[BTS] Immortal Justinian

Things look good indeed! You could found at least the wheat+clam spot and probably fish spot. Oh probably north of capital could be cottaged already? It's riverside grass anyway.

Edit: no huge rush with the philo bulber I guess, but probably should run 2 sci non-stop from now on in your chosen spot.

 

Regarding great people, it's best to count from the last thing you need, and check the slowest city.
When I play from isolation for example, I know I need to have my third city equipped with a library and ready to run 2 scientists non-stop at turn 90.
That way I know I'll get my second GSci in 300 / 6 = 50 turns, and I want to have him around by T140 to be ready to bulb astro.
If I can't manage that, the first guy simply have to forget his plans to build an academy.

It's much more tricky with caste/paci, and golden ages can also make thigns too obscure, but one develops a feeling for it after a while.
"Nah, this city won't make it, I won't worry about it." "Whoooa, this city might even pop two GPersons this GA!"
"Hmm.. might get one here, but I'll have to starve this city down heavily."

But knowing how many you need, and of what flavour, to execute your plan, and to form a realistic plan, is kind of important.

 

Yep, it can be a bit confusing at first and you'll be making mistakes in -generation until you get a hang of it. Doing some calculus on excel or paper will help.

This. I tend to count how many GSs I need, get them out first and the next ones will be GMs. So you need to keep in mind which cities pop their first.

 

T93-107

Spoiler :

Teched fishing and settled south city which proved really useful since I was having a lot of unhealthiness problems



Hammy starts spreading Buddhism and I convert right away




The bully won't spare 1 of his 4 golds



Also founded a city for the north-east fish, chopping out a library then will whip a workboat









I'm confused what I'm supposed to be doing here. From what I understand I don't want to be aiming for GP until I'm in both caste+pacifism, so whats the point in going for CoL so early? Why not math since I'll need it for philo bulb+forest chop bonus, or alphabet/currency so my cities have something to build (hammy still doesn't have alphabet)? I don't want to continue making settlers and crash my economy more since I'm currently +30ish at 0% and -65 at 100%, and I'm running out of land that I can use without IW anyway. Or maybe calendar since I;m having a lot of health/happiness problems.

 

Well, a bit unlucky I guess that a triple gold immortal AI doesn't have alpha by 200BC. Also unlucky that he is running -slider so that you don't see his research. Honestly I didn't remember that math is higher on bulb list than philo (is even alpha? that could be a problem). If you had good city spots (=-resources) you should be settling them.

Some nasty remarks: I don't see the point of putting fish to the 2nd ring. You need to have a REALLY good reason to lose some 25T of working that food. You should've probably roaded to Hammy? I don't really understand why GS is 20T away? I guess you are running one specialist, why not two? Surely with that amount of money you are reaching the necessary techs faster.

 

Some further comments now that I have more time.

Firstly, you have two unhappy cities in the screenshot. They seem to lack a military police. Seems very unnecessary?

Do you mean that you put precious chops to a library and delay the granary? 1N would've solved every problem you now have, no need to rush the library then and you can focus on getting fish+granary asap and start gaining 10per turn. As a rule, put food to the 1st ring and life is so much better.

I wish you would've asked first, played later. If you are trying to do something that you don't fully understand, just stop and ask. You don't seem to like to replay turnsets, so if you want higher quality play, you should play shorter turnsets.

On alpha/currency: how much research/wealth could you build now i.e. how many natural do your cities have, total? Pretty much horse + city centers. I would never go alpha for those, currency at least you can't get via trade, so that would make sense, but it's not on a relevant tech path. Horse city would be a good place to build a monastery to spread the religion swiftly btw.

On tech path in general: I thought we kind of discussed this topic already and you wanted to go CoL-philo. I apologize that I forgot you need maths for bulb which kinda messed it a bit. I think also Hammurabi should be sorry though... Yes going calendar would've been ok, at least it's on astro path as is IW.

Don't worry though, overall the empire is built well, the position is safe, cottages will grow and soon those 40 specialists will start doing their work.

 

In almost every game where I'm going for philo or astro I click around in the research tree (hold shift to queue up multiple techs), and then I see what tech the GSci have in it's bulb path.
One of the many benefits of buffy!

Mr HammyQuadGold, he might become annoying to handle. He builds a decent amount of units too!
It can be nice to have a tab with this open when in semi-iso with an AI.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-illustrated-1-know-your-enemy.478563/page-2#post-11931717

 

@sampsa
Theres already warriors in both the unhappy cities

I wanted to share the pig in the fish city -> whip a granary, chop out library, and build work boat in southern coast city

I was confused since it sounded like you should generate your 1st scientist for the philo bulb and then only running specialists once you're in caste+paci+golden age, so I was wondering if you may as well delay caste until you can bulb philo, and get calendar/math/alpha in the mean time (I believe alpha is also required for philo bulb)
Side Q, after generating the first gp, does the cost increase in just that city or your entire empire?
Also, should I be prepping grassland farms or just let my cities starve?

@krikav
Yes I'm starting to get in the habit of checking that page.
It's especially annoying since he wants 2 1of1 health resources for a gold when I'm already struggling for health

 

Cost for GPersons are empire wide. So if two cities are just at 97/100 and both cities generate 3 great people points (running one scientist) then the first city you settled will spawn a GPerson, while the other city will end up at 100/200 and thus requires 100 more GPP to spawn a GPerson.

That you only should generate them while in paci/golden age etc is more of a guideline, it's perfecly fine to generate the first 3-4 totally without multipliers, but once you start to get up at 500/600 great people points, only the very food densest cities will manage it in a forseeable future.
Example, coastl city with 3 fishes and a lighthouse at pop 10 can work the 3 fishes, have a food surplus of 4*3 +2 (the city center) = 14 and run 7 specialists.
These specialists will generate 21 great people points per turn, and would take just short of 30 turns to reach 600 great people points. So it's starting to get unrealistic at that point.


Gold is expensive in the early game, as it's the resource for a wonder, Shadow-wagon-Playa.
Once that wonder is built, gold starts to cost as much as all other resources.
And yeah, that can be quite annoying. :/

 

Oh ok. Just very hard to see from the screenshot. Maybe you could post a save at some point so that we can see better.

Ok. Sharing food is of course useful, but it's really the only food Antioch is using. One food resource per city works great. Southern city is so far it's better to start with a boat in fish-city, in a perfect world two chops into it finish on the same turn it's founded. 10 overflow into granary, one more chop into it and whip it at size 2. Then start working on the library, which is not urgent at all. Just grow and work cottages.

Yes, you understood it correctly. However, you are not that far from the requirements, alpha can be gained immediately if Hams gets it. Mainly my point was that there is no point in an unnecessary delay either. In a perfect world, you reach the last bulb requirement and pop the on the same turn. Getting the GS too early might cost you 1 per turn. Getting it too late costs you the nT benefit of caste/philo which can be pretty big.

Hmm, do you really have farmable grasslands? You have a lot of food, some of it is shareable so I don't really think you need any farms.

One more thing: you are building barracks in capital. Do you have a monastery? A much better build, +10% and the ability to build missionaries. Every city you run specialists must have the religion anyway.

 

T107-118

Spoiler :

Whipped out a workboat in south coast city and will soon whip a library there.
Slowbuilt settler in Thessalonia, probably going to settle 1NW of banana


Teched math->sailing->calendar, gives immediate +1 happiness from sugar and then +1 happiness/health from bananas+insense

Buddhism is spreading like wildfire, I won't even need to build any missionaries until I build new cities





GP situation. Was a little tricky since I had -health but it's working out I guess. I run scientists whenever I run out of improvements which results in several cities having a few GP points.






Tech situation, I'm 3-4 turns away from CoL and I should be able to bulb philo immediately when it's born.
Hopefully hammy will have alphabet by that point

Plan will then be going for optics and meet the other civs, getting IW first and a couple more workers so I can start clearing that jungle and get a couple more cities up.

Attached save, no spoilers

 

Your workers don't seem to be improving calendar resources. Wasn't it the whole point of going calendar? I think you should get a galley out immediately from Angora to check and fog bust the desert island. Try to get a warrior on board as well. I don't think you should build monasteries everywhere, often I build like one. Warriors will be useful soon with HR.

 

Running scientists whenever you run out of improvements is a good way to stagnate cities and if you are doing it in cities that will eventually spawn a GPerson, it's all good and dandy.
But for example Nicaea might have troubles spawning a GPerson with only that dry rice. So unless that weak city gets priority and is allowed to spawn early on, then GPP generated there are locked in forever and lost.

Important with that island, yes, if you can't get a galley there with a settler (nice with a offshore island for traderoutes.) or a warrior for fogbusting, consider placing a workboat there to prevent barb galleys spawning and harassing you.

As sampsa says, monesteries everywhere is a mistake, and especially so if Hammy does the work for you.
One monestery in capital can be good, and/or one monestery in some city with enough producitivity that cranking out missionaries isn't a big deal.
The +10% research bonus is nice, but it dissapears at Scientific method.

 

For long-term strategy, I advise you to do one of two things:

1. Ignore Hammy, cityspam the jungle. With 12+ good spots on immortal, you really can't lose by teching astro/steel and then wiping everyone out slow and steady.

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.

 

Also, can we have the t0 save?

 

T118-128

Spoiler :

Iconium founded. CoL finished, going for IW to start clearing these jungles



Scouted south island. I was thinking settling on red square and brining a missionary for culture, the idea was that I could work cottages on blue squares while still working sheep, wondering if that's worth doing.

1st scientist spawned





Hammy's filling in the space between us, I whip out 3 settlers, planning on settling on red squares. I could maybe get 1 more north of that barb city or maybe cheese capture it myself (I have no copper, Iron comes online in a few turns)

Alphabet still nowhere to be seen, of course I'm wondering if it's worth waiting for it, I have the scientist ready for the bulb and have buddhism in the important cities.

@Fish Man T0 below

 

The island you should settle with sheep in first ring, ignore the grassland that it could in theory reach, and ignore the whale.
Thats too long term thinking, and you would sacrifice too much here and now to gain that.

The two cities you have marked in the jungle I think look like complete garbage, I wouldn't want to settle those, I would let Hammy develop the jungle.
Well.. if you have IW and Calendar, perhaps the western banana river is ok, but a filler there in the east should be off imho. If you already have a settler and can't find some better spot, you could gift it to hammy to reach friendly faster.

If you can gift a city and get friendly, Hammy will start to trade all techs except the ones he is building wonders with.
There is a risk that Hammy has gone of the rails and is going for Music or theology or something, his high culture flavour can probably do that.
I would probably self-tech alpha now.

 

Regarding missionary for the island city, no. It doesn't strictly need a borderpop so you should wait for natural spread, or send a missionary there in 40-50 turns when the city needs it.
You can much better afford the cost of that missionary in 40 turns, than you can now. Postpone what can be postponed, prioritize what gives you the highest yield right now.

 

I'd actually settle on the forest for the whale in second ring. From what I see, your continent has a grand total of four happiness resources, so you could really use another one. Especially seeing as how whales come at optics, which is what you want anyways to meet everyone else.

 

@Fish Man
Yeah, might be worth it, I think I would prefer the chop to get granary up quicker, but each option has it's merits.