Immortal University 50 - Wang Kon

[Irgy]

I'm generally more of a peacemonger myself, but I figured the chances of not being declared on early were just too low, and thought I'd rather have the initiative.

Here's some screenshots then, from my save games. Up to the point shown I still think I was basically on the right track. So if you have some advice at that stage it's bound to be welcome. After that, I know what I did wrong (or at least enough of what I did wrong). I'll probably have another go from the save at the last screenshot, assuming I get time.

Spoiler :

The chariot rush was built from these two cities and three workers. Barracks in the capital but not in the expansion. I have no particular reason for why the warrior is still camped on the hill:

Successful rush - Monty is crippled. I stopped after taking the northern city. I finished Alphabet and left him with one city so that I could grab a bunch of tech off him before I finished him off:

Here I am about to finish Monty off, and this is the turn that Shaka declared. You can see my new expansion to the west that he captured on the turn he declared. The chariots in the SE just took out a small expansion that Monty had just built. The unhappiness is the result of war weariness and yearning for homeland, it gets fixed in a turn or two when I take down Monty.

 

[obsolete]

Hmm, looks like you have some very terrible leaks there. LOL @ the obelisk in your second city. Useless. You could have saved 30 hammers for a stables or something important. That's a tremendous waste at this point in time.

Also, something very wrong with all those trees still there in your T-46. They should be pretty much gone by then. You could have chopped settler & more workers.

Anyhow, I would never do this opening because it relies on a LOT OF LUCK. Luck meaning, most importantly you are praying that Monte doesn't get or find a metal anywhere, and even then there are a lot of problems with it.

Anyhow, to join in I decided to beat up this map again using YOUR opening. I'll post shots later, but initial phase was a decent success, with quite a few bad luck things.... e.g. I had a super-hero die to a barbarian! Go figure.

And then... things went so bad for me that I lost my capital to Shaka. That's right... and it hurts like hell. But I'm still hanging on and I refuse to die to an Immortal AI. Right now I'm about to make peace after getting backstabbed so many times, and I'll have to think on how to still wrestle him down. He's close to 20 cities!

 

[Irgy]

@obsolete

Spoiler :

Just arguing here for the sake of learning and understanding your comments better.

Hmm, looks like you have some very terrible leaks there. LOL @ the obelisk in your second city. Useless. You could have saved 30 hammers for a stables or something important. That's a tremendous waste at this point in time.

If I don't pop the borders, I don't get the full hammers from the trees in the BFC. All but two of the trees near that city are outside the inner ring. So given how many of those trees I chopped, the monument pays for itself.

Also, something very wrong with all those trees still there in your T-46. They should be pretty much gone by then. You could have chopped settler & more workers.

To chop any more trees before the rush I'd have needed another worker, and another worker would have held up the rush, 3 seemed optimal to me. The third would have been lucky to pay for itself, and might have held things up even if it did as I was close to a chariot a turn for the most part.

After the rush, I had captured plenty of workers, wanted cottages rather than chopped settlers to fix the economy, and was saving the remaining trees for Math, which I got shortly after.

Anyhow, I would never do this opening because it relies on a LOT OF LUCK. Luck meaning, most importantly you are praying that Monte doesn't get or find a metal anywhere, and even then there are a lot of problems with it.

I agree there's risks, but a well run chariot rush can usually cope with some metal. To me, settling peacefully runs a different risk of having two few cities before you get dogpiled. I don't think I could have survived for as long as you with just 4 cities, and certainly can't see how I'd have reached a winning position if I did. I'm not completely convinced you had either, although I can take your word for it if you really think you were.

Anyhow, to join in I decided to beat up this map again using YOUR opening. I'll post shots later, but initial phase was a decent success, with quite a few bad luck things.... e.g. I had a super-hero die to a barbarian! Go figure.

And then... things went so bad for me that I lost my capital to Shaka. That's right... and it hurts like hell. But I'm still hanging on and I refuse to die to an Immortal AI. Right now I'm about to make peace after getting backstabbed so many times, and I'll have to think on how to still wrestle him down. He's close to 20 cities!

Well, glad in a way to hear that it didn't go much better for you than it did for me then

 

[obsolete]

@ Irgy

Spoiler :

Well, glad in a way to hear that it didn't go much better for you than it did for me then

Taking a break right now. I was able to liberate my capital again. Though I had to abort invading Shaka's twice after getting to his door step due to stacks and stacks and stacks. I think I broke my world reccord for GG's in a non-Always-War map. And the bastard still isn't dead yet. Trying to wrestle down around 20 cities sure is taking a toll but I've got him pegged now.

Just a few more rounds left of grinding down and I should have him wiped off the map. At least in theory. After that, I don't know where to go, but he's done nothing but backstab me all game and my priority now is just to get rid of the idiot.

I'm getting a bit tired so hopefully what I said makes some sense.

 

[NihilZero]

I agree there's risks, but a well run chariot rush can usually cope with some metal. To me, settling peacefully runs a different risk of having two few cities before you get dogpiled.

I honestly can't see how this map can be played peacefully. We still haven't seen anybody beat the thing, though.

I still suspect that if I had gifted a city to Shaka I would have lived long enough to finish off Monty at least. Although the problem of how to remove Shaka, with his large empire of good land, would remain...

Also, metals are less of an issue for Monty than most. I ran into Jags which were an annoyance. Not as much as spears would have been, but irritating anyway.

 

[obsolete]

Start to Finish --> NSC

Spoiler :

I settled capital in place, and settled the second city in the same spot as Irgy. After that, I changed my rush plan substantionally.

I tried to rush Stone Henge, but unfortunately I lost due to a tie. I would have a lot of similar bad luck throughout the game, and even so much as losing a fully healthy general hero unit to a barbarian archer out in open field (love that ******** RNG).

I actually didn’t mind losing the henge since I was also trying to get around currency, but I also didn’t want the AI to have more culture defense, and I wanted my own captured cities to expand faster. Regardless, it doesn’t matter much either way

I beelined HR and got stables up, Charriots are ********, especially with this leader. My only chariots were for barb defense, and a few secondary specialists for sentry and healing.

Finished chopping, building, and whipping Horse Archers. And then... I finally decided to start charging in when Monte had a settler escourt with just one archer for the copper site. I couldn’t resist the booty. I haven’t played immortal for some time, and forgot that their escourts are so weak on this level. It seems they also can’t muster enough units even when whipping their cities down.

I rapidly took out the deer hill-city. And then another more south of Monte’s capital. While I did this I pillaged everything around the capital. I was tempted to leave him marble so he’d still build wonders ( he already built me ToA).

I had to rest to heal... with all my captured workers I still built a road right into the enemies territory. Seems a bit weird to have workers improving your enemy’s tiles while he’s got his own chariots running around, but hey...they would become functional as soon as the culture dissipated.
After I took the capital, I didn’t stop there. I took out the north city at the coast next (it had Oracle!). And even then I did not stop, despite there was no culture pressure anywhere. I didn’t want to stop until Monte was 100% dead (removes all penalties in cities).

So I heal again for a bit (made a super-medic which didn’t last very long), and then took out the last of Monte’s strong-hold. I really did love these 2 move units, I kept tricking Monte into getting his workers stuck and pinned for freebies the whole way.

After that, I was really, really, really tempted to DoW on Shaka for a bit, but decided to not be too over-ambitious. So I took out a couple other barb cities. I also had beelined aesthetics to put my new marble to use. I ended up building just about every other wonder in this game, except for AP and stupid stuff like Chicken Pizza and that silly thing that speeds up worker speed for a small time.

Unfortunately I tried to get Shaka happy with me. I kept giving him numerous techs time and time again, since he was so believably backwards. This was a mistake. He kept backstabbing me over and over and over. I learned a lesson here, there is no friends with Shaka in this game. I also unfortunately couldn’t respond in time to these backstabs, and I lost quite a few of my gains early on.

I went so far as to get full mutal-war benefits by fake-dowing on Egypt with him for a long time. Getting Shaka to friendly was impossible. And to make things worse, Egypt would keep losing and capturing her AP city, and the AI’s would both force me into their own Holy Wars with everyone else.

And then I”d have other AI’s like the French dowing on me after I was giving them techs after techs as well (I don’t really understand this). But whatever... due to Shaka’s insane amount of units and warring this game, I popped so many great generals despite not being IMP or having the Wall, that I’m sure I broke my record.

I had tanks up to commando which were not even generals by the end. Anyhow...

Despite the beginning phase seemed to have gone ok, I did run into my darkest hour later on. Worst time too, just as I got my Oxford up in my monster capital, I lost it.. as well as 2 other cities due to yet another backstab by Shaka. He attacked with so many units it was impossible to defend against. And the sad part is, if I hadn’t giving him all those techs earlier he wouldn’t have been able to do a thing. Well... a good lesson learned there.

So my new capital now defaulted to where Monte’s used to be. I eventually made peace, and with my monster hammer city + Bur I built the Pentagon as well super fast (told you I built a lot of wonders).
With my oil, things were able to change substantially in the future wars. Despite Shaka had 17 cities (including my capital!) I was able to re-gain some ground once I had infantry up. I re-liberated my capital and 2 other lost cities, but I had to abort an invasion twice of Shaka’s capital due to TOO MANY UNITS. He seemed to be making dozens a turn, WTH?
But once the tanks came online, things went more smoothly. After a little bit of pain, finally I cracked Shaka’s capital. That had taken a lot of work, but from that point on, we really picked up momentum and that 17 city count dropped down to just 1, where I finally vassaled him since his other city was far off on another continent.

I did not build any media wonders, since Hatty always wants those and I was planning to invade her anyway after. And that’s exactly what I did. I DoWed on her after I was able to promote my tanks to Modern Armour. Stupid Hatty wared so bad, like leaving artillery on the defense in the open, hahaha! Firaxis Fail!
Anyhow, same deal, whipped Hatty off the continent, then vassaled her. Ironically, her last city was on the same tiny island as Shaka’s last outpost!

I decided to go space race instead of moving a billion units around to finish domination. Unfortunately, just short of launch Babylonians beat me to it. Seems they had started picking up their tech at an exponential race. Well, he had a vassal so maybe that was part of it. I remember him being a run earlier and giving him all kinds of help, now was my time to pay for it I suppose.

Well, my answere to that was a couple transports with MA, and a lot of nukes. That SDI really hurt, but no more capital for him, which means no more space ship. I also razzed down another city from his French vassal (the idiot who dowed on me despite my power rating was 10000x his at the time).

Then I dropped a lot more nukes all over the French guy for the hell of it, before signing peace. Then it was time to sit back a few more turns hitting DONE until our space ship arrived.
--
So... map was pretty easy, as long as you don’t do what I did and keep gifting a billion techs to someone you are trying to make friendly, who is never going to be greatful and instead keeps backstabbing you!


Lost Henge...

Last of Monte...

Darkest Hour...

Shaka's Last Stand (On my continent), originally Egypt's city

Egypt's Last Stand

Emergency counter-measures...

End Date

 

[NihilZero]

^

Spoiler :

What an amazing game! It went on until 2021!

Awesome stuff Obsolete, I would have given up when I lost my capital, but it just shows what you can do if you never surrender. Kudos.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Until 350 B.C. (Medieval Era... tadzam !)

Spoiler :

The Turtle isn't my favourite PRO leader (Gilg/Sal/S. Bull would be) but I've been willing to try an "early" Longbow war for some time. I tried it for IU Saladdin but failed miserably. Now Charlie isn't the neighbour and the map seems interesting... So I gave it a go.
Hachwas + Longbows is the "plan".
We start with Mysticism and a 5 commerce tile, so I'll try Oracle --> Monarchy, then self tech Feudalism. If the world isn't burning in flames at that moment, that would allow to trade for pretty much anything. With 3 riverside wines, Monarchy also isn't a bad choice in itself (Feudalism is debatable, yes ).


Early Expansion :
Something like Agriculture, Hunting, Animal Husbandry, Meditation, Priesthood, Bronze, Pottery

1 worker, 2 settlers, then :

Spoiler :

Then I just expanded some more, going for Feudalism... (7 cities) I generated only moderate culture to avoid diplo maluses.
Shaka and Izzie are Jewish. Monty is Hindu. Shaka sends missionaries to me. Shaka and Monty hit me with demands, I choose to give in
10 turns later, Shaka DoWs me, but an archer and a warrior are enough to repel his 4 units stack.

Now... the war has stabilized a little, I have 2 barracks and will start producing Longbows this turn. The techpath aims for Currency/Construction.

Screens of the empire :

Spoiler :

And...

Spoiler :

Hahaha ! Initially it just made me laugh to settle there... But the land is good, even if it's a little "behind the lines".
Cowabunga was taken by a 2-move Impi recently, hence the rebellion.

Well, in retrospect, I'm probably too late to Feudalism, here... I think I'll load that save again anyways to see if Shock Longbows can do the job.
And if I fail I'll load the 4000 B.C. again to get an earlier date / settle better spots.

 

[Duckweed]

@BIC

Spoiler :

When settling toward an aggressive AI, hill site is #1 factor if you don't plan to attack 1st.

The best way to play this map is to DOW and choke Shaka in the beginning and defend or bribe Monty to help you at the war. This map is quite easily winnable in immortal.

 

[Grashopa]

epic game obsolete

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Thanks Duckweed

Spoiler :

Yes, I missed some settling spots. 1 is still free, SE of the capital, between the Gold and the Spice tile. Maybe some are hidden in the tundra. And I prolly could have gone further along the coast to the SW.

Heck, I also mismanaged my tiles usage. An old (bad) habit makes it so that the FIN trait is like a license to spam cottages for me (reason why I feel uncomfortable with that trait). I badly lack production with my cities, now. Especially under Hereditary Rule I could use more farms.

There are other problems, of course Poor exploration job, difficult logistics, no trade partner, not enough early libraries (only 1, stunning the capital's growth), etc.
That's the difference between what you want to do and what you actually do ^^

Errr... Maybe I'll just restart.
I don't think I'll DoW and choke Shaka/Monty this time, though. I'd consider it "cheating" since it wouldn't be my inclination in a "natural" game. Maybe if I restart 4-5 times I will do it so I can learn how and when to choke

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Spoiler :

I settled in place and teched to horse archers ASAP. I was just about ready to declare on Monte when Shaka DOWs me. He sends a stack against my capitol but my archers hold it off. I then see a plains city with no culture and 2 easy defenders and I take it. Shaka sues for peace for the city back. It was undefendable anyway.

I then declare on Monte and start taking his cities. Monte is a pushover and has no real stack at this point, which is odd. I guess he's making missionaries or something.

I get Monte down to 2 cities and Shaka declares on me AGAIN and starts giving me hell with his impi's. Swiping a town out from under me. Now I'm intent on reducing the Shaka problem permanently.

I then take the same town from Shaka I took before but this time I keep it.

The fatal flaw in the AI on immortal is it does not garrison it's non-frontline cities with more then 2 troops in the early game. I catch Shaka's capitol with only 2 defenders. It seems he's piling all his troops in the town nearest me.

Then another lightly defended Shaka town falls. At this point his war machine is beginning to stall a bit.

I sign for peace for some much needed tech and decide to finish off Monte.

Monte is a pushover at this point.

Shaka declares on Monte. I think it's interesting that you can tell the AI where to send their troops if you have a mutual war. Sometimes this can be advantageous.

Shaka is still fairly dangerous so I decide to make peace with Monte and backstab Shaka while his stacks are heading for Montes territory. Thanks to the construction tech I got from Shaka I can now take his stronger cities.

Finally in 1280 I capitulate Shaka. Just for the hell of it I gift back all his cities, it makes him like me which will help with tech trades, plus he will be more of a threat when we take on Hatchet.

Hatchet has been building this whole time, and her best units are cuirassiers, which are about even with elephants, but she is no match for the shear size of my army at this point.

I wipe Hatchet clean off the continent, she has some really nice cities with almost all the major wonders. She still has one city on an island so I capitulate her.

At this point Monte is still around and really backwards. He refused to capitulate before but we'll see about now.

By the way, does anyone know what the "surely you must be joking..." response means from the AI?

I wipe Monte off the map ( changed my mind about vassaling him ) and tech to tanks to take over the other continents. At this point I have 2000 BPT research rate which catapults me ahead of the AI's.

I then land on Augustus's territory and capitulate him ( he is going for a space win ), then it's Charlie, then Hammurabi and at that point I hit the domination limit.

A very nice game. Extremely hard start for Immortal ( could anyone do it on Deity? ). Shaka was a unit pump the whole game. Couldn't imagine what that would be like on Deity. There is no way to appease Shaka, and he usually gets Hatchet's religion, so not likely he will declare on her. Monte of course will declare on you also, so what can you do but attack one of them early?

 

[NihilZero]

^

Spoiler :

Nice game, congrats on victory.

There is no way to appease Shaka, and he usually gets Hatchet's religion, so not likely he will declare on her. Monte of course will declare on you also, so what can you do but attack one of them early?

I agree. The various outcomes throughout the thread are interesting because they show all the variations on the theme. In my case I didn't wait for HAs and went with chariots against Monty. This meant that when Shaka DoWed me at around the same time as he did you, I had no troops at home to stop him as I was able to attack Monty sooner. It didn't make any difference that in my game, Shaka had Hatty as his worst enemy due to peace weight (worst enemies seldom seem to matter much if an AI shares a land border with you and is at cautious or worse, I find. They always seem to ignore their worst enemy and attack the human in such situations).

 

[Higher Game]

Huts and Events are off. If you don't like it, just plop 4 warriors somewhere in world builder and give yourself 60 gold to simulate huts, and just delete your capitol and put 3 archers there to simulate events.

Old, but awesome.

 

[shyuhe]

It looks like I got lucky compared to everyone else.

Spoiler :

Settled in place. Shaka went after Hatty first so I dogpiled and pulled Monty in as well. At 1AD, the empire:

And the diplo:

Monty was hands full at this point so I bought peace to make sure I had time to build defense. When he declared on Shaka, I took the chance to dogpile and grabbed Ulundi. Empire at this point:

And tech:

Note that Shaka skipped feudalism.

After that, it was just a matter of steamrolling through Shaka, then Hatty, then eventually Monty:

I had to go overseas for domination but Louis capitulated easily. None of the other AI were ever threats to win the game:

 

[psifaktor7]

Spoiler :

I learned a lesson here, there is no friends with Shaka in this game.

Oh, come on...

That's very rare to happen, but it's my first immortal game and I'm holding out.

 

[joanne]

^ you may want to put that in spoiler tags

 

[pollock]

I just played the beggining. I was archer rushing shaka for some reason :S . I dont really know why lol. Was going pretty well

 

[ABigCivFan]

to 50AD..

Spoiler :

Settled capital 1 SE to get more land tiles since no seafood.

Shaka and Monty nearby, all out war. Lucky we have Hwacha, the best weapons against aggressive civs lol.

Oracle to Monarchy at 3 cities to raise happy cap and work wines. Whipping heavily for war.

REX to 5 tight cities; 3 production cities (food rich or hammer rich); 2 other commerce. Planed going construction and stick some crude rockets up Shaka's rear...

1000BC: 5 cities



125BC: Shaka DOWed me earlier, i fought off his early Stacks easily, now ready to counter attack.



50AD: Took Ulundi, did not lose a single unit! Hwachas are just ridiculous.

 

[obsolete]

Third Opening Variant

Start to Finish --> NSC

Spoiler :

Thought I’d experiment by raping the AI again. This time I decided to go after Shaka first. After you get past the IMPs, things get much easier. I did make a few stupid mistakes and lost back cities I shouldn’t have, because I keep forgetting the deadly combo of BOTH mobility & double-movement.

So I did a lot of bad things during the war but, alas, I took the capital etc. Before making peace. After that Shaka would keep Dowing on me, but I’d just play defensive until peace. Eventually Monte took some cities from Shaka, and then I started to flip those cities into my culture despite I didn’t bother with the Cistine chapel this game. Though I built just about every other wonder including the media ones (that could have helped).

My other wars I got into were just fake wars, so nothing much else to discuss. Things were a more un-eventual space race again, but since I hadn’t done many of those for a while so I didn’t mind. It’s also much faster to play this way since I don’t have to shove billions of units around with Firaxis’ really terrible gui.