[BAT Mod 4.1] Help me earn the title Imperator (Emperor)!

[Imperator Knoedel]

Like it says in the title, I would like to win at least one game on Emperor difficulty, and after failing to do so on my own several times recently I have decided to finally swallow my pride and submit myself to the wisdom of this forum.

I'll even wait with rolling the actual game and posting the initial screenshot until someone has given me detailed instructions on the game settings, i.e. map script etc. Personally I'd like to roll with City Flipping after Conquest, Rising Seas and Spies return to nearest cities if that's not too controversial.

To drive home the theme of earning the title Imperator/Emperor, I'd like to play as one of the following civs:

• Byzantium
• Holy Rome
• Rome

Additionally, whichever two of those civs I don't play myself, I will pre-select as AI opponents. After all, what fun is there in claiming to be Imperator with no contenders to the throne to fight against?

After we have decided on the game settings I will post the initial screenshot and save, wait for input on where to move the Warrior/Scout and where to settle the capital, and then we'll go from there and see where this journey takes us.

Signed, Imperator-to-be Knoedel

 

[lymond]

Interesting, IK. Even though you've been a long time contributor here, I realized I've never actually seen you in action. So I'd no clue what level you actually were. With that said, there are still plenty of folks around here who have played the game for many years but never really took the steps to move up difficulty.

As for settings, I'd suggest normal stuff. Normal speed, probably Pangaea map is best for learning, no huts/events. As for your options mentioned, I'm not sure they matter much...and other than the Spy thing I'm not sure what they do exactly anyway since I've never played with those options.

When you post the save/screenshot, and actually each time you report back on a screenshot, feel free to give your thoughts on what you might plan to do or think of the situation. Whether right or wrong, it gives us a feel for your current though process regarding the game so that we can correct things or reinforce things. Also, prepare and expect to open yourself to completely new ways of playing the game.

 

[AcaMetis]

As for your options mentioned, I'm not sure they matter much...and other than the Spy thing I'm not sure what they do exactly anyway since I've never played with those options.

City Flipping After Conquest means that a city can culturally flip back to the civ it was conquered from. Rising Seas I'm pretty sure is BAT specific because it's not a vanilla option, at least not one that I've ever seen, so no clue what it's about.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Spoiler lymond quote :

Interesting, IK. Even though you've been a long time contributor here, I realized I've never actually seen you in action. So I'd no clue what level you actually were. With that said, there are still plenty of folks around here who have played the game for many years but never really took the steps to move up difficulty.

As for settings, I'd suggest normal stuff. Normal speed, probably Pangaea map is best for learning, no huts/events. As for your options mentioned, I'm not sure they matter much...and other than the Spy thing I'm not sure what they do exactly anyway since I've never played with those options.

When you post the save/screenshot, and actually each time you report back on a screenshot, feel free to give your thoughts on what you might plan to do or think of the situation. Whether right or wrong, it gives us a feel for your current though process regarding the game so that we can correct things or reinforce things. Also, prepare and expect to open yourself to completely new ways of playing the game.

Yeah, I have mostly been active in various modding communities and the PBEM crowd, but I never actually got too deep into attempting to beat the AI at ever higher levels, which is something I'd now like to correct.

Yeah that's what I was thinking as well.

City Flipping After Conquest means that a city can culturally flip back to the civ it was conquered from. Rising Seas I'm pretty sure is BAT specific because it's not a vanilla option, at least not one that I've ever seen, so no clue what it's about.

Rising Seas should cause the sea level to rise with Global Warming, though I've never actually seen it in action. Since it only affects the late game I figure I might as well enable it. Ideally I should win before Global Warming becomes an issue in the first place of course.

Anyway, here we go, one standard Pangaea with no huts and events coming right up:



I have decided to choose Charlemagne as he is arguably the worst of the leaders I proposed and I do want to test my skills after all. The game seems to concur and hands me a pretty bad starting position without any good food.

My first instinct would be to move the scout 1NEand then either another plot NE or 1NW to see if it reveals anything good.

Settling at the Scout's current position or on the grass hill one north of it would give access to a Lighthouse to turn the Lake into a useful tile, but I would sacrifice all river tiles to the south for it.

SIP would give me a number of forested plains rivers, which is better than nothing I suppose.

I could settle on the Marble for extra production in the capital tile but lose the Cow. Then again if my eyes aren't deceiving me I suspect the tile 1S of the Marble to be flood plains. Maybe I should move the scout south after all to confirm my suspicion.

So yeah, I guess I'd probably settle on the Marble after moving the scout 2SW to see if he can uncover any good tiles, but waiting for feedback first.

 

[lymond]

Ack..hope you did not get the dreaded plain cow start. Common sometime with floodplain. If that cow is all you have for food I might restart as I hate for shadow games to be too far behind the 8ball. But we can at least see if there is more here to make it worthwhile.

Moving to a grasshill for the lake and coastal start is not remotely worth it. So lets analyze this. Nothing screams for me at the moment to move the settler. The main justification for a move is to realize some tangible benefit to the start cap like a bonus center tile or more food and rivers - this includes moving away from a coastal start if that is feasible.

Settling on marble is a thought, but we certainly don't want to move away from the only food we see...yet. We already see the current BFC tiles to the N, and nothing leads be to believe that settling in that direction would offer any benefit.

What most intrigues me is the spot of the blue circle, even though blue circles generally indicate jack squat. So I really like to know what is SE of the settler - I think more flood plains but at least more river. Regardless, settling 1SE does land you on a river with likely more river tiles and frees up that green tile the settler stands on. So what I want to know - assuming moving 1SE is what we're going to do is what I might lose.

So I'd move the scout 1SW and either 1S or again 1SW. 1S likely reveals FP anyway, so more info in general moving 1SW again might be better as well as progress toward AI. If now pigs or food hidden to the W, then blindly settle 1SE which is a comfortable leap of faith since we are not really losing anything.

 

[Gumbolt]

Not a good map to learn how to play emperor. Surrounded by plains and BFC likely to have 1 food resource. Sometimes the rule of five resources includes everything but food.

For flood plains you need rivers. It's 100% not a flood plain. Especially with forest that nearby.

This could be a settler explore moment to find a better capital location.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Moving the Scout 2 tile south revealed...



Wheat and a plains hill, hmm...

Instead of going for the blue circle, how about a leap of faith atop that plains hill?

 

[lymond]

yeah, I can't see jack in the screenshot..no clue if those were FPs or not.

No..that is a bit too much of a leap of faith.

Settle 1SE

 

[AcaMetis]

Would it be worth spending a turn moving onto the PH just to scout? It looks like the south is a coast and you might possibly ruin seafood if you settle 1SE.

 

[Fish Man]

I couldn't resist the temptation to play ahead, so if you want to avoid moderate-ish spoilers then turn back now.

Small spoiler 1 (based on something that you would reasonably do even without foreknowledge, but in hindsight something I'm immensely glad I did):

Spoiler :

Perhaps move the settler on the hill to check what's up in the east?

Moderate spoiler 2:

Spoiler :

It's rare this is the case, but trust the blue circle this time.

Moderate spoiler 3:

Spoiler :

It goes against what you know now but DON'T SETTLE THE MARBLE. It will ruin your day once you get a border pop.

 

[Fish Man]

Also...I think that you were the first person to ever give me advice on these forums, way back when I was a clueless fool trying to 4-city farmspam my way into winning the game, treating the whole thing like vanilla Civ V. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me start on the wonderful journey that brought me all the way here, and now that I'm comfortably on imm-deity, to demonstrate my gratitude in turn, I'll give you advice that'll help you crush the opposition with more decisively than you've ever experienced before!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Also...I think that you were the first person to ever give me advice on these forums, way back when I was a clueless fool trying to 4-city farmspam my way into winning the game, treating the whole thing like vanilla Civ V. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me start on the wonderful journey that brought me all the way here, and now that I'm comfortably on imm-deity, to demonstrate my gratitude in turn, I'll give you advice that'll help you crush the opposition with more decisively than you've ever experienced before!

Wow, that's great! It seems the master has become the apprentice.

Anyway, swayed by AcaMetis I decided to YOLO up that plains hill, not finding any seafood, but settling there anyway...



Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I immediately regret my decision. >.<

Turns out I should have listened to lymond after all, but instead I followed the siren call of a plains hill to my doom.

Uff, what do I do now? Should we try to salvage this train wreck, reload or regenerate?

 

[krikav]

I'm quite fond of settler-scouting and often delay settlement untill T3 or so in tricky situations.
I think I would too have climbed that hill, but if I would have seen no food resources I would have moved again. If scout wouldn't have found anything interesting I would have moved back NE to the safety of the beloved plains cow.

I wouldn't say there is much point playing on with a capital w/o food for a learning game, it's just way too unrepresentative of normal games to have no food.
Either regenerate, or just reload and settle on that blue circle.

 

[AcaMetis]

Why did you settle the city before moving the Scout and checking for seafood?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Why did you settle the city before moving the Scout and checking for seafood?

Because I am stupid.

 

[krikav]

Settling the first city is a critical decision, and here you had the opportunity to move the scout and gain even more information before making that final decision.

Write that up as a mistake, learn from it and lets move on! This is part of the learning process.

 

[Fippy]

On the + side, this must be the most funny - food in 3rd ring - settling i ever saw ~~

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Okay so I reloaded and settled on the blue circle after all.

My next steps would be researching Agriculture->Animal Husbandy, moving the scout in a half circle NW->NE around Aachen to uncover nearby terrain, and of course building a Worker. The Worker will Farm the Corn, then Pasture the Cow. After the Worker Aachen will build a number of Warriors to explore and fogbust until it has grown to some arbitrary size where another worker or a settler would be appropriate.

After Animal Husbandry I'm inclined to go directly for Mining->Bronze Working to chop all those forests into Settlers to make good use of Charly's Imperialistic trait. Another option would be The Wheel->Pottery for cottages. Opinions?

 

[krikav]

Cultivate the habit of deselecting tech until you reach T5, and only then commit to a tech.

Regarding BW, I'm not sure. you could perhaps run into economic troubles with that? Agri+AH is quite costly already.
I'm as it is now, I think that the site with wheat+fish looks kind of nice. (On the tundra forest).
It would also be connected, so no need for road, and that would yield 2 commerce (one trade in each city).
The lake is also ok to work commerce wise.

So maybe fishing is worth to consider after agri (or after agri->AH).
Abit too long planning though, deselect tech each turn until T5, and post screenshots then and post your thoughts!

 

[lymond]

Well, that was interesting

I like BW after AG here. I think you may run into worker idleness going AH first. Also don’t see a plethora of Pasture resources.

FISH seems questionable that early since it will take some time to get to it ( krikav”s spot is your next city indeed).

With BW you can farm corn, farm 1 grass, 1 grass mine (good for imp) and then start chopping.

Then maybe fish or AH, if no Copper. Fish will open up a little commerce