Level up: Emperor & Immortal with 4 games

[Gasp]

So i played a few turns and I'm not going to follow you. Chinese asked for a tribute (gold) I refused to give them. And Charly asked me to join him in the war against Louis. I'm building Trebs and units including some defensive ones because I believe to be the Chinese target (they are plotting) and I am weak right now

Here it is T137

Spoiler War :

I haven't seen his stack yet but here is mine (almost all of it)

Oh and this happened

Spoiler Silver pop :

 

[elitetroops]

How come you haven't opened borders and scouted Qin earlier (or scouted Charly)?

If he declares like that, without sending a stack into your lands, it means he declared unprepared and it can take a while before his stack arrives. Get a unit onto that forest hill north of the iron asap to see if something is coming or if (more likely) he just has some very weak garrison there in his city. There's a good chance you could advance on him and start taking cities instead of hiding in your own city.

Swords are not very good. Axes are cheaper and have better odds agains melee units, which the AI like to spam on this level. Some catapults can be nice to have if you plan to take out his stack in the open. Building defensive units, like longbows, should be avoided until they are needed. Ususally there's still time to build them if you see a stack approaching. If a stack including siege is approaching, whip walls first and he will completely bombard it before attacking, which give a lot of time to build defenders. Here you can bring one lb with you as stack defense, if you decide to move on him. Unfortunately it seems you've given CG promotions already... Guerilla would be much more useful for stack defenders. Don't promote units until you know what promotion is needed. Units don't lose fortification bonus by promoting, so even CG promos can be delayed.

 

[Gasp]

elitetroops you were right about Qin's stack and also for promotion.

the rest of my stack and some new built units arrived in Cherokee. I went in his territory with this stack and took is closest city Tanjin and another one north. Both were not well defended. Then I moved to Shanghai with a bigger stack and healed units. While I was traveling he brought he big stack to Tanjin and recaptured it (losing 8 units on the way).

Spoiler there :

My units are safe in Charly's territory unless Qin DOW on him. And my stack in Shanghai is big enough to go on in his territory. I should have enough units near Tanjin very soon to take it back (he has Chariots and HA).
The cooper north of Shanghai is my target.

What annoys me here is lack of Horses, Charly's culture took mine and he won't trade some.

Oh and Louis is joining

Spoiler :

 

[Gasp]

So I'm thinking since I'm alone at war against 2. Maybe I should cease fire with one of them.
Louis offers a little bit of gold but Qin offers this:

Spoiler :

I don't see why I would not take it

 

[sampsa]

Well, the past 45 turns have been a disaster and your game has deteriorated. This is the problem with playing long turnsets... If you start to go to the wrong direction you just keep going. You got trebs at a good date but now have very little to show for it. Three very weak captured cities, unhappiness from war weariness... You have two unworked wet corn in your core even. My eyes bleed.

I don't understand where you are going with your tech. First gunpowder, then CS-paper-edu... OK, but why? Maybe you are trying to take steel with liberalism, but you could have just gone for it without lib. I guess you bulbed half of education, but it's not very useful when you have no teching power to reach liberalism in the near future. You are not really working on getting any currently.

Yes, take peace with Qin now and try to capitulate Louis. You could demolish his stack now had you built some catapults like elitetroops suggested. The game is still winnable surely, but now it's a fight instead of a cakewalk.

 

[Gasp]

I feel it's not going very well. i try to check what are my cities working after I whip but it could be that these 2 corns escaped me; I will correct it.

I don't understand where you are going with your tech.

Probably me neither. I got CS from Pericles he offered a good deal so I accepted.
Should I still try to reach Lib or is it useless ?

Another thing I have 2 GGenerals and I don't really know how to use them. i want to use one for a supermedic (usually I have a Chariot) but I guess I'll have to do it with a Q.

 

[sampsa]

You could turn on city governor and emphasize all . That is imo often the best setting and you don't have to check after every whip.

Keep going for lib I guess, you should be able to win it... Yes you badly need a medic. Scout or quechua.

 

[elitetroops]

Here we see the importance of scouting. I don't know if you knew his army was entirely mounted, but if you did, your stack composition should have been very different.

No matter what, you should build way less longbows. In the latest save you posted, I guarantee that nobody will attack Tianjin, Macau or Cherokee. They don't need any strong units for defensive purposes. For this particular war, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have built a single longbow (quite often I don't build any at all in a typical conquest game). Pikes are much stronger defenders against their mounted stacks, so a couple of those are good to have here, but otherwise just build offensive units. Keep your stack moving forwards at all times, wounded units stay behind to heal up and at the same time defend the latest city you conquered. They usually only target the closest city, which mostly is the latest city you conquered, so no need to keep stacks around elsewhere. You have to be a bit more careful early in the war if you don't know where their main stack is, but once the initial main stack is gone, they'll only have some small stray stacks that target the closest city.

A treb stack like that should never be hanging around idle in a city. As soon as one city falls, your siege immediately moves towards the next city to bombard. Once the AI stack is down, your siege only need a few defenders and can move while the bulk of your melee units heal up in the captured city. Oh, and about the trebs, giving a few accuracy promotion is fine, but the majority of them should be CR only. CR3 trebs are awesome. Now you'll never see any of those as all of them have accuracy.

 

[Pedro78]

Wowowo you're playing way too fast lol. People can't point you in the right direction if you play 50 turns at a time! And your tech path is very unfocused, on this map by the time Qin DoW'd you you could already have cuirs with a focused tech path and a couple of bulbs.

I'll catch up on the game tonight.

 

[Gasp]

@elitetroops
No i didn't know his stack was mostly mounted.. I realized late that scouting had to be done I guess lesson learned here.
And thanks for these advices with promotions and movements they are good to know or good reminder I obviously need.

Next game I promise I'll play slower. It's again not an usual thing for me.

I played a bit until T178. Made peace with Qin, took 1 city of Louis and I'm 2 turns away from taking another one. I also have a large stack of fresh units in Aachen, ready to move towards Paris. I'll make a proper update of these turns later.

 

[Pedro78]

Okay so I've played to turn 94 and I think I'll stop here... getting bored and there's no point continuing (actually I'm pissed off because I'm going for Engi like a fool but could have rolled over the map with HAsn and I realized that it wasn't a pangaea map so it would take much longer than I want it to)

Got Machinery a few turns back, now building Xbows to kill Charly while waiting for trebs. Pericles has awful land not worth grabbing. GS coming in from Cuzco in 2T, GP bar also full in Ollytambo (or whatever it's called), will get a GS for philo bulb here (or GE for golden age later)

I attached two saves, I'd recommend you look at them.

Spoiler a few comments on the saves :

• Look at the city management and tile improvement, tile sharing etc.
• Look at the buildings/whip timer: cities are almost never unhappy because I either whip them or run scientists to halt growth
• Look at the "pre-built" units: it's a good way to reduce maintenance during war build-up and allows you to wait for civic change/barracks completion before you complete the units
• Not much to say about diplo, gifted Alpha, Ag, Pottery, Writing to Charly so he was pleased. Now he's back to cautious but he's dead soon anyway. The French are plotting but I'll have an army by the time they decide to attack someone.

Hope this was helpful, and don't hesitate to ask more questions

 

[gaash2]

@Pedro78 .. is there a good way / (probably the mods?) to not forget about prebuilt stuff.. I used to use this strategy for some stuff (such as spaceship building when the AI keeps sabotaging parts/blowing up spaceship parts) but I'm lazy and it was just too annoying to remember to make sure stuff doesn't get built too early (or that pre-chopped didn't become 'chopped').

 

[Pedro78]

I usually either keep the prebuilt stuff in the queue or I put a note (ALT+S) on a nearby tile to remember it. Same with pre-chopping.
Does the AI really sabotage space parts? That didn't happen to me, maybe you're too slow building the space parts or getting the space techs after Apollo. To sabotage a spaceship part you have to send a spy to the AIs Apollo city right? Or will any city do the trick?

 

[gaash2]

I usually either keep the prebuilt stuff in the queue or I put a note (ALT+S) on a nearby tile to remember it. Same with pre-chopping.
Does the AI really sabotage space parts? That didn't happen to me, maybe you're too slow building the space parts or getting the space techs after Apollo. To sabotage a spaceship part you have to send a spy to the AIs Apollo city right? Or will any city do the trick?

Im not actually sure how the sabatoging works (e.g. which cities they can go to). I will say that in my games, yes they do it a lot, and on huge/continents, space is a real factor often vs almost never in my games on standard/pangea. Of course I completely ignore espionage unless I have a huge tech lead and am playing for space (so bump it up to prevent the sabotage) so my espionage points are always low.

 

[Gasp]

Thanks Pedro for playing it. I'll look at you saves later today.

I didn't play this weekend but a bit until T208 this morning and the situation kept deteriorating. I was actually only focused on war and neglected a lot my empire.
On the other hand this was enough to completely destroy Louis and have 19 cities. But Qin DoW me and took back Shanghai with Knights and Trebs when my stack was still on the other side on the map.
My cities suffer a lot from WW and are very unhappy. I have enough units to finish off Qin's crippled stack and perhaps enough to move to his capitol and take Guangzhou as well, in hope to vassal him. But it'll be a fight. With some time my production will certainly be enough to take out my continent though and probably the 2nd continent which was recently discovered by Pericles.

Problem is that I'm not having much fun anymore and I won't have fun neither trying to catch up with my mistakes here. So I'd like to play a fresh game with shorter turnsets as you recommanded. It's probably wrong though not to finish this one. I'm thinking I'll do that later when I fell like doing it

If you have any recommandations on which leader and/or map settings I should pick I'd like to hear them. Otherwise I'll probably launch a random leader/map game again.

 

[sampsa]

I don't think it matters that much if you don't finish this game now. Probably many valuable lessons can be learned also from looking at Pedro's saves. I can relate to what you say about focusing on war and neglecting managing your cities. I think when you get more experienced with the mechanics many things become automatic and you'll stop forgetting to do some things every turn.

I think any leader goes for now, pretty much any map type too but I'd avoid maps with lots of water (like archipelago) or isolated/semi-isolated maps for now, just to become better with "normal play".

 

[Gasp]

#2 Frederick of Germany (PHI/ORG) - Normal size NHNE

Spoiler Our start :

I like it a lot of foodplains but not too many ressources we can see.
I think about moving Scout NW to see what's along the river. Then it'll move either NE or another NW (in forest) depending to what we see.
Unless I spot more ressources I think I'd settle were the Scout currently is (PH riverside).
For the tech I'm thinking Agg then BW

@sampsa Thanks for your answer.

@Pedro78 I've been looking at you 2 saves. I need a lot more discipline and learning to achieve this. I understand very well at least. I really have to be more careful with managing growth and anger as well as not building too many units. I think getting Libraries soon enough to run scientist is a priority for that matter.

i'm thinking about playing 20 turns or so this next game, probably just enough to end researching BW and plan what to do next.

 

[Pedro78]

getting Libraries soon enough to run scientist is a priority for that matter

That's really situational. In most cases you'll only wan't a Library in a couple of cities. Game after game you'll learn how to "read the situation"

On this start DO NOT SIP. 8 flood plains=+3. With a non-exp leader that's a huge pain and will hurt you all game long.

 

[Gasp]

I want to settle here, any objections ?

Spoiler image :

 

[Pedro78]

A little low on food but it's a lot better than SIP, especially early on.