Hi Bramble! I'll give you my take. I'm not the best player out there, but I hope you will find this useful!
Warriors, Workers, Settlers
I also play on Emperor and sometimes large maps. I do find with 'normal' settings the early game is the toughest part of the game -- usually once you get to the 'middle game' you can get your 'tricks' working.
As others have said, I find FfH is just too variable to ‘fix’ a strategy. My first rule is to tie research to building. That is, make sure you can use your builds. A worker shouldn’t be built if there is little use for it. You may see a rice in your fat cross and say, ‘I want to farm it’. You then spend 15 turns, research agriculture, build a worker, he farms the rice, and then …If the worker has nothing to do, you have wasted early resources. If you have one such resource, you may be better off going for exploration, building a warrior or a scout, and then going for agriculture and a worker. Then, the worker can build roads and connect you to your next city after improving the rice.
For this reason, you may want to get some warriors and one settler or so before workers, because workers will not have as many important tasks. Once you have agriculture, mining, and education though, you want a lot of workers, I would recommend almost 2/city. Also, if you play with Blessing of Amatheon, you want the workers faster since there will be more goodies and if there are goodies, you want to use them.
Assess your starting situation. If you have sea resources, it can be very nice since you can build workboats while having population grow so you might want to get fishing fast. Otherwise, decide if you have a ‘killer’ starting site. If you have a scout, look around, concentrate on seeing nearby areas for city placement.
Settlers Vs Big Capital
If you think your starting city is very good, but surrounding terrain isn’t as good, build your capital up, get it going, and then churn out settlers. Conversely, if the area has good sites, concentrate more on units and settlers and grabbing the cities before the opponents do. If you are concentrating on a good home site, try to get ancient chants and mysticism to switch to god king fast. This will help with money and building troops. If you are building settlers, exploration should be emphasized; you will want to tie your cities with roads for defense on high levels.
My most important rule is that in FfH, much more so than in BtS, you HAVE TO GET MONEY FOR RESEARCH. Given that the basic techs can take a while, if you don’t have a good economy and you get 4 or 5 cities you will be bankrupt by turn 150 perhaps before you have education meaning you are ’stuck’. This may be my most useful advice, decide quickly how you will finance yourself. The super city is easier since you won’t be building settlers and as many troops early and won’t have a lot of maintenance, but with this strategy you have to churn out the settlers once you are large.
So, if you have gold or gems, try to get mining right away, these really help. I had one game where my starting city had 3 wines, I went for crafting and a worker built wineries. If you don’t have a lot of money from goody huts, or money producing resources, it is important to get education fast or go for the aristocracy/farms strategy.
Empire is Shut in and Military Builds
Your military builds should somewhat be a function of what you see around you. If the Doviello or Clan of embers is next door, you better watch the power graph closely.
If you find yourself shut in, especially if you haven’t built a lot of cities, it is time to conquer. It may seem difficult with low production from few cities, but since you haven’t built settlers or workers you can build lots of troops. In this case, build warriors, churn them out. Get bronze working and all of your warriors are 4’s, a warrior rush can work nicely (although if you move up to immortal it is a decent amount harder). One of the reasons that conquering is easier than it may seem is that if you lose half of your troops in the first warrior rush, and take the first city, your surviving winning warriors have more experience, and you get a building bias toward stronger troops.
Festivals, Magic Users, and Technology
I think of festivals as a low priority. You will need all of the basics and rather quickly, meaning ancient chants, mysticism, education, mining, agriculture, and then the ‘second order’ basic techs, calendar, cartography, and possibly archery if you want to build lumber mills. Again, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, and I often delay the last three techs pretty long. If my starting city has hills, I usually try to agriculture and mining fast, hammers are very important in the tough early game.
Warriors will often do the trick early, but you want to deicide what you will do for defense pretty early. You may move up either bronze working (if you have copper especially) or hunting to get some stronger troops. Hunting is really good if you build a lot of cities, and also if you have a lot to explore because they have some punch and are fast. Bronze working will give you more punch and if you have copper, will make all of your warriors stronger.
I usually consider building adepts as my first ‘luxury’ build. Magic is very powerful, early it is largely an ‘enhancer’. Magic becomes even more powerful later so the earlier you build them, the better. I agree with Kael that enchantment and body are very strong early, and there are other good ones too. If you have a lot of desert, by all means get water magic fast.
After the basic techs, the next group is the powerful enhancers, like bronze working, hunting, knowledge of the ether, sanitation, warfare, mathematics/engineering, writing, smelting iron working, masonry and construction etc. Festivals is best if you have gone the hunter route since captured animals can be used for happiness. I put the religions in right here also, in most cases. If there is an unfounded religion that ‘fits’ you may want to move it up. The key here is deciding what kind of campaign you are trying to wage.
Of course, each Civ has its ‘thing’. The Ljosalfar will want FoL pretty quickly. On larger maps, I tend to move religions up since there will be more cities and therefore the shrines are more valuable. Religions are very powerful so think this through. If you are the clan, bee line for construction and warrens, put in bronze working, cast your world spell, I assure you, you can conquer everything. Believe it or not, the Clan is one of the best for getting magic early, put enchanted blade on this large stack without needing mage guilds and that 20% bump can be critical. Of course the Hippus want Stirrups.
In FfH the specific civilization differences make the game more detailed, but they also help lead you to a strategy. On higher levels, the value of using unique benefits of each Civ becomes more important.
Finally, if you are a slow starting Civ like the Amurites and are sandwiched between the Doviello and the Clan and Orthus comes after you, well, you can always start another game!
Why am I Falling Behind?
I think it is because Emperor is tough! Seriously, I remember wondering why I sometime struggle on emperor and have real trouble with immortal. I then saw my son play and saw how he does it. There isn’t a single ‘trick’, which was somewhat relieving; I wasn’t missing some big trick or major. Rather, he is a little better than I am at every aspect of the game. The biggest difference between his playing and mine, though, is exactly what we are talking about in this thread – he is better at using synergy in characteristics, techs, etc. and tailoring the strategy to the environment.
Best wishes,
