Immortal University 28: Isabella

[Fei Kelei]

Slightly off topic, but...

Spoiler :

...wow, that's probably the longest river I've ever seen.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm new to the Immortal University and fairly new to Immortal. I need help! I'm not going any further till I get some advice. Spoilers to 175 AD are below; so is the save.

Spoiler :

The land immediately around Madrid wasn't great, so I went all out on a chariot rush of Hammurabi. I teched agr>ah>mining>bw>pottery>hunting>writing. Settled Barcelona right between the corn and horses. Built barracks, 4 workers, and chopped chariots like mad. Anytime I whipped I whipped workers so I could 2 pop whip and get the +25% bonus on the hammers from expansive.

I attacked Babylon first with 15 chariots around 1200 BC. he had 3 bowmen in the capital (and Stonehenge to boot ). Detoured to the NW to take one of his cities newly built. Joined a few new chariots with the survivors and took Akkad, which was on the incredible floodplains site (and is the holy site for Judaism as well as the Great Wall). Took his last city next to the elephants.

Meanwhile I settled Seville to the far west to cut off Huayna Capac, settling on top of the fur and claiming deer and stone (will come in handy for UB). During all this my economy completely tanked. Plunder and cottages kept me floating at 0% science even with a loss. When I actually started making a profit I built up some cash and deficit researched writing. Went back to 0% science until I had libraries where needed, then deficit researched alphabet, aided by some barb city plunder. Saladin and Moao didn't have alphabet so I traded for iron working, sailing, archery, and masonry. Started building research while teching currency (which nobody has, btw) and am 7 turns away in 175 BC.

I stopped there because the diplomatic situation is very precarious. I just now opened borders with everyone. Probably a mistake to wait that long but I didn't have sailing so I didn't want them to get a trade bonus that I wouldn't get. Also took a -1 hit with Darius for declaring war on his friend Hammurabi.

But the religious situation is even dicier. Huayna Capac is Hindu, Darius is Confucian, Victoria is Jewish, and Saladin and Mao are Buddhist. I haven't adopted a state religion, hoping it would keep me out of the crosshairs but Darius is WHEOOHRN right now, Huayna Capac is assembling a large army to the west. Am I in deep doodoo? What should I do?

Any advice would be welcome. Thanks!

You're probably fine.

Spoiler :

Darius hates Mao. Chances are good that he's after him. Otherwise, you have great land and you should have an easy victory once you get your economy back together.

 

[GenerallyGreat]

Great to see a bunch of new guys stepping up I'll give this one a go tomorrow I think. I've been hoping to get a Spain game since the UU got a boost from 3.19.

 

[Kadazzle]

Screen shots.

Spoiler :

I forgot to take a picture of the tech situation, but mainly everyone has CoL, Currency and Calender, which I need.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Immortal/Normal - No UN win for me this time.

1856 AD Domination

Spoiler :

Get to infantry, arty, turn off slider. HE was building the cavalry along with 1 other city so I figured I'd use this to sweep hammy since he didn't have rifles (note, this means war vs HC too)

The infantry/arty I came up with quickly put down HC's rifles and chewed a few cities before he could get infantry.

I bothered to go grab Cuzco since there was nobody who'd take him as a voluntary vassal (mao and sal were at war, darius still pleased)

It was a nice shrine to have.

From there I had to make a decision. I could have gone after the 2 weaklings while they fought, but if I did that darius would definitely get mech infantry (was going for space) and possibly annoying gunships/modern armor. If I hit him now it would be infantry/arty/antitank vs tanks, fighters, bombers, infantry etc. I chose to hit him now, he was slightly stronger in the power graph when I declared on him (he had vicky as a vassal too but she was still dealing in redcoats)

Tech situation at that point:

And despite taking EVERY SINGLE CONTINENTAL CITY HE OWNS, the broken #$%# #$% cap mechanics rear their head:

What part of getting raped is doing fine on your own? The part where I captured every wonder you built, took your capitol, and over half of your cities? Or was it the part where I wiped out 3/4 of your army and took your vassal away in the process of becoming STRONGER myself? I guess vicky was too weak and hurt the average. So gay. But on this map it's an easy remedy. I took peace with darius.

Parked in london to heal and declared on sal.

After healing I moved over to his city, bombarded it, killed about 15 units defending at a highly favorable K/D, and

Gave it back after this. Good enough for

Roll the credits.

Kremlin I captured off of darius did help the troop spam at the end but most of the game i was without it.

So yeah...chariot rush/choke ----> settle/capture (1 hammy, 3 barb) 11 cities, lose lib, tech democracy then infantry/arty, $$$ buy, win. Works for me.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

@TMIT

Spoiler :

What's with all those explorers in your first stack? Wait... are those Conquistadores?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You're correct, those are conquistadores...I definitely don't blitz people with 8+ explorers...I don't even need to put that in spoilers .

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

LoL yeah, I was wondering. I've never played as Spain => never seen the UU icon.

 

[ungy]

immortal, normal.

Spoiler :

I settle in place, Ham settles Akkad at the great site. I rex out to the stone/fur/deer conceding the ivory to the south. Get the 'mids and chop out the Glib.
teching great and looks routine when carelessness and some oddities make it interesting for a while--Sal DOW's me right after I take pacifism and caste--he was WHOORN but I thought I was too far away (and not worst enemy).
Ham attacks Darius, and D bribes Vic and Mao. Ham is backwards and it looks like he'll get clobbered and I'm not ready to do the clobbering yet so I buy peace.
I get the following:
940 buy peace with Vic.
980 Vic DOW's again???
980 I buy peace again. So Vic gets tech twice from D for DOW'ing and twice from me for peace.
Hadn't seen that one before.
Then I whack Ham with the boring rifle/cannons and decide not to finish.

 

[Ringwraiths]

You're probably fine.

Spoiler :

Darius hates Mao. Chances are good that he's after him. Otherwise, you have great land and you should have an easy victory once you get your economy back together.

Thanks Shyuhe. I'll keep playing and see what happens.

 

[tycoonist]

455BC, Immortal epic:

Spoiler :

chariot rush went well, made peace with babylon down to one city. my comments on this rush however would be negative. i would not have been successful if i wasn't on epic or if i hadn't had quite a lot of luck. seville to the south is heavily under pressure culturally from persia and victoria (who captured a barbarian city). however, i wanted to secure access to elephants. babylon contained SH and the oracle, which was good news. i popped a prophet, so after finishing monotheism, i'm gonna pop theology which is excellent trade bait. economy is pretty healthy all things considered, and i have quite alot of good land, so i think this game is probably on course for a win. i'm considering judaism as a religion atm.

 

[norxposr]

Immortal/normal

Retired at 300AD

Spoiler :

I read in the forums were people bribe other civs to war with each other, but this seems to never be an options for me with the reason of "We would have nothing to gain" so my diplomacy clearly sucks. So since I'm pretty sure diplomacy is the weakest part of my game, I decided to try something I saw in a deity game by Obsolete and another one by ABigCivFan. Basically, one super city surrounded by 5 or so satellite cities and then focus on wonders and infastructure. You either keep some close friends or you die (based on "Retired at 300AD", you already know which route I ended up with).



So settled 1S and teched AG-Mine-BW-WR-AEST. I skipped AH for the pigs because I had copper and the extra food wouldn't be very useful until the happy cap increased. After AEST, I was able to backfill everything. I even got monarchy in there somehow. So now with HR, pigs and wheat, my capital exploded. I beelined Literature and then CS.



I was able to get a few settlers out, and captured a barb city or two (I didn't give Archery back to the barbs...I'm not a big kitten fan anyway). I got GL around 200BC, and NE some time later. The first GS around 300BC went for an academy, and the second founded Taoism via philosophy (around 1AD IIRC).



At 1AD I had a cow/wheat/fur city west of the capital, an iron/fish city north of captial, a wheat/sugar city way south near Vicky, and a cow/wheat city half way south to Vicky. I was planning two more cities, one north and one west of the cow/wheat/fur city. Madrid was size 12, heavily cottaged, libraries everywhere (most locations for culture push), and alternating between slavery and caste. My army consisted of cardboard cutouts, inflatable tanks, and warriors with scary masks yelling "Boo!" at everybody.



I was on track for my fastest lib date ever ~500AD, unless I wanted steel or democracy, then maybe 1000AD.



With the tech lead, I was pretty generous with Hammy, Vicky and Darius (all my border buddies). I didn't talked to Mao at all due to worst enemy status with Darius and Vicky. I was warm to HC. Everybody was pleased except Hammy and Mao. No problem...Hammy will fall in line in short order. I gave him some wheat for free. The religion situation was dicey. Darius, Vicky and Hammy were all sporting different shiny idols, so I just stayed out of it all together, painting my face and dancing around the fire while chanting (or whatever a Pagan does).



Around 150AD Hammy goes WHEOOHA. He hates Mao, not worst enemy hate or anything, but still. A few turns later, Hammy is now pleased, and I'm coasting. The horns of war sound, and I wonder how many civs are going to line up to crush Mao (Nobody likes that guy). I didn't even notice it was for me until the "So be it." window popped up. I gave it my best effort, but Hammy was 3 turns from my capital from the beginning, and was coming with about 8 swords, 3 axes and 3 chariots. He took my capital easily and turned to the second best city, which he was going to get also. I quit. I'm a quitter, and I can live with that.



I'm going to try again and will post my results, but knowing where the horses and copper are kind of screws things up. AH will definitely be a higher priority.

 

[shyuhe]

@norx

Spoiler :

I would tech agri-AH for the pigs. It makes a big difference on the speed with which you can spam settlers and workers from Madrid. Two 6 food tiles makes for a super fast expansion. Chopping is good, but getting those two tiles online is more important. A pre-math chop is 20 hammers. A pastured pig provides 3 extra food. 6-7 turns working the pig = a pre-math chop.

 

[tycoonist]

@norx:

Spoiler :

the path to victory on this map is stained with the blood of hammurabi. he has awesome land at his disposal, i would at least consider either rushing him (like me) or blocking him out of contention (like TMIT). the floodplains are invaluable.

 

[norxposr]

@shyhue

Spoiler :

Thanks for the advice. I'm new to immortal and not doing very well. The jump from emperor is turning out to be hardest for me, and it is decisions like this I need clarification with. The build speed of settlers and workers have confused me a little. For these two units, is food identical to hammers, or do you need some percentage combination of the two.
On another note, since you are one of the users I follow closely and respect a great deal. I'm interested in your selection of initially settling. I went 1S to get the extra city center hammer and river side. Nevermind. Looking closer I see you settled in place. I initially thought you settled 1W off the lake.

 

[norxposr]

@tycoonist

Spoiler :

I see that now. With the very wrong decision to skip AH, it took too long to get the copper hooked up (don't have mining or wheel) for an effective rush. I'm going to try the bloodstained hands approach tonight. I don't generally like to restart, but Immoral is just proving to be too big a jump for me, so I think it would be helpful to see side-by-side comparisons even if I already know some key facts about the map.

 

[Pindrus]

@shyhue
Thanks for the advice. I'm new to immortal and not doing very well. The jump from emperor is turning out to be hardest for me, and it is decisions like this I need clarification with. The build speed of settlers and workers have confused me a little. For these two units, is food identical to hammers, or do you need some percentage combination of the two.

In most circumstances, when building settlers and workers, extra food is converted into hammers at a 1 to 1 ratio. So a city with base 5 production and 5 excess (beyond what is needed to feed current citizens) will have 10 per turn when producing settlers/workers, with all growth stalled.

What sometimes throws off this calculation are production bonuses. Some of these are specific to building only either settlers (imperialistic trait) or workers (expansive trait) and others apply to building both (all +% production buildings--i.e. forge, factory, Ironworks-- bureaucracy civic...). For all of these bonuses, the total % bonus only applies to the portion of settler/worker production.

For example, let's say the example city from above has both a Forge and is led by Isabella, who is expansive. It is producing a worker with it's 5 (base) and 5 excess. the 5 gets multiplied by 1.50 (+25% for expansive and +25% for forge, added together) and then truncated, so the actual output will be 7 + 5 = 12 total when producing a worker. If the same city was building a settler, it would still get the forge bonus, but not the expansive bonus, for a total of 11. Based on how these bonuses are truncated, you can also see how it is important to micromanage tiles (i.e. an expansive leader building a worker as their 1st build on a 1 city-center plot and choosing between working a 3 plains-forested-hill or a 2 1 grasslands-forested-flatland).

Hope that helps! And didn't feel a need to spoiler this

 

[norxposr]

That helps a lot, Thanks. I couldn't understand why the number of turns for a settler varied when selecting different tiles even though the + amount was the same.

 

[JBossch]

^^good explanation Pindrus. As a small addition, it might be pointed out that the hammers from whipping are also multiplied by the bonuses mentioned. As such, an imperialistic leader can can often 2pop whip a settler after 1 turn of construction (assuming you can get 10 hammers in on the first turn).

 

[shyuhe]

@norx. I settled in place because I wanted to pursue Spain on a Lake. Given the river to the south, the better play is to settle 1S for river goodness. Plus you get an extra hammer on your city center tile, which means you get an extra hammer for worker production (awesome). Settling in place is NOT the best play here Especially since you can see that you're only giving up some forested grassland tiles for more river tiles (no matter how the river bends) by moving 1S.