Hammurabi - Immortal Cookbook

[Dhoomstriker]

What tech from vassal? We will have all tech we need in next 7 turns (in 2 if we go for Mil trad).

I guess I was not very clear in my point.

I am not talking about getting techs from your Vassal.

I am saying that if an AI, like Justinian, is Friendly with you, like he is in your game, he will normally (when you don't have Vassals) trade with you beyond the We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced limit. If you haven't traded a lot in your game and have not reached the WFYABTA limit with some of the AIs, then you are fine.

But, if you have reached that limit or if you want to pursue a victory condition that requires more trading (Space Victory, say), then by taking on a Vassal, Justinian will need to be Friendly with BOTH you AND your Vassal (Zara), in order for you to be able to get techs from Justinian beyond the WFYABTA limit.


So, it's not what the Vassal can do for you, it's what the Vassal hinders you from doing by making him your Vassal.


Since we're playing from my game, we don't even necessarily need to chase after Conquest or Domination. An Apostolic Palace Victory is certainly within the cards if you focus on spreading our Religion domestically and increasing our population--which could come from growing the population of our existing Cities but could also come from capturing some more Cities and spreading Buddhism to said Cities.

In that situation, further trading is almost a negligible concept, since we already have all of the techs that we would need to win.


It all depends upon what your Victory Condition will be, but I like to keep my options open by only accepting strong Vassals instead of weak ones--call it a personal preference because I like to keep my options open on harder difficulty levels where your best-laid plans can often go awry.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Nah. In all honesty, I'd rather not play from a save that has already won a war I had yet to fight, anyway, so I'll probably play through from my own.

And in all honesty, that's fine by me, too. Certainly, my comments on other people's games will be of more use if people actually continue from said games!


What do you guys think on the matter? Does the current voting system work? Should we maybe skip the voting (for future Cookbooks) and try something else?

Here's a possibility: everyone picks any save to continue from, as long as it is not their own. So, we can have actually multiple concurrent diverging timelines being played. We seem to lose participation after a couple of rounds... maybe this method would spark more interest?

Or maybe people just like the early rounds, so something like 50 turns, 30 turns, 30 turns on Normal game Speed would be a better approach?

Maybe you like things just as they are now?

Speak up with your opinion before Kossin hosts the next game!

 

[kossin]

Removing the voting system removes the cookbook approach -> becomes Immortal University.

I really don't have any preferences, whatever people deem most useful we can try... and if it doesn't work well we can try something else.

I wouldn't mind hosting it University-style with suggested checkpoints... less work for me

 

[Silvtown]

I don't think you should change anything. This thread has about 350 replies, tons of views, and was very informative - even though I only had time to lurk and not enough time to dig in and play.

 

[GKey]

The point is it's second cookbook we got much less people after round 1 and almost no people after round 2.
May be removing obligation to play voted save will fix this. We may have vote for the best save still, just no obligation to play from it.

Btw, now trying play Dhooms save I almost want leave too. Restarted 5 times already. Unfreekingplayable!

Well, you keep your promise to make it interesting.

I keep trying.

 

[vranasm]

the problems are multiple

1) sgotm
2) civ v
3) me watching tv shows that USA had offered in last 2 years
4) people really like starts where everything is new and smelling nicely and all options are open, where when you play your cards right from turn XX it's more about tedious drag to build/whip units and actually drag the game to end.

after you saw cavalry rush, with cavalry+bombers ending for 20 times, it's a bit boring to do it just another time.
The early game is so much better ;-) (and don't start to talk about the drag with SS/culture victory)

 

[CivConVict]

I prefer the Cookbook style over the University, it's much more educational. I just don't think we should continue from the best save each round. It makes things too easy for experienced players and players who are still struggling on this difficulty probably have a hard time reproducing such games offline.

Since we're discussing the game style anyway ... would you be open to play somewhat larger maps with more civs once in a while? I find those to be more interesting since taking out one opponent doesn't change the balance of power quite as much as it does on standard size.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Btw, now trying play Dhooms save I almost want leave too. Restarted 5 times already. Unfreekingplayable!

Well, you keep your promise to make it interesting.

Well, where's your strategy discussion?

In the same message where the saved game was uploaded, I put in a few suggestions already.

One thing that stands out in my mind is that there was no plan to attack Cities on Turn 150. We are building up forces at both AIs in preparation for a future attack. We are also "pinning them down," making them defend their Cities due to the nearby threat of our mini-stacks, instead of counter-attacking us.

As long as we remain Friendly with Justinian, Justinian remains at Peace with Zara, and we remain at War with Zara, Justinian will be unable to Peace-time Vassalize Zara, so we essentially have infinite amount of time (i.e. until Cuirs, Cannons, Rifles, or whatever next Military Tech you chase after) before making any progress against Zara's additional Cities. If it take us that long to capture more Cities, no worries.

Further, even with 2 Cities under revolt from Zara's Culture, those Cities cannot fliip back to Zara as long as we remain at War with Zara--they can go into Revolt, but they won't Culturally Flip. So, again, don't panic if they do go into Revolt.


Darius, on the other hand, isn't very large, so Peter will have to get much smaller before Darius would likely try to steal Peter as a Vassal. So, if they make Peace with each other soon, all the better, as once again, with Darius being Friendly with us, he won't be able to Peace-time Vassalize Peter, even if Peter becomes very small after some future war successes, as long as we remain at War with Peter.



If you are trying to attack right away and be the "hero" that captured Cities on Turn 150, then that's why you are likely failing. Our stacks are not large enough yet.

As I suggested, you could consider sending all of our nearby units towards Gondar, but probably the best thing that you can do is just "wait it out" in the Forest by Zara's capital, which means that he is forced to keep his stack of units defending the City, instead of harrassing us.

Peter has even less forces, but I'd suggest still waiting until more reinforcements arrive before attacking.


Now is not the time to throw everything at the AIs--we're at an equilibrium point, where we just need to hold them off while we tech up.


I also wouldn't recommend taking either of them on as a Vassal, as neither is a particularly promising-looking Vassal, while getting their lands eventually for ourselves is a much better prospect.


One suggestion that I have is to re-tool the Heroic Epic City. Switch it from Grassland Farms to squares that produce Hammers, even if it means a temporary Food deficit in the City. We'll take better advantage of the Golden Age's extra Hammers that way.


At some point, you'll want to invest in Apostolic Palace Religous Buildings, but that time doesn't have to be right away.


Feel free to change the Build queues, too. Sparta doesn't really NEED an Aqueduct, and it's only a place-holder build item at the moment anyway, with 0 Hammers invested into it. Sparta has both a Barracks and a Stable, so feel free to switch to building Military Units from there, for example.

Alternatively, plan to have a "holding action" at both AIs and wait for Cuirassiers before taking any more Cities, meaning that a City like Sparta should now build the 2 Buddhist Religious Buildings (Monastery and Temple) in anticipation of wanting the extra Hammers to pump out Cuirassiers in the near future.


We have our State Religion reasaonably-well spread, we're about to complete The Forbidden Palace, we're still in a Golden Age, Justinian is likely to vote us in as the Apostolic Palace Resident, and we have 2 AIs under our thumbs... so what's going wrong? My guess is that you are struggling with trying to play the hero and are perhaps attacking now (at the wrong time)--when you have insufficient forces to guarranty a City capture.

If there is some other major issue that you are facing, do share. Is Saladin trying to Peace-time Vassalize one of our war targets? It's unlikely, since he didn't do so in the past couple of turns, when we'd owned the same number of AIs' Cities. Saladin also is of a differing Religion and doesn't have a huge, powerful empire, so neither of those two factors leads to him being a likely Peace-time Master.

Zara would be most likely to captiulate to Justinian, especially after the war successes that Justinian had had against Zara, but as long as you stay at War with Zara and as long as Justinian stays at Peace with Zara, that possibility is an impossibility--well, unless you take on a different Vassal, like Peter, after which the Diplomacy map will change and all bets are off. Is that what you're doing? Vassalizing Peter and then finding that Justinian Peace-time Vassalizes Zara only to declare war on us? If so, you asked for it! Of course Justinian is not going to sit idly by while you try to Vassalize the world--but he WILL sit idly by if you avoid taking Vassals, since he is Friendly with us.


So, what is this great struggle that you are having?

 

[drlake]

@Dhoom

Reading your strategy comments is particularly interesting because of the way you run wars. Most of the advice I've seen posted around here seems to favor blitzkrieg-type wars, while you are quite content to leave things in stalemate for sometimes extended periods until you can either resume the offensive or the timing is right for peace. In very early wars, war weariness isn't an issue so that makes sense, but in mid- to late-game wars I've found WW more of an issue. The combination of a preponderance of advice favoring quick wars and a couple of games where WW became a problem have "conditioned" me into a reluctance to start wars until I've got overwhelming military superiority, and a preference for making peace when things bog down. I'm finding it very useful to see your explanations of WHY you are initiating wars you aren't really ready to fight (such as with worker steals in the early game), leaving AIs on the ropes rather than making peace or taking them out (particularly in the early game, such as in this IC), and accepting a period of stasis such as at this point in the game.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Reading your strategy comments is particularly interesting because of the way you run wars. Most of the advice I've seen posted around here seems to favor blitzkrieg-type wars, while you are quite content to leave things in stalemate for sometimes extended periods until you can either resume the offensive or the timing is right for peace.

Part of my strategy extends from the fact that I like to make allies out of my old war mates. At least, I like to do so once I've taken all of their good Cities. I'd much rather have a weak AI that doesn't hate me owning the poor land, instead of either having to own it myself or allowing another AI to come in and fill the vacuum, becoming that much stronger.


The other part of my strategy derives from how the Vassal system works. If we were playing in Vanilla, I might not care as much and would be far more willing to accept Cease Fires, raze Cities, or leave a weak AI that hates me a lot around to rot.

But with the introduction of Vassals, things change drastically. A weakened AI can very quickly team up with one of the stronger AIs, making for a stronger, more difficult-to-beat superpower than before your original war started.

Even if you don't have a lot of success in capturing many Cities, an AI that loses a big stack of their units (usually taking down at least some of your units in exchange) can run off to another AI, asking for protection, too.

It's all inter-related, which is part of the reason why I try to garner good allies (i.e. a Friendly Jusinian and a Friendly Darius) who will not only support me in a war, but more importantly, won't backstab me via the Vassalization system. That aspect of your game can drag out wars, but it can also make fighting the toughest AIs that much easier, as you'll more consistently be fighting them without them having the support of Vassals.

In the meantime, keeping the war-targeted AIs happier by only declaring war on them once, makes them more likely to become your Vassal later in the game, since they won't hate you absolutely and completely. I'd rather not make them my first Vassal, but after I accept another AI as a strong Vassal (say, we if we were later to get Darius to become our Vassal in this game), THEN I'd want to use my continued good relations with an empire-gutted Peter or Zara to get them as a Vassal--even a Peace-time Vassal--so as to assimilate the other AIs into the Collective that much sooner.


Besides, in this game, WE control the Statue of Zeus, so the longer that we remain at war, the longer it will take for the AIs' extra War Weariness to wear off. This War Weariness may or may not (likely not, since we're at Immortal level) be affecting the AIs yet, but keeping this War Weariness pressure on them may eventually make it add up enough to start to cripple them, or, if they aren't mindlessly coded, to discourage them from building as many units like Catapults to throw away on our stacks (although this last hope about AI intelligence is probably asking for way too much out of the AI programming in this game).

The combination of a preponderance of advice favoring quick wars and a couple of games where WW became a problem have "conditioned" me into a reluctance to start wars until I've got overwhelming military superiority

That advice is all fine and good on Monarch difficulty level, where you can actually pull ahead of the AIs and stay there for a long enough time to leverage your military tech advantage.

On Immortal, you have no such guarantees and you should expect to be fighting at equal tech level at best, most of the game. Liberalism might give us a temporary leg-up, but it's not going to last us very long. For example, Justinian favours Nationalism and Military Tradition, so he'll likely start piggybacking off of our Research if we go that route.

Zara is very likely to tech Gunpowder.

What do you think would happen if Zara became Justinian's Vassal?

Not only would it make for a horde of units that we'd have to fight off, but they'd be at tech parity with our potential Liberalism beeline of Military Tradition.

That's one reason why, if Justinian is willing to rejoin the war against Zara, you should NOT bribe him into the war. Meanwhile, if Justinian declares on Zara of his own accord, you may have to give away a valuable tech to him, just to secure Peace between him and Zara. It's certainly better than the alternative of them joining up to be the world's superpower--you'd rather have Justinian be at tech parity but be all alone, while you snap up more of the other AIs' lands and become a superpower in your own right.


On Immortal difficulty level, you can't COUNT on having an overwhelming military superiority unless you POSITION yourself to get there. Declaring war on an AI, keeping your thumb pressed-down on them, and garnering allies with the other AIs so that they won't backstab you by Peace-time Vassalizing your war opponent in one way to CREATE such a situation that otherwise might not be possible. You've got to work harder for your opportunities--or, if you played any sport, your coach may have once told you that you have to make your own opportunities, which is the same when you play with the "big boys" (AIs at Immortal level difficulty).

Sure, you can load up a starting location with really nice Resources and either the AIs placed far away or a nearby AI with no strategic Resources to defend themselves and then not have as much to worry about. But in your average game, where you don't play under ideal conditions, "waiting for your military advantage to become superior" just isn't going to cut it--it is unlikely to happen and if it does, it won't last for long, so you're more likely to have success with setting up and creating such an opportunity, rather than waiting for it to fall into your lap.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

and don't start to talk about the drag with SS/culture victory

Eh? How many Space Victories or Cultural Victories have you won on Immortal-level difficulty?


I'll tell you that a Cultural Victory where you don't go the Corporations Route for Sid's Sushi can be very stressful. Even moreso without the Pyramids to keep your Research Rate going.

And if you do go for Sid's Sushi, the game still won't be a guaranteed lock, as the AIs' tech pace will be that much faster and you'll be threatened by more powerful military techs that much sooner.


Sure, a Space Victory can be boring if you're already close to the Domination limit and are just dragging the game out. But, then you aren't really playing purely for Space and are just being lazy about completing your Domination game.

If, however, you're in a position where the only feasible way to win is by a Space Victory, then it's certainly going to be a very challenging, intense, and exciting late-game.

 

[GKey]

Some things to consider:

...
If you are trying to attack right away and be the "hero" that captured Cities on Turn 150, then that's why you are likely failing. Our stacks are not large enough yet.

Don't need to be an expert to see that we don't have enough forces in stacks to attack Aksum or Moscow. That's exactly my point: we are in 2fronts war while have forces sufficient only for 1 opponent. What are our stacks doing there then? They cause both Zara and Peter amass defense in both cities, so our chances are not going to get any better.

As I suggested, you could consider sending all of our nearby units towards Gondar, but probably the best thing that you can do is just "wait it out" in the Forest by Zara's capital, which means that he is forced to keep his stack of units defending the City, instead of harrassing us.

I do prefer him try harassing us, so I can kill his forces in open and come back after him. But first and foremost we don't have enough catapults! And we keep producing phants (vs mounted I guess) and HA's (vs catapults?!) - all these are just food for his pikes, no chance you can use them to attack city. We'd better not go for any Zara's cities until we are done with Peter. We got shorter border line with him before and could have little problem to defend while kill his stacks in open and use all our remaining forces to finish of Peter ASAP.

Peter has even less forces, but I'd suggest still waiting until more reinforcements arrive before attacking.

We slowly getting more forces near Moscow while Peter getting more defenses inside. Our chances there are not going to be any better! I've pulled our stack from his territory (1 catapult only, you kidding, right?).

Now is not the time to throw everything at the AIs--we're at an equilibrium point, where we just need to hold them off while we tech up.
And we are going to stay at this point for a long long time now. You right, we need military techs to move on. But guess what? Justinian is couple turns from Education - you could find it your self by offering him this tech and see what will he give in return. He is going to beat us to liberalism, before we will get anything from it. Academy in Sparta is ok, but now we desperately need that GS for bulbing. We could finish PP already and tech Gunpowder, while producing next GS for Chemistry.
I also wouldn't recommend taking either of them on as a Vassal, as neither is a particularly promising-looking Vassal, while getting their lands eventually for ourselves is a much better prospect.
So we going to stay in this pointless war for another ~50 turns? I see no problem in vassalizing Zara. Btw in my round3 save I've immediately converted him into Buddhism, after vassalizing him. That made Justinian and Darius pleased with Zara, so my relations with them remain friendly. We should vassalize them ASAP and go for Saladin ASAP and yes vassalize him too and do all out war with Justinian for domination. In current situation none of it can be done soon.
....
So, what is this great struggle that you are having?
All I've mentioned above. Mainly the fact that Justinian will get Liberalism before us been able to get anything useful from it. And yes I pulled our stack from Aksum and captured Gondar, while preparing more forces. Then after few turns Saladin declared on me. That's not a big issue comparing to these we already got. But all in all situation is not pretty.

EDIT: Yes religious victory is possible here, but we will not get 75% votes without capturing some cities from Justinian I afraid.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I prefer the Cookbook style over the University, it's much more educational.

I would have to agree. Playing your own game the entire game makes you far less open to having learn and deal with other players' approaches to the game. You may not like the situation in which you got thrown, but it teaches you to adapt a whole lot better. Taking up someone else's game also forces you to realise that there is more than "one way" to be successful and can very quickly open your eyes to new strategies that you would never try out on your own, even if people told you what to do.

I just don't think we should continue from the best save each round. It makes things too easy for experienced players and players who are still struggling on this difficulty probably have a hard time reproducing such games offline.

Here is one reason why I liked our pre-turnset strategy discussions. This past turnset, a lot of us followed a very similar approach:
1. Great Library and National Epic in Athens
2. Cottages and Mausoleum of Maussollos in Babylon
3. Heroic Epic in one of two discussed locations, with a focus on pumping Military Units out of that City instead of building Markets, etc, like we are normally tempted to do
4. Similar war targets (at least for those of us who went to war)
5. A similar attempt to get the Great Artist from Music
6. Etc

I think that this approach led to players having a lot more comfort and understanding of each others' games, while at the same time, we still got exposed to vastly-varying strategies and approaches. In that way, the commonality gives us a basis to work from, while the differences allow us to compare and contrast certain parts of our game in isolation--which is important in a game like Civ 4 where you can do so many things differently so as to quickly make 2 games be completely uncomparable to each other.

In this way, we'll also have a lot of games where we'll have done similar things (like building The Great Library in "the chosen place" and actually completing it before the AIs), but we'll also be able to say "sure, let's pick one of the weaker games to continue from, since we still made some good choices but aren't in a totally ideal position."

Since we're discussing the game style anyway ... would you be open to play somewhat larger maps with more civs once in a while? I find those to be more interesting since taking out one opponent doesn't change the balance of power quite as much as it does on standard size.

Maybe a Continents game would feed this need just as well? Put us on the smaller Continent and, say, Shaka on the other Continent?

My concern is that many of us (including me) don't have computers that run larger maps effectively, so beyond the first round or two, the game would bog down enough for at least me to keep participating.


Another approach is to have a setup like:
1. We're on a small continent with 2 to 3 AIs (so that trading, wars, and other early-game aspects are still all possible)
2. There is another, larger continent with 2 to 3 AIs within Galley-reaching distance (who can still pose a significant threat)
3. There is yet another, even larger continent that can only be reached via the Ocean (not even with a Cultural land bridge) that contains at least 3 AIs (who can also potentially run away with a tech lead, can build Wonders which we cannot capture early in the game, and can make for a suitable end-game challenge)

The map size would thus remain the same but the number of AIs on the map would be overloaded. It would also give us a series of successive challenges and opponents to overcome, such that even if we had major successes early on, we still might have a good struggle ahead of us, since we couldn't grab up too large of a chunk of land early in the game.

 

[vranasm]

Eh? How many Space Victories or Cultural Victories have you won on Immortal-level difficulty?

sorry it wasnt meant to be insultive arrogant etc. I just don't like that kind of victories. I fully admit i never won immortal game, but that was not the point. I just wanted to say that I can see why a lot of people just like more the first 150 turns then the last 150 for example.

 

[GKey]

Well it's a good thing to post impressions after playing some save. Crying on how unplayable Dhooms save is, actually helped me to figure what would be the best way to deal with it. All this is IMHO of cause.

Turn 0: Peace with Peter for compass and gold! Trade Engineering from him same turn. No, I don't see him vassalize to Darius.
Our stack teleport out of his territory closer to Zara's territory and we move it towards Gondar.
Trade music to Saladin for his gold - bring him to cautious. Ask Justinian for ~100 gold, we need it!

Adjust Babylon to produce GP in 4 turns with starvation ( I would kill someone for running engineer there, reducing our small chance to get GS. ).


Adjust cities that have some production to pump catapults/trebs. Stop that phant in Akkad for Crist sake, we need cats/trebs/maces instead!

Go for Gondor right now and for Aksum, when forces from Russia will arrive.

Next is uncertain. Capture more cities/vassalize/eliminate Zara, we will see... After that redeclare on Peter, swiftly capture Moscow and look if it worth vassalize him too. Don't forget convert Zara to Buddhism if you vassalize him. That way you will not suffer from diplomacy.

Trade/gift some techs to Saladin, try get him to pleased. Go into slavery/theocracy on last turn of Golden Age.
If Justinian get some serious gold next turns - trade him education, he will get it in a few turns and we need gold to run for lib-steel with 100% slider. No chances for Mil Trad from lib as I see it, only if someone will finish Nationalism and we trade for it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Don't need to be an expert to see that we don't have enough forces in stacks to attack Aksum or Moscow. That's exactly my point: we are in 2fronts war while have forces sufficient only for 1 opponent. What are our stacks doing there then? They cause both Zara and Peter amass defense in both cities, so our chances are not going to get any better.

Well, use whatever war tactics you have at your disposal to deal with the situation. For example, what you said you are doing here:

I've pulled our stack from his territory

Go ahead and do so. Focus on one opponent at a time.

Or, focus on reinforcing just one AI front at a time.

Or, execute whatever other tactics you feel will work best.

And we keep producing phants (vs mounted I guess) and HA's (vs catapults?!)

Recall that the war against Zara wasn't by choice.

The gains that we made against Zara were from coming from behind, where he had a Chariot, some Axemen, and Swordsmen at our capital's gates. I'd upgraded our defending Warrior to a Spearman, to prevent the Chariot from attacking our defending Axemen in Babylon, so that the next turn, we could counter his forces with Axemen. From that desperate situation, we have slowly but surely pushed the war back into Zara's lands.

However, since we had dragged Justinian into the war against Zara, and the two of them fought with Zara coming out in the losing position, I am very hesitant to give Zara Peace. To do so would likely result in a Peace-time Vassalization of Zara to Justinian, which is the last thing that we need right now.

War Elephants are to deal with the Crossbowmen that both AIs are fielding. Horse Archers are because Zara keeps sending out lone Catapults which are easier pickings with Horse Archers than with any other unit type.

we don't have enough catapults!

We haven't HAD enough of an advantage ever since Zara declared war on us to consider going for pure Maces and Cats--had we done so, our stack would have been wiped out before it got started.

It is all nice and good to describe the ideal make-up of an army, but when it is too small to be able to defend a stack of Catapults and you have already been forced into a war, you only have so many options available to you.

We slowly getting more forces near Moscow while Peter getting more defenses inside. Our chances there are not going to be any better! I've pulled our stack from his territory (1 catapult only, you kidding, right?).

Darius pulled the trigger first. If you notice, Moscow is no longer Peter's capital. He only just recently recaptured it.

Unfortunately, our forces weren't sufficient enough (because so many units were being directed towards Zara) to be able to "scoop up" the City from Darius, since Darius brought such an overwhelming stack.

But then his wounded stack hid in Moscow to heal up and Peter took it down (note his Horse Archer stack in Moscow).

So, the Longbowmen in Moscow don't even have any Fortification bonus yet. Unfortunately, Peter has just recently moved too many units back into Moscow to fortify it.


So, use a different tactic than brute force. Push into his territory. Pillage his source of Iron. Go after a different City with your stack, instead. Then, turn around and go for Moscow with your original stack and a newly-built stack.

Or forget bringing new units to Peter and send all new units to Zara.

Whatever. You have a lot of options available to you if you think beyond the overdone "crash and bash, throw Cats at every stack that I see and then throw Maces as a follow-up, taking every City in my path" approach. Retreating with our stack and then coming back to Moscow with a bigger stack is certainly an option, as you seem to have implied.

You right, we need military techs to move on.

It's not an absolute necessity. Both of the AIs that we are at war with have had their Stacks of Doom destroyed.

They don't have a tech advantage over us.

If you Pillage Peter's Iron, then he will stop fielding:
1. Macemen
2. Crossbowmen
3. Pikemen (although I have yet to see him build a single one of these)

All of a sudden, our cheaper-than-Macemen, Combat-promoted War Elephants will seem like a great counter to his freshly-built Horse Archers and Catapults.

Justinian is couple turns from Education - you could find it your self by offering him this tech and see what will he give in return. He is going to beat us to liberalism, before we will get anything from it.

We're 1 turn away from Liberalism, so we won't lose that race unless you really push it.

Start self-teching Nationalism immediately, if you'd prefer. Or take Nationalism with Liberalism, build the Taj Mahal, and use the Golden Age to switch into the Nationalism Civic and draft a larger army. Adapt. Change. Do something different from a standard must-get-Steel-from-Liberalism gambit.

If you desperately want a second Great Scientist, then work only 3+ Food squares in Babylon, hire 5 to 6 Scientists per turn (6 won't be sustainable but more than 5 will be sustainable--some turns hire 5, other turns hire 6), and get a Great Person with a predominant chance of getting a Great Scientist. It's not a guarantee, but you should probably be able to get somewhere between a 45% to 50% chance of getting one. Just have a backup plan in place in case it's not the Great Person that you want (a non-Great-Artist could spawn another immediate Mausoleum-infused Golden Age, for example).

So we going to stay in this pointless war for another ~50 turns?

Huh? Is it really going to take you that long to research the techs for Cuirassiers and field some of them? I don't see it taking that long, even if you try really hard not to get them.

I see no problem in vassalizing Zara.

To each their own. I would rather at a MINIMUM capture his capital first, in order to relieve a lot of the Cultural pressure on our nearby Cities.

It shouldn't be too hard to convince him, as he previously was willing to capitulate, then lost the nerve once he went to Peace with Justinian. A few more wins should push him back over the edge of willingness to Capitulate, if that's what you want to do.

We should vassalize them ASAP and go for Saladin ASAP and yes vassalize him too and do all out war with Justinian for domination. In current situation none of it can be done soon.

It sounds like you have a strategy in mind that you would like to play. Many players would advocate instead playing the map and coming up with a strategy suits the situation. You can certainly bridge those two ideas together and force your desired strategy to work given the current situation. We're certainly in a strong enough position for you to be able to do so. But yes, it will take some time to execute.

Then after few turns Saladin declared on me.

Hehe, what is it with you and the AIs? They seem to love declaring war on you!

At least Saladin was brilliant enough to attack when it would be his last chance to potentially succeed against you. Don't blame the AI programming for occasionally being smarter then people normally give it credit.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

sorry it wasnt meant to be insultive arrogant etc. I just don't like that kind of victories. I fully admit i never won immortal game, but that was not the point. I just wanted to say that I can see why a lot of people just like more the first 150 turns then the last 150 for example.

That's fine. I didn't take your comments as insulting or arrogant. I simply wanted to point out that Cultural and Space Victories can be challenging in their own right, and those challenges can be quite fun to play out.

I would also tend to agree with the majority of players that the early game is a lot more fun to play.

I actually really enjoy the "unknown" portion of the game, before too much AI territory is revealed, and there is still a lot of mystery about the forces that you will be up against.


One of my bigger beefs with the later game is actually that the lagginess of the game really reduces gameplay enjoyability. The computer can't keep up with the speed of our decisions and thus you're left sitting there waiting a lot of the time.

The Governors are also not trustworthy enough to be left in charge to make good decisions, so you're stuck waiting through the longer lag-time that it takes to enter and exit later-game Cities just to better adjust citizen assignments.

I'd gladly trade good graphics for better response times, but the Low Graphics Settings don't remove things like the "zooming in and out" effect of entering and exiting a City screen, like they should. So, performing an action (switching a citizen's assignment) in the late game becomes a tedious exercise due to lag, where an identical action in the early game doesn't cause as much lag. It just blows the mind as to why they would hire a Product Manager who would advocate for gameplay to be coded in such a silly way.

 

[kossin]

Maybe a Continents game would feed this need just as well? Put us on the smaller Continent and, say, Shaka on the other Continent?

This was the first "true Pangea" game for a cookbook... obviously it's going to be easier for warmongerers... still it's something interesting to do once in a while. I'm a big fan of Fractal normally for the continents that can be reached via wb so that's usually what I generate.

Used to only play Continents when I was a noob... they tend to start off slower since you have less opportunities for trading and then they end fast because you take over your continent and then there's nothing left to do really but conquest or easy space.

Next game will definitely not be a steamroll-over the AI type, but I have not quite decided on the shape of the map yet

 

[GKey]

At least Saladin was brilliant enough to attack when it would be his last chance to potentially succeed against you. Don't blame the AI programming for occasionally being smarter then people normally give it credit.

I would call it brilliant if he'd attack 10 turns earlier. Now it's not that much of an issue.

Point about not enough catapults: why on earth would we get our stack near enemy city, if we can't capture it? I understand, you had no enough time to make more of them, then why bring your stack in, when it's not ready to do anything? Existing phants are sufficient to defend, it's offensive forces we need right now. Why make more phants/HA's instead of much needed maces/cats?

It's not like I am for adamantium rules - get still from lib only, get cats/maces stacks only. With that approach I would never win any war. Just IMHO our chances to get steel from lib is higher (if we get GS in Babylon) then these of getting Mil T with lib. Chances for lib-steel could be 100% if we had that GS, you used on academy in Sparta btw.
Stacks should be balanced with offense/defense forces, we got sufficient defense and insufficient offense currently. Then why we make more defense?

Nationalism from Liberalism? Why actually bother with lib? To get some clear advantage, right? Will nationalism give us such advantage (we could research it our self in same amount of turns)? Drafting on this map is not that efficient IMO. So we will get lib+Nat for trade. Good. But its just like 10% in value of that we could get with Mil T from lib or steel.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

No chances for Mil Trad from lib as I see it

I tried for Military Tradition with Liberalism.

Spoiler Did I get it? :

Yes. But barely.

On the first turn, I sold Music to Saladin for his Gold and a Relationship boost. I didn't do any other Gold-based trades.

If you immediately research Nationalism, then Military Tradition can be yours with Liberalism.

If Justinian get some serious gold next turns - trade him education

I would not suggest trading away Education to Justinian, though, since he is our main competitor for Liberalism and we don't want to give him any more of a head-start than he will already have.