Immortal Mansa Help

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

I had played a few turns right after I posted my T134 message (to about T140), and had already proceeded to wipe out Elizabeth. Perhaps it would have been better to vassal, but taking the last two cities were relatively easy. It did take a few turns (3 elephants taking out 6 weakened defenders over the course of two turns).

I played on to T156 and things seem to be in good shape.

Spoiler T156 :

As mentioned, I finished off Elizabeth. I continued building elephants and catapults in my main cities, and eventually the units in English territory made their way toward the Eastern part of the Greek empire. I took 5 cities off of Alex and then went for peace with the plan to consolidate stacks and take Thebes and Athens, which should be enough for vassal. Eventually, Shaka and Isabella made peace with Alex, allowing Alex to get a decent stack together while my units had become somewhat scattered.

Tech-wise, I did bulb Education. Then I teched Philosophy somehow founding Taoism at the late date of 580AD. My science sort of plummeted due to whipping, SoZ unhappiness, etc. However, I traded for Machinery, Engineering, Compass, and Drama. I teched Liberalism and chose Nationalism. I have a decent science lead for the moment as a result. Plan is to go for Cuirs. In the meantime, I want to grow some of my cities and start building wealth to aid the tech rate. I started whipping mints in my cities as well.

I spawned a Great Prophet in London and used it for a GA to help push me towards Cuirs. Washington is fairly behind in tech currently and seems like easy next target.

If you hadn’t finished off Elizabeth by spending time taking out 2 tundra cities you might’ve had enough momentum to cap Alex. As it stands, the cities you took from him are virtually useless due to border pressure.

If you’re going to go for cuirs go for the tech leader (Willem in this case I think). Cuirs vs medieval units is pretty much a stomp so if both of them have parity militarily it makes sense to destroy the would-be runaway.

The game’s still definitely winnable at this point though. Good job so far.

 

[sampsa]

@southquote

Spoiler :

Can't open the save now, but it seems your game is running smoothly! Now you can plan how to exactly win the game. Maybe you can capitulate everyone with cuirassiers? When/how you win is important because it dictates what you build (only units? buildings? wealth/research?) and if you keep teching or basically stop teching (or at least stop caring about it).

 

[southquote]

If you hadn’t finished off Elizabeth by spending time taking out 2 tundra cities you might’ve had enough momentum to cap Alex. As it stands, the cities you took from him are virtually useless due to border pressure.

If you’re going to go for cuirs go for the tech leader (Willem in this case I think). Cuirs vs medieval units is pretty much a stomp so if both of them have parity militarily it makes sense to destroy the would-be runaway.

The game’s still definitely winnable at this point though. Good job so far.

Possibly I should have just capped Elizabeth. These are the types of things I am figuring out/learning. This forum spends a lot more discussion on the early game (and rightly so!) rather than how to win better. In the end, I doubt this decision really matters in terms of winning. I am not necessarily gunning for the earliest victory dates--yet anyway. For now, I am looking for convincing, "dominating" wins, and it is not clear if your comment is mostly about earliest win date.

I noted in some other games that civilizations I totally wiped out had much more productive cities than ones I capitulated, due to motherland unhappiness and cultural pressure causing frequent revolutions (might not have been as much of a problem here though). For example in the NC Lincoln game I played on Emperor, I capped Zara first, but many of the Ethiopian cities I took were in revolt the whole game. I garrisoned a number of troops in Aksum and that only helped a bit. Then I completed wiped out Elizabeth, and London became a powerhouse city, building all kinds of units, national wonders, etc. Other English cities also contributed that game. So it seemed to me that wiping out the first victim was preferable so that I could fully incorporate some new strong cities. Then, as the train gets rolling to domination, just capitulate everyone else.

By the way, only one of the cities was a tundra city and neither really have a lot of border pressure (Canterbury to some degree, but it still has some good tiles). Nottingham (the tundra one) has no border pressure at all and some good tiles. So it is hard for me to evaluate your comment.

With respect to next victim, good point about Willem. Given he has only 5 cities, I should be able to cap him quickly with Cuirs.

 

[southquote]

The game moved rapidly after getting over the hump with Alexander. Turn 200 (1400AD) Domination Victory. Final Score = 297052, considerably beating my previous bests (1535AD win on Prince with Julius Caesar and 156135 score with Zara on Emperor)

Spoiler The End :

As planned, I declared on Alex after 10 turns. I took Thebes and then Athens after a bit of a fight. Alex then capitulated. In the meantime, I had researched MT + Gunpowder, and I starting pumping Cuirassers. I built the Taj and also spawned a Great Artist in London followed by a Great Scientist in Walata for another golden age.

As Undefeatable suggested, I went for Willem next. Shaka declared on me, which I think was due to AP. Willem had built it while running Christianity and only Shaka had some Christian population. In any case, I took two marginal cities from Willem and as I was closing in on Amsterdam, he capitulated. At this point, I was pumping out a lot of Cuirs and sliced through Shaka taking 6 cities before he capitulated. I healed up, and declared on Washington. By now I had over 50 cuirs. I took two cities and as I closed in on some core cities, he capitulated -- game over.

This game went considerably better than expected. Why? I had ridiculously good land (tons of food, flood plains, happy and health resources, and room to expand); a very strong leader; and forum help. In fact, I am not sure I have ever had land this good. Forum help, while sometimes small (e.g., where to settle the capital, building more cats than elephants and filling in with skirmishers, attacking Willem first, etc.), I think has a big effect as well. I also got lucky that Alex waited until T128 to declare on me versus T84 for Sampsa (and possibly just as early for Krikav). In fact, the only challenge in this game was sharing a border with Alex. On the more positive side, I think I exploited those advantages well and also successfully waged two pre-cuir wars, something I have not done since Monarch.

Some clear lessons: (1) value early chops and granaries more; (2) (when it makes sense), early warfare is profitable; (3) accept capitulations earlier -- at least on Pangaea.

Thanks for all the help, especially Sampsa for playing along and giving detailed tips!

 

[floydmcw]

We have both corn and wheat, which with granary gives us +4 health.
And also the two types of seafood, and eventually the pig.
We have plenty of health resources.

I did a quick try, enjoyed the buildup but...

Spoiler :

I got a DOW from Alexander who also bribed Isabella on me. Guess I got to carried away with the preparation of a glorious bur-cap.
Curious how you others would handle diplomacy on this map.

Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I built some skirmishers and put a couple of hammers into walls, but when Alex DOWd he came with 3 cats and a huge stack, 5-6 skirmishers in a hill city couldn't fend him off.

I'm not used to immortal and Alex is tough to deal with, I ran his religion and he was allegedly worst enemy of Lizzie and someone else, that didn't keep him off my back.

 

[sampsa]

Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I built some skirmishers and put a couple of hammers into walls, but when Alex DOWd he came with 3 cats and a huge stack, 5-6 skirmishers in a hill city couldn't fend him off.

I'm not used to immortal and Alex is tough to deal with, I ran his religion and he was allegedly worst enemy of Lizzie and someone else, that didn't keep him off my back.

That has to be one huge stack if it beats 5-6 skirmishers in a walled hill city. It must be way past 1AD before immortal AI has stacks like that. Here we have easy access to both ivory and horses so you have several ways of dealing with him.

 

[Fippy]

Hmm not really, Sampsa ~~
After 3 Cats damage, those Skirms are not better than regular Archers anymore (maybe weaker, guessing).
Archers in wall hill cities are still pretty good, but aggressive Swords are also good attackers against them.

Need bigger numbers than ~5 to spread coll. damage,
3 Cats are already hurting them plenty and i would guess with 5-6 Cats they would win no fight anymore against Alex Swords.

 

[sampsa]

Yeh, but those cats always bombard first, right? So you have quite a lot of time to bring in defenders or even to try to flank those cats.

Edit: just saying that at least on this map we should have a way to deal with whatever immortal Alex does.

 

[Gumbolt]

You either have to get Alex to pleased/friendly or be prepared to whip more units. That or be able to bribe other Ai to attack him? Or Alex on them. Alex will attack at pleased.

If you are not going the phant route then you would need other options. Maybe Swords or axes? It's possible if you wanted to play peacefully you might go lit/music route. Then you would need to hope for Iron or copper nearby.

With a neighbour like Alex I always assume an early war of sorts. Albeit Alex has a lot of land to use here.

If you spam cottages you have some chance as you should beat Alex to construction. Probalem is sooner or later he will declare. Difficult to tech deep here for cuirs with a warmonger so close. Least at pleased you can beg for gold.

The alternative is to give him the option to attack your stack on a forest before he reaches the city.

 

[krikav]

I think we all agree that if one plays good and doesn't do any mistakes, then one won't run into problems.
But don't confuse this thread with "Post a tough diety map for me to play."
Floyd whom you replied to sampsa, clearly writes that "I'm not used to immortal".

Floyd:

In that letsplay, a strong diety player is cramped in the middle of a bunch of aggressive AIs, he speaks abit of how he handles it diplomacywise, basically working hard to not share a land border and thus dramatically lowering the chance of an attack.

I learned from it, and you will probably as well.

 

[floydmcw]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Yeah 3 CR1 cats and the ref was standing over my skirmishers counting 10. I didn't win a single battle.

My experience bribing one AI on another is that they fight halfheartedly, make peace, so I've made one AI mad and given the other a bunch of techs.

Alex seems tough to get to pleased, he doesn't care about religion and has a hidden negative (?). He made no demands before the DOW.

 

[floydmcw]

Oh and to answer a question Alex declared around T106

 

[sampsa]

I think we all agree that if one plays good and doesn't do any mistakes, then one won't run into problems. Floyd whom you replied to sampsa, clearly writes that "I'm not used to immortal".

Yes, I understand. And maybe I was lucky that in my game he attacked pre-cats when a single skirmisher (plus some HAs) was able to halt his attack.

Oh and to answer a question Alex declared around T106

I think you should have some elephants by then. At least some cats to suicide against his stack... Well, maybe you weren't teching into that direction.

Yeah 3 CR1 cats and the ref was standing over my skirmishers counting 10. I didn't win a single battle.

Damn, maybe you also got seriously unlucky.

 

[Fish Man]

Yes, I understand. And maybe I was lucky that in my game he attacked pre-cats when a single skirmisher (plus some HAs) was able to halt his attack.


I think you should have some elephants by then. At least some cats to suicide against his stack... Well, maybe you weren't teching into that direction.

Damn, maybe you also got seriously unlucky.

I got extremely lucky that Alex was plotting on Washington because I was completely unprepared for any attack at around 1000 BC, or turn 75 (!) when he declared on his other neighbor. However, that time he certainly didn't have construction so his phalanxes would have a lot of "fun" against my skirms if I had any. The safe play would've been go archery but I skipped that for a faster win date (traded for the potential of completely flopping at any early DoW).

However, if he declared at around 350 BC it would've been no contest. By then I had 5 cats and like 10 phants. The nice thing about getting enough phants to declare 500BC, which is the "standard" elephant attack date on decent or better maps IMHO, is that you also have enough army to crush anyone who tries to attack you and then go on to take their lightly-defended cities now that their main stack is destroyed. If you were going for any sort of classical rush at all then come 350BC your army must've been either smashing some serious @@@@ up or already won a war, because any later on immortal and you run the risk of longbows.

What was your tech/army (if you had one) like when Alex attacked?

 

[sampsa]

What was your tech/army (if you had one) like when Alex attacked?

There is a screenshot in my T86 spoiler. He attacked T81, I had one whipped non-barracked skirmisher and like 7-8 HAs.

 

[Fish Man]

There is a screenshot in my T86 spoiler. He attacked T81, I had one whipped non-barracked skirmisher and like 7-8 HAs.

Oops...I was asking @floydmcw that question. In fact, most of my comment was directed towards him . My bad.

 

[floydmcw]

Oops...I was asking @floydmcw that question. In fact, most of my comment was directed towards him . My bad.

I had a big tech lead but not much army (say 7-8 skirmishers for my 7 cities, plus warriors). I'd spent my hammers on the Pyramids, a couple forges, useless stuff like that.

EDIT -- I mean mints! They were minty fresh!

 

[Fish Man]

I had a big tech lead but not much army (say 7-8 skirmishers for my 7 cities, plus warriors). I'd spent my hammers on the Pyramids, a couple forges, useless stuff like that.

EDIT -- I mean mints! They were minty fresh!

Were you going for cuirs? If so minimal defense is understandable, but surely you must've known Alex was gonna declare sooner or later and prepped for that somehow?

This is not deity but the immortal AI is no slouch. Past construction you WILL have to go on the offensive to destroy enemy stacks (by attacking them outside of the city, preferably w/ cats). Especially for a unitspammer like Alex. And once you need such a large standing army anyways (which costs money every turn and gives you nothing when there's no war)...early rush to kill him before he lays eggs seems like the better option in the first place.

 

[southquote]

One thing I can recommend is to post a save and you will get good feedback (from better players than me). If you have the save right after Alex DoW, that would be a good one. It sounds like you were teching up to cuirs and got attacked and the question is how to survive that.

In my game, I did get a later DoW than you did so that helped. I bribed in Shaka and Isabella, and at the time I felt maybe that was a mistake, but now I think it was not. I noticed once the they all made peace, Alex had bigger stacks, meaning the AI-AI battle while not yielding any changes in cities did slow down Alex. I gave up most of my tech lead in the bribes, but then I got it back fairly quickly and really the game was all downhill once I got past Alex so it was worth it to spend the techs to bribe the other AIs.

In your game, the first question is whether you had ivory and construction. If so, you should have been able to whip a bunch of elephants and survive. Typically, the AI uses their catapults to reduce city defense to 0 first so you have a number of turns to react to a DoW (the one or two turns for the AI to get up to your city + the bombardment turns). In fact, if you see the "red fist" (using BUG mod), you can react then if you think you might be a target.

Completely speculating, but given all the food (and happy resources), perhaps the thing to work on is whipping? Were skirmishers your best unit? If you had elephants, they not only help by being bigger than the attackers, they help with whip anger since you can 2-pop whip them rather than 1-pop whip skirmishers (i.e., more hammers per unhappy citizen). If no ivory (or construction), what resources did you have. Had you grabbed the iron in the south? If so, it might have been a good idea to whip some axes since Alex probably had a lot of melee.

 

[sampsa]

Almost forgot this game, trying to finish now since it shouldn't take many more turns.

T121

Spoiler :

Capped all but Bella and Alex. Alex has a lot of C2-spears so I need some catapults. Bulbed machinery since didn't see much other use for GE, would much rather gotten GM to bulb currency even. No big deal of course. +40 HAs now and almost 10 cats, should be enough.