[BTS] Finally got the first immortal win!

[jnebbe]

Feels great, made some good plays, some big mistakes, overall quite an eventful game, learned lot from it!
Admittedly it was with a strong leader and a nice start but a W's a W.

Random civ rolled Mansa!
Spiritual is great, Financial is as well but I find it can be tricky to use since it disincentives building cottages if you can work coast tiles instead.

Writeup:

Spoiler :

Start:

Start was abysmally slow. I really really hate farming FPs when I know I'll cottage them later (I think I got agriculture T140 or something crazy cause I had no farmable resources nearby) AH is no good if a plains cow just gives 3 food, and with gems I don't really want to whip anyway.
I think I did fishing->pottery->BW->AH
After that I went archery since I assumed I was iso and had a huge island.

Meeting some ai and clearing out my island

Even with settling my huge island my tech rate was so far ahead of everyone else. Was 1st to optics and met sitting bull+julius on the other island. They've been locked in war basically the whole game, and seemed like a clear target for a cannon/rifle attack.

I believe I libed steel, but then I went sci-method->communism since I assumed SP would be nice but in hindsight it delayed my attack by quite a lot so it probably wasn't worth it.

Slow grindy war but even protective longbows can't save sitting bull

In the mean time gandhi and elizabeth teamed up on toku and are making good progress.

Got infantry and tried attacking julius from behind, was a bit messy but successful in the end.
Brennus does the least useful thing possible and dows sitting bull after plotting for a good 60 turns instead of attacking elizabeth or something... I bribe him out immediately so I can get sitting bull's last city.

elizabeth has brought toku down to just 2 cities, she has quite the scary stack atm.

T298, I clear out the other island and elizabeth kills off toku, jsut 4 civs left.
Gandhi has stopped teching in favor of running culture slider. Conveniently brennus has just built the manhatten project

At the last moment I make the difficult decision to target elizabeth instead, who was significantly stronger than me and just upgraded her defenders to mechanized infantry. The idea was that elizabeth would almost certainly be dragged in if I attack gandhi, I need to cripple her before I target gandhi. Miraculously I beg gold from gandhi and he accepts so he won't be interfering.

I stop teching for a little bit and go US and buy out 17 nukes.

The war was very costly but I did some good damage. Razed 5 cities and covered a good chunk of land with unclearable fallouts.

The Malinese were a truly unhappy people after losing a couple stacks in enemy territory and I was really afraid I wouldn't get peace+recover quick enough to stop gandhi

Elizabeth drops 2 waves on my island which I promptly nuke and will finally accept peace!
Happiness immediately goes back to normal and back up to +1300 gpt

At this point gandhi has 2 legendary cities and his 3rd is only 20 turns away!

I churn out an army as fast as possible, nuke numbers are quite low but gandhi doesn't have many troops

A couple turns later....
Crucially Delhi has the kremlin which will be very useful for the upcoming war with elizabeth

Finish off the rest of gandhi's land, once those borders pop I should be at ~60% land area

Since liza has sdi I go for tactical nukes which I've never used before (can someone explain why these are so much better than icbms??)
admittedly the game maybe could've ended here but I was getting impatient since I knew the game was essentially won at this point and made some dumb mistakes

The madlad lizabeth has been building spaceship parts while I was nuking her and she just launched her ship!

I bribe brennus into war and he absorbs most of her nukes for me

London razed, and send a few settlers south for those precious land tiles

GG

As you can see us Malinese are a very peace-loving people

lol

See you all in a year when I beat deity

 

[lymond]

Spiritual is great, Financial is as well but I find it can be tricky to use since it disincentives building cottages if you can work coast tiles instead.

Congrats!

Coastal tiles or lakes can be a nice boost early on if you can or need to work them some, but in no way lessens the value of cottages.

Nice looking start. You should post the autosave in case anyone wants to try to best your glorious victory!

 

[Fippy]

Cheers, BW first if you start with mining and have fish
Here you also had gems to mine before a chop goes into workboat.

 

[jnebbe]

T0 save @lymond

 

[sampsa]

I guess your early game didn't realize the full potential of the start. Judging from the starting screenshot, I'd go 2E to catch fp's and river tiles. Then try to settle all 3 seafood spots asap (probably meaning chop all forest).

Mid-game went well, thanks to good expansion. The end dragged out, I guess you didn't have vassals on? Ends like that is the main reason people tend to keep vassals on - you can just win a completely winning game quickly.

 

[jnebbe]

I guess your early game didn't realize the full potential of the start. Judging from the starting screenshot, I'd go 2E to catch fp's and river tiles. Then try to settle all 3 seafood spots asap (probably meaning chop all forest).

Mid-game went well, thanks to good expansion. The end dragged out, I guess you didn't have vassals on? Ends like that is the main reason people tend to keep vassals on - you can just win a completely winning game quickly.

Yes I think I was thinking too much about whipping instead of getting the fish boats out asap, which would've in turn let me grow and whip sooner anyway.

I do play without vassals; I think it feels kind of cheap to win with them while also being cheap and frustrating if an ai uses them to snowball

 

[sampsa]

I do play without vassals; I think it feels kind of cheap to win with them while also being cheap and frustrating if an ai uses them to snowball

Hmm, I don't think there is anything cheap. It just makes the end game less of a drag. It's possible to make all kinds of similar claims (nukes are cheap!), but I'm not a game designer, I'm a player and I play with the rules that are given. I never understood any need to play with different settings or to mod the game.

T65

Spoiler :

BW-hunt-AH-fish-pot-myst-medi-ph-monarchy-(writing). I did something a bit non-standard and grew to 2, whipped worker. BW first, floodplains and SPI are the things that make it sensible. Delays worker 1T, but has 8 in a warrior, so no big deal either way. Guess some won for working two tiles for a few turns. Went also worker-worker, probably dumb though as not that much forest. 2nd city T38 so pretty slow. T50 still at 2 cities so really slow. Using high for monarchy to work a million cottages asap. Not sure if it's the best, is an issue. Working the chariot towards sentry to perhaps meet someone.

T65 have 4 cities, two granaries and I'm ready to expand with settler whips. Weak scouting and safety though, as usual, but at least the core is very strong now and can settle one more to share fps. Chariot has killed two archers and has sentry now. Would love to find some resources...

 

[sampsa]

T115

Spoiler :

I just chose to go for cuirs since there is access to many AIs and can get to cuirs really fast. I didn't expand to cover my continent, I feel that it'd just slow down the attack way too much. Will go with 8 cities (8th needed to claim iron). Certainly not stellar play, I think with such a start 300 1AD is pretty normal. I couldn't bring myself to build an academy, even if it'd make 45pt at 100% slider, because insta 1500 simply leads to faster attack and post-attack shouldn't matter much. Starting GA in a few turns though with SPI I am already in caste+paci, just need to grow all three to full size (Gao, Kumbi, Djenne). Had to switch in and out of religion to please the AIs (to get OB+trades). Should be very easy from here, i.e. not planning to finish.

 

[krikav]

@jnebbe Nicely done!
I think the only advantage of tactical nukes is that they are much cheaper...? Thats the reason I build much more of those when I get to that stage anyway.
But perhaps SDI does work better on ICBMs, wouldn't suprise me if it did.

Ofcourse the beginning of the game could have been more efficient, but showing some grit and getting some wins under your belt is very valuable too. Having experience with lategame warfare and being more comfortable with that phase of the game is something that I think helps alot.

 

[Nick723]

Hmm, I don't think there is anything cheap. It just makes the end game less of a drag. It's possible to make all kinds of similar claims (nukes are cheap!), but I'm not a game designer, I'm a player and I play with the rules that are given. I never understood any need to play with different settings or to mod the game.

T65

Spoiler :

BW-hunt-AH-fish-pot-myst-medi-ph-monarchy-(writing). I did something a bit non-standard and grew to 2, whipped worker. BW first, floodplains and SPI are the things that make it sensible. Delays worker 1T, but has 8 in a warrior, so no big deal either way. Guess some won for working two tiles for a few turns. Went also worker-worker, probably dumb though as not that much forest. 2nd city T38 so pretty slow. T50 still at 2 cities so really slow. Using high for monarchy to work a million cottages asap. Not sure if it's the best, is an issue. Working the chariot towards sentry to perhaps meet someone.

View attachment 593194
T65 have 4 cities, two granaries and I'm ready to expand with settler whips. Weak scouting and safety though, as usual, but at least the core is very strong now and can settle one more to share fps. Chariot has killed two archers and has sentry now. Would love to find some resources...

View attachment 593195

I realise that this is somewhat nit-picking...

But you do play without huts or events, which I would put in the same category as no vassals (options available in the custom game screen).

Settings you choose do inform what constitutes ‘optimal play’, for example:
- scouting becomes more important with huts
- slavery gets a bit of a nerf with events
- without vassals, cuirassier breakouts become weaker as much more likely to encounter rifles before the game is ‘won’

 

[sampsa]

Okay, that's a fair point. Also if we are taking that route, I play with BUG or BUFFY which could be called a mod.

I don't think huts/events drastically change the game anyway, the ones you point out are very minor. I don't think cuirassier breakouts are weaker really, it's just that their objective changes from chain capping everyone to expanding to some +30 cities. I think the weakest part of this game is that winning a completely won position requires still a lot of play and no vassals alleviates that problem even further.