Question about my Immortal 'Win'

[Goldribbon]

I played for the first time last week on Immortal level. The play was ... weird compared to lower levels. Been playing since Civ I, never really played Immortal/Deity levels much before, as they always seemed too hard. But on CiV, even though the game constantly crashes, I have a better strategic grasp and can whoop the AI militarily. Anyway ...

So I beat the game on Immortal. But here's the thing. I didn't really fight any AIs. I used diplomacy to keep the AIs fighting each other until Montezuma had wiped everyone out and had 75% of the board, with me 25%. Because Montezuma and I were such good friends, he never attacked me for the 200 turns (I play on epic) it took for me to complete the rocket and win the game. In past Civs, he would have attacked me immediately with a SoD (and I would have lost).

Here's the weird part: Montzuma had some crazy numbers. During this time, his happiness was an impossible-to-believe 222 versus my 4 (according to Pliny or whoever does it in Civ 5). How can you have a happiness of 222 (doesn't seem mathematically possible)? He had about 50,000 gold and was earning 600+ gold per turn (I had at the same point 200 gold and was earning 10 per turn). On the military evals, my 'pointy sticks' value was 2,200 and his was 224,600. He hit future era probably 100 turns before I did. And yet I won!


Again, is this really possible? Or is Civ V just this broken? (Or am I better than I thought? ) 'Immortal' was kind of a cake-walk in this situation. Love to hear some thoughts.

 

[Rokklagið]

That sounded a very interesting use of diplomacy. How did you manage to keep them fighting each other? Just paying them for war declarations? Pacts of cooperation / secrecy? Gifts? I find practically impossible to keep in peace once the boundaries start to meet.

About the victory, that seems to happen a lot. I don't know if it's because of the broken strategic AI, or the "if the player doesn't win the game is not fun" design criteria.

 

[Goldribbon]

On my diplomacy strategy, I didn't have a clear one. I should mention, though, that I played on a small pangea with only two other AIs and tons and tons of City States (just to try something different).

But I did push each of the two AIs at each other all the time, traded evenly the whole way through, never made a pact of secrecy. I didn't expand into their lands (so I had a smaller kingdom than normal for me). I even let them City-Spam me by putting cities on the coast where there was only 1 tile to build on.

Maybe I was lucky, but I specifically picked Aztec and Mongolia as the other two AIs for their aggression. I played Hiawatha. Monte and Khan played off each other til the middle of the game, then had a very long war. I kept feeding both of the research agreements, and resources. Eventually Monte won because he also gobbled up a number of city-states.

But I think it was still way to easy for Immortal. Either that or I'm getting better in my old age.

 

[ICanHasName?]

Only having two AI's makes a big difference because that gives a huge amount of land for them to expand on. Monty probly didn't attack you because he was happy filling up the free space. Also, the AI's seem to randomly pick a victory condition and stick with it, so Monty decided to go for culture even though with his 3276430 cities that wasn't going to happen. Still kindof shocking that he didn't attack you at some point though.

The crazy AI stats are pretty normal though. Sometimes they fill up their entire territory with obsolete units.