The University of Immortals

[Abegweit]

@mystyfly and rusten

Spoiler tags are clearly in order. I haven't yet started the game but unfortunately I already know Louis is in it and, from the way you talk,

Spoiler :

I would guess that 10 axes and 4 spears would take him out. Plus, it seems, chopping them is a good thing

Rusten had the good sense to change his post. Unfortunately I saw it before that

 

[silverbullet]

All right, I was too jealous of all those people who started playing, so I started playing too, even though I was supposed to work late today... work can wait.

4000BC to 1920BC

Spoiler :

Settled in place.
popped 36 gold from the hut.
Tech:fishing->mining->BW->wheel->agriculture->animal husbandry->pottery(partial)
Build: Warrior(partial)->workboat->worker->work boat->warrior(cont)->worker->settler(chopped twice)->barracks->axeman

2080BC Teotihuacan founded
I placed it directly 1SW the bronze, even though it is 1 tile away from the coast. I cannot afford to wait any longer with my rush, Louis took all the good spots and I need them.
2 workers immediately mine the bronze. Route was being built as the settler was on the way.
After barracks I am planning to build axes, and after that axes and then some more axes.

Met Louis and Han. Louis founded 2 religions - Hinduism in Paris and Judaism in Orleans. He switched from no religion to hinduism and later to judaism.
My scout died to a barb archer.

1920BC to 575BC

Spoiler :

Tech: Pottery->writing->meditation->priesthood->code of laws (70% complete).
Build: axes and library in the capital.
Hannibal teched alphabet pretty early and then aesthetics. Both Hanibal and Louis signs open borders with me. I take the chance to scout Louis land a little bit. He has very weak defences. 2 archers per city mostly unpromoted. No axes and chariots. I notice he has copper so I plan my attack to start from there. I skip Lyons and go directly to Paris.
I started scouting his land a little too late (I forgot about it for about 5 turns), and I thought that he didn't have horse. My warrior finds the horse, so I send an axeman to the horse while we still have open borders, hoping he would get kicked out to the other side of france for a quick pillage mission.
I build a spearman, but I decide not to wait because I notice Louis starts building his army.

At 950BC I meet the Germans. I totally forgot about building a workboat to scout. I am so used to continents map where I quickly find 2~3 AIs and then no one comes until optics. I just noticed in the other spoilers that other AIs are also around. I will make it a priority to make contact.

Research speed slows down a lot, but as soon as a library is built in the capital I hire 2 scientists and don't let them go. When the borders of Teotihuacan expand to work the gold, it helps too.

I switch all my espionage to Hannibal since I plan to kill the french soon anyway.
The war goes pretty well. I capture Lyons, Paris and Orleans, and made peace. The french have 2 cities left.
They built the great wall, and the oracle. I hope that after Alphabet I can trade with them (or demand).
I am using the cash to research at 100%. I will finish COL in 5 turns (and also all my cash). Han doens't have it so I hope to trade it for Alpha. Frederick founded Confucianism, so I am hoping this means he doesn't trade with Han.

It might be that the french will switch back to hinduism. I am not sure if they have any jewish city now. This will make them Han's enemies, which means I will have to go to war again soon to make sure I get the cities and not him.

Long term, I am thinking of moving my capital to paris for bureaucracy and make Tenochtitlan a GP farm. Paris already has a nearby village and gold and some nice cottageable tiles, and good production to build a palace.
A great general was born. What should I do with him?
I am thinking to settle him in my copper town Teotihuacan and make it a HE city (I got a CR3 axeman during the war so it's unlocked).

GS comes in 4 turns. Should I bother with an Academy? If I trade for alphabet I think I have all the prerequisites for philosophy. This could bring me to tech parity if I meet more AIs.

Any advice? I am not really good at a game of recovering from war.

 

[Olodune]

Please think twice about what you write outside of spoiler tags

Up to 425bc

Spoiler :

Well, even though I'm nearly certain it's not a good idea this is just too tempting:

Two workers are just too juicy for Monty to ignore, plus they are three moves out of Paris so there is a good chance that I can keep them ...

It does work, and since I'll soon start building axes I easily kill a 1 spear + 1 Char + 1 axe counter attack.

After collecting ~ 7 axes + 1 spear outside Paris I capture it, loose it, and am poised to recapture next turn:

The assault on Orleans (hills are painful ):

Lyon (biggest battle yet):

The French are dead! Final death tally:

I loose:
16 axes
2 spears
2 chars

Louis looses:
25 archers
5 chars
3 axes
2 spears

Painful, but now I have land and lots of good resources. Hannibal will be a pain. In fact I think I'll build two more settlers to claim some more land.

Empire In 425 bc:

 

[Rusten]

250 AD

Spoiler :

We make a deal with Hannibal.



My rule of thumb is to never give cash when trading techs as it's not valued highly enough, but as you can see from the screen Hannibal just started on currency so it's now or never. Also made a deal with a Justinian; Calendar for CoL (+sold mysticism and priesthood to the dutchies for money).
We re-declare war at 225 BC and thus at 200 BC:



100 BC:



Bad, this was the same turn he got CoL IIRC. Apparently he burned a GS on it right away and beat me to it. When the AI gets philosophy they're far more likely to target liberalism right away. As you can see from the screenshot everyone is buddhist with the exception of Han (which later switched to confucianism) so I decided to keep with no religion so far. Good news is that Buddhism has spread to some of my cities, so I'll probably spread that instead of hinduism for relations boost (even it it helps already large Justinian). I'm planning to attack Hannibal anyway so it doesn't matter if he doesn't like me.

Speaking of which, here's the tech screen at 250 AD. Hannibal is pulling ahead (although it's worth noticing that I saved up some gold (400) at this point, almost finished CS and still didn't get the "boom" out of the rush yet. I'm not that worried given the size of my empire. Once my cities grow and I get infrastrucutre whipped out I should be able to surpass Carthage with ease.



75 BC:



75 AD (BURN BABY, BURN!!!):



Map type and geography spoiler. Decided to wrap it in as I explored much more than the average game I believe, so open at your own risk.

Spoiler :

Also got a funny event; my work boat has proven that the world is round.

200 AD: I've been toying with the idea of attacking Hannibal right away (maces+catapults), but he built the SoZ. I immediately start considering other alternatives. A whip+slugfest with the addition of more war weariness is no thanks.

Empire 250 AD:



GS headed to construct an academy in Paris, the new capital, because I didn't get to philosophy first and bulbing it right now wouldn't give me much trade-wise. I'll get more of them in the future (spawned him 100 BC or something and forgot about him, should've done it sooner).

 

[Rusten]

Rusten had the good sense to change his post. Unfortunately I saw it before that

Sorry for not changing it in time. Normally I'd put everything in spoiler tags, but I got fooled by the question not being posed in a spoiler. Changed it as soon as I realised (~25 mins later).

 

[Rusten]

Spoiler :

GS comes in 4 turns. Should I bother with an Academy? If I trade for alphabet I think I have all the prerequisites for philosophy. This could bring me to tech parity if I meet more AIs.

Any advice? I am not really good at a game of recovering from war.

Spoiler :

Do you have mathematics? That's the 1st pick, even before alphabet. If you can trade it around it's almost always better to lightbulb than to settle, so that would be my suggestion. Your research % will probably be low for a while as well due to the rush and many cities which adds weight to bulbing instead of an academy.

Recovery: priority #1 is to whip markets and/or courthouses. Currency and/or CoL are very important.

 

[Gliese 581]

I have a question about your screenshots (I've seen this before in for example the ALC games).
How do you name a screenshot in game? Do you use any mod for it? I press printscreen to take a pic. I mucked about in explorer to change names of my jpgs which feels like a waste of time seeing this feature in your games.

 

[shyuhe]

It's been a while since I played a straight up civ game. Let's see how it goes

Spoiler :

I settled in place and actually didn't tech fishing for the longest time. I teched agriculture first and went worker first followed by mining. By the time I had finished agriculture, I knew I was boxed in pretty bad so I skipped fishing so that I could go to BW and chop out stuff.

I settled my second city between the corn and gold to the east - I should have settled 1W in hindsight but oh well. I then proceeded to chop out axes - I didn't whip out any axes as the two cities were producing them at a fairly good pace and I wanted to keep on teching up to at least CoL.

I rushed Louis and took Paris, but I've taken peace for now. He's creative and his culture defenses are annoying. Plus the next few cities look to be on hills So I'm going to tech construction before I go finish him off. I've already taken his best city so I'm not too concerned.

Let's see now... I declared on Louis in 825 BC, I founded Confucianism in 575 BC, and Hannibal declared on Fred in 500 BC. Hannibal asked me to join and I agreed (I have no idea where Fred is though). 450 BC, Christianity is founded - I'm thinking either HC or Ramesses is out there because all of the early wonders have been completed. In 400 BC, I captured Paris. It came with a Scotland Yard (yay!), ToA, and Great Wall.

I'm going to be swapping between caste system and slavery for a while because I'm spiritual and I don't have any developed cottages. Too bad Louis didn't built the Pyramids I'm thinking of finishing math (halfway done), then go masonry -- construction -- civil service. There are wonder hogs out there so I'm just going to concentrate on getting land instead. Louis had around 12% when I attacked him so if I take all of his lands, I think the rest of the game should be easy.

No screenshots this time - I completely forgot

Tech order was: agriculture -- mining -- BW -- fishing -- AH -- wheel -- writing -- meditation -- priesthood -- pottery -- CoL -- math (current)

I've already popped my first great person - a GS that I used to build an academy in Tenochtitlan.

@Rusten

Spoiler :

That's an impressive speed on your rush! After I realized that Paris had hit 60% when I attacked, I had wished I had started attacking earlier and more aggressively (by doing 2 pop axe whips). I'll have to see if I can close the gap since I hit CoL earlier than you

 

[Melior Traiano]

Played up to 1840 BC.

Spoiler :

Well, here's my shot at this game.

Settle in place after moving Scout 2 NE & seeing nothing of interest. Tech set to Fishing (7 turns), build to Scout (8).

Pop map from hut.

Meet Louis in 3880.

Find Gold in Paris's fat cross. The city will make an excellent addition to the Empire someday.

MM capital to spit out the Scout same turn as Fishing finishes. Start Work Boat, due in 10, same turn as pop growth to 2.

Pop Masonry from hut in 3680. Will come in handy when it comes time to tech Construction.

Meet Hannibal sometime in here (didn't make a note of the year). He & Louis are already pleased with one another with 0 modifiers. Hmmm, seems a little queer, does it not?

Louis founds Hinduism in 3320, converts next turn.

Work Boat done, start Worker.

Bronzeworking done, start researching Wheel, find Copper nearby, adopt Slavery.

2440 Oracle BIDL, aka France I bet.

2280 Stonehenge BIDL, maybe even France?

Quickly build two Warriors to garrison first city to be founded near Paris.

Lost a Warrior to a barb.

2120 Found Teotihuacan, claiming Corn, Sheep (when Paris is conquered) & Copper (on border pop).

Wheel comes in, start Meditation. (In hindsight, should have teched Agriculture & AH first. But not a huge deal, as I'm too busy spamming Warriors & Settlers to train a second Worker yet.)

Meditation in, start Agriculture.

Machiavelli tells everyone I'm dead last in tech.

1880 Great Wall BIDL, definitely in France.

1840 Settler poised to found 3rd city claiming more Corn, Cows & Gold (on border pop). Quit here as I'm out of time.

A couple of screenies:

My fledgling empire. Boxed in by Louis to the east, by the sea in every other direction. I founded the second city to block Louis from settling in the area. The third city is not as strategically placed, but will grow into a decent place.

And future acquisitions. It's pretty obvious where the French cities are placed. It's also obvious that some strategic pillaging will have to be done early on in any land acquisition campaign.

 

[Sleepless]

650 -150BC

Spoiler :

It seems the right move was an early rush on Louis. Wish i had done that now. I'll have to see how a later attack goes. Looking at the troops he has at the moment it will be painful though.

Managed to settle 3 more cities although one was very close.

Luckily Lou sent the spear/char with the settler otherwise I would have lost that spot. Not thats its great but with the fish and trade routes it will pay for itself. I spent a little while thinking about the best place to settle on the hill or 1E. Decided 1E so it will be able to run 2 mines with the fish. Now up to 6 cities the same as Lou so a bit worried that he will look to me to expand. So when this request came I thought it would be a good idea to agree.

Obviously the Jewish gods were happy with me for this as:

Yay gems in the capital.
Managed all my goals in this turnset. To settle the other 3 cities and tech CoL. Tech wise Han is the only one with alpha and he'll only give me Mono. Is it worth the WFYBTA. I think so as I can then go into org religon for quicker sacrificial altars. Any thoughts?

Religion wise Han turned to Jud as well. So were 1 happy family on this island. Fred found Conf and converted. With Lou pleased with me and annoyed at Fred what is the likelihood of him attacking me? Lou also founded Christianity so will probably build the AP should I wait till he finishes that before attacking him or go when I think the time is right. Long way off yet though .

Techs I selected Aesth but will change to Math then Construction. Hopefully I will be able to trade Col with Lou a bit later. I assume my GM when he comes will bulb Currency and I'm seriously considering this. Good move or not?

Just a few screenshots to finish up.
My lands.

Tech situation.

Demographics not looking to good but if I can get Louis land will look a lot better. With the amount of HA he has running around I will be building more spears than usual.

Actually not as bad as I thought although I will be lowest pop for quite a while though.

All comments and advice welcomed. Please don't be too cruel though.

 

[Sleepless]

@Olodune

Spoiler :

Just wondering if after you took the workers did you carry on with an attack into France? Obviously once you declare the AI go into war mode so you might have faced a lot more troops than you needed to hence all the archers in the end.

@Silverbullet

Spoiler :

Well done on the rush. Now the hard bit rebuilding your economy. As Rusten said CoL/Curr become priorities to rebuild. Plus side being spiritual we can swap from Caste/Slavery without anarchy. I usually find I need to run scientists/merchants to get any research done but if you can get back in the tech trading loop your set. (At lower levels that is) I can see Han causing some problems later on. One of the strongest AI and with plenty of good land and teching well. Looking forward to see how you rebuild your economy.

Lastly really hard to not look at the spoilers isn't it

 

[mystyfly]

Rusten had the good sense to change his post. Unfortunately I saw it before that

Spoiler :

Sorry then. But you'll find louis ~3-4 turns into the game anyway as he is so close by. Changed to spoiler now anyway.

I would guess that 10 axes and 4 spears would take him out. Plus, it seems, chopping them is a good thing

Spoiler :

I consider this general strategy, not game-dependant

I have a question about your screenshots (I've seen this before in for example the ALC games).
How do you name a screenshot in game? Do you use any mod for it? I press printscreen to take a pic. I mucked about in explorer to change names of my jpgs which feels like a waste of time seeing this feature in your games.

shift - printscreen.

 

[pigswill]

Played a few more turns (up to 1ad). Miles behind everyone. Giving up.

Clear learning experience for me: I'm not yet ready to win immortal so I'm going back to emperor and try to improve my game. But one day (and pigs might fly).

 

[Sleepless]

@pigswill

Spoiler :

Sorry your dropping out . The main idea of this thread and the next ones (hopefully) is to learn to play at this level. You had the right idea with the rush. Probably going for IW was the wrong move. Especially as Jags are only 5 str. Free promo not much good in this land .

I think one of the hardest things at this level is rebuilding your economy after a war. It is so easy to fall far behind in techs. Have a look at Rustens save and spoiler (I haven't looked at the latest one). I'm sure he'll give a great example of rebuilding the economy after an early rush.

Thats why I decided to go the economic route first, waiting to see how that will turn out.

 

[mystyfly]

@sleepless:

Spoiler :

Actually I think jags are fine here, after you settled your first GG anyway. woody-3 out of the gate - pretty strong I think

 

[Sleepless]

@mystyfly

Spoiler :

Totally agree on woody 3 Jags. I just think at this level you have to rush as quickly as possible and with bronze no need for iron. TBH I think I will struggle against Louis. I'm going to need a big army, probably 2. So the altars when there built will see a lot of use.

 

[Dirk1302]

It's been a while since i posted here but i still play the game alot almost always on immortal so a thread discussing strats specifically for this level is very interesting to me.
My general take on immortal:

In my experience isolated starts are easiest given you have a reasonably good island. Especially bulbing to Astro (don't research civil service) is very powerful here, you get huge trade routes so much earlier than the Ais that you can have a 8-10 city empire with great research and a tech lead over the other AIs. From here you can tech to space or beeline some military unit and get another island.

Fractal and continents are generally doable using Snaaty's strat as you can generally expand to 6-8 good cities and then beeline to rifles (or cannons which i prefer) build globe and crush some nearby AI's this almost always leads to a win . It gets considerably more difficult when Ghenghis or Shaka starts near you.I still don't have a good answer to someone declaring on you pre 1000 BC. Usually i prepare a rush myself if one of those guys borders me, if they're somewhat further away i hope for the best.

Lately i've been playing Pangae alot, i find this map can be really difficult,usually you have to take considerable risks blocking other AIs, otherwise you can get boxed in easily. Alternatively you can rush another AI, i've found that doing so with only Axes and some defensive spears around 1000-750 BC is generally more succesful than going to cats and attack around 200 BC despite the fact that the cats can remove defenisve culture. Some reasons:

1. the AI has far more troops 200 BC compared to 1000 BC
2. Cats are considerably more expensive than axes, on the other hand you chop them out at 30 insteasd of 20 hammers apiece.
3. Most important, with cats you get back to peace +/- 300 AD instead of +/- 300 BC which is late to recover your economy on immortal. you're basically warring at a time you should be setting up your economy. Maybe next time we can play on a Pangae to address these sort of problems.

Back to the game at hand, i'll post some details tommorow, Up to 475 BC i did what most of the others did. Game seems to be going fairly well sofar.

 

[mystyfly]

@sleepless:

Spoiler :

Totally agree on woody 3 Jags. I just think at this level you have to rush as quickly as possible and with bronze no need for iron. TBH I think I will struggle against Louis. I'm going to need a big army, probably 2. So the altars when there built will see a lot of use.

Me saying that you need a settled GG before you get woody-3 jags suggest that you should start warring earlier

I think I'll try again. I don't think I was in a position THAT bad but as there were no comments on my game I'm somewhat at a loss what to do now (can't really blame you, I wouldn't like to have to read what I wrote there too... I'm no great writer, believe me and german being my native language doesn't help there either...

 

[Sleepless]

@mystyfly

Spoiler :

on your report. I had read it but don't feel very qualified to answer. . You look to be in a good position to me.

Second in land is huge at this point. Tech choices should be towards Curr and Col not sure if you have it or not? Moving palace to Paris is also an option? Explore more would be a good idea . See what else you can get in trades along the way. Try putting a couple of turn in math and see if Han will trade math for alpha. Possibly trying to build HG you can tell by the we have our reasons when asked why they won't trade.


Trouble with reading other peoples spoilers is we meet different people etc. Or in my case mmm I wonder if there is iron in that plains hill.

No one has commented on my game either. Except from your last post that is. I'm thinking of bulbing my first GM. I'm assuming when I get Math he will bulb Curr. Have to check I know there is a tech bulb list on the site. Whether it is a good move or is another matter.

Lastly your English is a million times better than my German. Anything other than bier or bratwurst and I'm lost.

 

[mystyfly]

@sleepless

Spoiler :

Second in land is huge at this point. Tech choices should be towards Curr and Col not sure if you have it or not? Moving palace to Paris is also an option? Explore more would be a good idea . See what else you can get in trades along the way. Try putting a couple of turn in math and see if Han will trade math for alpha. Possibly trying to build HG you can tell by the we have our reasons when asked why they won't trade.

HG has already built. somewhen ~800-600BC
Research is set to curr atm. For CoL I need Medi + Priest first. I hope conf will spread to me to convert for 5 turns got get hann to pleased and I'll see whether he'd gift one of them to me.

While building axes I somehow forgot the scouting WB... But one is on the way. Moving palace to paris could be an option. But paris is a strong production site, somewhat commerce poor. Probabely palace in lyons/orleans once I capture hannibal's land (which will probabely be @ rifling I guess).

Lastly your English is a million times better than my German. Anything other than bier or bratwurst and I'm lost.

Well that's enought, isn't it, you've got all you need