Winning every immortal game

dylanmeditates

Warlord
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May 14, 2012
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It has been suggested to me that virtually every immortal game on relatively standard game settings is winnable. I however I am coming across many games where on Pangaea I can only settle 3-4 cities even with the fastest rexing, and i come up without horses or elephants, and sometimes only one or possibly no metal. This definitely happens sometimes, I can hardly even call it a rare occurence.
So what's the solution, I mean you can always try to drum up some catapults and just try your luck with lots of swords and axes. But isn't there something better, like an engineering rush maybe? I'm not really even clear on the basic strategy of how to excute this. And what else can you possibly do?
Thanks for any ideas :)
 
Lots of siege weapons. It can be surprisingly easy if you have one of the warmonger AI's to bribe into war. Have them send their stack to some other civ, and then backstab them. Engineering can work, I suppose, but if you don't have good commerce land, Construction is a more realistic target to try to make up lost ground.

Weak starts tend to emphasize how well you can play diplomacy and your tech trades. Diplomacy to Friendly with a strong techer helps a lot, as it helps you maximize your research on weak land. Sometimes you might actually be in contention for liberalism, just because you're able to focus your tech and bulbs while the AI just kind of gets everything.

Even if you don't plan on attacking, messing with the tech leader by bribing guys into war with him can sometimes slow him down just enough to win Lib. If he's your main trade partner though, he may beg you to help him which will cause a diplo hit, which is bad unless it's Mansa.
 
Virtually every Immortal map is beatable...by an elite Deity player. If Immortal is your normal level, then there will be plenty of maps that you can't beat.

I roll a lot of Immortal Pangaea maps, and I find being boxed into 3-4 cities very rare. It's much more of a problem on Deity, when the AI has a second settler to immediately build in your face with. Getting out 6 cities should be possible almost always; the problem is more when 3 of them are kinda crappy and you have low :commerce:.

Diplomacy is useful; but bribing AIs into war is dependent on having Alphabet and a tech lead. Which isn't going to happen if you're boxed in with a weak economy. Best bet is to try and catapult your way out to take control of some better land. This usually makes for a very long game, as you'll flirt with bankruptcy and just have to hope you can limp to Currency with conquest gold and try and stabilise your economy that way.
 
So what's the solution, I mean you can always try to drum up some catapults and just try your luck with lots of swords and axes.

Barring earlier, riskier action (worker steal, choke, axe rush), I think this is exactly it.
Catapults are optional. Swordsmen powered with Mathematics + Hereditary Rule can be produced at lightning speed AND do not tend to cripple the economy too much.

So one can tech up normally, trade for Alpha and start troop production while on his way to Civil Service / Litterature / other.
Settling less cities should result in a better tech pace, so it isn't like this sort of play is a pure loss compared with a RExing game.
In any case, I find the Swordsman to be an extremely safe unit.
If needs be, one can tech up to Civil Service before bursting units. But Macemen are a lot more expensive than Swords are.

All in all, if you're denied RExing,
- your early tech pace should be better because you don't suffer as many maintenance hits ;
- your long term tech pace will reach a plateau pretty quick (globally less food + happy cap), so one can't afford to remain inactive too long.
So there's a window you need to make use of.
The earlier the agressive action, the better.

Then it's mostly about risk management & minimizing the toll on economy :)
e.g. rushing with Chariots might prove good if successful, but the induced risk is also very high, so it might be better to skip that option. Dead early chariots also weight very heavily on the economy, if they need to be replaced.
 
There's a big difference between beating a map and beating a map in a single try.

To beat a map on a single try you either play it safe (makes for a long, slow game if the map is challenging) or you get lucky on what risks you do take. Random chance can have such a big impact that two people playing the same overall strategy on the same map can see two very different outcomes. Distribution of religions, AI world wonder dates, early combat results against barbs or during an early rush, AI war targets, etc.

What makes Immortal so winnable is that it takes the AI a long time to reach a victory condition, so you can generally recover from things that go wrong if you don't mind spending the time. Immortal AI is also very prone to early suppression, worker steals are pretty safe and early rushes even without overpowered units are reliable. Axes or even chariots, for example, can get a lot done.

If you're left with no strategic resources catapults can be effective even with nothing but archers to accompany them. An extremely poor start might be won most easily by turtling and going for culture.

You're talking specifically about getting boxed in early but I think isolation can be much more difficult.
 
I however I am coming across many games where on Pangaea I can only settle 3-4 cities even with the fastest rexing, and i come up without horses or elephants, and sometimes only one or possibly no metal.

This shouldn't happen on immortal. Not using enough overlap maybe?
Even if you lack strategic resources you can still trade for it temporarily. You have contact with everybody so there's bound to be spare resources. If you have no military resources you surely picked up something else in return to trade with (+ GPT).
 
ikotomi said:
Lots of siege weapons. It can be surprisingly easy if you have one of the warmonger AI's to bribe into war. Have them send their stack to some other civ, and then backstab them. Engineering can work, I suppose, but if you don't have good commerce land, Construction is a more realistic target to try to make up lost ground.

Yep, I feel like on higher difficulties manipulating the AI diplomatically can make the difference between an easy game and an impossible one. Bribing the AI into wars with each other can also destroy their teching. The worst fear is a game where the AIs get along peacefully with each other while the human ends up at the bottom of repeated dogpiles.
 
Diplomacy is useful; but bribing AIs into war is dependent on having Alphabet and a tech lead. Which isn't going to happen if you're boxed in with a weak economy. Best bet is to try and catapult your way out to take control of some better land. This usually makes for a very long game, as you'll flirt with bankruptcy and just have to hope you can limp to Currency with conquest gold and try and stabilise your economy that way.

You're not going to be able to bribe every game, but even on 3 or 4 cities, it is still quite common to be tech leader on immortal early with either gold or financial trait. Depending on what the land gives you, you can also get a tech lead through oracle or early bulbing if you have food heavy start. This effect is compounded by the fact that AI typically don't tech fast enough to trade with each other like crazy, and warmongers like monty and toku have a tough time teching and trading anyways so you get to bribe them with a lot of cheaper techs.
 
I am hearing that a lot of you think it's rare to roll maps with fewer than 6 cities (on immortal). I am only counting cities with actual food sources, with a max 1-2 cities w only flood plains but with luck none. I am surprised most people consider it rare to see only 3 or 4 possible sites, I feel like it happens enough to be a proper concern. Especially when you roll lots of food inside of the capital and can't make use of every source. Or when #4,5 and 6 cities are right next to your neighbors charlemagne and justin and you can't even beat their first settlers by immediately building a settler at size 2.
My guess is that 1/4 games has fewer than 6 possible cities w food sources on immortal pangaea games i've played. I don't think I'm failing to get settlers out fast enough; on the contrary i'm always pushing up against over-expansion.
 
That being said, (cont from above)
I will be more conscious now of the possibility of sword rush or catapult rush even on immortal- i remember back when i played prince i would just sword rush everyone but i haven't had as much success with that moving up the ladder. i probably need to hone my whip and worker mm game, and diplomacy awareness.
That's a good point that having fewer cities will give you lower maintenance, so you can use that to your advantage to create a certain window. Clever! I'm always just afraid my production won't b high enough when i actually pull the trigger, especially in situations where i have given it all i got to get out 3 good cities while my neighbor is up to 7 and counting. I guess that's a situation when you want to get someone else to attack them- but of course that's no use when they are so strong that no one wants to mess with them.
 
Worker stealing and early harassment in general would probably open up some land for you on tight starts. 4 close cities with food is better than 6+ cities for a Construction rush anyway. 4 is often too many for an HA rush. 6 is plenty for a much later breakout like Cuirs.
 
Especially when you roll lots of food inside of the capital and can't make use of every source.
One word - overlap. Overlap, chop, whip.

EDIT: Or post an impossible save and see how the gurus here manage the situation.
 
There's a big difference between beating a map and beating a map in a single try.

Very much agreed,
There's a tension between "high risk, high reward plays" and "low risk, low reward plays".

Aiming to win all maps tips the balance towards low risk, low reward plays. This may become problematic when playing on a tough map. Depending on the map low risk play may not always be enough.

The more difficult/poor the map, the less one can afford to take too many risks and, at the same time, the more important it becomes to take some level of risk to make up for the map's difficulty.
Calcultated risks involve luck & map reading (scouting, strat resources, wonder dates, tech level, opponents' flavours, world wars, etc.).

More generally, low risk plays postpone the time when one can get an edge over his rivals.
High risk play aims to get this edge at the earliest.
As long as one doesn't get overrun, it's always safer to postpone taking risks.

But this cannot last forever... When one cannot plan to propel himself ahead of the AIs anymore, this is the last opportunity for a breakout.
e.g. : if one has bulbed heavily (using GSs to get Rifling ?), then he won't get another opportunity for an invasion.
 
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