Let's Play Immortal! #02: Louis XIV

[Gwaja]

Welcome to Let's Play Immortal! Series. The games in this series is dedicated purely for Immortal level enthusiasts who either want to improve their games or to take a break from often brutal situations common on Deity.

In the last game, we had Ragnar on a relatively water heavy map that many thought was quite relaxing. But that will change very fast in this game. ^_^

Our honorary leader this time is:



The game settings are:



And the starting position:



Don't let the gold fool you into thinking that this map will be a cakewalk. The map is crowded, and doesn't have as much breathing room as we had in the last game with Ragnar or the last Emperor game with Asoka... not to mention some "interesting" mix of neighbors. Any kind of early rush may also prove to be difficult to pull off.

And finally, just because the map is crowded doesn't mean you won't have to worry less about barbarians. There will always be room for them to spawn from. ^_^

The pig is the only food source visible but with all these floodplains, food might not be too big of an issue here. Also lots of riverside tiles which means they will be cottage friendly.

Oh, but let me not spoil your fun too much here. I assure you, this won't be anywhere near as hateful or brutal as "Deity Toku" map. ^_^

Let's have some fun!

 

[Brilliant]

well, here goes, my first post, and my first ever upload of a forum game. Please forgive me if I mess up the spoiler tags or something

Playthrough up to 1080 BC

Spoiler :

I settled in place, and much to my joy revealed another gold, hooray for fast tech starts! Turn two brought frederick to my borders and turn 3 Montezuma decided to make an appearance. " Interesting" neighbours indeed, and close by to boot. 3840 BC brought a brief moment for me as both Islam and Taoism were founded. Took me a while before I remembered there was such an option as " choose religions" as I never use it.
The rest of the early game was fairly uneventful. I settled towards Frederick first to get elephants and maybe keep him boxed in as he was on the sea. Researched archery to combat barbs and then went for alphabet. I finished it in 1360 BC and go to the relations screen only to find out that NO ONE has even finished writing... what the?
Since everyone was so backwards, and there were 3 holy city state religion civs (Frederick, Mansa Musa and Montezuma), I settled on the plan to rush for elephants and catapults on 4 cities to quickly deal with frederick and maybe Darius. In 1080 BC I had traded and gifted enough to convince the #1 AI (Brennus) to declare on the #2 AI (Mansa Musa) Hopefully prompting Montezuma to backstab either of them. I am still the tech leader, only brennus is on par with me as I just bribed him with everything, but he'll be at war for a while. Things are looking good so far.

I would have liked to include screenshots, but somehow I can't seem to manage to find them. Could someone tell me where to look so I can add them later, or maybe to my next post? Any other advice on how to report on my game is also appreciated.

Edit: added savegame, thanks whats a navy

 

[whats a navy]

Brilliant, welcome to civfanatics

You can upload your save so that other people can access it and examine your empire even more thoroughly than screenshots. You click the upload attachments (the paperclip) among the tools when creating your post. Select your save and anyone will be able to open it when viewing your post.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Speaking of "let's play", I'll probably do this one next for youtube. Just a HOMM upload for today however.

 

[Gwaja]

Speaking of "let's play", I'll probably do this one next for youtube. Just a HOMM upload for today however.

Forgive me for my lack of creativity in the name of the game/series. ^_^ But it just seemed the most attractive.

A very minor spoiler but a spoiler nonetheless:

Spoiler :

This will be a wonderful opportunity for you to get your revenge after that Deity Toku disaster. It won't take very long for you to realize this though... probably within 5 turns or so. ^_^

 

[NihilZero]

This is a fun map, I've played to 1000AD approximately and things have been eventful...

Spoiler :

...as you might expect given the wildly clashing peaceweights we have here.

 

[GKey]

After that Deity Toku map immortal might be not relaxing enough. Are there some settler series for wounded veterans?

 

[Gwaja]

After that Deity Toku map immortal might be not relaxing enough. Are there some settler series for wounded veterans?

LOL... at least you didn't get daggered and get killed pre 1000 BC in that game. ^_^

 

[ahcos]

Apart from his awful ugly model, useless UB+UU, a very nice leader actually. I like his traits and startingtechs, you can pull off something with them in almost every mapsetup... very flexible. Nice. Maybe i'll play this one myself.

 

[Noogai]

I would go 1N on the forest with warrior to see wether you should settle on place or 1N.

 

[dualmaster]

To 1AD:

Spoiler :

Opened AH>Mining>Masonry>Myst>Poly>Priest>Writing>Math

It was a bit of a gamble to do what I wanted, but I saw all the open terrain to the north and built the Great Wall. Squeezed out a settler before Great Wall to grab the ivory.

Spoiler :

Then worked on the Oracle:

Spoiler :

After that I self teched through HBR and Currency while whipping phants and pults. I managed to trade math for Alpha and then backfilled missing techs (BW, IW, pottery, fishing, etc). I should have built a third worker earlier because I didn't have enough to chop when BW came in. It set me back a few turns on the attack date.

While building forces, I started some trouble in 800BC:

Spoiler :

Then the AI helped out with causing some more trouble the next turn:

Spoiler :

Then in 550 BC I couldn't have Mansa free to tech away, so I called up Brennus:

Spoiler :

So everyone is busy:

Spoiler :

And I join in with a backstab on Freddy.

Spoiler :

Freddy had been at war with Alex for a while, so his forces were depleted and in the wrong location. A few turns after the start of this war Monty came to demand Currency which I gave in to. It guaranteed 10 turns of peace...

The unsurprising result:

Spoiler :

Freddy is dead and gave me a few nice cities, most of them with granaries. Unfortunately, I had gotten behind on producing catapults, so at the end of this war I had to pause for a bit until I had enough siege to continue on with phase II:

Spoiler :

Darius has been at war with Alex for 800 years and has nothing to slow me down. He also has some nice cities that will fit into my empire nicely.

Here's land and tech at 1 AD:

Spoiler :

With all the war tech is very slow. No one is close to longbows at this point so my cataphants have free reign for a while to come. I'm 8 turns from Feudalism myself. I'll look to take 1 or 2 more Persian cities and hopefully he will cap after that. Then I think I have enough time to turn and take down Alex before he get longbows.

With the general tech pace being slow I don't expect to have any trouble recovering after the war.

 

[dualmaster]

Oops......1110 AD Diplo victory:

Spoiler :

Looks like I forgot to take any screenies, but the war with Darius went easy. Took one more city from him, killed a stack, and he capitulated.

Alex's turn:

Spoiler :

Somehow Alex manged to bribe Monty in on me the next turn. Not sure how that happened as Alex was behind on tech. Monty never brought much against me and a few turns later Mansa declared on Monty .

Spoiler :

Alex only had 3 cities and no longbows so it was over pretty quick. I decided to extort tech from him and then re-declare later:

Spoiler :

This kind of backfired since Alex then vassaled to Brennus. But overall I think I wanted the tech more than the city. And it wasn't going to be long before I'd go after Brennus (he was the only real threat in the game with 11 cities).

I was 3 turns from Liberalism and MilTrad. I had almost all the infrastructure complete to pump cuirs. I would have rolled over the world, when a vote popped up and:

Spoiler :

I didn't realize how close I was to the AP win. I just laughed when all of a sudden I had won.

End screenies:

Spoiler :

Tech and land:

Spoiler :

I was going to win anyways. Tech lead+imminent mounted war.

 

[Gwaja]

Oooh nice one dualmaster. ^_^

I know AP win is frowned upon by many players, but if you were in a situation where victory is only a matter of time, it is better to take the AP win if the situation presents itself.

 

[HeddaGambler]

My favourite leader and a starting position very nice for my preferred cultural victories. This is going to be fun! Just too bad that I have to wait until after work today to play this...

 

[NihilZero]

Up to the minute coverage of my game thus far:

Spoiler :

First off, I get annoyed at Fred for taking my horse and gem spot. Look at those single archer defended cities. I could be chariot rushing those.



I earmark Fred for destruction, it's the only rational response.

600BC Monty Python goes WHEOOHRN. The only strategic resource I have is Ivory...there is copper, but it's in the foodless tundra and I'd rather not.

550BC Monty goes for Mansa. Having resolved to kill Fred, I settled four cities - capital, cows-ivory, corn-gold, and pigs. No Oracle, I just slow tech up to pachyderm war the traditonal way and my first GS gives me an Academy.

Pangaea politics being what they are, I'm nervous that when I attack Fred, he may bribe Darius into the war, so first I bribe Alex to attack the latter with Currency, horseback riding, and Mysticism. This works even better than I thought when Darius bribes Fred into the action. Nice.

100BC everybody is at war except Brennus and I, and we are both planning to get stuck in imminently.



Next turn Brennus dogpiles Mansa and I attack Fred, and it's war all over on multiple fronts.

Approximate 1AD screenshot:



It goes without saying that with all this chaos and destruction there is not a lot of teching going on anywhere.

I'm crushing Fred without much difficulty when suddenly something most unexpected occurs:



Woah...what!?



Crap. I really hadn't bargained on this. Seems that Monty was not content with taking a big bite out of Mansa, he had to attack me in the rear at the same time and fight war on two fronts! Awesome. He tries to catch my capital as undefended as Lyon was, but runs into elephant-shaped pain.



Germany is destroyed in 350AD



Leaving us with this situation:



...so now I'm free to move my forces proper to lay a smackdown on the upstart Aztecs.

Monty is the first to Feudalism. Bugger. Gradually the wars peter out, Brennus and Mansa call it quits and surprisingly Alex gets his ass handed to him by Darius and gives up. Might have something to do with him having no metals, but now he's down to four cities! Mansa isn't doing any better, also at four cities. Monty is still fighting me and the Malinese.

I liberate Lyons, despite the recently whipped walls and longbows and some horrible random numbers:



and now Monty is willing to talk but will only offer a most laughable proposal, suggesting that I should give him back the city I just shed so much elephant blood to take. Yeah right. Like he is in any position to play hardball when I have elephants and he doesn't.

Or does he?



Hostile elephants sighted! Thanks to Mansa's incompetence in losing his cities, Monty now has elephants. It's going to be a long night.

I use my Music Great Artist for a GA and finally choose a religion, switching to Christianity (shared by Brennus and Alex) and OR. Monty is Hindu, Darius is Jewish, and Mansa is Moslem.

After relieving Monty of one of his cities he's willing to talk turkey.





I accept, considering that Monty actually has better military techs and more troops than me. I lost a lot of beasts taking those two cities despite always having 80-95% odds.

Now at peace, I settle down to improve my empire a little to try and regain the edge. I hook up the Marble and build the Great Library, Parthenon, Shwedagon Paya, and just for the hell of it the Colossus.

Mansa continues to get chomped after the Celts DoWed him again:



and he is doomed with only two cities left, so I join the war for diplo points.



Shortly after Brennus gobbles up yet another Malinese city and MM capitulates. This is all that's left of his once proud empire (he was on top in city count and score at one point):



So I'm doing okay despite the very surprising DoW. Darius is teching furiously, Monty is still menacing, but I'm on top in score. The big problem on this map (apart from the volatile diplo situation and being surrounded by crazies) is the health cap. I can't seem to raise the damn thing.

 

[Capellan]

1928 Cultural Win (my first Immortal victory)

Spoiler :

Very easy map for me. Peaceweights meant that Mansa got dogpiled early, while I kept on Monte's good side by agreeing to demands. Mansa vassaled to Brennus which was awesome because it meant the Celts and Aztecs would soon go to war, and Brennus would remain Monte's favorite target for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, I went Oracle for CoL, founded Christianity, and spread it to Alex and Frederick. Didn't adopt it myself, though.

Good riverside land and plenty of AI vs AI warfare meant I easily won Lib. Used a Great Prophet for a Golden Age to adopt the Lib civics. Took Nationalism as my tech, and used the Taj Golden Age to adopt the Democracy civics and Free Market.

Took out Frederick (who had vassaled to Alex) when Alex joined one of Monte's fights against Brennus. The went Medicine (for Sushi) and Combustions (for CreateCon), rammed the culture slider to 90%, and hit end turn a lot. Only excitement was a declaration from Alex. He briefly sniped a city from me, but I had Infantry against his rifles and cav, so I smashed his stacks and took the city back without too much trouble.

City 3 went legendary 16 turns after City 1. Not terrible grouping, I guess. Would have been closer if I had lucked into a Great Artist late in the game (had a couple of 30% chances but no luck).

 

[Jester Fool]

but if you were in a situation where victory is only a matter of time, it is better to take the AP win if the situation presents itself.

I agree with Gwaja on this one - plus you get a better score! Seriously, once you have won (massive tech lead etc.) there really is no reason to keep playing. Take what you can get and move on. Gwaja has plenty of maps! (@ Gwaja : You do, don't you. )

 

[Noogai]

This is hilarious!

Are you sure there is no raging barbarians, or what the flower is this? (1500bc)

Spoiler :

I oracled feudalism 1360BC..

Spoiler :

I built some stuff (like longbows to wait *** declare..which never happened), and when AI finally got closer to feudalism, I bribed the whole world against each other with it.

Spoiler :

I am currently 500AD, but there is not so much interesting to report about so I'll leave it till later. Expect that this may be worth of mentioning:

Spoiler :

Two cities with 2 gold? What more do you need? Nothing! So that's all I got.. For now!

 

[CaF]

setting some sad records.

game 1: got TWO declarations for refusing demands of WARRING people. Hehe.
game 2: oracle'd feudalism for no real reason and ran serfdom over slavery. Pretty useless stuff.
game 3: perhaps tomorrow.

 

[NihilZero]

Are you sure there is no raging barbarians, or what the flower is this? (1500bc)

On those map types with extensive icy wastes at the top and bottom it's imperative to get those fogbusters up there fast or this always happens. That's a particulary scary example, though.