Zara - Help me through an immortal game.

[goodolarchie]

Looks like an interesting game, Zara is one of my favs I haven't played a while on Immortal so I might shadow this if I get time.

Spoiler :

Agreed on settling point and early pottery/cottages. Depending on surrounding resources this city will have some mid game health problems, but I doubt it will cause the city to be anything less than a strong bureau cap. Doesn't look like there's a possibility for horse/bronze in BFC unless its on the riverside hill for early barbs...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^^6 flood plains in capital isn't enough?

Pottery>BW will be a lot faster than BW>Pottery. This capital has enough much food/hammers to not need BW early to stay up in settler/worker prod.

Oh. I only looked briefly and did not fog-look. I saw ONE, not SIX . With 6 I agree.

 

[budweiser]

I finished researching AG, then went to wheel, then maybe pottery>writing.

Spoiler :

My scout is still alive. I popped copper from a hut.

Rags is below the jungle line. He can be blocked with 2 cities. One at S copper&pigs, one somewhere along the river. I also see some gold.

Marble, gold, ivory is like a holy trinity in a way. it obliges aestectis, SP and Zeus.

Looks like another duel. Ho hum. I would so like to get BC cats going one of these days.

 

[oranje willem]

Was planning to shadow this, but epic speed.... I just don't have the patience for it.

 

[budweiser]

Was planning to shadow this, but epic speed.... I just don't have the patience for it.

I agree. I wish it was normal. In addition to taking forever, epic isnt a fair fight.

 

[Kwik E Mart]

I would take my scout 1W then 1SW to get one more square revealed (not counting the floodplains that we can see already) from the BFC if I settled 1W. I don't like the coast line on the right. This also allows you to take the hut after you build your city with the scout which has better possible returns.

Settling inland allows for a much better city to be build on the coast if there is sea resources and the lake is a 3/2 with a lighthouse. You are also only giving up 1 tile that has a possible resource on it (the plains 1E, 2S of your settler).

I'll likely hop in and shadow you this evening.

Is this confirmed true? I *seem* to bet better goodies with a border pop than a scout...

 

[budweiser]

Another update.

t41

Spoiler :

Scout has travelled along the west coast to the jungle, then circles north to explore the polar region. He is heading south from the pole down the west coast now.

Popped Myst from a hut.

Random event: Melee cover.

Met Uncle Joe on the west side coming up from the jungle.

I am ready to expand. I have pop 3 with corn and copper improved, building an axe to handle any barbs.

Not sure when to build or what direction to go in. not sure what to research next. Maybe build 2 cottages and grow to 4 or 5 first. This will give extra research.

MC from Oracle could be a play since I have Pottery. A quick jaunt to writing could also allow CoL from Oracle.

 

[kossin]

Actually it's false, cities cannot get exp so odds of getting gold/techs are increased.

 

[Gumbolt]

General consensus seems to be agriculture then TW or pottery. Might as well settle in place now and search around capital and head towards ag where i can pause for thought.

I find epic more fun. Normal is rushed but playable.

 

[turkis]

It was actually a reference to grabbing it with the scout after the city was made as opposed to before. You could wait for the city to grab it, but this is a risk (even as creative) because AI might come steal it. I'd rather accept the almost even odds of a scout vs the city to gaurauntee that I get the hut.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that some of the beneficial hut results were unavailble until you had your first city up.

 

[Kwik E Mart]

It was actually a reference to grabbing it with the scout after the city was made as opposed to before. You could wait for the city to grab it, but this is a risk (even as creative) because AI might come steal it. I'd rather accept the almost even odds of a scout vs the city to gaurauntee that I get the hut.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that some of the beneficial hut results were unavailble until you had your first city up.

Agreed that should wait til 1st city is up before popping hut, if low risk of losing it (which is generally true at the beginning of game). But once city is up, I seem to get better results waiting for culture pop to get the hut than using scout (again, if risk is low of AI grabbing it before the pop).

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay played out to ag! Explored map a bit. The news so far is not good.


Scouted north and back south. popped 4 huts for 2 lots of maps and 2 bundles of gold. Should of disabled the huts! Grrr.

The bad news is in the news of Ragnar showing up from the south. I figure we can expect 1-2 more AI. If Nappy shows up too we'll have a little party!

Maps in spoiler to save load time.

Spoiler :

The North

The South

I am thinking perhap BW in case I need copper to fight of Ragnar or continue TW and pottery? We do have 1-2 pig resources nearby.

 

[Gumbolt]

A few plus points. We have gems, ivory and gold nearby for early happiness and commerce. Downside is land to west is pretty barren.

Pigs/marble could be a possible city site.

Pigs corn gems to south.

A city to use gold would be useful but more exploring needed first.

So BW or tw/pottery or AH next.

Looks like Ah would be useful for new cities given 3x pigs.

BW to ensure copper against Ragnar when he comes.

Pottery for commerce route.

 

[budweiser]

I would say follow your plan because if you change to BW now it wont help too much because you are not ready to expand yet. Better to get the research buff from TW/Pottery first.

 

[Grashopa]

When you see pigs or gold I always want to explore around them more to make sure on my city sites now rather than later. Getting a peak at the ice isn't as interesting.

Pigs/corn gems has good production. Usually you want the gold hooked up right away, but I just can't stand pigs/gold over there.

 

[Mutineer]

Well, played almost to 1AD, using my creasy strategy

Spoiler :

First thin first. There were waves and waves of barbarians coming. Land time I saw this many on deity, there must be a lot of available land to the west.

After beating off barbarians I finally revolted to slavery/monarchy.
Make a few more axes and move them to Ragnar.

When Opportunity appear I steal worker and declare.. It is way too late for real choke, but still I want to delay him. God know how many games I lost when supper advanced ragnar come to me. I took his new citi he put near me, but did not have anything to take his other one's. Insted I Annoy him by pillaging now and there.
His land soo rich, gems, gems, calendar resources, gold, iron...

Research went Pottery-writing-AH-Alphabet-Currency.

In a mean time I build 2 more cities and build bunch of axes to go and take all this barbarians cities.

So, basically this is situation. I am backward, but huge.. * cities with a lot of land between them..

 

[ABigCivFan]

I agree with going Pottery. But farm 1 flood for growth and settler/worker prod.

Next go BW then AH. Build some warriors to explore a bit around the gold for food support. Pig/Corn/Gem, Wheat/pig (or pig/gold for commerce) sites are good for worker/settler pump.

Also get an idea where your neighbors are, an early rush is always fun on Immortal and you have the hammers for it.

 

[budweiser]

I'm all done.

Spoiler :

Rags pulled a fast one. I did Oracle/CoL and sent my missionary to him so he converted with me. Everything's fine but I am playing with no focus.

Later on he founds Toa and converts. Then he doesn't like me that much anymore...

However, he can easily be taken out. I suggest you do it. Good luck.

 

[SillyGoat]

Playing a shadow....I normally play emperor, but Zara is one of my favourite leaders so I figure I'll give it a shot and see how long I last.

Spoiler :

Settled 1 east in spite of my gut telling me that I was going to be settling on a resource.
Popped a map from the hut to the north showing tundra and ice. Ugh barbs are going to be bad.
Popped a few other huts for 2 scouts and ~50g, so early exploration was good.

Tech: Ag-AH-bronze-wheel-pottery-writing

Built worker, 1 warrior and a settler, decided to place city 2 on the plains hill to the west, with an eye to working the pigs, gold and 2 scientists at size 4 (hence the research of AH).
It's also on the same river as the capital and thanks to creative, I had my capital's second border pop before the the city was settled so it was trade connected to the capital as soon as it was founded.

Settler finished a couple of turns after bronze came in.....good news and bad. Turns out my gut was right, otoh, I don't have to worry about the barbs pillaging my copper.
There seem to be a lot of barbs around.

Worker farmed corn, then mined the two unforested hills (same yield as farmed flood plains when building a settler, but faster to improve) then roaded to the ivory and camped it, finishing within a turn of pottery (and the completion of my second worker). Cottaged 3 flood plains, then moved to chop 1 forest in city 2 to speed the worker construction there, then improved the pigs and the gold and then roaded back to the cap. Did I mention there were a lot of barbs running around?

Built a couple of axes in the capital, then another worker. And some more axes. There are a lot of barbs around. I think I built around 6 axes in total (no barracks, I never seemed to have the time, there were a lot of barbs running around). Managed to unlock the HE and avoided having any of my improvements pillaged, so I'm happy with that, but it really nerfed my expansion.

City 2 built an axe then a worker and a library while my axe corps fended off a lot of barbs.

Turned the slider to 0 once writing was in, and build libraries in both my cities. Building another settler seemed pointless as all of my axes were busy fending off barbs.

Then I thought about what to research next. Conventional wisdom says "research Aesthetics and trade for alphabet/math/IW". Given that the neighbours are Uncle Joe and Rags, I figured that a) they would be more interested in teching math/IW than alphabet and b) Aethetics is a worthless tech except as trade bait or for the wonders.
So I said "screw conventional wisdom" and teched Alphabet. Got there before either one was even thinking about teching it, but they were both still cautious so no tech trades *sigh*. I still had enough in the kitty to research Currency at 100% so I did, speeding things along by building research. Currency finished up circa 700 BC, about the same time as my GS spawned (used it for an Acadamy in the capital worth ~11 bpt at this point).

The other continent had founded Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Chistianity (either from the Oracle, or it was a massive co-incidence that it was founded the same turn as the Oracle completed) which is good and bad. There should be lots of inter AI wars over there, but it meant that I and the Happy Twosome didn't have any + religion modifiers and I *really* wanted to get them to at least Pleased. Confucionism hadn't gone yet so COL was next. And I managed to found the religion. Converted the turn it was founded, and sent the missionary towards Ragnar. Before it arrived in his lands, he got an auto religion spread and also converted, so I had the missionary head for Russia.

Shared religion was enough to get them both to pleased, and the tech trading finally began. I decided "screw WFYABTA limits" and I traded for everything I'd bypassed except myst, fishing and sailing.

I've managed to keep tech parity up to 460 AD, and I've finally caught up in city count (we all have 8), but my bpt is pretty low at 145/turn losing 5gpt and my GP production has been awful. I've been relying heavily on the whip for production (and I'm going to continue to do so) so caste isn't a great option.

Stalin has been wonderwhoring. He built TGW, The 'mids, SOZ, and TGL all in Moscow. I'm aiming to whip out an army and take him down, but while Rags is currently Friendly I'm worried that he'll drop to pleased after I DOW Stalin. A two front war + SOZ war-weariness would mean "game-over" for me.
Fortunately, my cunning plan to have Stalin build TGLib for me has worked, and he just bulbed Philo and founded Taoism so he'll likely switch. F4 shows Ragar is +9 Friendly to Stalin, with +6 of that coming from shared religion.

I'm at tech parity with Rags, and I have Machinery to Stalin's Philo. In 3 turns I'll have Optics and will upgrade the two triremes that I already have in the water and whip a third caravel out of Debre Berham and see if I can get some overseas tech trading going. I'm way over Ragnar's WTFYBTA limit, and Stalin still isn't friendly in spite of some of the sweetheart tech deals he's gotten from me.

Advice/constructive criticism would be welcome.


(yes, I know. I don't have enough workers. )

Thanks for posting this one Gumbolt, it's been fun so far.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

25 AD

Spoiler :

Worker techs then feudalism. Bass tardic AIs near us with high unitprob and not very nice. HR helps bring Ragnar diplo up, but guerrilla II longbows (note all border cities on hills) are the real draw.

All I care about is staying alive. Land + cottages + hill defenses for the survival!

To 1836 AD and a good position:

Spoiler :

Lose circumnavigation, lose lib, generally not doing well in tech. Doing well in living however.

Annoying/ironically/murphy's lawingly (or something) Stalin founds Tao, nobody declares (I pleased beg abuse), and I get Ragnar to friendly. OBVIOUSLY I run the godly vassalage civic all game to pay for my 30+ units garrisoned, so with some extra unit spam I'm ready to take it to Stalin.

With medieval troops. After 1300 AD .

Techs:

Not much time. I do, however, use that one knight to pillage his only source or horses on the 2nd turn of the war. He actually skipped castles in a lot of cities, so it goes better than expected.

I get outside moscow (I FINALLY get cannons, but he gets them first) and am forced to take peace - attrition and only building military in 2 cities after the war started weakened me.

I declare again and...ALEX takes him as a peacevassal . Hax garbage from across the world ---> Hey game! Get some real code! Well, without any naval SoD prepared, Alex basically gives me mean looks, bombards a few cities, and doesn't even pillage seafood while I kill off mr self-whore.

I pay him divine right to escape war.

So after being backwards and suckage all game...I decide to go for space . Trouble afoot on the other continent...

I'm actually a little past this. Ragnar just DoW'd me the turn I got computers, but his 15 unit invasion stack, though it has a couple tanks, is about to run into 30+ infantry and a slew of dated units, including cannons. Guess what? Still whoring that hill city. Doing so will allow me to hit him with a few rounds of cannon collateral and then laugh his stack away. He's my only serious competitor for space (just got plastics), and he just distracted himself badly. For my part, I have internet building in moscow, due in 16 turns and nobody has computers. Looks like game over, man .

I don't know why I'm in a winning position. I don't deserve to be in a winning position, but I'll take it .