Charlemagne IMM Isolation Challenge

[Henrik75]

Hey guys, I am posting a very challenging map that @konata_LS sent to me and I wanted to share and see other people's approach to this type of situation. After playing 10 or 15 turns you will probably realize why it's tough. Found this harder than many regular deity games.

Also note that it's isolation, with no tech trading, so you're going to have to work with your land and build an economy without just beelining optics and trading your way back into the game. I'm really curious to see how other deity players will approach this scenario.

Good luck!

The Start:

Spoiler :

Settings

Spoiler :

Attached file is a WB save because I use BUG/BUFFY, you'll have to save it into your worldbuilder folder than add starting techs to barbs (default setting is immortal so add archery+hunting+agri).

Prepare to suffer.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

It's "only" immortal so we can push our luck.

T58 (1680BC)

Spoiler :

I am not going to build The Great Lighthouse. Clams give 2 commerce each so it's a smooth ride to pottery.

 

[krikav]

Looks fun!
Don't think I have ever won a NTT game... but it looks fun!

Spoiler T28 :

Moved scout but settled in place.
Thought about moving to the PH 1E of the pig, since a second city on the PH SW of starting location could claim clam (and also other possible seafood).
However, decided to settle in place to get clams (and some commerce) going faster.
Commerce is key in iso, and even more so in NTT.

Worker first while teching fishing, then swap to workboat as soon as fishing is in, then finish worker.

Mine piggies, BW to get a jolt of production and to clear riverside for cottages.
Scout sprinted northwards during the first 5 turns and managed to escape the junglebelt. Once he had cleared what he could north I went home to secure the west.
Only encountered a lone wolf.
Second city is likely SE of rice to share clam and help with cottages.
Island seems poor, and there is no happiness resources either. Monarchy seems needed.
There is alot of lovely green lush land under the jungle though...
Maybe it's best to just build a horde of workers and clear the jungle and cottage up? Is that fast enough to catch the immortal AIs in time...?

Spoiler Spoilery screenshot of alot of the island :

After second city, two nice riverside cottage spots are marked. But maybe some nice spot is revealed in the east before that.

 

[Henrik75]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Wow almost identical approach to me! Although I opened slightly different to you and Krikav, AH -> Mining -> Fishing -> Oracle, delaying bronze working in hope to chop out greatlighthouse soon after. I settled 1N of the clam spot you settled because free missionary from confu will give border pop, and it claims more land tiles.

I've seen enough early oracles even on immortal before 2000BC, so I went all out and starved a little to build it at a satisfying 1840BC, a little more comfortable date for me.

@krikav

Spoiler :

I like your northern city placement, actually identical to how I did mine too. Each city works several river cottages while being able to share and maintain a source of food.
It's very possible to catch immortal AI in No-tech-trade with enough commerce, Lain does it on a similar map with Justinian on deity (the one he construction rushed pericles for 1000 years), although the global tech pace will still be impacted by how much they attack each other and trade resources/open borders, or if they hate each others guts.

 

[krikav]

Religion is likely very nice here. Since there won't be much trading, it's concievable that astro will be delayed, and then getting spread from some abroad AI and spreading it around could be problematic.
The extra happines/borderpops and possible a pair of temples is nice too.
So oracle -> CoL is a perfecly OK gambit imho.

 

[soundjata]

The choice of settling site for cap looks quite interesting
kill fish / share food / go center... brownie hillies!

 

[soundjata]

Got inspired by your thoughts, here's my T49

Spoiler :

Mining > Fishing > Med > Priest (lazy worker ) > Archery (lazy missionary )

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T97 :

Took a screenshot at T58 to compare with the oracle timestamp.
Went Worker->Settler->Settler->Worker.
Settled Vienna in that location because juggling the food (Piggies) will be important.

Saved up cash a few turns... Thought hard here which path to go.
Want monarchy and IW to get something going, but I also want to snag a religion if I can.
I ended up going for IW first and settled two more cities. Changed the dotmap abit more... This way I can get two good inland cottage cities, and two coastal cities that can help mature cottages but also get some production potential up.

IW is in. There is SOOO many turns that I work grassland cottages instead of clams. It hurts my feelings but you got to do what you got to do.

Have just revolted to HR. Up at 6 workers now. Think that will be enough.
Must go agriculture for the health that the rice provides. And will also farm a few of the riverside to let the two jungle cities grow faster. Once they get up in size they can be replaced with cottages.

Confu was founded T72... To bulb philo I need alpha+math+CoL.
Might be doable.
WIll probably go Alpha next to boost research abit. Stay at 5 cities while I try to accelerate that research.

 

[konata_LS]

It's interesting to see and discuss different approaches of the same map.

Spoiler :

Henrik said he'd like to have a tough isolation map, so I generated this one and sent to him. It's one of the worst islands I've ever seen. Apart from the lack of - and - , jungle is also a trouble. People rarely rush into the jungle in Pangaea-ish or Inland sea maps, but in isolation, there is nowhere to settle apart from these jungle tiles .
Such a horrible island is definitely not for someone's first win on Immortal. OTOH, some veteran players or those who want to practise isolation on Immortal may find this map interesting.

Hope you all enjoy the game

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

What's the safer approach?

Spoiler :

I think there is an agreement that we want a religion.
1. We can Oracle for Confucianism.
2. Or wait for Confucianism to be founded somewhere, but go for Taoism.
3. Or go Stonehenge and Christianity.

I took path 1 but I am not sure if that is the safest choice. Safest means lowest chance of failure. We are isolated and have no information on the terrain and leaders outside.

 

[Henrik75]

I think on immortal difficulty, 1600-1800BC is a good Oracle date to aim for. You might want to make it 1800-2000BC if it was deity. There is no guarantee for safety, its gone at 2400BC in an isolation immortal game I did in the past. But it's also gone at 800bc on a deity isolation game. After 2 years of playing over 100 imm/deity games, i can roughly say it'll go at 1200bc on imm and 1600bc on deity hence the "safe"ish dates I initially mentioned to aim for.

Spoiler :

Sacrificing too much just to get a couple turns earlier oracle seems not worth it. It's a risk no matter what, so don't cripple yourself to get it a few turns earlier. Seeing soundjada build it at 2000bc was really cool none the less but I don't think I would take that approach as in my post I was 5 turns slower but I was able to get much more warriors out for fogbusting, improve the pig, and also take poly instead of meditation to open up organized religion path and keep astronomy bulb viable.

I think regardless, because of the dire early situation, we should aim for at least one wonder however Krikav's early cottage strategy seems very viable too.

Spoiler :

Did anyone have any thoughts about the marble to the east? I decided to settle a city on the marble to connect it immediately and use my beautiful religion to get a border pop for fish. Then had a shot at great library, but ended up delaying monarchy and OR for it :/

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Spoiler T65, Opening :

Offering an alternative to oracle plays. I think with no tech trades, it's more important to gain the land


T28:

Opening: 7 turns of Settler (17 turns vs 15 turns worker), 8 turns of workboat, 1 turn of Settler, 5 turns of seafood growth --> size 2 --> T28 Settler. --> settle for seafood + work 3 hammer hill.
Tech: Fishing, Mining, The Wheel, Bronze Working

T55: Iron Working in. Working the ocean for commerce

T65: Future capital up, Animal Husbandry + gold for Pottery in. Have sufficient techs to work all of the land. Dry jungle rice sucks anyways. With no happiness resources, riverside megalopolis with Hereditary Rule + Civil Service rush is probably the way to go.

 

[Henrik75]

@CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

very interesting approach, 2000bc iron working for super early start to developing the good land seems really promising.
How do you plan to build the palace in a city with quite near zero production? Leaves no option other than whipping things into it but even then you will stack up unhappiness fast with a lack of happy resources. Maybe you can get away with whipping axes for 30ish overflow.

Also I managed to fogbust the island with only warriors! You'll be proud, I even took out a barb axe with 2 warriors

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

@CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

very interesting approach, 2000bc iron working for super early start to developing the good land seems really promising.
How do you plan to build the palace in a city with quite near zero production? Leaves no option other than whipping things into it but even then you will stack up unhappiness fast with a lack of happy resources. Maybe you can get away with whipping axes for 30ish overflow.

Also I managed to fogbust the island with only warriors! You'll be proud, I even took out a barb axe with 2 warriors

Spoiler :

There's 2 hills with cultural expansion, and honestly probably around 60 turns to bureaucracy with this bad of a start, it should be reasonably doable, and no penalty until then.

Nice! I started a whole plan to wall off NE and E with 4 warriors and a scout, hook iron, build Axe + Sword, destroy iron road, funnel to the North, acquire heroic epic....and then the barbarians settled a city and don't look like they have clear plans to move out. At least the last part of that plan is still viable.

 

[Hamilton321]

Spoiler :

Alright, hopefully I successfully spoilered this. My tech path was fishing, AH, Mining, BW, wheel, Pottery, Writing, IW, agri, meditation, priesthood, monarchy, CoL, math, CS. I think I did a lot worse than others because I didn't get wonders, I didn't fogbust or go for an early religion like other people, instead I went for a full tech rush on five cities. I ran scientists early to get an academy in the capital and I built cottages to get to caste and then ran caste merchants in my other cities to keep teching at 100% to beeline Civil Service. I'm gonna try to go out and get more cities, but I still want to keep teching at 100% at least until I have the most essential technologies.

 

[krikav]

I'm not entierly sold on the CS idea.
Health cap could throw a spanner in the works.
GScientists are also hard to come by, so not certain academy is cheap enough either.

Hard map! And I don't really know.

 

[Henrik75]

Turn 132 / 425AD

Spoiler :

Just reached monarchy and double revolted into organized religion + hereditary rule. 3 pop whipping Rathauses will be nice for the economy. Math Currency Civil service is next. We will also whip markets in all key cottage spots.
Note that after Oracling CoL, I went Iron working -> Aesthetics -> Literature and chopped out Great Library in Aachen. We should now be able to grow with warriors to size 8-10 in most cities, you can see i already pillaged the iron

 

[krikav]

I feel things are going very slow... I just bulbed Philo (Tao) T121.

Currency is interesting... I was just thinking about what to go for next after the Philo-run.
CoL does give the opportunity to sink hammers (or whip) into Rathouses, so maybe currency is overkill?
Still... one free commerce in every city is neat.
But markets I'm even more sceptical about. The silder should be high so their utility might be low.

Spoiler T121 :

Another thing I thought about... Maybe going for multiple academies?
Bulbing is not as interesting since you can't broker the techs, but likewise bulbing is even more important to accelerate the pace to key techs.

 

[soundjata]

Oh boy you guys quick.
Need some time to display some pure Great Prophet approach.
AP > Sankore > Minaret > ICS

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T150 :

Took a bunch of screenshots regarding religion spread.
It's very nice when the holy city gets in the center of the island, as distance (as the bird flies) toward the holy city is a major factor when autospread happends.
I did use the first missionary to get Tao in capital, and whipped a monestery there and built/whipped 2-3 missionaries.
But I tried to be patient, and only did spread when it was very advantageous to do so.
Philo bulb T121, first spread at T125.

Second at T129.

New city here, waited two turns but then I lost patience.
The newly settled fish/pig got a missionary at the first turn too.

T142 it spreads here, this city did not need the happines, and I'm hardly running any specialists so I have not revolted to Philo, will do that once I get to CS.
Ended up going currency->sail->CS after philo.

Not much action in alot of the cities. Trying desperatly to juggle tiles and only whip one city once neighbouring cities can take over and hold the cottages.

CS is in, revolt to Bur+Paci.

Sorry I disregarded markets, I think they are a great idea now when I got a feel for the situation.

Religion is fully spread, even got one of the 3 missionaries I built left. Fogbusting in the north.
Doing some CS farming now (which I was ill prepared for, it always catches me by suprise. )

Going compass now, a harbour in capital will be good I think.
I try to respect the health cap, Don't think it's worth it to grow the population, build the warrior... Better settle another city instead.
Did change the dotmap abit. Florence took most of the river in the north.
Will have to settle a helper in the middle claming the horse and all the plains I supose.
Clam in the north is impossible right now due to barb galleys. Barbs have also spawned a city on the hill north of the piggies.

I think I'll go straight for optics now to figure out how the situation abroad looks.
6 Generals have been born, so it doesn't seem like they are cozying up!
After optics I'm not sure what techs to aim for first. But priority will be given to the economical ones... PP, Astro... Banking and economics perhaps.
Not sure how to utilize lib (if at all). Universities are soooo expensive.
Empire will be very cottage heavy, so I likely want to draft some protective rifles at some point.
Capital, Nuremberg and Maniz are gearing up for production. WIll want to move palace at some point, but it's hard... Augsburg is weak. Whipping forth a palace with a lone piggy takes time.