Epic speed, Immortal diff. Strategy?

[Stayflo]

Hello,

Longtime lingered, first time poster. I've been getting increasingly frustrated with immortal difficulty. I really only enjoy the game on epic speed. I've beaten emperor a few times (huge map, epic speed, emperor diff).

My request is simply for some strategic advice.

I typically go horsemen at first (6 or so) to conquer my closest neighbors, but EVERY time, by the time I get to the furthest civs on the continent, they seem to always have a massive army that is well beyond me in tech and size. (I've been teching militarily).

I'm not seeing how it's even possible. I'm on my 7th playthrough and Greece is destroying me with longswordsmen, against my mediocre horsemen.

Thanks in advance

 

[Realyn]

No joke, 1 rushed horseman with barracks promotion should be enough to kill a Civ on immortal. 2 with a GG or the 15% fighting bonus are allways enough, even on deity.

Other tips? Dont use obviously overpowered stuff just because its cool.

 

[Stayflo]

Thanks for the reply.

As I said, 6 horsemen and a GG are enough to take the first two closest civs, but once I get to the third civ, they're so far beyond me in tech and size of their army, that 6 horsemen doesn't cut it.

 

[the streak]

Even in epic? It's much easier on the slow speeds because your cavalry get so much playing time before they become obsolete.

 

[mbuna120]

If you're waiting til you have 6 horses, you're waiting way too long. thats what the previous poster was saying. 2-3 is sufficient to start your assault. With 3 horse, you can roll over 2-3 civs in a row even on diety.

 

[milk steak]

Agreed that it sounds like you're either waiting too long or not rushing quick enough.

What's your beginning strategy? Do you rush HBR and plant your 2nd settler on top of a horse resource? From my experience, this is the quickest path to getting Horsemen/Companion Cavalry:

1. Settle in place, build scout -> worker -> settler.
2. Research HBR immediately (AH -> Wheel -> HBR).
3. Scout around your local area with your warrior and your scout.
4. Once AH is completed, you should see horses. Plant your 2nd city right on top of that resource (or if you're lucky and have horses near your capital, settle your 2nd city wherever you please).
5. Switch your capital (which should be around pop 3-4) to a production focus. Once your second city hits pop 3-4, do the same for that one.
6. Once you have horses hooked up, start building Horsemen in both your cities. Once you reach 410 gold, purchase an additional one.
7. Research Mining next to boost production. You can replace the mine with a more interesting tile improvement later, but production at this point of the game is vital. Gems are amazing since they not only provide production (3 hammers), they provide more gold than any other luxury resource.

With this strategy, you should be able to have approximately 3 Horsemen within 50 turns on Standard and you should also have an idea of where the nearest civ is. This ought to give you plenty of time to conquer your entire continent with little opposition.

Also, deciding which civ to attack first is important. You want to get the civs that get strong early UUs first (such as Rome, Japan, etc.). If you go for them last, they may have a already fielded a large, powerful army (imagine if the Longswordsmen in your case were Samurai instead... yikes!).

As pointed out above, you can start the war with only 2 or 3 Horsemen. In fact, this is optimal since you want to draw their troops out and eliminate them before attacking the cities. Declare war early, let the AI bring out their troops (which they seem to inevitably do), wait for them to land on a flat tile (-33% defense), and take them out. Once you field your 3rd or 4th horsemen, you should have taken out enough of their army to be able to stroll into any city and capture it within 2 turns.

 

[cracked]

Perhaps the problem is the number of troops you're seeking to use.

Watching TMIT's video (you can find it on this site by looking at the compiled lets plays in stories section of this website) suggests that taking out a civ with two horsemen and a gg is quite possible within 70 - 75 turns. It was on emperor with standard speed, but the ease with which he did it suggests it would be a viable on higher levels at slower speeds. A city state was then taken by the same army very quickly afterwards. He took out at least two other civs by the the start of the ADs pretty much, spamming horsemen as he went and aiming to knock out rival civs as soon as humanly possible.

Build path was worker, monument, settler: while researching direct to horseback riding after mining (to get hammers) and animal husbandry (to identify the location of horses). He took advantage of the fact that barbs don't properly get going for the first 25 turns or so.

The monument allowed him to gain a great general via the honour path, the settler needed to secure horses. Fance (his closest neighbour) and the ottoman empire even went as far as to declare war on him before he had horsemen (rather ineffectively). He also didn't worry too much about keeping people happy
(though he took care of that as he went back for the other techs like calender etc).

Exploration was limited to finding what he needed through his first warrior (though using gold to build scouts could help you identify the location of other civs).

Watch the video, it may give you clues as to how to do it.

I should imagine starting the first war only once you have six horsemen would give the AI too much time to build up a force to defeat that by the time you get to the third civ. He probably could have won the first war with one horseman (early on they are extremely overpowered).

There isn't quite enough info to state precisely how you're going about things. If you're razing cities as you go it defeats the object to some extent: your research is based upon population so it's usually better to puppet state conquered cities (one thing I don't know if he did was spam trading posts in his puppet states).

But the main thing I'm picking up from your post is that you're waiting too long for the first war. Experiment with starting war at two horsemen and a gg and see how it goes. On higher levels the AI really rexes: It should be possible to strike early enough to catch them with their pants down (figuratively speaking).

 

[Stayflo]

Thanks very much for the helpful replies.

I was acting not really on the Horseman rush strategy, but more along the lines of expanding with three cities, conquering the nearby two, then moving along to the other.

This strategy has failed me miserably, now 9 times. It seems no matter how many puppet cities I conquer (with, either the fast horseman rush, or the slower large horseman army) a few AI civs are so far ahead of me by the time I reach them that they've already hated me to do my warmongering. They inevitably declare war on me with a much larger, and much higher teched army.

They also seem to be able to churn out units at amazing speed. I'm finding Emperor difficulty challenging, but Immortal seems to be the one that's just out of reach.

I've also noticed that epic speed plays much differently than standard. While it takes much longer to build an army, the AI seems to have no problem teching, building wonders, and generally making massive armies.

 

[bryanw1995]

my first and only immortal game was on epic/continents. I was irroquois with a grand total of 7 forests within a reasonable city-building distance as well, so not much help from the UA. i didn't use the classical horse rush strategy as I was extremely isolated (the 4 other civs on my continent were 20+ tiles away over extremely rugged terrain that was full of CS's). I built up to 4 cities, started building horsemen, used diplomacy to keep some of them on my side, then just whacked them one at a time. It was easy, they just kept throwing their armies at each other and CS's, I just waltzed in and whacked them. America looked invincible on the other continent, but I ended up getting to tech parity with him pretty quickly and dominated around turn 415 or so. I made very little usage of the UA, the UB didn't do much for me b/c of the lack of forest, and the UU was nearly useless b/c of same.

Immortal is definitely "winnable", just make nice with the furthest civ and get him to DOW on some of the others or wait for him to DOW on a CS, then swoop in to pick up the leftovers when they're all beaten.

I tried the horse/rush strategy next as ottomans on deity, same settings except normal/standard instead of epic/standard. england DOW'd me 2 turns b/4 got my first horse. he was the dominant civ but I finally put him in his place, by then songhai and rome were taking over the CS's one by one. Rome had longswordsmen before I even had iron! fortunately, he asked me to DOW sonhai, I let them beat each other up for a while, I went all out for Iron working then chivalry, we went back and forth for 75 turns or so, but I ended up winning eventually. Literally took me most of the game to take my continent, and even then I couldn't have done it but I convinced songhai to DOW rome and then stabbed him in the back after throwing his military into the 7 canon buzzsaw that rome had set up as defense. songhai had me on tech but for some reason he neglected to acquire rifleman in a timely manner. BIG mistake for him

 

[bluedevil99]

I'm winning pretty consistently with horse rushes on Immortal, to the point where I'm actually trying to play a couple archipalego games where I don't allow myself to declare war.

milk's build order sounds about right to me. Get yourself 3 horses asap and go take a capital. I typically build/buy only one settler in the early game. When I run into trouble it's usually because, either before my horse rush or when my first wave of horsemen are out causing mayhem, I get distracted by a nice city site or shiny wonder. Don't let that happen- the AI builds settlers and wonders for you. KEEP BUILDING HORSEMEN.

The other thing is, once you've picked up Calendar, Trapping, Writing, and/or Sailing depending on resources, beeline Chivalry. Build a library and run scientists in at least one city so you can bulb an expensive tech or two along the way. What's the only thing better than veteran horsemen? That's right, veteran knights. And who says you need iron? Your horsemen and then knights will happily sit on hills picking off swordsmen, longswordsmen, and musketmen the AI idiotically marches out over open ground.

Other than that, the biggest difference at Immortal and Diety is you really need those dirty little tricks, like selling open borders and excess resources for gold. You generally want to run as close to the happy cap as possible, leaving wiggle room so your units don't get hit with the 'very unhappy penalty' when you need to raze a city. Use the gold to ally with city states (maritime first, then cultural). Save up some policy points, bulb your way to the medieval age asap (often currency for me), and pick up the research generating policy in the patronage line to really make those city state allies work for you. Policies should come fairly easily since most of your cities will be puppets- be sure to spam trading posts around all your puppets so those idiot governors at least generate gold for you. Then beeline to the renaissance (often banking for me), pick up rationalism, and make all that trading post spam into a research powerhouse.

From there it's pick your victory condition. If you're king of a continent and want to relax for a bit, get to the industrial era via biology with an eye toward either the spaceship or, better, globalization and the UN (your huge population and many city state allies make diplomacy a great option). If you just want to finish off the rabble, go for artillery and stick a fork in the AI civs- they're done.