The University of Immortals

[Gliese 581]

Part 4 (10AD - 550AD):

Spoiler :

After finishing currency, I started whipping some markets.



I figured it was time to get monotheism for the OR bonus first so I started backfilling techs to get masonry, monotheism, meditation and priesthood before getting COL. I also made a tech trade with Hannibal.



I had sent an gallery with an axeman (no chariots available at the time) to Frederick's lands to explore. The turn after trading currency to Hannibal I met Gilgamesh. I checked the relations advisor and figured it was safe to trade with him without pissing of Frederick or Hannibal although I suspected there had possibly been some warring going on for Gilgamesh since I'd seen 3 GGs getting born. I decided to go ahead and do another trade anyhow to cash in on currency a bit. I also gave him a spare copper for 5 gpt.



A few turns later I met Justinian.



Justinian and Gilgamesh are bestest buddhist friends so it was safe to do some more trading. I switched research to Metal Casting temporarilly to try and trade Currency for it to Justinian.
My cities continued building/whipping infrastructure and Paris completed a wonder.



This was mostly built to deny it to the AI since I might go for domination although naval invasions can be painful. At least I made sure Hannibal didn't get it since he's got to go.
After researching MC some more it became clear that Justinian was researching Currency on his own so I had to to settle for HBR + Currency for Monarchy, but what the heck, he had researched at least 30% of Currency already and at this point it had payed of so well for me that I think of it as a free tech anyhow, at least it made him happy.



A shot of my whole empire, 265 AD.



And the tech situation.



Still behind more than I'd like. A penalty for not exploring more earlier when I took for granted that it was me Louis and Hannibal on our own.
I finished up backfilling techs then researched COL and started trading it around after putting in the research needed into my target techs. First up was Gilgamesh who gave me the rest of MC + some gold, then I trade with Justinian for Construction.



I founded my 8th city, mostly to make sure Hannibal didn't settle it tbh since it's pretty crappy. I just wanted to shorten the war-front, it would be dangerous to leave it so far behind my lines where I only have warriors and archers and I didn't want to have to divert troops there. It was going to be founded eventually anyhow.



My second GS arrived and I used him to bulb philosophy for more trades. At first my plan was to trade for Machinery, Feudalism and Compass+Literature from the opponents who still lacked the tech (all but Hannibal who founded taoism earlier) but my plans were foiled when everyone started building the GL. I decided to be patient though since Hannibal had been building it for a while and after one or two turns he completed it.



Great! I'll make sure to keep that city, speaking of which, it's almost time to gear up for war again, I don't feel like I can afford to wait for rifles as Hannibal might very well beat me to the liberalism race. Hopefully I'll manage with enough whipping, I'm in Hereditary Rule so if necessary I can use my second expansion, the one overlapping Tenochtitlan, as a whipping factory and just trash it for a ton of macemen. Maybe all that infrastructure wasn't necessary for it then, plan ahead..

I did get feudalism and compass+lit for philosophy but Frederick is being stubborn as h_ll and wont trade me machinery although I'm down to 1400 beakers to the 1950 of philosophy and I don't know why since he was willing to trade 1700 beakers feudalism for it. I'm thinking of switching back to CS (that I was teching when I bulbed) to get bureacracy earlier or maybe trade philosphy for the last 1000 beakers on CS? Frederick is willing to do that but I'm not sure I want to give him twice as much in a deal even if Hannibal is the main threat at this point and will be dealt with..

The tech situation when I stopped.



I'm catching up, if only Frederick would give me the rest of machinery. Philo is 1950 beakers, I've got 1400 left on Machinery and a 1000 left on CS.

I don't think I can both prepare for war and win the Liberalism race since I need whipping for the former and Caste System for the latter.

I was hoping to play a little longer this time but other stuff came up. Feel free to comment.

 

[Rusten]

@Gliese 581

Spoiler :

Doesn't look too bad, +/- tech parity after an early rush is ok. One minor comment though, you shouldn't trade for cheap techs like meditation. It's not the amount of deals you make that adds to WFYABTA, but the amount of techs gained. With that in mind you should try to limit trading to the more expensive ones, even if that means giving the AI some good deals. For instance it's usually better to get only mathematics from alphabet than to get mathematics and mysticism and so on.

About attacking Hannibal:

If you feel you have a window of opportunity to go to war then by all means cease it. There is this forum myth going on that warring with riflemen is the one and only thing (maybe because of Snaaty's great guide), but that's not true at all, there are many ways to play out the high level games.

 

[Gliese 581]

@Gliese 581

Spoiler :

Doesn't look too bad, +/- tech parity after an early rush is ok. One minor comment though, you shouldn't trade for cheap techs like meditation. It's not the amount of deals you make that adds to WFYABTA, but the amount of techs gained. With that in mind you should try to limit trading to the more expensive ones, even if that means giving the AI some good deals. For instance it's usually better to get only mathematics from alphabet than to get mathematics and mysticism and so on.

About attacking Hannibal:

If you feel you have a window of opportunity to go to war then by all means cease it. There is this forum myth going on that warring with riflemen is the one and only thing (maybe because of Snaaty's great guide), but that's not true at all, there are many ways to play out the high level games.

Spoiler :

Thanks for the heads up. I know about the WFYABTA mechanic and I try to avoid the cheap techs but I probably should take extra care as I'm used to emperor difficulty. Hopefully I'll be in a position where I don't need to do much trading once I've conquered Hannibal.

Well my reasoning about attacking Hannibal is he's the clear leader at this point and his teching is lightning fast so by the time I have rifles he might very well have grenadiers even if I beeline it. I think he's going to win the liberalism race, perhaps regardless of if I go to CS to spawn GSs faster, although if I remember correctly he likes Nationalism quite a bit so I can always hope he diverts time there. Even if it becomes a drawn-out war I've got superior tactics since he's an AI and I also have the free combat1 promotion since I'm aggressive. He has to go sooner or later right?
I edited my post to include the last save.

 

[Sleepless]

1040 - 1905 AD

Spoiler :

BurN gave me a couple of tips so I thought lets give the Lib race a go. Did I manage it.

Just missed out. Thought Han would get it but he went for Nat/Const. Finished off Lou after the peace treaty.

Han was teching really well but decided to form a colony. Meet

Isabella. Had a good relationship with her through the game and did most of my tech trades with her and Gil. Not all relations were so good.

He only landed 3 Cataphracts which were easily killed. I sunk 2 of his galleons and thought that was it for his troops. Wrong he must have been planning the war for ages. At the bottom of the island in the Lou picture by the mountain I had a frigate and saw his naval fleet there. 3 Tiremes and 5 Galleys. They couldn't get past my frigate so turned round and went back again. Shortly after Han declared on Just and I never saw any more of his troops.

Military I was well behind Han so attacking him was not an option so I decided to go the space route. Tech rate was a bit of a problem so I thought quite early lets beeline computers for the Internet.

Did I get it?

Yep. Got lots of techs. I didn't turn of teching but went for Fusion and managed to get there first.

Another nice screen.

A quick look at the tech screen.

That looks good.

I put the Palace in Paris as this was going to be my ironworks site and running beauracracy would help build the parts. A quick shot of Paris near the end.

Not bad production.

Did I win? A shot of the victory screen.

It was close but I launched first and

Hey a win is a win and wasn't looking too good at one point and a couple of others as well come to think of it. Thought and a bit more info to follow.

 

[BurN]

@Sleepless

Spoiler :

Nice try going for lib, tough luck missing it. When I played from your save I did get lib though but I hit it on 1120AD. It must've been a really close call as well though, since Justinian was after it too.

Question about your game, were you first to get computers? Because you got robotics on internet completion.

Anyways grats on your win, I was secretly rooting for you because you were in a hard position. Space at 1905 is pretty early. At least to my standards, I don't know how fast other ppl usually launch.

 

[Rusten]

Spoiler :

Thanks for the heads up. I know about the WFYABTA mechanic and I try to avoid the cheap techs but I probably should take extra care as I'm used to emperor difficulty. Hopefully I'll be in a position where I don't need to do much trading once I've conquered Hannibal.

Well my reasoning about attacking Hannibal is he's the clear leader at this point and his teching is lightning fast so by the time I have rifles he might very well have grenadiers even if I beeline it. I think he's going to win the liberalism race, perhaps regardless of if I go to CS to spawn GSs faster, although if I remember correctly he likes Nationalism quite a bit so I can always hope he diverts time there. Even if it becomes a drawn-out war I've got superior tactics since he's an AI and I also have the free combat1 promotion since I'm aggressive. He has to go sooner or later right?
I edited my post to include the last save.

Spoiler :

He might not "have to" go, but it would certainly make victory much easier. Hannibal is a very capable AI that you don't want to have too far ahead or let be in peace with sufficient land. You can probably get liberalism first if you avoid machinery (can bulb liberalism itself too then instead of printing press) and run an awful lot of scientists neglecting other stuff in the process, but whether it's worth it is another story. It's only a free tech and a lot of sacrifices has to be made doing that. Every turn not in slavery is a turn of wasted with Monty.

I'd probably either attack now or aim for liberalism taking military techs. I'd stay clear of rifling though as that will probably take you too long to get. Drafted muskets and cuirassiers come to mind (we have horses afterall).

@Sleepless

Spoiler :

Congratulations on your win!

 

[Sleepless]

A couple of thoughts and did I learn anything

Spoiler :

The idea of this thread is to learn to play and win at Immortal level consistently. So did I learn?

I made a big mistake at the start not rushing Louis. I usually play a more peaceful style but there is a time to be aggressive and being blocked in is one of them. Lesson learnt

I learnt you should emphasise early GP more. It would have made a big difference if I had run Caste/Pac earlier as Teno could feed a lot of them . I did have Philo first and quite early which was worth a lot in trades but next GP I didn't get until 1000AD ish.

Military I need to plan a bit more. I usually build too many troops which is a waste of time and hammers, doesn't matter so much at lower levels but the gold and hammers saved at higher levels could be the difference between winning and losing.

Diplomacy I'm ok with. Be careful who you trade with for worse enemy negatives, use of civics to get + relations (spiritual is good for that). Be carefull of WFYBTA trades.

As to the game itself I'm a bit disappointed with the way it went but glad I won.

Lastly thanks silverbullet for hosting this and if you planning to do more I'll be there.

 

[Sleepless]

@Rusten

Spoiler :

Thankyou . Yours much more impressive though

 

[Sleepless]

@Sleepless

Spoiler :

Nice try going for lib, tough luck missing it. When I played from your save I did get lib though but I hit it on 1120AD. It must've been a really close call as well though, since Justinian was after it too.

Question about your game, were you first to get computers? Because you got robotics on internet completion.

Anyways grats on your win, I was secretly rooting for you because you were in a hard position. Space at 1905 is pretty early. At least to my standards, I don't know how fast other ppl usually launch.

@BurN

Spoiler :

Yep, shame about Lib did think about replaying it and starving Teno and other cities more but didn't .

I did manage to get computers first. Robotics I was going for Mech Inf and possibly Space Ele but Han got that. Luckily Paris was a great ironworks site and didn't take long to produce the engines/docking bay/stassis chamber and Apollo itself.

Thanks again for the tips have to dedicate this win to you

 

[ungy]

Digging out of a hole (cont'd). 500-1515

Spoiler :

At my last save I am doing a late rush(debatable use of word) having taken an ill advised shot at oracle. Louis starts with 7 cities to my two but I've got Paris and the city nearest to me but I soon run into trouble:

60% culture on a hill I would need a miracle to win this battle but I will lose the game from here if I do not cripple Louis with this war. I cannot bypass the city with that culture and that stack--I just don't think that can work. So I retreat and hope Louis follows, which he does. I take out 5 units and then advance again leaving this position:

Not great but my guess is that I'm pretty good favorite to win and time is definately not on my side. So I attack, win, and Louis offers little more resistance and leave him with a two fishing villages. I have enough loot to research COL, which I trade for alpha with Hannibal. That lets me get MC and math in peace, and then I work on rebuilding the economy.
I get contact with Freddie from AP, lose a scouting WB But most importantly Hannibal (hindu) builds the AP and I have holy city (as well as 2 others). Near wars end (around 0AD) I have no GP, no lib no altar. Running around 0 at 0% science. Not too good.

But I've captured the GW, and soon generate a GSpy. I bomb Hannibal. Without running espionage on the slider, I steal:
monarchy, mono, currency, feud, banking, aesth, lit, compass, optics, machinery, gunpowder. Compare that with a GS lightbulb!

I'm more or less caught up in tech--I even build the SOL!
I've got an engineer to start mining, and an artist for a GA in reserve, and my army of rifles/cannon/cav is ready to roll on Hannibal.

Very enjoyable game--I really learned the power of the spy bomb to catch up in this type of situation--I was so far behind I'm not sure how I'd have caught up otherwise.

 

[Olodune]

Another round of Monty

1555-1740ad

Spoiler :

Last update I had just reached steel+rifling+democracy.

So it was time to build an army (through upgrades and rush-buy):

I give Hannibal a DoW, and he counters with a few less-than-impressive stacks and scattered Cavalry groups:

Everything is going well until I reach the gates of Utica:

Not fair!! He was two techs from cannons when I started this war, how the heck was he the first to Artillery Well, I'm committed to this offensive now ... but we'll leave more bodies along the way. CR cannons are suddenly not so overpowered Monty approves.

As it turned out I was able to pin down his artillery in cities like this:

Eventually, Hannibal is cleared from the continent (1740ad) with the capture of Hadrumentum:

Unfortunately he had an island city that I was unaware of until the war was nearly over. Capitulation looks like the best option because:

-I'm not mobilized to get that island quickly, and WW is hurting
-I *really* don't want Hannibal to vassal to a major competitor and potentially get surprised by that same WW
-I can get Scientific Method in the peace treaty
-Most of the others like Hannibal so diplo hits should be relatively minor

Hannibal lives on under the crazed gaze of Montezuma.

Final War Tally:

My losses:
18 cannon
11 rifles
3 spears
1 longbowman
1 chariots
some frigates

Hannibal's losses:
36 rifles
27 cavalry
12 artillery
4 SAMs
7 airships
15 catapults
assorted old stuff

War booty includes SoL/Versailles/Sistine/GLH/Colossus.

It was a fun slug-fest, and now Monty is in a very strong position. Soon our GNP should explode allowing the tech gap to be closed once more:

The AIs are moving through the tech tree very well. Still space/domination should be fairly straightforward options from here.

 

[Olodune]

@Sleepless

Spoiler :

Nice win That was a close space race

@Rusten

Spoiler :

Another very strong win, well played

You've convinced me, my next game I'll try musket draftees. The timing with the age of the cuirassier looks very promising. In fact it may be the strongest military play with early liberalism (since the remaining techs are quite close).

 

[Rusten]

@Rusten

Spoiler :

Another very strong win, well played

You've convinced me, my next game I'll try musket draftees. The timing with the age of the cuirassier looks very promising. In fact it may be the strongest military play with early liberalism (since the remaining techs are quite close).

Spoiler :

Thanks, I feel I was in a really strong position from start to finish.

You'll love the muskets+cuirassiers, it's a wicked combo and totally underrated unit mix, happy to have swayed your mind. On a bigger landmass you can continue the war with cannons shortly after as well, but this game I decided to call it quits after Louis and Hannibal as I had enough land already and naval invasions aren't as much fun. Fred was lagging behind in tech, so taking his island probably would've been doable right away. Justinian on the other hand was huge in my game, his tech rate compared to usual immortal games was amazing. I was even running mercantilism most of the time pulling us both down and avoided trading techs with him but we still went through the tech tree at an incredibly fast rate. That Buddhist shrine of his probably gave more than 100 gold per turn thus allowing a high slider.

Good luck for the remainder of your game!

 

[silverbullet]

1440 AD -> the end

This game was a lot of fun. Thanks for hosting it silverbullet and I'm looking forward to the next one (if you want to keep it going of course).

I am glad it was. I will definitely do at least 1~2 more games. I am just so sorry I don't have enough time to play and everyone gets ahead. It's hard not to read spoilers. So I hope to finish my game this weekend and start reading it all.

 

[Sleepless]

I am glad it was. I will definitely do at least 1~2 more games. I am just so sorry I don't have enough time to play and everyone gets ahead. It's hard not to read spoilers. So I hope to finish my game this weekend and start reading it all.

I enjoyed it as well . Did mention it in the spoilers but you'll see that when you read them. Luckily I was off work this week so had plenty of time to play. Shame everything else I should have done this week wasn't.

 

[Gliese 581]

Part 5 (550AD - 1070AD):

Spoiler :

Another short round played since there was so much micro every turn with all the whipping.

I started by putting another turn of research into Machinery in the hope of making the trade with Frederick but he obtained Philosophy the same turn so I switched back to CS. After finishing up both CS and Machinery I took a timeout to determine wheter I should go for Paper or Engineering but chose the latter. Trebs+ faster movement would help alot in my war effort so I delayed going for Liberalism once again (well I've more or less given it up really although Hannibal seems to be delaying it). I whipped the NE in Tenochtitlan and the HE in Texcoco.
At least the tech situation was looking good as I started to train units in more or less all of my cities.



Alot of whipping was going on.



Then I finally met the last opponent, Willem.



We drew alot of techers didn't we? Hannibal, Frederick, Willem and to some extent Gilgamesh.
I was building alot of troops and generating gold to upgrade my old aces and suddenly I plummeted in techs. from almost even to 5-6 techs behind everyone except Willem again, damn it's fast on Immortal! It doesn't help that everyone is trading with each other.
After a little while Willem was ready to trade a tech he had monopoly on, and of course I jumped at the opportunity to get back to civilized ways.



A little expensive but definitely worth it as it enabled a few other trades.







And the final tally for guilds is.. Paper, Drama, Theology and Optics.
Willem also threatened me for Aesthetics, and being a good sport I agreed. I had reason to appreciate the dutchman as he continued his research into unexplored areas, Banking was the next tech.



Which also gave me Music.



All this trading enabled me to keep up somewhat although I had a military budget of world conquest proportions, as Pliny noted.



Hannibal is worrying me a bit though, he's already got Scientific Method and right now he's headed for Constitution although he hasn't started on Education yet but I suspect he'll beat me to it. I hope I can break his back quickly or it might be rough.
I'm finally ready to attack, I've split my troops into three groups of about equal size. Only army group center has a superhealer though.



My planned route of attack:



Army group north is concerned with Jute, after that they will move southeast and mostly act as a block from counterattacks. I might split of a few troops to support in the attack against Utica.
Army group center will capture Thapsus then march on Utica.
Finally, army group south has the longest route as they are to conquer and raze Sicca, then scurry up to Leptis and from there continue towards the east coast. Both Sicca and Leptis are lightly defended though and razing Sicca will save them some time.
Reinforcements will muster in Orleans but I should probably add a few backup troops in Marseilles as well in case the resistance is heavier than anticipated there.
Any thoughts about my plan?

 

[Olodune]

@Gliese 581

Spoiler :

Your power looks good. I noticed you have as many as 5 unhappy faces from whipping in several cities (Monty approves ). The tricky part is that Hannibal is 2 techs from cuirassiers (painful but manageable) and 3 techs from rifling ( ... ). Hopefully he doesn't tech very quickly.

Looking forwards to the next update.

 

[Dirk1302]

Until 500 AD

Spoiler :

First part of the game is uneventful, find out that we don't have much space and copper is nearby. It might just be possible to found 6 reasonable cities and run to Rifling or steel. I'm afraid of a lot of cultural pressure from Louis though cripling my outer cities. Furthermore all the signs point to an early war, copper nearby, lots of forest , cramped for space, meek opponent. The only problem is Louise's culture so we have to be fast but also build as much units as possible.

Second city is build 2S of the copper, i know 2S,1W from copper settling on coast would have been better but if Louis settles near the Northern eastern corn i might lose copper due to culture. My plan was to build the third city near the Fish crab site, lots of mines and forests here. As it is the Corn spot near Louis is still open so i settle here as it is a good base for further operations.

850 BC and i'm ready with 8 axes and 2 spears, Louises's power rating is 1.1 which is a good sign. Power ratings don't say that much but i use it as yardstic as to how difficult the rush will be. >=0.8 generally means fairly easy, <= 0.7 not a walk over. I don't attack oppo's with powerrating <= 0.5 as you can at least expect huge resistance in this case, better build more units in this case.

Not much to say about the war really, Orleans on a Hill is a tough nut to crack, the rest of the French cities fall fairly easy. I'm more or less done by 250 BC. I can get Alpha and IW for peace so i let the French city live for another 10 turns. Alpha is important because i can set production to research now in Tenochtitlan and Teotuhican, my main production sites. Together with 2 scientists in every city where i can place them i get to COL in 8 turns from here. As mentioned earlier in this thread by Rusten and others, it should have been Currency i think.

Around here I've bad luck trading with the others, i've had COL for some time now but i never could get math for it so chopping the Altars would have been a severe wast of hammers. In the save Fred is finally willing to trade but he's got COL in the meantime. So i have to research everything myself. Currency costs 29 turns now but after building granaries in Teotuhican and Tlatelolcob productions goes back to research so i get currency in 6 turns 200 AD which i trade for math and some cash immediatley.

I have been prechopping forests everywhere ( of course forgetting to cancel the chop now and then each time losing 10 hammers) so instead of chopping the altars i can now chop the markets.

Completely off topic: I've made a Python mod addressing problems with prechop, halting the worker one turn before the chop is completed this really saves tons on micro.It also has functionality like getting all the muskets or rifles from all cities get to one place (different than setting a rally point, i'm talking about existing units in cities), a Gotocity shortcut (i really missed that from Civ3) and another shortcut that sends a unit to the last city i did gotocity to.Also saves alot of micro when warring. I got it to work together with Bugmod. I really have to post it one day in the mod section, in the meantime anyone who is interested in this sort of functionality give me a PM (as i don't want to clutter this thread) and i can explain in more detail.

Back to game, i get Civil service 500 AD and have a decent 145 beakers/turn now. I can choose Paper now with the idea of bulbing lib in the end. My empire is not ready for mass bulbing yet so i go Aestethics-> lit->Drama now planning to build NE in Paris then switching to pacifism. Since i'm late setting up this combo and research will be very good in some 20 turns i plan to self research paper, 1/2 of education and lib. I'll trade for Machinery and bulb Printing press, chemistry. With any sort of luck i can get Steel from lib.

I have a workboat exploring coastlines but it hasn't come up with very interesting info/new civs sofar.

 

[Olodune]

@Dirk1302

Spoiler :

You are in a good solid tech position, taking alpha from Louis was a very good move Did he build the ToA and T. of Solomon too?

I noticed you cottaged over a silk by Paris, are you going to keep the cottage (commerce) or will it be plantationed for a trade-able resource? I would assume a plantation, is which case assigning its citizen to another cottage would probably be better.

Finally, where is the HE going? Tenoch.? (Paris is probably better prob, but you said the NE is going there).

Sorry for the question spam

 

[Dirk1302]

@Olodune,

Spoiler :

Yes setting production to research/wealth is an often overlooked option. There really are times (such as here) when there's nothing sensible to build then it can be great.

Louis built the ToA, i had to build temple of Solomon myself as i couldn't stop the prophet from Paris, actually it's a decent shrine in a time that i needed money so no reason to complain here.

The cottage over the Paris silk was just a mistake , i see it now you mention it, i was making a lot of Cottages at that time so i probably routinely hit the T key not really seeing where the worker was.Should have been a farm and will become a plantage when Calender is in.

He will be build in Tlatelolcob, a rather useless city with reasonable production.Basically being a builder i don't like to mass produce units in cities that are good for commerce or specialists.