Lessons from first Immortal win and earlier losses

[Mr Justice]

OK.

just an update on this.

im now ~ 600Ad.

i left cathrine, attacked alex, got 3 of his cities.
had peace for 20 or so turns then attacken mensa,
took 3 of his cities. just after i accepted peace (and 4 turns worth of reaserch on currency ) both alex and issabella attacked me.

im 2nd last in score, lowest on all demographic rankings bar production. im middling there. absolutely Way behind everyone else tech wise. but militarily im in good shape. ive plenty of catapults, its all you need.

ok my questions now are.
russia is the score leader. they are the biggest civ2. and they right beside me. however im friendly with her. she not givin me techs, but she not attacked me yet.
how shud i handle her? until i take some of her cities my core 4 cities are on the frontline with her. the necessity of defending these cities is tieing up a significant percent of my army (atleast 3 units per city).

im thinking i'll declare on her and then sit in my lands and await her attack (i cant attack her first and adaquately defend my empire, i need her to attack so i can take out her presumeably big stack she gunna send).

tech wise im in a barrel, how exactly am i to catch up?
with an empire thats so big and cottage filled or by forcing other civs to give me techs?

[rah]

You'd better take catherine before she gets her cossaks.
And unless you're playing random personalities, she will come for you regardless of how pleased she currently is with you. It's only a matter of time. Only once in a blue moon can you keep her satisfied even with the right civics and the same religion and having fought together against someone.
And take care of her SOD outside your cities before they come in and pillage every improvement you spent centuries building.

[trev]

You neglected to state what the result of the joint attack by Alex and Isabella were, hopefully you were able to counterattack and take some of their cities, particularly Isabella. My instincts tell me that the 3 cities you took from Alex in your first war were not enough to weaken him substantially, maybe a 4th or even 5th city should have been taken. However you have done reasonably well, however less cats and more swordsmen and spearman may be in order, spearman are essential if an enemy has horses or elephants to stop pillaging quickly with low losses, as mobile forces are there preferable option for this.
The way I caught up in tech was to be the first or second to Paper, Printing Press, Education, maybe also compass which was learnt with a GS and traded with these to tech parity. This meant a lopsided tech route, eg Animal Husbandry was not needed in my first cities and therefore was unknown till I traded for it with Paper. Likewise Polytheism, Monotheism were unknown until later trades.
Construction was also unknown for quite a while, I relied on swordsmen, axemen, spearman in offensive stacks and archers in my cities for a long time, then next added crossbowmen when available to my stacks. Risk needs to be taken with unbalanced tech lines so that you are first to some key techs, whatever they are.
It is essential to either take on the leading civs or get them involved in other wars before it is too late, therefore fight Catherine, or get her involved in a serious war with her neighbours. In my game I gave Democracy to Victoria to fight Catherine, that long war allowed my GDP to begin to dominate as well as hammer production, and during that period I became the leading civ. Even though Victoria after that war usually had a marginal tech lead on me, she did lose a city which kept her to a manageable size, and Catherine lost multiple cities to me, which also weakened her permanently because a significant number of her remaining cities were in glacier territory.

[Mr Justice]

i havent gotten chance to play since i posted at ~600ad.

ive weathered issabellas first wave. she sent roughly 20 or so units divided between sword, horse, and chariots at a newly conquered city (which i pop rushed a wall once it stoped resisting) for the loss of a 2 or so units. she is thus far attacking me in an almost ideal manor (from my point of view). ive no idea where her lans are, she using open borders to get at me.

alex is only sending 2/3 units per attack (all horsemen) im low on spears but so far ive enuf to take them out, fortuantly hes fixated on getting one of his cities back and ignoreing the others which are not as well defended nor are they capable of producing units.
i want 2 more of his cities. one has iron, i want to deny him that, and the other is al;most surrounded by my empire, so i want to take it so i reduce my front lines.

techwise i just got currency. cant remember what i picked next to reaserch. im way behind some of the AI's, but others im much closer techwise. there nothing i can offer any AIs to come to war with me.
my one ace is that japan AI (#2 AI) is other side of cathrine from me and hes no iron and i have spare one. if i can only trade that for war im laughing, tho hes annoyed at me (prob cause im friendly with cathrine)
techs taking 40 turns + to research.

i'll try play tonight and upload some pictures so that ye can see the strategic situation.

[Saurus]

I wonder if it is even possible to win on higher than Emperor without warmongering? I have only played 2 games on immortal (both on Pangea) and restrained myself from using force both times. I lost both games somewhat clearly.

[Mr Justice]

soz, not had chance to look at this since.

but here it is.

im @war with alex and issabella (both to my right)

i need to get alexs two cities. then i can turn my attention to russia, who are to my left.

also currently reaserching metal casting (20 turns left).

[trev]

I am surprised at your build orders for your city considering you are at war with 2 civs. Courthouses are essential, but granaries could wait, capital needs to switch to units as soon as the marketplace is finished also. Even if you can gain those 2 cities of alex without more units, the extra units will give you a bargaining edge for the peace treaty that you want after that city capture. It is unlikely that you can get a gift from the Spanish for a peace treaty unless your military stength increases.
I suggest also that you may not have enough workers for your empire either, you need plenty so that courthouses can quickly be chopped and whipped into place, use whipping as soon as it is available to get those courthouses built earlier.
Get those 2 cities from the Greeks you want, make peace with them and the Spanish, then attack as soon as possible to gain those cities from the Russians you desire. Also beeline for a more advanced tech the AI's do not have so that you can trade techs to your advantage, Paper and Printing usually work well as I have mentioned in previous posts.
Good luck with your game and keep expanding, you need to get up to at least 2nd in production as soon as possible, and that will require more and bigger cities, high production is the only way to maintain a strong and active military force.

[Mr Justice]

i played on last night, till 708ad i think.

i pop rushed the market last night (after i poped my first prophet and made my hindu shrine), so that improved my finiacial position, so i can run at 50% now and still same deficit. capital back to producing units.

i need the granary cause pop rushing is suplementing my normal production in that city. but its now back to units too.

only sending in my first counterattack now, ive weathered both Civs initial stacks and they now just sending small groups of enemys.

my empire is too dangerous for workers. ive already lost 1 the AI. too much front line.

but am enjoying the challange that this game presents, but end of day, im exploting the AIs extreme weakness at combat, if i was against a human opponent id be history, so while it is gratifing, its somewhat of a false sence of achievement (especailly since i havent actually won yet )

but it does highlight for me the joy of bumping up the difficuty level. the way i beat emporer will not work here and im just adapting trevs ideas into my own style and giving it a go.

[trev]

My opinion is that rarely is it too dangerous for workers, just stack a good defensive unit or 2 on top of the workers, workers are essential to the development of your economy and must be continually used.
I also think you eed to make quicker progress in your wars, chop a bigger army if necessary to gain the quick victories and get peace treaties where they give you good cash in hand.

[Mr Justice]

yea, things are much better now.
yr is 1040 and i have taken 1 of alexs and 2 of cathrines cities.

i thought i was fecked, at one point i was at war with 3 AIs Greece, spain and japan. but got peace with issabella easily enuf. took alexs city and then made peace. japan was no threat, couple of knights sent my way, but spearmen adaquatley dealt with them. then i declared on cathrine. was a closely fought affair, was lucky to keep the cities, she attacked and left them with 2or3 injured defenders. another turn and id have lost both, but luckily she accepted peace and gave me money and i kept the 2 cities. mind you my most of my attackforce of 30ish units is gone. no wars for me for a while.

things in much better shape now. treasury of 1000+ gp, running at 70% science (-35gpt). also ive been lucky in that im the reasource king now, dont have too many double reasources but happiness is no issue now. much of the forrest has already been choped. whiping is my prefered form of shield production supplimentation.

hopefully i'll get to play some more tonight. i think im over the worst in the game. im not usually as aggressive as this in a game, but geesh, the ai cant really handle it atall.

[trev]

Good result so far, but even if you do not intend to fight again soon, your military strength must be raised or else they will sense a weakness and attack you themselves, in my current game Russians assaulted me 3 times, before I got enough strength to counter her attacks, she is now losing all her cities but earlier I had to accept peace on her terms twice, so watch out for her.

[Era Vulgaris]

Originally posted by trev
I did not build much else beside units apart from courthouses everywhere, maybe 10 cities had marketplaces, most had libraries, most had theatres, largest cities got granaries,aqueducts, maybe 6 had forges and universities, no banks from memory,no observatories, no factories,no walls, barracks most places, West point, Heroic Epic, Statute of Liberty only wonder I think, monasteries in 1/2 of cities, as they are cheap culture, plus some science. That is about all I built. However I captured many wonders, some shrines, and a few buildings in those cities too.

Sounds terrible and worse, boring. Looks like Sid & company didn't do much testing on the higher levels.
Maybe we can expect another patch in the near future to correct this.

[Minmaster]

please learn to use the "enter" button

[Mr Justice]

umm things are going down hill for meh now,

a few turns after alex declared on me. what forces i had left were mostly on the other side of my lands. too far away to help. (i was incorrect in my previous post, i had a good portion of my stack left but it wasnt in the cities i had just captured (3elephants, 2 sword,4 axe and about 6 cat))

i survived a mini attack on one of my core cities by upgrading the 2 archers to crossbows and i had a spearman placed between cities for this very reason.

but hes sent 2 other stacks into some of my previously aquired cities. im cutting losses and going to leave a scout in the least usefull (its almost surrounded by mali culture). i'll probably have to lose another as well before i can get any kinda force over there.

soz, i got loads a **** happening @ home and havent really been able to play much.

originally posted by Era Vulgaris
Sounds terrible and worse, boring

yea, in some ways its true. but for some of us the game is about pushing our skillz to the max. as it happens my max is quiet high, not the highest by no means, but im a compulsive micromanager so it shouldnt really be a suprise. the levels below emporer are just far too easy becuase i cant help but maximise what i got and on the otherhand im not perverse either and i wont play a bad starting location. at least at these high levels the AI compensates for this by giving the AI big bonuses.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Era Vulgaris


Sounds terrible and worse, boring. Looks like Sid & company didn't do much testing on the higher levels.
Maybe we can expect another patch in the near future to correct this.

Remember that we're just talking about one game here, and that on a Pangea map. I've played many exciting Immortal games with various settings - trev's strategy works sometimes but not all the time, and the are plenty of others that work too.