Anyone done emperor France UHV in beta 3?

[youtien]

I found the new UHV for emperor France very hard. 3x barbarians, I have to focus on units in early game.

Current strategy:

Found Paris, Tours(missionary goes here), conquer Bordeaux, ignore Tolosa, conquer Barcelona and Marseilles(might be overran by barbs later). 3rd settler settle Pamplona (NNNWWW of Barcelona). send a skirmisher to where Toledo and Valencia would be so they won't spawn and flip to Cordoba and we can settle Valencia in the far better spot(S) later. Then conquer Florence and Milan; build settlers to settle Rhone valley and west Germany......all before 840? Possible in monarch, but in emperor we have to build a lot more axemen...

Tech is very hard. Calendar - manorlism (you have to have cottage economy) - architecture - stirrup - engineering (need castle!)... I don't know if I can get Chateau de Fountainbleau in time, and Krak des Chavalier would absolutely be someone else to build. Impossible to get chivalry first.

Anyone done?

 

[Caliom]

I agree, the barbs in the beginning are too hard. you start with 2 archers and only 1 axeman and you have to mine the iron first before you can build more axemen. The barbs appear at around turn 10 with 3 axemen and 3 spearmen. So you have to defend your city and your ironmine with only archers and 1 axemen. It depends on luck where the barbs go and if they attack all at once ore not. I tried it several times to get a good start. One strategy was to lure them away position all my units on a forest in the east, so i hadnt to defend two plots at the same time. I didnt have to rebuild the mine (i think this is crucial) but i lost a lot of units anyhow. In the end i missed the first UHV by at least 20 turns.

In the end i decided to gift me one free axeman in the beginning. This helps a lot.
As i sad the barbs are totaly overpowered and it depends too much on luck. Its only frustrating.

Last time i tried i skiped Bordeaux and Toulouse because the have no production and only slow down research. Instead i conquered the italien cities first. And Augsburg, because it often gets razed by the barbs and its quite productive too, altough you loose it later.

 

[Zipzapzup]

I usually balance the barb spawning around monarch so it may be vastly overtuned on emperor. On emperor spawn thrice as much barbs as on monarch as youtien said, i guess i simply cut it to twice as much or would that be to much/less?

 

[Caliom]

In general the AI does poorly on emperor with all thoses barbs. The French always collapse and respawn later. With the new start they get all the french cities, but Paris often gets razed and they do not rebuild it.
I changed the python code to give the french two more axemen at the beginning and this fixed it. I also gave the AI a small bonus versus barbs on emperor. I dont know if this helps much.
Cordoba often collapses before Spain spawns. The Arabs often collapse too.
Poland on the otherhand seems to do better since beta3. Maybe there are less barbarians there or it is because the other civs have a harder time and less often declare war on poland.

As human player it is o.k. As long as you know what awaits you!!
For some civs its even easier, because most of the independent cities either got razed or are barbarian. Especially as Venetia or Genoa its easy to conquer Milan or Firenze right in the beginning because of the free barb wins. The free barb wins seem odd to me anyhow.

 

[youtien]

Maybe we can reduce barb in early game. Or thrice their spawn rate but not number so AI can handle better.

Another solution: make an option to bribe and buy barb units, using gold or food. With small bribe they can retreat, when you have enough culture you may buy it as mercenary, or even regular unit. Another thought is to enable missionary to convert barbs, which was done frequently in history.