Louis the Immortal

[Gwaja]

This time, I am really gonna try playing through a game from start to finish. Oh it's been so long I did that, so I am pretty sure I am gonna get my butt kicked. But hey, that's why these forums are here!

SETTINGS

Louis of France
Immortal, Pangaea, Standard Map Settings
No Huts / No Events / Choose Religions / No Tech Brokering (I wanted to try this setting!)

And my start was something like this:

Spoiler :

So I teched AH for the pigs, and then went Pottery, Bronze Working, Writing, and Masonry.

I tried to settle aggressively to try to grab the horses, copper, and the ivory, as you could see in the screenshots to follow. I really hate settling into the jungle, but since Louis is creative and all, I decided to go for it. I think I ended up beating Gandhi to the copper/ivory site all the way at the bottom.

I want to start settling close to the capital now and make sure that my cities are sharing cottages around Paris, so that I could make that city a monster bureau cap. There is a site to the northwest corner with fish, sheep, and corn that will make a great GP farm of sort.

The gold to the east and the copper to the east are problematic, but I think I may be able to grab the gold at least... that eastern copper seems out of reach, so I ended up grabbing the southern copper instead.

Darius already has Alpha, and Mansa is teching Alpha now. Not sure where to go with research. Beaker rate isn't good due to expanding a bit farther away.

Spoiler :

 

[Fippy]

Some quick points, without deep thinking thou

I would go Aesthetics, with marble + Ind.
You may want hunting first thou for Ivory & improved happy cap.

Orleans could whip granary now, into library.

 

[sampsa]

Can't open the save as I don't have BAT installed, but I can make some pointers from the screenshots.

• No reason to run 50% slider, nearly always go 0 or 100 (not sure if you were, or just showing how much you make at roughly break even).
• The reason why your research is weak is not only that you've settled far away but you are also not working many strong -tiles. Area around the capital is very rich and you should aim to get as many floodplains cottages up as soon as possible.
• Another way to gain 3 is to road to Gandhi.
• I wouldn't have gone for the ivory so aggressively, but now you have access to phants which might be a huge advantage later.
• Aesth-line is definitely one good choice, like Fippy suggested.
• Lyons has so weak tiles for now that growing doesn't accomplish much. Work the mine building worker?
• What is your plan for Orleans? I think the best was to stagnate at size 2 building settlers/workers (since you have 2 good tiles), but now that you've invested in a granary you probably should start 2-pop whipping settlers/workers when available. For whips, a farm is better than a mine. You also need something to put into when in growth, I suggest library/warriors. Whip granary now.
• Take care of diplo and you'll do fine.

 

[Fippy]

Lyons is an interesting city (creative helps very much).
Very good later, 3f city tile, sugar copper Ivory & river.
I think she did well settling there, even if it costs a bit now.

Road to Gandhi would be a perfect combo yup, going that direction.
Worker already there
Granary with mine (and copper when available) seems like a good choice.
Library is cheap, but not very useful.

 

[sampsa]

I agree that especially with the help of being creative it will be a great city some day. Border contact with a peaceful civ (Gandhi) doesn't matter either. I'd put much emphasis on getting settlers out asap, this is "only" immortal after all so there are still several strong spots unsettled. That's not the only way to play of course, you have marble and can focus on winning lib while remaining in like 6 cities or you can already think about expanding via elephant war.

 

[Gwaja]

Taking Sampsa and Fippy's advice into best use, I made some progress and played a little bit more. Thank you Sampsa and Fippy! ^_^

Spoiler :

I roaded into Gandhi and Suleiman for extra trade and tried to build and grow the cottages around Paris as much as possible. Research was weak, so it took forever to research Aesthetics, but once that was done, I was able to get quite a bit of techs from the AIs. No tech brokering, so can't go crazy, but I was able to backfill a bit, and obtained Alpha, Math, and Iron Working via trade.

Lyons has been doing nothing but building workers other than getting a library, but now that I just got IW, I could make some use of this place. Orleans? I plan to make this place a production city of sort.

I put some fail gold into the Great Wall, but other than that, haven't really looked at building wonders just yet. But after some trades, I do have some wonders available to build, other than the Mids. Being industrious makes you want to build wonders more than optimal at times, but I've been expanding more aggressively than usual, so my hammers have been going elsewhere. Otherwise, I would have definitely tried for the Oracle, with the marble/industrious combo.... not sure if that was a mistake. I might do a re-do and see if Oracle makes better sense?

So now, I am thinking about grabbing Currency first, and then to Code of Laws. I have 5 cities now, and an active settler looking to settle into that NW corner spot with a whole lot of food there. No hammers there though. I could only dream having a Great Library and National Epic there. Can whip there like crazy, I am sure, once it is more established....

Since Sampsa can't open the save file due to BAT mod, I included as many screen shots as I could capture.

Note: Creative is awfully powerful in the early game. Had I not been creative, there is no way I would even think about expanding like this. Thanks to creative, I managed to nab all those calendar resources and both ivories, horse, copper, and iron that popped near Paris after trading for IW. I may even get the 2nd copper to the east I feel greedy. Maybe I could trade the extra for some gold/turn or maybe even stone?

Mansa and Darius already have Calendar and Monarchy. This game has 4 whopping techers in the game, and not enough warmongers... may have to count on Gilgamesh and Suleiman to stir up some trouble I wonder?

Quick note on Rheims: It kinda worked out funny there, but I 2-pop whipped a granary after putting some hammers into a library. And the overflow (after taking into account creative bonus for library) of 66 hammers finishes the library right after! Kinda cute.

Finally, almost everyone is in Hinduism, so I think I may have to switch into that....

Screenies:

 

[Ringo Kid]

I think I would make lots of horse archers and or elephants, and take a few of the closest enemy cities. Because that makes you stronger and them weaker. I think in terms of tech I would head towards feudalism and engineering for trebs and longbows. Combined with elephants and or knights you would have a fine military. And build more cottages, lots of cottages.

 

[Fippy]

Everyone should have BAT installed ~~

Temple of Artemis is your best failgold build currently, Pyras actually not so good without stone
Would put overflow in Rheims into ToA, gold > bit more research from library. AIs should complete it very soon.

So i would start teching with 100%, not collecting too much gold while building failgold.
Paris would happily build great library & NE, Literature should be very high on your want list as well.

Parthenon & Shweggy are also great, chopping forests now into wonders would make you rich forever lol.
Calendar & Monarchy would both solve happy problems (settling fur city also good).
Currency could be traded for those.

 

[Gwaja]

I played a bit into the 500's AD and I realize that leaving Mansa and Darius alone is an absolute no no. In this attempt, almost everyone except Mansa and Hatty are Hindu, so everybody loves Mansa... and he is in the eastern corner by himself, teching away like a madman. Not only that, Suleiman declared on me, which resulted in me taking one of his cities, and then Darius turned on me after like 50 turns of plotting.

Ringo Kid's right I think.... I really need to deal with Darius and Mansa. It is really hard to bribe someone in this game either due to all the lovefest going on.

I initially went the wonder route with Literature and built all those wonders like Parthenon, Great Library, National Epic, the Paya, and even the Mids. But I think I'd be wiser to spend my hammers elsewhere.

Also... strongly thinking about getting HBR and Construction now and go beat up on Darius.