Immortal Univesity VI: Carolus Magnus of the Holy Roman Empire

[Gliese 581]

Part 3 (175 AD - 880 AD):

Where do I go from here? I think the situation seems a bit desperate to be honest.

Spoiler :

The first decision at the start of the session was what path to take to build my economy. I had to choose between going for Aesthetics -> Lit to get a shot at TGL or just go for Alphabet and work it out from there.
I decided in the end to go for Alphabet. My reasons were:
It's already 175 AD which is a bit risky for going after the GL. Both of the AIs I had met at the time, HC and Gilgamesh, builds wonder very often and had a tech advantage on the GL path. Gilga already had Literature.
There were two other civs I had yet to meet that had spammed wonders throughout the game. I didn't want to go for TGL only to lose it and only get the NE out of two techs with no trades and basically a dead end tech-path for some time.
So I chose to go for Alphabet, Sury was about done with just Isvarapura left so my cities had already switched to infrastructure.

200 AD: Finish Masonry start on Alphabet.

225 AD: Pillaged 40 gold in total from the sugar village, a little dissapointing. Strangely enough HC didn't send his troops onward to capture Isvarapura, presumably becasue the city would be boxed in by my culture but he could have taken and razed it for the plunder.

275 AD: I use my level 3 and 4 axes to capture Isvarapura and Sury was killed.

I razed the city.

300 AD: My first GS is born in Aachen, I used him for an academy there.

350 AD: Hagia Sophia built in distant lands. I meet Joao who is even more advanced than Gilgamesh and also jewish. They are friendly with a passion to each other.

375 AD: Finish Alphabet start on Meditation. I decided to go for COL after Alphabet since only Gilgamesh had it at the time and it's a good recovery tech especially with the UB.

400 AD: HC builds MoM in Cuzco.

450 AD: Finish Meditation start on Priesthood. Joao builds the Colossus.

475 AD: Finish Priesthood start on COL.

500 AD: Joao completes The Parthenon, Gilgamesh completes Chichen Itza.

My cities were building any missing buildings of use such as barracks, lighthouses and some were just building research.

660 AD: Finish COL. Unfrotunately Joao had gotten hold of it by this time so I only had HC to trade with. I tried to get Monarchy for it but the cheap bastard refused so I had to put a turn of research into Monarchy.

680 AD: Did the trade:

I start researching IW and revolt to HR + CS. All three known leaders have HR as favorite civics, which actually is one of the reasons this game is so difficult imo. Hmm I have to see how JBossch does diplomatically, normally The Pyramids is my favorurite wonder but maybe HR is better this game.

700 AD: Joao completes The Notre Dame.

720 AD: HC founds Taoism. Gilga builds The Kong Miao. Only DR left, looks like the love-fests will continue both here and abroad (where they only have buddhism).

740 AD: Gilgamesh completes The Great Library. Come on dude you had Literature in the beginning of the ADs now I'm pissed because I could have gotten it.

760 AD: Finish IW, start on Mathematics. The Holy Romans are an advanced people. All of the others have now obtained Philosophy.

780 AD: Finish Palace in Harry.

800 AD: Joao builds UoS in his superwonder city Lisbon. I discovered he has indeed stone in the bfc and two corn!

820 AD: Herodotus lists the most powerful civs.
1. Joao
2. Gilgamesh
3. HC
4&5. The unknowns
6. Me

Great..

840 AD: Finish Mathematics, start on Civil Service. None of the others have it yet so maybe I can finally do some more trades with it. Joao completes the Sistine Chapel, will have to watch for cultural victory there.

860 AD: I somewhat belatedly get my 8th city to hook up fish for health. I'll build the Moai here to make the city useful at all.

880 AD: Gilgamesh founds Islam. Just what the world needed. My second GS is born in Aachen. I stopped here for some advice.

How do I proceed? I could bulb philosophy and switch to pacificsm to try to generate enough GSs to win the Liberalism race. The problem is I only have HCs religion Hinduism, which he's spread to most of my cities. HC is the obvious target to hit next, I need more land to win this game and the other two are too powerful. Besides, HC is right next door.
All of the three have become Pleased with me bc of HR but only Joao can be trusted. Gilgamesh is aggressive and powerful and I don't want to further invite an attack by switching into hindusim my power is dreadfully low. I need to keep Joao at pleased to make sure he doesn't attack me.
Is there anything else I could do though? Maybe I have to take the gamble that I won't be attacked at this point?

 

[JBossch]

JBossch, I'm curious why you haven't upgraded to the GLANCE menu yet...

Is that a BUG mod thing? How do I get it? I have BtS 3.13 I think, with Bhruic's patch.

I like the Oracle Pyramids gambit, effective or not

Yeah I really don't know if it was. More land to grab peacefully and it would have been great but with the rush....maybe others could have done more with it.

 

[Gliese 581]

Is that a BUG mod thing? How do I get it? I have BtS 3.13 I think, with Bhruic's patch.

It's in both Bhruic's patch and the BUG mod. Actually I think you have to get Bhruic's supplementary patch if you don't want to use BUG. It's in their respective threads, I tried a quick look but it's always a hassle to find these things on civfanatics for me, it's hidden in one of the many mod subforums I think.

 

[Rusten]

It's in both Bhruic's patch and the BUG mod. Actually I think you have to get Bhruic's supplementary patch if you don't want to use BUG. It's in their respective threads, I tried a quick look but it's always a hassle to find these things on civfanatics for me, it's hidden in one of the many mod subforums I think.

It's one of the few stickies in the BTS forum.

People might not have noticed, but Bhruic updated his patch 2 times this week, everyone using it should go have a look and update.

Update:

* Extended spy ejection protection to Great Spies (and any other unit considered "always invisible")
* AI Civs under Theocracy will no longer accept gifted Missionaries
* Units withdrawing from combat will be removed from selection group (thanks Moctezuma)
* When bumping naval units from cities, preference will be given to water tiles
* Tweaks/bugfixes to improve starting city locations (thanks SevenSpirits)
* Cities no longer require a Monument to allow Spies to sabotage buildings


Bh

Update:

* Rivers added for starting locations will generate flood plains if they pass through desert tiles
* Spy unit help popup will display the percentage espionage cost decrease from fortification


Bh

 

[silverbullet]

I decided to abandon my game and restart again. Looks better this time, but the situation is still difficult.

Up to 620AD

Spoiler :

In my first game I just couldn't properly rush Sury. He had already expanded too much and had multiple axemen in his cities, so I decided to restart.

After looking at some spoilers, I chose to copy Rusten's start of agriculture and building a settler at size 3. To make it fair I also went to archery, pretending I didn't know that copper was close.
In my game Sury went quickly for Iron working and didn't have alphabet.
I managed to settle the goldx2+sheep site as well the copper corn city.
The war with Sury was very very long and is not completely over yet.
I had to stop it twice due to extreme war weariness.

Situation right now at 620 AD is not great but there is still a way out.
The know civilizations are Khmer, Inca, Sumeria and Portugal.
Joao and Gilgamesh are pleased with me as we share Judaism's.
Joao declared war on Huayna and asked me to stop trading with him, and I agreed.
I have nothing to trade with Joao and Gilgamesh now, but I can bulb philosophy first on the next turn. I wonder if I should trade it immediately or wait until I have civil service, since they are both far ahead and there is a risk of losing the liberalism race.

I have both currency and CoL which are crucial for such a big empire, and I have some room for more cities. There is also Sury's last city to conquer when the peace expires.

Any advice is welcome.

 

[Sleepless]

@Silverbullet

Spoiler :

At least you got to rush Sury he attacked me (or would of if I had let him ). I think you will have the same tech problem I had that I was so far behind Gil/Joao I had nothing to trade them and attacking HC is not going to endear him to you so not much trade happening there.

I would trade bulb Philo (went in the BCs in my game) straight away and trade what I could get for it. I didn't even try for Lib in my game as Gil had Edu a long time but still bulbed Education and traded it away for a lot of missing techs. If you can get to Lib first but I wouldn't bank on it.

Important techs to get ASAP are Monarchy/Calender for the Happies and shared fav civic bonus.

Good Luck on whatever route you take. If you can take some of HCs cities all the better even if it does crash the economy. Just run Specs build research/wealth in hammer cities and with the extra land its amazing how quick you can catch up (sort of).

 

[patagonia]

Immortal Charlie (Redux) - part three (to 1320AD)

Spoiler :

At the end of the last round, I'd just completed the Great Library and was attempting to pull myself out of an enormous tech-hole whilst avoiding being squished by any of the other AI.

Things got off to a reasonably slow start. I swapped research from Currency to Meditation/CoL to open up a philosophy bulb in the hope of back-filling some techs. Unfortunately Joao got to philosophy first and Gilgamesh declared on me as soon as I'd made the bulb, so I was only able to get HR from Huayna for it. I revolted to HR immediately for the shared civic bonus while my axe/spear stack in Polynesian cowered behind the walls there (one nice thing about this map is the mountain range that acts as a natural chokepoint, leaving only one land route available for the AI). Shortly after the revolution, I got a nice random event I've not seen before:

I took the military instructor - not sure if this was the strongest move or not, but I'd already built the HE in Prague so there was nice synergy there. I mopped up the remains of Gilgamesh's stack once he'd suicided most of his units against Polynesian, but he wouldn't agree to a peace treaty until a much larger and more advanced stack had arrived on my borders some turns later. I got into a bit of a flap and burned a GS I had sleeping on paper so that I'd have a tech to offer him in the deal, then remembered that I wouldn't be able to do that until the following turn. Fortunately I was able to get him off my back by raising the tax rate for 10 turns:

Not the kind of deal you want to be making on a regular basis, but probably better than losing a city, and it's good to know that the AI will accept GPT when you've nothing else to offer.

I continued with largely civilian/infrastructure builds as I worked my way slowly towards Liberalism and moved the capital to Harry as it seems to have the best combination of commerce/production potential to benefit from bureaucracy. However, I could tell I was still a long, long way behind when I was able to make this deal with Joao:

The AI lacks a certain degree of focus though, and I was able to get a couple more techs off Gilgamesh after double-bulbing Education (Huayna beat me to it and Joao annoyingly got it between my bulbing and being able to trade), before taking a major gamble on Liberalism itself by building research almost everywhere. Slightly surprisingly (and after a lot of tile MM to shave it down as much as possible), in 1290AD:

I took printing press as the free tech for the instant commerce boost. All the others had PP and nationalism by that point, and Huayna had already built the Taj, so PP seemed like the best option.

I've played on to 1320AD and have just met Saladin, who is more backward than me and looks to be either cramped for land or have taken a beating since he's only got 6 cities.

I'm still a long way behind in tech:

And my demographics suck:

So I'm not really sure where to go from here. The DP with Joao has me nice and safe diplomatically, but I'm not convinced I can get to computers/internet before the others do and although my lands have the production to win a space race, I think they lack the commerce compared to Joao/Gilgamesh.

Declaring on Huayna could well be a problem since he's part of the happy Hindu club (with Joao and me) and friendly with both Joao and Gilgamesh (Confucian), so it may be worth looking to Saladin for more land (I haven't built the FP yet either). That might also end up being a faster war due to being able to move troops amphibiously rather than trudging 1-tile at a time through Incan culture, plus it won't annoy any of my friends. I should also be looking to exploit Hinduism for more than just the diplomatic benefits with Joao/Huayna - I'm only running specialists in Aachen (NE city) so pacifism seems more trouble than it's worth, but getting Monotheism for OR is something I should have done a long time ago looking at the game now, especially since Huayna's been kind enough to spread it to all of my cities.

For now, I've got a couple of other issues I'd appreciate advice on.

1. I've just got a GS in Aachen. I haven't built an academy for my future Oxford city (Harry) yet - should I use him for this, or is it better to bulb when you're this far behind?
2. I'm up Liberalism on everyone - should I use it to back-fill, or keep the monopoly to deny the others free speech?

Thanks for your help

 

[Sleepless]

@Patagonia

Spoiler :

I was in a big tech hole as well and relied on trading with the other civs we didn't meet initially to catch up a little bit so I would gift Sal a tech, hopefully he will trade with you then.

Personally I would do as many trades as possible for Lib, (after seeing if Sal will trade with you) how long before the AI get it themselves? Another option is to go into Free Religion, the shared civics should keep you safe and I expect Gil will have a new worse enemy then. I know in my game I didn't have to build any military after the first attack on Sury until Arty/Infantry so I was a bit lucky there. (edit 2 or 3 Lbs and 1 musket no LKs though).

I would aim to get Oxford built asap. If you bulb the GS now what will he give you that will enable you to trade? So I think an academy is the best option. I don't mm or number crunch so perhaps someone else will do the figures.

Looking at the tech screen I assume Gil has rifles but generally the AI go for them quite late so you might get some trade value from RP and Rifles. I know HC has a very low WFYBTA limit (annoying when they have so many techs on you and won't trade because your too advanced ).

The land we have is quite decent so you have a good chance at a space win, diplo might be harder and watchout for an HC cultural attempt.

Good Luck.

Edit. My tech rate became a lot higher around 1500/1600 when I started overtaking some Civs. Only got in front of Gil right at the very end though.

I did run OR through most of the game but Sury was still alive so I had a shared civic bonus with him as well

 

[Dirk1302]

@Patagonia

Spoiler :

- Bulbing is rather useless when everyone already has that tech, i'd save for oxford
- Normally I'd trade lib around ,possible plan: get gunpowder research engineering yourself then research a few turns into chemistry, get it from Gilga for lib and try to trade that tech around only Gilga has it.

But, your natural trade partner atm is Saladin, i'd be willing to take some risks to get him to trade with you, so go FR, will probably bring him to cautious while Huyna and Joao will only drop to pleased. Very important is finding the last civ out there, might also be a good trading partner. In this scenario it might be better not to trade lib and wait till you can get better deals for it.

Get Joao and Gilga to fight each other asap. In my game these 2 share religion which is a huge problem, not only do they tech like mad, they trade like mad too.

 

[Sleepless]

@Rusten/All

Spoiler :

It seems that I'm the only one Sury declared on well he would have done (saved the game to see if he would and he did )but as I didn't want him to move into the forests around Aachen I had to declare first. So instead of a couple of Archers I had to deal with a lot of Axes/Swords which stalled my initial attack and prompted me to leave the hill city to last.

As for the question anyone have an idea why Sury declared on me. I suppose it could be my power rating when he decided to attack although it had jumped up when he got around to it.

I noticed Rusten made his attack on Sury quite late any reason he didn't attack you?

 

[Dirk1302]

@Sleepless

Spoiler :

The AI does a peace/war random check every turn against every player/ai regardless of power rating/diplo situation etc. If this check is war the ai will take into account diplo/power etc. Most Ais will reverse the war decision 80-100% dependent on AI at pleased. They will reverse if your power rating is high enough etc. But the declaration itself is random so well possible that you get declared on and the others won't. I faced quite alot of axes/swords too btw but i was quick to pillage the iron. The archers with the extra combat from the random event were at least as troublesome though.

 

[Dirk1302]

@silverbullet

Spoiler :

I can't look at the save right now. I'd bulb philo and trade it for CS (it's what i did actually), this tech'll probably cost you some time to research otherwise. Once the Ais are close to lib they can research techs like philo in 2-3 turns, risk is you set them on the lib path with this trade while they otherwise would go guilds/banking and engineering gunpowder chemistry all the way because they don't like to research philo, this is all hypothetical though. in the meantime we need CS so i suggest trading.

 

[Sleepless]

@Gliese581

Spoiler :

I've just looked at your save so you've probably played on since then. I think the Lib race is lost as Joao can already tech towards Lib. I would have gone for Lit earlier not just for the GLib but for the NE/HE as well. I doubt CS will have much trade value by the time you get it as I assume most of the AI will be going for it now.

I would use the GS on an academy or hold for bulbing Education and trying to get Oxford up early ish.

Looking forward to your next report.

 

[patagonia]

@ Sleepless/Dirk

Spoiler :

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking of snubbing Saladin in case I picked up "worst enemy" diplo penalties with some of the others, but since he hasn't met them yet I should be OK for now, so it probably is well worth buttering him up. I'm going to try just gifting a tech first though, since staying Hindu exempts me from WFYABTA with Huayna.

@ silverbullet

Spoiler :

Don't know if you've played on or not, but I'd be inclined to sell some spare health to Joao for his 7/turn, sell him meditation for his treasury and then bulb philosophy to trade around.

If you add a couple of shock axes and a spear to your stack, it may be worth trying to nab a city from Huayna once Sury's dead - give those CR3 units something to keep them occupied and Joao's keeping his forces busy on the other border.

 

[Gliese 581]

@ Sleepless

Spoiler :

Thanks, no actually I haven't played any more rounds, I've been starting new immortal /normal speed games and practiced on doing faster rushes. That was my problem so far in the Charlie game, I think I expanded to the copper city and set up the attack rapidly enough but then I wasn't focused enough to end it quickly.

What do you think about revolting to hindu to run pacifism? Is it worth the risk with both Joao and Gilgamesh being jewish? I think I might have a shot at Liberalism if I can bulb 3 more times (Edu+ Lib). But maybe I'm thinking epic speed here.
I've already built an academy in Aachen so I don't think I need more of them right now.

 

[Sleepless]

@Gliese 581

Spoiler :

As long as you stay in Monarchy you should be ok to adopt Hindu and run Pacifism. Otherwise Gil might take exception. Even if you don't get to Lib first, I didn't, Education is good for Oxford/Trade purposes. Remember you need to get Calender/Compass as well. Calender especially gives you some nice resources to trade so not a bad one to have anyway.

No harm in trying anyway.

 

[Gliese 581]

@ Sleepless

Spoiler :

Alright, I'll go for it then. Though the bigger danger is no longer having Joao pleased with me as he's 100% safe at pleased, Gilgamesh is an aggressive backstabber anyhow so I just have to hope he doesn't attack me.

 

[patagonia]

Immortal Charlie (Redux) - part 4 (to 1906AD)

Spoiler :

I started off attempting to redress the tech situation by gifting Saladin a tech to bump him up to cautious so that he was willing to trade and then made some deals:

I'd later get guilds, gunpowder and optics off him too.

I got a couple of Nav-1 caravels built in Prague and sent them off exploring and a spot of map trading netted me the circumnavigation bonus - more useful for AI denial than anything else since I didn't build another military unit all game.

The last AI turned out to be Cathy, who had been warring with Saladin a lot. I started off with -4 to relations with her for trading with him, but she turned out to be a more useful tech-trading partner than the Arabian.

I was still a long way behind Joao and Gilgamesh, with Huayna also up a bunch of techs on me. Some serious beelining towards computers and the internet had me first to a couple of techs, but with the others already researching them and therefore unable to trade for anything I was missing.

Although Joao was first to both radio and plastics, he avoided computers for some time allowing me to beat him to it. There followed some nervy turns while I was building the internet in Yasodharapura (IW city), knowing that if I missed that wonder, the game was lost.

How much of an impact did that have?

Tech before:

Spoiler :

Tech after:

Spoiler :

From there I beelined fusion, researching techs the other AI didn't have to maximize any benefit to be gained from the Internet. I burned a GS on my first golden age to swap civics to US/SP and started workshopping like crazy, getting the GE from fusion in time for another golden age soon afterwards. The space race was very tight, when I suddenly noticed a problem:

Curse you Huayna!

I'd seen him going cultural earlier on and bribed him into war against Saladin to get him to turn research on again. Once he'd started teching and building SS parts, I thought I'd successfully got him to switch, but that turned out not to be the case. I got distracted with the race for the internet and my own construction progress vs Joao and foolishly missed the fact that the Incans were sneaking a win.

I've looked back on a couple of older saves and although nobody would war with him, I could have focused my EP in that direction, set one city to build spies and gone on a water-poisoning spree in his 2nd and 3rd cultural cities to starve them out of contention if I'd got my act together in time.

Out of curiosity, I went into WB and dropped the culture in a couple of his cities to see what would have happened in the space race and I beat Joao to launching by a couple of turns, which would have led to a win in 1926. Dang.

 

[patagonia]

This was a challenging and enjoyable game - thanks for hosting it silverbullet.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Patagonia

Spoiler :

Well played anyway this is a challenging game and your position in your last update wasn't that good i felt so spacerace 1926 is a good result disregarding Huyna's culture trick more so because you didn't take out Huyna so you didn't have much land.

I wonder, would poisoning the water have helped, if you poison twice does the city have -16 health? or do you have to wait till the previous poisoning is over.

Also, most of the culture comes from the slider and wonders i think so poisoning might not help but since i'm bad with spies i really wouldn't know,silverbullet knows these things. If i have to deal with a culture thread i tend to raze a coastal city, then back in the boats and sue for peace.