The jump to Immortal, some questions about best leaders

[GenerallyGreat]

Ind can still be amazing on Immortal somtimes. I recently played a pangaea as Ram and built nearly every wonder in the game which really slows the AI down. Granted I did start in a well protected corner and fed Monty an obsolete tech every dozen turns to attack someone new.

 

[Grey Fox]

I think you might know this, but with fogbusting barbarians can't spawn within 2 tiles of any other unit. Doesn't matter if the tile is in the fog. So your units (and even the barbarians) cover a 5x5 tile radius where nothing can spawn (except barbarian cities if it is still in the fog).

When it comes to them entering your territory, well that still happens. It helps having archers or chariots for dealing with them. 2 Warriors or 1 archer per every barb warrior, 2 archer per 1 barb archer.
Try to get them to attack your unit standing on good defense, or take them out whenever they are on flat terrain. Whip units if you have to. Warriors can be whipped from turn 1 as long as you have population to whip. And they'll yield 15 overflow hammers.

Of course if you can get the Great Wall, that helps.

 

[Silu]

GW is a situational wonder. I would consider it best to learn to cope without it, to learn when it's worth the detour to Masonry&choppage to get it. If the closest neighbor is far, the good old GW->tons of settlers with 0 military works as well as ever. If the area is a bit more crammed, then it's usually totally useless, because the AI starts with tons of crap and often you can partially outsource barbcleaning/fogbusting to them. Fogbust the areas farthest away from neighbors as a priority. Also don't be afraid to delay that first settler by a couple of turns to produce more fogbusters if need be.

 

[Iranon]

I find that IND *shines* on Immortal.

Spamming wonders without it requires some serious concessions unless you have the appropriate resources; on lower levels where you don't need it you might as well pick PHI (faster rewards, more flexible).
Spamming wonders is still attractive:

The Great Wall is at its most powerful here. Below you don't really need it, on Deity the biggest menace is over before you typically finish it.
A quick Oracle/MC fix is a great asset to gain tech equality or even superiority right from the start. It's less expensive in terms of citizenturns to research the religious line and build it than it is to research Metal Casting, and with IND gives you a decent edge in production as well.
On some maps, the Great Lighthouse becomes a huge asset, the Great Library is pretty much always a good investment and the Pyramids remain a strong option depending on your playstyle preferences. Even many of the less popular money can be great: The Hanging Gardens for example allow you to transfer production from an established to underdeveloped cities (by providing whipping fodder); very useful for making the latter assets rather than liabilities.
While overflow money was limited, there is still compensation cash. Losing a wonder race might not be so bad at all.

***

Traits roughly in order of preference. I love:

ORG (makes expansion/war affordable while you keep focusing on hammers, some nice discounts)
IND (see above; snagging a few high-impact early wonders is both beneficial and difficult without)
FIN (Inferior to ORG early on imo but I currently like to replace production with rushbuy in the Renaissance)
PHI (never bad. Allows a great W/SSE if you start with wonder resources deep Liberalism beelines)

I'm fine with

IMP (On Immortal, I favour getting settlers out faster over getting cities developed faster because I sometimes need to beat the AI to juicy spots. Recovery can come later.)
SPI (Great diplomatic tool if you can appreciate it... imo much more useful on Deity).
EXP (Generic faster start... not bad but on Immortal I prefer something more 'assertive'.)
CHA (not bad, but I care more about production than early vertical expansion.)

I actively dislike

CRE (convenience instead of power. There are many workarounds for a lack of culture.)
AGG (normally the bottom trait for me. On Immortal, it at least makes a forced rush easier)
PRO (Generally not needed; defensive warfare becomes more attractive on Deity).

***

Leaders:

With a military edge, it's still possible to establish a dominating lead in the classical age. Especially nice if you have long-term economic benefits to make the best of it. Expect the usual suspects: Huayna Capac, Darius, either Roman or Egyptian. I'm also very partial to Mansa Musa (Skirmishers: resourceless emergency rush unit, ultimate choker, unbeatable defender and cost-effective general purpose unit until late medieval age).

***

Regarding religion: If I can pick up Judaism, I will... mostly because I love Organised Religion. Not reliable at all unfortunately, because the AIs can get too much of a head start from goodie huts (not only are they more likely to get them tanks to their starting units, the get better results).

 

[Grey Fox]

I can't see how you can dislike Creative

I'm starting to love it. Not only is the culture bonus instant, it also has cheap libraries, cheap theaters, and cheap Colosseum (which you might not get otherwise). And with Pericles it's just awesome since greek UB is Colosseum replacement! And fast libraries + fast universities is perfect for a quick Oxford.

And Aggressive and Protective are really awesome if you draft a lot. I think I am going to play a game as Japan and draft like crazy just to see how it is with both

And yeah. Industrious and Organized are great, I actually won my first peaceful Immortal win with Roosevelt where I dominated tech-wise. And my 2nd peaceful win was with Louis (IND+CRE) but that went easy much thanks to the map.

 

[madscientist]

Well, finally got myself an elusive Immortal Victory!

Random leader gave me Bismark, IND and EXP. Played on Epic speed, Hemispheres map.

1) Chariot rushed Hatty who founded Hindusim.
2) Conquered Willem after he DoWed on me taking 4 nice cities. Acquired the Great Wall/Pyramids/Stonehenge from Will.
3) Adopted Buddhism to buddy up with Justinian. This alliance lasted all game.
4) Last leader on teh continent was a major problem, Tokugawa. Finally was able to take him out with knights/muskets/cannons with a few added rifles.
5) Met other hemisphere leaders, Darius and Pericles who were behind.
6) Used 50% more land to catch and surpass Justinian in tech to build the space ship first. An extremely strong production base with State Property.

Thanks for all the help. Looking foreward to my next Immortal game!

 

[hoLLo]

I've been working on this jump for quite a while, I keep going back to emperor because it's more fun to win. My main difficulties at Immortal are Diplomacy and Trade. Can someone please post a link to an article or thread that discusses the mechanics of this? Such as the general rules of trade, I read somewhere that a civ will not trade techs if you're the only civ it knows.. is that true? I think that would be good to know, one way or the other. Is there a link that explains these kinds of mechanics? I never seem to be able to make good trades, even when I have good diplomatic status. Also all the different acronyms, whfdsiaf/wedroaigsh/asfwe8y and so on, I'm lost about these. Cheers

 

[waalTue]

very interesting thread...got the same problem with the jump from emperor to immortal. i may be win 1 out of 4 games. imo it depends very much on the start position. if u got a close neighbour an early war is very useful to win in immortal. i only won when i could take neighbours cities and then build up my land. then i m waiting for another war till i got rifles or may be bit earlier, it depends. anyway my favourite leader is capac (inca). usefull for an early war and then i can build up my land with wonders. but as i read this thread i will try others.

and a general question: do u guys always talk about a normal game? with tech trade? or a custom game without tech trading? i m still not sure which one is easier to win on immortal... wot u think?

 

[madscientist]

very interesting thread...got the same problem with the jump from emperor to immortal. i may be win 1 out of 4 games. imo it depends very much on the start position. if u got a close neighbour an early war is very useful to win in immortal. i only won when i could take neighbours cities and then build up my land. then i m waiting for another war till i got rifles or may be bit earlier, it depends. anyway my favourite leader is capac (inca). usefull for an early war and then i can build up my land with wonders. but as i read this thread i will try others.

and a general question: do u guys always talk about a normal game? with tech trade? or a custom game without tech trading? i m still not sure which one is easier to win on immortal... wot u think?

from my point of view, it's all default settings at EPIC speed (sorry, warring at Normal is just not fun for me). Maps are usually hemisphere, Big/Small, or random map script. Trading is always on for me.

I am doing better in the early games, now I tend to drag with a decent sized empire post liberalism. Even with a lot of land cut off from the AI I tend to delay settling everything I can. Gotta do better there. I am pleased at Immortal because I feel like it's fine tuning alot of different aspects of the game for me. Also I have been able to wonderspam when I want/need which was always a limitation before (hence why I delayed the jump)but I cannot hog all the wonders (hence a challenge there). The only trade off I see at Immortal is founding a religion is definitely out of the question, not because of missing it, but the delay in expansion is a killer.

 

[Silu]

The only trade off I see at Immortal is founding a religion is definitely out of the question, not because of missing it, but the delay in expansion is a killer.

You can try Poly with HRE or Byzantium with a Settler first opening. It's a bit less punishing than other ways, though I still don't like doing that. The rewards just aren't good enough. And no way you can outspread foreign religions if there's one on your landmass.

 

[madscientist]

You can try Poly with HRE or Byzantium with a Settler first opening. It's a bit less punishing than other ways, though I still don't like doing that. The rewards just aren't good enough. And no way you can outspread foreign religions if there's one on your landmass.

Actually I never thought of leveraging the IMP trait like that with the 2 that start with Mysticism. The issue though is that to leverage IMP you should work hammer tiles which are usually NOT the best commerce tiles early on. A good tip to think about next time I see those two.

 

[GenerallyGreat]

I've been shopping around for a leader to master on immortal to take on deity and just had an amazing game as Gandhi. Phi for GP production that let me run OR to get buildings done in a timely manner is a massive boost. Frequent free civic changes though game stages or to appease the warmongers was just icing on the cake. I got Oxford up before 800AD and took out the world with cavs without seeing a single rifle. So yeah fast workers get my vote here.

 

[Lynxx]

I just recently decided it was time to move away from my easy emperor games up to immortal and diety games. One of the things I painfully learned was that the leader makes a BIG difference (map dependent yes...)

I have learned to love any civ that starts with hunting and mining. You are one tech away from all the important early worker techs and you are free to pick according to the map!

As for traits, I would go creative over everything else. You can block off, claim land and hook up all your resources so much easier.

I would recommend the khmer. Ugly bastard too . UU i ok and UB pretty decent.