The Immortal Challenge 2: For the Fatherland

[UncleJJ]

Looking good.

The cost in pop in Berlin was offset by the extra turns the free specialists were given to the other cities and Berlin got its free citizen next turn too... so lose 5 pop but gain one back immediately and grow back to full size in a few turns by working food instead of running food specialists.

 

[Rancid Sushi]

Thanks for razing San Francisco. That made my day.

 

[aelf]

The cost in pop in Berlin was offset by the extra turns the free specialists were given to the other cities and Berlin got its free citizen next turn too... so lose 5 pop but gain one back immediately and grow back to full size in a few turns by working food instead of running food specialists.

Good point.

Thanks for razing San Francisco. That made my day.

Why?

I'll post the second part later. I need a good sleep first

 

[axident]

Good point.



Why?

I'll post the second part later. I need a good sleep first

Ten gold says that the SF-hater is a Republican.

 

[Rancid Sushi]

^^I don't think you have to be a Republican in order to be totally weirded out by the whole SF culture. Personally, I prefer to distance myself as much as possible from politics because there's so much pointless hatred on both side.

aelf: I like these threads. I've learned a lot about diplomacy from these Immortal challenges. Keep up the good work.

 

[axident]

^^I don't think you have to be a Republican in order to be totally weirded out by the whole SF culture. Personally, I prefer to distance myself as much as possible from politics because there's so much pointless hatred on both side.

aelf: I like these threads. I've learned a lot about diplomacy from these Immortal challenges. Keep up the good work.

I'm weirded out by some of the stuff that goes on in SF, but I wouldn't want to raze it outright. Did I get 10 gold???

 

[Rancid Sushi]

Good point, even though you raze a city, its culture still lingers. Is that Los Angeles I see in the corner of the map? You won't have to worry about illegal immigrants all the way out there.

SF is always the first city to experience war weariness. You know GW Bush isn't actually a spiritual leader otherwise he would switch over to Police State, Nationalism, and Slavery to whip off all those pesky protestors.

 

[axident]

Good point, even though you raze a city, its culture still lingers. Is that Los Angeles I see in the corner of the map? You won't have to worry about illegal immigrants all the way out there.

SF is always the first city to experience war weariness. You know GW Bush isn't actually a spiritual leader otherwise he would switch over to Police State, Nationalism, and Slavery to whip off all those pesky protestors.

:sound of crickets chirping in response to your "jokes":

 

[Rancid Sushi]

Maybe the crickets are the only ones smart enough to get it.

 

[EEE_BOY]

i believe Atlanta has already fell to Celt before u attack philadelphia, so the mini buffer u describe in the last post can't hold now. have u changed the civic? if not, i think capitulate Americans after taking philadelphia and quickly beeline to your UU and bombers while focus on civilian builds. build only defensive unit before u get your UU.u could change to caste system because of two free specialists. the war will end once u vassel America(is this right? ) to prevent Celts growing too large. and Washington, Boston and another city( can't remmember) could be a buffer when u attack Celts. vessel has three cities is better than having two cities, because once the war between u and Celts broke out , one of the American city might quickly fell , Washington will soon get out captulation as he lose half of his land. (this happened to my game) this is not good when he decide to captulate to another civ instead of u. your continent is large enough for domination win. u don't have to take every city. changeing to builder type as the assembly plant is online and build improvements in every city. tech fast is important right now. build panzer in your west point city and bomber in the rest cities. bomber + panzer = fast domination.
i d like to hear aelf's better plan

 

[aelf]

[continued from the previous page]

As the war began, we got our next GP from Madrid, and he was a prophet. Well, nothing for him but to build our second shrine:

On hindsight, I should have saved him for a Golden Age when we are building up a huge army of Panzers. Oh, well. A shrine has its uses too.

On the war front, Washington fell quickly to our SOD, which now included a full force of cannons (and a veteran catapult):

It was a little too close to the Celtic border for comfort, but a solution came shortly after:

I did cringe on getting a second GA, but I guess it meant we can better secure the American capital. He did not arrive in time to shorten the period of revolt, but the culture bomb did make the presence of our culture in the area comparable to the Celts'.

As you can probably tell from all those knights Brennus was sending, our AI ally was having a very characteristic pillage-fest. It's almost as if they did it to spite us. Not even the roads remained when we captured Seattle:

Anyway, as Washington was emerging from revolt, we made a civic switch:

This did push up unhappiness to new heights, requiring 70% on the cultural slider to appease, but it was necessary if we were to have a good shot at keeping Washington productive and revolt-free. The unhappy, starving population of the former American capital could be whipped to build a library and a temple instantly, which would produce some useful culture quickly. Seattle could use the whip on its starving citizens as well. All in all, I think the switch was worth our while. Unfortunately, due to the size of our empire, we could not switch two civics with one turn of anarchy. Otherwise, it would be the perfect chance to switch to Free Religion when we switch out of Slavery again.

The last of the main American cities, Philadelphia, feel soon after:

The last American city that we could see, Los Angeles, was a fishing town stuck in the northwest corner of our continent. There was no point in going after that city, especially since Washington might capitulate to Brennus anytime, so we drew up a peace agreement with the American leader:

As usual, the AI still wouldn't give us any techs to save its life

With the end of WW, we could resume normal research speed. In fact, I raised the slider to 100% to get to Assembly Line asap, which we did 3 turns later.

The tech situation doesn't look too good at this point:

We only have Assembly Line on the most advanced AIs (and Democracy on Washington), even poor isolated Louis, who seemed to have caught up remarkably well. This worries me. I don't know what stage of development Brennus would be in by the time we get Panzers rolling. Knowing the AI's love for gunships, our UU might prove to be nearly useless. We have several key techs to aim for: Industrialism for the ability to build Panzers, Combustion for oil, Flight and Radio for bombers and maybe Artillery for SoD-combatting (we also have a few veteran cannons to upgrade). We would probably want to get Biology at the side as well. By the time we get all of these, who knows if the Celts wouldn't already have won the space race? That's a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but the AI tech pace is quite ridiculous.

The power graph isn't too encouraging as well:

Can anyone say 'cheat' with me? The AI is able to maintain and upgrade huge, useless armies and still progress so quickly. Still rooting for better AI with no reduction to their sick bonuses? It's bad enough now.

The map of our continent:

It may just be big enough for a domination win, assuming we vassalize a much-reduced Brennus (if we can beat him) and Huayna.

And the map of the other continent, now seen in comparison to ours:

Yes, there's the small and pointless American city of Portland up there, and the one-tile Inca city of Vitcos. It's amusing to see where the AI would settle when there's almost no land left.

So, where do we go from here? I think researching Railroads first makes sense, since it leads to Combustion anyway and would allow us to begin railroading our rather large empire, which also has the side effect of giving a production boost to mines and lumbermills. After that, we would have to begin another long trudge, this time to Industrialism. That should be followed by Combustion, and then Flight and Radio. I don't know where to place Biology. Maybe it can be researched in the middle of the road to Industrialism, right after Scientific Method.

And, since we're in Slavery, should we whip out some infantry units to give our power rating a quick boost before switching out? They would be needed for the coming war anyway.

The showdown with Brennus will be another challenging phase in the game, and probably the last. If we get through it, the game is ours. Hopefully, we would be able to outproduce Brennus and win by brute strength. At least our UB, the quick-building Assembly Plant, helps with that.

 

[kniteowl]

Communism for State Property will Help a lot too especially with a huge Empire.

Is there a method to Brennus or HC to war each other and Flank Brennus while his Army is still on the southern end of his empire.

Why not trade Rifling to Wang Kong for 110 Gold? his master already has it... no harm done.

I really can't think of anything else...

 

[UncleJJ]

An interesting round. I looked quickly at the savegame and Brennus seems to be the next victim, but he is immensely dangerous at present. He has rifles and cavalry and about 4 times our power.

We are stuck having to research everything ourselves and with only about 800 beakers per turn that takes time. Izzy is Pleased with us but still won't trade. I've seen somewhere that we need to get her Freindly and then WFYABTA doesn't apply... how I bet you wish you could un-raze those two cities now Also you could give her some resources to get the "you have provided us with resources" diplo bonus... say horses and corn to start with. That will make her stronger anyway (and she can build us some cavalry ) to help with distracting Brennus.

And, since we're in Slavery, should we whip out some infantry units to give our power rating a quick boost before switching out? They would be needed for the coming war anyway.

Good idea, and that would stop Brennus looking at us with a greedy intention, but infantry need Rifling and that is hard to trade for right now ... maybe research that before Railroad?

We are certainly churning out the GP at a fierce rate right now A pity they all seem to be the wrong type. I find GPs difficult to use at this stage of the game. Would settling the GA in Washington and perhaps New York have been better? More gold and representation bonus and 28 culture / turn soon pops the borders all the way up to the 500 one. That seems as good as the one time 4000 cultural injection to me. The GE in Berlin offers 1334 beakers towards railroad, would that be better than half a golden age a long time in the future? The GS will give 2000 beakers for Sci Method when you decide to go for Biology.

But before you do that I recommend building at least one Islamic monastry in a city that can. Seattle has the Islamic shrine and that could either provide money or extra happiness/ culture under Free Religion (if you ever adopt that). At present Buddism is doing well keeping Izzy happy and running Pacifism.

Wallstreet in Madrid would be nice and needs a couple more banks. You might capture some or you could rush a couple.

One final question, why do you build temples in some cities, like Washington for instance? It doesn't need the happiness and temples only give 1 culture for 80 hammers.

 

[carl corey]

Still rooting for better AI with no reduction to their sick bonuses? It's bad enough now.

Yes, still want Better AI to be included. I enjoy more playing against a good AI on Noble than a "cheating" AI on Monarch.

Good turnset by the way. I've had the "pillaging" problem before; a war "ally" destroying everything in their path... Not funny at all.

As for the rest of the campaign, I'd say you most certainly need fighters and bombers. Lots and lots of them. That's pretty much the only way I can see wars still going on. Artillery is pretty useless when the AI has ten times your force. When you're inside their borders you'll be attacked before the artillery can do anything. And spies are also useful to repeatedly pillage oil wells, so as not to allow the AI to build Gunships. Of course, that also means they won't be able to build tanks so your Panzers won't be that effective, but c'est la vie. The good news is that without oil they also can't build Fighters & Bombers of their own.

It would be good if you had transport&marine combos to take out the coastal cities, but I really don't think you'll have that much time to prepare for the war. I fear the AI will also heave Mechanized Infantry by then, and without air or artillery support those Marines won't do much. I don't know what level troops you can produce; in some of my games I'd build level 4 Infantry and give them Combat I&II and then Amphibious, but since you don't have Military Tradition and Westpoint you're probably not able to do that...

As for Great People, do you have anything special in my for whatever comes next? If not, keeping them for Golden Ages might be an idea. Too bad you spent a GP and a GA, but what's done is done. I think in your situation you're better off having Golden Ages now rather than later with a bigger empire, because otherwise that "bigger empire" is in no way guaranteed... By the way, you can't choose which GPs go in the Golden Age... Grrr... You could probably couple the Golden Age with a switch to US (hammer from towns) and OR (Mercantilism can also go, the specialists won't do much) and build those Assembly Plants, Coal Plants and whatever other buildings are needed (Jails? Drydocks?) even faster.

I'm really anxious to see how this goes. It's a very tough looking game, but hey, we've seen you win from dire situations before. That's your specialty.

 

[EEE_BOY]

i looked at the save. maybe changing to free religion has the benefit of improving foreign relations. sell a tech to wang gan for 110 gold and he will be pleased to trade some tech to u . the French would be not so angry and he has 1100 more gold which will help ur research. sell AL to the French for some techs and gold and sell AL to the Inca to improve the relations,. they all beeline to this tech so u won't be monopoly for too long. get Flight quick to see if u can bribe some one fight with the Celts. u can do more to improve the foreign relations before u are in position to fight Celts. please do consider this advice.

 

[EEE_BOY]

changing to free religion: great people start to lose value in light bulb. u already have a GE for the pentagon so more GP will do nothing but wait for an Golden Age. better foreign relation may save u from fighting unnecessary wars before u are ready.

 

[aelf]

Communism for State Property will Help a lot too especially with a huge Empire.

Why not trade Rifling to Wang Kong for 110 Gold? his master already has it... no harm done.

Mercantilism is supplying us with quite a bit of free beakers. I'm not sure abandoning it would improve our position.

We don't have Rifling (see below).

We are stuck having to research everything ourselves and with only about 800 beakers per turn that takes time.

Actually, our bpt isn't too bad, and it will only improve with Emancipation and the development of the newly-conquered territories. It's only whether the AIs will be too fast for us to catch up. But, then again, if we can beat them with brute force soon enough, it doesn't matter.

Good idea, and that would stop Brennus looking at us with a greedy intention, but infantry need Rifling and that is hard to trade for right now ... maybe research that before Railroad?

Ah, yes, Rifling. But researching Railroad first and then Rifling might be a better idea. On second thoughts, I'm not too keen on whipping anything from our core cities when we're trying to tech up as quickly as possible.

Would settling the GA in Washington and perhaps New York have been better? More gold and representation bonus and 28 culture / turn soon pops the borders all the way up to the 500 one. That seems as good as the one time 4000 cultural injection to me. The GE in Berlin offers 1334 beakers towards railroad, would that be better than half a golden age a long time in the future? The GS will give 2000 beakers for Sci Method when you decide to go for Biology.

The culture bombs created an immediate cultural influence that puts us on equal footing with the Celts in those regions. Without the boost, we might not be able to compete in the first place.

One final question, why do you build temples in some cities, like Washington for instance? It doesn't need the happiness and temples only give 1 culture for 80 hammers.

It's percisely because temples are relatively expensive and give happiness too, which a newly conquered city often needs. We get a discount on theatres, so whipping them isn't really necessary.

Yes, still want Better AI to be included. I enjoy more playing against a good AI on Noble than a "cheating" AI on Monarch.

But not with the current unreal bonuses. The old AI needed it, the new AI shouldn't.

Artillery is pretty useless when the AI has ten times your force. When you're inside their borders you'll be attacked before the artillery can do anything.

They are immune to collateral damage.

for Great People, do you have anything special in my for whatever comes next? If not, keeping them for Golden Ages might be an idea. Too bad you spent a GP and a GA, but what's done is done. I think in your situation you're better off having Golden Ages now rather than later with a bigger empire, because otherwise that "bigger empire" is in no way guaranteed...

I really only regret using the prophet to build a shrine. The artists were alright. Anyway, I think a Golden Age now isn't important. It's later, when we're closer to the war, that it really matters.

i looked at the save. maybe changing to free religion has the benefit of improving foreign relations. sell a tech to wang gan for 110 gold and he will be pleased to trade some tech to u . the French would be not so angry and he has 1100 more gold which will help ur research. sell AL to the French for some techs and gold and sell AL to the Inca to improve the relations,. they all beeline to this tech so u won't be monopoly for too long. get Flight quick to see if u can bribe some one fight with the Celts. u can do more to improve the foreign relations before u are in position to fight Celts. please do consider this advice.

Brennus hates Wang, so we must be careful with than. And I don't agree with trading away Assembly Line. As it is, we're already worried that they are getting too advanced (our very own WFYABTA ).

We might be able to bribe Brennus to go after Huayna in the future and then backstab him. In fact, I'm intending to do that, if possible. That would be a great help to our war effort.

 

[carl corey]

But not with the current unreal bonuses. The old AI needed it, the new AI shouldn't.

True, true. I think we all agree there'd be no point in playing Immortal level with BetterAI. Too much luck involved to get a decent game probably.

They are immune to collateral damage.

Yes, but that's about the only thing they do right. If we're talking about fighting against Tanks then Marines are also available, so after collaterally damaging your top units the Marines can score some victories against Artillery. I still think planes are much better, but I don't mind being proved wrong.

I really only regret using the prophet to build a shrine. The artists were alright. Anyway, I think a Golden Age now isn't important. It's later, when we're closer to the war, that it really matters.

I'll have to look at the save to assess that. Most of the time I find that a cultural bomb doesn't help me much in newly conquered cities, except to get it out of revolt and create a way for reinforcements to arrive, so I'm reluctant to do that. Might have to reconsider it. As for the Golden Age think of it like this: you'll have less turns spent building production boosters, then more turns with those production boosters in place. I really feel this is more important than the Pentagon. If you're keeping your religion then Theocracy can provide you with the XPs to get to level 3 and adding Pentagon won't get you very far. Plus, if you build planes you don't need XP for them, and even an artillery with 7XP (Barracks+Theocracy+Pentagon) instead of 5XP (Barracks+Theocracy) won't mean much more.

And I don't agree with trading away Assembly Line.

Me neither! That's a huge tech to get rid of it just like that! Factories and Infantry?!? No way.

 

[UncleJJ]

I don't think a golden age is a good use of great people. With a SE I think we will be working too few tiles with either commerce or hammers or both to benefit for the 8 turns. At this stage of the game I suspect a better use will be as lightbulbs for key techs. A GS is worth 2000 beakers at present and the GE worth 2/3rds of that, the next GP costs 1800 GPPs so we can then consider each GPP that results in a GP to be worth about an extra beaker. I doubt that spending 2 GPs on a golden age will get anywhere close to that benefit even if we count hammers as worth 2 beakers.

 

[aelf]

That's it? Nobody else has anything to say?

Yes, but that's about the only thing they do right. If we're talking about fighting against Tanks then Marines are also available, so after collaterally damaging your top units the Marines can score some victories against Artillery. I still think planes are much better, but I don't mind being proved wrong.

I think it will depend on whether Brennus has gotten Rocketry by then (likely) and whether he will be spamming SAM infantry (which the AI loves to do).

I really feel this is more important than the Pentagon. If you're keeping your religion then Theocracy can provide you with the XPs to get to level 3 and adding Pentagon won't get you very far. Plus, if you build planes you don't need XP for them, and even an artillery with 7XP (Barracks+Theocracy+Pentagon) instead of 5XP (Barracks+Theocracy) won't mean much more.

The thing about building the Pentagon is it also keeps the wonder off the hands of the AI. I have a sneaky feeling Brennus would be the one getting it if we don't. Having it would also allow us to run Free Religion while building level 3 troops everywhere.

I don't think a golden age is a good use of great people. With a SE I think we will be working too few tiles with either commerce or hammers or both to benefit for the 8 turns. At this stage of the game I suspect a better use will be as lightbulbs for key techs. A GS is worth 2000 beakers at present and the GE worth 2/3rds of that, the next GP costs 1800 GPPs so we can then consider each GPP that results in a GP to be worth about an extra beaker. I doubt that spending 2 GPs on a golden age will get anywhere close to that benefit even if we count hammers as worth 2 beakers.

But I still think having a GA while building up for the great war would be a good idea. If we win that war, the game shouldn't last much longer anyway. In any case, I'm glad we have those extra engineer slots from our UB to help boost productivity in all our cities.