How to proceed with immortal Sully 1080 AD?

[jvdl]

I'm playing an immortal game with Suleiman and at 1080 AD not sure how to proceed.

The starting map had an unusual amount of food but financially not very good. Got GL and Lib, which give me Nationalism and self-teched Gunpowder and MT. Just finished after a Taj Mahal golden age with a GM trade and enough money in the bank to upgrade all my elephants + a few knights and Charriots to Cuirs. With a few whips should have 20+ of them. But Cuirs, no matter how many, are not going to finish it on this map.

On the map we have my Buddhist friends Constantine, Darius and Sitting bull. The first two are teching fast and appear to be aiming for a non-aggressive victory.

The others are Alexander, Peter and Bismarck that are a bit backward. Except for Alex, everyone likes me a lot.

The question is how to proceed.
1. There's a possible trade for 1500 gold + Printing press + Economics with Darius and Constantine. Giving up my MT monopoly though. Should I do that?
2. Who to attack? Darius will be an easy vassal but should I waste turns and units on that or go directly on Peter and/or Alexander; who are IMO the greatest threats. Or Bismarck, the weakest of the pack?
3. Should I go with 20+ Cuirs or keep teching for rifles and start the conquest with 30+ Cavs? Or will those Cavs get hammered by riflemen and cossacks by the time I get them?

 

[Izuul]

Cuirs are good until the AI gets rifles. Upgrade and attack Alex! Looks like you can get 13 right now just by upgrading knights and war eles with the available gold. Alex probably has a pretty good sized stack somewhere since he's a troop spammer and currently has 14 cities. You probably want 20ish cuirs before you attack him.

The AI tends to put the majority of their units in one big stack somewhere along their border. He doesn't like Bismarck (he controls Cologne so i assume they've been at war), so there's a good chance his stack is in Cologne or Mycenae. You should also check Ephesus with your scout to make sure his stack isn't there.

Concentrate your troops by Alex's border. There's no reason to have Janissaries in cities like Edirne. Justinian and Darius are friendly and will not attack you.

Switch production from things like Unis to Cuirs. You need to take full advantage of your window before the AI get rifles and that means 90%+ of your production should be cuirs. Don't be afraid to chop all of your forests and whip your cities. Konya, for example, is working some junk tiles so whip away that pop for more troops.

 

[Seraiel]

I'd take the Cuirrs and war with them for as long as possible, but I wouldn't destroy my whole tech-rate by whipping all of my cities into the ground, because as you wrote, this game won't be won by Cuirrs only. The next weapon after Cuirrs are Rifles, then don't upgrade your Cuirrs though, because that's expensive and Cuirrs are good weapons, but produce new Cavalries that you take for the hard defenders and finish of the easier ones with the remaining Cuirrs. Simultaniously, you should switch to Nationalism and use the unbeatable power of drafting. A draft-Rifle is only 1 population, but it's almost as strong as a Cavalry, it only moves a little slower, so use one or two fast stacks for the further away cities and crack the hard defended close lying cities with a stack of cheap expendable Rifles.

After that you have two choices imo. : Either get Steal and Artillery and simply troll everybody with Siege or, if your tech-rate is still good and if you feel that your opponents are too weak, tech Nukes. If you can't win a game with Nukes and Cavalries, then it's better you work on your opening and mid-game, because Nukes + Cavalries are basically the 2nd last warfare-options CIV offers and war with them is not funny anymore, you just 7-pop-whip a Nuke, you send it to a city, it explodes, 2nd one afterwards, then that city has 1 defender instead of xxxxxxxx it had before and you can simply walk in with a Cavalry.

Try to win the game with Cavs + Rifles first, they're very strong already. Shut off teching once you feel that you can decide the game, this gives you additional Spy-revolts + several more units via the whip. Drafting is especially powerful if combined with Barracks + Theocracy, because then the drafted Rifles have 2 XP.

 

[jvdl]

Thanks, I''ll take on Alex and then Bismarck with Cuirs, and then wait for rifles and cannons to roll up the rest of the map (or get rolled up my self). Hopefully Peter will stay put, or take on Darius.

Also thanks for the tip to not upgrade Cuirs to Cavs.

Alex has 14 cities, many of them on islands so I may need to take 6 or 7 (?) cities + his stack before he capitulates. That is a long march from my border up to Athens and I may loose momentum and fall behind in techs. And if I loose 3 or 4 Cuirs per city, 20 Cuirs won't make it. I won't be able to collect enough spy points to revolt more than a couple of cities, and getting more points will seriously delay getting rifles.

One plan is to hit him first in Cologne, out of Bismarck's territory, because that is the see of the Jewish apostle and don't want Alex and Bismarck to stop my war with a resolution; then take the other two northern cities bordering my territories; then march south.

Should I raze Cologne to shut them up forever? Or keep it? If keep it, there will be a new election for a new pope (which I won't win) and then there are how many turns for the next resolution (that will stop my war)? 10? 20? Not sure. If I raze it, will that lower Alex's willingness to capitulate? Will my friends start to hate me for such a vile act?

Another plan could be to take first Sparta and then Athens out of Peter's territory. That will hurt him but will he capitulate quicker? It is probably a bad plan anyway because the logistics to send new troops to the front will be problematic.

 

[jvdl]

Another outstanding question: Constantine and Darius have 1600 coins + printing press on offer, which I can trade for MT. Should I do that or keep the monopoly? They might sell it to Alex or would they? Alex has nothing to offer them.

 

[Seraiel]

Wait, I'm just looking at your save, I'll give you a detailed answer.

 

[elitetroops]

Alexander is also willing to attack anyone at a price. The price should be lower if you are already at war with the target. Maybe this could be used to an advantage to have him send his units into enemy lands, then you can move in from behind later, or take out his stack in some fresh captured city without defensive bonus.

 

[Seraiel]

From the save and in regard to your question:

Yes, you should take the 1500g that are offered to you in addition towards PP and Economics, because you already noticed that you will need to tech further and for that you need gold. 1500g + 2 techs are also enormously good trades and the chances that you'll attack Darius or Justinian are imo. not great, because Darius is supersmall but well developed (= you'll not gain much but that little will be hard to get) and Justinian is huge, I'm not sure you'd even have a chance against him at this point given your current strength.
I also don't think that you need to fear them trading MT to Alex or Peter (imo. the only logical war targets, Alex because he's big and underdeveloped and has the AP and Peter is big aswell, has the MoM and conquering him now could be the best chance you get, because Alex will still take quite some time 'til Rifles, Peter only needs PP + RP for them though, so enough for you to conquer him without fearing them but too little to expect that he won't have Rifles after your war against Alex) , if an AI has nothing to offer it's very unlikely that it'll get a tech, also: You have to thank the AI for every mounted unit that it builds, because those don't get defensive bonuses. A Longbow often is a harder enemy if he stands in a city than a Cuirr would be.
You'll btw. only get about 1000g if you trade PP and Economics in the right order from the right AIs ;D .

Regarding your build-up:

You can get 17 Cuirrs by upgrades (this will cost your complete gold + the gold that you trade for, but it's necessary and you also don't need to worry, because your empire is small, so you have a small deficit and you will be able to fuel that one by conquest gold.
Then whip away the Plains-Forest that your capital is working + the Plains-Cottage, your capital only needs to work the Grassland Villages + the food + the gems, this should be at least 2 Cuirrs with the Buro-bonus.
Edirne has almost no research potential, you can whip it down 'til it only works the food + maybe the Wine. All of the research-buildings in that city were superflous btw. and should have been units or Wealth / Research. From this city you'll get again 2 Cuirrs.
Ankara was a bad choice as a city, it has no own food and steals the food of the capital and it has only one decent tile (the Tundra-Horses) . Only found cities like that if you cannot get to 6 cities otherwise, this city is the reason why your capital is underdeveloped in size, it should be at least 15 at 1000AD imo. Whip this city down into the ground 'til it has nothing left except the food + the Horses, this will be at least 3 Cuirrs. (P.S.: Don't build Libraries in all cities, Ankara really has 0 commercial potential, don't think you need certain specific buildings in every city, evaluate city-builds in single. )
Bursa again has little research-potential with only 1 Village, but you're building a University. This is not as bad as it sounds, because you're PHI, but learn: If you want , then build Cottages! Research doesn't come from buildings, it comes from land-improvements, buildings only multiply what your land offers. This city has no food btw. , don't found cities that have no food. It seems to me that you need to work on your early expansion, because it looks like you were completely boxed in and founded those cities because you couldn't get any others anymore. Doesn't matter, this city has 5 decent tiles (the Villages + the marble + grassland farm + the Ivory) so whip it to size 3, so it only works the Farm + the Villages to not lose your research. Not having the Marble + the Ivory for a moment isn't bad, because those tiles are about as efficient as the whip, so it's the right decision to grow onto those tiles in peace-times and then whip them away once you go to war. This city should be 2-3 Cuirrs.
Konya would have been a nice city to generate a GP, it has Fishes and no other good tiles and you're PHI. I wonder it has 0 , try to use the traits of your leader better and pay more attention to GPs and generate them in multiple cities, you don't need 1 GP-Farm for everything, you need as many GPs from all cities as make sense (and in the case of Konya, a GP would have made a lot more sense than working non-FIN-coast) . This city can be whipped down to size 1, this should be 3 Cuirrs.
In Samsun you're working 1 2 Workshops. Those tiles give you nothing, because 1 is about 2 (via the whip) so you basically pay maitnenance for the population that those tiles cost while they don't give you anything. Whip it down to size 1 (= 3 Cuirrs) . Next time you have such a beautiful Grassland city with a good source of but little , don't try to make a city out of it, Workshop are goof from Chemistry onwards, not earlier. Konya could have been a really good 2nd city even with not having a River or it could have been great as a GP-Farm because of all the farmable Grasslands.
Gazintep is the utmost crappiest city I've ever seen, it has no food and no good tiles. I have no idea why you wasted a Settler on that spot... doesn't matter, whip it down to size 1, it's gonna be 1 Cuirr. Learn now: Don't work Plains-Mines unless your city is size 10+. Plains-Mines cost you 2 , 2 are 5 when a city is small (again via the whip) so working a Plains-Mine actually costs you 1 .
Then you got 12 Forests, those are 12*30*1.25 = 4.5 Cuirrs.

Sum: 17 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 +3 + 1 + 4 = 38 Cuirrs.

A little more than the 20 that you mentioned .

[EDIT]

And yes, ofc. , bribe Alex against Bismarck, wait 'til his Stack is in Bismarcks territorry and then backstab him. Try to at least get 4-5 cities simultaniously with those 38 Cuirrs. I'd probably not even capitulate him, because his land will make you strong, and capitulating him would damage your good relations towards the others because of combined diplomatic stance. It'll be easy to sweep over him with 38 Cuirrs and with 20+ cities afterwards you're in a winning position if you make it towards Rifles.

 

[Seraiel]

I was troubled with how you placed the cities and asked myself if there simply was no good land or what the problem was, so I re-opened the map. The following is how I'd have placed the cities:



Try to learn from the following:

The city towards the east claims the Ivory. It can steal the Cows from the capital to grow to size 2 and then whip a Monument to claim the Wheat. It has double food if necessary and it also claims the Marble. This one city gets you everything you got with your two cities and it's a really good city. Your first city suffers from being coastal (coastal tiles without FIN are not really great) and your other city has no food.

The city to the southwest claims two sources of food which cannot have been contested because Peter's capital is far away. I'd have founded this city as a 3rd at earliest. If I had founded it before seeing the Iron it would be 1SE to have the Rice in the first Ring, but it still would have double food then. Food is more important than anything. If I then had discovered the Iron I would have founded a city for the Iron that gets the Wheat.
Placing this city somehow like this also has the advantage that you block off Darius and Peter.

The city to the west. Darius should never have been able to sneak a city there in the back of your empire. This is your territory, I'd have founded the Pigs + Wheat city as the 3rd city probably, simply because it's strong, 2nd city needs to be the Ivory.
With having the Ivory + this double-food city I'd have been in a game-winning position because 3 cities is ideal for Elepult, and there's no AI that can stop a well executed Elepult.

Maybe however I'd then have settled the Rice + Bananas spot + backfilled the Fish-Horses city just because they're ok to good spots.

Notice that these are 5 cities and all of them are excellent. You got less with settling 7 cities than I'd have gotten with those 5, better get fewer really good cities instead of settling completely crappy spots only to have a city more. If you have Ivory, 3 cities is all you need, if you get 4, also ok.

Hth.

 

[Windsor]

The city to the west. Darius should never have been able to sneak a city there in the back of your empire.

That's Vandal, a barb city. Losing those sucks, but it can happen.

 

[Izuul]

I'd take the Cuirrs and war with them for as long as possible, but I wouldn't destroy my whole tech-rate by whipping all of my cities into the ground,

Not into the ground, but he has cities working tiles like unimproved plains, unimproved forest, tundra mine, PH mine, etc. I wouldn't hesitate to whip those away to get the initial Cuir stack rolling.

 

[Seraiel]

Not into the ground, but he has cities working tiles like unimproved plains, unimproved forest, tundra mine, PH mine, etc. I wouldn't hesitate to whip those away to get the initial Cuir stack rolling.

That was just some general advice without seeing the save Izuul. See my next post about how many Cuirrs he can get, you might find it quite contradicting to what I wrote before ^^ .

 

[jvdl]

Thanks for all the advice. Some comments.


First about the awkward city placement. Certainly could have done better but also had an unfair amount of bad luck.

1st city (2560 BC) was Edirne to block Justinian whose capital is close. Considered Serial's suggestion but rejected it because it wouldn't have taken long for Justinian to capture that wheat with his Buddha culture. No doubt Seraiel is right and I was wrong.

2nd city (1920 BC) was... Ankara. without copper, decided to go for chariots. The only other viable spot for horses would be Konya, but that would have taken about 20 turns longer to get monument, pop borders and pasture.

And indeed, as soon as the Ankaran got hooked up, Justinian built the great wall and an onslaught of barb archers came along. The spam busting worriers retracted in defense of the realm and had to whip 4 or 5 pop to get three chariots, right when I wanted to build settlers and workers. Barely survived and without Ankara would have lost the game right there.

Now with hindsight (or foresight if you are a better player) it would have been wiser to tech archers early and settle in the East (pigs and deer) and south (bananas and rice); the northern tundra even barbarians would hesitate to settle and therefore mine to claim later.

The Barbarian attack seriously hurt my expansion but things got worse. The surviving barbs settled Vandal (East) and Cimmerian (South), boxing me in. Gave up on the latter and figured I could take Vandal with horses later on, the AI still having a lot of room to settle peacefully elsewhere.

Now the RNG became really unfair: a cyclone destroyed the wheat, a hail storm the cows, a volcano two mines; and Istanbul went in slave revolt. Had trouble getting back to settling: Edirne was whipped to 1 pop and even that one guy was angry! Istanbul was preparing for GL. Ankara wasn't anything yet. Teching was also slow. The capital gems didn't exist yet: that would have made for a different story. They only appeared much later by a "small chance of discovering it" while mining a tundra hill. Figure that! Guess it was the RNG's way of saying sorry.

3rd city (1280 BC): Bursa. Desperately needed to grab the marble and the elephant. The original plan was to settle on the marble giving me rice but the proximity of Cimmeran made that impossible.

Somewhere around this time something happened I have never seen before. With a lot of empty land still around, an AI (Darius) captured a barb city (Vandal) behind enemy lines. Even before Cimmeran! (captured two turns later). That was a real bummer and seriously considered throwing the towel.

4th city (800 BC): Konya. Getting close to Darius to DoW him. Bad idea. Never happened. Should have gone bananas, as Seraiel suggested. Could not see the iron yet: discovered Aesthetics in 775 (teching real slow) and traded that for the basic techs (including IW). Next time, I'll wait a few turns to settle to know that beforehand; but even without iron it would have been wiser. And then Konya wasn't developed well: never understood how to farm GP. Hopefully will learn form Seraile's advise.

5th city (550 BC): Samsun (iron) Very late, still due to the slow disaster recovery (Istanbul being the only productive city). Beat Peter by one turn to the iron. With one turn more, would have settled 1SE as Serial suggested.

With or without the bad luck, it is clear that I'm still way to slow with building settlers (and that being ORG!) I'm too obsessed and focused on getting the GL; while in this game with marble, like in most others, I got it with many turns to spare.

6th city (580 AD): "Crap city". This city was built 30T ago on wasteland within my culture. Why? With an estimated 60T left to finish the game, 3x3 food + 4 hammers, this city can produce a good unit (Cuir or Cannon) every seven turns using 4/2 whips. That's worth a 1000 hammers. The price? One settler + 90T of maintenance of about 3 coins per turn (270 gold total). I don't think that's a crap deal but I'm probably wrong.

About working hammers. The save is a bit misleading as it's just out of a golden age with Caste (to get a GM), where these workshops have four hammers (+1 for GA +1 for Cast) and in general +1 hammer for every worked hammer tile. Now I'll move back to the food tiles that have been worked all the time before GA and get back to whipping. I should have done the previous turn when changing back to slavery.

See screenshot of 1070 AD. Look at all those hammers and anvils! Isn't that a lovely sight? But the foodies will prove me wrong on that one too, which is why they win on deity while I hardly survive immortal.

About all the other tips. Points taken. Thanks. Now get Alex!

 

[Seraiel]

Regarding GPs (as help to understand my advice correct, because it was only 1 sentence) :

GPs are enormously valuable, so high attention must be payed towards creating them. You definitely want 1 GS either for an early Academy or even for a direct bulb of Education. An Academy is the old line of play and it may be a good choice if the game goes very far, but an Education-bulb is a greater instant advantage, and if you can finish the game with Cuirrs or Cavs, the bulb is better than the Academy. The earliest Library you'll have is the one in the capital and the capital usually also has good , so hire 2 Scientists in the capital once you either have enough cities or when a different city can take over the Settler production, so basically as early as possible but not with sacrificing valuable land.

After that 1st GS it depends a lot on your tech-tempo, if you can create a 2nd one. With PHI this is definitely possible and you could i. e. use the 2nd Great Scientist for the missing Academy or the Education bulb or you could also bulb a part of Liberalism (don't trade for Machinery, otherwise the GS will bulb PP) . To have a chance at getting a 2nd GS in time at all, you need to choose a 2nd city that will also hire 2 Scientists, ideally a city with a strong source of that you get early and that has not that many other good tiles, so i. e. no river and plains (or coast like in your case) . As long as a city can create a GP it's worth it.

An extremely strong approach that one needs to practice though, is to use the 2nd GP and start a Golden Age with it, switch to Pacifism + Caste during that GA and run all cities that can create a Great Person as a GP-Farm, so i. e. stop working the Cottages and hire a maximum number of Specialists to only generate one GP, but because you do that in 4-5 cities you get 4-5 GPs out of 1 GP that started the GA. You can i. e. then generate a GS + a GM to directly chain the 2nd GA and maybe again 1 GS to bulb Chemistry and 1 GM to conduct a trade mission. With a move like that you can "jump" forward from the beginning of Education to Cannonts in (guessed) 10T. I once saw the player Doshin to make that move and Lib -> Steel at 700 AD on a normal map, I do that move all the time in the HoF + GOTM games I play and try to run continuous GAs 'til the end of the game sacrificing as much as 5 different GP's on the 6th chained GA (1 comes from the Taj Mahal) . The bigger the map and the more cities you have, the stronger this move is, but it's also generally a really good move because it can gain you an advantage, it can get you from being technically on par at most towards having a superior unit that AIs have no chance against.

Pacifism generally is a very strong Civic and not only for peace-times, because Pacifism costs no maintenance, so it usually isn't even more expensive than OR or Theo, even with a decent military. Theo is great when really amassing troops, because getting the 1st promotion without building a Barracks or the 2nd one which is a lot stronger than the first from Barracks cities is a great advantage, OR however is a civic that only offers little advantage, because a religion must be well spread for it, and 25% are not much. Pacifism however only needs to be in the 1, 2, 3, or 4 cities in which you generate GPs and +100% is a massive boost.

Hth .

And don't feel offended by my post about the city placement. I just thought I could help, because founding cities without food imo. isn't really worth it. I ask myself how you get those 1000 out of that 3*3 city. Don't overlook the suggestion to take the chance for Elepult when you have Ivory. Elepult has the immense advantage that Elephants are OP, they can even beat Longbows, and Elepult is optimal with 3-4 cities, getting boxed in with Elepult is an advantage, because then one doesn't need to travel that far .

Good luck .

 

[jvdl]

The war against Alex is raging. Got all his continental cities except one, but he's got five cities on five islands and the sucker won't capitulate. Impossible to ferry units over there. (Even if I would be inclined to pay for all the boats, my ice-locked sea is not connected to the ocean). I'll just have to make peace with him (after getting the final continental city) but for now call it a day. Will pick it up next week.

It happened as follows:
- Made the trade with Darius and Justinian. 1500 + PP for MT. Fancied the gold over economics. I won't need that for a long time.
- Bribed Alex to war with Bismarck for Education and MT. He self-teched gunpowder quickly As expected, the few Cuirs he managed to build proved worthless. His muskets were tougher.
- By 1140 (5T) had 32 Cuirs +five more in the making. Alex & Bismarck finishing each other's stack. Declared war and grabbed the three city's directly accessible from outside his borders. Razed the apostolic palace. That might have made Alex so unwilling to capitulate .
- My two spies did a miserable job and got uncovered. Taking a 100% culture hill city is a bloody affair. Taking three was depressing.
- By 1260 (19T) got to the gates his last city. Got 25 Cuirs left over and 5 Cavs joining the game. Lost about 20 Cuirs in the war but could keep the numbers up with the whip.
- Rifling & Chemistry in the bag; the slider at 100% all the time. Starting on Steel now. Will have to put the slider down though. Didn't find an opportune moment to revolt to nationalism but will do so soon.
- However, this war took much longer than I like. The middle of Greece is very hilly and I don't get much speed out of my horses. Will need 3T more to get the last city. Meanwhile, Peter's culture is eating up my conquered land.
- I'll expect to roll up Bismarck easily next. But then... the game is far from over.
- On a positive note, my crap city has already produced two 5XP Cuirs and one 5XP Cav in 19T. That pays for the settler and all the maintenance of the city in the entire game. Every next unit I'll whip out of that crap will be a free bonus!