Immortal assistance

[Peteyboy]

Hi everyone, thanks to various help from numerous pros a few months back, I've moved from Emperor standard, to regularly playing and winning the majority of Immortal matches. Played 10 won 7 lost 3.

I feel like I have the basics fairly well sorted (dealing with Barbs, getting cottages going, tile sharing etc.) Generally winning in mid-game through expansion, maybe an HA rush or Curr rush or something similar - 1 was a tank rush!

I have an example of a game, which was lost, which of my 2 losses (and 1 win*) have proven to be a continuous problem for me, and I haven't found a decent solution to counter. The issue of the teching AI who is a long way away on the map.

Both of the losses mentioned above were to Van Oranje, who I find often has the correct combination of sufficient strength + ability to out-tech (particularly helped by immortal advantages) - The win was fortuitous in the sense that the Van Oranje stopped to go culture, allowing me to slide a space race win in, but would have probably been 40-50 turns behind if he hadn't stopped. Unlike Pacal or Darius, and sometimes Mansa, which normally get squashed, Van Oranje I find rarely does.

I have an example of one of those losses, where I got drawn Montezuma (who I don't recall ever having played before.) - horrible start techs, and not great traits IMO, but reasonable UB for mid-time army. Furthermore a map not great for such a player. I won't give too much away, but I would welcome a couple of pros having a peek and seeing what position can be reached by say turn 50 (which I wouldn't expect to be too different) and turn 100 - maybe different. But the way it panned out seemed to give me no real opportunity to get ahead.

Save is using Buffy, no huts, events on (decided to try a few with events, not that it mattered in this one, to me anyway.) - No locked assets, so can use WB.

I'll happily share where I got to around turn 50 and 100 (exact saves were close) I went up to turn 200, but at which point any realistic prospect of winning had gone. Whilst I didn't play it quite as well in the middle turns, I'm not sure I could have done vastly better.

Help would be as ever invaluable. Would like to start trying Deity, but feel such an issue will only be exacerbated, so need to solve this first!

 

[antimony]

I was wondering if you're mainly looking for help for the pre war part (e.g. can you get a Cuir war started pre 1000AD?), or is it about continuing past the initial rush? If an AI is going for culture it is best to disrupt that militarily (they will usually have weaker armies and lots of nice wonders to conquer).

Here's my turn 49

Spoiler :

Capital on plains hill was debatable due to poor plains land around, but thought the number of grassland river tiles was enough to make it work.

For techs I went Agriculture, then Mining->Bronze Working since my capital had good commerce but was resource poor, so I needed chops/whips to help speed along. Also I saw the rice/elephant spot as a good 2nd city, so AH was not urgent either. (After that it would be AH, then the Wheel-Pottery-Writing line with Fishing possibly thrown in. I just finished the wheel here on T49.) Nevertheless it takes a lot of time to get to BW, so my initial worker farmed the corn, a floodplains and a grass tile in the capital before moving to city 2.

After worker, capital grew to size 2, then produced a settler, then a worker, grew to size 4 (2 warriors total when growing), then a settler that was accelerated with a chop and a 2-pop whip. It regrew back to size 3 and now is making another settler which I will accelerate with chops.

City 2 grew to size 2, then produced a worker, then grew to 3, now producing another worker.

I think the next steps are to settle the marked fish city spot, chop a monument, grow to size 2 with the capital's corn then whip a workboat. Fishing also gives a discount on pottery. There is also an argument for pottery first since our workers need things to do like building cottages and chopping granaries.

Beyond that 4th city, the rest of the land is not very inspiring, so there's an argument to be made for preparing for conquest (e.g. beeline construction for elephants+catapults).

Everyone's at 3 cities now so there is a greater risk of barbs entering borders, if I had a 4th warrior or didn't lose my scout I could fogbust the tundra to the north.

 

[Snowbird]

Not sure what the problem was... even if one AI techs away, couldn't you just kill all others and do conquest?

In general, immortal Ai's should not tech away, they sort of slow down after liberalism.

 

[Peteyboy]

Thanks for the responses to date.

Antimony - Not vastly different in setup, other than your 4th city was my 3rd, and my 4th was your 3rd. I went Agri - AH - Mining - BW. The problem is by that point you're at the Barbs stage, as you've suggested. I lost my fog buster south (Poxy Archer won a low %) Given I realised there was a lot of free land (albeit not useful) I expected more Barb trouble than I'm used to. Thus frustratingly went Archery, but as you'll see on my Turn 55, it was necessary.

This game caused me numerous headaches - 1) I was slow starting for the above reasons, whilst I got up to speed with cottages etc, I wasn't going to be quickly in a position for an initial rush and there were no useful cities anywhere close to me. Therefore I teched to Elepult, which had limited joy, I took several cities off Darius, but frustratingly couldn't muster enough to take Persepolis and it was taking around 8-10 turns to get units to him. meanwhile VO was mopping up WK (having also DOWed Darius early doors.) I found myself in a position where the cities I had were a long way from capital, trade routes weren't producing much, and there was only so much income I could make. France was 0.6 to me, VO 0.4, WK was killed, Darius was 1.4ish but only cared about Persepolis (I could have taken his other 2 cities, but they were limited value.)

:spoiler: (Apologies I don't know how to add a spoiler! (This might work) Not sure it's a big issue - If you want to try without some knowledge, then don't read on until you've tried

By around turn 190, VO had 15 cities and when at/around 750 Beakers / Turn (on 70% which seemed to be roughly break even (added Great Spy to check) - Which compares to my 10 cities and around 230 for me at 50% break-even. This is what I describe as the runaway opponent. My only real option was to try and eliminate the opposition. With WK dead, I wanted to finish of Darius - France was easy to take a couple of cities and hope for quick peace, but they weren't worth anything. A slightly late Curr rush plan went up in smoke when he vassaled to France (who was plotting on Darius) So no real prospects.

:end spoiler:

Snowbird - Whilst the AI perhaps doesn't focus as well as a human player, with the AI advantages I would say if the AI has more BPT by around liberalism, it's going to be difficult unless you're ready to gain more cities. In most my immortal wins, I'm either comfortably ahead after a successful initial rush, or ready to conquer. (Normally HA Rush to Currs or Elepult to Currs)

I look back on the game, and whilst I did make a few errors, I feel I could play this one again, with the knowledge I have and assuming the same AI things happen (which rarely happens) I'd still run into trouble. Possibly would have to bypass the inital rush, given the distance, and with less cities get to Currs ASAP (I.E Antimony has suggested a 1000AD rush or earlier, which without some of a maintenance (unit and distance) might have worked, by as suggested eliminating the other players - not generally the easiest option I find on Continents.

I have attached a few examples of the game - I abandoned at turn 194, having tried too late to get Currs up and running. T55 (akward Barbs but survived OK) T100 - Felt like position was reasonable, T133 a bit late for a Elepult rush, but hard to get army together, T194 - The final turn (Darius Vassaled to France) - P.S I took the WK city in the middle of all that.

P.S The other 2 teams on the other island made me chuckle - Toku and Shaka (Not sure that really matters in the game.)

---

As suggested in my original post, I'm not certain what the option is when presented with such a position. (I get that Deity games can be just about impossible sometimes even with perfect play, but I've not sensed that with Immortal, and I still win most.) But I felt this was a particularly difficult start / game to play, and unsure how to plan against it next time around.

 

[antimony]

@Peteyboy

Spoiler :

To add a spoiler click on the eye with a diagonal line through it which is towards the right of the top bar when you draft a post, before the undo/redo buttons.

I just looked at your T55. 3 cities by T50 is usually good at high difficulty level. The main issue is that neither your city 2 nor the 3rd had food to start; that is why I settled 1 tile from the rice, and also delayed the fish to settle city 3 by the cows instead. That probably had some impact on your defense against the barbs because you couldn't whip from city 2, for example. (When you do settle the fish city, you want to chop a forest and work the maximum hammer tile to get that monument up ASAP.)

I just got a bit spoiled by seeing how far Darius was. Indeed it would not be a good target for elepult, and if there were no closer AI you would probably want to keep teching, get iron working via trade or otherwise, and develop some of that jungle while waiting for something like Cuirs. In my game I saw De Gaulle's territory just east of the double gold spot, and I assume WK is nearby to the north or east as well. I may play later to see how well elepult works.

On a continents map if you're with most of the AIs and you can dominate that continent you're usually fine. Because of tech trading, the AIs that are on the minor continent will probably be less advanced that those with more neighbors on the major continent (that would be true even if it were someone other than Toku and Shaka, which are not the best AI economically indeed!)

 

[antimony]

I played a bit more starting on your T55 save (see attached).

Spoiler :

The units you had (+ maybe 1 more archer) were enough to take care of the barbs. I rushed 2 more workers to help with the cottages. Got Alpha on 700 BC, traded for Iron Working (De Gaulle), Masonry (WK) and traded Alpha + Myst for Math (WVO).

I'm doing a few things that might or might not be optimal in that save, btw. Built a bit too many cottages and even trying to build a long road to the French for war or trade. But at some point I had workers to spare and the only other thing to do would have been to pre-chop all the forests.

A good target date for Construction is around T80 on a good leader + map, at which point you can start building catapults while researching horseback riding for the elephants. Here it's Monty with perhaps a under average map, so a later date is to be expected.

I looked at your turn 100 save and it seems you got Alpha a bit late, and then did not trade for Math. For an elepult rush you really want to rush Construction as soon as possible, Alpha only helps if you can get Math and Masonry for it (e.g. on deity you can just go directly for Math rather than Alpha, and perhaps trade or even beg a pleased AI for Masonry). On your save it seems you were going for Currency to trade for Monarchy, a reasonable choice but more suited for a longer play than elepult, and in any case Math would have helped get Currency faster. Also if going for Cuirs instead of elepult, you want to run 2 scientists in a library ASAP to get that first great person, usually in the capital library, but here the fish city is a good choice due to having plenty of food and fewer cottages to run. For elepult this is less important (unless your leader is Philosophical, in which case discovering Math with a GS is a possibility), you want to prioritize granaries and city growth (even unto a bit unhappiness) to whip your army whenever you get the tech.

 

[Peteyboy]

Thanks Antimony on both fronts - I'm not surprised that my lack of adaptability at times costs me - This map / leader is a bad combo for me. No-one close and 2 techers on my island and not quickly able to squash. This was actually my 9th of my 10 games, and I'd won my previous 4 with elepult, HA (and 1 Praet) - Just generally something I haven't really needed to try - the medium term rush, but something to learn. That said I still stand by this being a tricky map. WK and De Gaulle quickly WFYABTA leaving Darius who gets squashed or gets teched up, and WVO who you need to use, but don't want to give too much away to.

A few more games needed - I'll see whether I can adapt sufficiently.