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Being a fan of AR's and AAR's and having noticed Hauptmans newest take on Emperor I decided to have a go at it myself. I'm generally a Monarch player, winning roughly 50% of those games but I have also won Emperor a few times and once on Deity through a string of amazing strokes of luck. I also play the Tri-League on the Intermediate level. All in all I consider Emperor to be a real challenge so let's see how it goes.
I welcome shadow players who also like giving updates on their performance. I'm not even sure whether or not I'm going to win this but it'd be nice if atleast someone did!
So, here goes
Map settings:
Map: Archipelago
Size: Standard
Sea Level: Medium
Speed: Marathon
Game Settings:
City Flipping after conquest
No Tech Brokering
Permanent Alliances
All victories except time.
Playing as the Vikings.
I don't think of myself as a brilliant writer but I'll do my best to relay the decisions I've made and try to make sense in to it, both to the readers and myself. As I'm writing this and looking back at the first 4000 years of game I made a few really stupid moves but these did not so far have an impact on my game.
So, the game starts here:
Not a bad start position. Not at all. We have seafood so we can make use of the fishing tech for early health, food and commerce and can found the city on a plains hill for 2
. There are also rivers for future cottaging and a Corn, a Cattle and some Wine to boot. This will suit us just fine. So, I start off with my scout headed east to see the extent of my island and start off by researching mining. I want to make use of those hills fast since I can feed them with the crabs from the get go. I'm also aiming for Bronze Working in case I share the island with anyone and get lucky with a copper nearby. Scout barely makes it out of my city radius and dies to none other than a Bear. Gosh, I hate them. Soon I am visited by Gandhi's Scout and am quite happy that there's atleast one wuss on my island and make my plans to take him out early on.
Game progresses; Taoism is founded in a distant land and I am lucky to get the one event I hope to have every single game! +2
thank you! It was perfect, my city didn't even lose a citizen which naturally would have set me back a bit. A gamble I'm willing to take every single time eventhough I seem to be well set when it comes to health. Oh well, in my personal experience you can never have too much!
Why is he researching Mysticism when he just stated that he's going to take Gandhi out early? Well, I had my mind set on getting the Oracle in case Gandhi doesn't get an early religion so I can sling to CoL for a religion. While I'm well set for health, it doesn't work out so well if my guys aren't happy. My plan still stands; I'm going to get BW fast and raise an army as soon as I have a city or two up.
Lo and behold!
I get just as lucky as I had hoped for and a copper spawns on the plains hill in my BFC! Time to start preparing for a conquest. Proceed researching The Wheel so I can gain access to the Copper, naturally. Sure enough, Gandhi managed to found Hinduism which makes me happy since now I have one thing less to worry about. Soon after Buddhism is also found (from Monotheism) in a distant land.
Time goes on and I have now found 2 new cities and raised my first army. It also seems that it was Gandhi who founded Buddhism. Ok, we can work with that. Screens showing my army on the march and the Power Graph which shows me well over Gandhi.
Soon:
Bombay was razed. I razed the Buddhist holy city because the religion naturally had no spread this early in the game and even at size 2 the poor little village was suffering sickness from the surrounding jungle. No way I'm going to pay maintenance for that and one religion will be plenty for me. Seen on the second screenshot my troopers take Delhi which was guarded by three unpromoted Archers. All in all I lost 2 of my 6 Axemen. I see that Gandhi has expanded to the west but will not bother to even go and kill him because then I'd risk a stronger power to come and take his place because there is no way I could maintain the cities myself.
Soon after I finish the Oracle but there's no good technologies available and this is my mistake. I should have finished Writing before going here but I didn't feel like risking it at this point since I might have lost the race to an AI. I choose Monarchy since it costs the most beakers out of the techs available at this point. Badly played but I didn't see myself having an option here. On the upside, I now have a wonder generating points toward a Great Prophet so I can build the Hindu Shrine. I soon research Monotheism, switch to Org Rel and have Delhi pump out Missionaries to convert my people. At this point I have yet to meet other AI's but shortly after I get visitors from Celtia, Babylonia and Zululand in the form of a scouting Work Boat. Brennus turns out to be the founder of Taoism and Shaka seems to be a Hindu like myself at this point. Three of my cities get Taoism from overseas but I insist on keeping my faith. I'll see later on if I should convert for the diplo bonus. Shaka goes back and forth between these two faiths.
Here's a picture of my western border some 1000 years after capturing Delhi.
Here I am, on turn 276 researching Agriculture. I don't mind, my Empire is doing just fine given the situation and seeing that I'm first one on the score, the AI's aren't doing that much better themselves. I am at this point researching peaceful technologies (after Iron Working that is!). No big surprise to see this pop-up:
Oh well, I'm fairly confident that I'll catch up seeing how I probably control the largest amount of land out of anyone at this point. I'm upset that I can't afford to fill in the empty spots on my island and fear for the AI to sail in and settle them and that is exactly what happens:
Argh. Both Taoists decide to set up camp at the corners ot my island. What to do? If I declare war on one, the other one will certainly declare war on me as well and that'd leave me at a very unfavorable spot seeing that they're on different sides of me. Hinduism soon expands into Durocortorum and I see that the cultural influence of Delhi is just about to expand too so I am feeling confident that the city will eventually flip. As for Sippar I want the city since it has a Deer resource which I don't have. I'm going to have to consider my options since on the other hand I would want to take out the Indians but I would still like to keep the island to myself so the Babylonians need to go. There's no way my culture would reach the city and make it flip since I don't really have any. How to proceed from here, that remains to be seen in the next session.
Here's a picture of the empire when I last saved from up above:
As you can see, the terrain basically could not be any better. This is a very desirable piece of land.
I hope to get feedback of any kind!
If you wish to shadow the game, you can download it here
Being a fan of AR's and AAR's and having noticed Hauptmans newest take on Emperor I decided to have a go at it myself. I'm generally a Monarch player, winning roughly 50% of those games but I have also won Emperor a few times and once on Deity through a string of amazing strokes of luck. I also play the Tri-League on the Intermediate level. All in all I consider Emperor to be a real challenge so let's see how it goes.
I welcome shadow players who also like giving updates on their performance. I'm not even sure whether or not I'm going to win this but it'd be nice if atleast someone did!
So, here goes
Map settings:
Map: Archipelago
Size: Standard
Sea Level: Medium
Speed: Marathon
Game Settings:
City Flipping after conquest
No Tech Brokering
Permanent Alliances
All victories except time.
Playing as the Vikings.
I don't think of myself as a brilliant writer but I'll do my best to relay the decisions I've made and try to make sense in to it, both to the readers and myself. As I'm writing this and looking back at the first 4000 years of game I made a few really stupid moves but these did not so far have an impact on my game.
So, the game starts here:
Not a bad start position. Not at all. We have seafood so we can make use of the fishing tech for early health, food and commerce and can found the city on a plains hill for 2
. There are also rivers for future cottaging and a Corn, a Cattle and some Wine to boot. This will suit us just fine. So, I start off with my scout headed east to see the extent of my island and start off by researching mining. I want to make use of those hills fast since I can feed them with the crabs from the get go. I'm also aiming for Bronze Working in case I share the island with anyone and get lucky with a copper nearby. Scout barely makes it out of my city radius and dies to none other than a Bear. Gosh, I hate them. Soon I am visited by Gandhi's Scout and am quite happy that there's atleast one wuss on my island and make my plans to take him out early on.Game progresses; Taoism is founded in a distant land and I am lucky to get the one event I hope to have every single game! +2
thank you! It was perfect, my city didn't even lose a citizen which naturally would have set me back a bit. A gamble I'm willing to take every single time eventhough I seem to be well set when it comes to health. Oh well, in my personal experience you can never have too much!
Why is he researching Mysticism when he just stated that he's going to take Gandhi out early? Well, I had my mind set on getting the Oracle in case Gandhi doesn't get an early religion so I can sling to CoL for a religion. While I'm well set for health, it doesn't work out so well if my guys aren't happy. My plan still stands; I'm going to get BW fast and raise an army as soon as I have a city or two up.
Lo and behold!
I get just as lucky as I had hoped for and a copper spawns on the plains hill in my BFC! Time to start preparing for a conquest. Proceed researching The Wheel so I can gain access to the Copper, naturally. Sure enough, Gandhi managed to found Hinduism which makes me happy since now I have one thing less to worry about. Soon after Buddhism is also found (from Monotheism) in a distant land.
Time goes on and I have now found 2 new cities and raised my first army. It also seems that it was Gandhi who founded Buddhism. Ok, we can work with that. Screens showing my army on the march and the Power Graph which shows me well over Gandhi.
Soon:
Bombay was razed. I razed the Buddhist holy city because the religion naturally had no spread this early in the game and even at size 2 the poor little village was suffering sickness from the surrounding jungle. No way I'm going to pay maintenance for that and one religion will be plenty for me. Seen on the second screenshot my troopers take Delhi which was guarded by three unpromoted Archers. All in all I lost 2 of my 6 Axemen. I see that Gandhi has expanded to the west but will not bother to even go and kill him because then I'd risk a stronger power to come and take his place because there is no way I could maintain the cities myself.
Soon after I finish the Oracle but there's no good technologies available and this is my mistake. I should have finished Writing before going here but I didn't feel like risking it at this point since I might have lost the race to an AI. I choose Monarchy since it costs the most beakers out of the techs available at this point. Badly played but I didn't see myself having an option here. On the upside, I now have a wonder generating points toward a Great Prophet so I can build the Hindu Shrine. I soon research Monotheism, switch to Org Rel and have Delhi pump out Missionaries to convert my people. At this point I have yet to meet other AI's but shortly after I get visitors from Celtia, Babylonia and Zululand in the form of a scouting Work Boat. Brennus turns out to be the founder of Taoism and Shaka seems to be a Hindu like myself at this point. Three of my cities get Taoism from overseas but I insist on keeping my faith. I'll see later on if I should convert for the diplo bonus. Shaka goes back and forth between these two faiths.
Here's a picture of my western border some 1000 years after capturing Delhi.
Here I am, on turn 276 researching Agriculture. I don't mind, my Empire is doing just fine given the situation and seeing that I'm first one on the score, the AI's aren't doing that much better themselves. I am at this point researching peaceful technologies (after Iron Working that is!). No big surprise to see this pop-up:
Oh well, I'm fairly confident that I'll catch up seeing how I probably control the largest amount of land out of anyone at this point. I'm upset that I can't afford to fill in the empty spots on my island and fear for the AI to sail in and settle them and that is exactly what happens:
Argh. Both Taoists decide to set up camp at the corners ot my island. What to do? If I declare war on one, the other one will certainly declare war on me as well and that'd leave me at a very unfavorable spot seeing that they're on different sides of me. Hinduism soon expands into Durocortorum and I see that the cultural influence of Delhi is just about to expand too so I am feeling confident that the city will eventually flip. As for Sippar I want the city since it has a Deer resource which I don't have. I'm going to have to consider my options since on the other hand I would want to take out the Indians but I would still like to keep the island to myself so the Babylonians need to go. There's no way my culture would reach the city and make it flip since I don't really have any. How to proceed from here, that remains to be seen in the next session.
Here's a picture of the empire when I last saved from up above:
As you can see, the terrain basically could not be any better. This is a very desirable piece of land.
I hope to get feedback of any kind!
If you wish to shadow the game, you can download it here
each.
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