Immortal win. G&K seems easier than vanilla

[PanzerEric]

Wow! G&K sure seems easier than vanilla. I got the game yesterday and won my first Immortal game. I won a cheesy diplomatic game on turn 374. I am not a guru or elite player by any means.

Civ: Gandhi
Continents
Standard
Epic

Started on a medium size continent with myself, Rome and Sweden. I was in the southwest, Rome was in the middle, and Sweden was in the north part of the continent. Rome expanded fairly aggressively while Sweden was hemmed in the north. I conducted classic - medieval era wars on Rome and Sweden and reduced them down to 1 city each

I have read that happiness is not as much an issue and I would agree. I was able to build 4 cities if my own, and puppeted another 9-10 cities from Sweden and Rome. Also I heard the gold is hard to get in G&K. I disagree. I was making tons of gold most of the game and towards the end making 500 gpt and with golden ages (due to all the happiness) making over 800 gpt.

I occasionally would dip down into negative happiness, but most of the game I had positive happiness and at the end of the game I had between 20 - 40 happiness......on Immortal! I never had this on vanilla.

2 cities with 40+ pop
1 city with 35 pop
3 cities over 20 pop
5 cities between 10 -20 pop

Was #1 on the demographic screen in almost all categories including science and also had a total population of 118,000,000. I was way ahead in science and after researching Globalization I built the UN. As the diplomatic vote counted down 10 turns I kept accumulating gold.

With one turn left before the UN vote I had over 27,000 gold and bought Ally status with every CS.

After the vote was taken Gandhi won a Diplo victory on turn 374.

Social Policies.
Tradition - with a free aqueduct now upon completion of this tree, growth really explodes. Also you get hammer free and maintenance free culture buildings and aqueducts. This helps gold management early on.

Commerce opener

Patronage first 3 SP's

Completed Rationalism

Overall this game was easy. It didn't seem like an Immortal game.

 

[Camikaze]

Feedback seems to be mixed on whether the game is harder or not. I had certainly thought that people would find it more difficult (I know I find it more difficult), but perhaps it's a matter of playstyles. Perhaps it's a matter of tall empires being easier, with combat and warfare being more protracted (though you went to war as well...).

Lack of gold is more of an early game thing.

 

[Schalke 04]

Some people are complaining that the game was too easy difficult...

If you ask me... I'm cannot confirm one or the other...


My first game was on King difficulty. And that was so ridiculously easy, that I aborted the game... I conquered my neighbours with Musketman, while they even didn't have the tiles around their capital improved... around turn 150, I met a CS that was 8 tiles or so away from my enemies capital and got 30 gold for finding it... what can I say, I was pretty confused...

The next game / my actual game is an Empereror level game. And this is definitely harder than the previous one! I don't have any problems with science, gold or happiness. Happiness is really easier to handle! However, I have quite some problems military wise. I have just one single enemy on my continent: Hiawatha. And he sits in a large forest area. Really difficult to take his cities, especially when you lack iron...

 

[MadDjinn]

random question:

who were the other civs, and what were they doing?

 

[Schalke 04]

I shared a continent with Spain and Sweden. Settings were: small map, standard pace, king. No DLC (except Mongols and G+K of course).

Here you can see a screenshot of the newly conquered former empire of Spain.

Spoiler :

It consisted of just two cities. You can see: no farms at all, mines just at iron. In addition: one cotton, two cattle and four stone improvements are missing. Plus: 7 tiles NE of Madrid there is a CS that was never been found by Spain. Pretty lame for turn 159...

My initial thought was, that the game was buggy. I didn't encounter this problem in my current game again however. If you want a savegame of it, I'll gladly upload it.

 

[Tiber4321]

@Schalke 04 Are you saying that Spain never developed its resources, other than iron mines? That doesn't sound good.

 

[Schalke 04]

To be precise:

Spain had two cities on turn 159.

By that they have improved just 5 tiles at all... 1 iron, 1 ivory and 3 cotton tiles.

It was quite disturbing for me... I gotta admit that Spain was at war with his neighbour Sweden, but not for the most time. They should have had enough time in peace to improve their lands iirc.

 

[Makaz]

I have seen that with dido - 2 unimproved cities by renaissance, even lux not hooked ! However she did rape her swedish neighbour 3 cities early on!

Maybe it s just a civ focus ? Either they go 1 city wonder / gp spam Or all military no developement or mixed ! Just seems like path are a bit extreme

 

[MadDjinn]

@schalke:

If you can post early game (turns 0, 40, 80) saves, we can figure out what went wrong. I've never seen an AI mess up that badly on tile improvements (they're actually improving more lux in G&K than they did in vanilla).

 

[Tiber4321]

@ At All This is a very concerning problem. Hopefully a patch to fix this will be coming shortly. These types of shortcomings may explain reports of ridiculously easy wins on G&K. It seems there are some things to be ironed out.

 

[Schalke 04]

I uploaded saves from turn 19, 41 and 81. That's the best I can do. Unfortunately I don't have the start file anymore...

 

[MadDjinn]

I uploaded saves from turn 19, 41 and 81. That's the best I can do. Unfortunately I don't have the start file anymore...

thanks.

that should be fine. I'm wondering if the AI lost its workers along the way and didn't bother replacing them.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I noticed something not that severe but still.

Spoiler :

Immortal, turn 170-180ish. You can see lack of quarries and there was no workers shortage. I got few. Although we might think it's good AI doesn't senselessly improve every hex with random stuff, but Paris still worked quite a bunch of unimproved tiles. Don't have a save unfortunately, though I'm sure it's not last time I see this. On emperor seems like most of the AI stay OCC or close to that, go culture and build no units whatsoever.

 

[Bibor]

Ai not building improvements is a bug, not an AI flavor.

 

[Andulias]

This just happened to me as well, Carthage built two cities, barely improved any tiles and generally did nothing the entire game. MadDjinn, any word on what's causing this? A bug, the AI losing its workers and never building new ones?