Help with my Persian immortal strategy

[Artemis]

So far I've played all the civs in vallina Civ3, frankly my favorite is the Persians. You can research Iron Working immediately starting a game (because you start with bronze working) which gives you the very powerful Immortal only a couple of turns into the game (provided you have a source or iron.) The industrious workers and science bonus are also a big plus.

Anyways, what I usually tend to do is to tech to Immortals quickly while exploring and expanding, and then massing about a dozen Immortals and send them to my neighbor (I love early conquest!) However I have a few questions on how I should play this particular style:

- How many cities should I build before starting to build immortals? I usually build four to six to start. I use four or five warriors to explore. At what rate should I be cranking out settlers? Should I build them back-to-back in my main city whenever it grows for quick expansion?

- Should I abuse pop-rushing? It's one of the Despotism features I like alot. Should I build granaries in every town if I'm going to pop-rush? What should I pop-rush if I use it?

- How far apart should I build my cities? I find it's good to build cities on the same border as the AI, to limit his expansion, then build from the outside in. However this leads to outrageous corruption levels but it's better because the immortals have only a few tiles to travel.

- If I build my cities close together it often takes 20+ turns for the immortal to arrive to the enemy borders, minus the time it takes to actually produce them. This also makes reinforcement difficult (although I seldom need it)

What is the right approach?

 

[Tomoyo]

There is no "right" approach. If you want to pop rush, poprush whatever you want to build.

My only experience with the Immortal rush was a failed Regent AW OCC, where unit support killled me, but that was because the Immortals were so good that they were indeed immortal.

Your Immortal strategy won't work too well if you wait until the expannsion phase is over. Build one or two cities and attack!

 

[Zardnaar]

If I'm using Immortals or any other early UU I prefer to have at least 5-10 cities built first. With the early golden age you trigger I like to build alot of units with it. My cities with barracks build Immortals and my other cities build catapults. This way you should win with a swarm of immortals (20-30 + catapults) that you don't need to upgrade until replacable parts is discovered halfway through the industrial age.

 

[zerksees]

Hmmm. I have to agree there is no right approach. What kind of victory are you after? Boogaboo has made an art form out of fastest finsh games using the Persians - at all levels on the small and tiny maps. You can check it out in threads in the HOF forum. These are all based on some spectacular starting positions and (I am guessing) a lot of abandon games.

If you are interested in playing through whatever the map gives you, or you want culture or spaceship, then in general I would say that grabbing the free land and resources should be your top priority. Once this is done and it makes strategic sense to use those immortals go ahead and do so. Good cases for this are if you have no more free land or the enemy has important land near your capital, or resources you want. If you ignore this, then as you are busy fighting AI #1, then AI's #2 #3 and #4 are busy filling in free land. the harder the difficulty, the more obvious this will be.

The real power of Persia is the scientific and industrious traits IMO. My adivce is to use those traits to get ahead in tech and get out of despotism before your golden age if at all possible.

I am sure there are other ways to be successful with them but this works for me.

 

[dmanakho]

Immortals are superb units and you really want to start war as early as you can. Well, you still have to wait to make a pack of at least 5 to 6 of those, plus few spears to defend captured cities.
But what i hate about persians and some other civilization with ancient era UU is early GA...
It always comes when you are still in despotism and Monarchy will come way after GA is over. Because of the penalties Despotism has on food and shield production you GA is pretty much is a waist.

So there is a good and a bad side on using immortals... Plus, I think if someone wants to become a good player it's better to have a random choice of civilization at the start... This way each game will be different and strategies will be chose not base on UU, but rather on one's abilities to control the game with the resourse available.

 

[Sukenis]

This goes completely against your early conquest preference, but you can also skip spearmen and only build immortals (and defend cities with them). Your military power will be seen as high enought o have the AI leave you alone and let you expand all you want in the beginning. Stockpile about 20-30 immortals during this time and once you get into monarchy or republic, start an attack. Yes you might be fighting pikemen with those immortals, but you are not waisting your UU. It may have the same stats as Mid Inf, but it is cheaper. So along with the fact you will be in a golden age, you can swarm and reinforce very efectively. Since you are waiting for your first conquest, roads should be in place to greatly speed up the time to get new units to the front lines.

THis is how I have done it in the past.