[BTS] Immortal SG

[lymond]

Roads did nothing for speeding travel, by the way. You could chop into a settler or something as well.

pre-chopping could be fine too ..yup..just depends on what you are trying to do at the time. Not sure exactly myself as I'm not fully in sync with your game.

 

[scheines]

Yep I was about to follow up to your point about chopping a settler. For better or for worse I’m thinking HAs vs Stalin, at least this time around.

So in this case, I was worried another city would hamper down my tech pace too much. Otherwise I definitely would just be chopping into settlers.

Good point on the roads. Didn’t even think about the river.

 

[lymond]

1N of Wash would have been better road connection if that was needed for movement...not sure which direction HAs will move from. I think road crossing on pigs is across river too..not sure though.

I think you can afford 1 more city before HAs.

 

[Pangaea]

NY to Washington because I will need it for war so I can make HAs.

Perhaps the next sentence pre-empts this, but just in case: This road was not needed for this, because the cities are auto-connected via the river (within your culture pre-sailing), which also includes all resources. That means New York has access to horses, and everything else your capital has access to.

Sometimes it's okay to put down roads if you have nothing else to do, especially when moving the worker anyway (1 tile move, 1 turn road), but right here you can pre-chop or chop into a settler. True, 3 cities is probably fine, but think you can afford another one here, for example further upriver. That ship has probably sailed now, heh. Close to HBR anyway. You may also start to tech it already now. With bigger cities and cottages developing, you may get there a turn or two earlier, or by not using binary research at the end. No harm done if you need another 0% turn later. You want to get to HBR asap now, since everything else is done, so would be a little annoying if you get there and have plenty of gold left over.

I see you have at least one chariot out, so an option is to check out Stalin's borders, or interior if he's got Writing and you can open borders. Maybe you see some workers you can snag too, on turn 1 of the war.

Looks like you have about as many cottages as you can realistically work right now, so unless you have been pre-chopping too, it's time to get that done. You'll be chopping down just about everything in the capital into HAs. Perhaps that will be overkill, but with some luck, you are able to continue the war after Stalin with another neighbour, so then they will come in handy. Or later when you have Monarchy happiness (unless you capture the Mids somewhere, for Rep).

Good luck with the HAs

 

[scheines]

Spoiler :

OK I played way too long for a shadow game, but it's hard to peel away from war! It was tough to document since there are so many decisions being made; I feel like I'd want a screenshot almost every turn.

I ended up getting writing while chopping and whipping an army, so I built up a decent initial army. Stalin's got combat 1 units for free, so I knew I'd need a few.

I opted to split a few units up top to pillage the mine which looked like it was iron. Hopefully this is his only metal and it's HAs vs. chariots now.

The war is a bit of a slow grinder, but I manage to pick up Moscow, Novgorod and St. Petersburg. I capture something like 7 - 8 workers in the process. I abused a cease fire to get some free scouting on 2 cities, then attacked the weaker one.

I got a little careless and left only 1 HA at St Petersburg, so I stumbled a bit and had to recapture.

I manage to pick up Rostov and I think now I'm out of steam. I have most of Stalin's good land; Yekaterinburg, is such a bad city aside from the copper, I think I'll leave it. His other city up north is in the jungle, and I am starting to bottom out my economy (losing cash at 0% science for awhile there). I reckon this is a good place to call it, what do you think?

I picked up IW, masonry and mysticism for my troubles. During the war, I started teching Aesthetics as I could afford, hoping to get a trade for Alpha / IW. I ended up aborting this though because I decided I'd rather extort Stalin for some tech if I left him around. The tech situation seems OK, at least on this continent. Bismarck is leading, but not too badly.

From here, I figure I'll recover an eco, then target maybe cuirassiers for polishing off Stalin, and a neighbor or two before reevaluating. Bismarck is plotting, but as long as Pacal is around in his own religion I feel alright. For teching, I figured literature + caste would be a good place start, since I have marble, and am philosophical. I could go for organized religion, but Stalin had so many forests I can just chop out granaries + libraries before proceeding to build beakers / wealth for teching. Plus, his land is pretty hilly for production.

My worker situation is a bit odd; I stole so many workers and I have nothing to use them for (so I say, feel free to disagree). I'll likely consider deleting a few... no use in paying for workers that just build roads aimlessly. I got a little focused on war, so my improvements were just mines in the area, then roads after all the forests were gone. I also settled up river as touched on in previous segments.

Critique away! I know I played far too many turns, but I'm sure there is something in there we can work on.

 

[Pangaea]

Well done!

How many HAs do you have left? Yekateringburg is crap and can be razed, but not a priority. However, that jungle city as you called it looks pretty nice. Riverside, lots of forests (and yes, some jungle) and ivory. Ivory is great for later warfare (even as backup/cleanup units) and of course you get happiness from it. And the river can be cottaged. Can't recall if there were food in that city because I stopped playing and quit the game as soon as Stalin was dead in my chariot rush attempt, but from the screenshot above, it looks quite nice. From the picture I see you have peaced out, but think I'd definitely have taken a look at least, to see if it was possible to grab the ivory city. Huge difference if it's a hill city with walls guarded by three spears, or if it's flatland with an archer.

However, even with peace now, Stalin is effectively dead and you have a bunch of cities. Several of them have Hinduism I see, which is great for free border pops.

Now it's about recovery. Get up some libraries, cottage up the nice land, get to Currency.

Add-on: Do you have spy points on Bismarck? Looks like it from the scoreboard. Of these AIs, Hannibal is probably the best techer, and a decent trader as well, so I'd put points on him instead. Perhaps awkward to change that now if you have 0 points on him, though.

 

[scheines]

Yep I think I started EP on Bismarck since he was top score at the time.

Is currency a better recovery tech than getting some GP going sooner? As I recall from the game, I won’t have too many good trade routes.

 

[Pangaea]

Currency isn't (mainly) about trade routes, but about being able to build Wealth, and trade for gold (sell crappy techs) and sell resources for gold per turn. It's arguably the most important tech in the game, after worker techs.

 

[Fippy]

CoL can be better than currency (for self-teching), in your game Biz already has it and it's much more liked after Relis are gone.
Aest seems like a good pick yup, should be able to get maths and some gold.

 

[sampsa]

I also used to think currency is important, but now I see it only as a "nice to have" and I rarely self-research it on deity. Ability to build wealth is not very important since you mostly shouldn't be working a lot of -tiles anyway, rather growing to work cottages. Probably the most useful function is tech/resource selling. On deity AIs get currency earlier so you get the benefit anyway, so maybe currency is a better tech on say immortal/emperor.

 

[sampsa]

Looked at the save. Doing good, but could improve the current position with a few tweaks. I'd give horse to Biz for ivory+1pt. Your core needs that happiness. Run two scientists in New York, stop working the horrible 4 tile in capital. Even a scientist is a lot better. I'm kinda shocked you have invested into so many libraries but haven't ran any scientists with a PHI leader. Libraries are rather marginal buildings especially if you ignore the scientist slots, because 90 is a huge price.

You are building mines in the ex-Russian area. I'd build cottages, they are a lot better because then you can grow a lot faster. Then chop into marble failgold. I'd try to capture the barb city in the north with leftover HAs. I'd finish Aesth for trading and failgolding purposes.

 

[nate46]

hmm, but on deity, the AIs have more cities, so you're more likely to get +2 commerce per city from trade routes. As someone who tends to spam (too many?) settlers early this adds up.... but what do I know.

I've tried the "tech aesth even though I don't need it and trade" thing a couple times but it rarely works out well for me. Is there a lot of luck to it or am i doing something wrong? How early do you tech aesthetics? is there a target year to get it by? Does it depend on the AI leaders which things I should tech? I notice that some, like Mansa, are usually way way ahead in tech, so far ahead that I almost never have anything they even want... while ones like Toku are almost always backwards and useless. I need to learn more of the leader's personalities.

 

[scheines]

OK, another big update.

But first - Aesthetics can usually net me a trade even on immortal. If I am doing that, I usually go for it after writing, once I have libraries in place. Sure, some AIs might seem to go for it earlier, but for instance here I was able to take 4 cities from Stalin and still have time to get some trades for it (see below). However, if you don't have marble to fail gold, I find going for caste is more worthwhile.

Spoiler :

OK @sampsa, you got me on the 4H mines. I think maybe I was trying to cram out as many HAs as I could and worrying about eco later. Maybe. Agree that the GPP are better.

So for tech I started out currency -> aesthetics as suggested. Netted me a bit of tech catchup... I got the below, then monarchy from Bismarck. Maybe I shouldn't be taking all these crap techs since it skyrockets my WFYABTA counter? Bismarck's is so low, but I really couldn't get much else. Perhaps self teching say mediation + priesthood then trading for the big ticket items (monarchy) is better?

Hannibal has been my only good trade partner. Pacal and Stalin hate me, and Bismarck is on the fence of WFYABTA. I got lucky with him forgetting a few times, though. I got a good bit of cash elsewhere for Aesthetics, however.

Next I teched code of laws, I got my first GS around 100 AD and popped philosophy for him. I didn't track the date of the second, but I used him for a golden age, as I teched CS. To start the GA I swapped into HR + caste + pacifism. I netted two more GS, double bulbed education after getting paper. I meant to swap into bureau before it ended, but forgot (oops). So I did that as I wrote this up lol.

Now I am going towards nationalism; it's on the path to libbing MT, if it's agreed that is still on the table? I doubt the 2 un-met civs could keep pace with a 5 civ continent, so I think we are on the further advanced one. Also, as seen below, we have paper + education on everyone. So libbing MT seems pretty comfortable here. Also, I have marble for the taj, which could let me get out more scientists for bulbing lib, or a merchant for upgrading some HAs into cuirs.

Workers spend the era cottaging any workable tile, and chopping into the Parthenon and Shweggity Peggity for the fail gold. I tried to save forests where I could for after math, but in some cases I really wanted granaries to speed up my growth. Combined the 2 wonders netted me well over 1K fail gold, so I am off to the races with my tech pace. Infrastructure is basically done (granaries, libraries all around), so I am also able to build wealth.

The diplo situation is alright, but not great. I should've finished off Stalin, as now he has peace vassaled to Bismarck, who is a little war crazy, and he has laid claim to the north. I sort of stopped growth in that direction and now I am regretting it, as he will probably top 15 cities pretty easily. Hopefully I can backstab him with a war bribe on Pacal. Techwise, I'd grab calendar from Bismarck, but keep paper and education for myself to ensure nobody here can beat me to lib.

 

[sampsa]

on deity, the AIs have more cities, so you're more likely to get +2 commerce per city from trade routes

Well, if you are connected to multiple AIs all your trade routes are often 2 anyway, so I don't think the effect is big. Maybe in some situations worth a few though.

I've tried the "tech aesth even though I don't need it and trade" thing a couple times but it rarely works out well for me.

I rarely go for aesth without marble and often it's a bit silly to go aesth just for the trade value. There are other trade chips as well, like especially CoL since it's on a good path. For me, aesth is for failgold and trying to win music (which leads to cuirs).

 

[scheines]

Yea usually I have marble or want to get music first if I am teching aesthetics after writing.

Otherwise CoL is just a more valuable position: leads to philosophy, CS, unlocks caste; etc.

Though, you have to play the map. Sometimes nobody techs aesthetics and it becomes the most efficient way to catch up on key early techs (IW, alpha, math, monarchy, etc.).