The Immortal Challenge 2: For the Fatherland

[Jorunkun]

Good work, Aelf. Can't win 'em all.

Must say I really enjoyed reading the last posts on the french and celtic wars, precisely because you were losing. I mean, I lurk other players' games to understand how they think - how they assess the situation, what they see as options, the reasons for and against etc.

But we're all so used to second guessing the AI and executing on the standard plays that it makes for a rare and interesting change to see a what people do in a losing battle, how they try to cut their losses or when they see the game as lost. So thanks for making the effort.

As for the next game, don't step down to Emperor. If you want to make the game easier, switch to a slower gamespeed and chose another maptype, not continents.

Also, I'd like see you try another civ with a late UU.

J.

 

[cabert]

thanks for the details, aelf.
The game wasn't lost IMHO, but winning it would be like moving a mountain : miracle needed.
I wouldn't have given up yet. Brennus obviously saw you winning the war (he offered gold!), meaning he didn't have much left under his feet.
A few bombers could have turned the tide, maybe. or a few nukes.
All this is very unlikely, but may be worth a try.

 

[UncleJJ]

A very interesting game. Thanks aelf for working so hard and presenting all this to us in such a clear way. It is very much appreciated. You've proven it is tough to win at this level and that this series really is a challenge worth reading and discussing.

I think that your basic plan for the end game was sound, except Louis screwed it up , and so it was too much to do in too short a time. If he had not attacked and disrupted your preparations for war then you could probably have beaten Brennus. I am not sure how you could have prevented Louis attacking in this way except by yielding to his earlier demands for tribute. Maybe changing to Free Religion would have helped.

In 1848 you were certainly running what I would call a late game SE and it was like that throughout most of the game, with Representation, Mercantilism and SoL contributing lots of beakers and GPPs. You produced 17 GPs of various sorts which is not bad going.

However if we look at the Financial Advisor screen we get:
100% Research 1059, Culture 315, Gold 67, trade 10, Exp 226
shifting the slider to 0% research
0% Research 262, Culture 315, Gold 790, trade 10, Exp 226

This indicates that there is a very large amount of commerce in the economy (due to many captured towns) At 100% the commerce gives 797 beakers and at 0% it gives 722 gold. The total size of your economy at this stage is 1126 (gold + beakers) at 100% and 1051 (gold + beakers) at 0%, so at 100% we have 797 from 1126 or about 70% of the economy is from commerce. You are running mainly engineers in 1848 rather than scientists or merchants so that would skew the results somewhat. My analysis doesn't take account of the GPPs which can also be counted as additional beakers from the specialist side of the econiomy (only if they produce a GP). However, I have to conclude that in 1848 the economy is firmly a hybrid or HE (as many late game SEs become).

A few technical points: Researching Biology would quickly have paid off in extra food production. You are working a large number of farms. Several cities (e.g. Munich and Philadelphia) are short of food and working plains farms is weak without Biology but more than adequate with it. The main reason Louis and Brennus are so far ahead in population and production is Biology. My attitude to this tech is coloured by my aversion to Scientific Method when I have the Great Library to lose, but for a farm based economy, like you clearly have here, it works wonders roughly doubling the productivity of plains and grassland farms. So for a late game SE it is essential.

Another technical point. The 3 cities on the southern border (Boston, New York and Washington) would have benefitted more from applying cultural pressure to Brennus's tiles. That would have helped more than the few extra troops they produced. A Buddhist stuppa in Washington, for instance, only costs 150 hammers (with 100% bonus) which is the same as the artillery currently building. Obviously cultural preparations take time to work on the tiles so those cities should have been made ready for the coming war against Brennus as soon as they were captured.

I hope to replay some parts of the late game to see what might have happened in an alternative universe. But I am not an immortal level player so it is just to satisfy my curiosity. I'll report anthing interesting in this thread for further discussion. I think this game might be winnable as Melior Traiano showed in his alternate ending (he came close to winning) but probably not by me

 

[Yeekim]

A honorable defeat - nothing to be ashamed of!
I'll try and play it out till the nukes, just to get a proper feel.

And don't you step down from Immortal! I have read the two past threads with great curiosity - they are actually almost only reason I visit this site.
Please, keep them coming!

The choice of a leader is up to you, really. But I'd rather not take Churchill - pick someone stronger. Hannibal sounds good

 

[cabert]

churchill is great.
I love level 5 protective redcoats straight out of the barracks .
+ they make pretty good draftees

 

[Sjaramei]

Too bad it didn't work out. Better luck next time

And for next leader i of course have a preference!

Shaka! Let the Zulus flood the world with fast impis and cheap mini courthouses! You can't go wrong with these!

 

[TheArchduke]

An awesome report and my first post in your reports.

Immortal is way beyond me, I manage to win Monarch with mediocre/decent starts but die a horrible death with bad ones, so I didn´t feel like I could offer productive advice.

It takes courage to play out such a backwards position and even more despite loosing to provide us with a report.

I am looking forward to the next one if you plan one!

 

[aelf]

Thanks, guys. I'd just like to offer a few comments. Louis didn't actually disrupt our war preparations. We could handle him until he landed that tank stack. Brennus really was too far ahead in terms of tech and power. Ultimately, the death knell for us was him getting mech infantry. We had nothing to counter them. Panzers with Pinch weren't good enough. And, like I said, I believe getting Flight/Fission and building bombers/nukes first would be too late anyway.

I will post a brief analysis of this game tomorrow. As for the next game, I'll probably come up with a proposal in a few days' time.

 

[aelf]

Well too bad it went that way... I woulda teched towards nukes just to go out with a bang

It was bang enough. We built a mega stack that I thought would overcome any adversary. And then there was the massive human wave assaults

I wouldn't have given up yet. Brennus obviously saw you winning the war (he offered gold!), meaning he didn't have much left under his feet.

I disagree. The AI thinks it's losing when it suffers more casualties. Actually, Brennus was clearly winning a strategic victory.

A few technical points: Researching Biology would quickly have paid off in extra food production. You are working a large number of farms. Several cities (e.g. Munich and Philadelphia) are short of food and working plains farms is weak without Biology but more than adequate with it. The main reason Louis and Brennus are so far ahead in population and production is Biology. My attitude to this tech is coloured by my aversion to Scientific Method when I have the Great Library to lose, but for a farm based economy, like you clearly have here, it works wonders roughly doubling the productivity of plains and grassland farms. So for a late game SE it is essential.

I agree. I thought of that too. However, Biology was a distraction from the military techs. And I anticipated the problem of WW. High pop would only mean faster unhappiness from WW during the great war.

 

[UncleJJ]

I agree. I thought of that too. However, Biology was a distraction from the military techs. And I anticipated the problem of WW. High pop would only mean faster unhappiness from WW during the great war.

Hence the importance of Police State, Mt Rushmore and Jails. Together they eliminate WW completely. Late game wars involve so many combats that you have to accept WW will be a problem for any city over about size 5.

Unfortunately running Police State costs a lot of research from Representation. But the only alternative way of gaining lots of happiness is using the cultural slider and given the large amout of commerce your economy has that would probably cost even more. Although with Mt Rushmore and Jails in big cities (together giving 50% less WW) plus the cultural slider you might be able to defer switching to Police State for several turns.

 

[bardolph]

... whoever said that a human player would never vote for an AI Diplomatic Victory must have been mistaken. This game is proof!

Good game. Very instructive. Well played overall, of course.

My thoughts (of course, I realize that hindsight is 20-20...):

• Too many civics switches for a non-spiritual leader.
• Too much mid-game reliance on Slavery. Cities were not allowed to grow to their full capacity. I believe that's why we fell so far behind in tech.
• The SE worked moderately well, but wasn't fully realized. Caste System + more farms (and less slaving) would have yielded more specialists and more beakers overall.
• For the end-game, I would have tried beelining to Internet, then turn off all research, switch Civics to an all-war configuration, put specialists to work in workshops, and grind out the last world war. Of course, the Internet is a long way off, and might not be achievable. I'll try this from the save, when I get enough time

 

[uberfish]

Bad break, Aelf. I've honestly never seen that many AI units on immortal. Are you playing with Blake AI or something? A great report anyway though.

 

[MT5678]

Well played overall.
As a prince player looking to learn the SE, I learned a lot.

 

[tazpn314]

Interesting game. Well played despite the final result.

I've never really payed much attention to the AI build strategy but is the AI smart enough to stop building wonders/projects if it should be building units? I noticed that Brennus is building projects in most of his cities and I wonder if that is not a window to pillage infrastructure while he is busy on the spaceship and not building units? Its probably not enough help in any case as he has a lot of big cities and a lot of units. Just a thought.

 

[aelf]

Alright, now to sum this game up: We attempted to do an SE in this game but found it a challenge to maintain it 'pure'. We chose the path of the warmonger and opted, first of all, to research Construction asap. Then we built catapults and went after Isabella. She was soon vassalised, after which we moved on to Washington with grenadiers. He too was defeated and became a vassal. By then, though, we were already far behind Brennus, despite being on par before attacking Washington. We teched up to our UB (Assembly Line) and our UU (Industrialism) and built a massive stack to attack Brennus. However, we was far ahead in tech and power and soon had mech infantry. We suffered a strategic defeat in a great war. By this point, it was pretty much impossible to win, so I conceded defeat and voted for Louis to be diplomatic victor to end the game.

What we did right:

• Prioritising techs like Construction and Chemistry led to success in war, especially in the first case where we got to Isabella just before she had longbows.
• We leveraged the Philosophical trait by building the Great Library and adopting Pacifism. We got more than enough GPs in this game, which included GEs, GS's, Prophets, GMs and even a few GAs, all of which saw some use.

What we could have done better:

• The SE worked moderately well, but wasn't fully realized. Caste System and more farms would have yielded more specialists and more beakers overall.
• Diplomacy was no good. There was no ally that was not a vassal. We couldn't stir up trouble between Brennus and his neighbour Huayna, so the former could simply build and build. I'm not sure if we could have done much better, though, given the circumstances.
• Played for the wrong victory. We could probably have won by space race by beelining to the Internet. In any case, we should have stopped at Washington or even at Isabella (in which case we would have cultivated friendly relations with the former) and played builder for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, we would not have been able to use our UU.
• Too many civics switches for a non-Spiritual leader. Cutting down on this would have saved us a few turns. I don't know how much of a help this would have been, but I have a feeling we could be more efficient.
• Too much mid-game reliance on Slavery. Cities were not allowed to grow to their full capacity. That might be part of the reason why we fell so far behind in tech.

That's all I can think of for now.

 

[axident]

Alright, now to sum this game up: We attempted to do an SE in this game but found it a challenge to maintain it 'pure'. We chose the path of the warmonger and opted, first of all, to research Construction asap. Then we built catapults and went after Isabella. She was soon vassalised, after which we moved on to Washington with grenadiers. He too was defeated and became a vassal. By then, though, we were already far behind Brennus, despite being on par before attacking Washington. We teched up to our UB (Assembly Line) and our UU (Industrialism) and built a massive stack to attack Brennus. However, we was far ahead in tech and power and soon had mech infantry. We suffered a strategic defeat in a great war. By this point, it was pretty much impossible to win, so I conceded defeat and voted for Louis to be diplomatic victor to end the game.

What we did right:

• Prioritising techs like Construction and Chemistry led to success in war, especially in the first case where we got to Isabella just before she had longbows.
• We leveraged the Philosophical trait by building the Great Library and adopting Pacifism. We got more than enough GPs in this game, which included GEs, GS's, Prophets, GMs and even a few GAs, all of which saw some use.

What we could have done better:

• The SE worked moderately well, but wasn't fully realized. Caste System and more farms would have yielded more specialists and more beakers overall.
• Diplomacy was no good. There was no ally that was not a vassal. We couldn't stir up trouble between Brennus and his neighbour Huayna, so the former could simply build and build. I'm not sure if we could have done much better, though, given the circumstances.
• Played for the wrong victory. We could probably have won by space race by beelining to the Internet. In any case, we should have stopped at Washington or even at Isabella (in which case we would have cultivated friendly relations with the former) and played builder for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, we would not have been able to use our UU.
• Too many civics switches for a non-Spiritual leader. Cutting down on this would have saved us a few turns. I don't know how much of a help this would have been, but I have a feeling we could be more efficient.
• Too much mid-game reliance on Slavery. Cities were not allowed to grow to their full capacity. That might be part of the reason why we fell so far behind in tech.

That's all I can think of for now.

I agree with your writeup. I think the biggest factor was to keep pushing after vassalizing Spain instead of building--but I'm sure you felt pressure to use the UU/UB for the thread's sake. You're pretty brave for showcasing your games like this; good job and keep 'em coming.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Hindsight is 20/20, but I do think that if you had switched over to Taoism to get on Brennus's good side, it would have opened up more diplomatic options over time. That's assuming you were going to pursue a peaceful route to victory, but then I also recommended that too. So I wouldn't consider these two things as second guesses.

I did play a shadow game from the 1685 save & got within 4 turns of launching, but Brennus beat me to it. So the Internet-space race strategy would have still been hard to win with, but it was winnable from the 1685 time point. See Immortal Challenge 2: Alternate Ending for copious details & the save right before Brennus launched.

Edited to fix link.

 

[Harbourboy]

Immortal level should not be a guaranteed win. It is supposed to be a challenge. If Immortal level was easy, we would all feel ripped off by the game. So this outcome is not all bad. It reminds us that this is a very well balanced and endlessly engaging computer game.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Did anyone try India yet? I like the idea of not having a military UU... (and a militaristic UB? I don't know what the programmers were thinking...)

 

[flamingzaroc121]

Sistuil has done an ALC with Asoka its right Here