Immortal growing pains...

[Davetopia]

I'm having a hard time getting a solid early build on the Immotal difficulty... Most wonders are out of the picture. I tend to get jumped when I start a third city and I can't fend them off. Are most of you immortal players doing a two city layout with tradition and oligarchy? Or am I way off?

[Ares42]

While I wouldn't say I'm a completely succesful Immortal player yet, I go warrior, worker, settler, worker. I did manage to get the colossus in my second city in my last game by chopping down 2 forests for the settler, then another one for the wonder. But I believe both Stonehenge and Pyramids was built quite a few rounds before it finished.

I'd say Honor is a must to keep the barbs away. I've had some issues with getting overrun, but if you try to not engage too much before you have it and only stray far away from town at the beginning and just before you're ready to plant your next city it's usually fine (like try to stay at home between rounds 20-35ish). I also try to go for horsemen pretty quick (although it depends alot on luxury resources), as they clean up barb camps pretty well.

[MadDjinn]

I got through my immortal game (pangea, standard size) by taking out 2 close city-states and settling 2 more cities (one settler built one bought). I went honour path towards the double XP side as my neighbours were mostly aggressive and spammed units. (so double XP gives a nice way of having less units do more)

After that, I tried to stay peaceful and get lots of gold. You need massive gold for research agreements to keep up. Lots of GS's as well.

But yeah, find a nice area that can be well defended by bombardment units (archers/crossbows then treb->artillery) to keep the AI hordes at bay.

[Davetopia]

So Arabia might be a good choice or china?