How do I win this game? (Immortal)

[Tecumseh1]

I'm managing to get into pretty good positions at immortal but seem to mess up the late game. Here is an example game at 1605 AD. I have 19 cities, just vassaled Ghandi a few turns ago (he has 7 cities). I killed Ragnar early with immortals and horse archers, almost killed Hatti but she peace vassaled to Wang Kon. At this point everyone hates me except Gilgamesh but he is far away and best friends with Brennus. Wang Kon is a monster and I'm his worst enemy. He has rifles. I have a bunch of cannons and tons of knights. Very far from rifling (at paper, have banking) but I have a few grenadiers. Also just switched into Wang Kon's religion to obey his threat. Hoping that buys me a bit of time lol.

Brennus and Gilgamesh on the other continent don't like Wang Kon. So maybe I can try start a world war against him? Seems I need rifling asap, but then what?

Well here is the same game if anyone wants to take a quick look I would appreciate it. And a screenshot.

 

[Gwaja]

To be honest, I don't think the problem is your late game. The issues from early to mid game have ballooned into what you are facing now at 1605 AD on standard sized map at normal speed, where your beakers are at 654 at 100% slider.

The first thing that popped into my mind was... why do you have 3 idle Great Scientists?

I don't think your early wars with Ragnar were very efficient at all. Your attack date was too late, and you spent way too long of a time trying to destroy him. 650 BC, in my opinion, is really late, to wage war purely with only Immortals. And even just to get them, you had to found your 3rd city, which also didn't have good food until you got a monument up, not to mention that the horses are not in the 1st ring either, which drastically delayed your Immortal rush. By the time you attacked with your Immortal-only invasion force, Ragnar already was running around with Axes and Swords and Spears at the minimum, so I reckon you lost a lot of units as well. If you are rushing your opponent, 650 BC should be with Horse Archers, not Immortals.

 

[Gumbolt]

Fiirst look and you have 3 dye in a row and no city can use them. Almost better to go 2 cities and just spam your UU taking second city with horse in inner ring. You would lose a fish. Pasargadae could of gone 1N?


Or wheat/silver/pigs should of been second city as a blocker? Decent city with those resources. This assumes no jungle. 3rd city 1720bc is too late. Then options for horse city inner ring. 10-12 early immortals means Eygtians or Ragnar is dead.

Liberalism went 1390ad and you didn't even go for it. 2k tech vs free 3-6k tech? Bulbing edu/lib on the way.

You seem to be in so many stop start wars. Did you not build enough units? Ragnar and Hetty. All those DOW will impact diplomacy. Probably why the Koreans attacked you too. You took Indians as a vassal but left him with so many cities.

Philosophy 1505ad. No paper/Edu by 1600ad. Lit, Mono 1595ad. Even printing pressmight of been good with a lot of cottages.

Have you got the starting save.

Korea will give you 21 Gold per turn for a resource. Simple wins!! I would whip the Court house.You can likely bulb printing press.

Nationalism and drafting rifles will be so strong here. Then use your cannons. You can hopefully upgrade some knights to cavalry. Indians would take his initial assault. If Koreans gets infantry you might struggle. How amy turns off for rifles? Your 4 techs short. Railroad will be up to you. 8-10+ turn wait for rifles? Fending off cavalry will be very annoying at start. Watch out for any silly naval assaults from Koreans.

Espionage on Koreans too.

 

[sampsa]

To be honest, I don't think the problem is your late game.

Exactly this. Mistakes were made earlier so it got difficult. What are you planning to do with the scientists? Check the resource trades more often, you can gain a lot of for free!

It looks clear you need to fight Wang. Grenadiers do great vs rifles...

 

[Tecumseh1]

Fiirst look and you have 3 dye in a row and no city can use them. Almost better to go 2 cities and just spam your UU taking second city with horse in inner ring. You would lose a fish. Pasargadae could of gone 1N?


Or wheat/silver/pigs should of been second city as a blocker? Decent city with those resources. This assumes no jungle. 3rd city 1720bc is too late. Then options for horse city inner ring. 10-12 early immortals means Eygtians or Ragnar is dead.

Liberalism went 1390ad and you didn't even go for it. 2k tech vs free 3-6k tech? Bulbing edu/lib on the way.

You seem to be in so many stop start wars. Did you not build enough units? Ragnar and Hetty. All those DOW will impact diplomacy. Probably why the Koreans attacked you too. You took Indians as a vassal but left him with so many cities.

Philosophy 1505ad. No paper/Edu by 1600ad. Lit, Mono 1595ad. Even printing pressmight of been good with a lot of cottages.

Have you got the starting save.

Korea will give you 21 Gold per turn for a resource. Simple wins!! I would whip the Court house.You can likely bulb printing press.

Nationalism and drafting rifles will be so strong here. Then use your cannons. You can hopefully upgrade some knights to cavalry. Indians would take his initial assault. If Koreans gets infantry you might struggle. How amy turns off for rifles? Your 4 techs short. Railroad will be up to you. 8-10+ turn wait for rifles? Fending off cavalry will be very annoying at start. Watch out for any silly naval assaults from Koreans.

For early city placement the plan was pig/floodplain for third city to block off land but Egypt beat me to the spot (should it have been my second city?). Yeah I think waiting for third city for horse just makes it too late to rush with immortals or even HAs unless I'm quicker. The rice/fish was also covered in jungles and settled that after Ragnar wars.

I rushed Ragnar with ~9 immortals. Took first city easy, but ran into a few spearmen in capital. So had to cease fire and second war to finish him. Then went construction and attacked Egypt. War was easy, had cease fire after taking 2 cities to heal, then 2 more cities before they peace vassalled to Korea. I took 6 of Gandhi cities which felt like enough with expenses and all. I completely avoided lib and only got bulbed philo just before the golden age. Went construction, optics, then eng/guilds to cannons (philo + GA on way to steel).

So seems overall like too many short wars with less efficiency. Don't think I could do much better with beaker rate given all the wars. Do you bother with optics with this map? Maybe I should just go straight for engineering and kill gandhi sooner? I bulbed Compass to get it a bit faster. But seems useless in retrospect. Sorry don't have the starting save.


16 turns to rifles but only have enough money for next 4 turns. It will be 25+ turns unless I built wealth everywhere? Will slow production though, but I do have 12+ cannons already.

 

[Tecumseh1]

Exactly this. Mistakes were made earlier so it got difficult. What are you planning to do with the scientists? Check the resource trades more often, you can gain a lot of for free!

It looks clear you need to fight Wang. Grenadiers do great vs rifles...

Yup so seems I got false sense of doing well by getting a bunch of cities, but efficiently leading to these problems.

I was planning on using GS to bulb paper and the others probably later for infantry/artillery push if I can't finish Korea. Maybe use last 2 GS for another golden age on way to rifles? Korea has horses and hoping I can get it before Cavalry. I'm still scarred from few games ago when Saladin wiped out my cannons/grenadier army with his rifles/cavalry.

 

[Gumbolt]

When ai has spear 9 is not nearly enough. Even with HA I aim for 11 or so.
You should beeline capital first. Vs sword/spear the UU is not great. HA much stronger.

Cuirs are usually strong. Avoiding Lib seems silly. Engineering is helpful but 2mp is much quicker. Maybe you didn't recover economy enough here.

Never under value wealth and resource trading for gold. Maybe grenadiers and cannons could work but you would need 15-20 of them. Knights can mop up weaker units.

GS on paper seems poor. Maybe it might speed up rifles here. Generally a no for me as GS usually worth 2k beakers.

 

[Tecumseh1]

To be honest, I don't think the problem is your late game. The issues from early to mid game have ballooned into what you are facing now at 1605 AD on standard sized map at normal speed, where your beakers are at 654 at 100% slider.

The first thing that popped into my mind was... why do you have 3 idle Great Scientists?

I don't think your early wars with Ragnar were very efficient at all. Your attack date was too late, and you spent way too long of a time trying to destroy him. 650 BC, in my opinion, is really late, to wage war purely with only Immortals. And even just to get them, you had to found your 3rd city, which also didn't have good food until you got a monument up, not to mention that the horses are not in the 1st ring either, which drastically delayed your Immortal rush. By the time you attacked with your Immortal-only invasion force, Ragnar already was running around with Axes and Swords and Spears at the minimum, so I reckon you lost a lot of units as well. If you are rushing your opponent, 650 BC should be with Horse Archers, not Immortals.

Honestly wasn't sure about GS use except bulbing printing press next on way to rifles. I went engineering/optics/guilds part of tech tree this game so didn't have as good opportunities to use them. My stolen Egyptian city had great library which started pumping them out for free Yup you're right I lost a few immortals as Ragnar had an annoying number of spears running around.

 

[Gumbolt]

Starting save? Check the autosave bit.

If you know the AI has Metal and in war mode then you choose the softer target.

 

[Tecumseh1]

Ahh, I started a new game and overwrote the autosave. I have save from 1200BC.

 

[sampsa]

It's a very poor position T70 and that's where your problems stem from, not from your play in the ADs. You should have 4 cities minimum, maybe even 5. Food to the first ring, meaning 2nd city should immediately claim the wheat. Maybe 2S? Leaves space for filler to borrow pigs and work gems+3*dye later.

You are wasting on buildings when just building more cities gives much better payback. You are IMP even! You are working many weak tiles and your cities are small (with CHA). I'd nearly always rather work 21-cottages than grass forest. That will be needed. Your capital should be working every green river cottage by now surely, it's way more important than a library (or barracks obv). Don't whip borderline useless things, grow! Chop!

If you want to attack with your UU, horse to the first ring, chop everything, take everything. Probably no time or need for barracks even.

 

[Gumbolt]

Wheat/pigs city was there for taking at 2480bc.
Start is just weird with all the resource placement. Dead resources if you don't follow the map. As said before 1720bc for 3rd city is very slow. Imperialist trait too. 7 turn settler at size 4 with no chops. You had a settler pump!

War chariots may have been annoying with your UU but rather them than spears in AI cities .

Not having horse in inner ring killed the early rush. Settling horse on inner ring wasn't great with all the jungle. You really needed myst before pottery purely for timing of border pops. Then chop your UU like crazy. Or just settle next to horse and rush AI with 2 cities. Timing closer to 1500-2000bc.

On a bad RNG roll Ragnar would of DOW'd you. 9 immortals at 600-700bc is just too late with only 3 -4 cities.

 

[Tecumseh1]

The pig city was north of where Egypt has Heliopolis. So back to the drawing board as I need to focus on starts.

Here is next game as Bismark. I have horses and marble in capital welp. SIP so had no idea about ocean fish. My first instinct is HA rush but thought about it more and seems I can expand peacefully easily to 5-6 cities. Alexander is next door. This is apparently a pangea map with high sea level, but only met 2 people so far. If I'm fighting it can definitely wait for construction or even engineering so I could kill both Alexander and Stalin. I have 4th and 5th cities marked. Settling the wheat 4th and wine 5th. There is also 2 furs along river to norther ice cap (but nothing else), which would make a reasonable 6th city with size 2 and fur for happiness. I'm behind on cottages and plan is to spam them now that I got pottery a few turns ago. But I'm going to postpone granaries till later (except maybe gold city which needs it?). Library in capital at some point, but prob want to get 2 more settlers first right? I prob need monarchy as well with wine, but with gold/fur I could maybe postpone in? So monarchy, beeline to construction, or maybe aesthetics should be play after writing/fishing?

Attached 400bc and 1480bc saves.

 

[Gumbolt]

You can go double settler after you reach size 3-4. With expansive workers are cheaper. Double settler would get 3rd city well before 2000bc. 5-6 turns makes a big difference. Gold city will not do much for you here.Helps with happiness.

Likely HA or chariot rush here. Land is pretty bad nearby, Don't be afraid to chop early on. Less roads more forest chops.

Could you of settled on the marble? Albeit less for worker to do but first worker is 10 turns. 2H base hammer in capital. Less AH resources to work but 11T settler at size 2. Maybe skip agriculture and try a chariot rush. AH/BW/TW and go. With gold maybe HA.

 

[sampsa]

You should chop early. Avoid wasting precious worker turns into roads! Sheep road does nothing, 1E of Munich road does nothing. You should mostly build settlers/workers before granaries, unless you will whip them. Probably the mine is moot.

 

[Gumbolt]

Maybe settle on marble.

 

[sampsa]

Maybe settle on marble.

Yes, with EXP I'd be ready to sacrifice some food (and definitely ) for a faster worker.

 

[sampsa]

T63

4 cities, settler for 5th out next turn. 5 workers. I feel I didn't chop enough and it'd be better to have two boats and the settler out faster at the cost of connection/cottages. Have writing, but 0 towards granaries and 0 towards libraries edit: of course also 0 towards barracks so far (as it should be imo). I think the gold-city should stagnate at size 1 until you have a granary, then drop the gold and grow.

Your first task in the early games is to EXPAND to good cities as fast as you can. Everything else is secondary (except safety of course).

 

[Tecumseh1]

Ahh marble settle wasn’t considered but seems quite good! I don’t chop enough and prob also whip too much pre math. Gold was settled 3rd to block of Alexander and was sure he gets the spot otherwise given my slow expansion. With faster expansion I could still get that 4th. I also had brain fart and went archery before agriculture (planning for HA before changing my mind), but chariots are awesome barb killers.

@sampsa can you upload the save at t63? I’d love to look at it in more detail.

 

[sampsa]

I don’t chop enough and prob also whip too much pre math.

Yes! I rarely whip pre-granary, pretty much only if two corn start of something (settlers/workers). Here I haven't even switched to slavery, but will now.

The save is BUFFY, hope you can open it.