The Emperor Masters' Challenge 2 (on Warlords)

Nice job of both snagging the Worker (I love it when I get a chance to do that in the early game, too :D ) and perfectly positioning the Warrior to stifle Huayna for a while.

I think you're right, you should take some time to expand before building War Chariots. I'm starting to play on Monarch now and I'm doing best by focusing on expansion before anything else. I suspect this is even more true on Emperor.

I like city site B--good for food and commerce as well (a pity about the 3 desert tiles, but the position of the resources are pretty much dictating the city's location). I agree, it looks like a GP farm. Unfortunately it looks like it will have very low production (1 hill, 3 forests), so it may be difficult to build the Great Library and National Epic there for Great Scientists, even with marble to help out.
 
City B as well as potential GP farm is also a potential science city; plenty of grassland for eventual cottages, food resources for scientists, if you could get Glib there then you could have a GP factory in Thebes and GS factory in City B.
 
ahandac said:
i was confused.you dont save turn to go to the horse tile. since your city is NOT on a hill

It looks like the city is actually on a grasslands hill.

Sisiutil said:
I think you're right, you should take some time to expand before building War Chariots. I'm starting to play on Monarch now and I'm doing best by focusing on expansion before anything else. I suspect this is even more true on Emperor.

Not necessarily true. I rarely build more than 2-3 cities before beginning war, and I play on Emperor/Immortal, epic. That said, I don't think that a strong early war is the optimal approach in this game. A settler, barracks, and a couple of WCs before Oracle seems best, and perhaps use the WCs to harrass opponents, or just use them against local barbs.
 
A few war chariots should be very effective stiffling Izzy. The change to the map scripts for Warlords make chariots pretty powerful. Copper is much less plentiful in the world so it is unlikely that she will have spears until iron which is more plentiful.
 
I'm thinking that the purpose of really rushing to war as soon as possible is to catch the AI before they have a chance to expand and prepare themselves. In this case, I think you've already accomplished that.

You stole Huayna's worker and stifled his growth for several turns. That should buy you some time if you choose him as your first opponent.

Isabella appears to be headquartered in the middle of a vast jungle. Her capital should be fine due to the way the map generator fixes up capital cities, but her follow-on cities are going nowhere until she has Iron Working and a whole lot of chopping.

Build a third city, get your empire moving in the right direction, then attack. They still won't be ready for you.
 
Phrederick said:
It looks like the city is actually on a grasslands hill.
Phrederick,it's not true. look at the frist picture:this tile is forest grass land and look at the defence bouns ,it's 50%,not 75%
 
ahandac said:
Phrederick,it's not true. look at the frist picture:this tile is forest grass land and look at the defence bouns ,it's 50%,not 75%

Nope, 'fraid not. The caption displayed in the first image is from another tile over which the mouse was hovering. The city was indeed founded on a grassland hill.
 
Think building GL in city B is going to be hard, since it has only 2 forest and 1 hill? (jungle isn't a hill/jungle, right?), but maybe Cuzco is..

I would put in a barracks first (prob. chop) then build a few WC's. I think you need the XP so they win the first battles against barbs or lone archers for sure. Then you are able to capture the capital.

6 forests; 1 for barracks, 1 for WC's, 3 for Oracle, 1 spare (forge).
 
The GL is still some time away. We can evaluate which city it should go to later, when we've established ourselves better and are able to assess our options.

voek said:
6 forests; 1 for barracks, 1 for WC's, 3 for Oracle, 1 spare (forge).

Sounds like a good plan.

How many WCs should we build for our first attack? And do you think we should continue with mass WC production after the first one or two waves? Or should we move on to swords and axes?

I think Huayna should be our first target, since we should capitalize on our advantage against him asap. However, Isabella is closer to us, has a prime city spot and a holy city. So who do you think we should attack first?
 
Since you already are at war with the Inca's and having a negative relation, they certainly should be your target. Besides they are the most dangerous. If you can convert Izzy or the other way around she will love you anyway.

Sent 1 or 2 WC's ASAP (chop) to Huayna his capital to prevent him from expanding (capturing strategic reources), get exp from picking archers in the open and get information about how many WC's you need to actualy capture his capital. Realy depends on the amount of archers, but I would count on 3. Then my guess is you need 5/6 promoted WC's to take over the city. (Depends on his promotions to ofcourse).

I would mainly keep attacking with WC's since they are cheap. One or two axes later on against spears. Maybe throw a few swordmen for city raiding. Since promoted swordsmen are of less value (trebuchets are the new city raiders, not macemen), you only need a few I think. WC's are cheap and more importantly FAST. Hit hard and fast, that's your edge.

You are right about the location of GL, but keep Cuzco in mind..
 
voek said:
Since you already are at war with the Inca's and having a negative relation, they certainly should be your target. Besides they are the most dangerous. If you can convert Izzy or the other way around she will love you anyway.

Sent 1 or 2 WC's ASAP (chop) to Huayna his capital to prevent him from expanding (capturing strategic reources), get exp from picking archers in the open and get information about how many WC's you need to actualy capture his capital. Realy depends on the amount of archers, but I would count on 3. Then my guess is you need 5/6 promoted WC's to take over the city. (Depends on his promotions to ofcourse).

I would mainly keep attacking with WC's since they are cheap. One or two axes later on against spears. Maybe throw a few swordmen for city raiding. Since promoted swordsmen are of less value (trebuchets are the new city raiders, not macemen), you only need a few I think. WC's are cheap and more importantly FAST. Hit hard and fast, that's your edge.

Actually, I am in the middle of playing the next round. The next few steps seem quite obvious judging from the comments so far, and I won't be playing tomorrow so I thought I should keep the pace steady by playing tonight. Anyway, my annoying warrior is doing such a good job disrupting Huayna's progress while mapping out his territory, that we can probably afford to target Isabella first. Huayna's progress should be sufficiently ******ed to weaken him greatly for some time, and it's more profitable to target Isabella first, who is much nearer to us and who offers some delicious targets.
 
If you want to settle in city B, I'm in preference of chopping a War Chariot first, then barracks and then another WC. He can follow the settler going to that city B. No need nor time for barracks first yet, I think, as Huayna may bring his extra Archer to that spot. The strentgh 5 Chariots should easily deal with the Archers and gain the 2xp needed for the first promotion there.

City B looks best for many reasons : blocking both the Inca and the Spanish, good food resources so we could get our Prophet quickly from that. And it's near a river, so commerce-wise more interesting. The city in the top right of your continent also looks very good. With the food resources and three hills, it can be a good all round city. This spot looks the best for the ToA (Krikkitone's suggestion), in view of higher trade route yield, especially with a Harbor. I'm not sure if we'll have the time to build it. A third city before attacking, if we plan to, also would be my preference.

I'm not sure about building Stonehenge, but it's interesting. If you settle in city B and guard it with one or two WC's, you can start farming the corn and get a pastry for the pigs. First thing to build may be an obelisk. Then get the two priests assigned.

Good luck, aelf, with the next round (saw your post only just now before sending mine...).

Jaca
 
Hmm, I haven't seen copper near the enemy yet, so that could justify your attack. Good thing the warrior keeps the Inca busy, one would suspect he dies after maximum of 2 or 3 attacks.

The only downside from attacking Izzy is you won't have a trading partner (at least till you encounter other civs). But maybe Izzy will be not to angry if you convert to her religion. At least it might be worthwhile to let her live to extort some techs later. But I am running ahead...

I should run a shadow game and attack the Inca first :)
 
Round 3: 2290BC - 970BC

A much longer round this time. I wanted to hit the next milestone in our game before stopping.

Once our settler was complete in Thebes, I switched the build to a barracks, which I was chopping for. It's a bit of a risk not building a WC first, since we left our capital unprotected as our defending warrior went to escort the settler, but chopping would mitigate that. The city screen:



Keeping the science rate as high as possible while getting decent production at the same time. The city was growing too. However, since it's now unprotected, we couldn't let it grow to size 4 without having unhappiness. So when Thebes was one turn from growing, I stopped working the farm to stagnate growth:



This arrangement also had the advantage of using the lake's 2 commerce again, increasing our science rate a little more.

Meanwhile, our settler and warrior attempted to reach Site B, but the increased barb activity in Warlord made sure that we had to play a hide-and-seek game with one or two barb archers. I decided not to found the city until we could get a WC to back it up. Couldn't risk wasting a settler.

Anyway, after the barracks was built in Thebes, we started to build WCs. Chopped a forest to hurry the first one up so that Thebes could have protection and continue growing. One turn before completion, we could afford letting the city grow on the next turn:



Once it grew to size 4, I decided to stop growth, since it had reached its happiness cap, and focus on research:



On the 'warfront', our lone warrior had succeeded in evading a few Inca archers and had done a good job mapping out Huayna's territory around Cuzco. Then he came to a farmed corn tile that was out of the reach of the archers...



Oh, we are positively barbaric, aren't we? :cool:

I moved him towards more farms, hoping to pillage some more and really screw things up for Huayna.

Back home, with the second chariot completed and moving towards Site B, I decided it was time to found our second city:



We worked the floodplains to let the city grow as quickly as possible and started on an Obelisk for some culture later (remember one of Izzy's cities is directly below). One of the workers had begun to lay down a road from Thebes to Memphis. He would chop the forest for the Obelisk when he got there.

On the 'warfront' again, our warrior came to another farm:



Huayna must've begun to feel the crunch. He came asking for peace even though we haven't killed any of his units.



Not so fast, friend. I wanted to at least pillage the two farms to the east of Cuzco before agreeing to sign that treaty :devil:

[to be continued in the next post]
 
aelf,how do you move your settler and worrior?move to site B and just wait the WC?
becides bars,bear are dangerous too.if you found you second city,animal can't attack your worrior& settler
 
[continued from the previous post]

As we got to a few turns away from getting Priesthood, I adjusted the tiles in Thebes so that we could begin on the Oracle once we had the tech:



I adjusted the tiles again after that so that we could get Writing before completing the Oracle (we needed Writing to grab CoL as the free tech):



Anyway, you might notice that I ran a priest in Thebes (we built an Obelisk in between building WCs). It didn't make a difference to the turns needed to research Writing if we were working the other lake instead, so I thought why not get some early GPP in the meantime?

Oracle construction was helped along by a few of the pre-chopped forests. Our timing turned out just right. We would get Writing and the Oracle on the same turn. But there was a problem: Thebes was growing again, and there was no way I could stagnate its growth without upsetting our delicately balanced timing. I fiddled around with the tiles one turn before Thebes grew and realised that I could starve the city a little by running another priest (getting more GPP in the process) instead of working the corn farm:



For the next several turns, I kept alternating between running the second priest and working the corn, starving the city a little and then getting it back to 1 turn from growing again.

By then we had pillaged the two Inca farms I was eyeing and signed peace with Huayna. There was nothing else safe to pillage, so I thought our warrior should go on to do more exploring elsewhere.

By the way, I had forgotten we had another exploring warrior, whom I fortified on a forest hill in the south to heal many turns ago. The thought of exploring made me remember him (it's amazing that he was still alive!). Well, he had Woodsman II, so moving around in the jungles to catch up on exploration shouldn't take too long. I also used a WC to help map out Izzy's current borders.

Anyway, the little bit of gold we got from pillaging helped us maintain our timing, and we did get the Oracle on the same turn we got Writing:



Our CS slingshot is successful! Now we just need to wait for a prophet to appear.



Couldn't resist taking that screenshot. But then I realised I made a small error. I forgot our capital couldn't be the holy city since there was a second city. Looks like Memphis doesn't really need the culture from the Obelisk after all. Should've built a barracks instead earlier...

Well, the show goes on. Maybe we can make some use of the priests we can run in Memphis later.

Anyway, this is where I stopped. Completing the Oracle is certainly an important milestone, and it removes a lot of anxiety from my mind. Our grand strategy can go on. But what are the next few steps we should take? Researching Pottery next seems obvious as we need to get some cottages up around Thebes soon. After Pottery it will be Polytheism so that we can burn our GP on CS.

Thebes is quite high on production:



Should we start amassing our first WC army and charge at one of our neighbours? And who will it be?

Huayna is weakened by our brave warrior's incursion, but has managed to expand further despite it. I fear our advantage may be eroding faster than I had expected. Attacking him first would allow us to capitalize on his weakness. And voek raised a good point about trading: if we attack Izzy, we might not have a trading partner as Huayna is not too pleased with us and might not want to trade.

However, Izzy is closer to us. And she offers a few good prizes: the resource-rich city south of Memphis and the holy city of Buddhism (probably her capital), which I suspect has Stonehenge in it. Keeping her happy and trading with her now might be good in some ways, but it also means by the time we take her on she would have already established herself well.

Anyway, this is a map of our empire and its proximity to our neighbours:



Barbs have built a city in the north, on the spot where we plan to build our 3rd city (looks like it). That means we don't have to build a settler to claim the spot :) This can be the first real campaign for our WCs (two of them have killed a few barbs so far).

Any thoughts?
 

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ahandac said:
aelf,how do you move your settler and worrior?move to site B and just wait the WC?
becides bars,bear are dangerous too.if you found you second city,animal can't attack your worrior& settler

I kept playing hide and seek with the barbs while waiting for the WC :p

There are no more barb animals once barb humans start to appear.
 
ahandac said:
memphis only have 4 hammers(if you can grab that hill and mine on it )why barracks?

It will be able to whip out some troops in the future.
 
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