Playing Immortal+ while avoiding specific strategies

[headcase]

This is a bit of a brag thread (though not for myself): The goal is to see how many AI-breaking (or softening) strategies can be avoided in combination while still winning a game on Immortal or Deity. Stuff like selling open borders for 50 gold when the AI hasn't asked for open borders, cooking the starting settings, selling worthless cities, etc. Self-imposed challenges such as avoiding war and not taking cities also count.

Which is the strongest combination of strategies that you've avoided and still managed to win the game?

 

[NotSure]

No bragging here. I use them all, including selling resources and GPT before war decs. IIRC, the HoF rules said it was good, so that makes up for the shame I feel when I reload about 5 or 6 times a game.

 

[snarzberry]

Well there's a world of difference between immortal and deity, on immortal you have much greater freedom to experiment and there are a number of avenues open to you that are closed on deity. One game that springs to mind is tabarnak's no Writing (for as long as possible) game for a hard fought deity domination win.

For myself I will sometimes place restrictions on my game to make it more interesting or challenging. I play lots of games on deity these days where I totally avoid the HS, PT, ND, and RA spam as those games became mind-numbingly boring after a while.

I had an idea for a general opening strategy to play as the ottomans that used pretty much only the bottom of the tech tree for a long time, so no universities, PT or anything like that. Just yesterday I fired up an immortal game to give it a test run and won domination victory on standard pangaea on turn 180. And I could have seriously deleted half my army on turn 140 and still won around the same time..

Ages ago, not long after release, when civ 5 was way different to now I won a standard deity cultural game where I built zero units for the entire game, just stole one worker, that was pretty funny and testament to how broken the game was then.

 

[Tabarnak]

Ages ago, not long after release, when civ 5 was way different to now I won a standard deity cultural game where I built zero units for the entire game, just stole one worker, that was pretty funny and testament to how broken the game was then.

DaveMcW made a deity cultural game(GOTM) under the current patch where he had like 3 units for the entire game. The starting position was somewhat cornered, but this guy know how to handle diplo for sure.

This bring me to this fact :

If you can ''extremely manipulate'' AIs diplo situation, with some luck, you can manage to do unusual things and let give you more opportunities to try something else. But like many other said already, the domination path let you try the most versatile strats. Playing with the diplo route is harder than going military and you need some favorable land. Usually, you want a pretty decent army and play like a diplomat based on your army and overal strengh.

 

[chazzycat]

I recently won a game on immortal with the following restrictions:

- science victory
- no RAs
- no great scientists
- no taking cities from the AI (recapturing previously lost cities and liberating CS is allowed).

That was a good one. Played as the Inca, fast expanded like mad to 9 cities, held the ground, and powered through the tech tree on population alone, focusing on happiness.