Mansa/Imm on a great map

[ben-jammin]

Map isn't that easy overall. If you managed to lib military tradition than you shouldn't be playing on emperor anymore except to let off steam after a few rough immortal games in a row

I think the loss comes down specifically to war strategy rather than overall strategy. If you have a window with cavs and are able to whip/chop/upgrade a whole lot of them really fast (which is, after all, the whole point) then you should go after the most powerful AI. If you don't they will likely catch up to you and then some while you're off rolling over weaker AIs who were never really an obstacle to victory in the first place. If Mao was already strongest, he should have been your first target. The game was probably still in hand before you declared on Mao. You either needed mass siege (can win a war at tech parity, particularly CRII cannons...bombard defense, kill huge stack of defenders, allow the AI to move more units into the city, kill them again with CRII....etc), or you needed to wait for infantry (when you would also want siege, just not as much).

Cuirs/trebs? Why? At this point trebs are only slowing you down when speed is of the utmost importance. Cavalry/cannons? I mean...this tells me something has gone wrong already. You need to overwhelm the opponents before they have anything better than pikes to defend against you. The window for this is a lot smaller on immortal than emperor. You will have to suicide quite a few units. But think about it this way: 5 cavalry before the target gets rifling is worth more than 10 cav after.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Sorry to bump an already very self-centered thread, but I just had to because...

The third time's the charm! I fired up an old Immortal University game that I hadn't played previously featuring Mao Zedong and ended up with an 1806 Domination win. Not the best date, but not terrible either considering it was Terra and it was another map with crazies on it; Monty, Shaka, and Ragnar to be specific. I'm just stoked to have won on Immortal! I think it's cool that it was with the leader who is my namesake too

Thank you all for the Immortal tips. They were definitely helpful!

 

[lindsay40k]

Do you use tarpitting? I recently cracked IMM with Toku by tearing down a runaway Genghis SoD. We'd got tech parity - Rifles and Cavs, both closing in on Steel. I could spit out a CRIII Samurai and upgrade it to Rifles every turn, and he was pouring out CIII Grenadiers. Instead of sending one gigantic stack to grind through his territory, I had two stacks; one chipped away at border cities, the other ate his reinforcements. I watched the movement of his giant SoD (had Shrine intel to see his cities) and built a hilltop fort BEHIND the city he was clearly heading to. My own SoD waited in the fort, couple of token CGIII Rifles in the city and five of the same in the fort. Let him take the city, losing a half doze units in the process; now, his stack was in a city, next to a pile of CRIII Rifles. Every time I wiped him out, a Cavalry killed the last unit and ran out the city again. If I had CGIII Rifles to hand, they'd speedbump his reoccupation, but the important thing was to bait him to keep moving his new units into the city next to the CRIII CI DII Rifles. Lovely XP, lovely GGs, lovely underdefended capital. Nom!

Once you can start producing CRII or III units and have Trebs or better, this exploit effectively turns their HE city into your XP mine. Not always a sure thing, what with geography and all, but worth bearing in mind if a fairly good city gets daggered. I've taken that disappointing loss and turned it into the Stalingrad that exhausted the top dog and let me pummel their empire into submission whilst they fed troops into the grinder.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Ideally I want to get to the point that I am consistently ahead of the ai in terms of tech and production by cavs/rifles, but that seems like a great way of dealing with a runaway ai.

 

[pepe26]

you cannot stay ahead of the AIs techwise while warmongering... your teching stops, the AI continues to tech even quicker the later the game becomes! how are you gonna stay ahead of the AI while at war? this is oly possible if every other techer is at war constantly, too, and you have tremendously strong land (a spectacular bureau capital)