Immortal University VIII - The Randon Leader Chosen is...

[Dirk1302]

@ABigCivFan

Spoiler :

Good start, remarkable that Lin didn't field more metal units, he probably researched IW relatively late. I prioritized writing and then moved in. Never felt the need for swords because approximately half of Lin's units were words/axes. I wonder if i made a mistake earlier on, i see you kept Chicago which seemed like a useless city to me (razed it), this'll cost you a ton on upkeep but it prevents Lin from settling there again, he did in my game which was a big nuisance.

@TheMeInTeam

Spoiler :

Definitely winnable, it's not such a big deal to be some 10 techs behind midgame as long as you have the possiblity to raise research in the future. Until SM Ais trade alot with each other and also with you, after that tech roads diverge and some AIs get a lead, that's the time you shouldn't fall behind too far. Important not to wait too long with optics, astro is also very important on this map.

 

[silverbullet]

300AD to the end

Spoiler :

And the end is in 350AD when I gave up facing longbows and catapults from HC and he started to take back the cities I have conquered.

So far it seems I lose every Immortal University game that requires a rush against someone who is not Louis.

Some conclusions:
All good games so far rushed Lincoln instead of HC. I guess I should have more respect for hills. My early 15 axes army would have crushed Lincoln, but I was tempted by the option of getting a temple.

I might try to restart the game and choose Lincoln as my target. I didn't reveal much about the rest of the world, so I think it could still be fun.

 

[ungy]

Up to

Spoiler :

I was hoping I could win this without a later war against HC, but it looked like he was just teching too fast. So i hurry to do the rifle/cannon thing and I get there just in time. I attack the turn before he gets rifling, which lets me wipe out his SOD before it upgrades to rifles/cav.
I don't play it particularly well and I keep thinking I'll be able to trade for MT and never can so my army is a bit cumbersome. HC has a lot of units and had physics for a while so I get bombed relentlessly.
Still the AI cannot resist the draft rifle/cannon attack so I get him down to 4 cities and he still won't vassal. I don't bother to check why--it's surely because I'm at war with Toku (without astro). Anyway after peace he offers vassalization and I take it.
I think it's an easy ride to space here--lots of great land and fin. Not sure if I finish it. I've got good relations all around, more or less tech parity and just about to explode economy wise.

A general thought on this game:

Spoiler :

obviously we had to rush. HC was too strong, as some found out the hard way. Lincoln was doable but it was more complicated than usual due to having such a strong other AI on the continent. I think the early knockout strategy would leave us too far behind economically.
I think I dropped the ball early by missing the blocking city at the rice/clam--I was lucky to get a good city on the peninsula anyway.

ABigCivFan:

Spoiler :

I'm wondering about where you put the second city. You picked the best spot, but I was worried about 2 things: the delay on getting the copper for waiting for the border pop and the risk of HC settling next to the copper before I got it in my culture and stealing it.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Dirk

Spoiler :

Chicago was the Christian Holy city (Lin prob got Theology from Oracle), so I build the shrine using my first poped GP (a priest from Washington). The Jewish and Christian shrines really help my early-mid game allowing a big empire to survive the dark ages with decent research.

I revealed Iron early, pillaged Lin's Iron in Philadelphia (the desert tile) early into the war, my holken pillager got killed by an Axe right after he complete the pillage job. Turned out that was the only metal Lin hooked up. I was surprised he did not even try to mine it again later. So my invasion force did not face large Axe defenders later. only then I started to swith from Axe to Swords for mop up.

@Ungy

Spoiler :

I wasn't worried too much about culture pressure in my second city. It was close to capital, by river, has great hammer potential (10+ river tiles! + food and hills), so it can rush out all culture improving buildings in a hurry + HE.

 

[Dirk1302]

@ABigCivFan, spoiler until 1 +/- AD and a remark about research until 1000 AD which probably doesn't spoil much

Spoiler :

Holy christian city,in that case you can't raze it for numerous reasons, apart from the shrine it may help you for reasons i pointed out. Personally i don't mind if Ais get iron hooked up (better than copper) because i hope they build swords, i take out swords more easy than axes or archers. Then again Swords vs archers is the ideal situation. It's strange though that Lin didn't hookup the iron in the neighbourhood of Chicago, he probably founded that city very late.

That shrines'll really help you, my game went ok but there was noway that i could get up any decent research (meaning 100+ beakers) until 1000 AD due to having a large but not too developed empire. Did you delay the whole axe thing to give Lin a chance to develop some goodies (could have been wonders too)?

 

[Dirk1302]

@silverbullet,

Spoiler :

Try again rushing Lin, this is a very interesting game, challenging also, i don't think the map knowledge'll give you any advantage apart from not rushing HC. Even more interesting would be to see you following your first plan (rush to construction) and then take on HC (not Lin, axes'll do for him), i didn't dare too and i don't think it'll work out totally satisfactory but interesting none the less.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Dirk

Spoiler :

No intentional delays on rushing Lin. think i started with 7 Axe + 1 holken around 750BC since his first city was lightly defended. I delayed a bit for settling the Iron/Rice/Clam city. I do tend to having at least 2 good prod cities for early rushes.

Ball court + HR + Expansive allowed me to have very high pop mid-game. Ample suger/banana/river grass and resource trades let several cities hit happy pop-cap quickly to work many cottages. Research rate explodes when you get Edu, PP, meet other civs for inter-conti trade routes. Gift/trade them Astro to make sure trade routes start kicking in.

It was amazing to watch HC researching everything(PP,Rifling, Democracy) within 3-5 turns mid game.

 

[ungy]

ABigCivFan: I thought it was only if you had astro that you got intercontinental trade routes--you have no benefit from the AI having it. I generally hoard it if possible to keep the AI down.
I'm also curious about something else

Spoiler :

I generally don't research IW before a rush but I admit I'm a weak rusher. My theory is that you are generally so hard up for beakers and so needing HR and COL that better off not spending precious beakers there. I'm with Dirk in that I usually don't mind the AI with iron--better swords, axe, and spear than nothing but archers for the axe rush. Now obviously knowing where the iron is helps but you can see the AI's iron anyway once mined unless it's a city.
Did the relatively good commerce start w/financial and the jungle tiles swing you here or is IW more of a basic strategy?

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Ungy

About self research IW before Writing

Spoiler :

I am more often to research IW before writing these days if I run a determined early rush for the following reasons:

1. Swords are much better than Axe at taking cities. Especially in cases the AIs have 60-80% Archer defenders. in this game, Lin had around 4 archers + 1 Axe for large cities, so 6 CR Swords have much better odds than 6 CR Axe taking these cities.

2. before hooking up copper, my capital produced 3rd settler. So revealing potential Iron is logical move.

3. my second prod city had several river hills, grassland, Ivory covered by jungle. It was my top priority to remove those jungles to make it a 17-18 per turn city than saving the beakers on anything. Early rush is difficult, it is a raw numbers game, so having 2 military prod cities are always my #1 priority.

4. reveal Iron for pillaging, without IW, you will not know if an Enemy Iron is on a hill. I mind if AIs have metal, since we can never assume they will use metal for swords but not Axes. AI's Axe defenders are usually the biggest problem for a human rush. So I pillage every metal I can regardless copper or Iron.

Under these circumstances, IW was the most important tech than anything else I could research at the time.

about Astro for Inter-conti trading. In my game, it only opened up trade routes when AIs on the other conti got Astro. I am not 100% sure but it d be nice someone can confirm that.

 

[Dirk1302]

@ABigCivFan

Spoiler :

Interesting

1. Ais don't always have so much archers in a city, against that you can mix your army accordingly so having the possibility to make swords is a rather big plus as they're almost sure to take out archers

2. Agreed but not terribly important imo.

3. Certainly, removing jungle especially if like me you settled the peninsula early is great
this is more important than 2. i think

4. I'm not so sure if axes are a bigger problem than archers, i often saw this rush that while there were axes, archer was the first defender so i assume that that they're not much weaker than axes on defence. You can move around more freely though because enemy axes tend to attack your wounded units where archers won't.

I'll add 5, later rushing gives you more benefits (like the 2 shrines here) and better developed land.

As opposed to all this, later rushing is imo more of a gamble, you'll face more cultural defence and a defender can have twice the number of units 500 BC compared to 1000 BC. I may try to do it this way in a later game, one question left, do you research writing before the rush? I'm always somewhat afraid i'll be left with 0% science and not being able to research in any other way, if you limit the number of cities you take you can afford this and then writing might not be neccessary.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Dirk

Entrenched Shock and combat Axes in AI cities are beasts. These guys are much tougher than CG Archers vs. our Axe rush. They can stop a rush cold in its path. That is why I like to do anything i can to remove that potential threat.

 

[silverbullet]

@ABigCivFan, Dirk:
I agree with pillaging metals ASAP. On a side note , I think pillaging horses is not a good move. The AI will then just spam archers, and with horses they will build some chariots which are poor defenders. What's your opinion on that?

 

[Sleepless]

Just read through the posts without going into the spoilers. Honestly.

It seems like we have a tough game here eg tanks v rifles, 1400AD and disaster. RL hasn't given me any time to play since the last university so I'll try and find time for this one somewhere.

Now just have to resist looking at the spoilers again.

 

[Dirk1302]

@silverbullet,
Interesting, i have no firm opinion on pillaging horses. Sure they defend bad but i find them to be a nuisance, chariots contribute greatly to the human WW in a rush and for that reason alone i tend to pillage horses. I usually don't see the AI defending massively with them but it does happen. If the opponent has horses you have to make some more spears, also sometimes have to keep a spear in your conquered cities, if you can put up with the extra MM i guess leaving horses intact might be better because defending or not the chariots'll be harmless. There's always a chance of course the enemy gets HBR during rushing, not disastrous but nasty.

When rushing Cyrus i'm sure, definitely don't pillage the horses. .

 

[ABigCivFan]

In general, I would pillage Metal and Horse if I could not capture these tiles quickly. Besides the main reasons for deny certain unit types, these are high tiles, combined with AI's deep discounted units, they help the AI to churn out more defenders faster.

The best scenario imo is deny all Strategic resources to the AIs ASAP and leaving them building nothing but Archers for defending. This means less surprise for you and more options for the human attacker.

 

[Dirk1302]

940AD - 1886AD

Spoiler :

Teched straight to space spamming cottage on all the tiles around my 14 cities, had some 90 beakers/turn 940 AD, raised it to around 1k beakers /turn around 1500 AD in effect gaining 20 beakers every turn. Transformed almost all the cottages to workshops in the end as i missed out on mining co. Ais were pretty competitive until industrialism then they stalled. Internet sealed it but wasn't even necessary as i only got satellites and a bunch of rubbish from it.

 

[ungy]

In general, I would pillage Metal and Horse if I could not capture these tiles quickly. Besides the main reasons for deny certain unit types, these are high tiles, combined with AI's deep discounted units, they help the AI to churn out more defenders faster.

The best scenario imo is deny all Strategic resources to the AIs ASAP and leaving them building nothing but Archers for defending. This means less surprise for you and more options for the human attacker.

these are both good points. I confess I often leave the AI horse to encourage chariots but I hadn't been considering the hammer value of the tile.

I think there is synergy between getting IW and building swords and pillaging.
Swords are a lot better vs archers, but it gets muddled when you face a mix, especially if you have a mix. I see how there's a big advantage to getting the AI down to archers if you can field swords--even if you face a lot of them. The difference between 5 and 6 +10% is huge.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I went through another playthrough on this. I did pretty well, would have lasted the whole game and may have won it not for:

Spoiler :

The monster HC to the south of me. All that gold to him early is too much power . He has WAY too much peaceful land, the starting position in this is very hard. The ideal approach would be to rush HC but he has metal and his capitol and several other important cities are on hills. Truly annoying. I wound up wiping lincoln off the map quickly, got 12 cities peacefully, but HC went culture and was undisputed tech leader on top of that. I captured 2 japanese cities and was stealing off HC to keep up in techs BUT, HC's culture got so powerful important tiles and cities started getting flipped . The terrace is an early advantage and between that, his 2 religions, and him getting free speech before me I couldn't do anything against the culture. Militarily he was too strong. IMO the best way to win this game would be to somehow rush the !@%# out of HC, box lincoln in (lincoln isn't too agressive actually, so it's not like we'd have to worry much there) and then have the PLAYER be the person with 30ish % of the world's land and pop. Tech would be poorer than an immortal AI but HC was seriously the only major threat in any of my games. He liked me but I couldn't prevent him from winning . If I can take a 3rd or 4th retry (I forget) I will constantly work on methods of successfully rushing and wiping out the imba civ.

 

[mirthadir]

Third time is the charm. Beginning until 1925 - Space Victory

Spoiler :

Attempt 1: popped fishing from a hut, build worker, chop build worker, build work boats, hook up bronze, and rush HC. This was a horrid mistake, 40% cultural defenses on hills blows. I pushed him out of his capital but finishing the bastard would not give me peace and was now running swords/axes. He also had the balls to rebuild two razed cities. Lincoln nabs Oracle and theology and I'm not finished with HC. I might be able to salvage this but it’s unlikely.

Attempt 2: popped wheel from a hut, chop built a settler, linked up bronze, rushed Lincoln. I killed Lincoln off in the late BCs. The problem was that HC has almost as much land as I do, a tech lead, and culture from hell. I block off the iron/clam site which eventually reveals itself to have HC's only possible source for oil. Unfortunately the bastard founds a crap city and proceeds to use his wonder base culture spam to take it. The spy brigade is unable to keep the well burnt. And HC's tech lead just keeps growing (he handily lead all players). Called this one quits in the mid 19th century as HC is the cultural and tech leader with oil.

Attempt 3: Balls to the wall rushing here. We build the rax, swap to worker at pop 2, chop build boats, chop build worker, chop build rax, chop the entire BFC for about a dozen holkan (2 combat 1 to get medic and the rest CR 1). Tech path was BW -> fishing -> hunting -> agri -> AH -> pottery -> masonry; wheel popped from hut along with cash.

New York falls with the loss of 3 Holkan (1 of the Combat 1's) and generates 2 CR2 Holkan. We heal, reinforce, and then march on Washington. Washington is lightly defended with 3 archers; 3 holkan die and we take the city. While waiting for all our four CR2 holkan to heal we scout a new city with a worker mining the plains. We detour from out planned course and raze Seattle to the ground. Next target Boston, in attempt 2 this was a . .. .. .. .. . to kill, thankfully it is busy building a settler and we get inside with 4 dead Holkan. The locale is not bad, but we need to quickly tech construction and riding so it is burnt. Philly is taken in a poor placement, but we keep it to block Incan expansion. We can't see any American cities, but Lincoln is still alive. We see has only one city and opt to take peace for sailing, archery, meditation, and alphabet. GG settled in Washington.

We whip out granaries and libraries in all the new territory and then run science specialists. Tech path is math -> construction -> riding -> currency -> CoL. Our first GS is used to build an academy in Mutal. Convert to Buddhism as HC has popped Christianity and we have a Buddhist AP. We don't care about a barb hoard; we have the GW thanks to Abe.

We find Lincoln on the far side of HC next to the southern sheep. We declare war and kill him just to get the happy bonus.

We mass about 12 pults 5 for accuracy and the rest are CR1 suicides. Washington and Mutal make stables and churn out shock elephants. Burning those nice American cities has paid off as HC is deep in the top path teching to wonder spam, no LBs stand in our way. We invade on a SE heading taking Corihauyanchina, keeping it only because it is the founded Taoism and built the Paya; no losses (only an archer and sword inside). We see the capital is still building the Great Library, so we elect to be nice to HC and let him finish it for us. Instead we take Tiwanaku for the price of 3 suicidapults. We spawn a GSpy out of Washington. We use this for the instant spy point advantage vs HC. Philly stops building reinforcement suicidapults to slowly grow spies.

Cuzco finishes our GL for us, we stomp it into the ground for the price of 3 suicidapults and an elephant (lucky spearman with 7% chances). We capture the GL, Stonehenge, and the ToA. Our economy is going to own now. For two suicidapults we take Machu Picchu; HC's only metal city and home of the AP. Swap to FR. Next turn HC finally gets LBs up and running. We take one city in the south on the fur river and keep it; we sitzkrieg in front of a crappy city in the central jungle with a medic elephant and woodsman two ax (quickly promoted to III from catapult defense). We mean to burn the oasis city on the east coast but misclick. Unfortunately HC's four remaining cities are poorly placed and stocked with hoards of whipped LBs. We expend numerous pults losing only one elephant and unlock West Point. Spies rob HC blind we steal Feudalism, Metal Casting, Philosophy, Aesthetics, Theology, Paper, etc. (spying is more efficient than researching at this point). We burn all of HC's cities and leave him with two (Vilcos founded Christianity on the SSW coast) and some crappy city just on top of the city. In the peace we get almost all of HC outstanding techs. Education -> Liberalism is our goal. We steal the last of HC's technology and then declare a 3 turn war. We actually are short on pults, but we need to thin the herd of elephants anyways. HC dies in 1410. All four of our GGs settled in Washington giving us the option of massing CR III rifles/infantry if we want. Otherwise CR III tanks sounds good to me.

At the tail end of the war with HC the Dutch and Koreans stopped by. The Koreans are significantly more advanced, but they appear to be running to democracy. The Dutch are hard on our heels to Liberalism (this was discovered after the fact when they valued the tech at 135 gold + WM). Cuzco pops us a timely GS to partially bulb education. On the turn we discover liberalism, Wang Kon demands we swap to caste, we decline, but find we can trade him liberalism for civil service before the bonus tech is taken. We take nationalism as our free tech and swap with the Dutch for printing press. We tech gunpowder to trade and meet Sitting Bull. Unfortunately SB has a galleon with a settler that claims the vacant clams/rice/hills spot. We trade him lib and other techs sequentially to get to banking and replaceable parts. We revolt to HR, FS, Slavery, Merc, and FR.

We take a barb city on the western edge of the continent and fill out the rest of the coast with settlers. (Beating the Dutch to the double ivory/iron spot by one turn). At this point tech is going chemistry -> steel -> science in order to trade for all the other tech paths. WK is tech leader having eaten most of Japan for lunch, SB and the Dutch are about equal, with SB being ahead in tech. I opt to best friends forever with the Dutch (they are FR and I want FR with my three religion mix/need to tech quick). At this point I'm thinking space victory; I have about a 10% land area lead on WK and am far more heavily cottaged. Everyone else made rifles before me and I highly doubt I can do an amphibian take down of one of the two big guys without letting the other run away while my tech tanks. I might be able to beat SB to infantry or beat up WK with CRIII infantry, but I'm doubtful it is all that practical. Science shows that SB has exactly one oil source, directly under a city.

I elect not to power tech to infantry, while I could likely take and hold that city and then roll him later with airlifted tanks, domination will require killing everyone and then at least razing several Korean cities (Korea has about 30% of the land area). I somehow think I'm going to have to make a desperate nuke/chopper attack followed up with a commando/morale cavalry sacrifice. As Seoul is not coastal, this type of cheese may be required.

We tech out along the biology -> medicine -> refrig path; trading with the Dutch for techs on the industrialism and combustion paths. We push out along the genetics path while industrializing; Sid's sushi is founded at our Wall street city which also has Taoism. SB completes the UN and we are elected both AP head and UN SG. We force votes on single currency (benefits us more than them), emancipation (good for the newer cottages; bad for SB's massed workshops), and banning nukes. We hoard our tech line; these give us a major science bonus and a major health bonus (average city size is now 17). We tech up to rocketry and then work our way through composites, satellites, etc. until we have only computers, fiberop, and fusion left that we care about. SB manages to score Internet, this could be a problem as he has by far the highest production; I can only beat him if I swap to SP and workshop over my capitol in order to get a second engine same turn as the first. We trade ecology and satellites to the Dutch for computers and communism.

We opt for a hopefully brief war with SB to take his one city and more importantly to get him to stop building spaceship parts to instead to focus on units. This doesn't work so well. We do take the city, but out stack of battleships is unable to stop his invasion force (which has mech infantry and choppers). We spam tanks and race them city to city along the coast until SB eventually takes a filler a city on the NW corner. We are still screwed, until we call the vote to the end war (bombers + choppers keep destroying my defenders, so I have to freshly restock the garrison with 3-4 units while he has a small SoD coming with mech infantry and choppers. This war does not appear to dent his space ambitions as he finishes the space elevator and begins building engines the moment we get fusion.

We tech up to fusion and pop our first golden age (all previous GP have gone towards bulbing tech or settling). We swap to SP and evict the townspeople around Mutal. Spies prove ineffective at slowing SB's spaceship progress. In 1915 the Mayan ship is launched, the same year as the Native American one. However our ship has two engines, their ship only one.

We spend the rest of the game caving to demands for resources, researching our way through stealth, and mass producing CD III mech infantry for Mutal (SB has an armada just off the coast with 5 transports). In 1925 we stun the world be beating SB's ship to the stars.

Mistakes made:
1. Not burning that one Inca city. It was good later, but I almost lost Liberalism from it.
2. Attacking SB at the end. I would have done better to have just sent a pack of spies in to keep dicking with him. I did swap his religious civic for him once.
3. Not getting settlers up faster to block off the coast. All told letting SB settle cost me in the neighborhood 5-10k beakers. I should have spent the hammers to either get the settlers prebuilt and waiting to found a city or to get ships out to watch for incoming galleons.
4. Not spy bombing SB's copper. I had intended to go after his aluminium, but he founded the otherwise useless corp (and ethanol as well). I could have rather good odds of keeping him copper deprived and maybe buying a turn from a slow cockpit.

I did get rather lucky with WK's demand that let me get nationalism via civil service and on HCs choice of wonders.

The key to me seems nerfing the economy just enough to prevent HC from expanding to several more cities, keeping NY and Philly, but not so much you can't hit him with the elephapult army before he gets to elephants and knights of his own (like my second attempt). Likewise burning enough of HC's territory in order to win through to liberalism is traded off against the other AIs settling your land.

 

[DMOC]

When will the next immortal university thread start?