The INSANE Walkthrough

[obsolete]

1590ad
Just another of the many examples of why cottages are bad. Here you have typical example of the idiot AI, which plays just like a newbie player would. Spamming cottages all over. This can only result in the AI falling behind even more in production, which means easier warmongering for us. But even still…. Notice how all that hard work by the AI is giving us ridiculous amounts of cash. We are pillaging this all the way, and it’s even slowing down our war effort! LOL.

Smart going Musa!

Unfortunately, I took another city here before I could even pillage most the cottages around it. I didn’t want to leave it sitting out there too long and risk losing it to nappy, as I’m sure a vassal is soon to come. And the game doesn’t allow us to pillage cottages in our own borders. Doh!!

At least we can still use those cottages against him anyway until our workers remove them with something useful like farms, etc.

 

[obsolete]

1670ad
Well, after the two cities we had captured in that war, Musa vassaled to Napoleon (no surprise). We now slow down on war production and work more on infrastructure.

Our southernmost city we captured from Musa is soon to finish a university. I say soon, because I plan to whip it as soon as we can. Unfortunately, silly Nappy built a city near me when a culture hole opened up after I took it.

This is going to cause some negative borders relations with Nappy which I don’t like, but we do have lots of good modifiers too. Religion being big… years of peace (despite I declared war on him!) Trades, open borders agreement… shared war modifiers… running favourite Rep. Civic, etc.

But still, I’m hoping to flip that one to my side, so that the negative modifier decreases.
It’s already in a city revolt now.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1725ad
Another Great Engineer arrives in town. Time to set him to work!
-ni

1750ad
Montezuna is a freiken ******. He’s the crazy of the crazies, and it’s hard to say who is worse, him, Brennus. Shaka, Ragnar, or Alex. The problem is they are all psycho crazies.

Isabella is a crazy too, but you can nerf her by using her religion. The others are just… all around crazies.

And unfortunately for us, Monte also got China (who is pleased with us) to go to war with him against us. Oh well... there is a little China city down south there, since they declared war on me I’m going to go take it out now, while I get to save on –3 for declaring war.

Time to bribe my brother Nappy into the war.. He should already have a –1 on the two of those idiots for attacking me while under his religion.

My problem is I NEED something that Nappy doesn’t have. So I’m going to try to trade with his vassal first for communism, etc. Then turn that around and give it to the master. Besides, I could do with state-propery as well.

 

[obsolete]

1802 AD

Wow!
That works out swell! Now I get a chance to slow down tech-master Huayna as well perhaps. I’m getting 3 birds with one stone resource (joke).

 

[obsolete]

What a mess! And let me do some explanation here…

Earlier I was trying to get Nappy to help me vs Monte, but no go. I didn’t know who the 7’th civ was yet, but I knew Nappy must be fighting vs him. This was because I noticed great generals were being born, and Nappy kept telling me (we have enough on our hands right now), which made that almost obvious.

Turns out, he was fighting Ghandi on another continent with his new vassal. And Huayna was also fighting Ghandi, which was on his continent. And the weight of the three of them FINALLY whittled Ghandi down a few cities until he vassaled.

Strangely, he vassaled to Nappy instead of Huayna. Weird… but that’s what happened.

And now, for one tech I’ve gone and put the entire world at war, LOL.
Again, diplomatic relations is VERY IMPORTANT at the highest levels of the game. If you can’t beat em, join em. As for Huayna, he’s on another continent so screw him. He’s a tech master anyway so any war that will slow him down is a great boon to us. Plan your strategy/relations accordingly!

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

Do you see this BLUE city? It was ours at ONE TIME. Unfortunately we ran into major culture issues. That is expected with the huge bias against the human player on Immortal. So what do we do about it? We gifted it to Nappy. And as you can see, Nappy doesn’t quite have the same culture penalties that we did.

Now, gifting a city may make people cringe, but it was never going to be a big production city to us with that culture problem. And furthermore, were probably going to lose it anyway. I don’t like keeping many smaller cities, I only like to keep a few BIGGER cities when I have well rounded leaders. Of course if I had started off with Romans I would have just conquered anything and everything without a care in the world.

But keep in mind, my gifting of this city is what helped give even more diplo relations with Nappy, which as you can see, had tremendous effects. I got him to take on the world for me, LOL. THAT was a great bargain.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1826 AD
RocknRoll completed!
That’s another free happiness for each city, but also extra resources we can trade for gold. Now, gold isn’t really that important, as you know I don’t even build cottages for gold. But these resources can be traded for other resources… like health. Health is related to food, and food is VERY strong in this game.

-ni


1836 AD
Eiffel Tower is completed.
This isn’t exactly a game breaking tech, but it does force the larger AI’s to have to manually waste lots of time and production to get their own towers built. But our cities bring them online NOW, and our super fortress was the only city who had to spend time working on it, which didn’t take that long to do.

Also note, since we are grabbing all the media wonders on the way, our towers can make extra use of those media resources right away. So the advantage, has many advantages.
-ni


1848 AD
1 Turn away from making the Hollywood wonder!
Again, as you can see, it is NOT impossible to pull down one wonder after another wonder on Immortal+, even with a tiny empire. It just takes some very well understanding of a production-SE and other tweaking of micro-management, etc.

Looking inside the city again, we see we are 9 turns away from computers. This was another interesting decision point for me. I was not sure if I should just abandon the Mass-Media tech or not. I am a sucker for the holywood wonder though, especially since my smaller territory size means we wont have many other resources. I can hold off the wonder researches from other civs, or trade them for ones I don’t have.

In any case, I decided to go and research the Mass Media just for that wonder. Also I can trade the dead-end tech to the AI 1 turn before completion (which is now) for other techs. So it’s not a bad strategy move. I also have the option to unlock the UN as well.

I&#8217;m not going to build it though, because Nappy is the largest civ, and owns 2 vassals, AND has the same religion I do, I don&#8217;t have a chance in hell of being a secretary. But I&#8217;m going to gift it (ok I&#8217;ll take a few pennies for it) from Huayna for it. This is because I want Huayna to build it, so that he can fight over votes vs Nappy while I sit on the side-lines. Also, the more resources Huayna wastes on the UN instead of military, the better for me and Nappy <grin>

P.S. As can be seen in the listing, we already completed iron works. Actually I was stalled 2 turns before working on RocknRoll in order to complete the I.W. But the stall is worth it! I had ONE source of Iron, which gives 50% boost, and then while I don&#8217;t have any coal, my brother Nappy gladly gave some. Actually I think he even gave it free at one point just because I asked nicely!

You see! You CAN get even selfish people like Nappy to open up to you, EVEN AFTER YOU DECLARED WAR ON THEM at the start.

Also note that buraecracy civic gives another 50% boost, and then I have organize religion on (very rare). I usually ovoid OR altogether, but in this case we had to adapt to the situation. I don&#8217;t even want to run in Free Religion because I twill hurt my big bonuses with Nappy. And since I&#8217;m running a religion then, I might as well take advantage of OR here for the increased 25% bonus. And then of course we have my built in 50% wonder bonus, and our specialists contributing FREE hammer production as well. You see, all that saving of useless lightbulbing sure pays off when run right.

Also note we had grabbed broadway earlier as well. We are really rocking along here, and our large forces of cavalry, even now serve us well against Monte&#8217;s ******** suicide attacks. The idiot keeps dumping units then attacking the same over-defended city over and over again, despite it&#8217;s on the other side of a river!

The only thing I&#8217;m not happy here is that the game assigned 2 running G-Engineers here. They SHOULD be working on two of the lumberyards I built! Argggg! Just another reason why you should keep checking your fortress city, because the system keeps doing odd things with your specialists!

F10 is one of the most important keys to use in this strategy. Keep using it!

 

[obsolete]

1878ad
Well, looks like Huayna finally completed the UN. And we couldn’t ask for anything better. The world’s two largest powers voting against each other. I had traded MM to Ghandi and Mansa as well, so I wasn’t really sure which one would build it first.

Unfortunately, we are a little behind someone here on the industrial side, and have lost the race to T3GD. OH well, you CAN’T BUILD EVERYTHING! We also missed out on the Pentagon as well. There are reasons for this. Monte the IDIOT kept attacking or bribing wars against me and caused one hell of a mess with builds and proper tech trading. I’d have to do emergency civic switches to FR, then Nappy wouldn’t trade, etc, and my timing would prevent me from getting from point a to point b a few times.

Again, this is just part of the bad-luck issues that come with the game. Sometimes things work out well too, so it sort of breaks even in the long run.

And since the dam is out, we should build coal power buildings now since we don’t have any choice. The pollution sucks, but nothing we can do about it now.

Note: Sitting now in middle position ranking wise, and 1 turn before we hit industrialism.

My plan is to grab the internet project and to keep pulling down the projects/wonders from under the AI, even with their insane Immortal advantages. Though, there really is only ONE world wonder left at this point, the SE.

I still have an axeman at this stage, because I have cavalry all over the place in the sea-side cities. Those original war-elephant units are STILL getting use made out of them yet.

Also, a Great Engineer arrived again! At this point, and getting late I the game, I have a decision to make. Absorb him for +3b/+3h, or not.

Please note, the +3 may not sound that big of a deal at this stage, but we do expect a lot more in return than +3. The super city contains both the Oxford AND Iron Works. So we will maximize the bonus on both sides of the spectrum.

In fact, because the fortress has…

Library
Academy
University
Oxford
Laboratory

You can see what happens. In fact, a GS in this case would net 31 beakers a turn, and that’s NOT INCLUDING the +1 hammers which would go through mods if we adjusted all production to funnel into science research..

Also note, production wise, we have….

Forge 25%
IronWorks (100% bonus)
Factory 50%
50% beuracracy bonus
50% wonder bonus
OR 25% bonus

And that isn’t even including the other resources bonus (e.g. aluminum) that will come into play, or the possiblility of another 100% bonus for Space Elevator.

That 3h actually gets put through a LOT of boosters!

These are important, yet most people tend to not understand these issues. And this is just one big reason why so many people just hit the lightbulb option at almost every instance.

However we still have other options. I am thinking on keeping him in reserve, since there are only so many turns left. Thus I can still absorb him if I feel I can’t do much else, or wait and see if I can time him for a second Great Person to start a golden age during either an emergency, or the final stages during the space race.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1898
3 turns till plastics!
Yes, this particular city may be starving down a bit, but that’s because I’m cranking up some of the merchant specialists, etc.

No, it’s not because we need any money, lol. That’s what silly cottages would be for. We are doing fine without them though. What we are doing here is trying to remove the GE pollution.

Now you may think that’s odd, as GE are my favourite types of great people to use, but in this case, I want anything but a GE. This is because if I feel I need to use a Golden Ages, I can NOT use two engineers to do it, they must be different!

It sucks, but that’s part of the rules Firaxis made, so we are adjusting now and trying to get anything else pop out, (and also pop out in TIME). Again, timing is important. Now, if we do get a GE pop out, it’s not the end of the world. But we are just adapting here to try and take as much advantage of our possibilities as possible.

Also note, Farms/Workshops/Water-Wheels are what I deem to be the best improvements, next to lumberyards, and mines!

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1922
GM from Zapotec arrives
-ni


1925
Take a good and close look at the hammer stats here. That’s right… We have chopping bonus. I had 3 forests outside of the fat cross in reserve for most the game. And right here, I timed them to get chopped in this turn, which is enough after being filtered to speed up the internet project by a whole turn.

This correlates into the Apollo project getting built one turn earlier, which is a very big matter, as that’s how we plan to win! Everything earlier is now starting to hinge on this. And despite the fact we don’t even have artillery tech yet, and that Huayna has already being building space ship parts for ages, one need not worry. This is because we have converted our early pitiful capital into a monster power-house now. Even on immortal the production advantage they have can not match our own production.

Note. While you can’t gold-rush a project like Apollo, Internet, or even Space-ship parts no matter how many cottages you have, you CAN rush with hammers. As proven by the chop as just demonstrated. And we have other trees in the fat-cross which can be used in an emergency also, coupled with numerous modifiers as well.


Also don’t forget, as soon as work starts on the InterNet project, it’s time to turn off tech funding AGAIN. And shut it off here for the rest of the entire game. Stockpile all cash which can be used for more booku emergency upgrades if needed and/or spy sabotage productions and/or gifting to allies, etc.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1926 AD

Oh-ohh, looks like somebody is planning on building the SE. Hmm, I wonder&#8230; I think after my Apollo is done, I may just take the brute force of our hammers and beat nappy to that!

And of course, I can try to sabotage it as well.

 

[obsolete]

1930

Alright, quick, quick, what do to? Lots of options. I decided to start working on the SE in one of my smaller cities while my Power House was busy working on Apollo. I also have that GE in reserve, so I CAN use it in an emergency to help rush the hammers as well. I also have gold in reserve to help complete a gold rush on the SE after the GE rush as well if things get cut short.

Naturally to catch up to Nappy I have to rush of some sort, or sabotage. In fact, I sent spies over to cut off his aluminum supply. Unfortunately with 20-70% chance of success, I’m still getting caught EVERY FRIEKING TIME!

Spoiler :

This is NOT good, as each time I lose a –1 point for diplo with Nappy. Argggh!!! I still have him fighting wars for me. Even though he stopped with Huayna and China (or was it Monte?) I bribed him to make peace with Monty so that I could re-bribe him to go to war again vs Huayna! LoL. I want to keep Huayna busy fighting because he’s the real threat if any to losing the space race.

Ghandi was totally eliminated by him (how often do you see that!?). And everyone else is trailing so far behind in tech.

 

[obsolete]

1937

Alright, we did it! Space Elevator was completed in time, but not what you think. I canceled the production in that city, and then started working on it in my little fortress. I also was able to FINALLY sabotage successfully the aluminum in Nappy’s back yard to slow his down even more.

Despite his huge head start, the pure power of all my hammers in my fortress are making this win possible. The only problem? I WAS GOING TO LOSE ON A TIE! And all ties go to the AI for getting the wonder. So what I did was gold-rush the final 2 turns, which puts Nappy at 1 turn too late (or technically a tie, but putting the human at the favour in that sort of tie).

Yahoo! And we manage to pull down yet even the last remaining wonder from the Immortal level Ais..

Now, one turn later we are off on space-ship production! Despite trailing far behind in that area, it’s ok, as it’s part of my strategy. Always going for the late game. We are going to catch up in such rapid succession here, the AI just isn’t going to have much chance. Always remember, it doesn’t matter if launch 200 turns before the AI, or just 1 turn before the AI. It just matters that you launch any time BEFORE the AI. And that’s the main key to everything. Everything leads up to this.

Note: Bottom right tile, is spices. I have instead put a workshop over the tile. Generally you’ll only see experts or newbs do this.

Newbs do it because they don’t know any better, or even what a plantation does.

Experts do it because they understand in the final stages of the game PRODUCTION MATTERS! It is the most important key, so ignore everything else, even if your city starts starving.

Side Note:

We have 3 military specialists, which aren’t doing much for us at this point. You can thank either one or two of them to Montezuna the CRAZY IDIOT who just wouldn’t stop warring against us all game.

7 other absorbed specialists.

There was one GE we used for pyramids early, and we have 2 more specialists on reserve right now.

Back in the Ghandi walkthrough we had more but there was a reason. Ghandi is philosophical which adds 100% great person boost.

Also note, we did not build the NE which would have given a big boost, so would have getting Parthenon, as well as running pacificism longer (we only did it for a short time). But again, you can’t have everything go the way you want, everything must have compromises.

Spoiler :

 

[obsolete]

1939


Ok, we start a golden age HERE. And take all our cities we geared up for space ship production, and get them to work.

Always remember, work from the largest, down to the smallest. It&#8217;s nice that you can get stupid casings out of the way quicker, but it&#8217;s the big stuff you want out of the way FIRST. Work from the top down. So in this case, capital works on the big hefty pieces, like SS Engine, docking bay, etc, while the other smaller cities (though still production monsters due to workshops, etc) work on thrusters and casings. It doesn&#8217;t matter we are very behind in the race. We&#8217;re doing a record breaking insta catch-up here, and there is absolutely no way anyone can compete with that.

You want to see what our originally production poor capital looks like now? During a golden age? Check for yourself&#8230;

 

[obsolete]

1951 AD

We have an official nuking Alert!
Nappy, just fired off and blasted Huayna LOL.

This is rather a rare event since usually one of the first things that get voted with the UN is a ban on nukes!

Also interesting, I was building the manhattan project because I had run out of space ship parts to make! LoL, and just then I had to stop because someone else beat me to it. Now I think we know who it was.

Unfortunately, uranium is ultra rare, and of course I don&#8217;t have any of that in my borders either! So unfortunately I can&#8217;t help out my big brother, as I was going to rush buy and build a ton of nukes if I could and help him. This is one of those ultra rare times where nuking actually isn&#8217;t too bad an option (if you do it fast) because no one has yet completed their SDI yet (but I&#8217;m working on it FAST in another city, believe me).

Also interesting, is that a few cities here and there are being captured by Nappy over on the other continent. Sorta like when nappy captured a bunch of cities from Ghandi. I found that surprising, as usually the AI sucks at continent wars, but Nappy has been having some decent success with them here.

One more thing, I had a LOT of cash built up, so much I didn&#8217;t know what to do with. I gave already 40K to my brother nappy. Why would I do this? Because he fell behind in tech a little compared to Huayna, and I was wondering if he was hurting due to all the warring I put him through, and all the other problems. So I gave him a 30K chunk and then another 10K since. Very strange though, as after all that, his cash really didn&#8217;t go up. So he MUST be doing something with it? Maybe he used it all on those nukes and things, lol.

I also COULD have done mass sabotage if I needed, but there really is no need here, Nappy isn&#8217;t in the space race lead, but I wish he was.

My spies have been traveling though on subs towards Huayna though&#8230;
-ni

1952 AD

Gahh!!!
Stupid idiot Monte declares war on me AGAIN for like the umpteenth time! This ****** just DOESN&#8217;T quit. But for once he is going to get the best of me. Why? Because, (and seeing is believing)&#8230; my capital is being defended by just that one barbarian who&#8217;s been there from like the beginning (after the other one got pounced on by 2 lions and died IIRC)

So looks like my warrior has no chance vs the helicopter! And while I have tons of cavalry still around, they are sorta getting obsolete to Monte&#8217;s units now. But again, the power graph is BS. AS I do have techs to make modern armour now, and in fact I think I just made one already for the hell of it. I also can insta upgrade the cav I have left (after all these wars EVEN STILL) to choppers. But who cares!!! I am on my last space ship part now, and we are launching end of the turn, he can take every city but the capital and I can&#8217;t lose now!

Note! And just to rub it in, I got nuked! And I&#8217;m pretty sure it had to be Qui since Monte is so friggen backwards all the time, even though I gave him numerous big techs this whole time!!! And funny thing is, they didn&#8217;t even nuke my capital, the idiots. LOL. They hit the city with the HE in it, as though it was the better target. STUPID STUPID STUPID AI! At least Nappy was targeting Huayna&#8217;s capital and production cities. I guess that means Huayna might have build the HE in his capital???

And of course, Qin who is very PLEASED with me gets dragged into another war with me. Something is wrong about that!

 

[obsolete]

1954

And the year before 1954 rolled in, it was already all over. Another Space race win&#8230; another game with no cottages, no lightbulbing, and on a very tuff Immortal setting.



P.S. And just incase you were wondering, yes our fortress won top score for best city.

Final P.S. For comic relief, we never even made a single gun-powder unit all game! As the notice points out now&#8230; but the text at the bottom already shows we have won space-race victory. The power of cavalry LOL

 

[frob2900]

Nicely done!

I think you have now proven without a doubt that a plains hill/floodplain capital can sometimes be built into a OCC-like fortress with wonder spam on almost any level with an industrious leader.

This is what I love to do.. stack groups of cav and pummel them against even the tuffest looking cities. It works! I don’t even bother cranking out seige weapons, they take too much time, and are too slow for my taste. I like SPEED!

Also, by beelining and spamming the overpowered cavalry unit you can also expand into a largish empire at the point where one city just isnt cutting it anymore.

Fair enough. Better hope cuirassiers cut it in BtS.

Under no circumstances will we be wasting any precious effort on silly cottages though. No, no, no! We are not doing Immortal Beloved here, this is Immortal Civ IV.

Immortal Beloved was a really good move. Gary Oldman's a great actor

 

[0R4NG3]

Very nice! Thanks for doing this Obsolete. Definitely gave me a few new ideas. I wasn't a cottage spammer before and now I won't feel like I'm losing something because of it. Although a few cottages here and there would've made your game easier.
This is a very good guide for people who don't like warmongering too much and prefer to have a small or midium-sized empire. With this guide you've shown that it is more than possible to do this and win, even on higher difficulty levels.

 

[Killroyan]

Incredible play again. An OCC style on immortal and never a problem (ok maybe the warrior against the gunship ). Thx for the game.

 

[de Mott]

Congrats again. In my last post I said you would make it on immortal, too.

But reading some of your lines isn't great fun.

Now lets see&#8230; we&#8217;re still ahead of the AIs here from what I can tell. So you honestly think I&#8217;d waste such a precious GS to trim off 5 turns on paper?

Are you f#%$ing kidding me????

Rookie move&#8230;. Forget it, we absorb him and boost our monster indefinitely even more.

At least you could have fake-considered saving him for 5 turns and using him on education.