Immortal - Need some directions

[Ignorant Teacher]

Hello everyone!

I've recently moved to Immortal and I've been having some problems with it. Once I don't expand hard enough and become irrelevant, then I overexpand, the next time... Well, I'm playing this game as Fred and would like to ask you to take a look at it and see what I could have done differently. I know what I'm showing here is not informative enough, but still. I didn't start this game thinking of asking for help and I don't want to get advice that's applicable only to this specific game.

Spoiler :

A friend was here and we were drinking and talking while I was playing, but feel free to be harsh.

Some things I know:

-I'm not big enough. That's a problem I have on Immortal. I've opened the World Builder a couple of times and saw many AIs build a settler first on this level. The thing is that I haven't learned how to deal with it yet.

-I don't have a clear plan. I've been just letting myself go and see how the games turn out to be instead of focusing on one direction or another.

So, in this specific game, I started as Fred and saw I had stone so I thought "Hey, why don't I build a couple of wonders?" I became boxed in real quick because Justinian is one of my neighbors and Gandhi is the other. Instead of rushing the Mahatma, I secured enough land for six cities and thought I'd run a settled specialist capital to fund my research.

One of the things I know I'll hear is that I haven't traded techs enough and that's true, I haven't. As I was focusing all my development in my capital, I kind of only built farms everywhere. Now that I'm running Emancipation I started to replace them by cottages. I was trying to see what the specialist economy people talk about is, but I don't think I did it right.

Well, what I mean is I know I'm not playing the best way I can, but I can't see where my mistakes are. TMIT said one of these days that some details can change the whole course of the game and if you can point them to me, I'll really appreciate that.

Enough talking, some game specific information:

My land

Spoiler :

Techs and demographics:

Spoiler :

Berlin

Spoiler :

There are three saves attached: the initial one, a moment I saved in the middle of the game and where I am now.

Thanks everyone in advance and I apologize I can't make myself more clear.

Spoiler :

Remember, I was drinking with my friend until, like, 20 minutes ago.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

With close quarters like this you could consider rushing. It's not pretty but there doesn't appear to be a lot of land for ANYONE, getting a #cities lead early is usually a pretty commanding advantage.

 

[Grashopa]

Theres no way I don't horse archer rush that game. You have a million forests. Grab the horse first and then settle the north coast grabbing the fish and cow. Only need 3 cities and 3 workers. Then just chop barracks stables and *Horse Archer.

But what you did could also have been a better plan, just you have to be planning to go to war at some point. I think the way you started you should have planned to go after guilds and chemistry and getting into caste+workshops. You have the HE? I'd have built that in the capital. You could easily take out Asoka with anything once the workshops and guilds are in.

 

[Silu]

I guess what you needed most was a long-term plan for your game. It's usually not enough to just "live in the moment" and micro as you bump into things but have a goal 100-300 turns in the future and stick to a plan that gives you a chance to accomplish that. If you think you don't have enough land to win you the game, you need to plan a moment to get that land, be it chariots, HAs, Cavalry, Tanks or whatever. If you think you do, you can aim for extra vertical growth instead like the SoL and the Elec-Radio wonders.

Another thing is to commit completely to a strategy you're executing. You were in a WE/SSE grinding a ton of specialists, but then you suddenly went Emancipation and started up cottages everywhere. This is not good since you can never run US without nerfing your tech and caste is a good way to get MFG and tech with that capital. With that MFG you could have planned for maybe Panzer-blitzing India or something.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I was thinking cavalry blitz more likely, but one could always do an obsolete impression also...

HA or even axe rush might have been doable here (I'd have gone for mr. CQB double gold personally). The AI having 2 golds kind of sucks. You having 2 golds is the opposite of "sucks".

 

[Silu]

I was thinking cavalry blitz more likely, but one could always do an obsolete impression also...

Tru dat. Didn't look at the tech situation closely enough, I thought Cavs were outdated if we were talking about Emancipation.

Gandhi would probably be history already if you had gunned for Cavs instead of Democracy, IMO early Democracy is only good if you have enough land to win already.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Or at least enough land that towns on it will keep you competitive in the tech race (so you can lay a beatdown with a tech advantage later).

 

[Bruin.Bound]

It seems like you don't have a lot of production oppurtinities with your cities...? I can't really see too well by the pictures sorry. The best thing is to try to play to the strengths of what you have. An early rush is an opportunity you probably missed out on, and now building an army would probably be pretty slow. If you draft an army I think you will cripple yourself on the grand scale, but maybe the larger empire will pay off in the long run. However, I think you are in pretty good shape at the moment, you could probably cottage everything up apart from one production city and win a space race. Its usually doable on Immortal even with just 6 cities. It looks like you have two trading partners so it should be ok, and you are second in GNP so just do some wise trades for a bit and you'll be in a position to win. If you save a GE and found Mining Inc. it would be helpful, but not necessary. Just beeline through the tech-tree to get factories, Three Gorges (not necessary but helpful), Internet, Space Elevator, and laboratories in that order, and you should be fine.

If you want to wage a war to expand I'd suggest going after the Kremlin and rush-buying a lot of your army, as commerce seems to be your most positive attribute. Though I honestly have not done this too often, but I think it should work out. Actually your production is #4 so maybe you could raise an army the regular way. Its tough for me to decipher someone else's game lol.

 

[Duckweed]

While you can trade for Guild, why bother to research it? Don't be afraid to give backward or even advanced AIs some fair trade even they are your immediate targets, as long as you are not giving away critical military techs. The most important and difficult part of diplomacy is to decide what to research and when to give away techs. If someone has the possibility to get a tech from trade besides you, why do you want to keep it just because you don't want an unfair trade such as Edu<->Guild? Remember you save the beakers for Guild from this unfair trade. You get unfair trade from everyone, however, you get fair trade by tech broking.

 

[vicawoo]

Why bother with grassland farms and plains farms if you're unhealthy? +1 food, grow, -1 unhealthiness, you gain nothing except a draftable population. Run a specialist.
Fish city only gets one fish, basically have one cottage city, could have ran more specialists at a lower population, and it doesn't look like you're prepared to go to war.

 

[kcmarkwell]

this is a pretty good setup. good food capital. easy win if you ask me, just beeline horseback riding, hook it up with city #2 and slave HA to your hearts content (have a stack of 30 - 40 at least), kill either neighbor or both, then fix your economy and game in the bag

assuming you were starting over and didnt know where horses were, you would already have bronze in your capital and you can crush either neighbor. with a quick road in either direction troops could get there fast. by the time one neighbor is dead, you have tons of cities to slave and horses hooked up for round 2 vs next neighbor