[BTS] Immortal Justinian

[krikav]

@jnebbe I think you are overdoing it abit with cottages on grassland, you need some commerce but if you use up all grassland now you might end up bulldozing alot of those cottages once you need to chain-farm (to irrigate the rice+wheat if nothing else) and to put workshops down.
Thinking specifically on the cottages in wheat/clam city.
I would prefer a lighthouse and just work coast which gives you an unlimited supply of 2F+2C tiles to work right away.
A cottage you need 4 workerturns to lay down, and then you need to invest another 10 turns with the citizens working that tile just to reach coast status.
Only after 30 turns you are actually starting to gain compared to the coast, but only by one coin a turn, and thats 30 turns after you paid the upfront cost of the workerturns, and 20 turns after you "lost" the 10 coins from working the initial 2F1C cottage compared to 2F2C coast.

Ofcourse in a very long game it might be justified, or in a city that you know will be dedicated to high commerce and might get a few multiplier buildings. But that is not the fate of that city.

 

[Pangaea]

Have mostly looked at the T118 save, but from recent pictures I see you have got IW too, which enables you to improve those jungle resources. Looks like you are working on incense too, so both of those will help a lot.

I don't like that you have whipped down the capital at this point, particularly in view of the above (higher happy cap soon). Agree the monasteries were unneeded, and hope you didn't complete them in all those cities. Spiritual temples are better tbh, at least that gives you happiness, even if only 1. Hammi appears to be doing a good job spreading Buddhism anyway, and the 10% research is negligible (but can be nice in the capital, if you find time to build a monastery there).

Now with IW, you may consider getting out some swords to grab that barb city. It's quite nice.

Iconium could have been settled SW on the green hill, to easier support capital cottages, including the riverside plains. Perhaps less useful now than way back, since the capital should get to good size soon-ish and work all its cottages, but still.

I like the spot in the west, next to banana. Plenty of forests. Hammi has ruined the spot now, but you could have settled 1W of horse, smack in the middle of three resources. That's rarely wrong.

In addition to the island in the SE, there is also one outside the eastern coast. Worth checking out if you have a galley or something in the area.

These points are more about details. The more important aspect is how you intend to move forward here. You talk about bulbing Philosophy. Fine enough, but does that really help you out all that much? Would be more useful to save one or even two GS for bulbing Astro here, since you are semi-isolated. That gives you great trade routes and (hopefully) more happiness resources in trade, and finally some tech trades as well.

Otherwise you could opt for what @Fish Man mentioned a little up-page: go on the warpath against Hammurabi and takes all his stuff. Once you are ready, he has probably cut down a lot of those jungles. Cataphracts are almost as good as Cuirs, but comes much sooner. Great before castles (and pikes).

Edit: Think you are a bit low on workers. The T118 save has 6 for 8 cities, which isn't enough when you need to cut down jungle. Those forests you were chopping could have gone into workers instead of monasteries. Or settlers, though they are nice 2-pop whips with IMP.

 

[sampsa]

Well, having CoL and meditation you need to bulb philo before you can bulb astro. I don't see why that's an issue though, pacifism makes running those specialists (to bulb astro) so much better anyway.

 

[Pangaea]

Aye, if the path to Philo is opened up, you need to do that first. It's not a bad option, that isn't what I mean. But I do think it would be more beneficial to prepare for an Astro path here instead. Bulbing Philo definitely has its merits, like you say, like running a GAge soon-ish and getting the required GSs for the Astro bulb.

 

[jnebbe]

Planning on finishing this up next week (getting my wisdom teeth pulled and will have plenty of time )
One question though, is it worth it to generate a GP just to start a golden age? I feel like the double gpp is offset by the increased cost of generating every scientist afterwards, as well as throwing away however many beakers you'd get from just bulbing.
If you should still start a golden age, does it matter what kind of specialist you use? Like scientist vs artist vs merchant etc

 

[sampsa]

One question though, is it worth it to generate a GP just to start a golden age? I feel like the double gpp is offset by the increased cost of generating every scientist afterwards, as well as throwing away however many beakers you'd get from just bulbing.

With SPI it's not so clear cut, sometimes you can just skip the golden age. However... that +100% GPP is nothing to sneeze at. If we want to learn something, we need to make some calculus.

 

[jnebbe]

T128-136

Spoiler :

Self teched alphabet. He will only give me monarchy for 2 of my techs which I don't think is too worth it, I only had 1 unhappiness so I didn't trade for it.

Bulbed philosophy with that 1st scientist and founded taoism, cool
My cities are fairly low pop since I just whipped a couple settlers/swordsmen so I'm going to let them grow a bit while I tech to optics, and then try to generate 2 scientists for astronomy. I want to know what the other civs are up to and I think this approach will be better for learning vs going cataphracts and killing hammy.

Settled Liodica here. Big mistake was not already having workers there and wasting a couple turns moving them over there.

Settled Dorylarum, there's a workboat in Angora so I can work that whale as soon as I get optics. I sent the galley north to scout that island to the west but in hindsight it's probably better to keep it here to move the worker back onto the mainland. Also sent a missionary there for the culture, maybe I would've been able to whip granery+library before I get to optics but oh well

Hammy captures the barb city, I sent a settler up there to possibly settle on the iron, I think it's a good idea since hammy's surrounding cities still haven't had their 1st border pop, but I really should've had a missionary ready here to work the fish earlier.

 

[floydmcw]

I played this game and am having a rough time. Fish Man suggested

"2. Go all-in for cataphracts. These things are unstoppable until engineering; not even longbows can hold back a horde of them. Take him out and take his 4 golds for yourself...and now you have enough land to win any way you wish."

but the problem is getting those cataphracts before an Immortal AI with 4 gold can get Engineering. Everyone on this map is more advanced than me. I built a ton of cottages and was running 2 scientists in almost every city.

I got Hammy to Friendly and was able to trade for some Guilds prereqs, but I couldn't get Guilds before 195. I attacked on T206 with 28 phracts and have taken two cities but doubt it will be enough, Hammy is sure to get gunpowder soon.

I have never seen barb galleys this bad. Is that an Immortal thing? I have killed 18 barb galleys.

 

[krikav]

@floydmcw Barb galleys can become absolutely crazy from time to time, and it's very infuriating.
You know you can fogbust for galleys too? Having units somewhat close to the coast.
There is also some rule for barb galleys, that they don't enter your culture if they can't see something to attack/smash 7 tiles in (or something like that).
Anyone remember the rule correcly?
What that means is that you don't have to fogbust/kill every galley on the map, and it can in fact be detrimential for you to have some triremes standing guard at your cultures end, in case your seafood is many tiles inside your culture.
The triremes will lure in barb galleys from even further away.

Doing a knights-rush isn't something I have usually done, and I don't think it's something that you can do freely on every map, and probably not something I would have done here.
But T206 does sound abit late, not sure what you could have done to shave of turns though.

 

[Qactus]

...but I couldn't get Guilds before 195. I attacked on T206 with 28 phracts and have taken two cities but doubt it will be enough, Hammy is sure to get gunpowder soon...

@floydmcw Cataphracts are indeed strong and fun, but you have to get them way earlier. Otherwise Cuirassiers are always better and have a much more favorable tech path. I checked the screenshot from a game where I went Cataphracts recently (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tech-path-advice.656888/) and the turn was 130 when I had taken the first three cities from the tech leader. Different map of course, but maybe still helpful for you to compare the savegames and look for what might have caused 76 turns difference. I remember in that game I spawned a GE from the Pyramids which could bulb Machinery, but apart from that it was not even a super straight beeline, going quite heavy on the wonder side (Pyramids, TGL, NE, Parth, HG).

 

[floydmcw]

@floydmcw Cataphracts are indeed strong and fun, but you have to get them way earlier. Otherwise Cuirassiers are always better and have a much more favorable tech path. I checked the screenshot from a game where I went Cataphracts recently (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tech-path-advice.656888/) and the turn was 130 when I had taken the first three cities from the tech leader. Different map of course, but maybe still helpful for you to compare the savegames and look for what might have caused 76 turns difference. I remember in that game I spawned a GE from the Pyramids which could bulb Machinery, but apart from that it was not even a super straight beeline, going quite heavy on the wonder side (Pyramids, TGL, NE, Parth, HG).

I only saw screenshots from that thread (I should play it), but am guessing you weren't in semi-iso with an AI who, in spite of having four golds, can't tech Alphabet.

I never thought of bulbing Mach with a GE. In this game I have 2 GEs ... the first of which arrived the turn I self-teched Mach.

Here is my T130 save. I seem to be in a comparable position with the OP's game:

Spoiler T130 situation :

Just founded 8th city, a settler to claim the iron/2 x fish spot when Hammy forces my hand.

Hammy will trade MC, prepping for that.

Spoiler Post-T130 :

Traded for MC/Med T132 and that was the end of the trading. Went Curr -> Poly -> Lit for NE, then Mach.

Hammy wouldn't trade and the map seemed backwards (T154 Great Lib for instance), so I self-teched Optics.

Got Hammy to Friendly T164 which allowed some trading. But he was way ahead so I didn't get to trade much. Optics revealed some AIs at or above my tech level (and Toku, groan).

Backfilled some helpful techs and started on Guilds T185.

I don't want to post my later save because I know I did some dumb things:
- I kept my army around when I should have checked whether Hammy declares at pleased (he doesn't).
- I made a mental note to switch to Vassalage before assembling my army, but oops I forgot.

So I can try again from around T130 with better MM and more promoted troops. And I'll try to spawnbust those galleys, thanks Krikav.

 

[Qactus]

Oh ok, I must've missed the semi-iso bit. In that case I don't think Cataphracts are the best choice against only one opponent. Those are especially good if you can keep rolling on quickly, take on the next AI asap, adding spies later etc. May be better to focus on meeting everybody else sooner instead.

 

[floydmcw]

Here is a better save, I pushed the Guilds date forward by 22 turns.

Spoiler Changes from first take :

• Didn't settle the double-fish city in the northwest.
• Deleted several warriors.
• Settled the southeastern island earlier, and kept a trireme parked there and in the island to the northeast next to Hammy. Had to kill only 6 barb galleys not 18. It helped that I spawnbusted the southeast coast, and decided not to care about the barbs off my west coast.
• Researched Lit earlier (when I traded for MC also got Poly this time), and built NE much earlier (T170 -> T153). This gave me a GS to bulb Optics.

Some things went against me:

• Hammy never got to Friendly.
• I backfilled a lot of techs from overseas but think I've hit WFYMBTA cap. So I don't have CS, and I had a heck of a time trading for Feud, got it with 2 turns left. Still plenty of time, at this point in the previous run I had not met anyone else.

Still not clear the phract rush will work, but I feel a lot better about say 35 phracts on T188 than 28 phracts on T206. Suspect after taking half his cities he'll get muskets and castles, so I'll have to dig them out with trebs. But with 15 cities to Hammy's 5 after the initial rush, it should work out.

 

[floydmcw]

I attacked Hammurabi on T185 with 27 phracts (and a few elephants).

Spoiler War Details :

As expected, the first 4 cities were easy but the interior cities were too well defended to take with cataphract stacks. I was able to finish Hammy off with trebuchets. Just 3-4 trebuchets per city, I'd bombard a few times while waiting for all the trebs to arrive. Some of the weaker cities were picked off with phracts.

The war ended on T214 (took the last 3 cities simultaneously). Lost 22 cataphracts and 8 trebs, not bad considering I had to take 13 cities and killed 120 Babylonian units (almost all of them medieval).

Now I'm way behind in tech and looking to recover. It's hard to bulb Astro when Paper, Education, and Philosophy have higher bulb priority. What techs does one avoid so as not to have that problem?

 

[krikav]

You have to avoid CS and Theology to avoid paper.
And you have to avoid either drama+CoL, OR meditation to avoid philosophy.

Thats how you usually bulb astro.
If you go for CS, then bulbing astro is more or less off the table, aint going to happen.
What you usually do in such a situation is to try to lib astro.