Another Emperor mid-game attempt

[noontide]

Yes, faster attack leads to faster capture of enemy cities, make them productive faster and so on. I think many people overly worry about "killing their economy". You don't need to stack a lot of whip anger pre-attack and remember to 2-pop whip, as 1-pop whips have the same happiness penalty. At monarchy happiness becomes so easy to obtain that you can more or less whip when you want (build warriors!).

That being said, catapult rushes are not the only way to play. You could also get 6-8 cities and win liberalism with the help of some bulbs, take military tradition and take over the world with cuirassiers. Lain's videos have many examples...

Yes, in the save I attached at the beginning of this thread I did win Liberalism and took Nationalism as reward, while beating down Celtics and India. Problem is Germany still managed to pull away in tech notwithstanding me being Korean and having built Universities in many cities. And I can't attack him with a stronger army because of other civs being bribed to DoW on me the next turn. I posted that save and wanted to get some advice on how to handle mid-game as well. Thanks!

 

[sampsa]

OK, I can help you with your current position, too. It's just that the easiest way to improve your game a lot would be just playing the first 100 turns better, so mostly the issue is how you got there. I'm looking at your save again, starting from the event log.

• you went BW first, it's a clear mistake, always food first! (=agri). You got slight compensation in form of founding 2nd already on T30, but I'm assuming the issue is the same as in your Fred game - your capital is very small.
• otherwise early tech path is fine, though I don't think you need hunting+archery unless going for HA-attack, which would have been a good idea btw as you had horse. Going IW is nearly always a bad play. You don't even have any jungle. Locating iron does very little at this point. There are a lot of good techs to aim for (construction for war, monarchy or CoL-CS if you want to play peaceful). Going construction war is a good choice even after wasting time on IW-hunting-archery I think.
• war went pretty good I presume, but you should have wiped them out or capped them. Keeping them alive is bad for happiness and they might vassal to someone else.
• you won liberalism and took nationalism, but have nothing to show for it. You should have maybe taken something else, as Pericles already had nat since he built Taj 2T later. You could have seen this from the tech trade screen.

Onto the current position:

• you seem to be just building stuff (buildings) without a plan. Markets and grocers are expensive and doing very little for you. You are working a lot of weak tiles like 21 and even worse. Always try to whip these tiles away. You should chop forests. Never build lumbermills.
  
• civic choices are not good. You should be in hereditary rule. Free speech is not good, bureaucracy is much stronger. Slavery is good, but you need to use it. Mercantilism is likely worse than decentralization. Trade routes would give ~10 per turn per city, no way a specialist compensates for that. Also civic cost 7 higher. Free religion is a poor choice for diplo reasons. You should be hindu like everyone else. Pacifism is usually very good, despite having an army. are just so insanely powerful at this point of the game.
• I think you could attack Pericles with the stuff that you have now, but since you have geared up your empire to teching, I think you should go for cannons.

What exactly to do:

• sell banking to Cathy for all the money. I don't know if doing this was obvious to you, but these possibilities should always be used. Getting a pile of is great for you and her getting a tech most people have doesn't harm you in any way.
• you can get both engineering and gunpowder this turn by giving away RP to Sal and Pericles.
• I'd run full amount of specialists (5) in Agra now to get out a asap (11 turns) to start a golden age for civic switches and tile boosts.
• at steel, you should be able to conquer Pericles with cannons pretty easily. Capitulate, move to the next victim. If Fred is too powerful for you, leave him as last.

 

[noontide]

OK, I can help you with your current position, too. It's just that the easiest way to improve your game a lot would be just playing the first 100 turns better, so mostly the issue is how you got there. I'm looking at your save again, starting from the event log.

• you went BW first, it's a clear mistake, always food first! (=agri). You got slight compensation in form of founding 2nd already on T30, but I'm assuming the issue is the same as in your Fred game - your capital is very small.
• otherwise early tech path is fine, though I don't think you need hunting+archery unless going for HA-attack, which would have been a good idea btw as you had horse. Going IW is nearly always a bad play. You don't even have any jungle. Locating iron does very little at this point. There are a lot of good techs to aim for (construction for war, monarchy or CoL-CS if you want to play peaceful). Going construction war is a good choice even after wasting time on IW-hunting-archery I think.
• war went pretty good I presume, but you should have wiped them out or capped them. Keeping them alive is bad for happiness and they might vassal to someone else.
• you won liberalism and took nationalism, but have nothing to show for it. You should have maybe taken something else, as Pericles already had nat since he built Taj 2T later. You could have seen this from the tech trade screen.

Onto the current position:

• you seem to be just building stuff (buildings) without a plan. Markets and grocers are expensive and doing very little for you. You are working a lot of weak tiles like 21 and even worse. Always try to whip these tiles away. You should chop forests. Never build lumbermills.
  
• civic choices are not good. You should be in hereditary rule. Free speech is not good, bureaucracy is much stronger. Slavery is good, but you need to use it. Mercantilism is likely worse than decentralization. Trade routes would give ~10 per turn per city, no way a specialist compensates for that. Also civic cost 7 higher. Free religion is a poor choice for diplo reasons. You should be hindu like everyone else. Pacifism is usually very good, despite having an army. are just so insanely powerful at this point of the game.
• I think you could attack Pericles with the stuff that you have now, but since you have geared up your empire to teching, I think you should go for cannons.

What exactly to do:

• sell banking to Cathy for all the money. I don't know if doing this was obvious to you, but these possibilities should always be used. Getting a pile of is great for you and her getting a tech most people have doesn't harm you in any way.
• you can get both engineering and gunpowder this turn by giving away RP to Sal and Pericles.
• I'd run full amount of specialists (5) in Agra now to get out a asap (11 turns) to start a golden age for civic switches and tile boosts.
• at steel, you should be able to conquer Pericles with cannons pretty easily. Capitulate, move to the next victim. If Fred is too powerful for you, leave him as last.

Thanks. Having studied your save I played from T0 again, got a little faster in reaching Construction. I have to say though, I'm a builder at heart, it kind of goes against the every grain of my being to whip to the ground a city that is growing and humming along, but my OCD pushes me to get better, that is why 13 years on I'm still playing Civ 4. Is ti Dawkin who said that fallacy is keeping doing the same thing hoping for a different result?

 

[Fish Man]

Thanks. Having studied your save I played from T0 again, got a little faster in reaching Construction. I have to say though, I'm a builder at heart, it kind of goes against the every grain of my being to whip to the ground a city that is growing and humming along, but my OCD pushes me to get better, that is why 13 years on I'm still playing Civ 4. Is ti Dawkin who said that fallacy is keeping doing the same thing hoping for a different result?

If you’re a builder like me then it’s good to aim for a space victory. Keep in mind that you can build to your heart’s content without to go for a single whip after you get 60% land and have communism. I might play through this soon to show you what I mean.

 

[sampsa]

Thanks. Having studied your save I played from T0 again, got a little faster in reaching Construction. I have to say though, I'm a builder at heart, it kind of goes against the every grain of my being to whip to the ground a city that is growing and humming along, but my OCD pushes me to get better, that is why 13 years on I'm still playing Civ 4. Is ti Dawkin who said that fallacy is keeping doing the same thing hoping for a different result?

I do not know if you played it before my last reply, as your mistakes are mostly the same as before. You also didn't choose the city spots I did for some reason. Food first, food to the 1st ring (i.e. not requiring border pop).

Also note that when whipping, you don't need to whip cities to the ground. In the early game, I try to have say 3-4 tiles that I want to work full time and 2-pop whip at size 5-6. When you get the hang of this, you'll be amazed how many you can generate very quickly.

Certainly it's ok to be a builder and aim for space, but also that requires you to expand via war at some point.

 

[Gumbolt]

You seem to love that fur site. No food in inner ring. You have whipped a workboat but have no culture in city to expand it's borders. Why whip something that will now sit in the city doing nothing for 10-20 turns? Guess it could explore. You are also chopping a forest near the city. To build what? Monument first was the better move.

Self teching iron working was a mistake. What did it add? You already had copper.

You farmed a plains near Wonsan? Adds nothing really. I would prefer a lighthouse and 2f3C.
You farmed a plains near your capital. When a city grows the new populations takes up 2 food. I like to whip away 2f1h tiles.
Generally you should not be farming plains tiles.

Not sure you need libraries everywhere.

Teching archery and archers add little if you have copper. Unless you planned on horse archers?

Your ability to rush the AI will be hampered if you can't whip 3-4 cities. The fur city is no use for this.

All your workers should probably be chopping forest for Hwacha. Cancel fur city chop.

Why tech poly? You want to try to trade for alphabet and back fill techs this way. col/currency would be useful maybe?