Washington (IC) Immortal Cookbook

[Dhoomstriker]

Sumerica

I don't understand how he got that city on that 1 square island. Bizarre.

Look closely at the name of the City. Is that a City Name that comes standard with the game, or is it a play on words of our Civ + Gilga's Civ?

I made that City and gifted it to him. I was actually strongly considering settling on the Fur, then gifting it to him, so that he and Montezuma would share a landmass. That way, they'd be a lot easier to bribe into war with each other, and the City could have been a useful one to capture in the future.

However, I didn't have my Galley there quite in time for the Turn 100 cut-off, and I didn't want to leave the game in a "WAR" state to pass on to others.

So, I made the compromise of giving him a junky City. Since I didn't think that it would be better to own a City with the two Fish on the Ice Island compared to a City with the Two Fish + the Furs, I decided that we would NOT want to recapture that City in the future.

Thus, I intentionally settled it so that the Fish would be unworkable by the City.

If we want to keep him in the game later on, say, to extort tech from him after capturing his mainland Cities, then this way, we can own all of his mainland Cities and still have him remain alive. Or, we can just raze the City.

Note that it is not on a one-square island, which would have been tough to capture. There is room to land troops next to the City before razing it, to avoid the Amphibious Assault penalty.


War, for what is it good?

Don't get me wrong i often do worker steals on emperor level. Just not sure how wise it is on immortal level.

It all depends what you're after. As Moroktonos pointed out, the game is set up nicely to be able to have a successful war against Gilgamesh. Ultimately, he's the guy with Marble and a bunch of other nice Resources that we'd love to get our hands on.

A war with Monte would also be profitable, since Monte seems to have a massive continent to himself, but it will be very hard to wage such a war, since it's off-continent.

If you don't want to play a war-like game, then don't pick my save. It's pretty simple.

I'll likely play a war-like game in the second round regardless of whose save we continue from, but it will just take a lot longer to make strong gains against Gilgamesh. Charismatic screams "go to war" in my books, but not everyone feels the same, which is quite fine by me.


Peace for a Price

You have got him to make peace.

He would only accept Peace by taking a City. I didn't want to give him one of our good ones. So, I built a Galley and gave him a really, really terrible one.

It's not my fault that he was stupid enough to accept Peace for such a junky City.


Iron?

The question is do we have iron? Kossin stated last time you normally start with 2 out of 3 military resources.

There is a lot of space for us to potentially own Iron. I would think that we'd have Iron somewhere, if for no other reason than the fact that the average player will probably delay war until one of Macemen, Knights, or Cannons, each of which would benefit from us having Iron.

Also, if we pick a game to play where a lot of the Hills have been Mined, we'll have a chance of popping either Copper or Iron once we've learned Iron Working. So, it's still worth learning Iron Working even if we don't have Iron, both for that chance and to deal with chopping the Jungle squares.

 

[Gumbolt]

I really should not read the posts so tired. Yep gifting a junk city was a nice idea. Huge upkeep cost too will cripple him a bit. I really do need to read through all the game reports. Had a lot on the mind.

I really am not against war with Gilga. I think the window will be small before he gets LB's. I am not sure a chariot war alone would do the job. Swords vs vultures are a pain. I am a bit of a warmonger myself really.

I am off to bed before I collapse from tiredness.

 

[bobbyboy29]

Ok My votes:
coming in 1st: Dhoomstriker
I don't really care about the DOW, we should still be ok diplomatically. You have an amazing number of well improved cities. I probably would have voted for you anyway to see more of those hilarious write ups! Keep 'em coming.

2nd: Gkey, the only reason I would have moved to the coast would be to get the GLH, I didn't think it was possible but you believed! I think some work needs to be done but a good foundation is set up for us.

3rd: Quaren. I think you got the dot map right and cities are well improved. Other than that I wish there were a bit more space for us to expand into, i'm very land hungry.

 

[GKey]

Looks like opinions split regarding aggressive land grabbing in particular that x2 sugar spice city. Yes it is way far from cap, way close to neighbor and way poor on shields.
I think it depends on what we plan to do next with Gilgamesh. Early war or peace up to renaissance era?
My approach is we have too poor production for early war. Chariots are good vs vultures only at attack, but AI is not that stupid to not make couple of spears. It will make actually lots of spears facing mounted enemy thus making chariots useless.
And lets not forget about Monty. We are his closest and military weakest neighbor. Do you really believe he will not backstub us? Naval war will not stop him.
I am warmonger myself as many of us here. But in this situation I would wait for renaissance or even to steel before we make a war.
We are weak on production but have decent food. So whip/draft war looks more promising.
And this returns us to this "useless" sugar jungle city. If we go for long term peace these luxuries will serve us well to grove cities large so we can draft/whip later on.
And in my particular save this city is really good:

1. It let us have 2 more decent coastal cities, which is good with GLH
2. Its high maintenance is compensated by trade routs income.
3. Already mentioned luxuries let us grove big
4. Thanks to this city we got neighbors religion early

May be before we chose particular save we should decide if we go for early war or peace till draft era.

 

[vranasm]

@gkey
if i saw correctly there is only those spices since sugar is to be get at our part of continent and I am afraid they are lost cause against cre civ.

 

[GKey]

Spices are in 5th expansion ring of Gilg capital and in 4th ring of his closest city. I doubt we will lose them. 2 additional sugar = trade for other luxuries/gold.

 

[bobbyboy29]

Just echoing Gkey's sentiments here, he's pretty spot on with his analysis. This is why I went straight for that sugar, spice and everything nice (execpt hammers) spot, because I knew that in the short term a slight lag in tech would be outweighed by what would eventually become a very helpful city (not to mention it gets us access to even more land on the other continent).

Regarding war, it's pretty obvious that this is a bad idea, even if we do have copper, I honestly believe Giggles is the worst leader to rush. Not only are his archers protective, his UU pretty powerful but also, being creative his cities will much more likely have border pops and higher cultural defense making them even harder to take.

Add to that the fact that I wouldn't do it anyway because Monty is such a nutjob and that means the only way we're going to get cities is with a land grab. That's why I feel that the best saves are the ones where we grabbed contested sites early ad we can backfill spots later.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Although I have already voted, here are some similar comparisons for bobbyboy29's game, in case anyone else wants to vote for his game.

If I had been voting based on saved games that I personally wanted to play, I would have voted for his, but I instead voted based on what I thought would be the saves that would be easiest for an average player to play. If you want a decent position and a bit of a challenge, his saved game fits the bill nicely.

bobbyboy29's game

Upsides
- We've got 4 reasonable Cities set up.
- Not all of the locations will be everyone's favourites, but you have to admit that his Gold City is a great Worker-pumping City that does a good job of blocking Gilgamesh.
- Gilgamesh only has 4 Cities, while he also has The Oracle and The Temple of Artemis. That situation leads to a potentially valuable war on Gilgamesh, near the end of the next turnset. In the meantime, Gilgamesh will continue to generate Great People, which he will hopefully use to build us a capturable Hindu Holy Shrine and maybe some settled Great People.
- We have a Work Boat built that can go and explore Montezuma's area, while another one is in the works for eastward exploration.
- We have started work on building Cottages (1 is being worked and another is being constructed).
- We have our Horse connected, so we could feasibly start to build Chariots at any time.
- Since Gilgamesh owns a Holy City, he is likely to spread Missionaries to us for free.
- Our existing Cities are not relying on Seafood Resources, so we can first explore with our Work Boats and then come back to "net" the Seafood Resources for our future Cities.


Downsides
- We are a bit behind on tech compared to some of the other games, most likely due to the aggressive settling.
- We don't have any Seafood Resources netted, so it will be a while before we get "caught up" in that regard compared to other games that do have them netted. We'll also have to first settle some Cities that have Seafood in their fat crosses before we can even consider using a Work Boat in this manner.
- We don't have a lot of improvements on the Flood Plains yet.
- There is a lot of Jungle remaining to be Chopped and we're far away from learning Iron Working.
- We're a bit low on infrastructure (buildings) in our Cities.

 

[Quaren]

It's hard to decide which games that are in the best position(and boring to chose the best). So I thought I would vote for the ones I think will give us the most interesting games.

Dhoomstriker
Very nice opening and the relations hit with gilg might make it more interesting

GKey
A little behind in tech and workers but GLH will make it interesting to play. Also a different sea opening then the rest of them.

bobbyboy29
Won over Fierabras mostly because I wanted a land based capital save with points too. The aggressive settling will be interesting as well.

Surprised that I am doing so well in the votes so far as I have no border pops, 2 less techs then a few others and have chopped more then most of the others.

 

[kossin]

I was actually strongly considering settling on the Fur, then gifting it to him, so that he and Montezuma would share a landmass. That way, they'd be a lot easier to bribe into war with each other, and the City could have been a useful one to capture in the future.

There are 2 requirements for land target:
-8 tiles touching (horizontal, vertical, diagonal)
-3 cities on the same landmass

Unfortunately they would not have been land targets due to the second requirement.
It's why you can exploit lone cities on landmasses without much fear of a DoW as the mechanism checks land targets first.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There are 2 requirements for land target:
-8 tiles touching (horizontal, vertical, diagonal)
-3 cities on the same landmass

Unfortunately they would not have been land targets due to the second requirement.
It's why you can exploit lone cities on landmasses without much fear of a DoW as the mechanism checks land targets first.

Good to know, thanks! That also means that the Fur + Fish City location is a great staging point for us to settle a City, should we want to go after Montezuma.

Settle a City there, then slowly shuttle troops over. Amass a large enough stack, which won't be incurring Unit Supply Costs, and then take on his adjacent City.

That is, if you're suicidal enough to "pull a Monte" over on Montezuma himself!

 

[Moroktonos]

So... we still need votes from Norvin Green, Drlake, Gumbolt, Lymond, and Fierabras.
No one should feel outclassed here . All of the saves were decent at worst, and the more opinions we have out there, the better off we'll be.

 

[Bibor]

Good to know, thanks! That also means that the Fur + Fish City location is a great staging point for us to settle a City, should we want to go after Montezuma.

Settle a City there, then slowly shuttle troops over. Amass a large enough stack, which won't be incurring Unit Supply Costs, and then take on his adjacent City.

That is, if you're suicidal enough to "pull a Monte" over on Montezuma himself!

Well, Monty doesn't need "land targets" to declare

 

[drlake]

So... we still need votes from Norvin Green, Drlake, Gumbolt, Lymond, and Fierabras.
No one should feel outclassed here . All of the saves were decent at worst, and the more opinions we have out there, the better off we'll be.

I've been too busy to even look at the saves, but I'll try to get it done now (before something else comes up). Sunday-Tuesday is my busiest time of the week, so it's hard to find time to vote.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, Monty doesn't need "land targets" to declare

Very true!

That said, he can't declare war on us if we declare on him first!

 

[drlake]

OK, here goes...

First, general impressions:

Bobbyboy: Decent expansion but the sugar city might be going a bit too far (getting the horses and gold is good, though). Decent tech rate but tech position is only OK due to lack of writing. Working on Sailing before writing when the GLH is gone doesn't seem like a good decision, nor does the barracks in Washington.

Dhoomstriker: Settling on the PH is interesting, and 5 cities is great but they are in close so gilg may be able to block us into a smaller area with this save. Exploration way beyond any of the other saves, shared religion with both Monty and Gilg is good, tech position is only OK (writing in progress), can't tell tech rate due to anarchy but probably a bit low.

Fierabras: Settling on the PH is interesting, and 4 cities in good locations (including getting the gold) is good expansion, with the peninsula already blocked from gilg. Tech rate is a bit low, but tech position is good with Writing/Pottery/AH done and Sailing in 5 turns. Monuments already mostly done and a Library in progress is also good.

Gkey: Settling on the coast NE of the starting loc is definitely thinking outside the box, as is the wide separation of the other two cities settled (gold and sugar). No other cities, only 1 worker, potential risk from barbs or gilg expanding into the gap are all concerns. Tech rate is OK but tech position isn't (no AH, Pottery, or Writing) and is hampered by the wide spread. Getting the GLH is a coup and provides potential to salvage this position with more cities settled. Shared Hinduism with Gilg will help.

Gumbolt: Moved to coast, and I like the city locations the best of all of these saves. 4 cities to grab the gold, horse, sugar, and rice and close off the peninsula. Granary and Library in Washington are good, tech rate is a bit low but tech position is good.

Lymond: Settled 1W, also thinking outside the box, but 1 off the coast? 3 cities, and while getting the horse is good by putting it on the plains you end up with no food specials. Expansion is generally close, risking getting blocked by gilgamesh but settler in progress helps. Tech rate and progress are both good. Gilg and Monty are both expanding well in this save.

Moroktonos: SIP with 3 cities in decent locations including getting the gold. Gilg up to 6 cities, though. Good tech rate and position, with a library in progress, but working on Masonry? Horses hooked up.

Norvin Green: SIP with 2 cities, but a settler already out for the third. Still, less expansion. Good tech position and rate, though, with sailing IP.

Quaren: SIP with 4 cities including getting the gold, which is decent expansion. Tech rate is good, but position is only OK (no Mysticism for Monuments? No Pottery). Barracks in production, though? Horses not hooked up.

Vranasm: SIP with 2 cities and 1 settler out. Expansion a bit slow, tech rate is low but overall position is good (but Mathematics?) and a Library under construction in Washington. No horses hooked up yet.

There is an interesting mix of stuff going on with these saves. I think the two strongest overall positions are Fierabras and Gumbolt, which are very similar. Both have well positioned cities, good expansion, good tech positions, and good city infrastructure development. If I were a stronger player I'd rule those two out to increase the challenge, but I'm not.

1) Fierabras
2) Gumbolt (order could be switched as far as I'm concerned)

Beyond that, I'm going with my third vote for Dhoomstriker for the most balls-to-the-wall approach to the game.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Both for play and flair it has got to be Dhoomstriker. Absolutely enjoyed your little signs inside of your report. Well-thought out play and big picture plan.

Moroktonos. A solid start from a solid player.

Fierabras. Solid play and slightly different set up than most.

 

[lymond]

My expert analysis:

Spoiler :

I'll just make a general comment here that I'm very surprised by all the votes for saves in which players planted cities on the far side of Gilgamesh. I think these are very dangerous moves and present a lot of issues.

dhoomstriker - 5 cities is really quite amazing at this point considering a somewhat weak cap. Plus, another city was gifted to Giggles. I like the scouting with the gally too. Main issue is not having writing in yet. However, this type a game is very interesting from the standpoint of rex/recoverer. NY as second city was a great idea for extra early production. All this and without slavery too. Awesome!

drlake - Not bad. Reminds me a little of my save. Not sure if Sailing is the best option at this point. Writing is in with Library on the way - likely whipped this turn.

Fierbras - Really nice round. 4 cities in pretty good spots. Really should have another worker or two here and mines in Washington. I would have worked a farm or two in Boston to grow onto the gold. Still this is one of the better saves. I would have gone Sailing earlier or just trade for it later.

Norvin - A bit slow on expansion here. I like the 2 cities you have, but don't understand the granary first build in NY. Also, I don't like that 1-off city spot that you are about to settle. Of course, you haven't settled it yet so it wouldn't matter. Nice research though. It appears though that we may be blocked out here.

Moroktonos - There is a lot to like about this save except Boston. Boston pretty much did this one in.

Gumbolt - I really like this one. Nice expansion. Two issues: You can run 2 scientists in cap now or at least one with pig guy. Surprised cow is not worked by now - did you build granary first? Workboat should be whipped there too before Lib. Really good round though.

Vrany - Start seems a little slow here. City placement not bad but not much going on in city 2 for this late. I don't like the worker build there. Rather have a workboat out before the border pop.

Quaren - Nice expansion but no Mysticism is a huge problem here. You could have had a nice block, but Gilgs can and will go through that gap to settle. Myst is pretty important for Char leaders. This could have been an excellent round.

Gkey - Little too agressive on settling pattern. I really don't care for where New York is and it could create a lot of problems later including po-ing Gilgs and getting blocked off. I'd rather have farms in Boston before the gold. Tech is quite behind. There are better spots near cap that should be settled first. Maintenance is too much of an issue on IMM to settle that far away. I give you some credit for doing things different but, honestly, I'm really surprised that you are getting so many votes for this one.

bobbyboy - The difference between this and GKey's save is that New York has setup the block. However, I still don't like Boston. You have roads, so Sailing seems less important unless going for GLH. Still would rather have Writing at this point. Decent round though.

lymond - This guy is such an awesome player that I don't feel worthy commenting on his save.

My votes:


Dhoomstriker - I was really torn between Dhoom and GB on this one. GB probably had the best "traditional" round here, but Dhoom's awesome expansion and Gilg DOW offers some interesting possibilities for this cookbook. The recovery here and handling a not happy Gilgs will be fun. Not sure if the city gifting was really a great idea at this point, but kudos for even being able to do that.


Gumbolt - Overall, just a very good round and I would have voted #1. Not sure exactly when certain things were completed, but GB could actually have a GS on the way here. I'm really surprised I have not seen more votes for this save.


Fierbras - Really a pretty good round. Workers really hurt this save from being a lot better and maybe even #1, plus lack of food in Boston. I would be fine playing this one though.

Overall, due to various mistakes, I don't think the other saves even come close to these 3 - including my own. A special mention to Quaren's save as one that would have been VERY strong if not for lack of Mysticism.

Really good to see the nice participation here and new faces (ugh...avatars). Where's Hopa's shadow?

 

[Gumbolt]

I will close out this round after work. Was a bit busy last night.

 

[Moroktonos]

Thoughts:

Sailing after pottery / writing was probably the ideal tech choice here. Kossin's and Dhoomstriker's comments made me remember exactly how powerful early foreign intercontinental traderoutes can be even without the GLH. No point in getting it before writing, however, because you can't explore Monty's cities or get foreign traderoutes.

Speaking of Monty, the more I think about it (mathematically, in terms of peaceweights [he'll get along great with Gilga (+3 on average) and Pacal (+1 on average), but he starts at -2 with us], nowarprobs [80-pleased for gilga/pacal, but only 30-cautious for us; Monty usually isn't pleased until +4 or +5], distantpowerratios [80% of a troopspamer's power is a considerable and very expensive feat], and frequency of war-rolling [Monty is just plain ol' mean and aggresive; you can find all of these numbers in Kossin's sig]), the more I'm convinced that he's coming for us and that he's coming for us sooner rather than later. His intercontinental invasions will likely be pretty easy to fend off, but I really don't see how invading his continent could possibly be profitable: we'll be swamped with colonial upkeep costs until communism, not to mention the high hammer costs of building a navy, and the sheer tedium of intercontinental invasions pre-oil.

Speaking of wars, Gilgamesh isn't exactly a fuzzy bunny either; we qualify as land targets (or we will very soon) in every save, but we won't be completely safe from his war planning until we get to friendly, and Monarchy is still aways away. Don't be complacent if you see a red fist!

The best saves this round came from the people who decided almost immediately what their long-term plans regarding gilgamesh were. Those who opted for peace aggressively settled the jungle to guarentee the land for later, the warmonger(s) pulled off daring worker steals.