This is my first attempt at Emperor.

Its on a standard sized Pangaea map and I am Ethiopia. I began with some extensive chopping around the capital to produce ax units to rush my nearest neighbor Ragnar. While I managed to take him out, I was only able to keep 1 out of his 3 cities, as the other two were auto-razed. I then took a barbarian city and settled another for myself, so I currently have 5.

Despite making use of the chop/whip gold overflow technique, my economy has ground to a halt and I'm forced to run 10% science or go broke quickly.

While my economy is in the shitter, I am not behind in tech (yet) and I seem to have the world's most powerful army. So I'm torn as to what my next move should be. It seems that I could continue to expand peacefully, as there is still lots of room for the taking. Or I could take advantage of my military superiority to start a new war with somebody. Although it seems I might be stretched too thin already.

I've never put one of my games up for comment like this before, so please take a look and say whatever comes to mind about what I could do now, what I've done wrong so far, etc. I'm trying to learn to play at this level and welcome all the help I can get.

http://i718.photobucket.com/albums/ww185/StevenCiv/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

I would like to say that Ragnar settled Niadros in the wrong place. If only he had stuck it on the coast (and over a bit) so that you could fit two cities with very strong early growth and production in that area. COuld've whipped in some cheap libraries and run some scientists. Too bad.

All in all I think you did an excellent job so far and are in a great position to leverage your traits.

For now try and take care of that barb city to south and settle that spot with the stone and spices next to finish the land block. It seems as if that's what you already are in for.

Also you have blocked off great land for settling a lot of cities inside and have fantastic traits for making them really economically powerful. I'll post a dot map in a min.

I can't look at your save right and having only recently reached Emperor myself take any criticism with a grain of salt. But, currency is a key tech (for the position you're in) and you've got 120 gold in reserve. How many libraries have you built? I would have no hesitation exhausting my reserve if I could tech currency (or get it in a trade). And I'm not sure why you're building a settler if you're having trouble breaking even. Also, OB can help you to pull out of the hole.

If you're army is strong and you want to cripple someone, then you could if you chose simply go a razing/pillaging spree. On the surface it seems that you've done a fine job. You've rushed what would likely be an eventual thorn in your side and you've settled a good amount of cities in what seems to be some nice land. Good luck.

Obviously these spots will depend on what remains available on the perimeter and how the land looks when you get a better view of barb cities.

Try and settle exterior cities first btw but the point is pack the cities in. You only really need one good food resource per city especially with so much grass. You should be able to have 15 productive cities here.

Also eye WK's land as somebody else is. He is a softy for some reason despite his prot trait. HIs cap is really a good site and hitting him earlier rather than later will prevent him from running away in techs.

GO math>constr immediately. Chop/whip Cats and get Wk b4 he gets too many techs with a Financial 3 gold capitol.

Also sitting Bull is almost clearly backed up against tundra to the north so he should be contained for a while but he may look to fight his way out of that spot.

If you take Seoul (which is also a holy city) you should have this game wrapped up and be able to go back and knock out Sitting Bull relatively easily and consolidate for a cannon knock out of joao

Sitting Bull has one of the highest peaceweights in the game (90% at cautious). I would let him be with his likely CG3 archers. He'll fall behind in tech eventually (and tundra is not going to be doing him any favours). If I were to be fighting a war of choice, it would definitely be against Korea.

I forgot to mention, but you can always sell some techs if someone has a lot of gold (and peacefully expand).

Thanks everybody for the help and especially to you mboettcher for the dotmap. I was struggling over deciding where to build new cities (what tool do you use to make maps like that? Is that something the bug mod can do?)

What about the state of my economy? I have 120 gold but at 100% it will be exhausted in about 4 turns. It isn't nearly enough to pay for the Currency tech I'm researching. I can't afford to settle more land without making some more money soon. Currency is in the pipeline, but its taking a very long time at 10% science. (this is also my first marathon game, and what I think to be a "very long time" might actually be normal. Still, 80 some turns?!)

I have built a number of libraries (3) in order to exploit the whip/chop overflow trick. I could run the maximum number of scientists possible until currency. I could build/work cottages instead. Or I could take the advice above and start a war to make money off pillaging.

Also, I'm having a hard time deciding how to balance city growth with the need to run specialists and building workers/settlers. Each of these things retards growth, yet each is necessary. Should I prioritize growing to the happy cap before I build workers/settlers/specialists?

Should I finish currency before going to math -> construction? (note - I've played ahead a few turns and produced my first Great Scientist. I was planning to build an academy with him, but I see that he could bulb mathematics instead. Any ideas as to which move to make with him?)

Lastly, what about religion/relationships? I have adopted no religion yet, although I could switch to either Buddhism or Hinduism now. The remaining 5 Civs are split 3/2, so there are two factions I could join. I think both Sitting Bull and Wang Kong are of the same religion. Since I intend to attack one of them next, does it make more sense to align with their enemies now?

Yes BUG mod has built in dotmap

Hit alt + x to activate. left click on spots you want a dot, right click on same spot to clear, right click to remove cursor but leave dots visible

ctrl + x turns off and on visible dot maps. Note: after load and saves it may take a few alt + x's and right clicks to get the same dot map back up but the mapping is saved with the game.

@steven p

Don't be afraid to drop that science slider down to 0 for a little while to build up some gold. I would try and get to math first with a little lower slider while whipping in libraries. Save as many forests as possible for post math chops and also save a few for national wonders. Don't do the chop/whip overflow here especially because there are not a lot forests but there is a strong food supply and you do have both Cre/Org making whipping very easy.

{Edit: whipping very easy with out forests. The advantage of Cre/Org is that you have scientific cities with in a few turns even on Marathon and don't have to run much of a slider for a while. You may want to use the overflow for from the libraries (the second city whipped) to produce more military units (or barracks) for your sooner than later invasion of Korea.}

2 pop whip in libraries in as many cities as possible and get your research from the scientists. You can stagnate production of other things while the scientists research out currency. Only when you have whipped in libraries in all your cities do you run the 100% slider at deficit. (basically lower your slider right now till you are making a semi decent profit and whip in libraries)

Build settlers but don;t settle them until you see the AI coming for the spot.

Build a mix of cottages and farms in the older cities. Enough farms to grow decently quickly and over time replace the farms with cottages as the cities reach their potential.

Save the Great scientist for bulbing Liberalism if you don't have a decent commerce city but I'm going to guess that you'l get another GS before then so an academy in your capitol might be the optimal choice along with some cottages and few farms.

Use the forests in Nidaros for chopping The Great Library. {Edit: if you get The Great Library in Nidaros putting an academy here along with National Epic and this is a great early science city/GPF}

Build workers, axes in downtime. Don't adopt Judaism. Always (usually) take the majority religion however religion is a long topic. Suffice to say that you want to use it as part of diplomacy to fight the enemies you want to fight (or are going to have to fight anyway) while staying on everybody else's good side for tech trades.

I'm torn between diverting resources towards settlers as opposed to units. If war with Wang Kong needs to be initiated pronto, then I could build units now to the exclusion of settlers. I could build swords/ax right now and then switch to cats when construction comes.

Or I could do both at the same time, having one city work as a settler pump.

I like the idea of taking WK's cities first and then backfilling with settlers after the war. Would that be advisable?

Either would work. Depends how many units you can produce b4 construction. I would bet quite a few. You really only need 2-3 settlers b4 the war as they can be used to take that land to the NW by Sitting Bull.

I've played a few more turns and have produced a settler for what will become my 6th city.

I'm torn about where to place him. All of "blocking" city sites don't have immediate access to good food, mostly because there are no rivers there. I'll need Civil Service before those sites can run farms. Another issue is hooking up iron for swordsmen, I have two options, one is lacking immediate food and one is not. The best city site has both iron and access to a river/flood plains. I'd like to build him here, but this site is the one smack dab in the middle of my empire and is land I don't need to secure for myself at this time.

So the choice now is between getting a productive city up and running fast or securing more land for myself for the future.

This game is now finished. I won a Domination victory around 1000 AD or so. I ended up attacking Sitting Bull (west) instead of Wang Kong (east) and I took out the remaining Civs to the west as well, giving me enough territory to win without having to fight Wang Kong.

I give myself a pat on the back for winning an Emperor level game on a standard sized map. Now I'll try again with Continents. I really liked Ethiopia too, they seemed very strong.

http://i718.photobucket.com/albums/ww185/StevenCiv/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg