[BTS] Immortal Justinian

[jnebbe]

I wanted to continue my other shadow but I needed to reinstall and didn't think to keep the save before doing so

Been playing a few immortal games, small turnsets every night so I don't burnout from the game, don't know exactly where I'm going wrong. One game I was 7 turns away from space victory but ai win space instead, the next game is an iso where I'm ahead of everybody when I meet them, then gilgamesh starts teching like a madman and finishes apollo T274 and I'm just wondering how on earth I stop him.

Start:

Spoiler :

Thinking settle on ivory, agri->mining->bw->pottery, seems pretty straightforward

 

[Qactus]

...
Thinking settle on ivory,...

I've learned to value the early boost of that extra hammer more and more since joining these forums, but in this case it'd mean just too much of a sacrifice to me. You'd move away from the river, move towards the coast, and gain desert hills in exchange for green riverside and who knows what else these mystery tiles might show. It's at least green riverside.
For me it would only be a decision between SIP and 1E.

 

[Fippy]

One of those starts where Agri - BW would raise all alarm flags on deity, esp if settling on Jumbos (and killing all river hills too).
On a fast start with 2 tile, IMP and double corn i might settle for pottery instead.

 

[krikav]

I've learned to value the early boost of that extra hammer more and more since joining these forums, but in this case it'd mean just too much of a sacrifice to me. You'd move away from the river, move towards the coast, and gain desert hills in exchange for green riverside and who knows what else these mystery tiles might show. It's at least green riverside.
For me it would only be a decision between SIP and 1E.

1E looks better than SiP.
But settling on the ivory is all but mandatory here.
Not only do you get your worker out in 12 turns instead of 15, thereby saving 3 turns, but also your worker will be 1 turn faster to improve the corn.
In addition to that, the extra hammer will help out more while building settlers later on.

I share @Fippy s worry about commerce, going agri->mining->bw here might land us in a commerce hole. I would for sure want to get 2 cottages down asap.
Might even go agri->pottery, as we get a extra hammer from the city center, and there is a 3H forested plains hill to work for those crucial first warriors, so there might not be a need for a early mine.

 

[jnebbe]

1E looks better than SiP.
But settling on the ivory is all but mandatory here.
Not only do you get your worker out in 12 turns instead of 15, thereby saving 3 turns, but also your worker will be 1 turn faster to improve the corn.
In addition to that, the extra hammer will help out more while building settlers later on.

I share @Fippy s worry about commerce, going agri->mining->bw here might land us in a commerce hole. I would for sure want to get 2 cottages down asap.
Might even go agri->pottery, as we get a extra hammer from the city center, and there is a 3H forested plains hill to work for those crucial first warriors, so there might not be a need for a early mine.

Yes I was thinking about going straight agri->pottery since I start with wheel, I figured going bw would be better since I have 2 good food tiles which will be great for whipping out settlers, I suppose I'll need time to grow to 4 anyway so I can afford to delay bw, and I can slowbuild granary while regrowing after whipping

I've learned to value the early boost of that extra hammer more and more since joining these forums, but in this case it'd mean just too much of a sacrifice to me. You'd move away from the river, move towards the coast, and gain desert hills in exchange for green riverside and who knows what else these mystery tiles might show. It's at least green riverside.
For me it would only be a decision between SIP and 1E.

Correct me if I'm wrong, it looks like settle on ivory will lose 3 or 4 riverside tiles, that's like 6 lost commerce while running bureau, I won't think it's worth giving up an extra hammer, expecially since I can start improving a strong food source immediately after building the worker.

 

[sampsa]

@jnebbe I like the way you think. Going for BW is the more ambitious route, as whipping settlers with these tiles and traits would be awesome (even without granary). I agree with the experts that on deity that is probably not going to turn out well due to very low . Tough call on immortal, but I guess I'd recommend the safe route (=pottery as 2nd tech). Kinda depends on the surrounding land too, maybe some high-tile would change things. You have 5 turns time to find out.

 

[sampsa]

Oh also, I would go towards equator with the warrior, probably NE-NE-N. Borders pop T5 and you claim visibility on the NW-hill anyway to get a nice view towards that direction.

 

[krikav]

If initial scouting reveals some excellent city spots that are contested, you might just have to accept a tanked economy.
There is a trick with justinian (or other myst-leaders) in such situations though, and that is to land a pair of chops into henge early on, if you can do that, economy is much safer.

 

[jnebbe]

T0-20

Spoiler :

So far no food but thats a lot of river grassland


agri->1 turn from pottery
built worker->warrior, will prob put 1 turn into stonehenge then start slowbuilding granary?
met hammurabi's scout to the northeast

I think the best 2nd city spot would be 1SW from my marker, can share 1 corn and river cottages
[\SPOILER]

 

[krikav]

No, don't build a granary yet. Granary is too big of a investment at this stage.
The forested PH and the two city center hammers are all you got. Those precious hammers need to go into warriors and nothing else.

Sharing one corn is a good idea, but you should scout abit further to the east, there are more tiles there where you can place a city that can borrow the capitals corn, and possibly reach some resource of it's own. (For example, NE of pigs).

A dangerous plan would be to be content with the two warriors and start a settler at pop3, but I would probably build 2 more, working the forested PH.
Pottery before BW puts one in danger as there is no opportunity to whip/chop warriors in case disaster strikes, need to play abit conservative.

Lay down a pair of cottages, but don't get too greedy, happy-cap doesn't let you work that many of them anyway.

 

[sampsa]

Yes, certainly 3rd warrior. North is rather disappointing, but at least there are pigs in SE for 2nd city. I guess AH is the next tech.

 

[lymond]

With POT first I might be inclined to place 2nd city 3E1N of Nople. Can eventually share corn and work cottages, plus a good bit of forest there. I think BW next then.

post saves by the way

 

[sampsa]

With POT first I might be inclined to place 2nd city 3E1N of Nople

Yep I think I like this better than settling away from the river and teching something else than BW! Easy to connect with a single roaded tile.

 

[jnebbe]

T20-35

Spoiler :

Scouting south
I do end up doing mining->bw. I know sampsa said AH but I really don't like it. Capital is going to grow insanely fast and will hit happy cap fast (will go from almost 3 to 5 in 9 turns) In my mind you want to start whipping/regrowing as soon as possible esp since I'll already have cottages up by that point. Waiting 14 turns to get ah for pigs on top of ~25 for mining/bw doesn't make sense to me. I guess there's some decent land by the pig but I'm going to use the river grasslands anyway
(feel free to tell me why I'm wrong btw )


Building cottages
Hammurabi's scout is wandering around that desert busting for me


South warrior is busting, I have the 2nd warrior nearby but maybe he should be down by the clams
Settler finishes in 1 turn, I was thinking I should slowbuild a 2nd settler but I don't think thats smart when I'll want to whip another settler after bw. Build a worker right now?

Typing this out I do like AH for the 3rd city but not at the expense of whipping much later. Really curious to see what others think

 

[krikav]

AH only made sense if you wanted to have second city close to pigs. BW is good.
You only want to slow-build the first settler (if even that one) all other settlers should be at maximum 1 turn in the queue, then whipped right away.
That way, you benefit maximally of the imperialistic hammer bonus as 1pop -> 30 hammers -> 45 hammers.

I think you should aim to get over 10hammers before granary, but after granary you should almost certainly look to put only 1-9 hammers into settlers so you can 3pop whip them, that way you can convert more pop -> hammers without stacking up whip anger.

You seem to be afraid that you reach happy-cap too soon, I don't think you should be.
If you played correcly, you would have utilized the forested plains hill and built some warriors and once that is done you can stagnate on workers/settlers continiously. Well, not in this case as the whip comes into play, but if you went AH first.

Make sure you have time to road to the river before you settle second city!

 

[sampsa]

The only close -resource you've revealed outside capital is pigs, thus settling in that direction and going AH seemed normal. However, on this occasion since you have double in capital, you can afford to not claim any new -resource with your 2nd city. The main reason why it is good is because you don't need to go AH immediately. I thought this would be clear from this post https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/immortal-justinian.666495/#post-16003670, but perhaps you missed it entirely.

I think your worker actions have not been optimal. Yes you will need to build those cottages eventually, but right now you can't work them. Connecting corn would be +1 (+1 when building a settler) and building a road SE-NE-NE of capital would allow you to settle 1T faster, which is worth 213 at minimum. It costs 5 extra worker turns, but the connection is needed anyway which costs 2 workerT, so the real cost is 3 workerT, thus I'd prefer it compared to building a cottage you can't use for a while anyway. These small mistakes early on tend to compound pretty hard, but of course you can get away doing sub-optimal stuff on immortal.

 

[krikav]

Nice feedback from @sampsa, this is what I alluded to here too:

Lay down a pair of cottages, but don't get too greedy, happy-cap doesn't let you work that many of them anyway.

@jnebbe Sucessful thread already, you have managed to reveal a source of improvement!

 

[jnebbe]

I think you should aim to get over 10hammers before granary, but after granary you should almost certainly look to put only 1-9 hammers into settlers so you can 3pop whip them, that way you can convert more pop -> hammers without stacking up whip anger.

Very good point, I didn't think of that.

Connecting corn would be +1 (+1 when building a settler)

I thought you meant the corn would become irrigated with a road but I just realized you meant the health bonus would add 1 food. Very good input, I didn't even think about that. I was going to road towards the 2nd city spot right where I left off but its true I could've done that before the cottages

would allow you to settle 1T faster, which is worth 213 at minimum.

That is the 211 city tile and 22 cottage right?


In my mind I wanted to build more cottages than I could work so that I can start chopping forests immediately after bw finishes, and so if a city grows while I'm still chopping, it will be able to work an improved tile. I see now that there's still plenty of time to make 1/2 cottages for capital, then road so I can settle faster, then more cottages

 

[sampsa]

That is the 211 city tile and 22 cottage right?

Yes. Also +2 for connection, but maintenance should go up roughly 2.

In my mind I wanted to build more cottages than I could work so that I can start chopping forests immediately after bw finishes

Yes, in general the correct way of thinking, but even better was connecting the corn to avoid and connect 2nd city for +2 and settling 1T faster.

 

[jnebbe]

T35-50

Spoiler :

Starting off I sent the worker to road the corn and then roaded the 2 tiles between my 2 cities, I think it moved into a forest right before bw and chopped immediately


This is T34 - I sent the warrior NW and then SW on T35


So naturally an archer spawned on the 1 non-busted tile on the 1 turn it could! Maybe I could've moved SW of the mountain but I didn't know if there was anything roaming around the coast



Build warrior in capital before granary, luckily the archer doesn't go towards capital (I'll need this new warrior since the NE archer kills my forested hill warrior across a river )



Bw finishes, I whip a settler and put the OF into a granary.
Going ah next for the pigs, maybe some horses nearby. Would be nice since only production is that PH



Founded 3rd city. Can share corn and a few cottages with capital. It can also work incense later on. I know food negative tiles aren't that good but I was thinking I can grow to work all the grasslands nearby and then the pig perfectly offsets two 0-food tiles. Also I have bananas and sugars nearby so I might want calendar earlier than usual.



AH just finishes to reveal horses, I could easily settle on that nasty desert tile for both the horse and rice.
Still haven't met anyone else, possibly just me and hammurabi.



What tech should I go for here? Once I get ah/pottery/bw I will always go writing->mathematics. Is there anything else I should be going for?
When should I be getting my 2nd worker out? I feel like having 3 cities 1 worker is too few but I think making a 2nd worker before making 3rd city is too early.
Also, how can you make the city bars show the number of turns left to grow/complete production? I swear it was a bug feature but I can't find it.

Anything else I should know?