The Emperor Masters' Challenge 3 (on Warlords)

Game over, guys. I'll spare you the details. Basically, a few turns into the next round, Monty declared war. At first it was just a few archers and I could handle them by whipping/building more warriors, but several turns before we discovered IW, he came with endless waves of chariots. His attack meant that we did not get to settle another city, whether near the gems or the horses. In other words, there was nothing we could've done to prevent defeat at any point, save bee-lining to archery from early on. Even then, our growth would be so stunted that the game would be impossible to win.

I guess it's tough luck having Monty as a neighbour and no copper or horses around. Aggressive AI was probably the main culprit, though. This kind of unpredictability is all very well when playing alone, but for a play along game like this it might result in wasted effort, as I've just learned.
 
Bollocks. Oh well, these things do happen. Shall we try it again with the same settings except turn aggressive AI off?

peace,
lilnev
 
yeah same settings, just regular AI. urgh i always hate it when your game is looking good and then in comes monty, Oh well
 
War. War never changes.
 
America swamped by Mexicans? Now where have I heard that before...

Definitely give it a go without aggressive AI; I'm really keen to see how the trading game works out on emperor.

Plus, if we get el Monty on the new game, I think that a little revenge would be in order...
 
I played this game to around 100 AD, and have somewhat different outcome. After finding out that I don't have copper, I beelined to iron working and found iron around each of my two cities. Both Caesar and Monty demanded iron from me, I told them to take a hike. Caesar declared war on me, and I fended him with my axes. Then I was able to turn the tide, took Neopolis (?) from him, and then sued for peace. My next plan is to get alphabete and horseback riding, and wage war and extort techs from AIs. Attached is the savefile, let me know what you think.
 
Yeah, I found the iron too, but by then it was too late. I fought Monty with grim determination by whipping swords out until we could get Hunting, but his chariots never stopped coming, even when it's obvious that he could not capture New York. We were unable to settle our 3rd city and Caesar settled one tile beside the spot. We were paying killer upkeep for the troops we had and still Monty wouldn't sign peace. Research slowed to a crawl this early. Then Caesar built the Great Lighthouse and I knew that the game was over.

I guess with a little luck and a straight beeline to IW, things might be different, but we would fail to accomplish our mission anyway. Alphabet at 100AD is a little late, no?
 
Anyway, I don't know how to continue. Should we start a new thread or just start a new game in this thread? I'm not keen on calling a new game Emperor Challenge 4, since we did not even have a real go at this one.

And I'm annoyed at having wasted quite a bit of effort in this game (posting updates is a lot of work), so I don't know when I'll decide to start again. I guess the map generator was just really mean to us. That and my regrettable decision to throw aggressive AI into the picture. Really bad :mad:

Sorry, I'm just peeved.
 
aelf, I rated this thread as excellent as the other challenges!

I would be glad to see another thread from you, when (and if :) ) you get over this loss. The choice how to do it is yours. For me the best one is a new thread with a short description and link to this one in the introduction. I guess in the next challenge the agressive AI option should be off...
 
I am glad I have learned more about Aggressive AI. But in the light of the trade game. Why not a island game instead of ice age?

Just call it Emperor challenge 3b. :)

Tough break Aelf, but this map looks very difficult. I advice against too much differences in settings.
 
Tough break. Take your time. These challenges are interesting, so I'll be ready whenever you are.
 
aelf said:
I guess the map generator was just really mean to us.
Click to expand...

Yep. I started 5 games on roughly the same settings just to see, and didn't get a start anything like as bad as that.

Cheer up! This just shows that you're taking on properly tough challenges, which makes them both more interesting and more suspenseful to us lot. And I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say that your detailed reports are greatly appreciated. :salute:
 
Thanks for your indefatigable support, guys. It kinda blows having to restart just after laying down all our fine plans, but c'est la vie. I guess I should get the ball rolling again so that we can move on as quickly as possible. We need time to decide on where to settle our capital and etc anyway. I'm a little lazy to type all the intro and stuff again, so the new game is hijacking this thread. I've done all the necessary adjustments to the first post.

I fired up another game. Same settings but no aggressive AI - I seriously think the AI would be too incompetent on an island map, voek, and we want a more standard victory before moving on to Immortal. Diplomatic victory is turned on this time to give the AIs a shot at it, if they can (yes, I promise we won't call a victory vote ourselves ;)).

Here's the new start:

Emperor3b-01.jpg


It's coastal again, so we're good to go. And this start certainly looks better than the previous one from the outset. Where should we move our warrior? I'm in favour of settling in place.

Let's hope this game goes smoothly.
 
aelf said:
Same settings but no aggressive AI - I seriously think the AI would be too incompetent on an island map, voek, and we want a more standard victory before moving on to Immortal.
Click to expand...

At least you considered my suggestion, good enough for me. ;)

Well a lot better starting location it seems to me. However the surroundings can make or break the situation of course.

I hate it the warrior most of the time starts at the 'wrong side'. Well I guess it's supposed to. Thinking moving him NE and then look at the situation again. I would tend to move to the corn to harvest faster. I can see a river to the right, right?
 
voek said:
At least you considered my suggestion, good enough for me. ;)
Click to expand...

Can't please everybody sometimes :p

voek said:
Well a lot better starting location it seems to me. However the surroundings can make or break the situation of course.

I hate it the warrior most of the time starts at the 'wrong side'. Well I guess it's supposed to. Thinking moving him NE and then look at the situation again. I would tend to move to the corn to harvest faster. I can see a river to the right, right?
Click to expand...

You're right. There's a river to the east. Two rivers in the fat cross make for at least a pretty good start :) I'm not too worried about the corn being where it is at the moment. I think the +1 health from the southern river is way better in the long term than working the unimproved corn earlier.
 
aelf said:
You're right. There's a river to the east. Two rivers in the fat cross make for at least a pretty good start :) I'm not too worried about the corn being where it is at the moment. I think the +1 health from the southern river is way better in the long term than working the unimproved corn earlier.
Click to expand...

Reason why I am thinking of moving is (again) the lack of hills. Next to that moving North gives more land to work. But I am only taking this in account and haven't decided myself btw.

I think moving warrior NE is pretty straightforward. Only NW might be a option, if you would like to settle higher, more NW, but I doubt that.

Show us more! :)

ps. Glad you started this fast again.:goodjob:
 
Interesting, albeit sad end to the last attempt. Since I've recently made the jump up to successfully beating Monarch level I'm inclined to believe Aggressive AI isn't as good an option as it proved to be at the lower levels (i.e. Prince and below). I guess this could be because at the lower levels many of the AI civs' power ratings will be much the same or actually lower than the human player's and therefore declarations of war will be less likely to occur.

I guess a lot is also dependent on which AI civs you start beside and Monty is probably not the best for Aggressive AI! I'm still not convinced that Aggressive AI was the main contributing factor in losing that game, since relations between you and the other two had improved signifcantly from the initial annoyed level; I actually think poor starting position and starting beside Monty were more critical.

Nevetheless Aggressive AI probably didn't suit your intended strategy of developing and cultivating a trade route based economy. Maybe one day you'll revisit Aggressive AI at the high difficulty levels (maybe with an militaristic civ like Japan).
 
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