Immortal Students, Re-examination !

[Takesitez]

Hehe, I am glad everyone liked the map.

Yeah I imagined this would be very very hard on Deity, but the land is so good that on Immortal, if you play your cards right, you can get a very nice conquest date.

I didn't finish the map, after my early troubles with the declaration, I stabilized and managed to lib Steel in (philobulbing through lib and chemistry helps ) 900 AD. Figured the game was won and the rest just about mopping up; and didn't feel like playing the war out.

Spoiler :

for me the key on Immortal was just to keep Cathy on my good side and stave off the mongols until you can win lib; then take them out. Considering the quality of the land, I decided against elepult/ engineering rush, but as can be seen from Izuul's game, that's absolutely not the most optimal idea

I really enjoyed reading Izuul's and shaka's writeups.

Maybe i'll roll another one soon

 

[shakabrade]

Spoiler :

I figured out there were very good chances at UN victory here.
So, the plan was to conquer people to make them tech what I want, tech to Medicine and Mass Media while keeping Cathy happy. Before any offensive, I begged her gold to get enough time for only one front.

First, I finished off Mongolia to make all unhappiness in former Mongolian cities go away and GK is not such a good techer to let him live. Also, my military production got 3 extra cities.

Spoiler :

Then I got Steel, Rifling, Military tradition and even Constitution in smart trades, as I was the first one to Steel.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

To make formidable army quickly, a switch into Nationhood and Theocracy was made. And then I attacked Hanny as he lacked Rifling. Although HC was supposed to be the first target. Hannibal suicided at my army, I killed a few stray units and he already capped. Didn't expect such and easy expedition.

Next target, HC. A few turns before I DoW-ed, he signed defensive pact with Pacal . Oh my, two fronts...

Anyway:

Spoiler :

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Their mostly mounted units really stood no chance. Especially as they are hesitant to attack SoDs, and then CR2 and CR3 cannons just do what they do best.


As I never had much time for Great People production, getting GM for sushi was easy .
Medicine was traded with my decent teching Financial vassals to get to Mass Media quickly. My plan was gifting it to Ottomans and letting them build it. In that case, I would be the second option with my Sushi loving pop and even Russia could vote for me, if happy. However, Russia got Mass Media at the same turn as I had and would probably be faster to producing UN. That possibility was the reason for me going Sushi in the first place.

Friendly Cathy was the most important thing in the game. She did attack me at some point with gunships and stuff. I reloaded and seeing that she was at +9, figured out if I were to switch her to Hereditary Rule that we could sign defensive pact. Later on, we both switched from HR, defensive pact bonus kicked in and our friendship lasted forever.

When UN was built, I had to skip first call for diplo win, as I barely lacked a few votes. Then I settled rubbish cities and gave them Sushi while denying all the happy and healthy to Russia. She dropped a bit and I got more and next vote was called:

Spoiler :

Military victory with Artillery and 3 good vassals was possible but I was playing isolation game in parallel and just wanted to finish with maniacally pressing end turn for once.

Thanks for this very difficult map! This is where you learn.

 

[MegaLurker]

Wait, so in your game Cathy formed a colony. And with all the un-used civs still available, by random chance it became the Ottomans 2.0, and with the same colour as Carthage?

This game is still full of surprises all these years later

 

[shakabrade]

Wait, so in your game Cathy formed a colony. And with all the un-used civs still available, by random chance it became the Ottomans 2.0, and with the same colour as Carthage?

This game is still full of surprises all these years later

Didn't know it was a colony. I thought that mapmaker did that on purpose.

 

[Izuul]

Mehmed was in the game from the start.

 

[Fippy]

Congrats Shaka, sticking with that game was impressive
I did put my money on Cathy, and so i loooose

 

[MegaLurker]

Mehmed was in the game from the start.

Hah, that explains that Did I just not meet Mehmed 2.0 yet in my game, or did I not notice? I guess I only played the opening.

I'd have thought it was impossible for a colony to be created as the same civ as the human player, or even any of the AIs.

 

[shakabrade]

Congrats Shaka, sticking with that game was impressive
I did put my money on Cathy, and so i loooose

You'll always lose betting on the AI!

But, yes, exhausting map on deity. You are a land target of two warmongers, one of them is always advanced while you have lovefest of 3 Financial leaders teching away and Catherine is really good at pushing both expansion, war and teching.

 

[Takesitez]

Yeah that was what I liked about the setup after I rolled the map, I did put Mehmed up there to kinda shake things up a little bit (it's a strong AI, but the player can use diplo to manipulate him a bit), but in my game he wasnt up to much.