[BTS] My First Immortal Game with Hannibal

[CGQ]

I want to really learn and be challenged so I decided to finish my last emperor game (details in my previous thread) and start this one!

Now I'm curious what I'm getting myself into. What's the difference between emperor and immortal? Is this where the AI gets a free worker at the start? Is it that much more difficult?

Here's the game settings:
Random Leader
Fractal
Temperate
Standard size and normal speed
No huts or events
Medium Sea Level
Immortal Difficulty
8 AI instead of 7, just for the hell of it.

Ah feels great to hear that Ancient Era music again!

Spoiler Here's the start! :

So the way I see it, we have a Financial leader and we're surrounded by riverside FP's and grasslands. So far that looks real nice, plus charismatic will help me grow/whip more and work those early +3 tiles once I get cottages. Only downside is I don't see food. At least not yet.

I have a feeling there could be some food up north (praying for wet riverside corn!). That forest south looks promising so I move my warrior 1 SW:


Wet cows! I don't start with Agri or AH but would it be worth moving my settler 1S to grab the cows? It's 5 since they'll be irrigated.

Though I would gain some useless plains.

Or SIP considering the potentially better tiles up north. I know there are more riverside grassland as the river turns west. It's evident we're fairly north of the equator here.

What do y'all think?

 

[lymond]

hmm...can't recall exactly the units...but yep...AI def starts with worker and 4 archers and probably 2 scouts. There bonuses go up and your costs go up. Barbs are more of a pain sooner. ~t50 is when the enter borders or if GW is built sooner.

Well, warrior should you stuff I could already guess, but actually not sure if there was anything better given his position. I abhor these types of start where you have tons of FPS but see no food. Can't tell exactly from screenie, but I think you likely have a cow or pig (if that is a hill) to the west. Small possibility of something 2N1E. Rest all FPs I think . Lot of FP starts like this give you like a plains cow..ha. But hey, makes great bureau cap later.

 

[lymond]

Opened Save...looks like 2 open tiles to the W (2W and 2W1N which is a hill) ...could be pigs.. Don't really want to move from that as that might be the food. Or it could be in the N. I'm always inclines to look for bonus tile start but here I think SIP is probably best.

Always hate to kill an FP but sometimes you have to ..there are too many options in different directions and no clear alternative.

 

[Fippy]

Moving south for cows doesn't look tempting, i guess your best option is 1n and maybe deciding what then with more info.

 

[Windsor]

Hannibal with a FP-start is great. I would just SIP here. No need to waste a turn moving.

 

[CGQ]

Opened Save...looks like 2 open tiles to the W (2W and 2W1N which is a hill) ...could be pigs.. Don't really want to move from that as that might be the food. Or it could be in the N. I'm always inclines to look for bonus tile start but here I think SIP is probably best.

Always hate to kill an FP but sometimes you have to ..there are too many options in different directions and no clear alternative.

Spoiler Played to Turn 2 :

SIP:

Irrigated wet corn! Even better than wet cows!

Further south I see rice. Could be a good 2nd city site:

 

[CGQ]

Spoiler Played to Turn 24 :

Further south I see lots of good land



My plan is AG>BW and chop some settlers:


I kill a lion with warrior. I found grass pigs! I could build a city between pig and corn to share!


Still no AI yet. Hope I'm not isolated. Then again, it'd be a good opportunity to learn what to do in those games!

BW is still 3 turns away so I farm one of the FP to not waste the worker turns. I'm not sure that's optimal but if there was a better tech route I'll replay these last turns:


Joao II...we meet again. I swear this guy spams cities like weeds.


BW reveals copper in BFC!

 

[sampsa]

Some comments.

• You should select/de-select your first tech until it is T5. This is because you gain a bonus (+2) if you meet someone in those 5T who already has the tech you are going to research. All AI on immortal start with agri
  
• There is no such thing as a wet AH-resource. Only grains gain +1 for being wet. Of course, riverside cows is +1 still
• Not sure if BW was the best choice, but it turned up good. You have only 5 BFC forests and the floodplains are giving you 2, so the -cap isn't very high. I think I'd start the settler at size 4 and go for 2-pop whip

 

[lymond]

You have 5 forests so you could chop one of them and keep 4 for health (2 forest = 1). The forest 2S1E has no tile to foster regrowth in the BFC. The 3 forests on the West side of Carth have chance of regrowing (adjacent tiles) with increased chance on tile 2W of Carth. Forest 1E of corn can be chopped too and the tile it is on has 2 adjacent forests for regrowth chance - actually chop that after FP farm. Not that I always think of regrowth at this stage but considering health is an issue early and there is no abundance here I might save them for now. You have good food for whips.
(Note forests don't apply regrowth chance to tiles on the diagonals..just adjacent tiles. FPs don't get forests of course, and regrowth will not happen on resource tiles, except certain camp resources like deer or furs.)

Although I might not have bothered farming a FP here, you might as well complete that farm now.

First city 1E of cows is primo for nice share city with Carth. That'd be my choice though I don't see everything.

Might as well switch to slavery now or you can wait until the warrior pops first.

 

[dankok8]

I haven't played Carthage since I can remember. I may shadow this and try the Numidians out if there are close neighbours.

 

[dankok8]

@CGQ

Don't have a lot of time tonight but craving civ so I just shadowed to turn 20 to check it out then saw your updates. Read my spoiler after 20-30 turns more to avoid well... spoilers!

Spoiler :

Went the same route as you with Agri then BW. Met 4 AI's. They are all probably below the jungle belt. Charlie and Monty founded rival religions already. Should be a bloodbath! Monty would be a good candidate for a Numidian rush if he's close given his overreliance on melee units. And he's such a psychopath that you don't want him alive.

 

[CGQ]

You have 5 forests so you could chop one of them and keep 4 for health (2 forest = 1). The forest 2S1E has no tile to foster regrowth in the BFC. The 3 forests on the West side of Carth have chance of regrowing (adjacent tiles) with increased chance on tile 2W of Carth. Forest 1E of corn can be chopped too and the tile it is on has 2 adjacent forests for regrowth chance - actually chop that after FP farm. Not that I always think of regrowth at this stage but considering health is an issue early and there is no abundance here I might save them for now. You have good food for whips.
(Note forests don't apply regrowth chance to tiles on the diagonals..just adjacent tiles. FPs don't get forests of course, and regrowth will not happen on resource tiles, except certain camp resources like deer or furs.)

Although I might not have bothered farming a FP here, you might as well complete that farm now.

First city 1E of cows is primo for nice share city with Carth. That'd be my choice though I don't see everything.

Might as well switch to slavery now or you can wait until the warrior pops first.

Spoiler Played to Turn 41 :

I 2-whipped a settler and sent my worker to chop the south forest. Met Charlie:


I used overflow to make a second worker and sent him to mine the copper:


Now without even wheel I haven't the first clue what to do with that worker now that he finished cow. It's a real shame I don't have pottery to cottage those nice FPs, I could really use the commerce now yet pottery it's still so many turns away.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Carthage was my favorite civ when I first started playing the game. I've always loved the Punic wars, so it had a bit of real-life reasoning for that. Plus, charismatic and financial is a pretty sick combo.

I haven't played Hannibal in ages, I may try to shadow. Probably time to try my hand at immortal anyway. I just don't want to have to micro TOO much.

 

[lymond]

CG - I might have gone Pottery first here. As you hit IMM, you generally have to be a bit tighter on the tech path and really look at the situation and what is best short term. Pot would have made that 3rd worker actually useful, while in this case I have reservations on why that worker was even built yet in a size 1 city. Ute could work FPs or the unimproved cow for now. And yes you have two visible pasture resources but I don't think that is enough here to warrant AH first.

Furthermore, I envision a city in the N actually not settling next to Pigs as the spot 1NE of corn allows that city to work the very strong copper tile early that Carth will likely used very little.

New Carth warrior can probably deal with some W scouting. Your busters are okay but the 1 in the SW could probably step to the jungle hill for better busting.

A city due S on the jungle 1SE of rice would be my next spot. Based on what we know so far your a bit limited on cities but we know at least of 2 given spots with that city in the S and copper/pigs.

 

[dankok8]

The biggest difference between a level like Monarch and Immortal for me which took time to adjust is that is that on Immortal maintenance costs are much higher. This means that you can't afford to simply fill out the land settling marginal cities or your economy will crash hard and even if you know how to recover you will fall behind a lot in tech that it will be tough to win the game. On Monarch I often had 10+ cities in 1 AD (many subpar) but on Immortal I often find myself on 6-7 good cities. In fact I'm on a four game Immortal winning streak and in three of these games I had 6-7 cities in 1 AD. Two games I broke out with Cuirassiers and in one game I went for a cultural victory. And of course like lymond said, you have to be more focused on Immortal. AI's tech fast enough that if you pursue the wrong path (or at least an unfocused path) you will be falling behind. The second biggest difference is how much unit maintenance hurts on Immortal. If you're not going to war, don't build more units than you need just for fogbusting and keeping cities happy. Rely on diplomacy to protect you, not your power rating, or you will go bankrupt.

 

[Fippy]

I wonder why you have 39g, forgetting a 0% slider can delay important techs.
And yup size 1 workers are rarely a good idea (works with cities that have no food but a prod tile like copper).
Here you had floodplains to grow on instead.

Fogbusting pigs makes sense even with copper, 4 archers are not really a pushover with Axes.
West can be skipped.

 

[CGQ]

CG - I might have gone Pottery first here. As you hit IMM, you generally have to be a bit tighter on the tech path and really look at the situation and what is best short term. Pot would have made that 3rd worker actually useful, while in this case I have reservations on why that worker was even built yet in a size 1 city. Ute could work FPs or the unimproved cow for now. And yes you have two visible pasture resources but I don't think that is enough here to warrant AH first.

Furthermore, I envision a city in the N actually not settling next to Pigs as the spot 1NE of corn allows that city to work the very strong copper tile early that Carth will likely used very little.

New Carth warrior can probably deal with some W scouting. Your busters are okay but the 1 in the SW could probably step to the jungle hill for better busting.

A city due S on the jungle 1SE of rice would be my next spot. Based on what we know so far your a bit limited on cities but we know at least of 2 given spots with that city in the S and copper/pigs.

Spoiler Played to Turn 48 :

Went back and replayed the last 20 turns, this time I went AG-WH-Pottery and improve fog-busting since the other way there seemed to be no viable way to play without wasting over 10 worker turns. Imgur is a pain in the butt since when I upload a bunch of images it always uploads them in random order so I only uploaded the key images.

2-Pop whipped settler:


Sent warrior to fog-bust pigs. After farming FP, I chopped the forest 1E of corn, then began to improve copper right away:


Settled Utica in 2600 BC:


Worker finished copper but Pottery has not arrived. To not waste worker turns, I might as well hook it up and start building a road to hook both cities up while I wait:


2nd Worker is out and helps the other one road through the desert. If it times perfectly, the road should be done just in time for pottery:


Turn 40, Pottery arrives and workers will begin cottaging the bottom two FPs so Utica can share with capital:


Capital now working three good tiles, I will 2-Pop whip granary at size 4. I go for AH this time:


That's right, build those cottages...


I meet Montezuma on Turn 44. Interesting...


Workers finish the first cottages. I 2-Pop whip granary in capital and will use overflow to build settler:


Utica now working two cottages:


Capital now building settler:


AH is coming next turn; Warrior kills barb archer; Workers cottaging another FP and chopping settler:


That settler will go in Lymond's suggested location in the jungle 1S1E of rice. Utica's warrior will take care of the area between the two warriors. I can tech hunting in 3 turns to hook up elephants for extra +1 happiness.

 

[sampsa]

Whipping a granary intending to slow build a settler next is a gigantic mistake. Think how the granary works.

 

[CGQ]

Whipping a granary intending to slow build a settler next is a gigantic mistake. Think how the granary works.

Should I build the settler then the granary or wait for the city to grow size 4? Should I have whipped the granary then waited for the city to grow? This is what always troubled me in the game, not knowing when to stop building settlers and start building granaries/libraries.

 

[sampsa]

Yeah, it's not easy to decide. Anyway, my rule of thumb would be to never aim to slow build a worker/settler after you invested in a granary. If you whip the granary, then you need to let the city grow to 6, then whip the settler. I think that is too slow though, no time for the granary yet as you have only two cities. It's also pretty early for cottages, but at least they are FIN cottages. I'd aim to whip the settler without a granary and then try to finish the granary with two chops.