Emperor to demigod

im having difficulty making the step to the next level. how do i post a save as thats probably best for tips?
any advice is appreciated

If you post a response to a thread, don't use the Quick Reply Box. Just hit Post Reply, and you'll get a new page. Scroll down below the box where you type a response, and look for a button that says "Manage Attachments." Click that and you'll get a popup box that will let you upload the save.

a copy of the save. didnt have a bad expansion phase but not sure where to go from here. ive got to this point in 3/4 starts recently. any advice?

Just some random feedback:

What is behind the gem trade, did you get a tech for it?

6 nations not met.

Could make one scientist and drop research to zero and take the same 48 turns.

why make MW units in towns with no barracks? Especially, if you are planning on going to Republic. The cost will kill you. One thing I would try to do is not fall very far below my allowed units. It cannot hurt to have as many workers and troops as you can get that have no unit support.

17 warriors and more being built? 9 workers, I think I would prefer to see that reversed.

1 cat?
1 galley, hard to explore with 1 boat. I would like to see one curragh still out there searching.

8 MW, can't say much as I do not know how long you have had the ability to make them.

3 spears. I would normally say 3 spears is good thinking, but above emperor and not isolated, I am liking spear a lot more. I am going to have to fight to expand here, that means I will need defenders to deal with all the incoming.

Did you put down Caughnawaga after the two towns were already up? That is going to be too aggressive for them and they will be looking to DoW soon. You do not want to plop down next to their borders, unless you want a fight. CxxC will be allowed, CxC will be a problem.

One of the problems will be that MW's have a defense of one and will stop nothing on defense.

You have almost no infrastructure and to a large extent that is good, but some is needed. Mauch Chunk, Niagra, Akwe, Caugh have flip risk and no culture. The last two are at the most risk.

I do not see any walls, by looking at the towns from the map, very brave. No walls and nealry no spears.

I would prefer to see some workers ganged to get tasks done in one turn or two. I also do not care for having them on the borders with nations I have already been at war with, especially at DG or better.

I would say that you should consider making a temple in any place that is going for a wonder, so it can have a larger pop and not need massive lux spending. You are ok, with a cheap wonder like Zeus and three lux, but a temple and more pop would be good.

I wonder why you never put a town on the hill west of Salamanca? That would seem like a good early spot to prevent crowding.

Tonawanda looks like a real problem for the capitol, why put it there?

Niagara I would prefer to have been on the hill west or north. Defending is no so easy on DG, so a little bonus is good. It also gives you back the plains tile.

One other thing I like to consider is the ability to get help from my nearest town. CxxxC makes that harder. Now you have MW, you can get some help, but you cannot get to more than the next town. IOW CxxC a two move unit could get two towns over. Often I can turn them by just arriving and not having any moves left.

Down 2 techs and things will soon get much harder as they get to Middle Ages and some will get a free tech and maybe traded to the others, not you though. So pikes, are very rough on AA units.

Keep an eye out for a war close by that you can join and get a leader. I would say it is critical to get a leader and stick in at least one AC. MW armies cannot be left in towns or they will get killed. AC armies can, maybe mix MW and AC to fill it quicker.

I think I would switch the warrior on the south coastal town to a scientist and switch to Poly and get Monarchy. I would have to fight my way to victory. If you had a shot at being first to Rep and knew more nations, that would be ok, but you really cannot afford to go to Republic anyway.

Switch a couple barrack towns to spears and get them to borders. Maybe sitch one or two non barracks to cats. start a wall in the places that are most likely to come under attack.

I would even consider abandoning the town stuck close to your neighbors, or even gift it to some far away to irritate them.

Monarchy sounds about right in this situation, you're too small for Republic. You want to expand aggressively once you've build up enough mounted warriors. Take a big chunk out of Carthage and then try to roll up China. Carthage while having num. mercs doesn't look to be in such a good state.

In these kind of situations, don't be afraid to give in to any demand by a civ you don't want to be at war at. Even one that is on the other end of the map could still buy an alliance with your next door neighbour.

A few mistakes you've made have been lack of scouting and settling in the wrong direction. On scouting, it looks like you've been exploring all the fog, while it is much more valuable to meet more civs. Sending early warriors in a straight line to the west would have given you better trading options, which is important when you have an isolated starting position on pangea like you did. With settling, it looks like you've settled a lot towards the east, while there is only ocean there. There really should have been an Iroqui town near Theveste for instance.

I also see that you are close to getting the SoZ. I think in a situation like this, the SoZ is kind of a waste of shields, but it will help against the Chinese in all likelihood. The 7 extra mounted warriors would have made a bigger difference in this situation. You could have gone to war already with them.

I do think that if you keep up with the tech pace, you'll find that the SoZ will go obsolete very very quick. Metallurgy isn't a tech you can really avoid getting for a while if you want to go for domination or conquest.

Many thanks for all the suggestios. im going to take all things into account, specifically the defensive side of planning city placement and having more workers aswell as the sending a warrior straight in one direction at the start by starting a new game. ill let you know how things go.

I am not sure, if I mentioned this (think I did) irrigating one cow is huge in your start. I tried to recreate the start, but I could not. The Seed seemed to have the exact map, but civ starts were way off.

One less nation on your continent in your save than I got. China and Carthage were moved far back in your save, so I do not know how it matched up. I finally used the editor to place the starts where they are in your save to see what the irrigated cow could do and placement changes.

I was down about 5 tech and did not trade writing. I only knew China and Carthage at that time. I met Germany in two turns, but it was too late. I was first to Philo and took Map.

Not becasue I wanted it, but I knew I could trade Philo and Map for the kingdom. I got to 11 towns, with a settler moving into place for #12. I have a few spears and met Inca and Korea. They have nearly the same color as Iroq.

I just got a boat out as I had no coastal towns till recently. Anyway the capitol has been spamming out settlers 2 turns after it grows back to size 6. So I could fill in the land soon.

Putting up temples in the crowded towns on the border to ease culture pressure. Wines connected and Hannibal is giving Ivory. I would hook up Gem and Ivory in a bit as workers are on the Gems now.

First MW going up. Embassies were bought with AI gold for several nations. Date is 1225BC. No wonders started though. Looks like no iron in the area.

Heading for Monarchy as land will have to be taken and defended. Resources will not be in great supply in such a small area and I prefer to kill everyone anyway.

The temple towns were making the troops for everyone till recently and will go back to that after temple and walls. I just would want to get the back filling in, before then or landings. It is possible they may elect to send in settler combos soon.

I would say 5 towns coudl fit in the backyard, maybe 6. BTW I went with embassies to mainly get rid of the cash I got form them. I would soon have to give it for demands or war, so keeping the cash on hand low, makes it easy to payup.

Good place to stop as I just wanted to see, if a few changes made any difference.

any chance of an upload of the update please, want to take a look at build order etc

also why always irrigate first cow?

Not sure what you mean by update. I think I went something like warrior, warrior, worker. The worker may have been second, I forget. Then a settler, after that I am not so clear.

I know I did a chop to speed up a granary and then only settlers with one expecetion. I got a spot where I made a barracks, thinking I was about to go to war. No troops from there though, back to settlers only.

I irrigated first, because this is DG and I have neighbors on three sides. If I do not get out settlers in a steady stream, they will fill the land for me. I wanted +5 food. At size 2 I had 10 food with one mined cow and one wet. (I may have made 1 settler early elsewhere, but otherwise all from one place)

I get the trees down, save one tile and I can work any tile an get 2 food. If I was playing on, I would get a mountain or a hill mined and a road. I have enough food to get to even faster settlers, but it does not really matter as the land is close to filled. Still you could get more shields for other things.

I do not recall what I did very well, but I mainly wanted two towns with a barracks to provide all the units, once the capitol switch to settlers. Then I had enough to cover my towns for now and got the techs, I tried to get in a temple in the two common border towns.

Walls were next, again I did not know how long I would stay on good terms. I am pretty sure that I will soon be annoying to all. I already have seen some drop the Polite and go cautious. The longer I go, not making a trade or a gift, the more towards annoying and worse I get.

Cannot be avoided, no techs, no cash. Embassies buy a bit of time. I would go on full war builds pretty soon. The clash cannot be far off. Too bad iron is not available, so MW's would not have to be used. Could try archers, if only one nation. China had already try to demand Horseback, but backed down.

will1444 said:

any chance of an upload of the update please, want to take a look at build order etc

Click to expand...

I did go back and play this out, so here is a screen near the end. You can at least see what the map would have looked like. It was a bit of a struggle in the late AA and very early MA.

This was mainly due to lack of Iron. No pikes, no swords, no Knights for a time, till I finally captured some German towns. Would have been a loss I suspect, if Carthage had been hostile during that time period.

I left them till China and Germany and even Inca were off the land (Germany and China elimintated).

Once I had all the continent clear and got to Steam, I found only one coal source and I had just the turn earlier, moved all my workers far away from that area. Lost 4 turns getting coal online.

China had neither Iron nor Horses. Worse nation was Mongols. I think I was late in the IA, when I had to gift them about 6 AA techs to get them to where I could give them Fued. Egypt had DOW on them and I did not want Cleo to get thier land.

They never got Theology. Dutch were not much better and never got Chiv. and other techs early in the MA. I never attacker either and Dutch never declared on me.

Inca, Korea and Carthage had island towns that I finally took to eliminate them. Henry had one island and one other town on the far side of Egypt.

After over a dozen Emperor wins over the years you'd think I'd win at least one at Demigod. No dice. After maybe a dozen straight losses I'm feeling extremely inadequate .

Here's my latest effort, with attached save. Comments, criticism, and advice would be greatly appreciated. The bottom line is, Is this game worth continuing? Thanks for your kind attention.

Just play on 80% archipelago map with England, Byzantines or Dutch = guaranteed win. Or - if You want to get used to Demigod without having to deal with the fact that they have extra settler - take expansionist civ, barbs sedentary, none of the AI should be exp. You will get a free settler or 2 and from there it is the same as playing Emperor.

Thanks, but as a "traditionalist" I prefer to play with random barbs, opponents, and (standard-sized) map/earth configurations. Seems like it's practically impossible on pangea, but at least I'm learning something. (Like, that I'm a masochist? )

Actually losing isn't so bad as long as you're having fun. One persistent problem is the AI will hardly trade techs with me--usually beginning in late Ancient--even though my trade rep is OK. Plus it seems conquered cities will almost always flip as long as there's an AI border, enemy or not, since they're pumping out culture like crazy. Anyway I'll just keep plugging until I hit the right combination of skill and luck. Cheers.

The bigger the map is the more time You have to catch up with AI tech wise and city count wise. So playing on standard is not as easy as playing on large or huge. AFAIR on large demigod You should have military tradition about 30 turns faster than AI and then just start golden age and turn them all in science farms.

Interesting advice, even a bit counter-intuitive. I'd always thought that AI civs would win the settler race and populate the map faster, no matter what the humanoid did. Plus there's the matter of RL time; the bigger the map, the more hours you're gonna spend, right? Anyway thanks, I may give it a try someday.

iPwn said:

Just play on 80% archipelago map with England, Byzantines or Dutch = guaranteed win.

Click to expand...

Eh, well, tried it with Byzantines several times. Even with fresh water there's always been somebody "sharing" my island-continent, boxing me in with that verdammt extra settler and multiple spawns. Perhaps it's not quite as "guaranteed" as one may think, or am I missing something?