Advice for Emperor attempt

[MAS]

Give me a break...at dist.3 they're too close...at dist.4 they're too far apart! Jeez.

Am I missing something? in your earlier screenshot you had some core cities CxC, in the screenshot I commented on they where all CxxxxC, Most people here would advice CxxC.

 

[MAS]

I tried, sincerely, to follow all of the advice and could not implement it all to success.

Maybe part of the problem was being told what I should have done after I had done it and, therefore, already at a disadvantage. Also, I think there is a disadvantage, for those giving great advice, to not understand what it is I'm seeing and why I'm making the decisions I am.

I really appreciate the help I'm getting and would like to make the most of it...while others see my trials and tribulations and benefitting from it for themselves.

If I may beg your continued indulgence, I'd like to ask for a mini quick start together from a virgin game (where the map, etc. are completely unknown). This way, perhaps, you can catch me before I get too far into a bad decision and others can see the progression of my failure or success.

[To the Moderators: I think it's okay to do this...and in this thread. But, if not, corrective action humbly accepted]

I'd first move the worker on the cow, this will reveal some of the hidden things, and You'll want to work the cow first anyway. If the worker move doesn't reveal anything importand, then move the settler one tile in the direction of the upperleft corner of your screen, and settle on the forrest there.
I wouln't worry about the palace untill more is known about the land.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Am I missing something? in your earlier screenshot you had some core cities CxC, in the screenshot I commented on they where all CxxxxC, Most people here would advice CxxC.

And on top of that, i think the correct spacing is a pretty delicate but very important decision. Be carefull about it.
-In somewhat longer games, i want 12 usefull tiles per city (deserts and large amounts of mountain are not counted). No more are needed since i won't build hospitals even if i invent every tech available.
-If i expect short game, that should end in the early AD's, 10 tiles per city will be enough for my core towns.

Very little space to start with may also make you go for a tighter placement.

When planning my new cities, i actually count the average number of tiles per city my empire has. I do not yet mentally assign tiles to the city, it will always be possible to micro manage the tiles between the cities when needed just as long as the averag is ok. Of course, keep in mind the cultural expansions you are planning to get and where not.
In C3C, cities thus don't need to be in any specific pattern they just have to be somewhat evenly devided over your empire, other than that, you just pick the best spots that allow for the needed tiles per city.
In PTW, the number of tiles you want per city decide the amount of cities you put into your CRP ring. What crp rings to use depends mostly on your surroundings and the space available. CRP4 is prefered.

If you space your cities wider than needed, you are wasting land that could be used and you are having more corruption in your core cities than needed.
That hurts.

If you space your cities closer than needed, your cities cannot grow to their target size 12. This also hurts since these are your low corrupt cities and you aint gonna get back production you lose because of this in other cities. Those are corrupt. This however only hurts you by the time your cities grow to that size. Before that, the closer spacing actually benefits you because of the lower distance corruption.

If your game does not last beyond your cities growing to size 12, the optimal target city size is just smaller than what they could become.
If you expect to win in the early AD's, your cities could grow to size 12 if you want, since however the production lost by not maxing your city size is countered by the earlier* benefits of tighter spacing, size 10 is often a good target. Smaller even if you expect extremely short games like tiny pangea maps.

Point is, keep corruption low by not spacing them too wide, don't let your cities maximise their size more than about 20-30 turns before you finish your game.
If you plan for a long game, 14+ tiles per city is no good. 11- tiles per city is no good either. Count them and make it 12. (a few extra tiles over your whole empire won't hurt, it makes micromanagement and swapping tiles a bit easier)

*Also note, earlier costs or rewards are more costly or valuable than later in the game. What you produce the last 10 turns often has zero influence on your finish date, what you produce the 10 turns before those only little.

Edit: Another important note, espescially for PTW where you use crp: Always make sure you give priority to the lowest corrupt town. This can matter in your city planning. It doesn't really matter a lot what land those corrupt towns have. When you are planning to place corrupt towns, count the land between the good and the corrupt towns as 100% designated for the good town. If there are semi corrupt towns, the land between the good and semicorrupt is for the good town, the ground between the semi corrupt and fully corrupt town is for the semi corrupt one.

 

[Corwin of Amber]

Give me a break...at dist.3 they're too close...at dist.4 they're too far apart! Jeez.

To paraphrase a well known saying, CIVIII lives in the details. 4 is too far apart in my book except perhaps around cities you know will be very large, very fast. At 4 the tiles aren't worked for a large portion of the game. And move one units can't get from city to city in one turn. I build very few defensive units because with three spacing I can move them around easily. In my current emperor (playing down from demigod for me) game I have ~12 cities moving into the AD and I have about three Hoplites, maybe four tops. My whole civ is very nearly completely roaded. I built too many temples though, something I don't usually do, but I got frustrated with size four cites using specialists.

At this point you sound pretty frustrated. Rather than start a new game right now, my advice is to stop playing for a day or two, let your head clear out a bit and come back to it. Let your subconscious work on it for awhile.

 

[adog]

I would much rather use the lux slider as opposed to temples or specialists.

 

[Corwin of Amber]

I would much rather use the lux slider as opposed to temples or specialists.

Yeah, good point.

 

[Rurik]

Wacken's post (#23 in this thread) was really good. I hope it gets noticed by a lot of others.

The posts about by remark re: distances has been misunderstood. I hope most people understand how to count distances properly. I never much cared for the use of C's and x's to describe city placements because it doesn't take into account some adjacent tiles are 1.5 distance from each other (ie CxC along the vertical and horizontal = CxxC along the diagonal in terms of corruption distance).

In my first thumbnail all cities nearest around my capital are at the same distance of 3 (CxxC) even though a couple have just one tile in between them along the vertical/horizontal. So, being told they were too close bothered me because, as you can see, others say CxxC is the norm...exactly as I had them originally. Some are temporary just like my capital. But that game was discarded once I got the practice I wanted from it. Thanks.

Corwin, I wasn't so much getting frustrated from the game (besides me going without Civ is tougher than going without my morning cup of coffee) but from so much hindsight criticism with so little encouraging advice. Criticism concerns itself solely with the past which cannot be changed. Advice concerns itself solely with the future which has yet to be done. Mas was just about the only one willing to give advice.

 

[Rurik]

When planning my new cities, i actually count the average number of tiles per city my empire has. I do not yet mentally assign tiles to the city, it will always be possible to micro manage the tiles between the cities when needed just as long as the averag is ok. Of course, keep in mind the cultural expansions you are planning to get and where not.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who does this. I haven't read others mentioning the diff. between # of tiles and # of useful tiles avail. to a particular city. Also, cultural expansion goes out to 3 tiles from a city so desert/mountain cities can be further apart and still end up with a cultural continuity.

 

[Rurik]

Let me switch the focus to defenders. If one doesn't build spearmen/pikemen defenders then what does one defend with?

On Emperor military police are emphatically important for keeping cities functioning....why aren't inexpensive (defensive) units good for garrisoning a city?

I find it difficult to believe I'd want to spend 30 shields on a swordsman (which doesn't upgrade) just to have him garrison a town....a function a 20 shield/upgradable spearman does just fine.

Also, am I really the ony one who's first war may be conducted solely with one to three stacks of 2-3 spearmen? Yes, I get elite spearmen and Leaders from doing this. On both monarch and emperor I've won techs, gold, and completely hobbled my nearest AI rivals just by capturing it's workers and pillaging it's lands with spearmen while my cities are producing settlers and workers. Why don't others do, too?

 

[vmxa]

Well it is manly because most of the people that did that back in vanilla do not play vanilla or emperor any longer.

Much of what is said is really aimed at C3C, not vanilla. The lack of upgrade paths in vanilla does alter things some as well as the over all easier game it was.

Industrious not being nuke, FP not being nuked and so much more. Still one consideration on the spears is that warriors are even cheaper MP's and horses are more useful with their upgrades and speed.

As to the distance it is well known, but remember in C3C rank is not a function for corruption.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Let me switch the focus to defenders. If one doesn't build spearmen/pikemen defenders then what does one defend with?

On Emperor military police are emphatically important for keeping cities functioning....why aren't inexpensive (defensive) units good for garrisoning a city?

I find it difficult to believe I'd want to spend 30 shields on a swordsman (which doesn't upgrade) just to have him garrison a town....a function a 20 shield/upgradable spearman does just fine.

Also, am I really the ony one who's first war may be conducted solely with one to three stacks of 2-3 spearmen? Yes, I get elite spearmen and Leaders from doing this. On both monarch and emperor I've won techs, gold, and completely hobbled my nearest AI rivals just by capturing it's workers and pillaging it's lands with spearmen while my cities are producing settlers and workers. Why don't others do, too?

MP is never a reason for me to build units. I just use units for MP when they are not fighting.
So i am not paying 30 for an MP, i am paying 30 for a usefull horseman, and when it is not yet needed, it functions as MP. Then when i go out and attack, i probably need to increase the lux slider.

My first attack is usually with either 12+ sworsman that are just upgraded from veteran warriors, or similar numbers of horsemen, either upgraded from chariots or simply hand build. On lower difficulties, it would be possible to attack with smaller numbers.

Incidentally, this warrior upgrade to swordsmen and the first attack often comes roughly at the same time you get republic. So you first build some veteran warriors that can do MP, and when they are upgraded and go attack, you can't use MP anymore anyway.

 

[Rurik]

Oh. On Monarch level I've usually destroyed two civs by the time I get the Republic tech. I usually make it to the Middle Ages with Monarchy gov't. I usually don't get Republic on purpose (it's just some tech thrown into the mix during peace negotiations). With a Monarchy gov't MPs are needed for cities since the luxury slider seems a bit of a waste.

Also, my first Monarch level war usually comes somewhere between 3000BC-1500BC...most civs (incl. mine) wouldn't have anything past Writing or Literature at that point....Republic would still be a ways off.

 

[Rurik]

Given this starting position I'm thinking already I'll want to palace jump (since my relative starting position is along the map edge...not a central location) and won't be able to if I settle on the cow (since I'll not be able to build a settler with zero or negative food at 1 or 2 pop, right?).

If I settle where I'm at I can forest harvest a barracks (not a granary since I don't have Pottery) after mining/roading the cow. I would have potential of an iron source if I go for Iron Working and put a dist.3-4 city both along the coast and into the hills...garrisoning these with vet archers & warriors (which will upgrade to swordsmen).

What do you all think?

Moving the worker to the cow revealed the coastline:

 

[Rurik]

After starting BERLIN in the settler start position I built two WARRIORS and started the second one exploring. A RUSSIAN SCOUT found me. RUSSIA has just it's starting techs so either I'm probably their first contacted civ.



Next turn I'll have a 2nd settler with a total two warriors. If this were a Monarch level game I'd kill the Russian Scout to prevent Russian contact with other civs. But this is Emperor and Russia probably has a slew of angry warriors waiting to be popped.

This is the point where I seem to do something everyone says is wrong so I'm giving everyone the opportunity to help me before I do it.

Where should my 2nd city be built? What should my capital's production queue look like? What should my diplomacy toward Russia be? What should my scouting priorities be? Thank you.

 

[MAS]

Let me switch the focus to defenders. If one doesn't build spearmen/pikemen defenders then what does one defend with?

Fast moving offensive units *horseman* are better at defending. (Horseman also upgrade all the way to cavs.)

If you kill the invading units before they reach your cities, then what are the defensive units stacked inside of the cities doing? Picking their nose!

On Emperor military police are emphatically important for keeping cities functioning....why aren't inexpensive (defensive) units good for garrisoning a city?

I find it difficult to believe I'd want to spend 30 shields on a swordsman (which doesn't upgrade) just to have him garrison a town....a function a 20 shield/upgradable spearman does just fine.

A 10 shield warrior that is never upgraded, even though he could, does just fine too. MP is all that you need them inside your city for.
And I usually just use the lux slider so I don't even need units for that.

Also, am I really the ony one who's first war may be conducted solely with one to three stacks of 2-3 spearmen? Yes, I get elite spearmen and Leaders from doing this. On both monarch and emperor I've won techs, gold, and completely hobbled my nearest AI rivals just by capturing it's workers and pillaging it's lands with spearmen while my cities are producing settlers and workers. Why don't others do, too?

If you send horseman (or swordsman) you can do even more damege, you can take the AI cities, then you reduce their abillety to replace the workers you took. And you free up land for your settlers, and reduce cultural pressure.

 

[Obormot]

Why didn't you move the settler to get the second cow? One lost turn pays off very quickly by having more food. And you would have also had a better RCP.

Now you should propably use the extreme RCP2 spacing since those mountains mess up RCP3 ans 4 and it is the only way for you to setup proper cow sharing.

With both cows worked by one city I would have started with a granary. But after making that mistake settlers first is not that bad. Your new city should be settled near the second cow, 2NW from Berlin and it should begin a granary. Berlin won't have enough production to benefit from a granary since the good tiles should be taken by the second city, so it should build settlers and workers.

 

[MAS]

After starting BERLIN in the settler start position I built two WARRIORS and started the second one exploring. A RUSSIAN SCOUT found me. RUSSIA has just it's starting techs so either I'm probably their first contacted civ.

Next turn I'll have a 2nd settler with a total two warriors. If this were a Monarch level game I'd kill the Russian Scout to prevent Russian contact with other civs. But this is Emperor and Russia probably has a slew of angry warriors waiting to be popped.

This is the point where I seem to do something everyone says is wrong so I'm giving everyone the opportunity to help me before I do it.

Where should my 2nd city be built? What should my capital's production queue look like? What should my diplomacy toward Russia be? What should my scouting priorities be? Thank you.

You seem to have ignored my advice to move your settler one tile to be next to the coast, anyway, I would build the second city on the coast, to the left above the second cow, then you will have 2 settler pumps. Try to explore the coastline a bit, and see if there is water there to irrigate the cows with, as you can't channel the water through the hills and mountains. If not, though luck...

I'd build an other worker and then a greenary. Get one of the fur connected.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

To me it looks like a palace jump would be something worth consideration. That means for
a) 2nd city: A good central posistion. I.e. a spot where you can build your empire around.
b) scouting: Have a look at what I think should be juicy terrain NNE in the fog.

ATM, I think the BG 1NW of the pond would be a good spot for your future capital. I mapped some possible city locations around it at RCP4 on the attached image. The palace jump itself should be fairly easy to pull too, with only two cities: Settle future capital spot, build a second settler in Berlin, and abandon Berlin if the settler build didn't already.

Just an idea.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Oh. On Monarch level I've usually destroyed two civs by the time I get the Republic tech. I usually make it to the Middle Ages with Monarchy gov't. I usually don't get Republic on purpose (it's just some tech thrown into the mix during peace negotiations). With a Monarchy gov't MPs are needed for cities since the luxury slider seems a bit of a waste.

Also, my first Monarch level war usually comes somewhere between 3000BC-1500BC...most civs (incl. mine) wouldn't have anything past Writing or Literature at that point....Republic would still be a ways off.

Republic is vastly superior to monarchy in 99% of the cases. Therefore, i advise to go straight for republic. In C3C, you can use the slingshot. Republic can usually be obtained around 1000BC, some games with very good start and succesful slingshot you can get it like 1500BC, difficult games with a failed slingshot may result in something like 500BC republic.

Yes, espescially on lower difficulties, it is possible to start your wars much earlier. However, i don't think that is the best thing to do. Early in the game, you want to focus completely on food, making new cities and increasing population. It is best to delay confrontations until a little later if possible. (of course, sometimes they are very close or you need to attack in order to get horses/iron)

Also, just don't build any regular units. Usually i have like 3 regular warriors build in the first 2000 year. (and that is all the mil. units that are build in those 2000 years) Those are build to fill the gaps between settlers and workers where cities don't have the population to build those. After that, just build veteran units usefull for offensive wars (possibly after upgrade)only.

 

[MAS]

To me it looks like a palace jump would be something worth consideration. That means for
a) 2nd city: A good central posistion. I.e. a spot where you can build your empire around.
b) scouting: Have a look at what I think should be juicy terrain NNE in the fog.

ATM, I think the BG 1NW of the pond would be a good spot for your future capital. I mapped some possible city locations around it at RCP4 on the attached image. The palace jump itself should be fairly easy to pull too, with only two cities: Settle future capital spot, build a second settler in Berlin, and abandon Berlin if the settler build didn't already.

Just an idea.

A bad idea in my book, this is a game of exponential growth, disbanding a town this early means a huge loss later on. I'd just build the FP on the spot you marked, and replace the capital later, if at all.