The UNREAL Walkthrough

The UNREAL WALKTHROUGH…

In the recent ‘Impossible’ walkthrough, (Impossible) I went about showing how it was possible to do a couple things which were thought to be ‘impossible’. Winning monarch+ without lightbulbing or building cottages.

I have been going over the posts and it seems there are still some doubts and puzzlement. So, just to PROVE AGAIN that the impossible is in fact possible, I will do it one more time. But this time, I will show it on Emperor level instead of Monarch. Which, some think is again ‘impossible’ despite the last proof I laid out.

So… HERE WE GO AGAIN……

Same settings as before:: Ramesses will be used on continents to prevent snowballing vassal exploits with domination/conquest. We are also using normal speed again, as slower speeds give too much an advantage to the human player. Again, if I were going to do marathon speed here, I might as well switch up to Immortal, just to keep some sort of challenge going.

There are no tweaks to the starting settings, and I will have but 2 main rules.

#1 No lightbulbing of any great person is allowed.
#2 No cottage building.


To be honest, I’m not 100% against cottages all the time. They have their SPECIFIC use, which comes into play a specific amount of the time. Every improvement in the game has its SPECIFIC use in SPECIFIC situations. The issue is that the use of cottages is far over done by amateurs cottage spamming. And the claims you need to be building them all over the place to win on these levels is a myth.

I am just going to not build any cottages here to continue shooting down the arguments a lot of the intermediate & amateur players keep making. However, I am not going to go ALL OUT OF MY WAY to kill every single cottage an AI may make in a city that I capture. The AI just makes too freiken many that I don’t even have time to pillage them all (unless we are playing marathon/epic speed).

In any case, it should be pointed out that one should be a top-player before heading out on Emperor, especially if you are used to lightbulbing crutches. It is not that it’s insanely scary (it’s not), but you really should know how to OPTIMIZE your cities/specialists, etc. This is because of the huge edge the AI’s get on this level. And of course, it helps when you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

In other words, the method I’m doing here is for top caliber players.

Q. How do you know when you are a top caliber player?

A. That’s easy. Everybody thinks they are a top caliber player.

But… note that the true elite players have a very strong solid understanding of SE techniques, city specialization, etc. If you don’t understand what SE even stands for, go back to the forums and do some searches. And even if you think you know… you probably still need to do some homework.

* Test…

If I tell you that you have A, B & C buildings in your capital, and running D & E civics, with F & G specialists. You should be able to instantly run the modifiers through the base values in your head and come up with the filtered output total.

Again, the best of the best players are ALWAYS doing this on the fly, always knowing where they will be depending what pops out, and gauging it to the current turn-year and how the other civs are comparing.

So much to get into, and so little time. Anyhow, enough rant. I’m going to start playing now, then type my results in this word file when done. No promises on what strategy I’m going to use either, I will adapt to what comes.

And P.S. I don’t claim to be the best player in the world, and I certainly make my own mistakes sometimes. I hope I don’t make any here.







-- Stop the Press --

We are done, and I only had to take one break during my session. Now off to upload my shots and get my write-up ready for posting.

Ok, 4000 BC. This is a tuff spot to decide for me. I really don’t want to settle on the hill because we wont be able to chop or mine it. On the other hand, if I move down south 1 tile, I will lose a whole turn. And early turns on Emperor are important. Another problem I risk, is moving down south for all I know may make me settle ontop of a potential hammer resource, which would be a waste. I’ve been told the game USUALLY selects the optimum city placement at starts, so again I have tuff decision here.

Weighing in all the factors, I’ll just say the hell with it and settle right away to not skip a turn.

Also the other blue circle is telling me (in theory) that another city should be built to the right. I can only assume there are some good resources there so I’ll move the barb down there and take a peek. Also let’s see who we can steal a worker from, or rush into a war with.

Last note. I am tempted to go for animal husbandry, since I want to hook up those cows ASAP. And if we find horses soon, then we can put our UU in work right out the gate. But I have another issue… I have a couple hills here, and I have forests on them. That means going for mining, and chopping has very strong benefits too, especially when we can use slavery to then rush a worker or settler or wonder even.

Decisions!!! Ok, lets take the metals route and just go with it. We can then find out where bronze is. But it’s a close choice…

2520 BC

Boy the years fly fast in the BC era. The blue circle was for once, dead on the money. That’s a very good spot to put my sister city in and it’s nice to find what I’m looking for… for once! I’m going to try and settle there before any AI gets there. If we can’t get it in time, then forgive me, but we’ll have the chance to build axemen and just take the city from whoever lands there in that case. Note that bronzeworking gave us two metal deposits very close. I love this because of the hammers they can provide, in fact I love it more than the war units it unlocks.

Also we ran into Cyrus and Toku. Cyrus’ favourite civic is vassalage IIRC. Which sucks because if I want to please him greatly, I won’t be able to run my beurocracy. And generally vassalage is a crappy civic. However, Cyrus is genearly easy to please. He’s great for keeping as an ally in your back-pocket, and you can rely on him to be decent. I just don’t like how he often doesn’t tech-trade that much.

Toku is the problem though. This guy you CAN’T TRUST. He is even against tech-trading more than Cyrus. And once he gets his UU, watch out. For that reason, I think I’m going to plan to hit Toku first, before he gets a chance to backstab me. I’ll vassal him or cripple him bad and then we’ll take it from there. Unless of course, someone else finishes him off or something.

I am actually building a road to it before I am getting my city in place to build the quarry. That’s right, always thinking ahead on Emperor. Timing in the early phases is very critical, and I intend to squeeze out every slight gain I can here.

I am going to get the Great Wall, before the barbs come pushing at me again. This means I can focus more raw hammers on other things than anti-barb units. I feel pretty certain I am going to stick in a builder route for a while. So far we don’t have any other real threats about, but if we did, (e.g. close enemy near by) then the mighty axe-men will come out doing what they do best….

1920 BC. Stone hooked up, and I also chopped down a forest to get our GW up in time. It’s ok though, I plan to place a mine where I chopped, so we didn’t waste anything. I also ended up making the Stonehenge just before. Whether we get a great engineer or prophet from these doesn’t matter. Both are great to absorb.

I also am going to try a gambit here. We don’t have any marble (yeah that sucks, but you can’t always get everything), but I’m going to try to make a run for the Parthenon. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work, but at least we’ll get some gold from it, 50% wonder bonus. It’s a non-critical shot, but has interesting pay offs both win or lose. Of course, temple of artemis is avail but… on Emperor there’s almost no shot in hell of getting it without marble in that city.

I’m also researching writing now. And my next building will be oracle. I’m going to time it for oracle to hit when we are done researching writing. Still not sure at this point what we’ll choose though if we make it.

Also, I am going to try and trade for animal husbandry. Man I really need it for my sister city, so much to do… so little time.

Now this was highway robbery! Both Writing and Poly. for AH and Hunting? Ahh, but it’s ok. We really need/want those two techs, they help us a LOT here, and the silly AI isn’t smart enough to understand right now he SHOULDN’T be allowing us to get these 2. He thinks HE is getting the over-all bargain…

75 BC . Toku has expanded out from wherever his capital is. His border is touching mine and that’s a mistake. I used my sister city to crank out some axemen after the Parthenon was completed and I’m just about to declare war on him…. Now!

And take that city and just possibly some others.

100 AD. Ahhh, the AD era has begun. Time to look inside our city.

Yup, as you can see, we got Oracle. We used it to grab alphabet again, while I went to research the slightly less expensive mathematics. That also will give us a little chopping bonus for any forested hills still left, and we will put it to good use. We grabbed hanging gardens for 1 extra population and health benefit. But we also built our pyramids just before then as well, then ran rep. Letting us decrease the growth cap, and getting our specialists to boost extra science.

As you can see, I’ve been getting mostly prophets at this point. We then turned our focus towards great library, and after that…. we even built the silly chicken pizza. That’s right, we built it but we had our reasons. Stone gave us double production here, and we don’t mind the GP pts. Also it will help to dilute artist poison later on when NE gets built.

Though if you look now, you’ll see I have two scientists running instead of priests (ontop of the great library scientists). There is a reason for that.. Something went a little wrong for us. While I was planning to be the first to hit Philosophy, someone somewhere got a big jump on us and snatched it. I’m not sure who, but SOMEONE either got very lucky popping barb huts, or was lightbulbing! That’s ok though, we are still going to research it because we need it to build the Ankor Wat. It’s just a shame now our religion was stolen from us, because as far as I can tell, no one on my continent has a religion yet. I would be the one controlling that field.

Anyhow, because someone’s ahead in the philosophy, I’m going to try to push our tech a little faster. I don’t want some lucky bastard beating us to the liberalism race. That would be another set-back, and we’ve already one as it is.

Make note. See those great prophets I’ve absorbed in the meantime? Those helped me so far in my gold/tech/hammer production. The display of wonders on the left shows you what can be done without using GE’s to rushbuild, even on advanced levels. There were no fancy oracle-slingshot gambits here. And in case you’re wondering, my sister city was able to make the Parthenon in time, which was nice. I whipped it at the end, just like I whipped the great library too. I tend to whip these because you do NOT want to lose due to a tie. Make every turn count. You can always re-grow back population, but you CAN’T re-take another shot at a wonder. If you lose it, it’s lost.

200 AD. Well, the was is over… I took two cities off him from now. That effectively doubled the total number of cities in my empire And I was able to make him give me a pottery tech in the process.

I may turn my forces against friendly Cyrus soon, but not sure. Toku is going to want revenge, and the idiot that he is… he may even go suicidal later and cause problems despite I could be 100 to 1 in power against him. At least Cyrus will stay as one of the good guys unless I give him reasons not to. But I think I’ll let the axemen rest for now, and wait till we get more better units down the road soon.

I’m still wondering who else is on the continent with me. Strange, no one still has a religion yet.

620 AD.

A message has arrived that Toku has changed to vassalage. I really don’t like this. That is Cyrus’ favourite civic. So even though Toku isn’t talkative to many people, he may still get some very good relations with Cyrus. Sure, cyrus is one of the good-guys, but he can be bribed. And also if I pick on Toku too much, it may hurt my relations with Cyrus.






880 AD. We FINALLY got our first scientist. Usually I consider great scientists as pollution (though they are not that bad), and I get more than I want. But for some weird reason, I kept missing getting one here. That’s just part of the randomness factor with the GP probability. I actually really wanted a scientist bad here because I want to run an academy ASAP. This is due to the fact that someone somewhere slingshoted himself over me on getting Philosophy. I’m not sure yet who, but I’m still very alarmed about that, and want to push my science. I’m willing to trade off my main push for hammers, for a little bit of more science now. If we were on Monarch, this wouldn’t have happened though. But that’s just how it goes sometimes…

Actually, I changed my mind and ended up lightbulbing that scientist so I could jump way ahead in the tech race. Whooops.

Just kidding!


BTW, there is a Jap city north of my capital. I will get that eventually. Either it will flip to my capital, or I will get tired of waiting and take it with brute force. Not sure yet, but lets see what happens.

1130 AD A city has just flipped over to our capital. Surprisingly it wasn’t Toku’s city, but one from Cyrus. We don’t mind though. He was giving us some bad negative ratings for culture pressure but that will be relieved now. Also notice that I am finishing up building the Taj Mahal.

Yup, you guessed it. We pulled out Nationalism from the liberalism race. I think it’s safe to say we are very highly advanced right now. In any case, I have included a save, 1 turn just before the liberalism tech comes home.

It’s right….. here

Liberalism

1240 AD. Let’s take another look inside our city. Already pumping out cavalry. And there’s an interesting story to that. I didn’t have horses, and I still don’t even have any iron anywhere! Cyrus didn’t have any horses to trade, so I started off working on constitution and go for statue of liberty. Then maybe take out Toku or Cyrus with grenadiers, while the dumb AI’s will be stuck defending with riflemen, and taking the worst of it.

But… I got more than halfway through constitution, and suddenly Cyrus shows up with a few extra horses to trade! LoL. If only I had known! So then I reverted to teching up the cavalry route instead. Now I’ve done all that, I’m back to continuating my constituion teching.

I want to take out Toku or at least cripple him again. Actually my main goal is to vassal him then I don’t have to worry about the guy. Cyrus I can trust right now, so no worries on that route. He is very well pleased with me but I don’t quite like how he keeps growing so well.

1370 AD. War begins AGAIN. Poor Toku is so far behind. And now I come trumping him with just a small cavalry force. Actually my capital isn’t even making cavalry right now, despite I’ve started a war. I’m funneling everything into tech research… including all that raw hammer power. What I WANT, is to get that statue of liberty, and deny any of the large civs from using it.

1430 AD. Geeze, I bet you don’t see THIS EVERY DAY. I get a great engineer in my capital just as I’m starting off on building the statue of liberty. And while it’s tempting to just use him to rush complete the wonder… I’m not going to. Actually I am. I’m going to use him to rush-build it the SLOW way, lol.

Of course, there is nothing really wrong with using him to rush-build the fast way, then shift the capital to focusing on cavalry again. But I’m going to do it my way, and to show you that you can still grab it on emperor without the GE rush.

BTW, I have included another save here, for just 1 turn before the statue is completed.

Liberty

1570 AD… I have been taking city after city, taking my time. And now I just took what was Toku’s capital (so THAT’S WHERE IT WAS!).




Let’s take a look inside and see what the spoils of war look like…

Wow, what a mess. We discover a new player. And our friend Cyrus has gone off to war. I think it’s becoming apparent why. I was actually baffled when I was getting weird messages about him attacking cities on another continent. Now we know why…

1760 AD. Notice anything new? Yup, we’ve vassalized Toku. That means our little unpredictable thorn in our back has been totally annihilated. That is, except for that tiny little bit of red dot up north in the mini-map. Yup, that’s Toku’s only single city left. And I’m not even going to bother giving him techs or anything. He’s a useless vassal, and always has been. And never wants to trade!

As for Cyrus, well he’s not so tech trade friendly, but he’s still one of the good guys. He’s actually got quite powerful too. But that’s ok, because we are both good buddies. In fact, we have protection pact running right now. And the strange thing is, even Catherine has a protection pact with me too! Very rare, but hey, I’m not complaining. I have a defensive pact with the two strongest civs in the world right now, how can I complain? What makes this spot so great for me, is now I REALLY don’t have to worry about Cyrus. No one can bribe him to hit me, and even if he wanted to hit me and had me outnumbered 10 to 1 he’s not going to do it now. This means I can focus more on infrastructure, etc.

And by the way, we completed every media wonder so far. And a little note… you should almost always build the rock’n’roll wonder before the Ieffel Tower. This is because the tower just gives you free towers in all cities on your continent. If you miss the wonder, it’s not that big of a deal because you can still build them. But for Rock’n’Roll, that’s something you just can’t replace. Who ever builds it, gets ALL those records. And can trade it to who they please at will.

Another note. I have absolutely no friggen iron even STILLl! Can you imagine? I had to pay very, expensive prices to get it from Cyrus, who happens to have at least 6 sources of Iron! All to himself and here I am not even having one between me and my vassal. Oh well, again that’s just the luck of the draw. At least we didn’t start off with Romans and beelining for Pratts only to find out we are nerfed. LOL.


And of course, NOW that my wonder is going to be finished next turn, we trade Radio for other techs. WE only trade NOW because even with a GE, the computer won’t be able to pop-rush and steal it on us. And it should go without saying, we’ve been doing this wait-trade thing for a while now. Same thing applies for statue of liberty and the rest of it…

1816 AD. We are one turn away from completing the UN. But THIS TIME, we are not going to make the mistake like last time and complete it. We will put it into the Que and focus our power on other things. There are many reasons for this.

While Cyrus will vote for me, he is so big he may end up on the vote list himself. In that case he won’t vote for me. And with the bias the AI’s get on this level, I’m not going to get Secretary position. Then I could run into all sorts of problems.

It’s best to let one of the big players grab it. That way, the two big players will be guaranteed to vote against each other, making the odds good that no one will be secretary.

Another reason… because of our powerhouse production, coupled to our 50% wonder bonus, we will get a very good gold deal when hammers invested in it are converted to gold after someone else completes it. This is yet another advantage of the system.

1850 AD. The internet project will be completed next turn. I am researching robotics because I want to grab the space race elevator next. Also note that our science slider is sitting on 0 again. I’ve had science money funding off for a bit, and right now I’m thinking on keeping it turned off permanently. Unless we run into issues where I feel I want to turn on the tap for quick tech spurts.

We really don’t need to spend money on science right now because,

#1 our specialists are hard at work, keeping us in the lead with Rep.

#2 Even if we do fall behind in tech, the internet project ENSURES that we can’t fall behind in tech. Umm… that sort of sounds like a paradox.


Also, I have made another save point. Right here:

Internet

1880 AD. Nothing special here. I used a sub to transport a spy over to Catherine. She’s pretty strong so I want to see what she’s up to. But I also am going to keep 2 spies over there, just incase a miracle happens and we start to lose the tech race, I can always sabotage production. But if we continue to play properly we shouldn’t have to worry about it.

Also note she has two shrines in the same city. Hmm.. I wonder if that contributed to her being a powerhouse. Though I would have found better use for those prophets if you ask me!

1916 AD. One last look inside my own capital. I’m not very happy with the production here. My population should be higher, especially since I was not doing TOO much warmongering. I have to be honest that in the last few hundred years I started to really neglect my tiles all over. Actually I knew I was behind in them, and was doing stuff to fix it, but I kept mistiming things. I blame the last walkthrough for that, cause I think it kept me in some sort of monarch timing mode!

In any case, only at the very end here did even my super city get the railroads and sawmills laid down. And in fact, not even that, you can still see some tiles that aren’t completed being worked on. Argggh… some of my other cities are not as best they could be either.

However, great timing and management early, allows you to get away with getting sloppy near the end. We had a good lead here, and that is also a reason I got sloppy. But that really is no excuse! In fact, I wish I could go back to another point and re-do this PROPER, but then…. That would be cheating.

At least some of you can maybe learn from this mistake, and I wont repeat it again either. Because I should have had the space race won before 1900 hits the corner, but very sloppy timing here made me miss the mark.

Oh and BTW, I also turned tech funding on again. After I spent a bunch of gold rush buying buildings and upgrading units there wasn’t that much point. We are so close to the end that making buildings isn’t really going to change much. War units is always ok in this spot, but Cyrus just isn’t really going to attack us unless we give him some good reasons to break own defense pacts. And there is no one else on our continent who can give us problems.

P.S. Though at this instant we just shut off tech money spending AGAIN. This is because no techs are left but future tech, and who cares about that!! Also note, all specialists missing +3 beakers because of forced US civic. But game is over, so who cares about that!!