looking for help with a tough immortal start

[jokulmorder]

i've been playing some games on immortal (quit them all, it's more of a learning experience for me) and this start would seem pretty hard regardless of the difficulty:

Spoiler :

at first it doesn't look too bad!

i settled 1 SW after scouting SW with my warrior and pick up the extra clam in exchange for my 3 hills (this turns out to be a mistake, i think). "no problem", i think, "i'll just move my capitol, it was a pretty weak spot anyways". lo and behold, justin is to my NE and i block him off with a riverside hill city (you'll see later, but it's the one with access to the horse).

first impressions look glum: even though i'm romans i've got a jungle start with no really powerful city sites and two imperialistic AIs ready to snatch all the land anyways. even as romans IW is well out of the way for me if i want to have a chance at getting into this game. i could have taken sailing and settled some marginal island cities, but i really don't want to do that and i certainly don't think i could pull it off having just moved up to immortal.

the thing that really bites me though is that catherine decides to put her third city right up in my face! you'll notice how close novgorod was to cumae. why the hell did she go through all the jungle, put up a crappy city like nov when she (probably) doesn't even have IW yet, when there is plenty of good land to her north and land that is still better than the jungle to her east! i don't understand why she would take that spot of all spots.


so here i am, deciding to attack justin (with HAs) because i can at least use his cities without cutting down the jungle and i'll have less culture defense to worry about. the problem is that all of my cities are pretty "eh" and the most i could conjure up was like ~10 horse archers by ~1 AD.

Spoiler :

how can i win games like this? what am i doing wrong? i know this start is rough but i hear about people getting guilds in the BCs at immortal and i'm struggling to even field some HAs by the ADs. i know those starts probably had happiness resources or 2-3 gold/gems in their capitol, but i still feel like i'm missing something...

btw this is augustus, not julius. tech order was something like:

Ag->BW->Wheel->Myst->AH->Writing->HBR->Archery

traded mysticism to joao for hunting.. i had a low food start though (except capitol) so i felt like i couldn't really use too many whips and thus decided granaries were not as important and therefore put pottery off until i traded HBR to ramesses for it and IW. ended up quitting this game when i accidentally switched to buddhism instead of confucianism.


EDIT: btw i put cumae where it is and not 2S to share the clams because i got paranoid about cathy putting a city past it, so i went for a hard wall-off.

here's the save:

 

[jokulmorder]

figured i should add the starting save

 

[vicawoo]

You need some extra source of beakers to get horseback riding in a reasonable time. Going bronze working and getting nothing out of it really delays you (should have skipped mysticism and maybe the wheel to compensate), especially if you go animal husbandry.

 

[jokulmorder]

You need some extra source of beakers to get horseback riding in a reasonable time. Going bronze working and getting nothing out of it really delays you (should have skipped mysticism and maybe the wheel to compensate), especially if you go animal husbandry.

yeah in hindsight myst was a big waste of time. i originally wanted it so i could wall justin off the rest of the land to the east. at the time though, i didn't know there wasn't much else to the east :/ i went BW because i really had no source of hammers in my capitol (especially not without chopping the hill).

 

[Chuwe3y]

I'm still a noble-monarch player, but

Spoiler :

I have played many games where I tried to rush but with only 4-5 cities just like yours and it has fail me 90%. From watching absolute zero vids, he has at least 6 good cities before he rushes, unless u plan to steal workers. But it might be possible. I will give this a try even though I'll know I'll lose, but my plan would be to play defensive on borders with the 2 AIs while settling in the south cuz all I see are barbarians down there. My top priority would be to block the Ais, tech choices sailing(trade for archery), then iron working. Lol play my first deity game and I was never attack, but lost to culture bomb, so I'm hoping they won't attack me until I get some cavalry

 

[Htadus]

That is a tough start from the get go. Too bad you chose to go south and settle in a peninsula you had direct access to. On higher levels when it is possible to reserve a city spot for yourself, consider going inland with your starting settler. I would have chased the clams north.

Also I am suprised to see a Roman Game heading toward horse archers instead of Preats. The tech path is pretty short compared to HA's.

 

[jokulmorder]

That is a tough start from the get go. Too bad you chose to go south and settle in a peninsula you had direct access to. On higher levels when it is possible to reserve a city spot for yourself, consider going inland with your starting settler. I would have chased the clams north.

Also I am suprised to see a Roman Game heading toward horse archers instead of Preats. The tech path is pretty short compared to HA's.

i didn't want justin to go down that path. i probably should have scouted it better so i could have seen there wasn't much to stop him from getting. however, i think HAs were the better choice (at least i made the decision that way) because i knew i had horses after getting AH, and if i researched IW and came up short i would have been really screwed (if i had settled north i would have been screwed more cause the only iron is farther down that peninsula).

basically, my train of thought went:

1. I have to rush somebody, i don't have enough room to play passively.
2. (my biggest blunder) I want mysticism to help me secure what land i can quickly
3. AH->Writing will give me more research than pottery would with these minimally effective city locations. This is when i found out antium had horse and decided i had to go HAs instead of an "iron working gambit".

I dunno if that was the proper course, maybe i should have risked IW. at the worst, i would be able to chop the jungle (but i didn't foresee that as a win). but i did have iron nearby (and it's pretty common) with a 4th city. with my food i probably could have bulbed math and then teched catapults, maybe that would have been better.

 

[Gumbolt]

I wonder the merits of a chariot rush here?? HA will take far too long. 40 turns?? There is no real commerce to be used early on beyond ocean tiles.

Tough start and it looks like the other Ai have half the map to expand into.

Okay a quick bash with a chariot rush.

Spoiler :

Okay settled rome on the plains hill. Settled second city on the horse. Pretty poor city but it there for the horse.

Sent a warrior north and worker stole from Justin. Built 6 chariots and took his lowest city. Took another 15 or so to take his capital. 81 gold later and he is down to 2 cities. He will no doubt expand but the land situ is greatly improved.

The start is quite interesting as it is worth growing on warriors as AH is so far off.

 

[Chuwe3y]

I gave this a chance and gave up.

Spoiler :

The start is terrible, I was able to expand inland with 5 ok cities. I thought there was better land opportunity below me but it was just copper. Bcuz I try to quickly expand to cap land quickly, my research went down to 0%. I made friends with justinian but did not switch to buddhism cuz catherine was a different religion and I don't want her to attack me. Justinian gift me writing so I chopped and build libraries and was able to get my research going a bit. The mess up part was the khmer empire (all the way on the northeastern part of the continent) declare war on me from about 20 turns movements. I was not prepare so I lost 2 cities and the war was over due to votes. So every1 became happy and I was way behind and gave up while justinian was trying to get a religious victory except jao and ramseses won't vote for him. This was my first immortal map and I can't believe AIs didn't attack each other.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay played on to 125 ad.

Spoiler :

Killed off Justin. I had to use prets for his final city.

Builts 7-8 more prets and attacked JoaII. He had 8 cities. Took down 5-6, he rebuilt a couple and I took peace for alphabet, sailing and aesth. This was a relief as I was losing 36 gold a turn at the peak of the war.

I am somewhat behind on techs but I am teching currency.

I have chaged to the Russian religion and happily this is making Sury peaceful too.

Now breaking even on 9 cities. Busy placing cottages. Room to expand and perhaps try and finish off JoaII.

I will probably play more tomorrow.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. I have to rush somebody, i don't have enough room to play passively.

I am running a playthrough of this where I don't rush. I'm pretty sure rushing isn't required. Maybe a little GLH abuse, but on terra with lots of opponents starting with more land in their caps and IND, a little priority on getting it after picking up the cow site to the NW (only good, close, non-jungle city one can reach if going WB -> worker -> grow -> settler) is pretty darn likely to get it.

As for where I am right now:

Spoiler :

It's the mid 100's AD and I'm running away in tech. However, justinian is pretty huge (~16% land) and while backwards now, once he clears that jungle he'll be monstrous. He took cathy as a peacevassal and so I'm buddhist. I'll have lib very soon and have a nice production base for uni whips with whipped forges on all of the islands along with basic infra (oxford being quite doable soon). I'm coming up on a crossroads, however:

1. Lib astro + try to settle new world while pushing for communism. This definitely has merit; I'm by far tech leader and could quickly drop half a dozen or more settlers over there with some garrison if I planned it out, and GLH would cut the expense of doing so pre-communism. However, this approach lets Justinian clear the jungle and then he becomes problematic. I'd need to set up the new world fast enough to come back and compete with the old world militarily, as justin will likely tech very quickly end-game if I don't.

2. Lib military tradition and try for cuirassers on Justinian. IF he wasn't byzantine, I would seriously consider it and likely do it. I can get there very soon, set up 3-4 galleys and easily chain whip units and ship them to mainland. Annoying logistics from a micro standpoint but barely worse than roads if at all. The problem is, my cuirassers will be going up against his cataphracts with 50% odds trades, and he's much larger. If I can get a dogpile on him, this will vastly upgrade my rating of this option.

3. Alternatively, I can try to cuirasser stomp somebody else and drop forbidden palace in their lands. The best candidate for that is Joao who's #2 in land, and maybe one of the smaller civs near him. If I could get to #1 in pop, maybe I could push UN onto someone like cathy (heathen to justinian) and win UN using the monster byzantine AI to vote for me. The downside to this would be justinian and other AI taking over the new world then.

4. I can delay until rifles, set up globe in double fish city (thank god for IND as otherwise it would be very painful to do that) and start drafting rifles + whipping cavalry (which don't fear cataphracts at all, or anything until opposing rifles/grenadiers). The downside on this is that justinian might start pulling away in tech rate before I have the #'s needed to kill him.

If I choose well it might be a rollover game, but only if I do so.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Wowow the dood to the north had 2 cities at 3300 BC for me.

 

[jokulmorder]

I am running a playthrough of this where I don't rush. I'm pretty sure rushing isn't required. Maybe a little GLH abuse, but on terra with lots of opponents starting with more land in their caps and IND, a little priority on getting it after picking up the cow site to the NW (only good, close, non-jungle city one can reach if going WB -> worker -> grow -> settler) is pretty darn likely to get it.

As for where I am right now:

Spoiler :

It's the mid 100's AD and I'm running away in tech. However, justinian is pretty huge (~16% land) and while backwards now, once he clears that jungle he'll be monstrous. He took cathy as a peacevassal and so I'm buddhist. I'll have lib very soon and have a nice production base for uni whips with whipped forges on all of the islands along with basic infra (oxford being quite doable soon). I'm coming up on a crossroads, however:

1. Lib astro + try to settle new world while pushing for communism. This definitely has merit; I'm by far tech leader and could quickly drop half a dozen or more settlers over there with some garrison if I planned it out, and GLH would cut the expense of doing so pre-communism. However, this approach lets Justinian clear the jungle and then he becomes problematic. I'd need to set up the new world fast enough to come back and compete with the old world militarily, as justin will likely tech very quickly end-game if I don't.

2. Lib military tradition and try for cuirassers on Justinian. IF he wasn't byzantine, I would seriously consider it and likely do it. I can get there very soon, set up 3-4 galleys and easily chain whip units and ship them to mainland. Annoying logistics from a micro standpoint but barely worse than roads if at all. The problem is, my cuirassers will be going up against his cataphracts with 50% odds trades, and he's much larger. If I can get a dogpile on him, this will vastly upgrade my rating of this option.

3. Alternatively, I can try to cuirasser stomp somebody else and drop forbidden palace in their lands. The best candidate for that is Joao who's #2 in land, and maybe one of the smaller civs near him. If I could get to #1 in pop, maybe I could push UN onto someone like cathy (heathen to justinian) and win UN using the monster byzantine AI to vote for me. The downside to this would be justinian and other AI taking over the new world then.

4. I can delay until rifles, set up globe in double fish city (thank god for IND as otherwise it would be very painful to do that) and start drafting rifles + whipping cavalry (which don't fear cataphracts at all, or anything until opposing rifles/grenadiers). The downside on this is that justinian might start pulling away in tech rate before I have the #'s needed to kill him.

If I choose well it might be a rollover game, but only if I do so.

Okay played on to 125 ad.

Spoiler :

Killed off Justin. I had to use prets for his final city.

Builts 7-8 more prets and attacked JoaII. He had 8 cities. Took down 5-6, he rebuilt a couple and I took peace for alphabet, sailing and aesth. This was a relief as I was losing 36 gold a turn at the peak of the war.

I am somewhat behind on techs but I am teching currency.

I have chaged to the Russian religion and happily this is making Sury peaceful too.

Now breaking even on 9 cities. Busy placing cottages. Room to expand and perhaps try and finish off JoaII.

I will probably play more tomorrow.

this is why i come to this forum. seeing you guys pwn maps that are like a cheesegrater to my forehead reminds me of how many mistakes i make! i'll have to try peace, perhaps i am not risky enough in my city placement. seeing it being done successfully (so far) two different playstyles is really cool. didn't think there would be enough hammers for GLH but now i see the advantage of an early sailing on this start and that having to go for those island cities is not the end of the world.

i will have to try replaying it both ways!

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

this is why i come to this forum. seeing you guys pwn maps that are like a cheesegrater to my forehead reminds me of how many mistakes i make! i'll have to try peace, perhaps i am not risky enough in my city placement. seeing it being done successfully (so far) two different playstyles is really cool. didn't think there would be enough hammers for GLH but now i see the advantage of an early sailing on this start and that having to go for those island cities is not the end of the world.

i will have to try replaying it both ways!

There are two ways you can play this map to get into a good tech spot to win. One you can Prat rush, and settle your first city on the Iron. I think that is probably the better way to play this map. Otherwise if you go with the second, which is trying to settle a couple coastal cities on the main land while building the GLH in your capitol, you have more than enough forest to chop it out. After that you can settle all of the junk islands, and most of them will strait off the bat make you commerce. But if you do this I found you will most likely have problems later with the northern neighbor. As he will get big, and if you're unlucky like me, and he gets a vassal AND a peace vassal you are pretty much screwed. In my game I had him at 20 cities with a 7 city vassal, and a 10 city peace vassal.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes, I witnessed a DOUBLE peacevassal in this game. I handled it in an interesting way though .

First, empire at 1 AD:

Spoiler :

GLH, then settle islands. If you don't rush, this is pretty much the only course to take.



76 beakers/turn stable, but just as importantly we're closing on civil service and have monarch so the capitol can grow. Was stunted prior to now because GLH commerce and need for settlers caused me to use cap for that more.

Note that all of this settling was done using a single galley; that thing gave me its hammer's worth . Barb galleys were not an issue thanks to cities and work boat + a warrior spawn busting them away. I'm pretty sure I never fought any...in the old world that is.

So if you read my spoiler earlier, I was at a crossroads on what to lib; astro to hit up new world or something military techish. I chose unconventionally.

Spoiler :

Yep, took astro and went for the new world. Why did I do this?

1. Cathy, sury, and Joao all had the makings of culture pursuit
2. Justinian, however, did not
3. Most of the world adored me, including justinian. Justinian liked me more than any of the AIs pursuing culture
4. Culture AIs tend to build UN.

GLH and tech brokering for gold let me get to communism even while settling spammed cities in the new world:


After this, I would put the pedal down HARD on expansion, committing capitol to looped longbow + settler while other cities have already whipped out 7 or 8 galleons. I proved the world is round which helped. Workers followed later. By the end of this game, I'd trained ~80 workers and 37 settlers .

That led to, in 1785, a UN win:

Spoiler :

Cathy took UN, which was one of the AIs I thought would do so.

I had fallen behind in tech fairly badly from all those cities, but by the point of this screenshot I have granary/forge/factory/coal in the vast majority of new world cities, which means that simply teching fission/rocketry/radio would allow me to face roll pretty much anybody as I could easily build 60-100 tactical nukes inside of 20 turns and since I have UN control they can't be banned. I wouldn't have minded nuking justinian + cathy into oblivion in a single turn, but I get a higher score and less effort to just accept the W graciously .

Ramesses was pushing culture, but #3 was still only around 20k. Plenty of time. Strange, almost never play terra for the new world but it worked out pretty well here and even the finish date isn't too bad.

View attachment Bryan AD-1785.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Gumbolt]

Update to 1605 ad.

Spoiler :

Okay after I finished Justin with Chariots i took 4-5 cities of JoaII.

At this point Sury and Catherine were at pleased.

I rebuilt the economy. I was slightly behind on techs but luckily the Ai tech everything that I can trade for later.

To catch up I bulbed philosophy/ Edu. Ran a golden age to reach antionalism and took MT with Lib.

Sury declared on JoaII last 5 cities and I joined in taking 2 of his cities. Unfortunatelt he vasselled to Sury. Sury is slightly backwards.

So I moved onto Egptians and reduced her down to 5 cities. Attacked Koreans after her and he now has 3 marginal cities. Both are now vassels to me.

I have about 40-50 curs now and I will roll onto the Russians/ Sury next. Both have vassels. Russians created a colony. If I get bored I could try for AP. Sury has a 25-30 strong stack but no modern units beyond knights.

Okay I attacked the Russians with 40 or so Curs. All their main land cities are now mine. She would not vassel as she still had a vassel. Mop up operation for later really.

Okay final assault on Sury next and he has a 30-40 strong stack. Some tempting out is required.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

I see, I think I could have done that victory also Phil, and wow you settled every single city in the new world in the EXACT same spots as I did.

 

[Kadazzle]

I had a look at the map, and I'm a little surprised at your tactics. Even though you revealed the extra clam with your warrior, what's the merit in losing all your hammers in your capital? The only hill you kept was covered in trees, meaning you'd need BW to improve it. You need hammers to get Workboats + Lighthouse to improve the clam. You're IMP - you get a settler production bonus off of hammers, not food. You're the Romans- Praets rushing is an easy way to get a couple early cities if you lag behind quickly. It just seems completely counter-productive to move AWAY from the production in this situation.

Also, your tech path needs refining. I like your start, Ag -> BW, but you should have taken time to analyze what to do next. Your capital is on the coast, whether you SIP or settle 1SW, and you have no immediate happy/military resources you can connect. You don't need pottery ATM - you're not about to whip, and you have no ideal locations for cottages, so why even research The Wheel now?

By the time you research AG -> BW, you should have had a decent amount of time to explore the land, meaning you probably uncovered the cow and the shape of your peninsula + some other islands from culture expansion + exploration (remember, I'm trying to go off the theoretical info you would've had at the time). With islands, and the only other food resource needing AH (and with no visible military resources at this time), it seems the only two tech options you have for 3rd tech that I'd choose is Sailing or Animal Husbandry. Like TMIT said, The Great Lighthouse looks excellent on this map (being familiar with map types helps as well - there is normally ALWAYS an island cluster on Terra maps, and your capital city's cultural border expansion uncovered it).

From there, it all depends on what develops throughout the game, and what you want to do. TGL + island abuse is an option. If you settle your first city near Antium to kind of counter-balance Thessalonika, then settle your second to it's west near the sugar, you should have more than enough time to block a bit more of the jungle from Cathy, and if you do that, you can easily settle 10 cities on your peninsula + the surrounding islands.

Good luck though!

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay all done 1705ad.

Spoiler :

The war with Sury was painful!! Took out his 37 strong stack and attacked with 2 main stacks. Sury defended by spamming longbows. Quite shameful!!!

In the end I took peace because I noticed I was close to a AP win.

2 turns after taking peace i killed off JoaII final city and Sury offered to become my vassel anyway.

This left Russian and Indians left. Both with 4 cities.

Anyway gifted the Indians a Hindu city and victory was mine a few turns later.

Domination was more than possible as I had 70+ curs left.

Built 173 curs! Kill nearly 97 longbows. 30 or so pike and about 34 mace. Sury border city has a 15-20 strong stack of mostly longbows. They curs were eating them up.

Anyway a nice win.

Hello Kadazzle. Pc working now?

 

[Kadazzle]

Okay all done 1705ad.

Hello Kadazzle. Pc working now?

Nice win there. Yeah, ended up getting a new one