Montezuma Immortal Cookbook

[obsolete]

One thing that this game reminds me of, over in the general forum there is another thread on the worst UU in the game. Some people are nominating the Jag as the worst unit in the game, LOL.

 

[Fierabras]

That's odd, because in my game they were awesome, especially those woodsman III promoted ones.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

he had over 4 strength

Ohhh, but a wounded unit is doubly-vulnerable in a fight, as not only does it take less successful "hits" from the opposing unit for the wounded unit to die, but it also fights at a weaker level, since, the last that I heard, a unit's comat strength when wounded averages both its full health strength level and its current strength level.

One way to counter the heart-rending and shocking effects of losing such a battle is to double-up or triple-up your units (in this case, Jaguars). In that way, you would have had immediate payback and at least +1 Experience using the second Jaguar on your following turn.


While +1 Experience doesn't always make up for the loss of a unit, you have to expect that over time, you will lose units whenever you are fighting, so it helps to offset your losses by having other units follow-up to get the experience (especially being able to counter-attack before a turn passes and that Barb Warrior promotes itself to Combat I or II).

After I lost on 12% odds jaguar against barb warrior I came to conclusion i really hate this combat system...
I am really happy that in CiV they tried to change it (and one of things that is better)...

Sarcastic voice: I hearby revoke any successes that you have had in CIV where your combat odds of success were less than 89%. In fact, forget about all of those wins where you'd won on odds like 68%, 61%, or even 50%. Consider them all to be losses. Because if a loss at 12% odds is unfair, then a win at 88% odds is equally unfair.


No combat system is going to be fair. Even real life, most of the time, falls under a definition that the average person would judge to be "unfair."


So, what should you do? Just give up? Blame the system? Or should you try and find ways to bring yourself more success within the system, such as it is?


As I suggested earlier and suggest again, doubling-up your troops that will fight fights gives you many advantages. One, in this case, would have been to have a fully-healthy Jaguar defending, while the wounded one on the same square is busy healing. Get busy healing or get busy dying. But even a Barb Warrior can come up and kill the guy who is busy tying bandages onto his legs, hence the benefit of having "backup." Even the police know not to "go it alone" and are instructed to call for backup when seeing that combat is a possibility.


Another important approach is to believe that your army will require regular maintenance (in the way of Gold-based Upkeep Costs) and regular replacement (in the way of Hammer-based replacement unit costs). So, you lost a unit? You'd expected to lose at least one and thus had decided to build 2 more. Net result? 1 more unit in your army than you'd had previously.

While it is tempting to run an army with minimal Gold-based Upkeep Costs, it is an impractical and unrealistic approach--when you play with going to war, as we did by using obsolete's save, you need to be prepared to pay for that war both with Gold and Hammers. To believe otherwise is to set yourself up for heart-rending distaster when a single unit in your "minimalistic army" falls to enemy forces. It's going to happen. Plan for it to happen. So, pro-actively build replacements. Build more units than you are accustomed to building. Do both of those things and you'll see success in war much differently and you'll find that a complaint like the one that you raised becomes a trivial issue in the war at hand.



While your contributions have been appreciated in the Immortal Cookbook series (and likely in other areas of the forums for Civ 4 games), if you want to move on to playing a different game, that is entirely your choice.

However, if you are here to learn new lessons and to find ways of being more successful in your games, take heed to the information presented.

Even in a hex-based, single-unit-per-hex approach, the lessons are the same:
a) provide backup support for your units (by way of ranged unit support in behind or units that flank both the attacker's hex and your other unit's hex)
b) build far more units than the "minimum allowed" for avoiding Upkeep Costs--far, far more than that amount
c) treat war as an investment in not only Gold but also additional Hammers, with the hope that your overall gains, whatever the outcome of the individual battles, will be greater in the long-run

 

[obsolete]

T - 140

Spoiler :

I messed this one up bad. I tried to pre-build the Zeus in my cities for a sh|tload of gold. And then I realized just as I hit end-turn soon after that I accidently completed it in my capital! What a waste. So that has set me back quite a bit from where I wanted to be right now.

Funny how you NEVER lose a wonder to a tie when you WANT TO!

Anyhow, I kept DoWing on the Romans to take cities & workers. I also built the Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, etc.

I lost the race to the library, but at least I got the free artist at the end of Music. I then almost gave the tech away to Frederick. Better to get him to friendly and hope he builds it so I can capture it easily later.

I was going to culture bomb one of his southern cities with my artist, but decided to keep it for a rainy day. Now I wish I had bombed, since I have to do that now anyway as I just lost a good food tile to his culture.

Currently I have a scientist standing by.

 

[Fierabras]

@obsolete

Interesting to see how you got that far in techs without cottages. Is Caste System with Pyramids stronger than cottages in general?

 

[Grashopa]

A cottage is +1 commerce. A rep scientist is +6 beakers.

 

[Fierabras]

A cottage is +1 commerce. A rep scientist is +6 beakers.

Yes, that's quite obvious... I'm not sure what I was thinking when asking that question. I guess something about CE vs. SE

 

[obsolete]

There`s a few silly cotts in that save because I was either too busy, or forgot to pillage some of the tiles I captured. I guess I still play too sloppy on immortal, but it`s hard to get motivated when there is no real challenge.

 

[kossin]

Does anyone else intend to submit a save? (Keep the round open or move on).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Say, what's the story on Woodsman III vs Medic III?

For example, if I have a Jaguar with Woodsman III, would having a different unit with Medic promotions in the same square stack in terms of healing, or does the Woodsman III promotion have to be on the exact same unit that has the Medic promos?


Let's say that I get a Great General. Would I be better served to make a Medic III Jaguar that doesn't have sufficient experience to hit Woodsman III, or would it be better to make one that is Woodsman III but only Medic I?

What about Medic III (and some other promos, but not enough to also get Woodsman III) vs Woodsman III plus Medic II?

 

[Grashopa]

Fierabras - With caste, pyramids and a bunch of cities you can get your beakers up quick with scientists - but obviously you have to balance it with growth. Heck even without pyramids scientists can be a boost before cottages catch up, but getting to caste is typically the bottleneck.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I pumped out a round...

Spoiler :

Slavery over Caste System when you have Sacrificial Altars.


Wonders targeted and achieved: The Pyramids and The Great Lighthouse. By the time that I even thought about building The Hanging Gardens, it was gone.


Police State over Representation in order to replace my army that had slowly been reduced over time by throwing units at Julius to capture Workers, fend off his investigative Archers, and slowly, over time, capture or raze his Cities at a slow enough pace that he kept building Cities for us. Only after I'd rebuilt our army did I switch into Representation--only 1 City had had an unhappy person at the time of switching into Representation anyway, and we hadn't yet built a sufficient number of Libraries (nor had we had Caste System), so switching into Representation early on wouldn't really have been all that useful anyway.


The tech pace was slow because I massively expanded, then used stolen Workers to build Cottages, used my settled Cities to build even more Workers, used Forest Chops to build Jaguars, captured and razed Cities to fund Research, and then used more captured and manually-built Workers to spam even more Cottages.


Cottages are now EVERYWHERE.


We finally got our second Great Person--a Great Scientist.


We have our State Religion in most of our 14 Cities. Many Cities have their Sacrifial Altars and several have Markets for the whole +1 Happiness that Ivory gives us.


We didn't immediately capture Julius' Cities, as we didn't have the Worker support to get them up and Cottaged within a reasonable amount of time. So, the initial fighting was limited to capturing Workers, pillaging Julius' source of Horse, and fending off roaming Archers.

After dodging between City to City, we finally decided to take on Antium, to help clear a Trade Route path between * Home * and Rome. Ha, they rhyme, how about that.

The Great Lighthouse and The Pyramids came courtesy of Mathematics-based pre-Chopped Forest Chops.

Here's a view of our Happiness Status in our Cities.

And here you can see part of our empire, including the Great Scientist that we just spawned.

I have found Sacrifial Altars to be SO useful at whipping our infrastructure (and Hindu Missionaries) that I stuck it out in Slavery and Organized Religion. What do you really need Caste System for, anyway, if you can have up to 4 Specialist slots from a Library and a Market in our best Cities?

We're definitely behind the world's tech pace, as Christianity and Taoism have already been founded. No worries. Our empire is pretty solid, we've started to build The Forbidden Palace, and our Courthouses are racking up Espionage Points against Frederick.

It shouldn't be long before we can steal Construction from him, for example. You'll need to build a Spy or two, though, if you want to take advantage of the Espionage Points.

I decided to go after Civil Service, since we have been maturing some Cottages in the capital (as well as in other Cities). After that tech, I'm guessing that going for war with Frederick or playing it peaceful with him and going for Astronomy would be the two main approaches.

I've scouted nearly all around our continent and I can't find a way off of it, so Astronomy will likely be required before we can meet any other AIs.

View attachment 272723View attachment 272724View attachment 272725View attachment 272726

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@Fierabras

Spoiler :

I made sure to settle towards the south soon enough and first settled near the corn/pigs/ivory on the river. Without sailing and roads it still was connected right away. I don't understand the mechanics behind it, but I guess it has something to do with being connected through cultural borders?

Yes, a River connection fully within your Cultural Borders can give you a Trade Route connection before you learn Sailing.


That said, in my game, I didn't want to have to build Roads AND Cottages everywhere at first, so I teched Pottery -> Fishing -> Sailing.

It may have been a mistake, as delaying Writing delayed my Foreign Trade Routes, but I didn't get much of a Road up to Frederick until I finally learned Writing anyway, so it probably worked out just fine.

I can't even remember if I went for Writing or Masonry after Sailing, but certainly getting early Sailing allowed me the opportunity to build The Great Lighthouse, so it ended up being worth it in the end.

 

[kossin]

Say, what's the story on Woodsman III vs Medic III?

For example, if I have a Jaguar with Woodsman III, would having a different unit with Medic promotions in the same square stack in terms of healing, or does the Woodsman III promotion have to be on the exact same unit that has the Medic promos?


Let's say that I get a Great General. Would I be better served to make a Medic III Jaguar that doesn't have sufficient experience to hit Woodsman III, or would it be better to make one that is Woodsman III but only Medic I?

What about Medic III (and some other promos, but not enough to also get Woodsman III) vs Woodsman III plus Medic II?

Healing promotions only stack on the same unit. Otherwise, it uses the highest promotion and any other is "wasted: on that tile.

 

[Fierabras]

Fierabras - With caste, pyramids and a bunch of cities you can get your beakers up quick with scientists - but obviously you have to balance it with growth. Heck even without pyramids scientists can be a boost before cottages catch up, but getting to caste is typically the bottleneck.

That's kind of what I was thinking about: how do you get to Code of Laws (or Currency for market merchants) in this game without cottages? In my game I had the problem that whenever I thought about building wonders for fail gold, the wonder was built somewhere else a couple of turns later. I also researched Writing rather late (after Masonry and Pottery), so it took a while before I had the 2 scientists running in my cities. That said, I still should have used specialists more, but once I start growing cottages, I find it hard not to work them.

 

[kossin]

Whip libraries, run 2 scientists per city.

Wonder gold failure is a timing issue, 1 city with its base infra has to dedicate to that unless you want to chop gold.

 

[Benginal]

Well this monarch/emperor player gave the second round a whirl, but it didn't go particularly well.

Spoiler :

I continued the war against the Romans and took all of their cities by about turn 95, capturing two northern cities, the one in between Rome and Home, and two southern cities. But come the end of the war I ran out of gold pretty quickly after and all my units disbanded, including my awesome woodsman III city raider III great general. I was able to get enough cottages up and running to stop ... Actually, what happens if you keep striking and have no more units left? That's never happened to me and didn't happen this game either, so shrug.

I settled a few southern cities as well and by turn 140 had 10 cities, was researching alphabet, had -2 gold with the slider at 0% or something, and didn't have the pyramids or the great lighthouse. I did however have pleased, +7 maybe, relations with Frederick, some solid gold producing cities, ~15 workers, and all of my cities granaried and many libraried. Given my relations with Frederick, the game was definitely going to be winnable on Monarch. I'm doubtful about Immortal though. Either way, it definitely wasn't going to be the best save.

Things I did wrong:

I took the Roman cities too quickly given my small worker force. I should have done more nabbing of workers first or just take the cities more slowly over the course of more turns.

My research was terrible. I wasted a few turns on alphabet after writing, realized this wasn't going to work, so switched to pottery which took forever because I was having fun playing war and just left the slider on really low. At this point my empire was too big to catch up in tech.

I didn't get trade routes up soon enough. I opened borders with Frederick right after writing, but didn't research fishing or build any roads down. All the gold I wasted here didn't dawn on me until my units started disbanding on me.

I might try this again just for my own satisfaction. But it won't be the best save. So to answer your question, Kossin, feel free to open voting on the next round.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well this monarch/emperor player gave the second round a whirl, but it didn't go particularly well.

It sounds like you did alright! Certainly, you learned some things, which is a lot easier to do if you try out the game, as opposed to simply lurking and reading about others' adventures.

Don't forget to attach your saved game, so that others can possibly offer feedback on your game and so that you can be included in the group of people who are eligible to vote for the save that you'd most like to continue playing from.

 

[Benginal]

Round 2, Take 2:

Spoiler :

I tried it again bearing in mind that I didn't want to pull an America and screw up the economy. The things I did differently were expand slower and build and work cottages sooner. I think it worked out much better.

Notable events:

Settled the Great Prophet. I needed 4 gpt and then he appeared. No brainer. I blindly put him in *home*. Not sure if that will be ideal later on, but it worked for the time being. I'm building this game around using *home* as a bureaucracy capital later, so it made sense to me.

Left Rome with one city. I was taking them pretty slowly, as my economy allowed. You'll notice I razed the two northern ones this time. The east one not getting the fish just pissed me off and the western one was too small to be worth keeping. I'm pretty confident we can get both of these sites later anyway.

Took southern barb city and then settled Texcoco as a blocker city. Fred had a settler there and everything and was shooting that gap to go settle the east coast. So I plopped my city right in it so the settler couldn't get through. I'm not sure of the mechanics of when Fred will send the settler through my borders or if he will only send him on a galley, or what.

Notable Non-events:

No wonders. Yeah, I'm still adjusting to this level. The pyramids were built in Germany, however, so we can take them later. No biggie.

No Great Scientist. This was me just not prioritizing it. Rome is kind of running scientists when it's not building/whipping stuff.

Current State of Affairs:

I've got 11 workers and 9 cities. It felt like more workers when I was playing. I think that's mostly because I've been building cities pretty slowly and the workers have time to improve a city before the next one gets built.

I've researched alphabet and currency. I traded alpha with Fred for Maths. I extorted Archery and Fishing from Julius. I'm currently researching Code of Laws.

I'm in Hinduism and almost all of my cities have it. Hats off to Fred and his missionaries. It has us at pleased relations. And I think he doesn't declare at pleased? I really hope not since his power is way above mine.

I wasn't sure what is ideal to build at this point. Mostly I just want to build a bunch of sacrificial altars. So I've got all of my cities building wealth except the new ones who are still working on granaries and/or libraries. I stopped at turn 138 so that those of you who want to build more workers or settlers and whatever can do so without too many wasted hammers.

Here's the Continent:

Here's the German-Aztec Border:

Save is attached.

 

[kossin]

I'll close the round in a few hours, sorry, I've been busy as hell these past weeks.