Share your Immortal+ Wide Winning Strategies!

[DLimited]

Hello everyone,

I need some help with regards to wide play on Immortal or higher. I'm having problems starting up a 5+ city empire and keeping it relevant - I've only managed to do so once, as Maya (free turn 30 Religion because Maya, lots of space and City State buffers to nearest neighbors).

I've since given it serveral tries as Russia, Rome, India, Shoshone and Zulu. However I never seem to be able to actually convert these starts into wins, because I either get bumrushed by my closest neighbor (because I admittedly settle right in his face), or I manage to defend but fall really far behind that one runaway civ that's always there.

I play Strategic Balance low-sea-level Pangea maps on Quick speed, for reference.

I checked InfoAddict, and by turn 100 I have roughly 100 Science +/- 10 depending on Specialists and unhappiness. In my last game specifically, the runaway AI was 11 techs ahead and made 400+ Science around turn 110. Now, I'm not sure if that's just my wide play failing or if that was just an outlier of AI doing AI stuff.

Anyway, those of you who manage successful wide empires, what's your starting build order? Rush Pyramids or not? At which point do you start building Settlers? Do you build a Scout or just Warriors? Skip Shrine or no?

 

[WileyNg]

There are quite a vast variety of approach wide-empire game. In the previous versions, I usually started the game as tall as possible and focus my resource in just two to three cities. Invest on culture and science to a point that I can catch up with the AIs, because in a immortal game the AIs have numerous boost that you don't have. If someone attacks me I just fend them off with forts or citadels. The miltary AI is ridiculously suicidal at this and they often end their turns around the citadels.
Speaking of citadels, Great General is very crucial at turning the tide of war. So it is essential to wage some early wars with your allies and earn GGs. Just bear in mind in CPP as a painful trade-off, the AIs are quite agressive and they will attack you if don't have enough units.
When I think my first few cities are impressive enough, this is the time I spam siege units and UUs and just start attacking juicy cities around me.
This strategy always works for me. Go tall early, and go wide later.

As for the wonders, I always rush stonehenge and pyramid and any religious wonders afterwards because the boost from religion is a huge buff to a tall gameplay.

 

[Finarvi]

[...]
As for the wonders, I always rush stonehenge and pyramid and any religious wonders afterwards because the boost from religion is a huge buff to a tall gameplay.

You meant "wide" probably.

 

[DLimited]

There are quite a vast variety of approach wide-empire game. In the previous versions, I usually started the game as tall as possible and focus my resource in just two to three cities. Invest on culture and science to a point that I can catch up with the AIs, because in a immortal game the AIs have numerous boost that you don't have. If someone attacks me I just fend them off with forts or citadels. The miltary AI is ridiculously suicidal at this and they often end their turns around the citadels.
Speaking of citadels, Great General is very crucial at turning the tide of war. So it is essential to wage some early wars with your allies and earn GGs. Just bear in mind in CPP as a painful trade-off, the AIs are quite agressive and they will attack you if don't have enough units.
When I think my first few cities are impressive enough, this is the time I spam siege units and UUs and just start attacking juicy cities around me.
This strategy always works for me. Go tall early, and go wide later.

As for the wonders, I always rush stonehenge and pyramid and any religious wonders afterwards because the boost from religion is a huge buff to a tall gameplay.

Hm, I'm not trying for military expansion (which is a whole different beast) but rather for ways to make 5+ city starts work effectively.

 

[Condotierri]

There are quite a vast variety of approach wide-empire game. In the previous versions, I usually started the game as tall as possible and focus my resource in just two to three cities. Invest on culture and science to a point that I can catch up with the AIs, because in a immortal game the AIs have numerous boost that you don't have. If someone attacks me I just fend them off with forts or citadels. The miltary AI is ridiculously suicidal at this and they often end their turns around the citadels.
Speaking of citadels, Great General is very crucial at turning the tide of war. So it is essential to wage some early wars with your allies and earn GGs. Just bear in mind in CPP as a painful trade-off, the AIs are quite agressive and they will attack you if don't have enough units.
When I think my first few cities are impressive enough, this is the time I spam siege units and UUs and just start attacking juicy cities around me.
This strategy always works for me. Go tall early, and go wide later.

As for the wonders, I always rush stonehenge and pyramid and any religious wonders afterwards because the boost from religion is a huge buff to a tall gameplay.

I pretty much have the same strategy of going tall, then wide, although I only play on marathon game speed, so it will differ. Regardless, I don't rush those WW, but faith is important at least to get an early pantheon. The buffs with the More Pantheon mod is absolutely worth it in the early game.

My strategy is:
- Build a scout to explore, get goody huts, gold from meeting CS, and extra happiness from natural wonders
- Build/buy a shrine next to get an early pantheon
- Start making my settler with pop. 3
- Buy an archer and use archer + warrior to clear barb. camps for early gold.


I am not sure what turn 100 is for quick game speed. With your data I am guessing Renaissance? Industrial? In my marathon games, I am pretty close to the AI (10 AIs) in technology until about the Modern age where they can be 8-10 technologies ahead.

Only way I find to combat this is have tons of friends with research agreements (the WW research agreement buff is great here), and try to push for the science buff from the world council that makes already researched techs -20%. Also, spy on them to steal their technology. I try to choose ones as far away as possible, so it takes them forever to try to attack me, and hard for them to reinforce their army.

I also try to go for the research tree in the social policy as soon as I hit renaissance. I can usually close the tech gap, but it takes a while. Another way, is to pay other civs to go to war with that runaway civ in hopes that their capital is taken, which will lessen their science out put a lot (although you have to fear that the runaway civ steam rolls that paid civ. Which is why I like to declare war on the runaway civ first and just turtle and let them lose a lot of units to me first).

Also, I should add, I watch civs closely with EUI and when I I.D. a potential runaway civ, I try to harass it as much as possible and try to get other civs to dislike them (pay them to go to war on them, etc), so we can gang up on them later and restrain their "runaway-ness." So far it's been working pretty well.