Emperor me... or not !

[Vampgelus]

Feeling a little defied to try at least a few games at Emperor difficulty despite of my dislike of the way the difficulty is risen, i gave it a try this morning.
I took my favorite hero, Hannibal, with restrictions so that i had to take Cartago. Terra map, huge, tropical, low sea level, 9 IA civs, no barbarians, agressive IA and no tech brokering.
Got a not-to-bad start location with a 6 tiles long river, 1 corn, 1 plain hill (not next to the river), coast and many forests.
Teching farming first (followed by BW) and building worker -> warrior -> workship -> *pop2* -> worker -> 2 warriors -> settler.
Qin Shi, Ghengis and Napoleon for neighbours... great.
I managed to get 2 early port locations just next to my capital with rivers as well and had to go a little inside the land for getting copper.

VERY early (4th or 5th research) Qin Shi asked me to join his war on Ghengis, which i accepted since he was fist by far and Ghengis had about my score. I fought of 3 stacks of swordsmen (!) O.o, slowing down my settling efforts, but as evryone seemed to join this fight on my side, i thought it was worth it. We all became jews fighting agains Ghengis (with something like 1 boudhist and 2 hindous remaining neutral).

When i came to research Maths, a great stack of swords+cat's took out my copper city and my capital and i left the game... any suggestions here ?

[snoopy369]

Build the settler sooner, something like worker-warrior-workboat-worker-settler or settler-worker... Also, it is usually better to hit pop2 before the first worker if you can (if you have the food to grow it during your first warrior build, f.e.)

Also, build more army

[Vampgelus]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Build the settler sooner, something like worker-warrior-workboat-worker-settler or settler-worker... Also, it is usually better to hit pop2 before the first worker if you can (if you have the food to grow it during your first warrior build, f.e.)

Also, build more army

I needed to build the wheat farm soon, and the second tile that would have been worked did not have commerce on it, so that i prefered to get the worker first. I settled on a plain-hill so that it come out in 24 turns instead of 30, i don't think my error was there. I started another one without agrssive AI and without joining the first wars (but the seconds :P ). This time it works well, i managed to build the great lighthouse and hanging gardens, have 7 citys (settler on the road for the eight) and manage to stay in top 5, sometimes being 3rd on score.

Problem last time was not a lack of arme, because i had almost to much, so that i fell behind in research. Workboat was a mistake last time because i only needed it in my second city and there was not much to explore until i was blocked by either other borders or ice.

I'll keep you informed of Carthago's glory

[snoopy369]

If you're playing BtS, you should definitely play aggressive AI. The AI is too boring without it...

[Vampgelus]

So, here we go. This is without agressive IA, but i don't know about any civ in this game that stayed at peace for more then 60 turns.



I managed to vassalize France and am 3rd on score, having beelined optic i'm about to upgrade my navy and will be beeling astronomy for settling the new world (after engeneering), remaining otherwise defensive and teching for the moment (mansa has something like 4 techs more then i do). I give as many techs as reasonable to De Gaule, so that he can manage Stalin's attacks on his own (but he sucks for now).

The persians are ruled by Darios, the german by Frederic, who vassalized Ghandi who sucks as well...

Justinian has vassalized Izzy, founded boudhism (spread it to 65% of population!) and has a huge territory what makes him first on score, just before Mansa, second in score because of his tech lead.

I'm about 15% behind, then comes a 10% hole again, and all the others are roughly equal (exept the vassals of course).

US are ruled by Roosevelt, but he didn't manage to get a single wonder, so NP with him.

UPDATE : 40 turns later, Mansa declares free religion thanks to Shwedagon Pagode, what makes Justinian declare war on him. I HAVE to chose a side, and this sucks. Staline is loosing war against Roosevelt and De Gaule (gg my vassal!). The US managed to build Notre-Dame in Washington, i think about taking it by force a bit later, as i have border-conflicts with america anyway. Beelined Astronomy and cartographied about 30% of the new world. I have seen about 7 good colonys to place out there already, but diplomacy seems to say that i have other prioritys. I will try to remain neutral for the moment taking over the new world where i found the slot and the ressources needed for Versailles, even if i don't think that i will get it, because of Mansa already having divine right... Anyway... it's a very intense game

UPDATE ß : The german attacked me and that hurts... they captured my two northern citys which i could take back with extreme losses. In the mean time, Izzy got free from vassalage and the first thing she did was declaring war on me (déja vu? ) I'm still far behind in techrace and Mansa made me an offer that I couldn't refuse... he gave me 1000G and Printing in exchange of astronomy. As he is still having trouble with the byzantine cathaphracts and their cannons (! he beelined steel !) i shouldn't worry to much. Anyway... Izzy took Rouen, the small frensh town you can see totally submerged by my culture and tries to attack Hippo, my main military production city and makes great losses trying. I will help my vassal out now because i just signed a peace-treaty with the german who were visibly affraid of my (small) tech advance on them, because they offered me evrything sparable for letting them alone (gold, map, gold per turn). My vassal is doing well besides the loss of Rouen. In deed, he managed to take 3 russian citys and to creat two new ones in the middle of the jungle. With my tech backup, he should be a great ally over time. I'm 10 turns from beeing the first to get economics... damn this will be good!

[Vampgelus]

THE END

At least, i know where my biggest mistakes were... beelining 2 big techs, and not stopping Justinian when it was still time.

I'll try with Darios next time ! Or Frederic ?

[Hauptman]

Play Darius or Huyana next and Immediatly take out a neighbor. That will give you a huge kickstart to help you out in emporer. Darius requires horses, so I'd recomend Huyana, plus his financial helps maintain the extra cities.

Spend your first many turns just building Cuecha and take out 1 or 2 neighbors, then you can expand at a more leisurely pace.


By the way on the statistics screen for my last emporer win.... 350+ riflemen killed... wow! Cavalry was almost as high.

[Vampgelus]

I already read about the Incans being effective at emperor level, as for the persians, it's no surprise to me (i find them more reliable btw). But thank you for giving me that advice.

As i said, in this game, i should have joined the war between Mansa and Justinian on Mansa's side because Justinian didn't have such a tech lead at that time, so i could have done something in this war. On the last screenshot, you don't see that under my grenadeers, there are only crossbows and longbows -_-. There wasn't anything i could have done against artillery, cavalery and infantry. In addition to that, he had combustion navy, i didn't.

I will give emperor another try. For the moment i'm just having fun (huge pangea with always war and cyrus of the byzantine, noble difficulty).

[couerdelion]

With the early expansion of the Incas or Persians, you may need to be selective about keeping or razing cities. Keep too many and you might run into severe problems on the financial front - which is why Huayna is perhaps the better to start with.

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by couerdelion
With the early expansion of the Incas or Persians, you may need to be selective about keeping or razing cities. Keep too many and you might run into severe problems on the financial front - which is why Huayna is perhaps the better to start with.

I'm liking Huayna more and more on Emperor level. I don't build many wonders, so Ind was always a low proirity. But, the quick forges, Fin trait, and the early Quecha rush have won me over.