An Emperor start - how would you play it?

[goraemon]

Colony:

Spoiler :

Holy sh*t Gandhi was wiped out?!? Must've been his neighbor Montezuma. In my game he was small compared to Monti but lasted throughout the game, and I even helped him in his war efforts to keep Monti from becoming powerful. Damn, if he wiped out Gandhi he could get crazy powerful with all that land

 

[sandman_civ]

Let me join the club too, emperor is a huge jump. Although immortal players reckon it's even bigger. And deity is ridiculous. With emperor you have to have some luck, in a game I played this week, I had consistent losses of musketmen vs their knights (even lost fortified on a forest hill) - and when you lose 10 musketmen midgame (and then your knights poked by tons of pikemen), and they take back their captured cities, it tends to lose you the game.

Also, if anyone can play into renaissance it would be nice. For me this is where it's make or break, I tend to keep up until education, and then half the time they seem to accelerate, while I slow down building universities etc. and if I don't build universities then I stagnate bigtime and lose to space race.

 

[Tinus]

Did a short survey of the island and decided that my normal approach to a start like this would be to restart a new game (*blush*). I'll sign up for the club as well: we need another thread

 

[dimebolt]

Since I'm beginning to get comfortable at monarch, I decided to try your start as my very first emperor game. I played to 1550 AD sofar. My report is a bit long and detailed, but maybe someone might learn from it (me for example ).

Spoiler :

I started researching bronze to get out some quick settlers to get prime locations before opposition. When my two scouts (I popped another from the goody hut near moscow) finally reported we're on an island, I considered abandoning BW right away. However, since it was almost done and my almost finished worker needs something todo, I continue anyway. After bronzeworking, I research agriculture -> the wheel -> pottery -> iron working. In retrospect, agrculture i-> the wheel -> pottery first would probably have been best for this starting location. The production of my capital was focused on warriors, with the objective lift fog from the island, which was succesful. Not a single barb ever set foot on my island.

I found my second city to get all three gems within its area to be my future commerce city. I will build Oxford Uni there. I think chopping the settler and settling it around 2500 BC was my first big mistake, and it had no useful tiles to work on (2 river grasslands was all). I should have postponed until pottery, which came in around 1920 BC. This being my first emperor game, I didn't know that even the second city would have such a penalty. If this wasn't stupid enough, I also found my third city immediatly after pottery in the upper-left corner to grab the fishies. It dropped my research to 40%.



While my economy was emproving due to cottages, iron working came in at 1000 BC. I was prepared: I already made 4 or 5 workers (which, for me, is insane for only 3 cities, but with that much jungle you must adapt) and the gem mines were created quickly. By now I had a severe hapiness problem. The island is lacking luxuries, so I needed a plan.

Plan one was to meet other civs to trade my gems to. For this I researched fishing (since my commerce was booming now this took only 2 or 3 turns ). I used workboats to meet cyrus and (much later) mao. Unfortunately, Cyrus didn't have any luxuries to trade. However, plan two was already on its way: religion. After fishing I researched writing to get libraries ASAP. While building these, I bee-lined to CoL. I admit it was a bit of a desperate move and I didn't really believe it would work, but since my research was fast, it took only 19 turns to research mysticism, meditation, priesthood and CoL. In 325 BC Novgorod became confused, making my desperate move rather brilliant in retrospect (although actually I was probably just lucky). I immediately start building a temple in Novgorod for the priest specialist (I wanted a Great Profit, fast). As you may have noted, I lack the wonders to get it for free. It is here that I make (arguably) the biggest blunder: since my capital has nothing better to build, I start putting some shields into the Chicken Itch for cash (with no hope of building it, it takes over 70 turns) and forget about it for about 50 turns, that's a lot of wasted shields.

After researching alphabet and trading to get skipped techs, I switch to happiness plan three, four and five (metal casting, monarchy and calendar). At 1AD exactly, I found my fourth city to get four sugar, pigs and wheat for massive food. This placing may have been a mistake, I'm not sure. I had already cleared the jungle (and already built a cottage) to make the location immediately viable.



From here I'll speed this report up a bit.

My next goal is to meet the rest of the world ASAP, so I bee-line to optics. While doing this, in 375 BC the indian civilization is destroyed.

While my first caravel is meeting various civs across the globe, I discover I'm about even in tech but the clear number 1 in BNP. This makes me decide to bee-line for liberalism, which I succeed to get first (I choose astronomy, as it is most expensive, allows galleys and most importantly: allows observatories to further exploit my only edge on the opposition). I also succeed in circumnavigating the world first. Meanwhile I found the remaining spots on my island. Well, almost all... Cyrus beats me to one, which is rather pathetic given the time I had to settle my island, but it's the worst spot anyway. I also built the confused holy building and started to spread the word. Unfortunately only mao and hatty share my religion right now.

1550 AD: I just discovered economy first and am currently in doubt about what to do with my Great Merchant. I usually lean towards adding as super specialist to my holy city, but it's already fairly late in the game, so it might be more profitable to let him travel around the globe. I'm tech leader, but only with a 2 tech lead on all except cyrus (only 1) and monty (7 or so). I'm dead last in score, population, culture and size. I figure right now space race is the only viable option for victory (although I am a bit worried about the lack in production). Just the previous turn my pal Mao decided to attack Cyrus, and it might be a good idea to join in the fun to get some more living space and some better production spots. Unfortunately, I have neglected military sofar (I have 3 longbowmen, 8 archers and a bunch of warriors). Building up defence is currently my primary goal.

Building up an attack force to get some cities from Cyrus might be a good idea (I will bee-line the UU tech next). If I manage to get a bigger population this way and my good friends mao and hatty vote for me, diplomatic victory might just work but hate putting my victory in the hands of the unreliable voting system.



Note that one of my competitors manages to have a -5 GNP...


Most of the techs in my list are missed by monty, the only two I own exclusively are printing press and Economics...

 

[colony]

Goreamon:

Spoiler :

Monty might have a lot of land now, but he's so far behind in tech I doubt he'll be a threat to me. And he's more likely to attack Hatshepsut first anyway (I hope, my military is almost non-existant). I still think diplo victory is my only option ATM (Cyrus, Mao and Roosevelt are all pleased with me, Monty's likely to be the other candidate)

 

[goraemon]

A note about the midgame and to dimebolt:

Spoiler :

Looks pretty good. I see some similarities in that I also circumnavigated the globe and got to liberalism, and generally focused on commerce/peaceful building. Cyrus also managed to build one crappy city on the corner of my continent (but I absorbed it culturally later on). Mao and Cyrus also warred pretty often, and my land area was also limited to that 1 continent. The prime difference between my game and yours thus far is the fact that Gandhi was not destroyed in my game. He and Montezuma shared a continent and while Gandhi was clearly the weaker and smaller of the two, he later ended up playing a part in weakening Montezuma's dominance, along with me and Roosevelt in a 3v1 attack Now despite Gandhi, Monti had the biggest population and largest land size for most of the game.

In your game, with Gandhi gone, it's very likely that Montezuma has an easy #1 in land area. I don't know if you have the world mapped out yet but I'd watch for Monti because although he's way backwards right now, he may well catch up very quickly due to his sheer size and power (in my game I dismissed him for a long time only to be surprised to find out he's made very quick strides technologically towards the end-before I got the world to turn against him that is). This is doubly true if Monti has the whole continent to himself without having to war constantly with Gandhi. In my game Monti was my only consistent enemy (I made myself friendly or pleasant with all other civs) so that might be something to watch out for.

What are your foreign relations like? You can probably think about a diplo victory if your relations with all but 2 of the civs are/can get to 11+ but otherwise it's going to be very tough (I once got to within 30 points of the needed diplo victory but stopped pursuing it in favor of SS). It's safer to go for SS at this point because you're not going to take over the world, and once your cottages develop to towns and you (rush)build all the requisite production-enhancement buildings you'll be competitive in production too.

 

[goraemon]

colony:

Spoiler :

That's what I thought in my game and dismissed Monti for a long time only to be sneak-attacked by him somewhere around midgame. Luckily I had been building riflemen/grenadiers and fought him off but had he attacked like 20 turns earlier it would've been tough. And that's with Gandhi not having been destroyed in my game. I don't know maybe your relations with Monti are better than mine was, but I'd keep my guard up since Monti's even bigger in your case.

As to diplo victory - it's very possible to pull it off. Although it was kind of frustrating when I attempted it because Monti was the other candidate (he'll almost definitely be the candidate in your game too) and I got Roosevelt, Gandhi, Mao to vote for me but Cyrus and Hatty both abstained even though both were pleased with me. I was something like 30 votes short of victory. I might've gone for defensive pacts with all civs and that might've pushed it over the edge but I didn't try it and went for SS instead.

 

[Oggums]

Dimebolt, can you post your save at 1550 AD? I'll post mine at the same place tonight when I continue, as I'd like to compare where we're at (I stopped at around 1500AD last night).

Spoiler :

It's interesting looking at your tech screenshot. In my game, where Ghandi was not wiped out by Montezuma, all leaders are significantly ahead of yours on techs, with Nationalism, Gunpowder, Astronomy etc...and that's in 1500AD.

You are ahead of me in techs, so settling first and going with Bronze before Pottery obviously didn't hurt in the long run. Although, I also spent a few turns on the Great Lighthouse before settling.

I totally forgot about Liberalism, since most games I've already started falling behind at this point and never get it first. I think I've started researching Printing Press right after Education, while building my Universities.

It looks like Diplomacy is going to be the best bet, so here's where I'm at
* I already have a Defensive Pact with Roosevelt.
* Cyrus is Friendly, and I'll sign a D-Pact as soon as possible.
* Mao is getting ticked, because I wouldn't cancel my trade deals with Roosevelt (he's giving me Iron, yeah I'm really going to cancel that). After he made that demand, I cancelled all deals with Mao. I'm hoping to annoy him enough that he eventually attacks and I can dogpile him through Cyrus' ports with American/Perisan allies at my side.
* Montezuma has made one demand and I gave it to him (I'm still with archers in many cities), which gave me a negative mod with Gandhi, Hatty. I'm hoping he wont make too many demands, hurting my relations with Gandhi/Hatty, before I can get some gundpowder units defending and I can start telling him to shove off.

 

[colony]

Damn, I thought I could hold out until the end, but obviously not...

Spoiler :

Everything was going well until just after I'd discovered rifling. I'd been heavily beelining towards Mass Media, when I was attacked about halfway to discovering Electricity. Surprisingly it wasn't Monty that declared war though (I'd kept him away by giving him tribute twice, Music and Sci. Method), it was Cyrus and Mao (both friendly before they declared).

Cyrus sent over some knights and catapults first, and a turn later Mao dropped off 2 stacks of rifles/knight/catapults (about 12 units in each) on the west side of my island, near the gems. The turn Cyrus declared I switched to Nationhood/Theocracy and drafted riflemen in most of my cities, which unfortunately wasn't enough to hold off Mao, and he razed my second best production city, at the cost of most of his invasion force, which continued to pillage all my towns.

Cyrus then dropped another 2 galleons of troops, rifles and cannon this time, on the northern shore. With towns being pillaged, and massive unhappiness from drafting, as well as missing luxuries and health resources, my cities were rapidly starving and would have soon fallen (Most had lost 4 or 5 pop points by now), especially as no one else wanted to go to war with either of them.

Well I've learned something from that at least, that the AI isn't useless at Naval invasions anymore

It was definately an interesting game anyway, despite all my mistakes

 

[goraemon]

Ouch tough luck colony,

Spoiler :

when Monti attacked right as I was getting rifles and grenadiers, I was caught by surprise but fortunately I bribed Mao into declaring on Monti that same turn (Mao will do anything for $$ it seems ) and I didn't have to face any serious stacks of doom. "Fought" Monti a couple more times after that but nothing serious, I never even set foot onto his continent. Had no wars with any other civs throughout the game once I focused more on keeping my military updated. That's strange that friendly nations would sneak attack you like that.

 

[Oggums]

I win.

Spoiler :

I went for a Diplomatic win, as I mentioned in a previous post. First time for me...not really my cup of tea, but it seemed the most obvious choice. I just didn't think there would be enough production on that island for much of a military play or space race.

I thought all was well, as I reached Friendly status easily with Hatshepsut, Roosevelt, Cyrus and Gandhi. However, things did not go as smoothly as planned.

Montezuma, despite having fallen behind in techs, began to overun my pal Gandhi. So, I bought off Roosevelt and Hatshepsut into war with Montezuma. This wasn't enough and Gandhi was still losing fast. I was also at war with Montezuma and he kept sending galleys of cavarly. They were trivial, as I had Infantry and artillary, but a nuisance nonetheless.

To make matters worse, Mao also declared on Cyrus and was taking over Persian lands.

I had thought I was already set up for an easy win, and was just running turns to end it, so I wasn't exactly prepared for this. As I saw my votes dwindling, I began desperately building tanks and marines to aid Cyrus.

By the time I had built the UN, Gandhi was all but extinct and Cyrus' lands were pillaged, and he was down to 3 cities. I was able to take back a couple Persian cities with my tanks and gifted them to Gandhi. Gandhi was not at war with Mao, so this not only kept him in the game, it gave me a safe place to heal my tanks where they could not be attacked.

I also had to rush supermarkets and emphasize food, in order scrape enough votes. I believe I had 7 rounds of voting before I won, each time the required votes moved up as my population increased and I was beginning think I'd never catch that carrot.

Fun map, thanks Goraemon!

 

[colony]

That's strange that friendly nations would sneak attack you like that.

I'd been expecting a war coming for a while, my power graph was about 1/2 the size of Hatsheput's, roughly 1/3 of Cyrus/Roosevelt's/Mao's and just tiny compared to Monty's, but definately not from an alliance of the Chinese and Persions (we were all friendly to each other for most of the game). I simply gave Monty anything he asked for, it just wasn't worth it over a couple of techs, which kept him away. I'd personally have expected it to come from Hatshepsut.

What most surprised me was that I've never seen Cyrus sneak attack me before at pleased or better. I think I should've just signed a defensive pact with Cyrus or Mao straight after Nationalism to give me some protection.

 

[Oggums]

Is is possible that Mao paid Cyrus off to attack? I don't think I'd ever trust Mao even with a Defensive Pact. Although, I've had Cyrus attack at Pleased, when he was my only neighbor. So I don't really trust him either.

 

[Shadzy19]

Part 1.

Spoiler :

I gave the game a try and it after reading the pages it seems we definatly went a other way , i made plenty of mistakes who might possible cost me the game in the future but it doesnt look that bad atm.

The starting position was awful with only 2/3 cities you could actually place early on that would be profitable so after scouting my island i just stayed with 2 cities going mass cottages untill i had IW comin in (after watching the map more closily i could have gotten a decent city east of my capitol but didnt see it at the time.

My tech research went BW > Agri > The Wheel > Pottery > Fishing > Archery ( failed to get all the fog off my island in time and lost 2 warriors vs archers on a forest hill ) followed by Sailing > IW then a beeline for Monarchy followed by writing and alphabet .

 

[Shadzy19]

part 2

Spoiler :

So in the mean time i was settling my continent , however i lost 2 cities (actually 3) because both Mao and Cyrus got a city on my continent around 100 AD i think didnt really check the date. At this point i actually looked at the map and saw how good the spot was directly east of my cap , cyrus founded his city there cutting off the fishing city directly east of it also .
Mao got a small city with 1 of the pigs.

After researching Alphabet i traded around a bit but was around 5 techs behind both cyrus and Mao but had a way higher gold income , things got even worse though since Cyrus managed to get the great lighhouse and collusus , things really dont look good.

I managed to catch up in tech pretty fast .
Beelined for optics for caravals and after that a beeline for liberalism , i managed to get both the circumnavigent and liberalism and took astronomy and got a lot of very good trade deals.

 

[colony]

Is is possible that Mao paid Cyrus off to attack? I don't think I'd ever trust Mao even with a Defensive Pact. Although, I've had Cyrus attack at Pleased, when he was my only neighbor. So I don't really trust him either.

Cyrus was ahead of Mao in tech, so it might've been the other way round, with Cyrus paying Mao. I think I could've held one of them off until they offered peace, but with both of them in there I didn't have much hope of being able to hold on to my main cities. Or maybe Mao just saw the opportunity and decided come for me the turn after Cyrus declared.

At least I learnt not to neglect defence even if I control a whole island (one more Civ3 habit gone I hope )

 

[Shadzy19]

Il post the rest of my game together with screenshots and saves when my new comp arives on monday / tuesday , i keep getting a page not found / bulletin error whenever i try to post a long post / post a SS / save file , im sure its my comp but cant find whats causing it.

 

[Oggums]

Cyrus was ahead of Mao in tech, so it might've been the other way round, with Cyrus paying Mao. I think I could've held one of them off until they offered peace, but with both of them in there I didn't have much hope of being able to hold on to my main cities. Or maybe Mao just saw the opportunity and decided come for me the turn after Cyrus declared.

At least I learnt not to neglect defence even if I control a whole island (one more Civ3 habit gone I hope )

I had a horrid experience in another island game, getting tag-teamed by Tokugawa and Montezuma. I was playing Qin, and I waited until caravels started showing up before building a military. At that point I figured I'd have time to finish researching Grenadiers before they'd show up with galleys.

I only had about 1 grenadier per city when both of those nutjobs declared on the same turn with 2-3 galleys each of knights/grenadiers. They also had 2-3galleys each full of reinforcments arriving 2 turns later. To make a long story short, I had several cities razed.

Does the AI plan these things out together, or is it a coincidence?

 

[goraemon]

In my experience Mao does almost anything for bribes, even attack a nation he's pleased with. I've gotten him to do it a couple times in a couple different emp games now

Congrats Oggums!

I'm going to discuss the later part of my game below so if you're planning to try or in the process of trying out the game you might want to put off reading. It has screenshots and a savegame too.

Spoiler :

Throughout the game I never left my original continent except I circumnavigated the globe early on with a caravel/world map trading. I never set foot on another continent except for a couple explorer units. I had 6 cities for most of the early/middle game, founded a 7th city later, and absorbed an 8th city on the edge of my continent from Cyrus (he founded a crappy city on my continent earlier) towards the end. Essentially I operated on 6 cities for a long time.

I had no iron, no horses, and no aluminum. As Catherine, I never even got to use my Cossacks.

I ended up winning by SS around the 1950's.

I did it by always focusing on research early on, with lots of cottages and requisite buildings, and trying to prioritize techs that further improved research. I missed all the early wonders/religions like I said but got to education/liberalism first and my research pace took off nicely. Some of my cities sucked in production initially but that was to be expected with my approach. I tried to keep the other civs pleasant or better towards me and I was able to trade for a LOT of different resources (I didn't have a variety of resources on my continent but some of the ones I had, there were multiples of them) and a fair number of techs. Only exception was Montezuma with whom I warred 3 different times - with the 1st one happening when he sneak attacked me around the middle of the game (my riflemen/grenadiers fought him off my continent).

On the other continents, Mao was periodically warring with Cyrus (I think I bribed Mao into fighting Cyrus one of those times, don't remember) towards the west, and Gandhi/Montezuma were struggling with each other on the east continent, with Monti having the clear advantage (for most of the game). Roosevelt was cruising along nicely on his own continent, and Hatty had a couple of smaller continents to the east and was coming along as well.

Cyrus was cautious during the middle ages but I managed to keep Mao on my good side and traded lots of resources with him. I eventually got Mao to give me iron so that problem was alleviated. Eventually I got Cyrus to be pleasant towards me as well. I cultivated a good relationship with Roosevelt and he was friendly to me. Hatty was pleasant, and Gandhi, initially annoyed, got friendly to me later on due to trading and my helping him in a war with Monti in the late game.

Around the early 1800's, I was considering possible routes to victory. At that time, all civs were pleasant or friendly to me except for Cyrus who was still cautious at the time, and Monti who was furious (around this time I was warring Monti for the 2nd time, along with Mao who I bribed to also fight him). Monti was the largest civ atm and nobody really liked him. I looked at the possibility of a diplomatic victory since I had no aluminum. I built the United Nations and sure enough, Monti was the other candidate. I got voted Secretary-General unanimously . Cyrus got pleasant to me due to the trading etc. I decided to try for a diplomatic victory:



Even though both abstaining members were pleasant to me at the time, it wasn't enough to get their votes. So I was considering I should either shuffle the population a bit or get Cyrus/Hatty further on my side which wasn't easy. I didn't really want to go to a real territory-grabbing war with anyone because that might upset the delicate diplomatic balance I had. Mao was barely able to vote for me and another -1 modifier might make him abstain.

But then something else happened. I suddenly found out Roosevelt had obtained another source of aluminum and was "friendly" enough to trade it to me. What's that, you want 3 of my resources plus 30 gpt? Sure, sounds fair to me...

I had not been letting up on research at all and was still ahead in tech so I considered shifting my gears to a SS race. I was competitive in production despite all my cottage spamming because I had built the Kremlin earlier and rush-bought all factories and built the Hoover Dam or whatever the wonder is called now. Although I only had 7 cities at that point, I preferred a SS victory if possible, so I went for it while keeping the option open for a diplomatic win.

During this time that pesky Monti warred again with Gandhi. Gandhi asked me for help. I...accepted but didn't actually lift a finger. Not a single transport of mine went over to Monti's continent, and vice versa, because in my effort to slow down Roosevelt (#1 in score at that time and rival in SS construction), I bribed him into attacking Monti. Monti finally found himself on the losing end and began to lose some cities, and his population went down enough so that eventually Roosevelt took his place as the candidate for Secretary-General. Once that happened, my chances of a diplomatic victory went down the tubes (although I could still get voted to SG).

Still, due to my edge in tech and the Space Elevator, I was able to complete all the parts before the AI by 1952 AD. During this time Roosevelt kept upping the price on aluminum and I paid an arm and a leg for it but was strong enough in commerce that it didn't matter. Due to my late boost in wonder grabbing, I also got a lot of late great people, so I got myself two Golden Ages (yeah, 5 great people including the late great engineer via Fusion) which really helped with SS building. I culture-absorbed Cyrus's city as my 8th and final city but it didn't contribute to SS building much.

A shot of my empire and the world 1 turn before the win:



Demographics:



#6 in land size but #1 in population



This shows I was hovering at the bottom in score till around 1200AD. then the slow, painful ascent began, finally overtaking Roosevelt in score at the very end. Cyrus lost some wars against Mao in the midgame, and you can see how Monti lost his latest war near the end.

Overall, it was a fun game. Despite the lack of resources, I survived through trading and keeping good relations, and focusing my few cities to produce commerce. I was also aided by some of the other civs slowing themselves down due to war and keeping Roosevelt friendly all the way was very conducive to the SS win. One would think he'd stop trading me Aluminum altogether at some point but he never did, just kept raising its price like 3 different times. Thanks Roosevelt, you've been a true friend

Savegame 1 turn before my win is attached if you want to take a look.

View attachment 111619

This was my first ever win at emperor. I always like to play all default settings and standard continents (at least initially) because I feel that all other kinds of wins are...non-standard Right now I'm trying out another standard emperor game with Elizabeth, and it's a completely different game because I've got a pretty large continent with 2 competing neighbors - Napoleon and Mao.

 

[isi]

When I first saw starting location i thought it will be hard, but once I realized I´m lonenly on big island it was easy. With financial civilization you can go easily for cottage spam and skip military and have minimum production without problem. My plan was going just for knowledge – library, than literature, then build only ancient wonder – Great Library for great Scientist and then straight for printing press and democracy. Even all that jungles get me bad start I manage to be tech leader around 1500. Than I rushed for Kremlin and bought all missing buildings in few turn, with income about 800 per turn. After that it was only time to choose path to victory. I have no military, was second worst in score and don’t have industrial cities for space race, so choice was go for diplomatic win. So I rushed for UN and also for Hollywood and Rock and Roll to bribe for some votes. I have about +9 score with all peacefull leaders (Rooswelt, Hepeshut, Cyrus), Gandi was eliminated and other leading candidate was Montezuma that was hated by all other nations. So position was good, but I was preparing Manhatan Project anyway just in case I did not get enough votes to reduce world population a little. With 1400 income and Kremlin you can buy lots of nukes each turn. At the end, it turns out I get votes from all friendly nation and managed easy Diplomatic victory from first voting to my surprise.

Here are few saves attached, but I there was lot of mistakes at the beginning. But this cottage strategy is pretty easy. There are only 2 easy wins on emperor: play Caesar on one continent map (preferably small) for easy Conquer victory with Praetorians or play any leader with financial trait on islands. Any other setting is real challenge.