How hard is Immortal compared to Emperor?

[Arksa]

Hi,

Been playing emperor for some time now on GK and can win now consistently so I was thinking of moving up a difficulty.

Just wondering what I should expect. How much harder Immortal is compared to Emperor?

 

[brhlbryce]

Biggest difference is you will be DoW within the first bit of the game. Get Archery ASAP and have a couple of them handy in your city. Other than that, its all dependant and didn't seem like to much of a leap when I jump between them.

 

[mcd1901]

I've found that as I have bumped up the difficulty level I had to pay more attention to the politics - on the easier levels I would trade with everyone and not really pay attention, but on the harder levels I am picking a favorite to trade with and make a declaration of friendship (generally the 2nd strongest competator) and denoucing others, refusing to trade etc.

 

[tyrael233]

Biggest difference is you will be DoW within the first bit of the game. Get Archery ASAP and have a couple of them handy in your city. Other than that, its all dependant and didn't seem like to much of a leap when I jump between them.

Yep, this is the tough part. You actually need to spend some production and tech on military early on, otherwise you will get overwhelmed. Be particularly wary of civs with early UUs.

If you can survive the early rushes, you have a good shot at winning. Make sure that you have good relations with most civs, don't neglect your tech, etc

 

[Miravlix]

I turned a hostile civ around by returning a civilian to them.

Those little extra things gives you a leg up.

 

[smallfish]

AI will always outspam you in wonders

Don't get carried away by early game warmongering and neglect Science, harder to recover from on Immortal than on Emperor

T300 is the target date for you to be in Atomic/Information Era, because the AIs will certainly be around that time. Expect your local runaway to build the UN soon.

Always bring in reserves.

edit: a tip from someone who was in Immortal way before me, always applicable

You're misrepresenting my strategy! I don't want the uranium for a bunch of frivolous Giant Death Robots - my Persian civilization is too backwards for that. I want it for atomic bombs in B-29s. Because the English are so far ahead of me in tech and social policies the only way I can prevent them winning is by war, and the only way my horribly outclassed military can win is by pre-emptive nuclear war.

Which means I need to control as much of the world's uranium as possible. Which means I need to conquer America since it has 75% of the world's known uranium supply. See? It all makes perfect sense.

Anyway, it's too late to change course! Stopping the plan now would be immoral. I murdered 50 million Americans for that uranium. If I don't use it to build bombs to murder another 50 million Englishmen, all those Americans will have died in vain!

 

[spfun]

Emperor is the last difficulty where you can effectively wonder spam with a small tall empire all game long while facerolling in all departments even with 1 city! Immortal generally requires a move to wide atleast in vanilla. I haven't tried many immortal games in Gods & Kings yet apart from 1 OCC where i only managed 1 wonder early game. 2 were built by turn 32!

Emperor is far to easy with my favored builder playstyle while immortal obselete's the playstyle. :/ This is why i wish the AI was smarter, they could reduce the bonuses on immortal & i can still play my favorite style of play & have a challenge.

 

[TPQ]

Hi,

Been playing emperor for some time now on GK and can win now consistently so I was thinking of moving up a difficulty.

Just wondering what I should expect. How much harder Immortal is compared to Emperor?

I have found that the biggest difference is that the early game is quite a bit more difficult. The AIs will be even faster to tech, have an even bigger military and be quite eager to use their advanced army to crush you as soon as they can.

If you have a relatively isolated start, it's not that much harder than Emperor, but if you end up in the middle of 5 civs on a continent or pangaea, you're in for a tough time, especially if Alex, Napoleon, Genghis and friends are among your neighbours.

If you can get a decent foothold on the map in the early game, the only thing you really need to worry about is keeping up in tech with the AIs. If you can at least keep up, then you'll have no more trouble winning than on Emperor.

 

[Louis8k8]

Yes, Emperor lets me wonder-hoard. Immortal is not viable. You're either suiciding for a single wonder that throws you so far back it's not recoverable, or you're always slow and wasting production. You can expect plenty of wonders later on however.

The key in Immortal is Science. It's the only possible way to not get rolled. After you rush for pantheon. Always prioritize science buildings until NC. Then you can start teching to whatever you need. You'll be behind in every single way until industrial-ish Era. I'm personally slow and only get ahead in Modern Era.

Best way is to play passive. Don't spy on someone after getting caught. Keep trying to kill enemy spies and forgive them. Never accept requests to assist in a war (you'll almost never get a peace treaty you can afford, while AI declare peace on each other in like 5 turns -.-). Friendship is good at the start, but later, people will hate you for befriending their enemies.

Either cheese rush or win in Information Era. The choices are very limited.

 

[budweiser]

Emperor is the last difficulty where you can effectively wonder spam with a small tall empire all game long while facerolling in all departments even with 1 city! Immortal generally requires a move to wide atleast in vanilla. I haven't tried many immortal games in Gods & Kings yet apart from 1 OCC where i only managed 1 wonder early game. 2 were built by turn 32!

Emperor is far to easy with my favored builder playstyle while immortal obselete's the playstyle. :/ This is why i wish the AI was smarter, they could reduce the bonuses on immortal & i can still play my favorite style of play & have a challenge.

I did the exact same OCC wonder spam faceroll on Immortal the first time I tried, so I went back to Emperor to do it where the situation is a little less tense.

 

[xDaunt]

I feel like keeping up with the AI in tech is a lot easier in GK than vanilla. One thing I will say is that, starting around the industrial age, it seems like the AI gets some ridiculous boost their research, which makes them harder to keep up with, even if I build all of the science buildings in my cities.

 

[AriochIV]

Biggest difference is you will be DoW within the first bit of the game. Get Archery ASAP and have a couple of them handy in your city. Other than that, its all dependant and didn't seem like to much of a leap when I jump between them.

Yep, the AI's start with a ton of units and at least one will come after you early, so the main challenge is to survive that first attack.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

I play on emperor, but I give the AI the starting units it gets on deity (an extra settler, an extra defense unit and two workers).

<AIStartingUnitMultiplier>1</AIStartingUnitMultiplier>
<AIStartingDefenseUnits>2</AIStartingDefenseUnits>
<AIStartingWorkerUnits>2</AIStartingWorkerUnits>
<AIStartingExploreUnits>1</AIStartingExploreUnits>

 

[Tabarnak]

Emperor is the last difficulty where you can effectively wonder spam with a small tall empire all game long while facerolling in all departments even with 1 city! Immortal generally requires a move to wide atleast in vanilla. I haven't tried many immortal games in Gods & Kings yet apart from 1 OCC where i only managed 1 wonder early game. 2 were built by turn 32!

Emperor is far to easy with my favored builder playstyle while immortal obselete's the playstyle. :/ This is why i wish the AI was smarter, they could reduce the bonuses on immortal & i can still play my favorite style of play & have a challenge.

You can do a lot of things if you set up a nice 4 cities Tradition empire. You can go wonderspam and outclass the AIs in gold, production and food without being at war from early 50's to the end of game.

In my last game i had 1 AI with 12 cities against my 4 and i was still 1st into demographics and very close to the 1st in score(thanks to my dozen of wonders). All techs discovered before turn 230.

I will make a thread about how to do this very soon.

 

[Tabarnak]

the main challenge is to survive that first attack.

True. Your stack of Gold and Archery are your friends until construction.

 

[fat_tonle]

First attack is nothing. It is the mid game pushes that kill you. If you are in flat terrain and get catapult rushed, and you don't have swordsman to overpower his auxiliary infantry you are done. The initial 8 warrior/archer rush is easy to defend with nothing depending on the terrain. All flat ground and luxuries on plains and you will be in trouble.

 

[Xile]

As others have said, the difference is mostly in the early game, they'll DoW you sooner and with more units.

Immortal doesn't require you to go wide, though. Imo, Tradition is preferable to Liberty with G&K so going tall makes more sense.

 

[Arksa]

So my first Immortal game on Epic speed and large. Playing as Hiawatha.

Has been a very eventful game so far to 1000 AD. Germany declared war 2 times and spammed tons of landsnekchts but my Mohawk Warriors won the day. Seriously those Mohawks saved the whole empire since I don't even have iron. Also managed to build the Oracle and Hagia Sophia so far. Science is 120/turn on 960 AD. Every AI is friendly with me except the Huns and Germany (took Hamburg from them and stole their capitals luxury with GG) and the friendly ones have like 4-5 positive modifiers.

Only problem is an unknown runaway civ that seems to be leading in a lot of the demographic stuff and I don't think I can possibly ever hope to catch that. But I think even a survival game and "do as good as you can" strategy is fine with me here. We'll see how it goes.

 

[spfun]

You can do a lot of things if you set up a nice 4 cities Tradition empire. You can go wonderspam and outclass the AIs in gold, production and food without being at war from early 50's to the end of game.

In my last game i had 1 AI with 12 cities against my 4 and i was still 1st into demographics and very close to the 1st in score(thanks to my dozen of wonders). All techs discovered before turn 230.

I will make a thread about how to do this very soon.

I did a game exactly like this on emperor, tech victory late 1700s on standard map standard speed standard settings as Arabia. I just find that on Emperor its almost 100% you can get the Great Library with Oracle and few others early. While on Immortal after 4 separate tries the Great Library is built before turn 40 in all 4 games. In 1 of those games 2 wonders were built before turn 32.

With luck like that building early wonders isn't really viable unless your really lucky. Better to do things more guaranteed until you close the gap on the AI bonuses at the start. Having some of the early techs for free + free worker at start makes wonder building damn easy for AI who beeline for it.

 

[Polycrates]

I'm not sure I completely agree with everyone who says you have to 100% prioritise early science. The National College is certainly the highest priority of the national wonders, and you should be aiming to get it but I disagree that beelining it is in any way necessary. My experience in immortal in G&K is that yes you'll be a fair way behind for a fair while, but that in the late medieval and renaissance you can catch up and shoot past them in tech so fast it's like they're standing still. It's actually a bit uncanny. And that's without even stealing anything, which will certainly catch you up even quicker.

But yes, you certainly need to bulk up defence early on or life will be unpleasant, and maybe refrain from expanding TOO recklessly. Learn to love your archers, they are your best friends!
Don't neglect your navy either! The AI will build heaps of ships - and while you can probably pretty safely ignore triremes, galleases and above are an excellent investment for both offence and defence.