Could some Emperor players play out this start?

Turn 1 (4000 BC) - Warrior explores NW, settle Beijing in place, Beijing->Warrior, research BW to see copper and chop

3 (3920 BC) - Gold from hut, research to 100%

(Met Cyrus somewhere in here, didn't note the turn)

13 (3520 BC) - Beijing Warrior->Worker, Warrior explores S

15 (3440 BC) - W Warrior survives Lion attack, waits to heal on hill

17 (3360 BC) - Buddhism founded in a distant land

18 (3320 BC) - Learn BW. No copper in sight, as usual. Research the Wheel, for roads and pottery.


At this point, I don't see stone/marble anywhere in sight. Not many forests either, but lots of jungle. So I'm thinking that an early wonder will be a resource waste and that I'm better off heading to Iron Working reasonably soon in order to clear jungle and then get Metal Casting for cheap forges. Maybe that will get me enough production to field a reasonable army to beat up on Cyrus, who's always a big builder but has the advantage of early immortals.


23 (3120 BC) - W warrior is healed, sets off toward Cyrus.

25 (3040 BC) - Beijing Worker->Warrior. Cyrus adopts Slavery. Worker moves to chop 1S of Beijing - it's not clear to me that any chop location is clearly better than others.


I really don't like the expansion possibilities here. The dotmap (in the attached screenshot) is best I can see. The plan is to settle the SW site first, which gets cows, dyes, and ivory, and then backfill to the coastal spot by the fish. Eventually, try to settle in the western jungle, but I don't see any site there that could be immediately productive. Unfortunately, the SW site is right on Persepolis, so it's highly likely that Cyrus will get there first. And even if he doesn't, his culture will push on that city pretty hard. It's just about guaranteeing a fight with him, but that looks to be the way things will go anyway.


26 (3000 BC) - S warrior moves towards city site to keep fog and barbs away. W warrior starts moving around Persepolis to look for more contacts.

27 (2960 BC) - Learn Wheel, research Hunting - I'd rather go for Pots, but without Copper I feel like I have to start working towards archers. Fog-busting warriors aren't enough.

28 (2920 BC) - Warrior beats Panther, takes Combat I promo, and heals.

29 (2880 BC) - Beijing Warrior->Warrior. Worker moves to chop for a Settler. New warrior moves W to fogbust. Turn research down to 90% - still gets Hunting in 4, -1gpt w/12g in the bank. SW warrior reaches city site and will fortify.

30 (2840 BC) - Beijing Warrior->Settler. New warrior fortifies in Beijing.

32 (2760 BC) - Chop finishes, still 10 turns to a Settler, but there are only two forests left - I feel like I'll have to wait. Worker will move to irrigate the rice.

33 (2720 BC) - Hinduism founded in a distant land - I'm surprised it took so long. Learn Hunting, research Mysticism - we'll definitely need an obelisk for our new city.

34 (2680 BC) - Cyrus converts to Hinduism - he was the founder. That could be helpful, if I convert to keep him friendly for a while and then take him over along with the holy city.

38 (2520 BC) - Worker finishes the rice farm. I notice there's a forest tile just outside Beijing's radius to the NW - I probably should have chopped that. I'll head there now and use it for another worker while I'm waiting on Pots and Archers. Turn research back to 80%, still have Mysticism in 4, breaking even with 3g in the bank.

41 (2400 BC) - Beijing Settler->Worker. W warrior moves slightly to give the Settler an unfogged path - looks safe. Far W warrior barely survives a barb warrior despite jungle cover, will take 10 turns to heal. There's an absolute ton of land out here, but I still haven't met anyone but Cyrus. Crap, a barb warrior has shown up near my chopping worker - Beijing's warrior should be able to cover this, but it's going to delay the chop a couple of turns.

42 (2360 BC) - Odd, the barb wandered off. Beijing warrior will move one away in order not to get too far from the city. Learn Mysticism. Pots or Archery, Pots or Archery? I'm afraid - Archery in 11.

44 (2280 BC) - Settler reaches location. Chop finishes, worker will start on roads and improvements for Beijing. New worker (due in 2) will head to new city.

45 (2240 BC) - Shanghai founded. Work for only 1fpt in order to get the obelisk out 5 turns sooner. Our economy stinks - 50% research to break even, Archery in 11 again. This sucks. There's not a single tile I can work that would get the financial bonus, even if I had Pots.

46 (2200 BC) - Judaism founded in a distant land. Beijing Worker->Warrior - I'd like one more fogbuster for the south.

47 (2160 BC) - MM Beijing a bit so that it will grow at the same time as the Warrior is produced. That way, Beijing warrior can move S and we won't have any revolts.

50 (2040 BC) - Shanghai worker starts chopping a forest before I realize that I'll need it for the hammer-poor third city. Drat. I cancel the order immediately after, but that costs me 2 turns on the Shanghai obelisk. Not a huge mistake, but a stupid one.


50 turns have gone by, and I already feel like I have no momentum. I have a whopping 4 population points, no luxes for at least 15 turns, and a crappy economy. Seems even worse than other Emperor starts I've tried. And yet I don't see anything obvious that I could have done differently. Taking Pots over Archery is the obvious candidate, I guess. But I'm surprised that Barb archers haven't shown up already - they surely can't be far off. Frustrating...

I didn't keep a log, so this is a bit more generic than yours.

Founded Beijing in place. Built worker -> warrior -> warrior -> barracks (partial) -> settler. Basically, after the initial worker was built, I got Shanghai to max size (4) as soon as possible before starting the settler. I chopped 1 forest to speed the settler, then went barracks (finish) -> worker -> warrior. I founded my 2nd city (Shanghai) in 2320 BC between the horses and cattle. Not an ideal city placement, but without mysticism I didn't want to wait 20+ turns to get those resources that settling on the coast would have meant.

My worker in Beijing pastured the cows, then mined the eastern hill, then farmed the rice, chopped a forest (for the settler), mined the other hill, then started roading (towards Shanghai.)

My initial warrior headed south, met Cyrus quickly (~3600 BC) and popped 2 goody huts (netting gold each time.) The gold allowed me to keep research @80-100% for the entire 50 turns. The first warrior I built headed West, and I met Julius Caesar ~2800 BC. I had several attacks from panthers/lions and I saw my first barb archer ~2600 BC (yikes!) He killed one warrior but lost to the 2nd. I've just managed (in 2000 BC) to get the horses connected for chariots.

Tech path: Animal Husbandry (to work the cattle/reveal horses) -> Bronze Working (forests/axes - but no copper ) -> The Wheel (roads/chariots) -> hunting -> archery (saw the barb archers and wanted *something* for defense)

Overall, it's not a great starting position. It's not bad, but the lack of nearby copper really hurt. Beijing is a pretty nice city location actually. 10 hammers at size 4 is nice, and you can build a settler there in 8 turns. Having Cyrus as a neighbor is a real drag though. You can see in my save that his culture is already crowding Shanghai. If I continued playing the game, I think I'd *have* to start a war with him or risk having my cities eaten by his culture. Sitting back peacefully probably means scrabbling around for scraps until someone comes to wipe me out. Unfortunately, the lack of copper means that an axe rush is out. That leaves essentially 3 options I can see: 1) chariot rush - probably ill-advised since the cities will have pretty good cultural defense, +40% or so bonuses by the time I get there 2) Go for IW and cross my fingers there's iron nearby or 3) go for HBR and rush with Horse Archers. Of course all of these options carry pretty big risks, but I guess that's what Emperor is all about.

EDIT: I saw you were looking for 100, so I played on a bit more:

Turns 50-100:

Now that I had horses hooked up, I started spamming chariots. Beijing produced non-stop chariots, and after it finished its barracks, Shanghai did the same.

I had a few more barb archers show up west of Beijing, but I took care of them with a couple of Woodlands I warriors. I also saw a couple of barbs to the south along the coast, so I sent my first chariot down there to investigate. I found a barb city (Assyrian) along the coast. The city had a cow and a gold mine in its initial city radius, so I decided I wanted it. Because these barbs seemed to be particularly stupid, they decided to send their archer out of the city against my chariots instead of defending. I took the city easily, making a total of 3. I also noticed, after I took the city, that there was a source of copper west of Assyrian. I built a settler in Beijing to claim it, but other events intervened before I did.

I set my research to Iron Working when I reloaded the 2000 BC save. It was a gamble that didn't pay off, but still proved useful. When I discovered Iron Working in 975 BC, I saw that Cyrus had 2 sources of iron. One, near Susa, was already hooked up. He had just hooked it up, since I had only seen a spear in one Persepolis the turn before I discovered IW. I knew that if I wanted to have a shot at taking out Cyrus, I needed to act soon.

I declared on Cyrus in 925 BC. My initial assault was on the iron resources. 2 chariots were able to take out the archer guarding the iron mine and pillage it. In the north, near Arbela, another chariot captured a worker mining that iron. My initial plan was to capture Arbela and Susa, but I saw a stack of archers moving to reinforce Susa, so I changed my plans. My southern thrust headed for Persepolis instead.

Persepolis was guarded by 2 archers and a spear, and when my chariots approached the city, the spear attacked (and lost!) I had 7 full strength chariots against 2 archers, and even that was close. I lost 5 assaulting the city. Cyrus had reinforcements (including a sword!) approaching at that point, so I razed his capital in 850 BC rather than risking him taking it back. I promoted the 2 victorious chariots with shock and managed to take out (hopefully) Cyrus's only sword.

Things didn't go so well in the north. I assaulted Arbela with 5 full strength chariots and failed to kill either of the archers defending there. I had to lick my wounds and pull my forces back pending reinforcements.

All in all, it's not going great, but I think I'm doing ok. I think destroying Persepolis really put a hurt on Cyrus - his score dropped by 150 points. I also stole 2 of his workers. I'll probably see if I can't fight a defensive/pillaging war for a few turns and see if I can get him to sign a peace treaty. That would give me enough time to get started producing axes, but it would probably take him the whole 10 turns just to get his iron hooked back up. With axes vs. archers, the war turns from a stalemate to a pretty solid thing. I don't necessarily want to destroy Cyrus, just take away his iron and make sure he's not a threat to me in the future.

51 (2000 BC) - Beijing Warrior->Settler - I may want to interrupt it for an Archer when that finally comes in.

55 (1840 BC) - Shanghai Obelisk->Barracks, though I think I'll interrupt it for an Archer.

56 (1800 BC) - Far W warrior finally makes another contact, with Caesar - he's in between me and Cyrus. Learn Archery, Pots in 17, ugh...

58 (1720 BC) - Shanghai worker starts new chop, Shanghai switches to Archer.

59 (1680 BC) - Warrior near Rome killed by Barb archer.

60 (1640 BC) - Shanghai Archer->Barracks.

63 (1520 BC) - Beijing Settler->Barracks. I think that the spot near the western cow and rice is more useful than I had earlier thought (see screenshot). Since the southern coastal site is nearly safe within my borders, I decide to go there instead. But I may need to let the Settler wait for a few turns until Pots is in, otherwise maintenance will be atrocious.

65 (1440 BC) - Shanghai Barracks->Archer

66 (1400 BC) - A distant civ completes Stonehenge - surprised it took so long. With much trepidation (over upkeep), I click Build City and now equal Cyrus and Caesar in number of cities. Pots in 16!!! Holy hell, I hope the nearly completed trade routes help with this.

68 (1320 BC) - Wow, the trade route gets me to Pots in 7. That's a relief. Get a worker going on connecting Guangzhou, which only needs one more road.

69 (1280 BC) - Hinduism spreads to Shanghai. That could be useful, though I can't see it being worth a revolution yet. I'll wait for it to spread a bit more on its own.

72 (1160 BC) - Beijing Barracks->Archer. Shanghai Archer->Archer.

73 (1120 BC) - A distant civ completes the Oracle.

75 (1040 BC) - I accept Open Borders from Cyrus - I've got nowhere to box him out of really. If he wants to spread more Hinduism, he's welcome to it. Beijing riots, because I forgot to turn off growth, but I'll have Ivory hooked soon. Beijing Archer->Worker. Learn Pots, research Animal Husbandry in 23 (!!!).

76 (1000 BC) - Take Open Borders from Caesar as well.

79 (925 BC) - Guangzhou Obelisk->Granary, health is tough right now.

80 (900 BC) - A distant civ completes the Pyramids. Yowch... Shanghai Archer->Archer. Shanghai warrior moves SE to explore what looks like another Persian settlement.

81 (875 BC) - Beijing Worker->Settler, I want to be ready to grab the 4th site if necessary. Caesar converts to Judaism.


OK, I can see some angles here. Cyrus is a strong builder, but a weak warmonger. If Caesar starts swarming Cyrus with Praetorians, I might have a good window of opportunity, especially since I'm next door to Persepolis. I can't imagine doing that without Cats, which are still a long ways off, but it seems possible.


82 (850 BC) - Ivory is finally hooked. Worker moves to chop some of what will soon be Cyrus's forests. I love doing that. The exploring warrior continues on to scope out Cyrus's territory.

(Shanghai Granary->Archer somewhere in here)

91 (625 BC) - Shanghai Archer->Archer, nothing else to build so at least let's make sure we have Archers w/Garrison all around. Beijing Settler->Granary. Settler moves toward the fourth site (originally the third, near the southern fish) and will fortify there until I can afford a new city (and have Fishing, for that matter).

94 (550 BC) - Confucianism is founded in a distant land.

95 (525 BC) - Learn Animal Husbandry, research Fishing. There are Horses right next to the proposed fourth city, not bad. But I sure hope there's Iron somewhere, too. There are more Horses a bit west of Guangzhou, but not really a very good city location for them.

96 (500 BC) - Damn. Lookout Warrior spots a Persian galley headed for my southern horses. I'll have to found city #4 in no more than another turn or two, even though I can't afford it and don't have Fishing.

97 (475 BC) - Shanghai Archer->Worker, since that fourth city will need work. Persian settler hasn't made landfall yet.

98 (450 BC) - Beijing Granary->Archer. Strange, the Persian galley is passing me by. I wonder where they're headed?

100 (400 BC) - The Persian galley has continued on and is now passing by Beijing. Maybe they're headed for the horses in the west, but why not do that via land?


Well, I'm now 100 turns in and last place in everything. I have 3 (soon to be 4) cities compared to Cyrus's 6 and Caesar's 5. I'm last place in every statistic. But I actually feel like I might have some sort of plan at this point - wait for the inevitable war between Caesar and Cyrus, and then backstab the Persians. That seems doable - even if he has Macemen by then, I'll at least have Cho-Ko-Nu's to work with. I think I have to take Writing next for Libraries, and then probably Iron Working, but maybe there will be some trade possibilities if I go for something like CoL instead. At least I have horses, which is a change of pace. Happiness is really a problem, though. Hopefully, I can trade my fish and cows to someone, but I see a lot of duplicates out there in the continent. Certainly it's still a tough road ahead.

I think that your going for Husbandry first made more sense than my BW. There just weren't many forests around to chop, and the cows were known from the start. At the same time, I got Myst instead and that's going to make a difference, especially given our differences in placing Shanghai. As far as that goes, I think that my site is decidedly stronger. You'll have early horses, but are pretty much limited to only one more strong city along the northern coast. I'll have Ivory, a much needed lux, and more importantly made space for another city on the coast south of Beijing. Part of this is that your scouts missed uncovering the fish 2S of Beijing's rice, so it wouldn't have even looked like a good location. At the same time, if your site is pushing a war with Cyrus, then mine is practically smacking him upside the head. Also, if I had gone for AH first, which I really think makes good sense, I'm not sure I would have had the guts to settle Shanghai where I did because I would have wanted the horses. As I played it, I basically figured I wouldn't have horses by delaying AH so much later and was completely gambling on having Iron in my borders.

OK, if I can read your plays correctly, you're basically taking advantage of the coast - by researching to Sailing, you're lessening the need for roads (instant trade routes), and thus don't need the Wheel or a second worker. That gets you a third settler/city while we only got two, and lets you research both AH and Mysticism as well. Extremely cool. And of course it plays into the financial bonus by opening up coastal tiles early. Is that basically what you're thinking?

One reason I asked about your tech path is that I'm curious about your military plan. At the moment, you're relying entirely on fog-busting warriors to stop barbs - you have no techs toward Archery, no copper, and the horses won't be in your borders for some time yet. I recently learned the value of fog-busters, but I guess I'm too fearful to go for so long with only warriors. Whenever I see that I'm without copper or horses (which seems to be always), I go for Hunting next.

I was going to make a proper log, but messed up the turn numbers, so here's a rough description:
Settle on start location, build a worker. Start researching AH, as there aren't enough forests around to really take advantage of BW. Go exploring with the warrior. I popped a scout from the closest hut, which is a nice result, and sent them off in opposite directions (scout south, warrior west).
After meeting Cyrus I pop 2 more huts, one with gold, and one with a map, so I put the research up to 100%. Once AH was done I researched BW. The worker was done the same turn, and went to build a pasture on the cows. After that it was time for 2 more warriors, timed so that the 2nd would finish at the same time that Beijing reached size 3, when I started a settler, only chopping one forest.

After BW was done I researched the Wheel, and after that Pottery, switching to slavery the turn I got it. The build order after the first settler in my capital then went: Warrior--> Settler --> Barracks, starting a worker in Shanghai. I'd just founded Guangzhau in 2000BC, starting a warrior there (The starting warrior and scout both being dead by now). As you can see my research is down to 40%, which does not make me think too highly of the possibility of doing well here.

I've put the capital at the starting point. I wanted to stay on the coast and near fresh water and other alternatives would make too little production. I didn't want to gamble on lucky search and settled right there. I've started worker->few warriors->2 settlers. I think, I've built barracks somewhere in between (while waiting for the population to grow).

My first warrior quickly found Cyrus and scouted general layout of land. Research was animal husbandry (for the capital), then bronze working. Without copper, I've decided that I'm not going into an early war and my warriors have just established perimeter for defense picking hill/jungle spots.

The jungle in the middle was kind of protection me from quick early invasion, so I've just build enough warriors to discourage AI from attacking.

My next step was to establish decent economy. So I've found 2 cities on the coast (one fish-cow and another lake-cow-rice-hills). I've researched mysticism (for obelisks), chop-rushed obelisks in both new cities.

I continued research to fishing-sailing (which gave me trade routes with my own cities - they were working coast/lake tiles initially to pay off their maintenance). As I their borders expanded I was able to exploit resources and switch those cities into full growth mode. Meanwhile I've constructed lighthouse in the capital while researching masonry and then proceeded to Great Lighthouse (I needed to exploit industrious trait somehow, after all).

In the new cities, northern was designated as military center (as I got cows improved I could get hills worked, so this city looked good for decent production), so I've built barracks there. Southern city was designated as science city, but I've built worker and settler there and founded another city to the south west (cow+clams+ a lot of hills) which got also military assignment (Cyrus has managed to cover cows by his culture, but chances of getting it back are probably decent, anyway clams+hills work well for now).

I continued research to writing-hunting-archery-alphabet, so that my military city could switch to archer production and science city could get a library. The prospect of the capital didn't look too good, and I wanted to make it eventually into specialist city (with all that food), so I went for Pyramids (anyway, there wasn't many things I could build there). I've got beaten by couple of turns, but the gold will allow me to run 100% science for quite a while, so that's not too bad (I would prefer Pyramids though).

So I've done some tech trading and mostly caught up technologically with Persia and Rome. Now it's 8 turns to Compass (and harbors) and financially things look in a good shape.

Somewhere along the way I've done some good resource trades that allowed me to grow my cities.

That's the state of things at 100 turn mark.

My further plans:
- I don't plan to go to war until catapults, but I will keep producing units in my 2 military cities
- I hope to plant couple more cities along the coast (there're spots in the north and in the south). In worst case, I have some room within my current borders where I could hook some food resources and make another city.
- Compass will buy me mathematics, and then I'll probably be able to trade for few missing older techs as well. Then it's to the monarchy, currency and construction and feudalism. Perhaps I will be able to get one or two of them by trade. With hereditary rule and vassalage I will go into war mode and take over Persia (with lots of catapults). I will use the Great merchant (from Lighthouse) either to get a tech (if that's one I can trade to AI) or to finance my research.
- I need more scouting to decide whether I want to do invasion by sea or by land, and so, whether I need to build galleys or not.
- As my cultural borders grow, stand-by fishing boat will try to cross the sea and reach other nations.

cleverhandle said:

OK, if I can read your plays correctly, you're basically taking advantage of the coast - by researching to Sailing, you're lessening the need for roads (instant trade routes), and thus don't need the Wheel or a second worker. That gets you a third settler/city while we only got two, and lets you research both AH and Mysticism as well. Extremely cool. And of course it plays into the financial bonus by opening up coastal tiles early. Is that basically what you're thinking?

Click to expand...

Yep, you're reading it right. 2F3C instead of 2F1C coast tiles is a real ace of financial trait, so I definitely want to use it. It also gives me flexibility of switching worked tiles between food, hills, forests and coast to time my research and construction in sync (and it gives me a headache of micromanaging it - city governor is useless for this purpose). Plus, I need coast to get harbors and hook sea resource which will give me a lot of income and health.

cleverhandle said:

One reason I asked about your tech path is that I'm curious about your military plan. At the moment, you're relying entirely on fog-busting warriors to stop barbs - you have no techs toward Archery, no copper, and the horses won't be in your borders for some time yet. I recently learned the value of fog-busters, but I guess I'm too fearful to go for so long with only warriors. Whenever I see that I'm without copper or horses (which seems to be always), I go for Hunting next.

Click to expand...

It depends on terrain. With so many jungle and hill tiles, fortified warriors are pretty good. I got a promotion on few of them (forest/jungle defense) from early attacks from animals and barbs (and some were built after barracks) and used those warriors to cover critical directions. They're something like 4-5 strength in defense (+20 promotion, +50 or 75 terrain +25 fortified). That's why I set them in a perimeter. And a bit later Cyrus protects me from barbarians on most fronts. So I postponed archery a bit until I got more important techs researched (and until my military centers are ready and with barracks).

If you're afraid of AI attack at this stage, it's very unlikely, they would lose too much troops trying to take your warriors in those jungles, it also takes a long time to get anywhere across this terrain. You just need to have enough troops so not to appear weak. Besides, I've not build a city in a Persia's sore spot (near ivory and dye), so they have much less reasons to attack me.

As soon as the horses were connected, and the rax done in Beijing I started building chariots. I saw a worker on the edge of Cyrus' territory (near Susa in my game) so declared war and captured it. I then sent a chariot to just generally cause a nuisance around Persepolis. Once I had 5 chariots I attacked Susa, to take the Ivory, losing 3 in the process (it was only defended by 2 archers, so quite a lucky result). I made peace with Cyrus after that, while I built more chariots, and chopped another of the forests near Beijing for a Library.

My research after I finished Pottery went: Fishing--> Mysticism --> Writing --> Iron Working (not finished yet, and I'm praying for iron to be somewhere close to me and away from the Romans ATM). Unfortunately I think the Romans might be getting a good tech lead, as they've founded Confuciansim.

My next target will be to make sure that the Persians don't connect any horses up, and then to capture their cities (there's 3 gold squares that I want at the south of the continent), hopefully using swordsmen, although it might end up being with horse archers

Edit: I don't normally research archery very early anyway, but after seeing this start it just didn't even occur to me to go for it early. Starting next to Cyrus I didn't imagine there'd be much room for barbs to spawn in early on, although it is a big risk, as even a couple of barb axemen could really do a lot of damage when all you have is chariots and warriors