Arghhh...can't make the step up to emperor!

I'm at an odd point in my civ game. I can usually dominate any decent starting position at Monarch, but when I play Emperor I almost invariably get my butt handed to me. Take my current game for instance (attached). I got a strong starting position with Mehmed on an isolated continent with room for over 20 coastal cities, 3 off shore island cities, and built the glh. I've tried two tech paths from this point, and both put me at a ridiculous disadvantage tech-wise when I hit optics and met the neighbors. I tried a monarchy beeline, going back for writing, math, CoL, currency and managed to have Astronomy before anyone else bothered to research it...which got some good trades, but gave away the one advantage of the isolated start. In the second try, I beelined CoL, picked up confucianism and taoism and was shocked when Justinian picked up liberalism, in 865 AD! (at about the same time I got the circumnavigation bonus).

I would consider this starting position to be ridiculously easy on monarch or below. But at Emperor, it seems to be an uphill dogfight, even when my economy has been running well through two well-tested tech paths. The one thing I haven't tried is a hell-bent for leather, crash the economy, settle every single coastal spot and build harbors asap approach. Will that work, or is there just no way to have a tech lead at this point in an isolated emperor+ level game?

I've included the save right after completing the glh, and the latest ones from each tech path afterwards. (in order, the glh save, the religion-less save and the conf/tao save) If someone with some experience playing isolated starts at this level could take a look and let me know how I am doing, i would appreciate it.

I ask because the moment I finished the glh, I felt my position was so strong as to perhaps make the game a joke...and it would be at any lower level.

I can't check your saves on this computer, but in my experience with Iso starts on emperor is you're sort of at the whim of civs that might have had an imba start. Even if you have a lot of land to settle, not being able to tech/resource trade is a huge disadvantage. It certainly isn't game over though.


YMMV with this strategy depending on your leader/civ traits. Since you know you can practically ignore your military, focusing on infrastructure and economy/research is king. If you do have a lot of coast, I like to build GLH, Oracle (found metal casting), then sometimes Colossus. TGL is a high priority.

If you're short resources, running HR is a great way to offset it. You don't necessarily need to found a religion but it sure helps, confu/taoism are high priorities anyway for you so you should get them regardless. I also prioritize working early cottages non-stop if I'm going that route.

Skip the non-necessary techs of course, run a tight liberalism beeline and make sure you get caravels out asap. If you have great opening land for your 6-city spread, don't be too expansive early. When you have competition, blocking and landgrabbing is important, but when you don't you can take your time and run your slider high. In other words make sure you have the worker force and tile improvement techs to make best use of the terrain before you settle a new city, otherwise it will set you back in research. Once you've secured the liberalism race and met your neighbors you can pretty much settle to your hearts content.

Looking at your save I can see a few things you could improve.

• Workers! You don't have enough, especially with so much jungle around!
• GP generation, you have only had 2 Great People, ideally you should have at least 2 by 1AD. 2 at 870AD is exceptionally slow and you don't even have the NE up and running!
• I wouldn't worry too much about religion, the building of temples, monastaries and missionaries is taking away from more important things.
• In case you haven't noticed, those Harbours aren't really doing anything, and as total trade route value is rounded down while maximum base value is capped by distance and doesn't even begin to increase passt 1 till cities pass size 10 anyway they rarely do till long distance intercontinental routes to AIs become available. I don't think any city is big enough to warrant the boost and I think the only cites actually recieving any real bonus to trade is Izmir and Kayseri with one route each to Istanbul giving a measly 1 extra per city!

Looks like an interesting map to shadow if you have a 4000BC save, even if it is huge/mara

Its not unsusual or even worrying to be a bit behind if your isolated, the AIs will trade techs a lot but as you share borders with noone the liklihood someone will attack you is reduced quite a bit. However, being far enough behind to not be able to trade your way back in is a concern.

I have the same problem - I am good on Monarch, but step it up to Emperor and I allways get behind in tech and then lose (or usually quit in disgust).

NPM

goodolarchie said:

I can't check your saves on this computer, but in my experience with Iso starts on emperor is you're sort of at the whim of civs that might have had an imba start. Even if you have a lot of land to settle, not being able to tech/resource trade is a huge disadvantage. It certainly isn't game over though.


YMMV with this strategy depending on your leader/civ traits. Since you know you can practically ignore your military, focusing on infrastructure and economy/research is king. If you do have a lot of coast, I like to build GLH, Oracle (found metal casting), then sometimes Colossus. TGL is a high priority.

If you're short resources, running HR is a great way to offset it. You don't necessarily need to found a religion but it sure helps, confu/taoism are high priorities anyway for you so you should get them regardless. I also prioritize working early cottages non-stop if I'm going that route.

Skip the non-necessary techs of course, run a tight liberalism beeline and make sure you get caravels out asap. If you have great opening land for your 6-city spread, don't be too expansive early. When you have competition, blocking and landgrabbing is important, but when you don't you can take your time and run your slider high. In other words make sure you have the worker force and tile improvement techs to make best use of the terrain before you settle a new city, otherwise it will set you back in research. Once you've secured the liberalism race and met your neighbors you can pretty much settle to your hearts content.

Click to expand...

Yeah...I guess maybe I am doing alright. I am playing on a huge map, so the initial spread can be up to 8 cities. I did hold off on much of my land grab for IW, (lots of jungle). And I am not kidding about 20+ coastal city sites, with about a dozen pretty good ones. Only a couple of real sites, but that's hardly the problem (yet).

As for being short happiness: being Ottoman is one way to offset few resources. (love that UB) I've got a couple anyway (sugar, gems). Given that Justy hit liberalism at AD865, the only way I am getting it is to go for it prior to astro (astro is a decent grab with liberalism, so not the world's worst play) with stringed GS bulbs. I do wonder if just surrendering the liberalism race to play diplomacy and use the glh for a late game tech advantage isn't the best play. I expect I can run a pretty strong US/SP/Kremlin war wachine, but getting the kremlin will take some real doing, given lib is already gone and I am already at a tech disadvantage.

btw - I completely ignored the aesthetics path as the Great Library isn't as important when you already have the glh, and i also plan a very early sci meth.

Ghpstage said:

Looking at your save I can see a few things you could improve.

• Workers! You don't have enough, especially with so much jungle around!
• GP generation, you have only had 2 Great People, ideally you should have at least 2 by 1AD. 2 at 870AD is exceptionally slow and you don't even have the NE up and running!
• I wouldn't worry too much about religion, the building of temples, monastaries and missionaries is taking away from more important things.
• In case you haven't noticed those Harbours aren't really doing anything, and as total trade route value is rounded down while maximum base value is capped by distance and doesn't even begin to increase passt 1 till cities pass size 10 anyway they rarely do till long distance intercontinental routes to AIs become available. I don't think any city is big enough to warrant the boost and I think the only cites actually recieving any real bonus to trade is Izmir and Kayseri with one route each to Istanbul giving a measly 1 extra per city!

Looks like an interesting map to shadow if you have a 4000BC save even if it is huge/mara

Click to expand...

I really don't think workers are a problem. Using a gradual settling pattern, I have not worked an unimproved tile for millenia at the point of the late saves, and only work specialists by choice. There are cottages waiting to be worked in nearly every cottage city.

The GPP point is well taken...I could certainly do more there, but I generally try to work as many cottages as I can as early as I can. (particularly with all-green isolation like this) The primary reason I don't have the NE up is because I beelined for Astro, a pretty standard glh isolation play...does that become wrong at higher levels?

As for the harbors, it's nice to have them waiting when they start being useful (and they are very useful at astro). The opportunity cost in building them with a EXP leader is also very small. Frankly, I've build more infra than I really need, but apart from Istanbul (a buro capital which needs infra), none of it is in cities which could contribute much in terms of military or builds. So the only thing I didn't build to get the infra is more settlers, and I've been maintaining a growth rate which keeps me at ~50% on the slider, which seems to work well in most iso games.

I could certainly crash rex early on (and then I definitely would need a whole lot more workers) but it doesn't seem necessary given how simple the spawn-busting is and the fact that it would be pointless to do pre-IW anyway.

EDIT: And now with the 4000BC save! (as requested)

Tell it to the choir... I have been stick on Warlord for the last 5 years.

We were all there once, PreLynMax. I played warlord for several years before taking some time to really absorb some of the info on this site. I can now stomp on just about any prince level game, and beat most monarch ones. I've seen modern armor vs longbows at monarch....so it's time to move up. But I just can't get traction at emperor! Games like this one are frustrating...I feel I've played pretty well, but am clearly not in control of the situation yet.

Fellow new emperor player here as well. The non-religious save looks very strong to me. You have so many cottages, once you get Lib,PP, and democracy you will be in a very good position for a space victory with the huge tech rate. Just because in monarch you might have been in a big tech lead at this point doesn't mean that the game is lost now, you just need more time. I don't see any reason you could not win this game. You have techs to trade as well as all the AI's love you pretty much. You could probably go for a conquest/dom victory ,using rush-buy, as well but I don't have much good advice for modern wars.

With regards to the religious save. I would only go religions in isolation maybe to get a cultural victory or AP cheese. Otherwise, religions aren't really that strong in isolation and you especially don't need to spend hammers on religious buildings if you aren't going for culture. With 2 religions and that many cottages you could easily get a cultural victory with music/culture techs. This would have caused problems with Diplo the AI's though because you would be a different religion.

The non-religious save makes me a little nervous though...I traded away astro to get close to tech parity. I also am relying on trade for metals, where in the other save I got a lucky mine (iron no less). An early galleon invasion could spell disaster for me. A tech brokering FR diplo win is probably possible too, but I don't have much experience with that kind of game.

My initial thinking at building the glh and seeing how much coast I had was to run a US/Kremlin/castles glh rush buy military win (rifles+cannons/arty+air+navy). Not sure that's realistic, but it is probably worth trying. If need be, I can always take the Kremlin by force as my first attack after playing nice as long as is reasonable. Preferably, I will build it myself.

The non-religious save is definitely stronger....Played it up to liberalism, and almost lost it for my abortive attempt at getting steel with it (9 turns would have done it...if only I'd been building a horde of spies, could have pulled it off!) Also, the non religious save definitely did need more workers...so I was only half right about having enough, as I did in one game and not in the other.

I don't know how or why Justy got liberalism so darn early in the other path.

Justin is pretty notorious early liberalism getter. IDK why. I've had him unexpectedly come and get liberalism in some games.

It's funny though...in the non-religious game, it was Hammy as my competition for liberalism. Now beelining communism, with a GE laying in wait for the Kremlin. Have Castles up all the way around, in FR and have the gnp lead pretty handily. I might be able to pull this off!

Well, I'm up to Immortal now, and I can't say I've ever seen such an early Lib on any difficulty level, so I think your current game is something of an aberration.

Unfortunately I'm useless at isolation so I'm the wrong guy to ask for help. You can expect to always be at a big tech disadvantage without any tech trades. You can get a huge portion of beakers from trades. One monopoly tech can get you several times its own value in beakers. The research reduction cost for other civs knowing the tech is not insignificant either. Get to optics ASAP and then start trying to catch up. Problem with isolation is you are really powerless for a long time, which is why I hate it and generally quit isolation games (I find them pretty boring too).

Maybe I should grow a pair and play some isolation, but I have my hands more than full with Immortal at the moment.

The 400BC save of this game is up on this thread, and if you want to play an isolation game it's a nearly ideal start for a trade based game. (no metals, so that's a problem) Mehmed is one of the best isolation leaders, and the single best non-FIN one imo.

Anyhoo...at an impasse in the game now, and looking for advice. My power is weak, and a few people are mobilizing, which makes me nervois. Just researched SciMeth and traded it to Gilgamesh and Pericles (his freshly broken off vassal) for chemistry and RP. But here's the impasse: My fear of other civs makes me want to not research communism right away, even though the Gspy would be incredibly helpful for me, and more importantly, the Kremlin is essential to what I am doing. I will have to adopt nationalism for a round of significant drafting, and I'd rather do it with rifles than Jannisaries (which are only muskets when most of the enemies have muskets themselves). Put the save in another thread where the discussion of the glh/castle/airport rush buy tactic was ongoing. Any advice from people who've successfully done this would be appreciated!

on a frustrating note: HC settled one of the sites on the southern penninsula of my continent, but that isn't such a big deal, as I will be in war mode before too terribly long anyway, and it will be easy pickings and pre-developed for me. It is annoying though, as a more diligent aggressive settling plan on my part would have made that impossible.

Ghpstage said:

GP generation, you have only had 2 Great People, ideally you should have at least 2 by 1AD. 2 at 870AD is exceptionally slow and you don't even have the NE up and running!

Click to expand...

For me, this little line is rather confusing, as I see it repeated over and over, and yet... I don't see 2 GP by 1 CE in games such as many of the ALCs. How can you get 2 GP without a philosophical leader? You have so much to focus on early in the game, you need workers, settlers, some army presence when you're not isolated, a lot of techs which are very useful, making aesthetics + poly + literature rather low priority. And you may also go for an early wonder, such as the GLh.

So really, how can you get 2 GP by 1 CE? I've gotten 3 in some games as Pericles, but I was aiming for that, and I accepted that I was leaving behind things I consider more important, but... with a non-philosophical leader... how do you get that?

You basically have to turn 1 of your cities in a GP farm very early, and that city will build close to no infrastructure just so you can get two people who'll bulb a tech or offer some advantage if settled. So you have to basically make 1 of your 3 early cities rather unproductive, leaving your other two cities to take care of workers, settlers for other cities (because we also kind of want close to 10 cities by 1CE, don't we?), military for at least some minimum defense, and an occasional wonder.

I'm sorry, I don't get it. But then again, I am barely a prince player, but still... this particular piece of advice, which I see repeated over and over, is the most frustrating of all, at least to me. I haven't yet seen a non-philosophical leader getting 2 GP by 1 CE in any of the games I've watched for inspiration. I've seen immortal players go for aggressive REX, for an early rush, for a few early wonders, but I've never seen any game in which getting two early GPs was accomplished, save for the games in which this was actually an early goal... and it came with an expense in the other departments.

Do you know of games in which this is accomplished without the expense of REX and without having to abandon some of the more important techs? (Because getting aesthetics and literature doesn't quite seem as getting important techs, considering that you want currency, CoL, perhaps monarchy as well, and all of them rather early on)

Would have liked to actually play this game on epic/standard map settings but I played this one to victory using your non-religous 860AD save even though it took forever. I used no micro whatsoever on this game, didn't even bother to finish settling the other island=\, and basically hit end for all turns in between reading some homework heh. I did exactly what I told you to do in my other post and got a space victory in 1899 easily. First, I went straight for Lib in order to make my way to the other cottage techs.

Took PP with Lib in 1015.


After democracy, I went communism for state property and then teched to superconductors for labs. Then I went for apollo program and teched the rest of the spaceship techs. I workshopped every tile of 4-5 cities for spaceship production and cottaged every other city. I turned down pretty much all demands. Did very limited trading. I pulled away from everyone else in techs after all the cottage techs were in, according to plan. I was declared by Khmer but I bribed Joao and some others into war with him and he didn't bother me much except for pillaging some seafood tiles. Was a relatively uneventful game except for millions of requests from the 30 AI's in the game heh.

1884 Launch


1899 Space Victory


Score


No one was close to any other victories




Probably could have won earlier if I would have spent more time. Winning on huge monarch takes way too much time, much prefer epic/standard. You had the game pretty much won when I took over I just had to play it out heh. Goodluck with your own game.

Nicely done! I'll have to keep that in mind. I guess you play to the strength of the commerce, and space makes perfect sense. (and the bonus being that space takes much less time than domination conquest, particularly on huge marathon)

Looked at the 860 save and it does look really nice for space. I recently tried Mehmed on an archipelago with the GLH working, emperor. You can literally 1-pop whip at pop 2 using overflow for all the discounts he has. You probably could have had granaries, lighthouses and courthouses in 16 cities by 200 AD and a beaker rate of around 300-500 before you even got to cottaging. It would only get better from there. I hit 20 cities by 200 AD --650+ beakers-- but they were not as good as your 16. You got green!

When I saw this map space victory immediately jumped out to me because there were so many AI's on different islands that I thought domination would be difficult or atleast very time consuming. Also the lack of hills on the island and abundance of cottages that were already in place when I took over in 870 also pushed me towards space. However, I was curious to see how Kremlin and rush-buy units would have worked out on this map. I loaded a saved game where I had just gotten communism. Instead of space I went for rifling + steel. I built the Kremlin and after steel proceeded to buy banks and grocers/markets in my commerce cities. This would have probably been an option for this map if you wanted to go conquest/domination.

Before rush-buy Screenies 1474


No modern military at this time


Very close to last in soldiers ranking


Power chart..not good




After Rush-buy 1500


77 units bought + enough ships to transport them


From 11 to 2 in soldiers ranking


Rush-buy spike in power