Some questions for Immortal+ players!

[crdvis16]

I started playing on Immortal and after some initial success (won my first two as Inca and Celts and another as Germany later) I have lost a number of games in a row. I'm trying to get better and I find I have a lot of questions about how I should play so I was hoping I could poll others that play Immortal+ and get a better idea about some of these things:

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? I've started increasing map size and decreasing the number of AI Civs/CSs when I plan to go wide because otherwise there simply isn't room for more than 3-4 cities before you are pushing into borders. I'll also make sure my map has water/islands when playing a civ like Polynesia or Carthage and would pick Pangaea for a ground based militaristic civ like Germany. But so far I haven’t gone beyond these tweaks- I don’t play around with raging barbarians for civs like Germany or Aztec, I don’t disable certain victory conditions that I don’t plan to pursue, and I don’t play around with age/sea level/etc to get certain types of terrain. Are these things necessary in order to expect to win more than every now and then?

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart? I used to never restart but now that I’m losing a lot more I wonder if I am sometimes playing games that I am at too heavy of a disadvantage in. I know things like having a plantation lux located in marsh are bad because you have to ping-pong between techs to get to it which can seriously slow you down. Does that situation call for an immediate restart? Is there a certain threshold for food or production tiles? At least 2 unique lux’s nearby? What is your personal criteria?

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into? Like scouting to find that you’re between the Huns and Mongols? Thus far I’ve been just trying no matter what until it becomes exceedingly clear I will lose (and even then I sometimes keep playing just because) but I wonder if that is sort of a waste of time.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? I rarely steal workers from CS or AI civs in the early game because it seems somewhat gimmicky to me, especially if my plan was to play a tall/peaceful science or culture game (though if I’m the Huns/Mongols/etc then I’m totally fine with doing so since it fits their persona). I never do the lump sum of gold for lux then DoW trick as I see that as a no-consequence exploit. I have traded my lux for an AI’s lump sum of gold when I know they might DoW me as I assume the AI takes that kind of thing into account when it decides to DoW (but is that really the case?).

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? If you’re going for a science vic is there a number of beakers you plan to have by turn 100, 200, etc? Same for culture? What amount of science do you want in other victory condition games on a per turn basis?

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Whenever I am going tall I typically plan to play relatively peaceful, mostly just defending myself when I am DoW’d. Is it necessary to plan to not only defend but to then conquer no matter the victory condition? Are puppets just too valuable?

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era? I just played as Rome and may have put myself at a disadvantage because I wanted to see how effective legions and their catapult replacements were. I’m now playing as India and planned to spam war elephants as a replacement for the CBs but obviously I will miss out when they aren’t upgraded into XBows.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? I’ve found that my faith generation just doesn’t keep up unless I get gold/silver or wine/incense lux’s or something like desert folklore as a pantheon. Do you usually decide if you’ll bother with a religion once you see your start location or will you build an initial early shrine no matter what and try?

Sorry for the long post!

 

[Unresolved]

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? I've started increasing map size and decreasing the number of AI Civs/CSs when I plan to go wide because otherwise there simply isn't room for more than 3-4 cities before you are pushing into borders. I'll also make sure my map has water/islands when playing a civ like Polynesia or Carthage and would pick Pangaea for a ground based militaristic civ like Germany. But so far I haven’t gone beyond these tweaks- I don’t play around with raging barbarians for civs like Germany or Aztec, I don’t disable certain victory conditions that I don’t plan to pursue, and I don’t play around with age/sea level/etc to get certain types of terrain. Are these things necessary in order to expect to win more than every now and then?

I don't really tailor the map. I feel like that makes the game easier. I usually go with random sea level/temperature/dryness/world age. But I'll usually pick the map type based on the civilization I'm playing. I don't see a reason to play someone like Polynesia on Pangaea for example.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart? I used to never restart but now that I’m losing a lot more I wonder if I am sometimes playing games that I am at too heavy of a disadvantage in. I know things like having a plantation lux located in marsh are bad because you have to ping-pong between techs to get to it which can seriously slow you down. Does that situation call for an immediate restart? Is there a certain threshold for food or production tiles? At least 2 unique lux’s nearby? What is your personal criteria?

I usually restart if I don't have a hill or river. I don't care who my neighbors are, an early rush makes them all pretty similar. I've played a map where I had a coastal, jungle, no river, no hills capital. It sucked really badly even though I managed to take over my continent.

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into? Like scouting to find that you’re between the Huns and Mongols? Thus far I’ve been just trying no matter what until it becomes exceedingly clear I will lose (and even then I sometimes keep playing just because) but I wonder if that is sort of a waste of time.

I only restart if I lose a city(or going to lose). Outside of that, I won't lose a game because I'm proficient enough in teching to win in any other solution.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? I rarely steal workers from CS or AI civs in the early game because it seems somewhat gimmicky to me, especially if my plan was to play a tall/peaceful science or culture game (though if I’m the Huns/Mongols/etc then I’m totally fine with doing so since it fits their persona). I never do the lump sum of gold for lux then DoW trick as I see that as a no-consequence exploit. I have traded my lux for an AI’s lump sum of gold when I know they might DoW me as I assume the AI takes that kind of thing into account when it decides to DoW (but is that really the case?).

The only trick I use is the worker CS stealing. I've tried taking workers from other civs(which I don't consider an exploit if you don't do lump sum trades), but I can't really get it to work for me. And doing lump sum DoWs crosses my imaginary line.

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? If you’re going for a science vic is there a number of beakers you plan to have by turn 100, 200, etc? Same for culture? What amount of science do you want in other victory condition games on a per turn basis?

Uhhh, benchmarks depend on what turn you want to win by. A turn 300 SV has very different benchmarks than a turn 250 SV.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Whenever I am going tall I typically plan to play relatively peaceful, mostly just defending myself when I am DoW’d. Is it necessary to plan to not only defend but to then conquer no matter the victory condition? Are puppets just too valuable?

It's not necessary, but it helps. You can have very fast games(in terms of turns) with or without wars.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era? I just played as Rome and may have put myself at a disadvantage because I wanted to see how effective legions and their catapult replacements were. I’m now playing as India and planned to spam war elephants as a replacement for the CBs but obviously I will miss out when they aren’t upgraded into XBows.

Depends on the UU. On general principle, I dislike melee UU's because they're usually not good enough to make up for the fact that they're a melee unit. There are exceptions like the Janissary or the Carolean.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? I’ve found that my faith generation just doesn’t keep up unless I get gold/silver or wine/incense lux’s or something like desert folklore as a pantheon. Do you usually decide if you’ll bother with a religion once you see your start location or will you build an initial early shrine no matter what and try?

I will go for a religion if I have a faith pantheon or UB. If I can ally a religious CS early, I'll also get a religion. A faith NW is an automatic religion obviously. Outside of that, I won't force a religion because it's not worth wasting the hammers/gold you need to get a decent one without a faith source.

 

[Deau]

1) I strongly recommend against it. Once you move to deity, giving more room to the AIs will just be you begging for a bunch of AIs to runaway and you to never catch up.

2) That's a matter of playstyle. I prefer playing to tailor strategies and optimize turn to victory so I spend an absurd amount of time regenerating maps, sometimes even to make it a much harder start when I ought to work on a "bad start" strat. I probably spent 6h over 3 nights to try to get a good petra start for that OCC domination project - never had one so I threw the towel . Usually it's anywhere between 5 minutes to 15 minutes when the project doesn't require extreme tuning. My comp is slow

3) Similar to the above but rarely. If the capital had a strong start, there's hardly anything to drive me away from a game. Exception due to religion based strategy tuning where I miss the game breaking pantheon (e.g. missing DF or stone circles). Rarely do when the strat isn't fully tailored around faith though.

4) I use most of the tools available for min/maxing, on regular play, I will still steal workers and bribe wars but not trade all my GPT for gold immediately before DoW for example. My exploitative trick threshold goes up a few notches on reg games.

5) Education by turn 110, 120-125 if an early war got me to 5-6 cities with one or two very strong locations cities. These are my upper thresholds, if I miss them by a mile, odds are the game can't be recovered already so in most case scenario I just change map. There is another rare exception where my land allows for absurd gold output so that I can rush buy most science buildings AND spam RAs, then I will keep up as the recovery looks promising. Other thresholds are highly map dependant. I've had games where I pushed flight by turn 160, others on turn 200 yet both were easily winnable as the AI had teched significantly slower (more wars, smaller land to map size ratio)

6) It is not. Occ science is winnable even on deity. However, the less land/cities, the better that land has to be and especially, the more you rely on very good relationships. Conquering nearby AIs compensates for that. CB rush is also probably the easiest way to leverage your game with the current patch (or rather most constantly doable) so that's why you see it discussed everywhere.

7) I rarely use UUs that are outside the science path. It's too big a setback. For Rome in particular, I'd use some ballistas but definitely not tech iron before univs unless I was playing a water map and needed to see iron locations for next settlements for frigates.

8) Pretty much what Unresolved said. In some cases for peaceful approach, I will go slightly out of my way and build Stonehenge if available to get 3rd religion. Otherwise, it's all about faith generating tiles.

 

[PDMX]

1) I do not really tailer the map, I just chose different maptypes and sizes, which are suitable for the civilization I want to play. I usually never play with the other settings. I prefer to play maps like Fraktal or the Earth map. They are very good maps to build up a big navy, including aircraft carriers. Pangea and Continents are sometimes a bit boring and too land based. So for me it is not special at all, just my basic preference to play and to be able to use a big variety of units.

I usually restart if I don't have a hill or river. I don't care who my neighbors are, an early rush makes them all pretty similar. I've played a map where I had a coastal, jungle, no river, no hills capital. It sucked really badly even though I managed to take over my continent.

2) Same for me, of course atleast one luxury on multiple tiles or two different luxuries should be visible from start or found within the first turns by your warrior. They are very much needed for lump sum trades with the AI. I personally also restart, when I am in jungle, not so for forest: it could be challenging to start in a forest without hills, that is what makes it tempting for me. But I hate jungle, it totally masses up everything, its like another big disadvantage for the player. And on Immortal or Diety, you already have lots of them.



3) When I find myself in a situation, where I would probably quit after turn 30, 60 or else, because of a random event, like a multiple DoW or losing out on two or more wonders, which I wanted to get for strategy testing, or whatever else, then yes, I will probably quit and try the same map with the initial save again, until I can accomplish, what I wanted, or win the game.



4) Lump sum trades for your luxuries are very very important to rush by units, libraries, workers and settlers in the early game. It euqals things out a bit in favor for the player, because the AI already has most of those things right at the start. So I would always sell any excess luxury that I can for a lump sum. Even lump sum + some GPT, if no AI has enough money is ok. Lump sum before DoW is pretty lame of course. I only do this, when I really hate that civ, and when they annoyed me a lot. I will probably buy a nuke with that money and just destroy his capital, when I am already at the end of the game. Of course this will not be possible in BNW anymore because lump sum trades will require a declaration of friendship, which is probably most likely to be achieved in the early game.

Taking over workers from City states in the early game is very important. You can atleast get one worker for free, without getting any major diplomatic hit, in every game. When you take 2 or more workers, which means going at war with CS atleast two times. The other CS's will no longer grant you gold for finding them. So you can get even two or more workers, but you should only do this, when you have almost finished your scouting.

Taking workers from other civs is possible, but only if you want to take them out anyway. Its just much more difficult on the diplomatic side of things. You will be immediately at war with the civilization and you probably can not make friendship, untill they decide to surrender, or you weakened them enough to make a white peace. They will definitely get after you, once they have build up their military, which can be good, because they will probably lose all their units to your cities. But also have in mind, that you will probably become the evil warmonger for all the other civs early in the game. This will impact the luxury trades to all other AI players and they are more likely to declare war on you aswell.



5) 400BPT at turn 200 should always give you a close sub 300 SV, if done the right way, by using great scientists, etc. But you will probably need to finish the game sooner most times, especially on diety. The closer you get to 600 BPT at turn 200, you will be more likely to finish SV on turn 260 to 270. This will require some more focus on science than normal though. It also depends on your capability to produce all the parts of course and the amount of research agreements. If you have a lot of research agreements, you can probably cut that down even more. But as I am usually the big warmonger, because of stealing all those workers, I am usually not getting many RA's.

I am not really a friend of the friendly science victory, so I have not worked on that strategy so often. I usually go for a science victory, if I run out of options. For example on continents map, when I have conquered my continent and the capitals on the other contient are far inland, I will decide whether to win by diplo or science. But most preferaby I go for domination as a priority, as I will take out atleast half of the civs anyways. I usually also go for Korea, Babylon, Siam and the Mayans very early, if they are close neighbors, so at one point I will eventually gain the tech lead anyways.



6) If I find out that my neighbors are science powerhouses, city state related civilizations or strong religious civs, I will take them out. It gives me more advantage not having them in the game anymore. So they will not become a runaway. Especially Greece, Hiawatha, Rammy, Korea and Babylon are usually becomming Science or CS runaways, or even both. I will definitely take them out, when they are my neighbours. I also go for Ethiopia or the Celts, wqhen they are close because I usually want to create my own religion. So anybody with a religion, which is close to me is becoming a potential enemy too.

On the other end I tend to wipe out two to three civilizations until the medieval era anyways, so probably being close to me is never a good location for any AI.

It just gives you more of everything, when you conquer cities: free settlers, free citizens, free science, free buildings, free gold... You would have to build all of that by yourself. Especially capitals are usually good puppets, because they have a decent location most of the time.



7) As said before it depends on the UU, you will probaly need less Chukunu than Crossbows. But I usually use the setup during the entire game + adding siege units during the medieval age, or catapults if the city strentgh is just over 20. I personally do not play a lot with the unique units of the civilization, because most of the civilizations I use to play only have a very early unique unit. Like Mayans or Babylon. Once you start to play Celts or Persia or Greece with their Piktish Warrios, Immortals or Hoplites it becomes more valuable to use them though. Although you will probably still need atleast two Hoplites to be save to capture one or more of the enemy's cities.



8) On Immortal I usually get a good religion, and it is very worthwhile doing this. You can get a good religion, if you really want it, even without any religious bonuses, You just have to complete CS's quests, find wonders, build stonehenge, or whatever else, tehre are a lot of possibilites. Once Piety becomes available in the ancient Era in BNW, shrines and temples can be produced faster. This will be a primary bonus for all non religious civs, which need to build shrines to get their initial faith.

On diety you can do it, but it is a lot harder. The good beliefs may already be gone by the time you found the religion. I would only recommend to try to found a religion, if you are playing the Celts, Ethiopia or the Mayans on diety. Otherwise you may often not be able to choose good beliefs or even found a religion.

Religious play is a vital part of my strategy in any game. You get such a lot of bonuses, if you have a founded a mayor religion. Tithe will easily give you 100+ GPT and Ceremonial Burial, +2 happiness from temples, gardens, pagodas are all every worthwhile beliefs to counter the unhappiness while warmongering.

I basically found a religion for money and happiness. And I usually also go for the Hagia Sophia on Immortal.

 

[Justice1337]

I started playing on Immortal and after some initial success (won my first two as Inca and Celts and another as Germany later) I have lost a number of games in a row. I'm trying to get better and I find I have a lot of questions about how I should play so I was hoping I could poll others that play Immortal+ and get a better idea about some of these things:

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? I've started increasing map size and decreasing the number of AI Civs/CSs when I plan to go wide because otherwise there simply isn't room for more than 3-4 cities before you are pushing into borders. I'll also make sure my map has water/islands when playing a civ like Polynesia or Carthage and would pick Pangaea for a ground based militaristic civ like Germany. But so far I haven’t gone beyond these tweaks- I don’t play around with raging barbarians for civs like Germany or Aztec, I don’t disable certain victory conditions that I don’t plan to pursue, and I don’t play around with age/sea level/etc to get certain types of terrain. Are these things necessary in order to expect to win more than every now and then?

Change what you want, obviously, but keep in mind that certain things will make the game much easier. That includes playing the game on a slower speed, using a smaller map, allowing policy saving, or obviously disabling certain VC's. For me, these dilute my sense of accomplishment. But I find no issue with changing the world age, sea level, map type, or enabling raging barbs. While certain maps type are easier than others, I find it's good to get a bit of variety now and then. And things like Raging barbs and sea level make such a small impact, in the end.

As for being able to go wide on certain settings, you just have to adapt. If you run into enemy borders quickly, you have to conquer, but once you do you'll find that the same strategies apply. Self-settling is actually less common than conquering when going wide, just because wide empire play lends so well to Domination in the first place. Or obviously, you could start the game undecided whether you're wide or tall and make the decision based on proximity.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart? I used to never restart but now that I’m losing a lot more I wonder if I am sometimes playing games that I am at too heavy of a disadvantage in. I know things like having a plantation lux located in marsh are bad because you have to ping-pong between techs to get to it which can seriously slow you down. Does that situation call for an immediate restart? Is there a certain threshold for food or production tiles? At least 2 unique lux’s nearby? What is your personal criteria?

Restarting is generally considered taboo. For me, it depends on my mood. I will judge whether the start is production-rich, food-rich, both, or neither, and I've played enough that I know what to expect from each. If I don't feel like scraping together a come from behind, tundra ice-ball Domination win, I'll restart. But of course, I've played that game once or twice before. For those who haven't, I'd recommend a go at it.

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into? Like scouting to find that you’re between the Huns and Mongols? Thus far I’ve been just trying no matter what until it becomes exceedingly clear I will lose (and even then I sometimes keep playing just because) but I wonder if that is sort of a waste of time.

I won't restart against multiple militaristic neighbors, or against the dreaded Turn 30 triple-DoW. Often enough, it's not decisive. But if I start losing my cities to the AI, I will resign.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? I rarely steal workers from CS or AI civs in the early game because it seems somewhat gimmicky to me, especially if my plan was to play a tall/peaceful science or culture game (though if I’m the Huns/Mongols/etc then I’m totally fine with doing so since it fits their persona). I never do the lump sum of gold for lux then DoW trick as I see that as a no-consequence exploit. I have traded my lux for an AI’s lump sum of gold when I know they might DoW me as I assume the AI takes that kind of thing into account when it decides to DoW (but is that really the case?).

I don't exploit non-simultaneous exchanges with the AI, lump sum for per turn. I think the dilemma of those exchanges is just so obvious, not only from the perspective of strategy game design, but from a historical contract law perspective as well. People and governments simply don't make non-simultaneous exchanges without remedies at law. I consider it a huge, amateur lapse in design and won't exploit it.

Otherwise, it's hard to consider something an exploit when it's based in rational game design. So, the AI doesn't war as well as a human. I'm not tying a hand behind my back. And so stealing Workers is easy, and there might not be enough negative consequences, but it was contemplated by design and there are some negative consequences. In fact, I won't even do it every game because often I prefer to befriend the CS's.

[/quote]5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? If you’re going for a science vic is there a number of beakers you plan to have by turn 100, 200, etc? Same for culture? What amount of science do you want in other victory condition games on a per turn basis?[/quote]

If you're rolling with any start, you have to have a good sense for what your weak points are going to be in a given game, and adjust any benchmarks accordingly. Otherwise if you're going for your personal best times, then your personal best is the benchmark obviously. And to get all-time HoF times, there are guides out there for that. On beakers, I think that your beakers per turn should be about twice the turn timer for Diety Science wins, with a period of slowness at the beginning of the game obviously. For other VC's, I tend to look at the timings that I get each Science tech. Education should be around T90 to T120 at the latest, with Universities built and staffed immediately. For other inputs, you just have to play the game enough to get a good idea of what's a good position at T70, T100, T150.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Whenever I am going tall I typically plan to play relatively peaceful, mostly just defending myself when I am DoW’d. Is it necessary to plan to not only defend but to then conquer no matter the victory condition? Are puppets just too valuable?

All VC's do well with an appropriate amount of space. Science and Culture wins I think are optimal at about 4 cities, but 3 cities is ok, and even 2 and 1 are still winnable. Cities beyond that are really only necessary for Domination VC's, and only useful in the first place beyond T100 if you're prepared to give each city a substantial production kick somehow. Tech rates are so fast and build times so slow that crazy expansion is not necessary for record times (finally). Puppets ultimately have about as much effect as other things like CS allies, Research Agreements, etc. They are by no means necessary.

Otherwise, benefits to expansion are indirect. It's easier to win if the AI can't. Often when pursuing Cultural your tech rate will drop, your production is low, and so an unchecked neighbor AI will pummel you and you lose. Higher diffs are also known to produce "runaway" AI's, where you have to send and expeditionary force out to take some cities so that the AI can't launch a ship at T220 and beat you.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era? I just played as Rome and may have put myself at a disadvantage because I wanted to see how effective legions and their catapult replacements were. I’m now playing as India and planned to spam war elephants as a replacement for the CBs but obviously I will miss out when they aren’t upgraded into XBows.

Iron Working is at an awkward spot in the tree right now. Philosophy and the NC are key at keeping up, and IW is on the other side. UU's like Legion and Mohawks are still quite useful, but you have to have some game knowledge to adjust to a slower tech rate. Ballistas are awesome. Chariot Archer UU's are at a good spot in the tree on the way to Civil Service and Education, and they're not as awkward as normal CA's because they don't require horses. India is a bad civ though, and since lots of players weight the per-city unhappiness as a greater drawback than the per population boost is a benefit, its UU is often considered worse than nothing. They definitely require some game knowlege and effort to get right.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? I’ve found that my faith generation just doesn’t keep up unless I get gold/silver or wine/incense lux’s or something like desert folklore as a pantheon. Do you usually decide if you’ll bother with a religion once you see your start location or will you build an initial early shrine no matter what and try?

Religion on higher diffs require one condition of a list of many: a faith generating Pantheon, a Faith Natural Wonder, a Civ specific bonus, a Religious CS, a Faith Goody Hut, the Hagia Sophia wonder, Prophet as the Liberty Finisher, or opening the Piety SP tree and hard building Shrines/Temples. If I am Maya/Celtic/Ethiopia, I know I'm getting a religion. Otherwise, I have to look out for the things on the above list, and if I get none, I'm not getting a religion that game. This will obviously set back any VC quite a bit, particularly Dom and Cultural, but that's what comes with rolling with any start. If I have some religious thing in mind for a non-religious civ, like Byzantium, I might reroll. But otherwise, winning is still possible, of course.

Sorry for the long post!

NP, sorry for the short answers.

 

[Hulking Lummox]

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? Are these things necessary in order to expect to win more than every now and then?

Immortal, standard size/standard speed always. I play with 7 or more AI's. I enjoy Pangaea, Continents, Oval and Fractal. Occasionally I will use Europe too. For the Pangaea and Continents games I prefer to use the modified versions of the Plus maps where city states spawn wherever and there are some islands available on the map. I never tailor the map to a civ beyond choosing continents if I'm a water civ. The only thing I turn on is quick combat.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart? What is your personal criteria?

I restart a lot but not as a cheat. I don't need a perfect start for some preconceived notion of a perfect game - I like a beautiful map that will provide an interesting geopolitcal environment (not to sound too nerdy but it's the truth). If the map is flat and boring or too generic looking of a pangaea for a example I will reroll. My only hard and fast rule is this: If I see both desert and tundra tiles on turn 0 I reroll, no questions asked. I hate that! Also I am getting more and more pampered by the hill river start but I try not to depend on it.

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into? Like scouting to find that you’re between the Huns and Mongols?

Not usually, just if the map looks really boring or one AI is magically city spamming abnormally fast where it impacts simply having fun. I wind up feeling like, "hello, I happen to be chopping a forest for my first settler in what I consider to be a rush. I would enjoy placing my single settler in what I consider my sovereign territory because this is a game that's supposed to be fun for me. Your 'computerized AI bonus world' frightens, and confuses me...."

My latest (and greatest) restart was because the AI founded on an Oasis I wanted as part of a future city, removing it from the game. I razed the city like "NBD yo!", only to discover.... It was GONE! Newman! That was a rage quit (and wasn't really avoidable because of other factors).

As a separate note, and the reason I don't play Diety - I hate when a next door neighbor is 2-3 eras ahead in tech. It just bothers me from a gameplay and historical standpoint. Neighbors should tend to be around the same tech level and it's why I play Immortal because it's the only difficulty I find balanced against the player without being unfair in the science game. When it comes to Diety I find myself asking why would it be fun to shoot a musketman with composite bows for turn after turn until I can repeat the same thing with crossbows against rifles. For me it's an exercise in tolerance, however I do highly respect Diety players.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ?

CS worker steal. I allow the city state to give me a slap on the wrist by shooting me once before I make peace. I don't see worker stealing as an exploit because your penalty is erasing quests from that city state, setting your influence with them to rock bottom, and possibly getting a warmonger penalty with civs. I do not exploit lump gold + DOW against the AI or open borders silliness. If my intent is hostile I will not beat around the bush by peacefully getting in the way of a city getting captured. I bring the pain or I don't get in the way

The only "trick" I use is reloading the game when I feel like one of the AI's cheats overtly gave them an opportunity to do something unfair that could not be anticipated such as the occasional time when they rush-buy a unit and they get to skip a turn of waiting to immediately come out and kill a highly promoted unit. 85% of the time I just let it happen but at times enough is enough. I will also reload upon misclicking, which I feel is a no brainer.

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? What amount of science do you want in other victory condition games on a per turn basis?

My benchmark is generally growing as much as possible in my best cities and building the NC and all science buildings ASAP. I generally play domination and diplomatic games but for science and culture games I just ravenously build the associated buildings and work the specialist slots. I am still learning the fine points of the late game tech race as well as high difficulty culture games. That's why I tend to go out and conquer/nuke the capital of my greatest competitor in those games.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Is it necessary to plan to not only defend but to then conquer no matter the victory condition? Are puppets just too valuable?

I consider this very necessary, not for your own outputs but to do as much damage to possible runaways. I believe that even in peaceful games you need to have some ability to exact hurt against a runaway or you'll likely be beaten by a quick AI steam-roll into science victory.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era?

Hmm well on Immortal I feel like you can get away with having a little more of a 50/50 split of melee and ranged, and that you also have the option of picking between getting horses or catapults before the world starts to move on without you. I do that 50/50 distribution more for realism and the ability to occupy ZOC than sheer superiority, however. Regarding UU's I always build plenty of them regardless of what's going on.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? Do you usually decide if you’ll bother with a religion once you see your start location or will you build an initial early shrine no matter what and try?

I always build a shrine because even if there is no good faith related pantheon choice or what not, grabbing a pantheon like faith healers will help you for a solid 100 turns or more even if you never found. Also, grabbing something that gives growth, culture or a tiny bit of happiness is better than nothing. If you don't get a religion it will take you very little effort later to save up for a great person purchase by having accumulated faith for the whole game. Would you pay 1000 gold to grab a great person? That's essentially what you're doing.

But on the whole I find getting a really good religion on Immortal difficulty to be very doable.



If I could give one overall general piece of advice that's not necessarily directed at the OP, it's that a little role-play at higher difficulties is okay, but you generally can't pigeonhole yourself by saying "I'm not into the whole warmonger thing" or something similar which it seems like a lot of people talk about on these forums. If you want to win the easiest you have to do what real societies - what real wonder building, technological societies have done for centuries. Fight!

Coup city states! Pillage. Arrange people to go to war in a way that is to your advantage. Conquer the weak and undermine the strong. Go out there and scratch eyes and kick 'em where it hurts. You have to roleplay reality as opposed to a fictitious, self-inhibited game. It's serious business. People can roleplay to make the game more challenging or interesting but should not limit themselves upon moving up in difficulty.

 

[wigwam]

I play on Immortal and win about half the games I start. Generally a diplo/science builder type; I don't usually have the patience to finish a domination game.

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game?

I don't. I always play Standard/Standard or Small/Standard, usually Fractal, sometimes Continents or Pangaea. No special settings otherwise—I never use raging barbs, never change the sea level, never fiddle with the number of AIs. Playing on Fractal most of the time means that I generally have at least some opportunities to use all of a civ's abilities; I've won with every civ except the Huns on Immortal, all on Fractal/Continents/Pangaea.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location?

Don't restart on the first turn. If your settler starts in a really awful spot, move your settler; there's probably a better site nearby. Even if your capital ends up in a suboptimal spot, maybe you'll find an amazing one for your second city. Maybe there are two natural wonders within spitting distance of your starting location. Maybe there are two religious City-States. Maybe all the AIs got worse starts than you! You never know.

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into?

Thirty turns in is a little early to give up—you won't really know how much of a mess you're in until you've met everybody. Having two nasty neighbors isn't necessarily the end of the world; what's going to sink you on Immortal is somebody on the other side of the map (Hiawatha, Maria Theresa, Napoleon) completely running away with the game. Two eras ahead of you in tech, three times as many cities, giant army—it can be fun trying to take them on, but sometimes it's a lost cause. If you made it to Education and got your Universities up in a timely fashion, and some AI is still just completely schooling you (no pun intended), it might be time to pack it in.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? […] I have traded my lux for an AI’s lump sum of gold when I know they might DoW me as I assume the AI takes that kind of thing into account when it decides to DoW (but is that really the case?).

I don't think the AI does take that into account, actually. I definitely don't do the lump sum/DoW thing, which is a huge exploit and is thankfully going away in BNW. I don't swipe an early worker from a City-State—feels a little exploit-y to me—but I will occasionally nab one from a civ I expect to have trouble with anyway. I'll definitely pounce on an unescorted (or weakly escorted) settler that seems to be heading towards my territory.

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition?

No, although maybe I should. Generally I just try to push my cities to their limits and hope for the best.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory?

It helps. They're probably going to attack you sooner or later; instead of having their presence be a drain on your attention and resources, why not turn them into a productive part of your empire? Puppet cities have lower-than-normal science and culture production, but every little bit helps (and they'll certainly crank out plenty of gold). Once you've got all the National Wonders you want, think about annexing a few (well-developed cities might actually have the buildings you need for a NW already, or will be able to build them in just a few turns)—capital sites, at least, tend to be super productive, and the AI does stumble into another good city location once in a while. Don't go out of your way to conquer your neighbors, don't overextend yourself, don't try to prosecute a war against an enemy that's going to take forever to kill (Great Wall, Himeji, mountains and rough terrain all over the place), but if you have a good opportunity to take out a relatively weak neighbor (who's not going to be a worthwhile trade/RA partner), go for it.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era?

I don't usually build that many troops, actually—more like 4-6 ranged and 1-2 horse units, plus at least two Triremes and then 4-6 Galleasses if I can spare the hammers (depends a little on the map, obviously). If I'm not waging early war, I definitely plan for the long term (thus CBs instead of War Elephants, in your example)—exceptions should be made for the truly, dementedly OP UUs like the Keshik and Camel Archer.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore?

You can always found a religion on Immortal. Always. Any civ, any start. That includes the Byzantines, contrary to the whining you sometimes hear about their "useless" UA. You might have to make sacrifices to do it (settling your second city in a suboptimal spot near a faith-giving Natural Wonder, blowing twenty turns on Stonehenge, throwing gold at a religious CS), but, in my opinion, it's worth it. Tithe alone can make a huge, huge difference in the late game, even if you haven't spread your religion very effectively. Religious Community is amazing for tall civs. I usually go Scout, Monument, Shrine—sometimes Scout, Scout, Shrine or straight from Scout to Shrine with a few turns on a Worker in between.

 

[cmorganuk]

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? I've started increasing map size and decreasing the number of AI Civs/CSs when I plan to go wide because otherwise there simply isn't room for more than 3-4 cities before you are pushing into borders. I'll also make sure my map has water/islands when playing a civ like Polynesia or Carthage and would pick Pangaea for a ground based militaristic civ like Germany. But so far I haven’t gone beyond these tweaks- I don’t play around with raging barbarians for civs like Germany or Aztec, I don’t disable certain victory conditions that I don’t plan to pursue, and I don’t play around with age/sea level/etc to get certain types of terrain. Are these things necessary in order to expect to win more than every now and then?

I only change the map type, I never both playing around with climate, rainfall etc. I don't reduce standard number of players on a standard map size either. I know you want to go wide, but the AI will go wider, better, so you are disadvantaging yourself.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart? I used to never restart but now that I’m losing a lot more I wonder if I am sometimes playing games that I am at too heavy of a disadvantage in. I know things like having a plantation lux located in marsh are bad because you have to ping-pong between techs to get to it which can seriously slow you down. Does that situation call for an immediate restart? Is there a certain threshold for food or production tiles? At least 2 unique lux’s nearby? What is your personal criteria?

I will reload maps until what I would consider a decent start, which is usually decent food for my capital and 3-4 lux fairly close to settle. The way I see it is, without either of these you can't grow and you're screwed. I'm trying to continue with more difficult situations, but if you're handicapped at the start, that can snowball and by mid game you can be miles behind and thats no fun.

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into? Like scouting to find that you’re between the Huns and Mongols? Thus far I’ve been just trying no matter what until it becomes exceedingly clear I will lose (and even then I sometimes keep playing just because) but I wonder if that is sort of a waste of time.

I usually use the first 20-30 turns to scout and see if I want to continue the map, but this will be far more to do with the layout of the map itself than my opponents.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? I rarely steal workers from CS or AI civs in the early game because it seems somewhat gimmicky to me, especially if my plan was to play a tall/peaceful science or culture game (though if I’m the Huns/Mongols/etc then I’m totally fine with doing so since it fits their persona). I never do the lump sum of gold for lux then DoW trick as I see that as a no-consequence exploit. I have traded my lux for an AI’s lump sum of gold when I know they might DoW me as I assume the AI takes that kind of thing into account when it decides to DoW (but is that really the case?).

I use all the tricks. They have enough stupid advantages as it is.

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? If you’re going for a science vic is there a number of beakers you plan to have by turn 100, 200, etc? Same for culture? What amount of science do you want in other victory condition games on a per turn basis?

Not really, all games are different. A conquering start may be slow science wise to start with but them steam roller, where as a peaceful high science start may stall a bit later. And its all relative to how your opponents are doing anyway.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Whenever I am going tall I typically plan to play relatively peaceful, mostly just defending myself when I am DoW’d. Is it necessary to plan to not only defend but to then conquer no matter the victory condition? Are puppets just too valuable?

As above, all situations are diffeent. If you have space then there's no need. If you don't then you'll probably need to. I like to war, so I tend to prepare to take out my closest guy with CB's regardless.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era? I just played as Rome and may have put myself at a disadvantage because I wanted to see how effective legions and their catapult replacements were. I’m now playing as India and planned to spam war elephants as a replacement for the CBs but obviously I will miss out when they aren’t upgraded into XBows.

Not very. I never chase the early game UU's because, as you found, you'll often put yourself behind. Long bows, chu-ko-nu's, kesiks, camel archers, definately worth bee lining.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? I’ve found that my faith generation just doesn’t keep up unless I get gold/silver or wine/incense lux’s or something like desert folklore as a pantheon. Do you usually decide if you’ll bother with a religion once you see your start location or will you build an initial early shrine no matter what and try?

Faith generation dependant. You aren't going to maintain a religion off shrines and temples alone.

 

[crdvis16]

Thanks for all the great responses guys! I think this info will help me gauge my play and will definitely make me better (and hopefully others will benefit too). It's especially good to hear that most games are winnable with normal or even weak start locations so I will plan to play games through rather than restart on turn 0.

 

[Falconiano]

I started playing on Immortal and after some initial success (won my first two as Inca and Celts and another as Germany later) I have lost a number of games in a row. I'm trying to get better and I find I have a lot of questions about how I should play so I was hoping I could poll others that play Immortal+ and get a better idea about some of these things:

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? I've started increasing map size and decreasing the number of AI Civs/CSs when I plan to go wide because otherwise there simply isn't room for more than 3-4 cities before you are pushing into borders. I'll also make sure my map has water/islands when playing a civ like Polynesia or Carthage and would pick Pangaea for a ground based militaristic civ like Germany. But so far I haven’t gone beyond these tweaks- I don’t play around with raging barbarians for civs like Germany or Aztec, I don’t disable certain victory conditions that I don’t plan to pursue, and I don’t play around with age/sea level/etc to get certain types of terrain. Are these things necessary in order to expect to win more than every now and then?

I prefer Pangea with 12 AIs because I found this setting diminishes the "runaway" issue.
AIs keep each other in check more, so it's unlikely you're left against 2 civs by industrial or stuff like that.
This allows more alliances, more twists, more fun.

As for VC go for what you prefer.
I personally don't consider anything beyond domination to be a victory because you actually didn't "beat" the other civs as I see it.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart? I used to never restart but now that I’m losing a lot more I wonder if I am sometimes playing games that I am at too heavy of a disadvantage in. I know things like having a plantation lux located in marsh are bad because you have to ping-pong between techs to get to it which can seriously slow you down. Does that situation call for an immediate restart? Is there a certain threshold for food or production tiles? At least 2 unique lux’s nearby? What is your personal criteria?

I say scout the map a bit first, if it's -really- badly seeded then decide.
Still, once you're really really used to deity your starting bias isn't much of a factor resource-wise, it's more a matter of where other civs are etc.

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into? Like scouting to find that you’re between the Huns and Mongols? Thus far I’ve been just trying no matter what until it becomes exceedingly clear I will lose (and even then I sometimes keep playing just because) but I wonder if that is sort of a waste of time.

Quadruple DoW very early while in central position is usually my surrender.
Else I actually enjoy war, that means my bows get +range double hit sooner thus allowing me to conquer faster.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? I rarely steal workers from CS or AI civs in the early game because it seems somewhat gimmicky to me, especially if my plan was to play a tall/peaceful science or culture game (though if I’m the Huns/Mongols/etc then I’m totally fine with doing so since it fits their persona). I never do the lump sum of gold for lux then DoW trick as I see that as a no-consequence exploit. I have traded my lux for an AI’s lump sum of gold when I know they might DoW me as I assume the AI takes that kind of thing into account when it decides to DoW (but is that really the case?).

My only trick is to steal settlers they make after city #2, and steal an early CS worker.
If you watch LPs most good players do that.
My scout or horse usually does that. I get free worker, the neighbor loses a good chunk of production/gold early and you greatly undermine their expansion.
This is especially true if they play to plop their cities near your borders (this should be removed imo, it's just stupid).

Undermining your neighbor before it's too late is important.

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? If you’re going for a science vic is there a number of beakers you plan to have by turn 100, 200, etc? Same for culture? What amount of science do you want in other victory condition games on a per turn basis?

I prioritize Education, Scientific Theory (sometimes I delay this a bit for Dyna if warmongering a lot), Flight/Oil, Plastics.
For me it's ALL cities with Lib/filled Unis/filled Schools/filled Labs, even more so if Korea.
Usually build academies pre-Scientific Theory.
In deity this is just a requirement to keep up with the AI, in any speed/map setting.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Whenever I am going tall I typically plan to play relatively peaceful, mostly just defending myself when I am DoW’d. Is it necessary to plan to not only defend but to then conquer no matter the victory condition? Are puppets just too valuable?

Conquering wonders or razing close neighbors for their tiles is all good imo.
Plus if you attack a city of a CiV you just destroyed the army of, they will give you a ton of stuff for you to not take it; retailatory attacks are all good.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era? I just played as Rome and may have put myself at a disadvantage because I wanted to see how effective legions and their catapult replacements were. I’m now playing as India and planned to spam war elephants as a replacement for the CBs but obviously I will miss out when they aren’t upgraded into XBows.

My style is 8 CBs 1-2 horses.
Non-mounted Melees are flawed vs cities covered in forest, while horses can give your troops line of sight and kill stuff without risking much.
Let alone that if you get "heal every turn" with horse you can attack and retreat on your territory to heal up, which is very strong.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? I’ve found that my faith generation just doesn’t keep up unless I get gold/silver or wine/incense lux’s or something like desert folklore as a pantheon. Do you usually decide if you’ll bother with a religion once you see your start location or will you build an initial early shrine no matter what and try?

Bleh. Unless ruins give me something I will lose the religion race on deity (not on immortal tho, I recall getting religion every single time there) unless I'm Ethiopia/Celts and the like.

I know some players like to try a SH or something, but that just doesn't fit in my strat.
I need units early on, and I prefer Oracle as a wonder.

Generally speaking tho, unless you're on all-flat terrains, chop your stuff.
Do the hammer math and chop the rest. Chop Oracle, chop your secondary cities' long buildings.
Double-chop wonders.
Some say you can't get wonders on Deity but that's because they don't double chop.
Chopping units/settlers is ok too if you have plenty of hills and forests.
I even chop before luxies if I have enough happiness.

 

[Leviat]

1) How much do you tailor the map to your Civ and planned victory condition when playing a normal/serious game? I've started increasing map size and decreasing the number of AI Civs/CSs when I plan to go wide because otherwise there simply isn't room for more than 3-4 cities before you are pushing into borders. I'll also make sure my map has water/islands when playing a civ like Polynesia or Carthage and would pick Pangaea for a ground based militaristic civ like Germany.

I matched my civ with the map when I was moving up to a new level, but once you are accustomed to the difficulty level I think it's more fun/challenging to just random/random the civ and the map.

Increasing the map size/decrease the number of civs might make things easier if you plan on going extremely wide/ICS with a civ like the Maya but it will probably benefit the AI more than you.

2) How many times will you restart on turn 0 in order to get a good start location? What are your criteria before you’ll decide to play and not restart?

Again, I think it's okay to do when you are first moving up to a new level, but once you have played a couple games you shouldn't stack the deck in your favor. It's very fulfilling to win a game even when everything goes wrong!

3) Are there situations that will lead you to just restart a game you’re ~30 turns into?

No, I don't think so. Keep in mind this doesn't mean I finish every game I start. If I had a faster computer, maybe I would, but if I am at turn 200 and it's clear that the game is nothing special, I usually just stop playing instead of sitting through the god-awful load times.

4) How much do you use some of the ‘tricks’ in civ? I rarely steal workers from CS or AI civs in the early game because it seems somewhat gimmicky to me, especially if my plan was to play a tall/peaceful science or culture game (though if I’m the Huns/Mongols/etc then I’m totally fine with doing so since it fits their persona).

Most games, I steal a worker from a nearby CS. It's not always necessary, but nearly always. The diplomatic hit is minimal and the extra worker is a huge boon for the civilization. I haven't gotten into the early DOW to steal AI workers/settlers yet, but that would probably improve my finish times.

Lump-sum trading and then DOW is cheap and you shouldn't do it. You won't be able to do it in BNW anyway so it's best not to get used to that.

5) Do you have benchmarks for science, culture, population size, # of cities, etc depending on your victory condition? If you’re going for a science vic is there a number of beakers you plan to have by turn 100, 200, etc?

I guess I have a few, and it also depends on the civilization I am playing as. If I am Babylon, I will have over 100 science by turn 100 regardless of whatever else happens. In general, if I don't have over 130 science by turn 130 then things aren't going well. But it all depends- sometimes the land is bad or you get an early double DOW and there are more pressing concerns. Also if it's an ICS game or something science can lag.

Still, I'd say 130 beakers by turn 130 is the minimum I expect to have regardless of the victory condition I am shooting for or the way I am playing. And then 500+ bpt by turn 200 if going for a science or diplo victory. I havent done a culture victory in so long that I can't remember how much science I would have! Probably similar, since getting to the good culture wonders is key, and that requires a lot of science.

If not playing peacefully (often a good choice if you had bad land/not a lot of land) then I should conquer a capital turn 80 at the latest. Ideally around turn 65 with a CB rush.

6) How necessary is it to conquer nearby civs when not going for a domination victory? Whenever I am going tall I typically plan to play relatively peaceful, mostly just defending myself when I am DoW’d.

Not at all necessary. If you stay small and sign lots of RAs then you don't need war. My first Deity win was just 3 cities with Babylon and I don't think my science ever even reached 1000 bpt. By constantly signing RAs I was still able to finish by turn 254 even though I didn't conquer a single city.

7) How much will you vary from the normal “6-8 CBs and 2 melee” setup if the civ you are playing has UU in that era?

For early wars, almost no variation for me. Unless you count using horses to take the cities, and not a melee unit. There are only a couple civs with which I will change this. With the Aztecs I will have more melee units because Jaguars are strong and make Amazing swordsmen that are actually useful. With the Ottomans I will have a few more melee units that I am very protective of because the Janissary is so good.

The couple times I've played with the Celts I used their Pictish Warrior, and it is quite good, but that was more for novelty and I think I'd have been better off with more archery units.

Oh, and obviously if I am the Huns I use their Horse Archers.

8) How much do you even bother with religion anymore? I’ve found that my faith generation just doesn’t keep up unless I get gold/silver or wine/incense lux’s or something like desert folklore as a pantheon.

Completely situational on religion. If I draw a good religion civ (Maya, Ethiopia, Celts, Arabia w/ DF) I will get one. Otherwise it's only if I can get Desert Folklore, find a faith natural wonder (rare) or happen to befriend a religious CS. On Immortal but not Deity, Wine/Incense, Gold/Silver, Marble/Stone will do it for me.