Immortal University XX - Stalin

[Sleepless]

@TMIT

Spoiler :

Justinian wasn't far behind me in the space race but still a way off launching. Perhaps it would have been better if I incorporated his lands into mine to speed up my win though.

I'm still trying to get a sub 1800 space victory and I thought I had a chance in this game. The usual trouble being I left the AI to far behind me to get any techs from them. Still I'll manage it one day. Perhaps I'll have to play at deity level to get a finish pre 1800.

on your win as well.

 

[Dirk1302]

Deity until 500 AD,

Spoiler :

Settled in place, early tech: AH-BW-Myst-Wheel-Pottery-Writing-Accumulate gold. Scouting reveals that this is a very nice map for happy rexing and so i do. Diplomatically i'm save since Justin and Monty share borders and are annoyed with each other. For this reason rushing Monty would be a very bad idea also on immortal i think. He's just sure to put up fierce resistance.Get Parthenon/GL combo up so i'll win lib. Good position 500 AD. 9 cities up, the land is not great but could have been worse. I plan to take nationalism from lib and build the taj. This in turn should help to get oxford up, i'll have to work for that 6th uni though.Then goto steel and turn our greedy eyes to the right. All very standard and i don't see too much trouble ahead right now.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Dirk

Why did you adopt hindu? It looks like it is best to join the Budda club and beef up the defense a bit against Monty. He wil prob fight Justin and Roosy though.

 

[Dirk1302]

Maybe, as long as Monty's cautious with me he'll take Justin. But if he becomes annoyed i'll be in danger. The reverse is also true, as it is now Justin and his buddies will always pick on Monty or the confucianists. Also hindu has conveniently spread to all my cities and while checking i see that buddhism hasn't spread to any yet. Later on if buddhism spreads i will switch.

 

[Duckweed]

^
Why didn't you settle your capital on riverside?
Why didn't you trade for MC? Forge is half price for Stalin and isn't it your favorite building?

 

[Dirk1302]

MC isn't on the market that long, indeed i'm going to trade for it now, have to see with whom exactly.I thought about the riverside for a sec but didn't want to lose a floodplain. Looking back i i'd rather have the capital on the riverside, it would have been a great levee spot. Also my western coast cities would have had some more breathing room. I thought about the levee but i didn't know about the western coast. There also was a risk that the eastern tiles were no good in which case i'd lose a turn. Didn't consider it for too long though so i may have missed something examining the start.

 

[ABigCivFan]

300AD:

Spoiler :

Deity/Normal

I did some aggressive REX, was lucky enough to get the triple fur/crab site to the far East.

Settled Moscow 1SE by river and some nice river grass hills.

Got Monty Pleased with his Religion.

Have lots of resources to trade for GPT and this will ensure very large cities.

Novrograd is a great HE site with no overlap. Yekaterinburg will also become a super city with Moai. 1 More city to work horse/cow next to capital and will take over the southern Barb city by fish and rice.

 

[Dirk1302]

^Looks good

Spoiler :

i missed that crab fur city by 2 turns, was not at all happy about it. I see you also chose Monty's religion in the end. Of course there's no reli block in the first place in your game.

 

[ABigCivFan]

1340AD:

Spoiler :

720AD: Unlocked HE with a CR sword fighing Barbs.




840AD: Stiring up some trouble.




1190AD: Monty Bribe. I was able to get ahead with tech by staying peaceful and build up. Which allowed some chips for diplo. Monty is quite strong, I want to weaken his as much as possible before my invasion.




1300AD: Monty's main SOD ~50 units.




1320AD: Monty whooping Justin's Ass. Taking cities with absolute numeric superiority. Justin has cannons, I hope he can deal more damage to Monty.




1340AD: My own war preparation. I am focusing on Cossacks, with cannon support, I should be able to destroy Monty's main force with the great cossacks. Battle plan is to barrage his SOD with cannons first, then move in with cossacks, this should be able to destroy all his siege in the first wave (Flank). and he will have no answer for my cossacks.

Running Rep+Buea+Caste+FM+Theo now.

 

[Dirk1302]

^Didn't look at your post yet since i haven't played beyond 500 AD but i'm glad you play along . Our 300 AD saves don't differ so drastically so should be interesting to see how it all pans out.

 

[ABigCivFan]

1605AD Update

Spoiler :

1540AD: Sending 2 equal battle groups to invade Monty. Empire all railed up for fast reinforcements.




1545AD: My overwhelming EP on Monty allow me to see his cities. He just made peace with Justin, but a large stack is trapped in Nicomedia since he does not have Open Border with Justin. This allows me to split my forces and heading to 2 fronts without problem.




1550AD: Capital. Oxford+IW combo doing the heavy lifting on tech and troop prod.




1590AD: Took over Monty's land within 10 turns using a combo of Cannon/Cossacks/Spies. There are some great land, unfortunately Monty workshopped over the cottages for war and I had to rebuild -> Farms ->cottages.




1605AD: My next target is Justin, bribed ZY to war with Justin. And I ll wait until I get Bio/Arty to join the fun.

 

[Learningciv]

Immortal/Marathon Checkpoint 1 (to 300BC, close enough to 1AD for my liking)

Spoiler :

I will start this by saying that even though I am in a good position I played this poorly after a certain point. I am very exhausted physically from constant training and I found my micromanagement was not to much better then automation.

Settled in place, worker first build, tech path started with Bronze. Very quickly I found Monty (turn 5). Found bronze up north which led me to settling my 2nd city coastal to grab fish+bronze+marble. Monty was further away then I would have liked for a rush but I decided to send my tech path down Wheel (hook up bronze, unlock Pottery), Agriculture, Pottery, Writing then Asthetics while I Axe rushed Monty.

Realised almost immediatly that if I wanted to rush him my economy would crash hard due to distance but the long term gains seem worth it. I planned for this by slowing my rush and building some cottages before my chop frenzy started in Capital. In 1620BC I dow'ed Monty with a stack of 10 Axes, 1 Medic Warrior, 1 Spearman. A few more Axes were also on the way and they were very close. By 1510 iirc the Aztec civilazation was destroyed, I had 4 new cities including 2 of them holy.

I got very lucky with this war in hindsight. Monty's tech path had gone to OR before BW in order to found Judism. This meant he was slow hooking up bronze, and I actually cut him off 2 turns before he managed to get it done. This meant I didn't fight a single axeman. His unit count was also suspiciously low for a warmonger, leading me to believe he was building a wonder (he had stone hooked up, does this effect AI build probs??). In total I lost only 3 or 4 Axes in my entire war due to Monty not acting look a warmonger and good luck with the attack chances (all my 20% battles were lost, but I want all battles >60%). I also get myself a 10xp unit to unlock heroic.

I now enter the sloppy part of my game. I had a large number of workers, a good sized empire blocking off Justinian (I do settle a 7th city 2E of the deer up north to completly block off a huge penisula), and the economy techs I need to dig myself out of the hole I am in. I start chopping out libraries and building cottages. My standing army is big enough that I am not afraid of Justinian at the moment so I can neglect units. My city specialisation is pretty bad here as I just get every city working cottages to get my economy out of the red.

Asthetics ends up being great trade bait once I tech enough of Alphabet to trade it 1:1. I then trade Alphabet + Asthetics to completly backfill. I realise to late that I would have had a perfect oppurtunity to grab the Mids, but my failed attempt at them grabs me 700 gold. I do however get Glib in capital (combined with an acadamy), ToA in the former Aztec capital (I want those GP's because I have two shrines to build), and the Parthanon (actually 3 turns away... but I would be suprised if an AI beats me in those turns) in southern Aztec city.

At 300BC I have fur + ivory with gold still to hook up, I can trade for even more happyness resources. I am getting around 60bpt breaking even on gold, the entire continent is buddist (I own hindu + jew holy cities). I have nearly chopped out 1 temple and am going to build another in my ToA city so I can work priests to get those GPs out. If I continue building my economy, expanding into the unclaimed land I have blocked off, and get my shrines working when they are built I am going to have a VERY strong economy.

For a game where I lack city specialisation (does it count if I just spam cottages in all cities) and used workers badly I think it is going very well.

A question on an AI leaders behavior

Spoiler :

Does Justinian declare at Pleased?

EDIT: Sorry for no pictures. I am just really that exhausted. If someone is actually interested enough just post in this thread and I'l upload the 300BC save.

 

[Shurdus]

A question on an AI leaders behavior

Spoiler :

Does Justinian declare at Pleased?

EDIT: Sorry for no pictures. I am just really that exhausted. If someone is actually interested enough just post in this thread and I'l upload the 300BC save.

Spoiler :

Justinian will not declare at pleased.

 

[Learningciv]

Spoiler :

Justinian will not declare at pleased.

Spoiler :

Thats made this whole game a whole lot easier knowing that I am pretty much safe from attack and can just focus on economy

 

[Dirk1302]

@Learningciv, i'm interested in the save. A save actually tells more than pictures.

There's an excellent guide based on the xml here (upper link):
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/reference_charts.php

You can check the answer to your question there.

 

[Tempesta13]

Spoiler :

I'm curious now as to what happened in my game - I thought justinian did declare at pleased but looks like he doesn't. I had monty/de gaulle capitulated, was ready to attack brennus and justinian/roos/zara (all pleased w/ me) declared on me and i retired.

It was justinian who went wheoohrn and declared first, bribing the other two same turn. He must have dropped down to cautious at some point i'm assuming, and i wasn't paying enough attention to notice it. As for zara and roos the fact that they were bribed explains their dow's at pleased - just not sure how i got the original one. I was basically playing under the assumption i was safe with them all at pleased (which i should have been) and just thought i had justinian's limits wrong after it happened.

Vassals aren't factored into dow's right? (relations-wise) I know they are factored in as far as diplo votes are concerned, as well as WFYABTA limits.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Vassals and AFAIK everything except diplo victory votes are factored into DoWs. One of my most hated game errors in this great game is this particular hidden modifier, because it causes the interface to lie.

 

[Dirk1302]

Agreed, it's a pity in the first place that not all modifiers are shown. Shaka, Monty pleased with each other at +0, annoyed with Ghandy also at 0 . It all has to do with xml peaceweight and warmonger respect but i don't see why these modifiers can't be visible. Maybe Firaxis thought that it would confuse beginning players but these players are not stupid either and are going to wonder anyway.

 

[Tempesta13]

Vassals and AFAIK everything except diplo victory votes are factored into DoWs. One of my most hated game errors in this great game is this particular hidden modifier, because it causes the interface to lie.

So even if i had all 3 of those AI's at friendly they could still have dow'd me since they were all annoyed with my vassal? So basically can't really capitulate anyone if you want to be immune to dow's? I always thought friendly really meant friendly when it came to if they can declare war on me or not. It would be a lot easier if the game would just average my vassal's relations in there for me (should BUG maybe do this?) Say i'm at +12 with an AI, my vassal is at -6 with them, just tell me they are cautious with me and at +3. I really hate how you have to just throw out all diplo information as soon as you take a vassal.

 

[Learningciv]

@Learningciv, i'm interested in the save. A save actually tells more than pictures.

There's an excellent guide based on the xml here (upper link):
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/reference_charts.php

You can check the answer to your question there.

Here is the 450BC save. I realised to late that when I started my 2nd session at 300BC I loaded from the autosave. This save contains basically everything stated in my first checkpoint however.

View attachment ISS Son BC-0450.CivBeyondSwordSave

Thanks for the link to the XML charts by the way. I have been looking for something similiar to that which I can use