Moving to Emperor

Basically I am looking for tips, I plan on switching to republic, but I will have to fight the Dutch eventually, and right now my current plan is grabbing the GL to give me spare cash for my military, and I will hopefully have the Dutch taken care of before I get education.

I am aware that I need a few more workers, and so where could I put a worker pump? Also, where should I start a prebuild, if in fact you guys think I should?

Often times I get by without any set place making workers. I push out a worker from each new town's first build as long as they can do it in 10 turns. That pretty much means towns after the first 6-8.

If they can make more than 1spt, then they do no make a worker or if they cannot grow in 10 turn. 2spt I make a worker after it has grown or is within 5 turns.

Later I may come around to some semi core towns and make another worker, especially as I get close to Steam. Also any settler town, may have gotten enough improvements to be able to squeeze out a worker now and then.

Too late at night to check the save.

Also, can I turn my settler pump into a 4 turner. Right now, it's a 5 turner, and it starts at 3 pop, working BG, BG, Fish. Grows to four, picks up forest, then I move it to floodplain. Grows to 5, picks up forest again, and threatens to riot. However, now I can move the forest and a BG to specialists for 1 turn, adding extra gold or beakers.

You don't have masonry yet, so not much of a prebuild is available right now. If you want one at some point, Niagara Falls is the logical choice. I would change Salamanca spear to a warrior. You have no rax there yet. Pull your two scouting warriors back so they can block Dutch settler migration northwest. I would also move your settler 4NE- 1E and settle on the hill. You can then use reg warriors to block any Dutch settlers trying to settle in the area northwest. Looks like you can get about 8 more cities down with CxxC spacing. Make sure you put down a permanent or temp town down on one of two hill tiles west of Allegheney, it's the only way you will be able to provide a path for irrigation to the larger area.

Could somebody play ahead a little and post a save? That helps me much more then any wall of text could.

Can you post the 4000BC save? Then I can play until 1600 BC and compare notes.
I quickly looked at the save, good points are number of towns and 2 curraghs in the water, bad points too few workers, wrong worker actions (mined tile that is not roaded; worker on marsh) and city placements (grab the bananas, grab the lux).

I could check if I have a 4000 BC save. It may still be in my quicksave folder. If not, I will generate another start, play 50 or so turns, then post both saves.

EDIT: I will play with your tips in mind, though.

I got lucky and found the 4000 BC save.

That's a nasty start location for an Emporer game, but I "cheat" and reroll the map if I don't see rivers and a bonus food tile at my start location.

While I got tired of rerolling it, so I just took a crappy start. I plan on playing peaceful anyway.

With Dutch as your neighbor, I don't think a peaceful game is possible

Read my OP. After that war, I am planning on going for diplomatic or space.

Gotcha! May the RNG gods be with you.

OK, I played the start to 1600BC several times. I think that expansion-wise you are doing fine, I was not able to top that significantly.

Your game at 1600BC: 5 towns, 11 pop, 1 settler, 2 workers, 7 warriors, 2 curraghs.
You have BW and WC and are 17 turns form Writing, 33g cash.
Salamanca:



My game at 1600BC: 5 towns, 11 pop, 1 settler, 5 workers, 6 warriors, 1 curragh.
I researched Writing at minimum, traded that for BW and WC, I am 22 turns from CoL, 227g cash. Salamanca:


In this game I went for granary first in Salamanca, build orders were warrior-worker-warrior-granary. Second worker as second build because there is a fair amount of work to do to get the 4-turner up. I chopped the forest E of Salamanca to speed up the granary build, but then I had to mine a mountain in order to have an extra 2 shield tile to make the 4-turn settler factory work at size 5-7.

In other attempts I let Salamanca build a settler first before going for the granary - this is what I normally do. In that case the results I got were very similar to yours. In the attempt with granary first I think the tradeof was more curraghs early (your game) - more workers early (my game).

Main difference between your and my game are workers (2/5) and tech/cash. At emperor and higher, most of the times it is a waste of time to research a tech if that can be traded for. So a normal strategy is here to do a min run on writing, and buld up cash to later used for a max run on CoL+Phil.

Overall game perspective is fairly grim I think, not undoable but it's going to be a long haul. The countryside could be better. The Salamanca area is fine, but expanding beyond what you have now is going to claim spots that will be hard to make productive. You have no luxes (main reason why I dislike archipelago maps). You are on one island with the Dutch. Their 3 movement curraghs are likely going to get contacts before you do, reducing your trade opportunities. By the time you are ready for war they will have MDIs, and Swiss mercs with a 4 defense. You are ging to need a lot of catapults/trebs to kill these. And roads trough the jungle for the trebs. Also, some mercs walking around in your mountain rich core are going to be a real pain.

You are absolutely going to need iron, and trade opportunities.

I've also played this start a bit and made a turn log up to 1250BC (the time I became a Republic).

Attached is also the sav from 1600BC, but quite a few things went terribly wrong in my game, so I played on until 1250BC, when things became a bit better...

Stats at 1600BC: 5 towns, 13 pop, 3 worker. However, one town was burned down by the Dutch , so it would have been 6 with a bit more care...
Researched Writing in 38 and am now 2-3 turns away from Code of Laws.

What went wrong:

• Should have defended better to avoid the Dutch demand.
• Curragh went around the "wrong" one of the discovered continents/island and therefore no overseas contact yet.
• When I settled Allegheny, the two Whale tiles were not yet discovered. (Had not moved a warrior to the outmost coast.) Allegheny should of course be settled 1W of its current location.

At 1250BC things are much better. I think the game is easily won now. Salamanca builds 2-3 more settlers and after that 2-turn workers to road towards the Dyes/the Dutch and also to improve more towns in NW direction. The existing towns produce 10 Mounted Warriors and go whack the Dutch... (This of course means, it'll be a military game, Conquest/Domination. For a research game I would wait with the war against the Dutch, until I have Literature and can use the GA for building libraries quickly. In any case, we are in the fortunate position and can pick the time for the war as we want: the Dutch are stuck with all jungle towns, except for two decent ones, so they won't get any stronger, while our core is improving with every turn. Perhaps it's better to delay the war, wait until the Dutch have cleared a bit jungle for us, and meanwhile settle the NWern part of the continent. In that case get dyes hooked up asap, though.)
The first curragh is back to the "western islands" (after finding nothing on the eastern island) and will hopefully get a contact soon.

Stats at 1250BC: 7 towns (the war with the Dutch put an end to settler production for about 10-15 turns), 18 pop, Bronze, Masonry, Alphabet, Pottery, Wheel, Warrior Code, Iron Working, Writing, Philosophy, Code of Laws, Republic. Horseback Riding due in 6. Just became a Republic after 4 turns anarchy.

Lanzelot

I somehow totally missed the fact that the Iroquois have the Mounted Warrior...
That makes the military situation considerably better, and then horses instead of iron ar the key resource of course.

ThinkTank said:

but then I had to mine a mountain in order to have an extra 2 shield tile to make the 4-turn settler factory work at size 5-7.

Click to expand...

Don't you have to refill the granary everytime you hit size 7? Are you still able to pop out a settler every 4-turns running to size 7? I've always popped out settlers at size 6, but if I can squeeze in a few turns of extra unit support I'll change my strategy.

Well, sort of. The granary does empty at size 7, but if the settler completes on the same turn as the city hits size 7, it's not a problem. I'm not entirely clear on the mechanics, but as long as production and growth are on the same turn, the city grows, the settler is produced, and the city drops in pop, without the granary emptying.

I was running a 5 turner. A four turner will help my expansion considerably. I think I will replay this game to 1600 B.C. and see how things go.

Lanzelot said:

Stats at 1600BC: 5 towns, 13 pop, 3 worker. However, one town was burned down by the Dutch , so it would have been 6 with a bit more care...
Researched Writing in 38 and am now 2-3 turns away from Code of Laws.

Click to expand...

Nice on the techs, you did better than both me and me GamezRule here.

Growth-wise the distinctions are small as you might have had a 6h town, but then both GamezRule and I had a settler almost on settling location site.

Main distinction is I think that your MM was more detailed to not waste any shield, food or commerce/beaker; and besides growth, more targeted to research. I was certainly less precise in that area. One question though, does it really pay off to go at 100% research from the start on (first 10 turns or so)? I do not see any difference in research turns over the firrst 10 turns, whether the slider is at 20% or 100%. Or is this a rounding issue?