Here is a walk-through of my recent emperor milk session resulting in 246,641 points.

Game Setup

Leader: Julius Caesar - I always use him as he can knock out the AI's quickly with the praetorians and still keep his economy in control via the organized trait. He also gets cheap granaries, lighthouses and courthouses which are all important in a milked game.

Opponents: Isabella, Gandhi, Peter, Mao Zedong - Gandhi is usually a quick researcher/wonder builder but he skimps on military which will be to my advantage. Mao and Isabella expand and research slowly. Peter is just generally weak in my experience.

Map type: Balanced - This is a pangaea map that ensures that you have all the strategic resources close to your capital (within 12 tiles or something like that). This way I always have iron available right away.

Map size: Standard - I wanted to test if a larger map scored higher than a smaller map and I found that they do. My duel map on emperor with very similar settings only scored 171,000.

Climate: Tropical - For maximum food.

Sea Level: Medium - I'm still not sure what's best for this setting for a milked game.

Game speed: Epic - Marathon would be better I guess, but it's just too painfully slow for my tastes. The slower the speed the easier it is to conquer the AI's as they research slower. Also, making a mistake is usually less costly on epic because each turn isn't quite as important. For instance if you start researching one tech but change your mind to research a different tech. With normal speed that decision would cost you more than with epic speed.

No barbarians - Trust me you don't want to have to deal with barbarians during a milking session.

No cheating - Required setting.

My starting location:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_start.JPG

The reasons I liked this starting location:
1) 3 food bonuses to work for the capital. I'll take that any day. Along with the flat lands this city can be a research powerhouse.
2) An early source of happiness with the furs. Happiness is always a problem pre-calendar. The fur tile is also a great source of early commerce that can be used to get iron working more quickly.
3) Lots of forests to chop. Once iron working is learned praetorians must be chopped out rapidly so you can start taking out the AI's before they expand too much or research too far.

I started a worker first as I always do and research set to bronze working to chop a few forests and get my early cities set up. My warrior was sent on a hut popping mission and also to find all the other civs. I want to know exactly where to go when I have my praetorians. From huts I received 40 gold, 33 gold, and Mysticism. (Interesting looking at my log it says I received a scout from a hut at 4000BC but I never did receive it.) I'm not sure my build order as I'm surprisingly lacking in early saves for this game. But I built two workers right away and improved the sheep/corn/wheat. With 3 great food/production tiles London was able to dish out two settlers pretty quickly. I built my first city near the copper/sheep/corn to the west in 1550BC and my second city near the horses/wines/flood plain to the southwest in 1175BC.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_3cities.JPG

My early research:

3560BC - Mysticism (popped from hut)
3120BC - Bronze Working
2800BC - Hunting (hook up furs, leads to animal husbandry)
2080BC - Animal Husbandry (sheep)
1850BC - Agriculture (corn/wheat)
1250BC - Iron Working
1075BC - The Wheel
900BC - Pottery (keeping commerce up is important as early warmongering destroys your economy)
720BC - Writing (libraries)
180BC - Alphabet (trade and extort techs)
Traded for a bunch of techs here which aren't in the log unfortunately, but basically just trying to get all the techs I can so I don't have to research them on my own later.

After learning Iron Working I found iron in workable range of Rome, as you can see in the above screenshot. After connecting it I started chopping out praetorians as fast as I could. Antium and Cumae both built obelisks and barracks before starting on praetorians themselves. In 580BC Gandhi's Buddhism spread to Rome and I converted for +1 happiness. By 540BC I had 9 praetorians. I also knew where all my opponents were at this point.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_enemies.JPG

(Sorry for the image quality, I only have Paint to edit with.)

Gandhi was my first target. As I was moving my troops towards Gandhi's lands I ran into his settler escorted by an archer. I took that opportunity to declare war and capture his settler.

Indian War:

540BC - War Declared
460BC - Bangalore razed
420BC - Calcutta razed
280BC - Delhi captured
200BC - Madras captured
180BC - Bombay razed and Indians destroyed

My philosophy was that I didn't want to keep every city I captured as that leads to Moonsinger's situation of running -500gpt. I only kept cities I thought would be valuable. Delhi was of course a powerful city and Madras had 2 fish and clams so it could be a decent GP factory and of course high food is always great. These cities also had my state religion which was a bonus.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_exindia.JPG

During the end of the Indian war I knew I had enough units down there to finish him off and started stacking up troops outside Mao's borders to the west.

First Chinese War:

120BC - War Declared
100BC - Shanghai captured
80AD - Xian razed
100AD - Beijing captured
120AD - Nanjing razed
180AD - Peace with China. I injured him badly enough and had to get to Peter before he got too big for me. He would never speak to me again the rest of the game. I think I razed his holy city...oops.

Beijing was kept mainly because it was a capital with improvements around it. Shanghai had lots of villages around it so it could pay for itself easily.

China remains:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_exchina.JPG

Meanwhile I was also fighting Isabella with ex-Indian troops and also some more that Delhi built.

First Spanish War:

120AD - War Declared
140AD - Seville razed
240AD - Toledo captured
250AD - Salamanca razed
280AD - Madrid captured
300AD - Santiago razed
350AD - Barcelona razed
360AD - Cordoba razed
400AD - Murcia razed
400AD - Peace with Spain for Monarchy and Monotheism and some gold.

Toledo had dyes and gold for happiness and decent land. It was also centered on the continent so a good Forbidden Palace location. Madrid had ivory and nice land.

What's left of the Spanish jungle empire:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_exspain.JPG

She just kept settling more cities as I was taking her out. It was quite annoying. She was down to her last city and I wanted to keep her around and I also wanted to focus all my attention on Peter.

My economy was definitely starting to hurt at this point.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_economy_400AD.JPG

I switched all cities to emphasize commerce and had built a lot of cottages already. I stopped building military units altogether in the early AD's and focused on markets and other buildings. But there was light at the end of the tunnel. Code of laws was learned in 430AD and most cities started building courthouses after it was learned. I also switched to caste system so I could generate some leaders.

To be continued...

Let me explain how I was upgrading my praetorians. I made sure I had a medic with just about every task force. I needed my units to heal up and get back into action as soon as possible since I wasn't building fresh troops anymore. The rest of my praetorians all got city raider promotions up to city raider 3. Many, many praetorians reached 4 promotions and some even reached a 5th promotion. Almost all my fights were 85% or greater chance of winning, except for the odd axeman that the AI had fortified in their cities.

During all this time my original warrior was still exploring away. The benefit I'd have in my war against Peter is knowledge of all his cities:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_Russia2.JPG

While I was laying waste to all the other AI's in the game Peter was expanding away and building all the wonders. He built the Pyramids, the Great Lighthouse and the Parthenon.

Russian War:

400AD - War declared
410AD - Yekaterinburg captured
420AD - Rostov captured
450AD - Novgorod captured
530AD - St. Petersburg captured
560AD - Moscow captured
590AD - Vladivostok razed
620AD - Yaroslavl' captured
640AD - Smolensk razed
650AD - Yakutsk razed and Russians destroyed

Ex-Russia:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_exrussia.JPG

I probably shouldn't have kept Rostov or Novgorod. St. Petersburg had the Great Lighthouse. Moscow had the Parthenon and the Pyramids. Yaroslavl' had two gold hills to work so I thought it would be a decent city. Unfortunately getting irrigation to it proved to be a problem.

In 650AD I got my first great person, a Great Artist in Beijing. I used him to create a great work in Beijing since China was putting extreme cultural pressure on it. I don't think that was the best idea in hindsight but oh well. It didn't even pick up any tiles really.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_culturebomb.JPG

Next it was time to clean up the map and settle down for the milking. Unfortunately my military was starting to dwindle and Mao had some rather spread out cities.

Second Chinese War:

700AD - War declared
710AD - Hangzhou razed
720AD - Tianjin razed
750AD - Chengdu captured
770AD - Beijing captured by the Chinese because I was stupid
780AD - Beijing recaptured
780AD - Bejing captured by the Chinese again because I'm an utter retard.
820AD - Guangzhou razed
850AD - Beijing recaptured. The city lost many buildings including a courthouse from all the capturing.
910AD - Macau captured and China destroyed

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_exrussia2.JPG

I got a great scientist in 770AD which built an academy in Rome. I got a second one in 1000AD to do the same in Madras.

Now all that remains is Isabella. I can't destroy her since that would trigger conquest and I haven't done any milking yet. Well, while some cities had nothing to build I built a few settlers. I sent one settler to play on the beach and catch some fish.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_gonefishing.JPG

I founded the vacation resort of Neapolis right next to the fish in 1000AD. I then gifted the resort to Isabella because I'm that generous and declared war on her.

Second Spanish War:

1005AD - Zaragoza captured
1005AD - Pamplona razed
1010AD - Valencia captured

Once she was willing to make peace I left her to tan on the beach for the rest of the game.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_vacation.JPG

If I decided to win this turn I would score 144,937 points. That's not nearly good enough. The milking phase shall commence...

But first, my combat stats demonstrating how overpowered praetorians are:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Shillen_SEM_stats.JPG

118 kills to 12 deaths. Nearly 10 to 1 kill to death ratio without using any catapults. Some cities even had 60% culture bonuses.

I know you guys want to read about the milking strategies more than the war, but that will have to wait until later in the week unfortunately. Taking me a bit of time to write this up since I didn't take the screens while I was playing.

I forgot to mention in the original post that this was a standard sized map so that's edited now. I also mentioned razing the Confucian holy city but you can see well enough that Shanghai was the Confucian holy city so I didn't raze it. I think he might have founded another religion that I razed. I know I had a penalty for razing a holy city and he refused to speak to me even 20+ turns after the war was over.

(reserved..)

Wow it's interesting to hear about the strategies of a superior player. Can't wait for you to finish the article. Great job!

Very interesting read so far. But I'm flummoxed - how did you not trigger domination when there was only enemy city remaining?

You need to domniate in pop *and* own a percentage of the available land to trigger victory. You need to keep the land just under the limit at all time until you've reached the maximum pop the land allows for. This is harder than it was in Civ33, where you could disband cities and sell (cultural) buildings.

Yes my land was only at about 35% at the end of the fighting. It's very dangerous to get close to the domination limit in civ4 since it's harder to control expansions, like a space oddity said. I will settle more cities though during the milking phase. I'll try to get the rest of this written up tonight.

I founded the vacation resort of Neapolis right next to the fish in 1000AD. I then gifted the resort to Isabella because I'm that generous and declared war on her.

Thank you, dear! You are too kind. Now, what am I going to do with all those food?;)

You could've found a city in the middle of desert, with no fish or food in sight, I think that would be even more generous. ^^

BTW, how would you modify your strategy for swordsmen conquest? Is it doable on standard size emperor map?

any chance that you can post your replay file so that I can put your score (with your name) in my localized hof?

Nice score!

I hope ya'll finish the milking strategy soon :)

one question tho, in about every picture u are at like -30 gold per turn, howd u keep managing that ?

Each time I captured or razed a city I was getting like 100 gold so I was able to run in the negative for the most part.

Sorry to anyone who's been looking for the rest of this post. I've been putting it off due to time constraints IRL. I'm still planning to do it but I'm not going to commit to a timeframe again since I failed to meet it last time.

Sorry to anyone who's been looking for the rest of this post. I've been putting it off due to time constraints IRL. I'm still planning to do it but I'm not going to commit to a timeframe again since I failed to meet it last time.

Would you change your mind if you were threated by the chance of Chuck Norris coming over and roundhouse kicking you in the nuts?

Warned for going-off topic.

That chance always exists, doesn't it? You just never know.

Warned for off-topic animation.

Interresting Thread...
I'm looking foward to read your milking strategy Shillen...
One more week to wait! :(