Immortal University XL: Ragnar

[TheMeInTeam]

IMM/Normal off Autosave

1 AD

Spoiler :

Settled in place. In retrospect the sugar would have been better for a faster opening, but I'll cry some other time.

I met toku (bad) and hammy (not as bad, doesn't plot wars @ pleased). I opted to block and prepare for war w/ toku. Hammy is his worst enemy, but that hasn't been helping much lately and I'm closer.

Sure enough, the game takes another dump:

Only as I said, I came prepared for it. We are AGG, and the axe/spear spam helped out. I fought this stack off easily, sniped 2 cities, and took peace once caught out of position (well, actually toku defended 3 consecutive 25% battles for him outside my cap)...I decided to quit while ahead:

That's a nice boost and it will help me pull together once I finish punching him in the face. As of now hammy is pleased w/ me, annoyed at toku, and in war mode, so I need to get more cities off toku ASAP. Hammy is blocked and so only poached a barb city from me...the western jungle land is mine.

To liberalism.

Spoiler :

After healing and spamming more axes/spears, I take on toku again:

I lose a lot of units as expected but he really couldn't keep up anymore. I leave him a city to the east to get hamster's attention and to advance in the tech tree a bit more:

Lib is picked up far away with me nowhere in sight of it:

I use a lot of farms here despite FIN to whip infra...working well but it's hard to recover from doing nothing for so long techwise. Early lib isn't my friend here.

1923 UN

Spoiler :

Time for the kill shot on toku:

Hammy also declares on him, but I get the city first!

More backfill, more development. More problems. Hammy, mansa, and ram ALL go culture . Sury has AC as a vassal (cap) and hates hammy. I decide to butter up sury after some trades (minimal while catching up). I resort to draft (very heavy draft with globe in osaka) rifles and cannon spam to pick off culture whore 1 since he apparently thinks avoiding rifling is a good idea:

Not surprisingly, he dies very quickly, going from substantially ahead of me in tech to having no techs.

SP/Caste/WS spam is next, and I keep drafting. I don't industrialize, instead going drydocks for navy and using draft+produced rifles and air:

Idiot musa went the religion culture approach, and had plenty of them. However, he did another version of hammy's idiocy...no infantry:

But he was getting close:

So I decided to completely destroy him...

He got machine guns during the war (that's through 2 techs...he probably had an insane rate until he turned off research), but 9 str machine guns aren't very good against combat II-III rifles.

So AC breaks free from capitulation...but he misses having sury up his behind and voluntarily vassals to the guy who smacked him around. Worse yet, RAM VASSALS TO SURY VOLUNTARILY TOO! Sury is cautious with him (heathen) and ram didn't exactly like sury. Hell, ram liked me...maybe he should have vassaled to me because I am stronger at this point?!

I'd have gone on a mass razing spree of every city all of them owned to pay them for being idiots (I was about to build wealth to fission/rockets then spam nukes), but ram built the UN and buttering up sury to keep him off me while I dealt with the culture whores paid off...

Ram had his #3 city around 30k in culture. I had time...and rifles are just as good as anything to take out nuked cities. Oh well.

Stats:

Gotta love the draft.

 

[Berkobob]

To 1700 AD: (forgot to mention I played off autosave)

Spoiler :

Uploaded 3 saves to show the rapid development of my empire and my climb out of my tech hole.

Ended up wiping Hammu after two wars + a third to take his last city, left him one city to extort a few techs.

Funny enough he was 2 turns from Liberalism when Mansa won that race, he might have won if i had held off a few turns from capturing his cities hehe.

Tech was in a HUGE hole after finding the other continent, no one would trade with me as I had traded with Hammu/Sury who popped up, turns out mansa + AC were at war with sury and ramssess hated me.

Caught up in tech by beelining physics, then trading for democracy, and using three saved GP's for 2 12 turn golden ages (Babylon built the MoM in his capital). Eventually was able to backfill with AC + Ram, then Mansa, now have a small tech lead.

Cottaged up, currently ~1800 BPT, beelined UN, currently building it, going to rushbuy a massive tank/air army and chain capitulate the other continent if I cant win diplo, dont feel I have the hammers for space.

 

[obsolete]

From DMOC

Spoiler :

*Researching alpha to trade with Hammurabi and extort Tokugawa

I'm curious do you think I should have made some temp-peace with him in my game? He was so backward I wouldn't have got any techs anyway, just gold. I'm still debating on this. I wonder if on the hole he would have made just as many units, but just stock-piled them?

 

[Berkobob]

1818 Diplomation:

Spoiler :

Grabbed Tanks, grabbed Combustion, grabbed fighters, capped sury in 2 turns, moved forces, capped AC in one turn, moved forces to Mansa, voted self in a win. Pretty boring finish once I had the continent.

Feel I was very lucky as the other continent warred pretty heavily but still would have won just with a later date.

 

[Rittmeyer]

One thing I can never understand is how much tech people who post games in these forums are able to get out of peace treaties. In my games (Immortal), doesn't matter how much I destroy my a rival, even if leaving him 1-2 cities, he will never give me more than one/two cheap techs. They prefer to die instead.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

One thing I can never understand is how much tech people who post games in these forums are able to get out of peace treaties. In my games (Immortal), doesn't matter how much I destroy my a rival, even if leaving him 1-2 cities, he will never give me more than one/two cheap techs. They prefer to die instead.

This is game speed dependent...

 

[DMOC]

obsolete

Spoiler :

I haven't checked your spoiler yet since I haven't finished the game yet (I know almost everything except modern era stuff, etc.). But in my game Toku had a considerable amount of loot available for grabs in peace so I took advantage of that. In my opinion it simply depends on how much the AI is willing to give to you as to whether you want a peace to get those techs, or all-out war.

Meanwhile, my game ... 1200 AD ish

Spoiler :

Conquest of Japan complete. Yes it took a while. But as I said, I wanted to take up some of the techs and gold Toku had. I was not able to trade much with Hammurabi. Next target is definitely Hammurabi. Lib went around 1000 AD, I could have gotten it but I opted to ignore it in favor of empire development.

 

[Teelman]

This is sort of an off beat question but relevant to playing this game. Does anyone know a free program that can unzip these files without having to download the trial version of winzip every 45 days?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

7 zip is free and can handle a lot more than just .zip.

 

[Rittmeyer]

This is game speed dependent...

I play on normal... guess most people also do, including you.

 

[beestar]

Windows XP can unzip files by default - it shows up as a "Compressed Folder". That normally works for me.

Oh, my game (Immortal / Normal / no huts, but barbs get Archery), up to 1860AD now:

Spoiler :

REXed by Settler and by sword, ate Toku in 3 pieces (kept him alive so I could trade techs with Hammy).

Due to the war, fell way behind in the tech race. Neither Hammy nor I had met the other continent so we couldn't trade many techs. Lost Liberalism to a distant land somewhere about 1000-1200AD - I think I didn't even have Currency at the time. Needless to say I didn't have any wonders.

Eventually I was discovered by MM and eventually circumnavigated, meeting the massive Sury (14 cities, capped Caesar). Tech whored like crazy and caught up: Mansa Musa as always was willing to trade; I had Hammy at Friendly; and I could feed techs to the backward Sury for cash.

I had 14 cities to Sury's 19 and I wasn't feeling confident about my land, so I switched to Nationalism, drafted an army of Rilfes (and upgraded my Berserkers to amphibious Riflemen), and attacked the weak Rameses. I was able to claim 4 cities, including Versailles and the Mahabodhi, before capping him. Founded Mining Inc through a lucky GE.

In the meantime, Mansa Musa was 60 turns from culture. Fortunately Sury declared on him and captured one of his 3 culture cities, but this was a little too successful as Sury's army of 12 cuirassiers and 16 grenadieres was more than a match for MM and it was looking like Sury might cap MM. So I traded Assembly Line(!) to MM to keep him fighting.

It's now 1860AD and I'm still trying to generate a GM for Sushi. I lead the world with 20 cities and my power looks secure. In terms of tech I'm finally ahead with Plastics and Radio, and about to tech Computers for the Internet. The problem now is that Sury is 90 turns away from culture and was slowly rolling over MM, so I had to declare on him. Fortunately his navy is weak, and his capital was coastal and defended only by 4 LB and 2 Riflemen, so it fell quickly to a Destroyer bombardment and Infantry assault.

"Do you want to raze this city?" YES.

I'm now following TMIT's technqiue of sailing around Khmerland and razing coastal cities. It's awesome - I just sail to find a lightly defended city, bombard it down to 0% defense, then amphibious-assault with Infantry, and raze. The one unit that makes it to shore gets deleted to avoid enemy war success, and I just sail on to the next city. Sury's willing to talk peace but I want to beat up Rome to get Caesar to split away from Khmer, so Sury will (maybe) cap to me. If I understand correctly, getting Caesar to declare on Sury would help a lot, since Sury will now have two land target neighbours. Getting Caesar to split off (and survive against Sury) will be difficult. Will need some Marines ...

Ultimate goal is still space, but fighting Sury is too much fun ...

TMIT, this was the first game I've really understood and tried your 'coastal city razing' tactic. It's AWESOME.

 

[DMOC]

Second turn of the war. The game will end later with a space race win.

Spoiler :

 

[beestar]

The reminds me to follow up on my IU XL. Finished space in 1952AD.

Spoiler :

Bit of a slow launch, but it was too much fun repeatedly beating up on Sury's Riflemen and Grenadiers with my Infantry (and eventually Marines).

I killed Caesar first, but didn't do enough damage to vassalize Sury, and had to leave a very, very angry Sury alive. I think he had -30 "you razed our city" against me. Fortunately MM kept him busy while I launched.

Oh, and I finally got a GM in the 1920s or so, and was still able to pick up Sushi ... not sure if it made much difference at that point. Well, "every little helps" as we say here.

Thanks for a fun game TMIT.

 

[ThoMeuhGal]

Got my ass kicked several times in this one. I'm not able to grab enough good land early, or if i do i make myself an easy target for the first one of the two who will attack me. Still a long way to consistently win on immortal...

 

[DMOC]

DMOC's Game:

1909 Space Race Victory - Clock ticked at 10 hours, 18 minutes.

Spoiler :

The game was a walk-in-the-park starting from 1000 AD. My tech speed became phenomenal. The biggest challenge was trying to found Sid Sushi's ASAP (I did this pre-1800 AD I think). As you can see in the replay, my early land-grab was important in this game. In 2000 BC, I had more cities than any other AI.

I do enjoy letting off some steam on relaxing games. Now it's time for me to go back to the 2 online games I want to finish.