The Emperor Masters' Challenge 2 (on Warlords)

definately build the shrine to help pull you out of the black hole of "distance upkeep" (see my other thread) and will help auto spread the religions where it can. next prophet same thing.. net result is a higher research %. combine this with spamming cottages and clearing away jungle to greatly inhance total commerce output. set 1 city to spam missionaries from whichever religion has the 1st shrine, then again from the 2nd

but remember "state religion" will dictate the usefullness of the univ of sankore and the spiral so choose early and wisely. the 2nd religion is purely for economic reasons and later happiness with free religion.

as far as techs. get alpha asap so you can extort techs. then pick up literature followed by the path towards construction. cats will be a stronger addition to the army then macemen I would think. also its on the path to engineering, giving you greater mobility across the empire and the NeW allmighty treb which devestates units in cities.

but before war like I said.. cottage up, run priests and hear their words!!! prepare the holy warriors and launch a blazing attack on HC with ideally 2 stacks consisting of war chariots, axemen, cats. when upkeep levels extort for peace, let WW settle down then finish him or isabella off completely.

NaZ
 
Well we do seem to agree you should use the prohpet for the shrine. To make a better or clear decision about the tech path I would ask you to post a tech screeny. Besides that you might provide us with a small list of the discussed techs and the amount of turns they will take.

What is left of your army? My guess that the other point of agreement is having a peaceful buildup rightnow. However, I wonder if trading will be an option (like Krikkitone suggested), since you declared war on Huayna twice. What are the relation modifiers at this moment?

Edit: Btw I would build up stacks with 2/3 swordmen, 1 shock axe, 2/3 warchariots and 4 cats. But that depends if he will have longbows by then.
 
Each prophet will lightbulb (1000 + 3*total-population) * 1.5-for-epic beakers, or about 1650 beakers.

From here the prophet tech preference list is:
Theology (1170 beakers)
Divine Right (2808 beakers)
Monarchy (702 beakers)
Literature (468 beakers)

So plan to pop 5 more prophets and use them for:
1. Mahabodhi (see below)
2. Theology
3. Monarchy
4. Divine Right
5. Divine Right. I think we'll still be busy researching things other than DR. Let's see how far we can push this priest thing!
Then either pop one more prophet for the Kong Miao, or switch to scientists. Probably the latter. Alternatively I suppose Kong Miao / DR / DR is also a reasonable choice; we should still get DR pretty early.

Meanwhile research Alphabet (roughly 30 turns) then Literature (roughly 20 turns). I don't think we'll get much from Alphabet beyond revealing what techs Huayana and Isabella have, but all 3 Literature wonders will be good for us. Marble and Industrious will help us build them. NE will help our Priest gambit. We should build the GL because we can, and we can juggle priests to discourage premature great scientists, or if we do get a great scientist it won't be the end of the world.

Then Metal Casting, Machinery, Mathematics, Construction, Paper. The reasoning is (a) I'm not sure we can attack Huayna until Macemen, because by the time we have an invasion force, he might have Longbowmen, so we might as well put off Catapults until then, and (b) I'm guessing we can put of Paper that long, although I'm not crazy about it. On the other hand if Alphabet reveals that Huayna is sufficiently far from Longbowmen, we might try Construction before Machinery and/or Metal Casting, and attack earlier.

Back to the present. Go Organized Religion; it's worth the upkeep (currently 3 wealth per turn).

I feel like Huayana will attack at any minute. He's Furious and much stronger than us. It might not be enough to hold him off, but try going Buddhist for now. We're Spiritual; the switch is free. It will also expose some other cities, which will be handy. Make note of what's in Cuzco and Ollantaytambo before you shut off the lights there. I'd even gift Huayna a crap resource if you get a chance. Looks like he might not have any rice or sheep. Sheep would be better (no granary bonus), but you probably won't get it as soon.

Now, I count 6 Confucian cities and 5 Buddhist ones. Huayana's other city might also be Buddhist. I would have said go Kong Miao, but screw it: stay Buddhist, build the Mahabodhi, and if Huayna stays off your back such that you don't have an emergency need for war production, spam Buddhism and build temples for the happy: you're Spiritual, and won't prioritize Monarchy, and will be in OR for the missionaries. Madrid will make an awesome commerce city; Buddhism gives you less chance of attack by Huayna and a remote possibility of trading; and the extra temples - and additional cities for shrine income - will be good for you anyway. The availability of 3 extra priests from the Kong Miao might have helped Memphis, but with another temple that's 4, and we'll have Literature for the NE; that's enough.

I think you really want the HE before you attack Huayna. Stay in war with Isabella, send the elite WC plus one more WC into her territory, and assess your chances of getting the elite one up to 26 EXP in this war. This war would be continued soley for that purpose. If you don't think you can do it, use the GG for a Medic III instead of an Instructor, and declare peace. You could re-declare on Isabella to get the 6 EXP after you're more prepared, but that would delay the HE, and hurt relations, and divert forces from the north to the south. The Instructor is not critical because you can get Theology pretty soon (25 turns, see below).

Cancel the worker cutting jungle near Barcelona and go mine the copper by Madrid so that you can diversify your army promptly. If you do use the GG for an instructor, it's a close call between Thebes and Huamanga, but I say Thebes, then the HE in Thebes for big total hammers. Meanwhile build the GL in Memphis or Barcelona if they can get it done promptly enough, otherwise in Thebes. Later, build Oxford in Barcelona, plus maybe the Palace for the Bureaucracy bonus.

Send a WC up to the northeastern barb city so that you can defend against raiders and keep an eye on what it's doing and whether Huayna attacks it. If your economy recovers enough, you should capture it, but you can leave the south for Isabella. She'll have to go through that barb city Bantu and then cross that desert; it'll be fine.

Your builds have competing priorities. You need libraries for HE/NE/GL but should probably leave it at that. To be safer and to prepare for later, you need keep building military aggressively. But you also want Buddhist missionaries, temples, granaries, courthouses, and you really could use a few more workers. That helps a lot, doesn't it? I'm a fountain of sagacity.

Run another priest in Memphis so that you get the Mahabodhi in 12 turns rather than 18. Even with -1 happy from switching to Buddhism, Memphis can still run 3 priests and pop the Mahabodhi prophet before it starves all the way down to 4 pop.

In Thebes I'd run 3 priests + corn + cottage so that it pops the Theology prophet in 25 turns. You'll have to get a missionary in there before it starves down. After the Theology prophet, turn off the priests in Thebes in order to "catch up" on military and science. You can probably switch to Theocracy then; build a monastery in Madrid for the rest of the missionaries. Meanwhile keep max priests in Memphis and you'll get Monarchy in at most 60 turns from now (the 4th priest and the NE should make it less than that).

Thinking about national wonders for later:
* Go for Versailles in Madrid and Forbidden in Cuzco. We should have early DR, Versailles is Marble which we have, we're Industrious, and Madrid is a good production city. It would be wickedly satisfying to have government centers in the enemy capitals.
* Even though Barcelona won't have the NE, if it has Oxford and maybe the Palace, it could possibly get the Globe Theater. It has a ton of food available to it.
 
Hi all! I just wanted to make Aelf a question. I have found this thread very interesting and so have tried to reproduce the same game conditions: Ramsess, Coninents, standard, epic, emperor... Well, I could get such a favourable map (the one in this game) one out of ten times. For example, the first 2 ones without hammers in capital or surroundings and horses 10 tiles far at least, the third oone was a bit better but without horses in capital. Of course, none like the initial position in this game. This is also the tendency I've seen in other games like this.
My question is: when you begin a game like this, do you wait for an initial good position or you take the first you get? I'm not trying to be malitious, I just want to know if it's just casual or not. As far as I've experienced, in Monarch, Emperor, you get very often very initial bad positions, bad positions that I've never seen in this kind of games.
Saludos
 
Jet said:
Each prophet will lightbulb (1000 + 3*total-population) * 1.5-for-epic beakers, or about 1650 beakers.

From here the prophet tech preference list is:
Theology (1170 beakers)
Divine Right (2808 beakers)
Monarchy (702 beakers)
Literature (468 beakers)

So plan to pop 5 more prophets and use them for:
1. Mahabodhi (see below)
2. Theology
3. Monarchy
4. Divine Right
5. Divine Right. I think we'll still be busy researching things other than DR. Let's see how far we can push this priest thing!
Then either pop one more prophet for the Kong Miao, or switch to scientists. Probably the latter. Alternatively I suppose Kong Miao / DR / DR is also a reasonable choice; we should still get DR pretty early.
It's the GS that adds (3 * pop) beakers, the GP adds (2 * pop) beakers. Either way your calculations show to me that using a GP on Monarchy is probably a waste- the cost of that tech is roughly half of what the GP can provide. Even for a Philosophical civ getting the first 5 Great People out is a big deal, I would not use a guy on Monarchy and save him for either another Shrine or a more expensive tech like Paper, Printing Press, or Education. Or even Philosophy, if Taoism can be founded. Fast Philosophy gives you the benefit of pacificsm if you are set on cranking out GPPs.
 
But can he research Monarchy and still get Paper and DR in time? I guess it might actually be faster to research Monarchy than to farm the last prophet (say if it costs 700 GPPs, at 24 GPP per turn from 4 priests + NE, that's 30 turns to farm it). It partly depends how far along he is to researching Paper. Also, getting Monarchy sooner has a growth effect. (Of course the same is true for the second shrine, although I have not recommended it.) The decision should be clearer once he pops the prophet that can lightbulb Monarchy.
 
First off, Hi :) I'm only a Prince player, but here is what I would do.

Cottage memphis, shrine confucianism > buracracy. Get those worker improving on the money resources. Economy is your most limiting factor at this point, I think, and everything else will suffer until you improve it.

I would normally head for Alphabet as well, in order to tech trade techs that i beelined past, but I don't think either Izzy or the Incas will trade with you now anyway.

I wouldn't start war again until you have catapults and at least swordsman. If swordsman is the best you have though, you're gonna need alot of catapults.

GG should become GMI in what your production city is. Have it cranking out defense for now, until you get that iron hooked up, then swords. Cats are cheap, once you get construction, have all cities build a mess of them, then you can get going again. The WC's glory days are over I think, once the AI's cities have thick enough culture defence (they will once you wait long enough for your economy to recover) all the flanking promotions in the world won't save them.

And for goodness sake, start razing some cities. :p Going to war early is to hamper the AI, at this point, you've hampered the AI a great deal but how much is it costing in terms of maintenance?

That's my humble advice, don't mock the (civ4) noob too much please :)
 
joyodongo said:
Well, I could get such a favourable map (the one in this game) one out of ten times. For example, the first 2 ones without hammers in capital or surroundings and horses 10 tiles far at least, the third oone was a bit better but without horses in capital. Of course, none like the initial position in this game. This is also the tendency I've seen in other games like this.
My question is: when you begin a game like this, do you wait for an initial good position or you take the first you get? I'm not trying to be malitious, I just want to know if it's just casual or not. As far as I've experienced, in Monarch, Emperor, you get very often very initial bad positions, bad positions that I've never seen in this kind of games.

I didn't know the horses were going to appear there. If it were up to me, I'd have preferred a river instead of the lakes, not knowing where the horses are. IMO an early game commerce-oriented capital and possible late game production powerhouse (with watermills) is much better.

Well, the majority of us could agree on investing the next GP on a shrine, researching Alphabet-Literature next and investing the GG as a GMI.

However, contrary to what I've read so far, I think the Kong miao is a better choice to build. In terms of immediate financial gains, there isn't much difference between the two shrines (unless Bureaucracy affects the income, which I doubt), but Thebes should be the one running priest specialists, since it has the Oracle to help with GP generation. Why waste the wonder's free GPP? Also, I think Madrid is better off working cottages for now to prepare it for commerce city status.

Researching Alphabet will allow us to try extorting some techs, especially from Isabella, and will give us an idea how advanced HC is. With Literature, we can take a shot at getting the GL (although I think only Thebes has a good chance, which will pollute our GP points) and build the NE to boost GPP (location yet to be determined). I'm inclined to research Monarchy on our own, since it's not really worth burning a GP on. We can research it after Literature, before we start heading towards Construction.

On which city the GMI should go to, I think the best choice is still Thebes as it is ready to start cranking out troops, which we need to do. And like Dr Elmer said, Thebes will not make a very good late-game production city after we stopped using Bureaucracy, so the Ironworks will probably go to another city to help build those late-game wonders and expensive spaceship parts and Thebes can stick to building units.

Hmm... On second thoughts, there many points I made that conflict each other. I may just decide to build the Mahabodhi instead and have Thebes build the GL (then it will not be a GP city), but not before the city generates the following GP (which we need for either Theology or DR). I may also put the GG in Huamanga instead, since with the Bureaucracy bonus Thebes should be building wonders instead of units. Agh! :crazyeye: I guess I'll have to play and decide on the spot.

That said, I'm going to play the next round now. You will know what I've decided on when I post the update (for a bit of suspense ;)).
 
go aelf!!

definately choose what your next path is. we've all weighed in on a variety of points, its ultimately up to you.. WE LEARN FROM YOUR CHOICES.. and while the reverse is true, you're the one playing on emperor while i only occasionally step up to monarch.

looking forward to the update!!

NaZ
 
aelf said:
On second thoughts, there many points I made that conflict each other. I may just decide to build the Mahabodhi instead and have Thebes build the GL (then it will not be a GP city), but not before the city generates the following GP (which we need for either Theology or DR).

Actually, I forgot that the Confucian holy city is Memphis, not Thebes. I guess it might be the Kong Miao after all.
 
Round 6: 170AD - 500AD

It's quite a short round this time, necessitated by a further set of important decisions that have to be made.

To begin, let's pick the game up from where we left it. Screens of our main cities:



I decided to put 3 priests, as advised, in Thebes. However, I thought we couldn't afford to cut down on production and income (especially production and income that are boosted by Bureaucracy) so I let it starve while continuing to work on the most developed cottage, the quarry and the pasture instead of the corn. We need the 3 priests to pop our following GP (the one after the next) quickly so that we can lightbulb Theology.



Memphis is our designated GP farm, and I let it focus on being that with another set of 3 priests. It would soon pop our next GP, which we would use on a shrine.



At the cost of 2 population, I whipped unhappy Madrid for the Confucian temple (which will help with the happiness problem). After this, I would let it grow back as quickly as possible and develop it as a commerce city.

It would be peace. As discussed, we researched Alphabet next. I switched to OR to help our cities build up, but we didn't convert to Buddhism yet as that would cause unhappiness in Thebes and Memphis. I decided we should wait until we could spread Buddhism to them. Or at least until the gems were connected. And soon enough, they were:



Those gems also pulled our economy a little way out of the black hole. I sent two workers to mine the other gem (near Barcelona) to give it a further boost as quickly as possible.

Now that Thebes and Memphis were no longer at their happiness cap, we could safely convert to Buddhism. Trade was unlikely in the short run, but at least for now it would give us some diplomatic benefits to help prevent Huayna from attacking us (on second thoughts, does it actually have any effect, since HC still wouldn't be too happy?). Our conversion seemed to make Isabella calm enough to sign a cease fire agreement (we were actually still at war with her since razing her copper city, although we made no more agressive moves).

Anyway, before Thebes starved down to size 5, I configured the tiles it was working:



Initially, I took one priest down and worked the corn to let the city grow again for a few turns. However, we did not have an immediate need for production. The GG wouldn't be installed there so Thebes was not going to crank out many units, and there are no useful wonders/improvements to build. We needed to keep our commerce (for research) and GPP up, however, so I decided it should focus on those.

Our next GP was soon born in Memphis:



Now, should he be used to build the Mahobdhi or the Kong Miao? Memphis is our GP farm, and a check with the religion advisor (a highly amusing government position, don't you think? :lol:) revealed that Confucianists stood at 12% of the world and Buddhists at 11%. And the GP was born in Memphis, where it didn't to spend a few turns walking in order to establish a shrine. So the answer was clear to me: the Kong Miao.

The shrine allowed us to raise our research slider by 10% without losing too much money per turn. Our economy is on the road to recovery, friends.

Unfortunately, the good news ended there:



The GL was built by heathens in a far away land before we could even begin. We might be facing a more advanced other continent again in this game :aargh:

We finished researching Alphabet soon after, probably much later than the other continent, and I stopped playing.

Now that we can't go chasing after the GL, we might need to rethink researching Literature next. Do we need the NE or HE badly? Or should we research more important techs first? And what are those? We might want to start heading towards Construction or to research MC. The tech screen:



Huayna is ahead of us (wow, this guy is doing really well after all that we did to him). Besides what we can see, he definitely has Currency too, judging from the fact that his gold is available for trading.



Even Isabella has Mathematics, so we can expect the rest of the world to have it too. We should be able to research it at a big discount, which is an argument in favour of heading towards Construction. However, Monarchy is required for DR and enables Hereditary Rule, which will help us. Assuming that we leave Theology and half (or all?) of DR to be researched by GPs, we have to decide between these two paths. We will probably research Paper when our economy is stronger.

Another decision we have to make is whether to change the configuration of the tiles worked in our cities. Thebes and Memphis are still running 3 priests each at the cost of production and, to a certain extent, commerce. Should we continue this, especially in Thebes?



It will pop the next GP soon enough, but is getting the GP earlier worth further sacrificing production and commerce? You probably have to take a look at the save to consider the situation.

A look at the comparative statistics, as usual:



Our GNP is lower than Isabella at the moment, which I find quite amazing since, even though shrine income and priests are not taken into account, we are working several cottages and two gem mines. What could Isabella have? Is there something wrong with the graph?



Our power is slowly rising as we build a few axemen, but HC's power is rising more rapidly and the gap is widening. Is this a worrying trend? In the last Emperor Challenge, Napoleon's power rating was high but he had nothing to prove it when tested. Should the next target be HC or Isabella? If we target HC first, we can probably defeat him (maybe at high cost, though) with lots of catapults and break his power. If we go for Isabella first, we can build up and hopefully challenge Huayna when we have an economic advantage.

Another map of our continent, although it hasn't changed much:



Our land area is apparently the largest in the world, which a first time for me this early in a game. I think this is a good sign, and hopefully it will translate into an advantage in mid-game.
 

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Not running warlords yet so can't look at the save. Is it worth moving the capital to Barcelona? I'd have thought researching monarchy and lightbulbing theology for DR should be priorities given your game plan. If you ain't planning on war maths/construction ain't a priority. If HC is planning on war maths/construction probably wont be enough to deter him.
 
pigswill said:
Is it worth moving the capital to Barcelona?
This may be a good idea, in my opinion. With all the mineable hills, the Sugar, Gems, Spices and the river with probably four places for a cottage, and the very central location, Barcelona looks a very good spot. After HR (Monarchy) there should be enough happy faces to sustain a good population with good commerce and production (Bureaucracy helps much better here then in Thebe). The Palalce is rather cheap now, the only pity I see is that by in order to get access to Sugar, the Obelisk looses its power, doesn't it?

Jaca
 
Somebody rated this thread Terrible. Is it that bad? ;)

Indeed, eventually moving the capital to Barcelona might be a good idea. But how soon can we do that? Barcelona is still being developed, and we are not going for Calendar anytime soon. Maybe after Thebes has built Sankore and Spiral Minaret with Bureaucracy hammers?

Anyway, we aren't planning for war soon, but we will have to fight before it's too late if we want to overcome HC and dominate our continent. The question is when should that happen?
 
produce the kong mao, get your 2nd prophet out BEFORE you lose the obelisk advantage!!! use him on the desired tech.. then turn off the priests for now.. you need the production in all of your cities.

tech towards construction, and hit HC asap to cripple him. take the 2 closest cities, and make sure before declaring peace to pillage any/all cottages he has. remember his financial bonus needs to be crippled so his tech lead will level off. when you declare peace extort whatever you can out of him. let your infrastructure rebuild then wipe isabella out before she takes any more land like that barb city.

need to secure the continent and prepare for a naval invasion... before the other side gets too far advanced like last game.

its gonna be tough.. but thats the point of an emperor game I think

NaZ
 
NaZdReG said:
tech towards construction, and hit HC asap to cripple him. take the 2 closest cities, and make sure before declaring peace to pillage any/all cottages he has. remember his financial bonus needs to be crippled so his tech lead will level off.
NaZ
That's what I am worried about. In the save file I hoovered over the cottages he has built. The lion share is just unworked, despite him being financial. He prefers to work unimproved forests sometimes over a cottage (producing what? An army?). And look at his capital: not a single cottage, all farms, and pop 9. It seems he's running some sort of a specialist economy there. He has three 8+pop cities. Ruining may be difficult... You'll have to take cities.

Also, at the current rate, Thebe should have its prophet out in 8 turns. I then assigned no more prophet and tried building "Research", since our research is at turtle speed. If you place the citizens on the Horse Pasture, the Marble and the Mine, you gain, thanks to the Bureaucracy, 18 beakers, which is a significant amount compared with the total of the rest of our cities. Monarchy, which I would prefer now before continuing Literature for the hapiness, allowing our cities to grow at least one pop up, is then only 8 turns instead of 14. Could this be an option to temporarily speed up science by using the "bureaucracied" hammers in Thebe?

Jaca
 
OK, No GL means I think we focus even more on the religion route.

Get the GP from Thebes for Theocracy then focus on Commerce (whip for production)

Get one More GPs from Memphis... for Buddhist Shrine, (use the Pigs, and run as many Priests as possible with the Pigs and Wheat...Then switch to max food for Whipping)... bonus is it helps you maintain cultural control of the Copper.

Start Running 3 Priests in Madrid for the last Prophet (for DR.)

Work the Pigs in Memphis to get some growth for Whipping or More Priests (6 allowed now, you could run 5 with working just the two food bonuses... I'd probably run them High until the Shrine [only tile workers on the wheat and pigs], and then Focus back on whipping units.

I'm still in favor of the Long peace, (perhaps hitting some barbarians) so Monarchy first, Then Literature for HE to start rapid buildup, Then Construction, then Paper [while you are conducting the War], then start Researching DR (Timing it so that the last Prophet appears in it)

The question is where to put HE, I'd say Huamonga, along with the GG. That way Thebes can use its 'far from the Front Bureaucracy' on Commerce.
 
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