Game of the Now: episode one.

[Calvin Vu]

Two reasons that most likely to cause me to cheat:
1) Barb boats which destroy all my work boats. This is especially painful if I don't have a high production coastal city which can replace them in less then 50 turns, say. If I see any barb boats around, I erase them with the WB.
2) The random events which happen very early in the game and destroy the few buildings I have (once I had the library destroyed right after I built it). It's like WTF, should I quit the game since I will surely lose or should I cheat ?
That's why I usually play with no barbs (or at least without raging barbs). I don't know how to turn off the random events. The GOTMs have them turned off so there must be a way to do it somewhere.
BTW, just won my first Immortal game yesterday, score was almost 250K, not my highest score ever but highest for Epic speed. I get better score at Marathon speed since it favors early rushing.

[rah]

In custom games there's a check box for no random events.

[self biased]

BAH. beaten out by one turn for the spaceship.

[rah]

Wow, I always find it amazing when after so many turns, it can be so close.

[self biased]

i'll post a few saves later, i don't want to provide any spoilers.

[rah]

I loaded it up and played about 120 turns last night.
I thought I was doing fine till I remembered that tech trading was enabled.
So instead of putting my effort into eliminating the french I should have put that effort into making them my tech trading beatch.
I got scouts from 3 out of my first 4 huts. Not very useful. So much so that when a bear chewied one of them, I just laughed.

[Garth Vader]

Wasn't there a thing where the AI wouldn't trade with you if you were the only CIV they knew of? I assumed that was still the case and finished off the French. They had lousy tech anyway.

[self biased]

i didn't finish off the french until the maceman/musketman crossover.

[rah]

I took metal working with the oracle and rushed to crossbows to do the trick.
Took Paris, and didn't get a single building. Crappy Frenchmen.

[Garth Vader]

Me too, but my tech was going so well but low enough production that I had Macemen by the time I had enough cats. I only kept 2 cities, razed the rest cause they put them in dumb spots. I don't normally do that cause it's a waste, but I am isolated so what the hell!

[rah]

Crossbow against archers, I didn't need more that a couple of cats. For every city but Paris, I didn't even bother taking down the defenses.

[Garth Vader]

I still took the defenses down. I am used to playing with Agg AI on, so it was easier than expected, I probably could have done it earlier.

I am also not a big fan of crossbows, I tend to just build a couple as a stack defender.

[rah]

Since I knew I could control all the metal on the island. (he snuck in one of the irons but as soon as he connected it, I declared war and pillaged it so he only was able to build 2 axeman) I figured I could get to crossbowman before he got to longbows, especially after using the oracle for metalworking . (and I was right)

[self biased]

yeah. i wasn't so lucky, rah. i'm also not really used to playing on prince. i didn't raze any cities in france, though i did have to raze thebes to prevent ramses from winning a cultural victory.

[Theben]

Razed his 2nd city w/ 2 warriors and killed a 3rd warrior wandering near my cap. Took Paris with a warrior and a Holkan on turn 65; it only had 1 archer.