Thoughts on the Immortals

[tboner23]

I am playing my first game ever with Cyrus right now, trying to learn how to exploit UUs by playing with civs that have early, and different, UUs (ie not replacing a standard rush unit like the Axe or Cav). The Immortal shines, from aelf's wonderful guide, when you have a close neighbor to strike quickly. In my game I am playing tilted-axis, which means continents, and I started with no really close neighbors. Toku, HC, and Izzy were in their own neighborhood on the western third of the continent, leaving me with a third all my own.

I could have REXed 5-6 cities by 1 AD and built up an army without fighting anything other than barbarians, but that would defeat the purpose of my game. Then an idea hit me.

I stopped expanding at 3 cities and went into normal rush mode, started building and whipping attack units whilst my workers improved my land. Instead of creating an army as fast as I can though, I built Stonehenge to help my cultural borders expand and the Great Wall to keep Conan and his friends away. When I had 10 Immortals stacked together I attacked Toku, the closest, and took three of his cities with them. Razed them all. By that time I had a nice stack of Axemen and Spears that I took the fourth city with. Razed that too. I built some more Immortals to replace my losses and pushed farther west towards Izzy. The only city I kept was Madrid, the Buddhist Holy City. I left HC alone so I could backfill on Techs.

I only played this on Noble, but I am wondering if this strategy would work on higher levels for Cyrus; provided there are no close neighbors? Raze a swath through the continent razing anything that is not important, but perhaps leaving one person left for trading purposes. Then re-settle as desired. This gives a long period of peace in which to grow and research, while your lone neighbor also grows... obviously to only be cut down when you are out of room.

I would also like to note I got Construction when I reached Madrid, so cats would have taken to long to get there. One stack of Immortals for small cities and speed, one stack of heavy lifters to take those hilltop fortesses.

 

[frob2900]

I only played this on Noble, but I am wondering if this strategy would work on higher levels for Cyrus; provided there are no close neighbors? Raze a swath through the continent razing anything that is not important, but perhaps leaving one person left for trading purposes. Then re-settle as desired. This gives a long period of peace in which to grow and research, while your lone neighbor also grows... obviously to only be cut down when you are out of room.

Yes, Persian Immortals are very powerful, and Immortal rushes work well at least up to Monarch but probably higher. On Monarch you won't be able to dominate your entire continent (at least on standard size and higher), but 1 or 2 enemy civs can easily be crushed underfoot.

You can probably also take on a third if that is your cup of tea, but that will probably be after construction and the AI will probably have Longbowmen. It shouldn't matter tho, since you should have bunches of generals (from Imperialistic) settled in your military city to produce highly promoted catapults/immortals/swords. The charismatic/imperialistic combo is for highly promoted units.

 

[Ozbenno]

I've used Cyrus and an Immortal rush on Emporer to bag a domination win. I found by promoting some flank (is this the withdraw promotion) I and II and using these to damamge the top defenders, with a good withdraw chance and then combat promoted ones to bring them down.

The other good thing about Immortals (and War Chariots for that matter) is the 2 movement allows easier pillaging. Cut the AI supply to metals and horses on the first turns of the war and then you're left with archers only.

 

[BARBEERIAN]

It works pretty well up to Emporer at least (I don't play Immortal/Deity so I dunno). Probably the best all around early rush unit for SP games IMHO. +50 vs. the AI's beloved archers, 2 moves, and it gets defensive bonuses so it can defend captured cities pretty nicely too. Pretty much until cities start getting +60% cultural defense and Longbow's they'll eat through any non-protective Civ with minimal loses.

 

[tboner23]

I think you all might have misunderstood me slightly. I am not talking about a standard Immortal rush, where you consolidate cities and expand your empire. I mean a rush where you simply knock out your opponents, then re-settle.

If you read my post correctly, then I apologize.

 

[Phrederick]

The problem I see is that you're clearing out room for the ai to settle into, but you're paying the costs of war, and they just have room to grow. Therefore, you might have a problem of playing catchup. Perhaps the hordes of barbarians they'll be facing will even it out, perhaps it won't. Also depends on the size of the map. I tend to play small maps, where it would be a bit more effective. I think it would be slightly sub-optimal (as in you would do better with a different strategy), but probably still successful and possibly more fun.

 

[Harbourboy]

Balbes employed a variation on this strategy in WOTM7 (?). This game was at immortal level (immortals on immortal) and mostly achieved the aim you are looking for which was hobbling the AI rather than taking over their cities. Balbes declared war on all AIs on the continent and used fast moving immortals to continually cut off resources and harry the AI so that they could not develop, occasionally razing small, poorly defended cities, whilst building up a stack to eventually knock over their big cities.

Beautiful stuff, when executed properly. You look like a clown if you stuff it up though.

 

[de Mott]

I only played this on Noble, but I am wondering if this strategy would work on higher levels for Cyrus; provided there are no close neighbors? Raze a swath through the continent razing anything that is not important, but perhaps leaving one person left for trading purposes. Then re-settle as desired. This gives a long period of peace in which to grow and research, while your lone neighbor also grows... obviously to only be cut down when you are out of room.

I recently achieved a conquest victory on huge prince, marathon with Cyrus and his immortals. What I observed was that my tech pace was really, really bad, since I kept a lot of the cities I captured.
On the other hand, razing a lot of cities and settle the spots yourself later also has its disadvantages. This isn't cost-efficient production-wise, though it may help to keep your research speed higher.

In the end it comes down to which victory type you want to achieve in your game. It doesn't sound like you are going for conquest/domination, so it seems fine to harass some of your opponents early to make sure they don't harass you later.

Note, however, that on my huge map I couldn't establish trade connections easily due to some modifiers (you attacked our friends - 15 ). Almost everyone has some friend somewhere, but on a standard sized map, it would be easier to leave one opponent to trade with, who is not too impressed by all your warmongering.

 

[tboner23]

HC was friendly with me before I started warmongering, the other two were Annoyed. Izzy because I wasn't Buddhist, and Toku because, well... just because. I would have left Izzy alone and killed HC if I had better relationship with her, simply because of distance.

Thanks everybody, it sounds like I won't have to throw out this idea as I attempt to move up the difficulty ladder. Just perhaps add in resource pillaging and rely more on my SoD to take cities. Thanks again.

 

[Dan Quale]

The best part of the immortal is that it does receive defensive bonuses, therefore making it an excellent pillager, there are other ways to destroy your enemies than by taking their cities. With 1-2 immortals sent to each of your neighbors, as early as possible, reguardless of difficulty, but most effective on marathon, they will not be able to kill them until the age of feudalism, which will be very very long, as you can completely shut them down. Immortals are great at taking cities, however they lack the ability to gain city raider promotions, they truly shine on the open battlefield.