Stuck on immortal

[alfred_noobel]

Hi, this is the first time I post here, or any game forum whatsoever. I tried Civ 5, but BtS just seems to have more "balls", don't know how to explain it better.

I've beaten Emperor with all victory conditions and many "suboptimal" leaders (standard size & speed), thanks to the tips on this forum (basic stuff + funny things like Golden Age chain, State Property-Kremlin-Workshop-Cavalry whip whip whip whip etc). My favourite moment is 40 cities whipping cavalries v.s. pitiful enemy infantry (Not sure if they can take mech infantry? )

0. When going mass cuir/cavalry (without siege), is it better to have flank or combat (+pinch) advances? For example, cavalry attacking rifleman in a city has about 2% victory chance, and at that point 50% retreat seems very attractive.

But the actual problem is that I'm struggling on immortal, haven't won a single game yet. The closest was 50% of area, but the leading AI had vassalled the rest and I couldn't continue. On the first glance the difficulty jump doesn't seem so high. I can get 6-7 cities with 100-200 beakers around 1 AD, have a tech lead and everything looks like on emperor.

Assume standard size, speed, pangaea for now.

1. Is it necessary to conquer one or two civs in the BCs? (Unless I can peacefully expand to 10 cities with gems+gold+infinite food)

2. Almost everytime I declare on someone, or someone declares on me, they have a "friend" attacking me at the same time . They don't even necessarily share faith. Am I missing some diplomacy stuff? Should I always gift an AI to backstab the target or what? I think this doesn't happen on emperor.

3. How do you choose between trebs and cuirs? Apart from available resources, of course. I guess further teching is not an option?

4. ... and my basic game may be bad, but we can get into that later

 

[elitetroops]

0. When going mass cuir/cavalry (without siege), is it better to have flank or combat (+pinch) advances? For example, cavalry attacking rifleman in a city has about 2% victory chance, and at that point 50% retreat seems very attractive.

1. Is it necessary to conquer one or two civs in the BCs? (Unless I can peacefully expand to 10 cities with gems+gold+infinite food)

2. Almost everytime I declare on someone, or someone declares on me, they have a "friend" attacking me at the same time . They don't even necessarily share faith. Am I missing some diplomacy stuff? Should I always gift an AI to backstab the target or what? I think this doesn't happen on emperor.

3. How do you choose between trebs and cuirs? Apart from available resources, of course. I guess further teching is not an option?

4. ... and my basic game may be bad, but we can get into that later

0. I like to go with combat line. This gives you a better chance of wounding the top defender, which gives significantly better odds for the next attacker. I know some will disagree on this.

1. Not necessary. It depends on the map. If your neighbor is easy to conquer, or if it's the only option to expand, then probably go for it. But sometimes peaceful expansion can be just as good.

2. They are bribed to war. All leaders have diplo thresholds for when they can be bribed, which you can look up in Civ Illustrated. For an AI to bribe a second AI on you, this second AI must like him enough, dislike you enough, and be a bit backwards so that the first AI has something to pay the bribe with. Also, to be willing to be bribed to war, he must not be at war already, nor be plotting war. When you see a potential bribe, there are different options for how to deal with it. If the potential bribe AI is pleased towards you, you can beg some gold for a peace treaty. If he isn't, but your power rating is close to his or larger, you can demand gold (and take a diplo hit) for a peace treaty. If none of this is possible, you can give/sell this civ the techs he doesn't have, but your war target has, then he cannot pay for a bribe. If even this isn't possible, there is also the option of bribing someone else to attack him, or bribe him to attack someone else. Or then you declare on him yourself, at least this halves the duration he refuses to talk, compared to if he declares on you.

3. All depends on the map. I rarely go with trebs, usually HAs or cats early, then cuirs/cav or cannons later. Lately I've been trying to do some treb wars as well, to avoid stagnating expansion in the medieval era.

4. We all have flaws.

 

[MegaLurker]

The biggest differences between Emperor and Immortal are:

1) Barbs that can actually end your game if you're not ready, it seems you don't have an issue with that.

2) Faster global tech pace that can require a better understanding of tech brokering. Perhaps you haven't adapted your game in this way.

3) Diplomacy is a lot more important. This one definitely sounds like your main problem. You have to pay attention to the relations between AIs, not just between you and the AIs. When choosing a target you need to consider not just who is most convenient (closest, weakest etc). You need to see who will be able to bribe friends into war against you, based on their relations and whether they have anything (tech, generally) to pay the bribe. Keeping in mind that bribing someone into a war that has already started is significantly cheaper than bribing them to start a new war.

As to your questions:

1) No. Even 6-7 cities can get a Cuirassier breakout done, for example. If you have good land and are efficient. But HA rush is certainly very powerful on Immortal, almost unfairly so. It's the economic recovery that is the tricky part.

2) See above.

3) That's a complicated question. You have to judge based on so many things. The tech situation, your economy, available land, how safe you are from being plotted against...

 

[Gumbolt]

Nothing wrong with trebs and mace and using feudalism to chain vassel a map as long as you are ahead tech wise. I had a game recently on immortal where med units were enough for the map. Cuirs are good fun. These can be 2-3 pop whipped and don't need any other units. Obviously you need to reach cuirs before the Ai all have rifles or grenadiers. I normally go combat on cuirs too.

Diplomacy can be tough. Remember to gift AI resources. Use open borders. If need be gift techs. Also use fav civics. You could also gift a city if you really want to get +4 diplo points. Of course you need to settle a really pointless city that they would accept. Adopting religions on immortal is the biggest thing that will upset neighbours. All these things you have to decide and base your decisions on the game. E.g Toku as a neighbour nearly always means he will attack someone.

Nothing wrong with an aggressive start if you lack land. Obviously have a plan if you don't plan early wars. If I am struggling for good land early on war is often a good choice. Then the choice is normally axe, HA, or catapults/swords/axes. Impi are good for warfare. Great for pillaging resources and stealing workers.

 

[Seraiel]

Hi, this is the first time I post here, or any game forum whatsoever. I tried Civ 5, but BtS just seems to have more "balls", don't know how to explain it better.

I've beaten Emperor with all victory conditions and many "suboptimal" leaders (standard size & speed), thanks to the tips on this forum (basic stuff + funny things like Golden Age chain, State Property-Kremlin-Workshop-Cavalry whip whip whip whip etc). My favourite moment is 40 cities whipping cavalries v.s. pitiful enemy infantry (Not sure if they can take mech infantry? )

0. When going mass cuir/cavalry (without siege), is it better to have flank or combat (+pinch) advances? For example, cavalry attacking rifleman in a city has about 2% victory chance, and at that point 50% retreat seems very attractive.

Combine Cavalries with Airships and Spy-revolts.

But the actual problem is that I'm struggling on immortal, haven't won a single game yet. The closest was 50% of area, but the leading AI had vassalled the rest and I couldn't continue. On the first glance the difficulty jump doesn't seem so high. I can get 6-7 cities with 100-200 beakers around 1 AD, have a tech lead and everything looks like on emperor.

Assume standard size, speed, pangaea for now.

1. Is it necessary to conquer one or two civs in the BCs? (Unless I can peacefully expand to 10 cities with gems+gold+infinite food)

10 cities are not needed, I've won medieval wars from 3 cities. It depends a lot on which strengths you have, if you are able to backstab a target so have a good diplo-game and build a strong combined stack out of Elephants / Macement + Catapults / Trebs then a lot is possible, but it's not easy.
Peaceful expansion also works, 6-7 cities is a great position at 1AD, 100 are not much, 200 are good for Immortal and ok-good even for Deity.

2. Almost everytime I declare on someone, or someone declares on me, they have a "friend" attacking me at the same time . They don't even necessarily share faith. Am I missing some diplomacy stuff? Should I always gift an AI to backstab the target or what? I think this doesn't happen on emperor.

AIs bribe everybody they can from my experience. If an AI has a tech and the necessary diplomatic relationships then the chances for bribes are very very high in the first few turns but then sink quite fast so if i. e. having a 10T peace-treaty it's mostly unlikely that an AI will still bribe someone against onesself or against someone else.

3. How do you choose between trebs and cuirs? Apart from available resources, of course. I guess further teching is not an option?

Further teching is definitely an option. Rifles and Cavs are much stronger than Cuirrs but Cuirrs are sometimes enough to win and starting war earlier is often better. In my games I often fast-teched to Cavs directly but in the best games I attacked with Cuirrs and only needed few Cavalries later. It depeneds also a lot on the map-settings, winning a Huge map without Cavalries if it's a non-Marathon-speed is not easy until plain stupid. Cavalries are a great unit, imo. they're almost twice as good as Cuirrs because of the much higher withdrawl and the defenders are often not stronger so i. e. Muskets which aren't really stronger than Pikes so Cavs don't cost that much more but have enormously better odds.

 

[alfred_noobel]

Nice, thanks for suggestions. I have definitely neglected most diplomacy so far, apart from choosing a suitable religion. Also, i rarely care about espionage, unless i have (Stone and/or philo) Great Wall. These things are much harder to quantify than the other economy choices :/

Edit. Damn phone

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Wrong thread.