Frustrated with immortal

[Gumbolt]

So Deity challenge next then?

See how you cope with Monty's stacks on Deity?

 

[jorissimo]

So Deity challenge next then?

See how you cope with Monty's stacks on Deity?

Lol! My first Deity game will probably be a Quechua rush. But before that I would probably want to beat Immortal on a hard map with Boudica. Funnily enough, my first Immortal win was a cultural victory with Wang Kon. This was in my last civ phase before the current one, around 2019-2020. Kind of strange for a first time really, not the easiest victory out there

Edit: that was a Noble's Club game (172). The land kinda sucked, mostly plains and tundra. I'm not sure how I did it with 7 cities.

Second edit: 10 cities. But last in score.

 

[sampsa]

I have never won culture in BtS.

 

[jorissimo]

Here we go. Lessons learned. I ordered them roughly in chronological order as they were posted here. Didn't include specific space race advice, as that would probably merit a separate guide.

Spoiler :

• Don’t worry about happiness early. Letting your cities grow to 1-2 unhappiness is fine, especially because those angry faces are just stored production.
• Always work the strongest tiles, independently of happy cap.
• Chop chop chop early on.
• Trade health resources for happiness ones.
• Second city around 2600-2700 BC. Third city around 2200 BC (or 2000 BC at the latest)
• Build a granary in the capital as well.
• Don’t farm plains tiles (except for irrigation chains)
• Size 12 capital by 1 AD.
• You can have 3-4 cities before building cottages.
• Settle connected cities close to the capital.
• Calculate the whole build, improvement and tech order in the early game to line everything up and not waste any resources in a broader sense (worker turns, tile yields, beakers).
• Take your time in the early game, taking regular breaks to reflect, like every 15-20 turns until t100 or so.
• Prioritize cities with automatic trade routes (this does not necessarily have to mean being connected to the capital as secondary cities can have connections between one another even if not connected to the capital). With automatic trade routes, close cities basically pay for themselves.
• Coast connects before any tech, as long as all of the coast is visibly covered in culture.
• Adjacent river tiles are connected even if they are on separate rivers that do not meet.
• Prioritize cities with resources that can be improved before they are settled.
• Early tech order is one of the most difficult decisions of the game. I tend to go for a weakest-link logic: between food, production and commerce, think what you lack the most and research that. Especially commerce can be clutch. Don’t just research all worker techs you need for your capital, you might have to skip some initially. Depending on the map, Fishing and The Wheel are ancient commerce techs. The same goes for Mining if you have precious metals or Hunting if you have ivory or fur. But of course calculate everything and make sure no worker is idle.
• Barbs enter borders on average on t50 on Immortal (the specific rule is that the average number of cities per player/AI must be above 2).
• Don’t fret if you’re boxed in with four cities without strategic resources. You can always break out using catapults and archers.
• General principle: make concrete plans and execute them in a very targeted way. Ask yourself if any action directly contributes to reaching a particular goal, and if it doesn’t, don’t do it.
• Don’t forget to road into neighbours as soon as writing is in (or even better, time it so that you have roads in place as writing finishes).
• Cottage river plains tiles. As long as food is not scarce or you have a low happy cap, they are better than non-riverside grassland cottages.
• For a construction breakout, aim for around 7-10 catapults and 7-9 melee units. Attack date should be pre-1 AD. Around t100 is a good target.
• Don’t fret if you get attacked by a third AI while prepping for an early war against a neighbour. Leave some defenses behind (a couple of axes and a spear), preferably on a forested hill. Then you can just attack your target.
• Scout out AIs while preparing for an attack. This can be done with any unit, including workers if you don’t need them.
• Don’t always immediately move substantial numbers of units into conquered cities. There may be counterattacks which may be unfavorable. On the other hand, if you have siege, them taking the city back immediately just means you can kill more of their units on the next turn.
• Send workers along with stacks to instantly connect conquered cities.
• Don’t always use GGs for super medics, sometimes promoting a whole stack is better.
• If an AI starts plotting while you have a peace treaty with them, they can’t be plotting on you.
• Always check if you can send cheap old techs for gold. Can be quite substantial.
• Spreading your religion to your cities is a very high priority. Whipping missionaries is justified.
• Settle island cities ASAP (unless you’re preparing for an early war), again justifying whipping.
• Same goes for improving those islands’ seafood. Barb galleys cannot enter ocean ever. You can enter ocean that is covered in your culture. This can sometimes mean you can just ignore the barb galleys by sailing around them.
• Around the middle game you need a plan for Great People. Usually one golden age while running Pacifism and Caste System (switching out of those on the last turn of the GA) is enough to get 3 GS to get you to Liberalism (avoid Machinery in this case). This plan usually requires you to bulb Philosophy with your first GS (worth it even if others already have the tech) and use a second GP (the Great Artist from Music for instance) to trigger a GA.
• In anticipation of the GA, you need to grow your cities as much as possible and avoid whipping them. Pick a few that will be temporary GP farms (making sure they can run around 5 specialists). Then, when the GA starts, make sure you schedule GP emergence from small to large, because smaller cities have less pop to spare, and the GP threshold goes up after each GP.
• Forges and Courthouses aren’t always necessary. Don’t build them out of habit. They can be good for longer games though.
• Academies are usually not worth it, unless you’re Philosophical or for space games.
• If you complete the Taj Mahal during a GA you get one turn of GA for free.
• You don’t need universities and Oxford for Cuirassier games.
• Scout out wars between AIs to see where things are going (you want to avoid a strong civ easily taking over a weak one).
• Every tile in your empire should have a road before leaving workers idle. After that, use them to scout the AI (meaning, keeping the fog of war lifted so you can see their units).
• General and very important takeaway: too many buildings! Calculate how long buildings take to earn themselves back (taking into account the opportunity cost of not running wealth or building units). If the game is over before that, don’t build them.
• When trying to decide on a next target, always prioritize the nearest, easiest to assimilate AI. Only go for the strongest if they are close to getting a key military tech, making their conquest later much more difficult.
• Switching to Vassalage is usually not worth it, as it adds little in terms of XP.
• Flanking promotions are useless. They do less damage, don’t kill, need to heal if they survive and slow down attacks.
• With Cuirassier attacks, figure out where the opponent’s stack is, mapping out its potential path, and then let it come to you first, after which you can take it out in the open.
• On the other hand, it’s better to attack stacks inside cities if you have cannons.
• Don’t prioritize your economy during war time. Whip, whip, whip.
• Make sure you do not attack shortly before an AP vote. Always check when the next AP vote is in the victory screen and plan accordingly.
• Work coast over plains farms.
• If you have a production advantage, you should not lose a well-prepared war to a single AI at tech parity.
• In a Cuirassier war, when the opponent has a massive stack in their capital, do not attack the capital. Attack other cities first. Force the stack to come out.
• Contentious issue: upgrading Cuirassiers to Cavalry. Sampsa says yes, a pen-dragon says no.
• Even future era AI with all techs can be taken out with tanks and fighters/bombers.
• Don’t give gold or expensive techs to get leaders to pleased (the effect of gold scales downward with the number of turns you have known an AI and so is rarely worth it).
• When dealing with a lot of unhappiness, sometimes upping the culture slider can increase bpt, as counterintuitive as it sounds.
• Aim to pair State Property with Caste System for super workshops, dealing with Emancipation unhappiness by bribing your vassals to switch out of it.
• Use the city details screen (check the dropdown in the city screen) to see which cities are running which (useless) specialists.

Edit: spoilered.

 

[a pen-dragon]

Quite exhaustive list. You probably know these things but for further reference I want to state that:

Don’t fret if you get attacked by a third AI while prepping for an early war against a neighbour. Leave some defenses behind (a couple of axes and a spear), preferably on a forested hill.

Make sure you can wipe their stack (defensively) first.

Settle island cities ASAP

Only if they have seafood, or you have GLH, or, arguably, you have no foreign trade routes and need the commerce.

If I might also add one point that I believe is important:

• Have a plan on how to win the game by midgame.

upgrading Cuirassiers to Cavalry.

for instance this would heavily depend on that plan.

 

[jorissimo]

Make sure you can wipe their stack (defensively) first.

That's an important caveat I kinda took for granted. But it's true, Monty suicided his stack before I attacked WK.

 

[sampsa]

That's a very nice list. Perhaps not all are hard truths but certainly something to consider.

You didn't comment on your T0 decision. On page 2 I recommend 1W which seems almost automatic for me. By T50 you are up 50 which is a LOT. It's half a tech! 1T later cow+corn loses what - 33 and say it snowballs a bit to 66... it's still way less than 50. Also getting techs earlier snowballs. What about moving away from a possible horse/copper/iron? So what, another city can work it, which is especially easy with CRE. The killed wine tile itself is meaningless.

• go aggressively for capital city center bonuses, especially when you don't lose a turn doing so.

 

[jorissimo]

That's a very nice list. Perhaps not all are hard truths but certainly something to consider.

You didn't comment on your T0 decision. On page 2 I recommend 1W which seems almost automatic for me. By T50 you are up 50 which is a LOT. It's half a tech! 1T later cow+corn loses what - 33 and say it snowballs a bit to 66... it's still way less than 50. Also getting techs earlier snowballs. What about moving away from a possible horse/copper/iron? So what, another city can work it, which is especially easy with CRE. The killed wine tile itself is meaningless.

• go aggressively for capital city center bonuses, especially when you don't lose a turn doing so.

Yeah in hindsight I regret not having settled on the wine. Also because the corn and sheep would have fallen into my culture earlier.

 

[Gumbolt]

When you settle on a gold tile for extra hammer and commerce? Instead of being stuck on low or no growth for many turns. The difference of 4-5 turns vs 7-10 turns growth. Also the reason come 1ad your capital is still size 8. 12 is only a target many manage 15-18 by 1ad if you have double fish or wet corn starts. You need HR civic to keep the city happy of course. 5-8 warriors too.

 

[jorissimo]

So, back to the Washington game. I just wanted to run this by you guys to see what you think. As you may remember, I started this game at the same time I started the Sury shadow game. Took out most of Cathy, except for 2 cities, in the BCs with a horse archer rush. Took peace because I was close to going on strike and had some heavy losses towards the end. Then back-settled and I have 15 cities now. I had originally planned a 16th city for the spot marked 'c', which has a settler on it, but now I feel like that city won't add a whole lot. I haven't touched this game in almost a month. I went through the last session (around mid-end of October) kinda fast, doing T100 to T157 in one go. This was before I got much of the middle game advice for Sury so I played this a little sub-optimally. As far as I can tell, I'm getting my first GP now, which I understand is super late. I switched to Hindu to please the rest of the continent (Cathy originally founded Judaism, which was my first religion, but for some stupid reason I didn't spread Hindu almost anywhere. Switched research to Philo just now to prepare for a golden age. When the GA comes, I could temporarily switch back to Juda just to make Paci work. I'm lagging behind in tech, but if I do this GA correctly, I might still win Lib (thank God I don't have Machinery). Furthermore, I noticed I whipped too many forges and courthouses (old habit). So now the question is, where would you take this? Cuirs? Or develop the land further and go to war at a later tech since I have 15 cities and a bunch of infrastructure? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Spoiler :

 

[a pen-dragon]

I would just go space. The current empire should be ample to do so.

Really for anyone playing immortal this position makes it very hard to lose, independent of what plan you pursue.

Maybe a Cuir rush would be a bit too slow.

 

[jorissimo]

I would just go space. The current empire should be ample to do so.

Really for anyone playing immortal this position makes it very hard to lose, independent of what plan you pursue.

Maybe a Cuir rush would be a bit too slow.

Then I have a further question for optimal play. It would be nice to lib down the communism path, but both the Press and Astro require Machinery. Since Pacal can go Edu already, it will probably be a close race, so that would mean bulbing lib and libbing Nat and going Taj since I have marble. What do you think?

 

[a pen-dragon]

First you have the advantage to see what Pacal goes for, that is nice.

Lib is not safe, but you should have a good shot, but that rules anything fancy out. That is a scenario where you would want to pre-research Lib, try some stuff, and if an AI gets Edu (and Philo) then get Lib and pick your backup option.

Machinery should not be a problem, since it can be traded for. Also libbing Nat seems like a bit of a waste, sure the taj is nice, but I think that for a long game printing press would be better. The less time your game lasts the more important the GA becomes.

If you do not want to do a cuir (or cav) rush then nationalism can be skipped until going for assembly line, so the tech cost really has to be added to the cost of the taj. A big reason for going for it in cuir rushes is that it is on the way anyway, and there really is no reason not to try for it most of the time.

 

[jorissimo]

First you have the advantage to see what Pacal goes for, that is nice.

Lib is not safe, but you should have a good shot, but that rules anything fancy out. That is a scenario where you would want to pre-research Lib, try some stuff, and if an AI gets Edu (and Philo) then get Lib and pick your backup option.

Machinery should not be a problem, since it can be traded for. Also libbing Nat seems like a bit of a waste, sure the taj is nice, but I think that for a long game printing press would be better. The less time your game lasts the more important the GA becomes.

If you do not want to do a cuir (or cav) rush then nationalism can be skipped until going for assembly line, so the tech cost really has to be added to the cost of the taj. A big reason for going for it in cuir rushes is that it is on the way anyway, and there really is no reason not to try for it most of the time.

The thing is that if I have have to bulb lib there won't really be any good techs to take. But I'll let it depend on what Pacal goes for. I'll double bulb Edu and then evaluate whether I can hard tech Lib in time and take Printing Press for it. Btw, GAs require n GP of different types, where n + 1 after each GP-generated GA, or after each GA period?

 

[a pen-dragon]

The taj does not increase the number of GP you need.

n + 1 after each GP-generated GA

So this.

Btw, I think that even getting 2GP before Lib is a stretch, although possible with Caste/Paci. Planning more than two bulbs for the Lib line now seems wrong.

 

[sampsa]

So now the question is, where would you take this?

You have a nice big empire, I don't think forges/courthouses and buildery stuff is bad here. It just means you need to chill now, i.e. certainly not go cuirs imo. I would just tech, see if you can win lib, attack maybe at rifling, maybe at tanks. Of course space is doable, but why.

 

[jorissimo]

You have a nice big empire, I don't think forges/courthouses and buildery stuff is bad here. It just means you need to chill now, i.e. certainly not go cuirs imo. I would just tech, see if you can win lib, attack maybe at rifling, maybe at tanks. Of course space is doable, but why.

It's nice to see convergence around skipping cuirs and teching further!

 

[sampsa]

Yeah. It's because the point of cuirs is to get there quickly with a small number of cities (under 10) and then take more cities quickly. Earlier warring often slows down your tech but helps you get more cities. Especially if your tech pace is extremely slow (it has been here) cuirs will be late and you might face a lot of resistance. On the other hand chilling and teching further with 15 cities will guarantee you a very strong position later.

 

[jorissimo]

Yeah. It's because the point of cuirs is to get there quickly with a small number of cities (under 10) and then take more cities quickly. Earlier warring often slows down your tech but helps you get more cities. Especially if your tech pace is extremely slow (it has been here) cuirs will be late and you might face a lot of resistance. On the other hand chilling and teching further with 15 cities will guarantee you a very strong position later.

That makes sense. I still have some difficulty deciding on a macro strategy, but these are some good pointers.

Edit: I meant the above in a general sense. Regarding this game, I now have a pretty clear idea of what to do.

 

[a pen-dragon]

It is also useful to consider how much additional cities can contribute to the econ, and IMO on standard size and before state property expanding beyond about 20 cities takes lots of time to pay back economically. So if you can forsee that the game will not end on cuirs going for them could actually slow you down.