

Let´s hope that some more players manage to play up to 1700 AD today or tomorrow

 

[Giaur]

Spoiler :

Launched the ship. But it's was suffering. 20 cities, I did not want to manage each of it. Made plenty mistakes, like building UN or building NE in commerce city, especially that I wanted build there Oxford University. The opponents very badly behind in tech. G.Khan was running Merchiantilism, Brennus too. I was even afraid too loose due to my own proposal: Free Religion. But at the end I had some luck. Two last parts of the spaceship were built in the same turn. Even chopped some forest, which was left to escape this Drama quickly. I do not like Space Race, I think. Maybe it would be easier if I had 10 cities. I would leave the save as soon as the next round begins.

 

[shyuhe]

I had to dig up my save.

Spoiler :

I continued my war with Monty with Peter after begging Khan off. Monty had attacked Peter before so I wasn't too worried about him vassalizing Monty but I didn't want Khan to do that. After whittling Monty down to one city, I forced him to capitulate.

I then went into OR to put in the infrastructure that I had largely ignored as a consequence of the war that I had going on. I then started bribing Peter and Khan to go after Hatty and Wang Kon. Brennus was too big and nobody wanted to mess with him - I stayed in OR to run Brennus' favorite civic and to avoid a DOW. Not a whole lot of action going on otherwise - I just tried to build up the infrastructure in my cities and largely ignored military builds. I don't think I built anything after my Monty war as I had the warmongers going after the guys on the other continent instead.

Now I just need to make sure that Brennus doesn't launch before me. I will try to bribe him into going after some of the other guys on his continent, or try to negotiate a trade embargo against him. We'll see.

I've been trying to culture flip some cities for lack of anything else better to do. I'm also planning on using the internet to keep up in tech - I've hit WFYABTA with pretty much all the other civs now.

 

[Galileo44]

Here's my next round report up to 1700:

Spoiler :

I came into this round with a good tech lead and going strong. I first headed to Constitution for a boost to science. Then, while I got Peter and Khan to attack Monty, I went for chemistry and steel. A dozen trebuchet and mace builds combined with 3 GMs and I declared war on Monty with Cannons and Grendiers, hitting him in the north while all of his units were in the south and east. I took 2 cities the first war, a northern one and his capital. I signed peace for a while to get my army back together, then I redeclared, taking 3 more cities and finally Vasselizing him. This was to keep Peter and Khan from having his cities. Plus, you get your fat cross in Vassel territory guarenteed! During the war, Delhi landed the Statue of Liberty, helpful now with almost double the cities! I revolted to Emancipation and cottaged over the farms that were all over Monty's land. I teched peacefully for the rest of the round and plan to continue. State Property helped with upkeep, and my trade routes finally got going once other civs got out of Mercantilism. Brennus also beat up Hatty and vasselized her and is now a monster. That was a bad idea starting that war. Now I have several 8-12 commerce routes! I am researching Radio, I have Industrialism and half of Rocketry done as well. I have Liberalism and Industrialism over Brennus, but he has Railroad and Combustion. Wang, the AI tech leader I have Industrialism over and he has RR. Peter is a little farther back, he doesn't yet have Electricity. My Former Aztec cities are paying off, the five accounting for 268 science, for an average of about 53 per city. Plus, I did not know before the war, but I secured my only source of coal with the last Aztec city I took. My GP was cut way down after Caste System was vacated and the GL expired, dropping to half of its previous level.

Here are some screenshots:
North

Middle

South

My capital and best science city (still running Bureaucracy)

Calcutta, my best production city and home of the Ironworks

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/92585/Snaaty_AD-1520.CivWarlordsSave
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/92585/Snaaty_AD-1700

 

[mrchadt]

Well I think I'm as good as dead.

Spoiler :

Too many errors to mention. It's 1710AD, I did restart from 1510AD to see if I could avoid so many wars, but my diplomatic skills let me down. I think the only reason I lasted as long as I did was because I found both bronze and iron in some nearby hills. Although my attack on monty was quite good, taking a couple of his cities. In my first war I thought I had a 10xp unit and agreed peace, but I was mistaken so no HE was a disaster. I didn't realise that I could use my great general to give xp for this, something I did later, when it occured to me, after another war.
One thing I did achieve was first to circumnavigate the globe, I did this without a caravell, I just traded maps with Wang and Brenus. I was in free religion when they arrived. I wish I had taken better care about what technology I traded and with who, maybe now Brenus wouldn't be sending over his artillary and destroyers.
I did manage 6 cities and the Globe and this is working well. Here are my saves, but I wouldn't recommend you bother looking.

View attachment 149194

View attachment 149195

 

[shyuhe]

This is for post 1700 stuff. I just wanted to post it before I forget the details (like I did for the pre-1700 stuff). I will post the saves for it after this round closes:

Spoiler :

I just wanted to post this stuff before I forget. I launched in the mid 1800's. I researched assembly line, then built factories and coal plants in all of my cities (Brennus got the dam). I then beelined the internet and built that in my ironworks city before I had even touched the apollo program. I started the program after the internet and started researching towards fusion. I completed factory/coal plant/laboratory in most of my cities and set them to build research. Once the program was done, I divided the casings, thrusters, life support, engine, and docking bay between the cities so that they'd finish in about 10 turns.

I then researched towards genetics. In the meantime, I picked up 3 GE (I ran representation almost all game) and rushed the space elevator using 2. I burned the last one building the UN to make sure no funny resolutions got passed (I didn't pass anything - I was voted secretary but I just took no action in hopes of slowing down Brennus). I continued to bribe on wars, and at one point Brennus even managed to take a few of Peter's cities. Khan was stuck in a perpetual struggle against somebody on the other continent and it really hurt his research - I had to feed him military tech to make him decent.

Brennus was in a perpetual state of war (I swung him after Wang after he got peace with Peter) and it really slowed down his tech rate - he was the tech leader going into the war against Peter but I overtook him (with no small help from the internet) by the end of that war. I was actually production limited in the end (because I stupidly built the apollo program so late) rather than research limited, even though I was finishing the game in a golden age. I was almost done with the first future tech when I launched.

I think if you can secure yourself 10 or so good cities, then the endgame on immortal isn't too bad. You just have to make sure you're on good terms with the warmongers and keep them occupied by sending them after the builders. And the internet is awesome. I think it gave me at least 5-7 techs this game.