Immortal -- Forced to go early vertical?

xDaunt

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 28, 2005
Messages
31
Since the patch came out, I've noticed that I have had a lot of difficulty going horizontal (expanding) in the early game on immortal difficulty. Specifically, I find myself consistently falling way behind the other AI's in terms of economy and science, and having a lot difficulty catching up.

More interestingly, I've also noticed that the strongest AI's in my games are typically the ones that go hard vertical, expanding once or twice and growing their capitals to 15-20 pop by the late medieval era. They then warmonger and puppet other cities, especially taking advantage of the ICS-prone civs.

Have other immortal/deity players noticed similar trends? Is it optimal to go hard vertical now, settling only one or two extra cities to claim critical resource clumps?
 
You can ICS if you have the space (like MadDjinn's Rome game). Otherwise, it's possibly better to go vertical or semi-vertical (4-5 cities) and then mass-puppet later.
 
Now when the AI is even more aggressive than before, it's probably not a good idea to expand fast in most maps. Fast expanding almost certainly triggers an early aggression, and it's hard to defend those small cities far away from your capital. Either two cities and a sword war or three/four cities and teching to rifles seems like a good plan now.
 
Even with this more vertical approach, do y'all still go full liberty to accelerate your early game and get the early GP?
 
Even with this more vertical approach, do y'all still go full liberty to accelerate your early game and get the early GP?

SP's aren't as important, although the Liberty worker is fine. I would not go full liberty because the extra production SP (Republic?) as well as Meritocracy's trade route bonus being kind of a waste if you're only gonna end up with 3-4 core cities.

If I were going to go vertical, I'd go Tradition, Oligarchy (or whichever SP increases wonder speed) research Archery (a must) - Mathematics, and rush the Hanging Gardens for full effect.
 
Even with this more vertical approach, do y'all still go full liberty to accelerate your early game and get the early GP?

Keep in mind that it's actually better for your culture rate to expand early in the game given the reduced SP cost.
 
A vertical approach with the honor tree also works well, of course, especially with guys like Monty, or even Bismark, as you could potentially gain a ton of culture recruiting your warrior army.
 
Yeah, i'm playing immortal and what seems to work best for normal settngs is going vertical, tradition/honour, and grow by conquest. Liberty isn't worth it if you can't expand early
 
Yeah, i'm playing immortal and what seems to work best for normal settngs is going vertical, tradition/honour, and grow by conquest. Liberty isn't worth it if you can't expand early

. . .without the AI's all getting pissed off and declaring total war, might I add?
 
You're right that you often can't just go merrily along plopping down a few cities without regard to your defence and expect not to get DoWed and destroyed if you are competing for that land that you're claiming with other civs. On deity/imm that option is taken away from you unless you can expand backwards into land that no AI covets.
 
You're right that you often can't just go merrily along plopping down a few cities without regard to your defence and expect not to get DoWed and destroyed if you are competing for that land that you're claiming with other civs. On deity/imm that option is taken away from you unless you can expand backwards into land that no AI covets.

Even when I had a lot of space in my immortal games, I still wasn't able to keep up with a more expansionist strategy. Conversely, in my current game, I had little to no space to expand, so I went vertical. I beelined NC and settled my second city near a 6 spot of iron. I then cranked out warriors and upgraded them to swords to take out most of the German empire, who was bearing down on me. After the war, I was in a much stronger position relative to the other AIs than I had been in my expansionist games.
 
Yeah expanding through conquest is still numero uno. Especially if you can deal with the warmonger hate that we understand better now. If you aren't going conquest then presumably you're going for loads of RAs with the PT which is still a great way to barrel through the tech tree. Peaceful settling, or at least expansion and then fighting off invading AIs, is still a part of the game though I am more inclined to war.
 
Thanks for the helpful thread - I'm just 'moving up' from emperor, which I seem to win reasonably comfortably most of the time, but finding immortal very difficult and having the same problems - even if I want to expand, can't get that going because of being way behind in tech. Expanding early without a solid base results in DoW after DoW.
 
I dunno...Liberty is still a great tree even if you only have room to expand to a few cities. It was my first pick in my current immortal game which I am about to win via culture. It's all about getting your core up & running quickly - I only expanded to 4 cities but was able to get them productive much faster due to free settler/free worker/etc. This was as Rome where I also got screwed with only 2 iron available anywhere. So I built up those 4 cities, built PT, and used RAs to tech to rifles/cannons, defending myself that whole time with only 2 legions and a bunch of archers. Then I went on a conquering spree and now the game is easily in hand with a few turns left to complete the Utopia project, no AI is close to any vic condition, and I'm 1st in tech, GPT and production.
 
I dunno...Liberty is still a great tree even if you only have room to expand to a few cities. It was my first pick in my current immortal game which I am about to win via culture. It's all about getting your core up & running quickly - I only expanded to 4 cities but was able to get them productive much faster due to free settler/free worker/etc. This was as Rome where I also got screwed with only 2 iron available anywhere. So I built up those 4 cities, built PT, and used RAs to tech to rifles/cannons, defending myself that whole time with only 2 legions and a bunch of archers. Then I went on a conquering spree and now the game is easily in hand with a few turns left to complete the Utopia project, no AI is close to any vic condition, and I'm 1st in tech, GPT and production.

I still have a sense from the deity posters that Liberty is regarded as the optimal play, but depends how its used and situation dependent. You get the free worker/settler and this saves vital :c5production: for other uses. Maybe I've just had poor maps so far. Another problem I regularly have post-patch is that luxuries are so bunched together on Pangea - seem to have 6 x cotton or 7 x silver and not much else. Good for cash initially but not for happiness.
 
Frustrating. 1550 AD and the 'friendly' neighbours rock up with artillery. 1700 AD fighters. My Landsknecht don't stand much chance. Should I be spamming military units from the beginning?
 
Frustrating. 1550 AD and the 'friendly' neighbours rock up with artillery. 1700 AD fighters. My Landsknecht don't stand much chance. Should I be spamming military units from the beginning?

what is the best units you can train at 1500 and 1700?
 
In my experience in immortal, if you have a lot of area to expand in the begining and you are not surounded by at least 2 AI's, then it's not a bad idea to spam cities. But in this case, I spam really fast and really many depending on luxuries. I ussually spam up to 10 cities, rarely more. Of course you have happiness problems, but later it becomes ok. And then after you spam them be ready to be dowed by nearest civ. If your able to defend, then your science/gold/production goes up like crazy in due course and you can easily take all the map then with cannons/artilery.

Otherwise I just keep capital, spam units, conquer, get pupets, anex if needed, and thats about it. In this way capital only grows late in the game since I am using production focus in it for a long period after geting 4-6 citizens or so.

(I am speaking here about the latest patch)

But of course there are so many ways to play/win. It would be a lot diferent in multiplayer PvP.
 
I work pretty hard to keep up on military tech and let some of the other tech slide until puppets get rolling. I might work the top side of the tech tree up until I can make the NC before beelining swords, but nothing after that for a while. I will usually go with just capital until I reveal iron and use first settler to get iron. Hopefully also a port if capital is not a port. Pre-patch I tried very hard to stay at 2 or 3 cities and puppet, but post I find there is a point where building cities is not that big of a drawback due to SP being less important and ongoing wars being more of a drain.

I find I fall way behind civs on other continents on immortal due to longer and constant wars on my own continent, but can make up a lot of tech later.

All that said, I am still working out the kinks under the new patch. I probably would lose a lot of games but for the fact the AI does not seem real focused on victory conditions.
 
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