[BTS] A curveball at Immortal graduation - tough? save

[Winth]

I've come back to Civ4 after a long, long hiatus and steadily climbed to the point where I was entirely crushing my last few Emperor games. Feeling bold about the tech and expansion lead I decided to Random/Fractal my first Immortal game only to get Saladin - a tough leader in my books, as much as I like Spiritual - in a start with a few tough nuts to crack. I played up to 500 BC and promptly retired, but would like to attempt to redo this game and learn something since it looks like an interesting start, at least.

Spoiler Spoilers from a failed run :

I settled on the Marble, went agri -> ah (note #1: do I really care for sole Sheep as a food resource all that much?), farmed two Flood Plains to the north planning to share tiles with a future city #2. AH showed horses to the NE so I figured I might try Oracling HBR (due to Marble) and go for a Horse Archer rush against my immediate neighbors, Germany and Inca. Unfortunately, HBR plans felt off as Bismarck is entirely bogged down in jungle and any spoils of war I gain from him (besides Berlin, which is a solid cap) will be hard to insert into my empire due to this, whereas Inca is really far away. After realizing this post-factum (after already preparing a lot of infrastructure) I figured I tackled this start badly, especially since both Bismarck and Huayna have Copper deep in their territory, and thus Spearmen.

Note #2: Is Oracle really the best play here? I could get Alphabet, CoL or Monarchy with it. It's hard to pass up the Marble, especially since I'm really not crazy about my immediate starting area.

Save runs on BUG 4.4. I invite you to try it out because it looks like a somewhat oddball Immortal map.

Spoiler :

Either that, or I'm horrendously incompetent at horse archer rushing, but considering the need to clear Hunting, Archery AND HBR I am not sure how much better this could go.

 

[sampsa]

I'd like to play it, but I have BUG installed in CustomAssets-folder, like I imagine most do. Can anyone help?

 

[krikav]

I can't, I have buffy5 and a plain install.
@Winth can you open up the save in worldbuilder and make a worldbuilder save?

 

[Winth]

My apologies, I struggled a lot with putting the BUG version on Steam for some reason and I must have screwed it up somehow (evidently).

Below is the WBSave. Let me know if it works properly now, sorry for the mess, will reinstall the game ASAP. Here is the starting location for additional posterity.

Spoiler :

 

[sampsa]

Haven't checked your spoiler yet.

T60

Spoiler :

I think settling on marble is the best play by a wide margin. Plains sheep and floodplains are good enough. Agri-min-BW-fish-pot-AH-writing-(sailing). Got gold from two huts and some stonehenge failgold so been at 100% slider so far. I think getting whips+chops and granaries up asap is better than a sheep tile, hence BW and pottery before AH. 2nd city T36 to wheat+clams, 3rd northern floodplains T56, 4th south of cap T59. Now planning to explore a bit and see which way the game is heading, but I don't think it will be a HA-rush.

 

[Winth]

*snipped for posterity*

My own spoiler only reaches up to 500 BC, since that's where I realized I messed up. Looking at your playthrough so far,

Spoiler :

I have made mostly the same settling decisions except I founded your-Damascus as my city #2 (borrowing farmed Flood Plains to the north) and opted to have your-Medina 1NE to save a forest, because I went Priesthood and Masonry for Marble+ speed Oracle and skipped Fishing, figuring that I will work the seafood resources later. I never settled city #4, although my dotmap certainly had that spot. It's nice that at least my settling decisions were mostly accurate.

What I think screwed up my initial attempt was

Spoiler :

the panic from having an inconvenient neighbor, Bismarck, up North and a seeming claustrophobia stemming from the area immediately to the east being scarcely settlable (or is it?) due to the desert and the odd geography to my East. I have restarted the save on my own volition before I read your spoiler and, again, decided to attempt another Oracle plan, but this time I will attempt to snag some economically stronger tech than HBR and attempt tradebait. My initial thought from this start is that the land around the starting area isn't downright terrible, but that I'd be boxed in and that I need to establish a wide city core early.

 

[sampsa]

@Winth

Spoiler :

With this crowd (two IND neighbors) I'd just forget Oracle. My game took a huge leap forward a few years ago when I learned to not go for Oracle and just expand to 4 good cities asap. I think this game will play great with no pre-liberalism war as you can easily get 8 decent cities or so. If you want to war, it should be an elepult imo.

 

[Winth]

@Winth

Spoiler :

With this crowd (two IND neighbors) I'd just forget Oracle. My game took a huge leap forward a few years ago when I learned to not go for Oracle and just expand to 4 good cities asap. I think this game will play great with no pre-liberalism war as you can easily get 8 decent cities or so. If you want to war, it should be an elepult imo.

Spoiler :

My issue appears to be that I somewhat presumptously assumed that 4 good cities is all I can hope for I must have really misread this start.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler :

4 good cities is enough. 4 more cities that can build a granary (and possibly a lighthouse) and just grow in pop for whip-fodder later on.
Looking at sampsas screenshot, 1E of the horses can borrow (or take) wheat, and on the PH 2E1S of the clam is another ok spot.

Probably settle on marble is best, those extra two hammers early one is really huge!
But another interesting spot is the grassland hill 2N of initial settler spot that "spiders" every resource.
That would create a extremly compact empire of 7-8 cities that would tech like a beast.

 

[ArchGhost]

having a go at this too right now

You're too worried about only getting 4 cities with this crowd on IMM:

Spoiler :

After Currency + Monarchy I plopped down 3 more cities around the core just for a little cottage sharing and future Cuir pumps, bringing up the total to 12. Kufah is totally unnecessary but I didn't want him troll settling up against my horse between Damascus and Baghdad.

Went for the PHMarble settle too, it's just a dynamite center tile for early city work, and there's a clear 2nd city spot to the east. Settling 2N from SiP would have been fine too, but quite a lot of food for one city.

Bismarck did come right at me, but easy enough to block off; the 2nd city with 2 clams+ wheat is very strong for pushing settlers. He would have been more problematic if he founded one of the first 3 religions (he did just found Theology religion a few turns back) but as it is, pretty much just have to share his religion as he's the greatest early threat here. Mehmed is taken care of nicely with a gift city a crap spot in the desert near him.

Agri>Mining>BW>Fishing(on same turn as 2nd city settle)>Pottery>AH>Writing.

I was not as concerned with getting hold of horse/copper/Archery as it's really easy to fogbust this terrain with Bismarck so close and chokes on either side. This isn't a problem because you can fogbust between Bismarck with only 2 units, your backend peninsula is busted by capitol's culture (I did have to get an emergency warrior down HC's way to control that choke against barbs)

Then I opted to do the standard Aes for Alpha trade since I was so late to AH and finding horse anyway, so HA rush was not really in my cards. HC was very slow to expand my way, so I took his gold spot

I'n not gonna beat HC to Great Lib or Charlie to Music, but the failgold will be nice. Madrassas should let me flip back the gold and corn down by his border and keep the one with Bismarck secure.

 

[sampsa]

I kinda lost interest in the game since I noticed that I didn't add archery to barbs... Anyway, I don't think it's a tough map

Spoiler :

, the only difficulty is in finding enough -resources. Since HC founded judaism in my game, getting that was easy (all you need is open borders and they will eventually send missionaries). Cheap temples are another +1 but after that it's not so easy. Ivories are in kinda poor spots as it's not possible to claim 1st ring food+ivory. Trying to open trade routes to all AI asap is important here, otherwise they might do the resource trades with each other. I think peaceful expansion going aesth and lit for GLib (also plenty of potential failgold from both marble and stone wonders), winning music, libbing MT and taking over the continent with cuirassiers is a good strategy on this map.

 

[Winth]

I kinda lost interest in the game since I noticed that I didn't add archery to barbs...

It isn't set to do so by default on Immortal? Huh.
Yeah, after seeing the notes and screenshots,

Spoiler :

it's evident to me that I've been too concerned with distance maintenance costs and cities not paying off for themselves; it wouldn't have occurred to me to push expansion this hard due to the jungle, that small patch of desert to the east, wiggly corridors in places (narrow coastlines, the peninsulan shape) making defense and worker logistics sort of difficult.

Thanks, I'll try to see if I can manage this now. I had really misread the start.

 

[sampsa]

It isn't set to do so by default on Immortal? Huh.

It's because of the way worldbuilder saves work, barb techs need to be added manually.

I replayed it with barb archers and I'm a lot happier with my play. I don't think map knowledge played a role really.

T100, 2nd try

Spoiler :

Same tech path, though popped fishing from a hut instead of money. Doesn't change much. This time I realized that due to the low -cap, it's hard to leverage granaries. So I just chopped all capital forests to settlers/workers. Got the herbalist event for +2, which certainly made that choice easier (can't afford to whip due to extra unhappiness for 20T and won't run into ). Also sent out two work boats for scouting asap, which helped me get -trade from Charlie before adopting a religion.

Got these 6 cities up and might not build more, maybe take a barb city if I can. I don't think what ArchGhost did is optimal - those helper cities slow down lib date (and thus attack date and win date) considerably. 6 cities can easily produce enough units and bigger cities are better IMO.

GLib in next turn, ~650 invested in ToA, some in Parth (failgold obv), after music going CoL, bulbing philo, starting GA to run specialists, bulbing towards lib and so on.

 

[ArchGhost]

I kinda lost interest in the game since I noticed that I didn't add archery to barbs...

Heh, now I know why Bismarck got that western outlier city so fast in my game (his 3rd city!). I forgot doing that was a thing with WB saves.

He resisted quite a bit (he ran right to Guilds>Gunpowder>Grens before anybody else despite being the smallest one) and had a decent stack after a bit of war with Mehmed. Capped him at 1 city cause I didn't want to bother killing all of it, in the process of taking HC now who is still at longbows despite having Gren tech + able to research Rifling, heh. Even if he trades for it I have 40+ cuirs breathing down his neck already and German cities coming online.

Mehmed is big in my game at 17 cities but quite behind, I'll push him over with Cavs in a bit. The other continent seems sure to attack me in the future, it hates everybody over here and I'll be the only one with vassals :/

 

[sampsa]

@ArchGhost

Spoiler :

My current winning plan is to not take any vassals but capture and settle the whole continent, which should be easily enough for domination.

 

[ArchGhost]

@ArchGhost

Spoiler :

My current winning plan is to not take any vassals but capture and settle the whole continent, which should be easily enough for domination.

Good idea. I didn't think about something as basic as most of the land being here at home, heh. I committed already and have Biz+HC *edit: and Mehmed* under my belt.. And I did get some visitors from out and away, who dropped off a whole 3 boats worth of an invasion, before attacking the only other one not under my banner twice after being rebuffed by me

Things are going fine, vassaling the last player here and then it's just a merry boat trip with overwhelming force to close things out.

Edit: Scratch that, wiping rival #4 off the continent is easily gonna put over Dom limit, vassal or not. 61% with 6 cities left to come out of revolt. Crazy how quick it can sneak up on one like that. He did get smashed flat in like 9 turns, so not that crazy.

@Winth
Have you had any better luck the next go around?