Need deeper insights, I'm shite at Immortal

[Immortal24]

Yesterday I won my first legit Immortal game on my first try, but it still felt bad. Because I was bad, really bad - I even came within an inch of losing sizable cities during late game twice. I upgraded directly from King since that felt more like an adequate challenge for my mom, or maybe my mom's mom.

I may have won far before any AI came close, but it felt lousy because the AI was dumb. Not just regular "I need thrice the unit count a human would need to take your city" dumb, but more like "I'm Austria and float 20.000 gold at all times but I'm not gonna buy any of your 6 CS allies and sit here while you go enjoy your diplomatic victory" ********. Yet the AI's I didn't obliterate in the beginning ran away big time and the capitals I took didn't have any wonders and the remaining civs ran away, usually 1 era in front of me and close to 1000 points above me at my time of winning in 1941.


Okay, so what I would be really thankful for is a deeper insight in this game from you big guys. I intentionally didn't write "tips" or "tactics", I'm gonna pick up the smaller tidbits in my own pace either by playing and making mistakes or lurking on this forum.

I feel like what I need to succeed and become a good player is the big picture stuff.
My impression is the really good players can "see" what they are doing at all times, while I have trouble keeping my focus. My question is really this: how do you "think" about playing this game in a big picture kind of way? I know most if not pretty much all of the warfare stuff with terrain and rivers and ZOC already, that's not what I need help with.

Obviously there's the different Victory Conditions (VC) and I suppose the first decision you make is whether you pick a very specialized Civ that screams for a certain VC and then you stick to that or you take an all-rounder Civ and go for the VC that seems the most attainable, once you know more or less how the playing field looks like.

So what then, I start and I got my apples, hammers, beakers, culture and the sweet, sweet monies. The more apples the more population, and the more ppl. the faster the science and the faster the -everything really- because I can work more tiles, only real downside seems unhappiness but that can be managed. But there is no obesity Victory condition, so at the end of the day what I really need to do is convert the apples into something that wins me the game: Beakers, Culture or Gold (for Diplo). When do I go food focus in my city? When do I place specialists?

To build anything I need hammers, so can't drop them under the table either.
I guess what I'm driving at is how can I better "see" the correct balance of everything in relation to each other, the playing field, and my Victory Condition? I'm not very focused because I can't see "it". Sure maybe I want a Science Victory, but maybe I feel like I need some money soon because I wanna buy that city state before the fat Austrian marries into it, so maybe I should build a bank instead? When do I build a bank? When don't I?

Obviously all this depends on the playing field, maybe I got an unfriendly Civ, so bye science and hello production and welcome crossbowmen. How do go about thinking of the resource flows behind the curtains in a way that focuses my game and how do I make really smart decisions about how to manage my city and resources? It's not just a disjointed collection of small-scale tips and tricks and bonus synergies, though I'm sure that helps, but 100 tricks does not make an overall strategy. It's not just a matter of "picking this chain of bonuses and synergies in that order wins you the game, so just do that". So what is the overall strategy?

Thank you very much for answering!

 

[Immortal24]

This is a screenshot of the won game, I believe 1 turn after I won. (Small, Continents, Standard)

I can look at this and analyze it and see tons of mistakes already, but I don't think my own insights will improve my game much over what I'm capable right now.

First mistake I think was jumping too late on the religion bandwagon, so I didn't get a pantheon. I bought all religious buildings in my annexed cities and now float faith like crazy. Not sure how a missionary would even benefit me if I don't have a religion associated with me in the first place?
I suppose an Inquisitor will remove the other faiths but the two big shots over the pond happen to be Buddhist so they shouldn't get benefits from my christian/Muslim cities.

I didn't Raze Osinnka in the south. Completely worthless and making a dent in my happiness. I didn't realize I could raze puppeted (non-capital) cities after I annex them. Now I know. Maybe I should have razed the almost-as-usless city north of Damascus too, but hey the AI settles on every rock sticking out of the sea if it has one fish next to it, so I presumed I'd rather have a lousy city there than none.

I realize I really didn't manage my city growth correctly. Many tiles aren't worked, I pushed gold or production over default or food and didn't even have the sense to build an aqueduct in time as an attempt to at least balance it a bit more.

I was behind in science all game so badly. Almost lost Mecca when the fat Austrian married into Ur (red tiny dot on the mini-map, on my continent) and started pumping out bombers in that city and I barely had Artillery, let alone anything on par. Had to buy walls and castles fast and bum-rushed her city with weak units a while, forcing her bomber on them, giving Mecca time to heal . Same story with Damascus later on, only it was an attack by sea and by that time I luckily had bombers myself and there was no unit-sacrifice necessary.

So yeah, that game was bad and I feel bad. I spent a lot of my money on keeping the city-states as allies. God forbid the fat Austrian marries them too and becomes my new neighbor. Once the CS were all 100+ I would rarely have to spend more though, getting by on their quests. So yeah, the diplomacy victory worked out well in the end, but I couldn't catch up with the AI even though I held basically all 6 city states (only ones which were left) since turn 150 or even earlier.

 

[direblade99]

I see no screenshot

 

[Espartafilardo]

"Yesterday I won my first legit Immortal game on my first try, but it still felt bad."

Look, I know you want big-picture advice from the Deity players, but still:

Congrats. You won your first Immortal game. The worst we can say is that King didn't prepare you to win your first Immortal game in high style.

I've noticed that there are a number of people devoted to Civ who, like me, are more-or-less crippled by concerns that don't mesh well with high-diff play. I find it hard not to role-play a few decisions here and there; I like pretty arrangements on the screen; I have feelings about the AIs and the wonders and so on ... I do have the intellect and gameplay foundation to play MUCH better, but I'm not even sure I want to. I do know that, like you, I want more than "an adequate challenge for my mom, or maybe my mom's mom."

So again, good job, I hope you had fun and were challenged, and I wish you luck learning what game conditions are most satisfying and stimulating.

 

[kb27787]

... immortal and below?
1) don't expand too fast; there simply is no need to, unlike deity. Expand at t80-90 if you must.
2) don't go to war unless there is a very good reason to; cities incur a 5% tech cost penalty whether or not they are puppets. Do not overexpand and do not keep a bad city; raze it. Best to obtain cities through peace deals and try to liberate CSs to mitigate warmonger penalty.
3) using gold to buy CS constantly is not a good idea (at least wait until they come with a +50% influence quest; use coups instead, and vice versa, AIs will use coups on your CS so be careful)
4) prioritize food for all VC. For CV, also prioritize hammers and culture gain rather than gold. For SV and DV, prioritize gold second.
5) have a sizeable faith income (from CS if you must) past industrial regardless of whether or not you've managed a religion.
6) Have friends, preferably rich ones. Use your gold for research agreements.

 

[Laurwin]

play morocco
build trade ships/caravans
get tons of gpt
...
profit!!!


but yea, I played a nice king level game with morocco yesterday, tall empire freedom morocco. I was literally swimming in gold for the mid-late game. I could buy space ship parts every two-three turns (I had like almost 800gpt in golden age or something i forget)

for citizen management. What you need to probably do is this. Use manual specialists in every city (you assign them if you want any)

Also lock down all the best food tiles like farms in all cities, and put all cities on production focus. Production focus is because of how the production works in a city, during the growth process of the city (1 turn before city grows, after growth you can re-assign tiles to mines or farms). It seems that you can "game the system" with little bit more hammers than otherwise when you use this "production focus trick". You just have to remember to reassign the tiles after each "growth phase" of a city.

Remember, you need a citizen (pop) to either work a tile, OR be a specialist. You need good size cities 6+ IMO for consistent specialist usage (like scientists)

When a city is 1 turn away from growth, on the next turn you need to remember to visit that city, and reassign the tiles (what you focus on, is the "newly computer assigned tiles" which has the green-and-white-face icon on it, manually assigned tiles have a lock icon on them)

Production is important sure, hammers build the units after all. Gold is also important to offset the maintenance costs from buildings and units, so be sure to work the good lux tiles that you have in your cities (lock the tile)

But the prime directive , is growth. Without growth, and more pops, your cities can't do many things at the same time, they cannot grow, work hammers, lux gold tiles, and specialists at the same time. You will be hurting with less gold, and less science if you have many small cities.

Growth and pops, also give you raw beakers in cities with library. More pops = more science in the long run. IMO, aqueducts line of buildings are necessary in all cities which you intend to grow beyond certain pops.

Without growing your city to decent size, your city will hardly be worth the costs. Considering how BNW punished the wide empires with science malus per city. It's a good afterthought to keep in mind, you really do want to develop all your cities, because it will benefit you in some way. (it will atleast remove or diminish the science penalty)

Also happiness and gold is more scarce in BNW than vanilla e.g., so wide empires get slightly less gold benefit these days (but on the other hand, wide empires have more lux tiles you can work, because you have more total land usually, wide empire also has guaranteed access to more strategic resources.)