Help on Immortal

[grdolph]

Hello there!

Well I took the steps and have beaten the game in all other levels besides Immortal and Deity.
Now I've tried Immortal a couple of times, with China and Persia, but although it seems to have started quite well, after some time the huge bonuses that AI gets leave me far behind them and thus lose.

What do you think is the "right" way to beat AI in such levels?
Are there some specific steps that help that much?

BTW, I'm playing standard maps/continents.

Many thanks

 

[CharonJr]

Basically warrior rush your closest neighbour, then rush the next one with warriors and horsemen. And steal their workers ASAP, this will slow them down.

With 1 city and 2-4 puppets you will be equal to the remaining AIs, maybe even a bit ahead.

CharonJr

 

[Soronery]

if you don't attack something early you will be really far behind.

 

[avl8]

Or unless you settle like true ICS they just overcome by bonus science/production.
ICS is the only strong strategy on immortal imho, unless you got isolated start somehow and they just burn each other somewhere far far away.

In any case you have to play diplomatic games, means get as many PoS/PoC to make em struggle with each other while your getting higher and higher on a food chain.

 

[grdolph]

Well I do warrior rush to my first neighbor and usually it is successful, except from these times where he is far away and until I send 4-5 warriors there he already has a 9-10 defense city plus warriors and archers.

After I get the first neighbor I'm not usually in position to hunt a second one, cause they all seem too strong after that time.
That's when I try to build/advance my cities and that's where I fall behind eventually.

You mention "playing true ICS". How do you mean "true ICS"?
I have this example of my today's game, with Persia, where I was lucky to have 5 cities in continent and I got full space in a big island next to the continent (where I could send settlers, passing only one coast tile), but still, though I managed to have quite many cities, when I had riffles, Germany was attacking me with Modern Armor lolol
And I'm talking about a quite advantageous position, as you can understand (if I explained it nice lolol).

what about the other elements of the game?
What technologies should I aim for?
Is there a path, which gets the best results?
SP? Buildings cities, won't let you have many. Maybe 3-4 before it gets too difficult to get another. Which ones are better in these levels?

Thank you!

 

[Soronery]

Don't play continents. Pangea or a land only map is the only way AI can play ATM. If you want a benchmark: By turn 100 (quick pace) should be getting at least 100 science per turn. If you fall behind on tech you basically lost.

 

[PScirocco]

There's no need to ICS or warrior rush to beat immortal, if you look at the civ you're using and maximize it's advantage. For example, China should/can beeline to CKN then wage extensive defensive wars, simlarly with England you can do the same with longbowmen.

Mongolia on the other hand lets you go on the offensive slightly earlier with horseback riding, if the map is sufficiently flat, you can delay an enemy's tech by a good deal by pillaging its improvements while you beeline to keshik (just make sure you pillage).

 

[avl8]

Played standart size pangea on emperor and immortal recently. Totally agree that other land types will cripple AI, meaning an easier game.

So peaceful start is better than early warrior/horsemen rush.

Ive played warrior rushes alot until i found that peaceful start and early infinite city sprawl will get me much much more.
Instead of wasting time on 2-3 warriors (20-30 turns on standart speed) and spoiling relations with other AIs who will treat me like a bloodthirst (which have great trading penalties), i prefer scout/scout combo now (14 turns) followed by worker/settler.

2 scouts quickly founds CSs/civs to trade and most important - different species of luxuries. I get like 300+ gold from scouting during early turns, means rush bought worker or library. Even more important is that those little scouts find every civ. To sign early PoC/PoS ofc.

Worker gets even more from connecting luxuries and immediately selling them to AIs. By the time you have to re-sell them. Also worker improves farms which pumps up settler spam on par with liberty #1 policy.

Then every luxury around my borders gets connected with a city. My benchmarks are 10-11 cities/1-2 citizens each before turn 85, about 40 science and like 70+ gold per turn.

Tech tree is Pottery>Writing (sell open borders to every civ i find, rushbuy library to pump science)>Calendar(luxuries)>Mining/Masonry/Construction (colliseum for every city asap), Animal husbundry/The wheel for trade routes and horses to sell.
then options are wide depending on situation.

Trading luxuries without penalties for early warmongering nets imbalanced sums early on emperor and above. And nothing beats ICS currently in gold/science output. Sad but true.

Another important part of that strat is diplomacy. You gotta sign as many PoC/PoS with your closest civs to prevent early DoW and make trade union vs early warmongers. My benchmarks are at least 1 PoS per civ before turn 85 and 3+ PoCs on standart pangea sized map.

Finally i doubt you can rush something with horsemen on Immortal without sacrificing too much time to settle cities and spoiling future relations with other AIs.

Peaceful ICS plus
non-stop trading plus
non-stop diplomacy gets you
better start.

 

[scytheavatar]

Well I do warrior rush to my first neighbor and usually it is successful, except from these times where he is far away and until I send 4-5 warriors there he already has a 9-10 defense city plus warriors and archers.

After I get the first neighbor I'm not usually in position to hunt a second one, cause they all seem too strong after that time.
That's when I try to build/advance my cities and that's where I fall behind eventually.

You mention "playing true ICS". How do you mean "true ICS"?
I have this example of my today's game, with Persia, where I was lucky to have 5 cities in continent and I got full space in a big island next to the continent (where I could send settlers, passing only one coast tile), but still, though I managed to have quite many cities, when I had riffles, Germany was attacking me with Modern Armor lolol
And I'm talking about a quite advantageous position, as you can understand (if I explained it nice lolol).

what about the other elements of the game?
What technologies should I aim for?
Is there a path, which gets the best results?
SP? Buildings cities, won't let you have many. Maybe 3-4 before it gets too difficult to get another. Which ones are better in these levels?

Thank you!

Even without any special strategy you should be able to get Rifling easily before turn 140 if you beeline for it. If you can't something is very wrong with your research strategy. Just make sure you buy the Maritime states (sell resources if necessary) and stock 2 scientists in each of your cities ASAP. And what policy trees are you taking? Honor makes your life a lot easier.

 

[Ashwind]

Finally i doubt you can rush something with horsemen on Immortal without sacrificing too much time to settle cities and spoiling future relations with other AIs.

Peaceful ICS plus
non-stop trading plus
non-stop diplomacy gets you
better start.

I don't know abt the better start part but using horsemen in an early war is doable, Immortal and below and very effective - until the upcoming patch at least.

Build one or two other cities and start making horsemen. One advantage horsemen have is its ability yo hit-and-run. So it works even up to pikes - as long as you do not end their turn within striking distance of any retaliation. Only time this will fail is at choke points with horribly rough terrain.

Get PoC with far away AIs. Do not destroy an AI at war (leave them a city) and I find myself dictating diplomacy until the end of the game - which seldom last past the modern era or turns 220ish. And that's playing quite 'relaxingly'.

ICS may work better (haven't tried) but horsemen wars are definitely doable. And works well even on Imm.

 

[avl8]

I don't know abt the better start part but using horsemen in an early war is doable, Immortal and below and very effective - until the upcoming patch at least.

Build one or two other cities and start making horsemen. One advantage horsemen have is its ability yo hit-and-run. So it works even up to pikes - as long as you do not end their turn within striking distance of any retaliation. Only time this will fail is at choke points with horribly rough terrain.

Get PoC with far away AIs. Do not destroy an AI at war (leave them a city) and I find myself dictating diplomacy until the end of the game - which seldom last past the modern era or turns 220ish. And that's playing quite 'relaxingly'.

ICS may work better (haven't tried) but horsemen wars are definitely doable. And works well even on Imm.

You will be pleased if you try to play a proper ICS
Horsemen are cool, thats for sure. Thats why they get nerfed with the recent patch.
Bad news are horsemen wont get you huge science/gold output ICS will.
After all its all about different victory conditions. Horsemen are cool for domination, ICS is uber for diplomacy/spaceship.

 

[Ashwind]

You will be pleased if you try to play a proper ICS
Horsemen are cool, thats for sure. Thats why they get nerfed with the recent patch.
Bad news are horsemen wont get you huge science/gold output ICS will.
After all its all about different victory conditions. Horsemen are cool for domination, ICS is uber for diplomacy/spaceship.

I agree with you on the huge science output part. In the short to mid term at least. And maybe won't net me an early win. But I've had played games where I discover modern techs in 3 turns each, games in which I started out using horsemen army and remain horse-only throughout. Throw in some siege for defense.

Though I doubt it'll beat ICS on a science per city comparison.

I keep up in tech with RAs and the huge, huge amount of gold from conquering / puppet trade posts. Diplomacy win is meh. Anyone can win it actually - no actual prior plan required. In fact its the easiest win for someone in the modern era and have no desire to play more turns to beat up the *usually* already lost AI or the turns required for a spaceship / culture.

Though I think that I should try out the ICS method soon. It looks interesting.

 

[avl8]

Ye, it definetely worth time to try it
Just imagine +100 gold per turn by the 100th turn on standart speed!
And some players got like 55 science by the turn 85 what i havent achieved yet

The trick is if you go peaceful trading, almost every AI will sign RA/trades w/o penalties, resulting even more gold and science gained!
The only drawback is going peaceful of course AND going with only 4-5 policies for entire game (3 of these will be liberty and one is freedom unlocked).

 

[grdolph]

Well, I did try to play peaceful ICS and all I got was war from 3 neighbours at the same time!
I survived, but this made me fall back in science.
Now that I started standing back on my feet, AGAIN I have 3 neighbours attacking me at the same time...
It seems that I should have some minimum amount of military in order to prevent these "You're weak and I should get the opportunity to crash you" wars.
So, how big military should I have in order to avoid these wars?
And how do I evolve if I spend my production/gold in military?

 

[bryanw1995]

Played standart size pangea on emperor and immortal recently. Totally agree that other land types will cripple AI, meaning an easier game.

So peaceful start is better than early warrior/horsemen rush.

Ive played warrior rushes alot until i found that peaceful start and early infinite city sprawl will get me much much more.
Instead of wasting time on 2-3 warriors (20-30 turns on standart speed) and spoiling relations with other AIs who will treat me like a bloodthirst (which have great trading penalties), i prefer scout/scout combo now (14 turns) followed by worker/settler.

2 scouts quickly founds CSs/civs to trade and most important - different species of luxuries. I get like 300+ gold from scouting during early turns, means rush bought worker or library. Even more important is that those little scouts find every civ. To sign early PoC/PoS ofc.

Worker gets even more from connecting luxuries and immediately selling them to AIs. By the time you have to re-sell them. Also worker improves farms which pumps up settler spam on par with liberty #1 policy.

Then every luxury around my borders gets connected with a city. My benchmarks are 10-11 cities/1-2 citizens each before turn 85, about 40 science and like 70+ gold per turn.

Tech tree is Pottery>Writing (sell open borders to every civ i find, rushbuy library to pump science)>Calendar(luxuries)>Mining/Masonry/Construction (colliseum for every city asap), Animal husbundry/The wheel for trade routes and horses to sell.
then options are wide depending on situation.

Trading luxuries without penalties for early warmongering nets imbalanced sums early on emperor and above. And nothing beats ICS currently in gold/science output. Sad but true.

Another important part of that strat is diplomacy. You gotta sign as many PoC/PoS with your closest civs to prevent early DoW and make trade union vs early warmongers. My benchmarks are at least 1 PoS per civ before turn 85 and 3+ PoCs on standart pangea sized map.

Finally i doubt you can rush something with horsemen on Immortal without sacrificing too much time to settle cities and spoiling future relations with other AIs.

Peaceful ICS plus
non-stop trading plus
non-stop diplomacy gets you
better start.

nice strategy, but horseman rush is still extremely effective on immortal and can be depending on circumstances even on deity. with the horse penalty in the next patch this exploit should be fixed, however.

 

[basta]

Warrior rush is an extremely dubious strategy--as grdolph says, 9 times out of 10 your neighbor is too far away to get to in time for it to work, and if you've one barb camp to deal with, forget it.

Horseman rush is better, but avl8 is right--start off peaceful and ICS and trade to the max to get ready to be attacked, because that 6th city and the rush for iron resources will usually bring a DoW at around longswordsmen. This is when the game is won or lost; either you break your biggest rival then or you'll be unit-spammed, weakened, and then piled on to.

 

[bryanw1995]

yeah, one of my favorite strategies is to plan an early rush but settle close to my intended victim and provoke him into attacking. last game I went for an iron rush and was almost forced into this plan since I had no iron but catherine had a nice juicy 6 iron plot nearby. upgraded 5 warriors and rushed a cat right after the settling/dow, game over.

 

[avl8]

It seems that I should have some minimum amount of military in order to prevent these "You're weak and I should get the opportunity to crash you" wars.
So, how big military should I have in order to avoid these wars?
And how do I evolve if I spend my production/gold in military?

There will be different solutions depending on the map type and AI attitudes/personalities.
But as I see it through my emperor/immortal games, your biggest weapon before turn 75 @standart speed is diplomacy. Second one is settling away from AIs and preventing them from settling near you.

By diplomacy I mean focusing on intelligence aka scouts early game. 2+ scouts mean business for sure. They find AIs for you, they provide info for the best settling places and they get you some extra cash from meeting CSs. Ruins too, but I hate my bad luck so I dont count on ruins
Then once your scout gets AI, theres very little time to get early PoC/PoS. Usually farthest AI asks for a PoC really soon after you meet him. 1-2 more PoCs can help with the trades and distraction during next steps.

The great power of early scouting is that: who meets AI first gets PoC first.
And if you come too late, they got PoC with another AI and you wont get any PoS between them for sure. Thats why scouts are so powerful!

I ask for as many PoS as I can immediately after I get PoC with the civ. Usually it gets me 1 or 2 PoSs depending on personality/map settings.
Crucial part here is to get a PoS from your nearest neighbours and PoS on them cause they are most dangerous ones in the game. Later, when youll get ICS running, AI wont be a trouble, but early they can be troublesome.

Close neighbours mean trouble only cause AIs currently strictly territorial creatures. If you get closer to their lair, they start to insult, then DoW very soon. And if theres enough distance between you and them itll be another peaceful 10 turns. Before AI will settle near you and blame you for being too close

Then comes distraction. If you got PoS on your dangerous neighbour, there is high chance your partner can be bribed into war. So the question will be: is it worth bribing to get another 10-20 peaceful turns or not worth doing?

Good news are once you settle first 7-10 cities, income gets high enough to rushbuy some troops and resist unwelcomed guests. Im feeling kinda safe when i get to 10 cities while teching to longswordsmen.

So wish you good luck on getting a safe game

 

[tibbles]

Assuming your military isn't totally wimpy, don't always try to avoid wars either. High level AIs get a lot of resources and they will gift them all when they lose.

My last immortal game out of nowhere Catherine DoWed and dragged 2 friends with her. ~30 turns later all 3 paid me 50g/turn each for peace. I probably only killed 4-5 Russian units and never even saw the other 2. Had they shown, it'd have been a tough fight for sure, but still worth the free money.