BTS – A guide for higher difficulties for standard speed and maps (emperor+)

^Indeed, it depends a bit on the neighbour but with Ai's like Dghengis it's the only option.On immortal i was on an island with him, i expanded like mad (and he was even faster of course). He declared on me 900 BC while being pleased (+6 or so) .

I should have beelined IW and only build units i think as soon as i saw that i was alone with him. If i'd won the ensuing fight (which is doubtful because Ghengis builds tons of units), i'd have won the game, the island was very big.

I tried Snaatys strategy in my current game. I've been a successful Monarch player for some time, but a regular Emperor game (that is, standard+ size map, standard settings) was beyond me. So I tried Emperor, standard Big&Small map, epic speed.

Well I couldn't really keep to Snaatys schedule, but that didn't surprise me I researched Liberalism in 1090 AD and Rifling in 1485 AD, but I was still first by a large margin. I've never before managed to be uncontested tech leader at that time even in Monarch games

Unfortunately, later in the game I was bogged down. One AI (Montezuma) had developed into a superpower and his science and military skyrocketed. I attacked him but he had the tech advantage, it was tanks and marines against mechanized infantry and incredible amounts of battleships and fighters. Good thing: He lacked Rocketry. In an extremely tough war I nuked him back to the stone age and wiped him out. Now I'm confident to achieve Domination or even Conquest, even though my own country is devastated by countless bomber raids and desertification.

So all in all it was a success, and I even know about a couple of mistakes I made, so there is room for improvement.

lol- i really wanted to rag the op (the theme not the person) in regard to creating a "recipe" to follow-compromising creative play.
But instead , i played a game within the general guidelines suggested (Prince)
and found myself way in the lead with a nice sized empire and with no money issues.
Sound advice, thanks to the op.

Ironcrown and Troytheface,

I completely agree with you guys. The strat works and the most vital thing is getting food for the capital to reach the happy cap, then build workers and settlers like mad. A simple thing I never did before but changed my came completely.
I still tend to play Monarch games, but can compete (at least early) on emperor.

Great that this strat works for you...

As madscientist has already pointed out, the main thing is to reasearch the techs to work the land around capital, then archery (if you have no horses/copper in capitals BFC), build some defenders while growing capital to happy cap and then spamm settlers and workers like mad... ...helps you keeping up in the land-grabbing and also in research if you build some cottages around city 2-4

I think that I'm not alone when i say that the hardest part in getting Lib in the first century AD (i think you said you got it in 320?) is lightbulbing. If you could explain a little in depth how you manage to not get stuck bulbing compass and the like, it would be a help to many people. Besides that I like the strategy. I used to build two workers and then chop like mad but I since have used your start and have been able to beat out AI REX even on emperor and keep my forests. I never bothered to try immortal or deity but it's good to know they dont expand any faster and you can still outgrab them.

@ Yesod:

I found a reference sheet about which Great Person will lightbulb what in exact order with all prerequisites some time ago (about 2 years) here in the forums...

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@ ALL:

I think I might have time over this weekend, so I will copy it in here and add some comments, about how to generate which GP and what to lightbulb and research in more detail...

Snaaty said:

I found a reference sheet about which Great Person will lightbulb what in exact order with all prerequisites some time ago (about 2 years) here in the forums...

Click to expand...

If I'm correct, it's a post in the strategy articles forum by DaveMCW called "tech preferences for great people", or something like that. I'm quite sure about the "tech preferences" part.

@ JujuLautre:

Thanks a lot, you are right... ...I just checked via the search here and refound the original threat, which seems to have been reworked lately:

Which GP will lightbulb what in exact order, by DaveMcW

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I will still give you some comments about prerequisites and bulbing strat. (civics/religion/wonders) over the weekend, but for the impatient ones this might also do...

if you have the time, can you also play another demo game plz?

The early liberalism part is one thing I have never gotten to work, so I just skip that part. A more likely approach is to bulb Phil, tech paper, Bulb Education, tech liberalism which most of the time I take printing press. Occasionally I can bulb part of PP and tech the rest before liberalism, then I have alot more options and will take either nationalism, military tradition (if I managed to tech nationalism first), Astronomy (less and less as time goes on), or even replacement parts which immediately opens up rifling.

An example of taking a greta strat and adjusting it to my game. Then again I have never played immortal or diety but it does work on emperor which I occasionally play.

Today I started another Emperor game. Big and Small map, I was on a continent with Hamurabi (east), Frederick (southeast), Tokugawa (south/southwest) and Sitting Bull (somewhere remote). To the north and west there was the sea. Well, I played Gandhi and wanted to go for cultural victory, so I decided to stray a little from Snaatys strategy and go for Hinduism first. Long story short, when I had my settlers out, all the good spots were taken by the AIs. I had only three cities and could have founded maybe two more in mediocre spots, but that was all. I quit the game and loaded the 4000 BC save.

This time I kept strictly to the guide in the beginning... I let the capital grow to five pop, then built only workers and settlers. I did much better, but still, I couldn't found more than five cities before the AIs settled their own cities in between them. The problem was: My capital was in a corner and in three directions there were AIs. It wasn't possible to block land because I had to build my cities in a 180° circle to do that... and there wasn't enough time. On top of that the continent was heavily jungled which slowed things down.

So my question is: Does the strategy rely on playing a map with choke points that allow easy land blocking? Any ideas how I could have done better?


(I went for the Pyramids because there wasn't anything else to build, I couldn't afford more units or cities at that time.)

Ironcrown:
the great thing about civ is that no one strategy works all the time even if it is a good one. Sometimes the real estate is such that you must get the first settler or two out earlier, sometimes you have to rush, etc. Dunno about your game specifically.

I am playing Prince/Standard/Continents and I can somewhat follow this strategy (I am still a bit noob and not to mention stoned most of the time I play) but often my initial 4 cities are so are decent but then the rest of the space I have available is really not very good for a city and *I think would be a burden on my economy* so I usually begin to stagnate my empire without even realizing it.

Should I build cities even in spaces where there might just be one beaver resource and mostly crap tiles like desert, etc just to fill space and have more cities?

Also, when I begin to think about attacking another player they seem to have more of everything than me, if I wait until I build a couple cities like with your approach, and then I am unable to conquer their lands even if I wanted to because they are much bigger, produce more of everything than me. When I check the demographics and see that I am last in almost every category (GNP, Food, Production) I usually just give up.

I don't think it is a great idea to use this strategy on the lower levels. This strategy is designed to give you a chance against uber expanding and uber teching AIs. For lower levels, I think there are better strats to use (wonders, early rushes, etc.)

Not that this approach is necessarily bad for lower levels, it is just you have many more options available. Limiting yourself to this approach is probably suboptimal in many circumstances.

GS

fuzzynutz said:

Also, when I begin to think about attacking another player they seem to have more of everything than me, if I wait until I build a couple cities like with your approach, and then I am unable to conquer their lands even if I wanted to because they are much bigger, produce more of everything than me. When I check the demographics and see that I am last in almost every category (GNP, Food, Production) I usually just give up.

Click to expand...

The point of this strategy is that you get a small tech lead because of the liberalisme and (ab)use it for getting CR rifelmans. As they are much better than anything the AI will have at this stage you can still win even if the AI has better production.

I've used and tested this strat a lot on immortal the last few months. One quesion and a few remarks:

Q: beelining to Rifling do you make the detour to Economics for the free merchant? I'm not sure, i've tried both, the free GM is great for updating troops but the 5 turns it genreally costs to research can just make the difference in being in time or too late in attacking. Ultimately it depends on how close your victim is to Rifling or military science i guess.

Some remarks,

Blocking the AI's is a great strat, it's not always as easy as it is in the example game given here though, sometimes you have to block in 2 or even 3 directions or you have no backyard (coastal or worthless tundra behind you). Not such a problem, if you can get 6 reasonably good cities up that's good enough and generally better (for this strat anyway) than going out of your way to settle cities very far from home which will hurt your early research too much to fully profit from this strat. I'd have to test it but i don't see why it wouldn't work with 4 cities even, if you get the globe up in time you can rely heavily on drafting, i guess these 4 cities have to be developed to the max in this case though to get enough science in (but also a super science capital may do). At least you can have the slider close to 90% in this case.

On immortal if i really try hard and focus on getting the globe build in time (begin with theaters and the globe asap, researching or trading for drama before lib) i can get Rifling between 1100 and 1300 and so be ready to attack between 1200 and 1400 which generally is good enough especially if you get the globe done before rifling, just draft muskets in this case.

On building the globe for this strat, plan ahead you'll basically want a site with
2 food resources but also some production (or forests) so you can get the thing build in time. this can make a difference as to how you settle this city, i find myself forgetting about this time and again, finding myself with no suitable city or finding that i have a good city but there are three cottages where there should have been 3 farms. To optimalize this you should be planning in the 1000 BC-1AD stages i feel. The more units you can draft (especially if research is ok and you can reach rifling in good time so you can afford early nationhood) the better your position will be.

It's not always good enough though, there are times when the chosen victim will be close to rifling when you're ready to attack, rifles against rifles is a total no go so what can be done in this case....

The afore mentioned scenario most often happens when you're on a Pangea where all the civs know each other, in this case overall research is fast and
techs like printing press and replaceable parts are generously traded amongst the other civs.

In this case (granted you see the aforementioned problem with the rifling strat in time) i think it's possible to go another route. As you can generally see how far all the civs are you can delay liberalism research and bulb it till there's one turn left,take it off the research queue then go about bulbing printing press, researching gunpowder while trading for engineering (remember research is high in the scenario i'm sketching here). Then bulb chemistry and take steel of liberalism. I've tested this in one immortal game (where AI research was slow though) and it worked like a charm. If not in time to get steel from lib, no problem, just research it, bulbing chemistry and researching steel is still faster than having to research replaceable parts and rifling. So you can have cannons really early.

There're a few issues with this,

- Most important your stacks with lots of cannons (and drafted muskets) in it instead of rifles will not be immune to counter attacks from mounted units, be sure to build some pikes to protect from cuirassiers and knights, muskets are not strong enough and mounted units will attack these sort of stacks, with pikes in it they won't attack (or lose expensive mounted units against your not so expensive pikes).

-You don't need spies as you'll have enough cannons to bring down defenses fast, this saves you from the need to sacrifice research on spy points. Basically you tear down defenses but also attack with superior cannons(upgrade to cityraider not barrage) which have a good chance to win
once defenses are down, you ultimately take the cities with the drafted muskets and whatever you brought along (maces, pikes).

-Once you get to steel it pays to research Military science and build some backup grens especially if the victim is indeed close to rifling they'll come in handy. Begin the attack asap though upgrading prebuild trebs to cannons and moving in together with drafted muskets. At the moment the enemy does get to rifles you'll probably really need the grens(there's one thing i'm not really sure about, if the enemy gets rifles will it attack your stack? Could well be that since the AI regards a rifle as a defensive unit that they'll leave you alone, still you'll need grens in this case or you'll lose to much cannons)

Summarizing, the rifles strat is faster, you don't have to build pikes and you'll break defences with spies, moving on with the superior rifles. the window of opportunity is kind of narrow though, once the victim has researched rifling or military science (grens) the fun is over.

Cannon strat takes longer, since the cannons not only have to bombard but also attack they'll need healing. Just as in warlords the opportunity window for this kind of attack is alot bigger though, basically the enemy is defenseless
unless the've got steel themselves but somehow it takes the AIs a long time to research to steel.

The only difference with Snaaty's initial strat is the beeline to steel, there are no changes otherwise, you'll try to get to steel asap instead of rifling but building globe ,drafting and preparing otherwise (more pikes for this strat) is still essential.

This was a long post, since i've only tested it once not all the ideas have fully cristallized so discussion is welcome.

At Snaaty

And our capital, building the Taj Mahal and tying to generate a GE

Click to expand...

Why did you try to generate a Great Engenieur and not a Scientist?

Hi folks, I was away for a little... ...but now some answers:

@ Kelvenor:

I started to build the Taj Mahal and tried to get a GE only after I had all GS I needed (got Nationalism from Lib) AND the GM to upgrade all my troops

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@ Dirk:

First, thanks for your input, some great points you added

Conserning your questions:

1. Economics, like you already stated, is situation dependend. If you are comfortable in your techlead, take the detour, because then you can skipp the generation of a GM. If not, run Cast and get the GM "manually" and go directly for rifling

2. You need 6 cities to build the Globe. Thats the main problem else it wouldn´t be a problem with 4 or so

3. Your idea of timing the Globe is exactly right. Build it right after you got Nationalism from Lib in your city with the most food (NOT in the capital) and you will have it finished once you reach rifling, when you planned ahead and kept some forests.

4. Again you are right. PLAN YOUR GLOBE CITY RIGHT FROM THE START. No cottages, 2 food resources and some production or forests to chopp down (and don´t forget to use whip overflow)

5. I usually stick to rifling, but cannons might also do the trick. But I´m usually quite flexible concerning my victim (like in this demo game, where I attacked Mansa because he was teching slower then expected) and you normally find one or two AI´s on pangea who don´t have rifling at that point

6. Thanks again for your input about the cannon rush, gonna try that out

I'm very interested in how it works out for you Snaaty, i've tried some more and it works great for me on immortal, basically the game's a win (just as with the rifles strat) if i don't get rushed before 1000 AD and i can get to the AI's before 1500 AD. Lightbulbing chemistry then researching steel is a bit faster even than researching replaceable parts and rifling, i'm not on the Guilds->banking->economics route however, so i don't take part in the race to economics anymore.

I'd forgotten about the 6 cities for the Globe so 4 cities is indeed not enough for this strat, what you can do is build 2 worthless extra cities with theaters
then go globe, this feels counter intuitive though, if you're so cramped an early rush is probably better. Setting up 6 cities is doable most of the time though.

I wonder if it's possible to something like this with Cuirassiers like Unconquered Sun did in his Justinian thread. It's possible to get to Military tradition long before the Ai's are there but i don't know if Cuirassiers are always strong enough.