America (Immortal) - Spain/Huns/Ethiopia

[civ405]

I posted before about working through King a few months ago. I finally beat the map playing as the Dutch with the science victory. Started a new maps on Emperor as Japan. That took forever, but I finally beat with another science victory (I played the map so many times I memorized the locations of resources and the nearby ruins along with the best placement of cities).

I'm working my way on this map on Immortal as America and it just seems impossible given my play style.

I think the key problem is that I am not good at war. It's a mixture of technology (can't fight Pikeman with warriors and you need a siege unit but catapults are terrible) and good idea of the strategy (the AI on Emperor and beyond will have a huge army compared to yours and attack, the key thing to remember is to use a mixture of your few ranged units and city bombardment to whittle them down).

I really want to take out Attila first. He's always the first to declare war even when I build my cities away from you his land. Is it possible to rush when playing Immortal? It seems like you always have to have the AI attack, destroy his army, and then counter-attack. Also, the few times I've done that I remembered not to mess up. Go in quickly for the kill. You lose 2-3 of your siege units and you should seriously consider withdrawing until you can rebuild.

I've attached the beginning of the save game for you guys to see and play for yourself. I'm sure some of you playing regularly on Deity can take out all 3 nearby AI opponents before turn 100 and I just like to find out how.

Also, regarding tech: on Emperor and below my strategy was to go for Great Library at all costs (Pottery -> Writing (Great Library) -> Calendar -> Philosophy (use Great Library) -> Drama/Poetry -> Theology (Boom! Medieval before anyone else).

The key seemed to be if you can research time-consuming technologies that advance you to the next period (Ancient -> Classical -> Medieval -> Renaissance -> Industrial -> etc.) all the previous technologies can be researched much more quickly.

Yet, I never really added up the amount of time required. I was just SO happy to be ahead of every AI opponent and once I unlocked Radar I began to attack other civs. I know you can do it much sooner, but it just becomes SO EASY when you can bomb any city from a great distance. It just becomes a matter of "mopping up."

You can get Great Library on Immortal if you're lucky (the AI does weird things sometimes and I swear it's dependent about how much you explore) and are willing to "hard-build" a worker instead of a Scout, Shrine, or Granary. You unlock Mining and start chopping down trees with 2 workers instead of one (1 from hard-building, and 1 from the social policy in Liberty, I think).

This also helps you get National College ASAP, but you (ofcourse) have to hold off on expanding more cities. It's painful since I always like the mad dash to place cities and key resource-rich locations, but you can't really defend them and your happiness goes down like crazy.

So on Immortal I've just been selecting technologies that seem immediately useful and occasionally clicking laterally on the tech tree to see how many technologies I need to unlock to enter the next period and then selecting the one with the lowest number (3 techs to unlock to enter the Industrial Era versus 5, 8, and 11 becomes kind of a no-brainer even though the techs might not be immediately useful).

I could go on and on. So many questions I still have after playing this gave for almost 400 hours now. It's kind of ridiculous.

 

[civ405]

Also, my strategy in my most recent attempt was to have a tall/small civ with just 3-4 cities away from the other civs. It just doesn't seem to make such a big difference with such an aggressive civ as Attila. He just expands like crazy and ends up attacking you anyways.

I think save game file is just before Attila attacks. It's probably already too late, but I've managed in a few attempts to hold him off for a bit. The key thing seems to be to kill his nasty battering rams and his horse archers do quite a bit of damage also.

On a previous play-through I noticed that if they're barely alive, the battering rams won't withdraw nor will they attack. I would just let them pile up around my city and just kill any fresh ones that came within range. Once enough had accumulated I would just start killing 3-4 per turn with my ranged units and all that would happen would be their barely alive reinforcements would take their place.

That was really satisfying and after I killed enough, Attila proposed a peace treaty.

Unfortunately, that won't happen in this save game. I think it was because the city on the previous play-through was on a hill (defensive bonus).

 

[kb27787]

Sometimes even chopping wont get you GL (it's gone on turn 30+)
but I find Atilla is one of those guys who's completely capable of rushing you turn 40+ and if he had 8 horses... (barring good choke points) its usually gg... the rams will sit there but if he has your city down to 0 hp with his archers, he's not stupid enough not to take the city.

 

[civ405]

Also, one interesting thing about this map is that El Dorado is in just a few turns Northwest from your starting position. I always seek it out can collect the 500 gold and get the 4-5 ruins in the area.

Then I use the 500 to buy my first settler and get my second from one of the social policies in Liberty.

 

[bjelar]

I am having a terrible time, underestimating Atilla The Hun

I'm nowhere near the strongest players here on the best of days, and this game got the better of me. I lost a couple of battles, Atilla hid a huge force and counterattacked once I sacked Atilla's Court. It happened twice

I'm still in the game though, but now I need a quiet time growing my puny cities

First screenshot is the turn I went to war, the other one the turn the hun was dead.

 

[MarshalN]

How are you doing tech wise? Seems like you're really behind now because of the war. Ethiopia is going to be a problem - and the Uluru looks very juicy

 

[bjelar]

Heh peace....

I got DOW'ed by Isabella shortly after the war against Atilla

She quickly conquered Atiila's Court, I had to retake it. That city has been conquered 7 times now

Then the Russians invaded.

Ethiopia is moving all their units into my territory.

I'm playing on my laptop, I wasn't aware it was a huge map. Every turn takes five minutes now.

But it doesn't matter, I give up. Too slow start, and I messed up everything by underestimating Atilla

Interesting map though, I just messed it up

 

[civ405]

Wow! Nice! You got the bastard!

I finally tried Tabarnak's Tradition start, and did much better. With a build-up of so many archers early on Attila won't attack. Depending on where you place your cities. I placed my a little north of the citrus tile to the East. On a hill beside the lake. I'm such a noob still that I just found out that you almost always want to build on a hill (hammers and defense bonus?).

I think on my next playthrough I'm going to try planting a city a little Northwest of El Dorado. There's a spot there where (when fully expanded) you can have 2 luxury resources, El Dorado, and another 3-4 regular resources.

Unfortunately it almost guarantees a war with Isabella, but it might be worth it.

Interesting, but I also notice if you waste a turn and move your settler Southwest one tile, you can get a number of additional silk resources.

 

[bjelar]

I like rivers because of gardens. Great people are... well... great.

With that much forest around to chop, founding on hill isn't so important. I was happy with my location for capital, I founded it on the... spices was it? It's quite good to found cities on lux resources because you get the happiness boost as soon as you research the appropriate tech.

 

[joshua43214]

I went ahead and played 162 turns of your map.

First I want to make a bit of a heavy criticism. Your city placement is terrible. Never, ever, in any universe, forward settle Attila on a flat plain in the middle of a vast open territory. Not only did you settle every city on a flat tile when all of them could have been settled on hills, you spread them out so far that Germany came right in and settled inside you. If you must settle spread out, take advantage of Americas UA and buy tiles to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

Virtually every post I read from players trying to step up to Immortal and losing cities to early DoW's are because of very bad city placement and being far too spread out.

Attached is a T100 save and a T162 save. I settled the cap and a city, went to education, then down to machinery in preparation for war with Ethiopia. Ethiopia and Russia are the ones to beat in the game. Attila is a cuddly kitten, Do not let him scare you, he is always really easy to kill off. Cathy on the other hand is going to be a monster to deal with, especially on a fractal map. You are in for a long ugly slog with her and she will probably win a SV before you can take out her cap unless Bismarck deals with her (very unlikely).

The T100 save is just to give you an idea of what techs and junk I had at that point. I would have done better to be more proactive about getting the DoW from both Ethiopia and Attila, but I did not realize that Cathy was on the far side of a fractal map. I was also too cautious in my opening. I basically turtled and waited to be DoW'd. Fractal maps are the most difficult maps imo because the AI just goes gonzo nuts and settles cities all over the place, and the terrain makes them hard to take out. I would suggest sticking to standard Pangaea until you have Immortal mastered, the step up from Emperor to Immortal is really big.

The T162 save has you at war with both Attila and Ethiopia, I have already killed the dangerous part of Attila's horde, and you should have enough to push him back and take out his empire so you can push onto Isabel. It is important to fully conquer both Isabel and Attila (leave them both a tiny hemmed in city) so you can take on Cathy, try to save Bismarck for last since he is slow to win SV and will not be able to take over Russia.

Approach Ethiopia with caution, he took the belief that gives him extra combat strength. You need to kill him off now because you will have a horrible time getting past his UU once he gets rifling. His riffle will kill your infantry, it sucks to deal with.

Bismarck is mad because I won't stop stealing his techs. Let him whine and ignore him when he DoW's.

And lastly, because Cathy just went stupid nuts with city spam and is all over the place, you need to keep cranking out units to get your ranking high. Cathy only respects strength and will be your best buddy forever if you have an army. If she DoW's you before you are ready it will be ugly.

 

[civ405]

Interesting, but I gave it another goal using a mixture of what I like to do and Tabernak's strategy and did a lot better.

I still lost though. I just get too far behind in tech and some large civilization far away simply launches his spaceship 10 turns before me. I'm going to try to restart 20-30 turns and focus on research, but unfortunately (as you can tell) I'm at war with Russia, and she just won't accept a reasonable peace ("No, I'm not giving you two of my cities.").

I think I maybe too far behind though.

I realize now that the key to not getting attacked regularly is to have a large enough army. Well, to be specific, be technologically advanced AND have the numbers to provide an adequate defense. No 20 warriors probably won't deter an AI with tanks from attacking you.

Also, I continued playing after Bismarck won his science victory and tried dropping an atomic bomb on Berlin followed with most of my army. I wanted to see if I could take Berlin with a surprise attack initiated with an atomic bomb.

The key was just to take his city, even for one turn, and prevent him from getting the science victory. Even if he retakes his city, he has to start from scratch, no?

I know it's just a game, but it seems such a nasty thing to do. Plus, I have no uranium resources within my territory. I have to trade with Isabella, and there seems to be a bug where 1 of the 4 is being used, but I pretty certain I don't have any units nor did I build any civic improvement requiring uranium.

This was the first time the game has been noticeably buggy game-play wise. It didn't crash, but weird things happened like not being able to click on the technology you want to steal. It just eventually cleared when I reloaded an auto-save game.

 

[joshua43214]

Ya, this is what I was saying about Cathy. I have probably lost more game to her than any other civ. She just takes over and takes a science victory.

Tabarnak's strategy is excellent on the right map. It is intended to be a fast 4 city tradition start for a science victory and is set up to handle the early DoW that comes from rapid settling.

I find that tradition with 5 cities is very borderline for strength, and tradition 6 cities to be weak except on very rare maps. You might want to consider trying liberty of you are going to expand this much. Your city placement is better in the last screen shot, but you are still settling flats rather than hills, and not settling fresh water. The garden is possibly the single most powerful building in the game, you need to settle fresh water for it. And there is no good rational to settle a flat (especially with America) when you can settle a hill, the forests do not make up for it.

Immortal in G&K, the AI will win ~T300 unless they are all at perma-war.

The key to not getting attacked regularly is not about army size, its about city placement and diplomacy. Where you settled Chicago guarantees you will get regular DoW's from both Attila and Ethiopia. You would have to be #1 in military to prevent it, which is a massive waste of hammers and gold if not on the war path. Boston will provoke Isabella but she is usually pretty wimpy, and New York is forward settled on Attila meaning you will get steady DoW's from him. The reason I forward settled Attila where I did was to take advantage of both the fresh water and the terrain - it is a highly defendable location and I easily get the citrus.

I am thinking your science might be a bit low, but its hard to judge. I hit 1000bpt with 4 cities pretty effortlessly, seems you should be higher with 6 nice tall cities like you have.

You can streamline your first 100 turns a bit I think. Looks like you are close to getting a combo that fits your playstyle and gets you a solid core to work from. Where you need the most work is putting it together with the mid/end game. For instance, I see only 1 settled great scientist, if you are going SV you should settle ~3 depending on map. Are you bulbing them early? Most people build the Apollo program in a satellite city and the Hubble in their capitol. When Cathy is in the game, you will have to beat her to it by using a great engineer.

Lastly for future experience, note how small Washington is compared to Philly. This is the long term effect of settling plains tiles, they are just bad for capitols. That was one of the major reasons I settled Washington north of that little lake, I get grassland tiles with fresh water, a hill, and a more defensible location