How to play Persia with nerfed Immortals

[Stevanovic]

The last time I played Persia Immortals had a melee attack. When the recent Macedon/Persia DLC was released for iPad I decided to play them again and was very surprised to discover Immortals couldn't capture cities anymore. I gave up on that game once the AI started building walls because Immortals can't use battering rams.

However I noticed recently that Persia is still listed as a tier 1 civ in the Civ 6 Deity Tier List so I must be missing something obvious with Persia. How do people play Persia now?

Immortals are expensive to build and they prevent you from building swordsmen, they can't use battering rams so ignore them completely and just go for an archer/horseman or archer/chariot rush then upgrade to crossbowmen and knights ASAP?

Or build Immortals and beeline gunpowder? Or maybe build Immortals and Spearmen? Can spearmen even use battering rams and take cities? I've never built a spearmen so don't know.

 

[Diganand]

Persia isn't such a good civ because of immortals, in fact the current meta for more or less every civ is cavalry.

The biggest strength of Persia is the +2 movement when declaring a suprise war. You can just chain and spam war declarations against the AI and scout the map and settle faster than anyone else.

The advantage in combat is incredible, particularly with cavalry. Your carbon based brain is just much better than the AI at manuevering units and finding positional advantages, and the movement bonus helps that. Once you get the "1 movement to pillage" promotion, things just become ridiculous.

The UI is probably one of the best in the game. You get it extremely early so Persia is one of the best civs at generating culture early, probably only matched by Rome. Because Persia incentivises warmongering, your classical civic research generally goes to Games+Rec and then military training (the double pillage reward card is necessary at higher difficulty I find). You just unlock early civics much much faster. Most warmonger civs unlock the warmonger cards very late, and in general have difficulty producing culture early unless they get lucky with city states or wonders. Persia will never has this problem. Their culture gemeration from the UI alone makes them a Tier 1 civ, in my eyes.

In short maybe just focus cavalry and abusing your unique abilities.

 

[kb27787]

Given that their UI only gives 1 culture unless you build it next to a TS or HS (river ziggurats are clearly superior in comparison)... Its not THAT great early... (the extra route and culture from routes is useful however)
A normal archer rush is probably better... 4 move archers mean you can easily shoot down a wall or any other threat in one turn with 10+ archers (making the extra defense of immortals rather useless and is kinda conflicting with their UA). Afterwards, add in horses or knights... But the archers with two promotions (+12) will be useful all game thanks to the extra movement.

 

[Stevanovic]

Thanks to both of you for the help playing Persia. I’ll try playing Cyrus in my next game. It never occurred to me to keep spamming DOW for the movement bonus.

 

[Stevanovic]

Just finished a game playing Persia. I went straight to horsemen and later upgraded chariots to knights. Completely ignored immortals and won easily. I can see now that the plus 2 movement after declaring a surprise war is incredibly strong. I used that movement bonus to steamroller capitals and adjacent cities and ten turns later made peace with that civ. Rolled on to the next civ and repeated the process and kept repeating untill I had every capital.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Just finished a game playing Persia. I went straight to horsemen and later upgraded chariots to knights. Completely ignored immortals and won easily. I can see now that the plus 2 movement after declaring a surprise war is incredibly strong. I used that movement bonus to steamroller capitals and adjacent cities and ten turns later made peace with that civ. Rolled on to the next civ and repeated the process and kept repeating untill I had every capital.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

The rinse/repeat DOW bonus is not only useful for conquest. Settlers actually getting to their desired location with online speed can take the better part of an era. The +2 movement speeds things up considerably. Add Golden Age monumentality to builders and another +2 for DOW, and they can get from what would otherwise be considered distant parts of the empire to a Magnus friendly location MUCH faster to build say, the Colosseum (as war weariness will most probably be a problem at some point).

 

[Stevanovic]

The rinse/repeat DOW bonus is not only useful for conquest. Settlers actually getting to their desired location with online speed can take the better part of an era. The +2 movement speeds things up considerably. Add Golden Age monumentality to builders and another +2 for DOW, and they can get from what would otherwise be considered distant parts of the empire to a Magnus friendly location MUCH faster to build say, the Colosseum (as war weariness will most probably be a problem at some point).

I’ve played a few games as Persia since my original post. I discovered it’s better to leave each defeated civilisation with just one crippled city instead of totally wiping them out. I then strike a punitive peace deal that takes all their gold and luxuries. When I need to move my armies long distances to engage the next opponent I declare another surprise war on a previously defeated and crippled civilisation to get the movement bonus. It’s a particularly useful way to get slow moving battering rams or melee units quickly across the map. The defeated civilisations are so crippled they pose no threat to my cities so I just ignore them and ten moves later strike a another peace deal with them.

 

[Jarms48]

After they nerfed Immortals they should really give Persia back Swordsmen, that would at least open up some more options.

 

[Stevanovic]

After they nerfed Immortals they should really give Persia back Swordsmen, that would at least open up some more options.

The removal of the melee attack from immortals was either a mistake or a silly decision. Without horses or knights Persia can’t use battering rams until you get musketmen. That’s clearly not good for a civ with a bias towards domination victories.

EDIT:
From the spring patch notes:

• Fixed a bug preventing the Persian Immortal from using melee as its default attack.

 

[JustifierNA]

The last time I played Persia Immortals had a melee attack. When the recent Macedon/Persia DLC was released for iPad I decided to play them again and was very surprised to discover Immortals couldn't capture cities anymore. I gave up on that game once the AI started building walls because Immortals can't use battering rams.

They still have a melee attack -- You have to attack with A to attack melee reliably and R to attack ranged reliably the bug had to do with how that was processed before.

 

[Stevanovic]

They still have a melee attack -- You have to attack with A to attack melee reliably and R to attack ranged reliably the bug had to do with how that was processed before.

The fix for the bug that prevented Immortals using a melee attack was part of the spring patch. Refer to the Spring Patch notes.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/spring-patch-notes.632218/

 

[JustifierNA]

Yes, I'm aware; It had to do with when you left clicked the unit then right clicked a target to attack -- If you use(d) the hotkeys A and R this issue did not (and if you're still having some kind of related issue does not) happen.

https://plays.tv/s/LmllxVVUu5cY