BTS – A guide for higher difficulties for standard speed and maps (emperor+)

[Chode]

It took me quite awhile to win consistently at emperor. I am now stuck at Immortal level for about the last couple months. But if you follow the formula he gave and don't make fatal errors, you will start winning. The thing that got me over the hump at Emperor was just to slow down and micro-manage my cities. You can't afford to get sloppy. Diplomacy is also essential. I always play for Cultural Victory and never have the top military, but if you manage the military dudes diplomatically, you can get through a whole game without getting attacked by them and running Pacifism much of the time. Alexander seems to be the exception for me. If I see he is my neighbor, I prepare for war immediately. I think he is the most trigger-happy civ in the game.

If I ever prepare for war early, like being neighbored by shaka/monty/genghis, my economy tanks every time. I get enough axes to take out their 3/4 cities, but my science slider is at 0% and I start getting strikes.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

1. Put your science slider to zero at the start of the war and leave it there until the war is over.

2. You don't have to destroy his whole civilization in round #1. Cripple him -- pillage everything. Make peace. Recover your economy. Come back later with advanced military units (Cats, Elephants, Etc.) and finish him off.

3. Don't keep crappy little cities. Destroy them and just keep the gold to finance the war.

4. Get Currency as soon as you can after the war. If your economy gets close to strike, have some of the cities make wealth.

5. Cottages, cottages, cottages!!

6. Libraries are also a priority after the war. Then courthouses.

7. I also use Oblisks and priests to make money. That is the advantage of being the Great Ramesses! But while you are learning to manage early war economies, choose a leader who has the Financial trait. That will help.

 

[yanner39]

1. Put your science slider to zero at the start of the war and leave it there until the war is over.

This is a good tip. However, how long does the slider stay at 0%. I mean, the other 5 Civs are researching full throttle while you are at war. How do you catchup once the war is over?

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

This is a good tip. However, how long does the slider stay at 0%. I mean, the other 5 Civs are researching full throttle while you are at war. How do you catchup once the war is over?

The time to catch up is after the war is over. He is getting strikes because he is trying to fight a war and keep up teching at the same time. At Emperor+ some tech-happy guy like Ghandi or Masa may ALWAYS be ahead of you in tech, but you still have several ways to win the game anyway.

 

[EditorRex]

This is a good tip. However, how long does the slider stay at 0%. I mean, the other 5 Civs are researching full throttle while you are at war. How do you catchup once the war is over?

I actually find my slider near 0 a lot during key points in the early game when I'm using this overall strategy. I'm not researching using the slider. I'm researching using specialists and Great Scientists in my capital!

One trick that may be obvious to everyone else, but I realized the other day: I'm trying to balance an ugly economy and science to get Liberalism ahead of the AI pack without going totally broke or trading in my technical edge for cash and cheap old techs. I suddenly realize that I've got enough tech stored so that when my Scientist pops in about 5 turns, I'll be there. I don't get the tech any sooner by wasting extra bulbs on it. So I turn down the sci slider to 10 percent and focus those few bulbs on Machinery. I get Machinery without having to trade on the turn AFTER I pop the Great Sci for Lib and (and Nat).

 

[EditorRex]

Having a great game using this strategy as Ragnar right now and want to point out something specific about using him with this strategy in mind.

As an Aggressive leader, Ragnar's units start with the usual Vet +10 promotion. With barracks and possibly Theocracy and Heroic Epic (thanks Barbs), you can be cranking out Swords and Axes with a lot of promotions during the rise to Liberalism. Personally, I always take the Theology path to Paper, but I may do this differently if I play Ragnar again. Once you do get Berserkers, they get Amphibious promotion. And when you promote those veteran Swords and Axes to Berserker, they also get Amphibious. Even better, when you promote the Berserkers to Rifles and Infantry, they KEEP AMPHIBIOUS. If you delay the techs for Grenadiers, you can crank Berserkers out of your Heroic Epic city and then promote them to Rifles when you have the spare change. Once you get Grenadiers, you can't built Berserkers any more.

It happens that I'm on a Fractal map that worked out to Pangea. I've got the largest land area of 12 rivals, but it's mostly landlocked and I only have 2 ports. (Viking UB useless on this map.) Although I'm confident of getting a UN Diplo win shortly, the balance of power on this map won't let me do anything else (I had turned off Culture and Space so I could focus on other options.) Bottom line: I won't get to take advantage of Amphibious Infantry and Rifles in this game.

But I may try Ragnar again soon on Archipeligo map or something similar. I'm thinking this should be ripe for exploitation. It's funny how maps go. In my last game (as Pericles) on a fractal map, I had to go for the UN Diplomatic win over trying for Domination because I felt like I couldn't crank out Marines fast enough.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

Having a great game using this strategy as Ragnar right now and want to point out something specific about using him with this strategy in mind.

As an Aggressive leader, Ragnar's units start with the usual Vet +10 promotion. With barracks and possibly Theocracy and Heroic Epic (thanks Barbs), you can be cranking out Swords and Axes with a lot of promotions during the rise to Liberalism. Personally, I always take the Theology path to Paper, but I may do this differently if I play Ragnar again. Once you do get Berserkers, they get Amphibious promotion. And when you promote those veteran Swords and Axes to Berserker, they also get Amphibious. Even better, when you promote the Berserkers to Rifles and Infantry, they KEEP AMPHIBIOUS. If you delay the techs for Grenadiers, you can crank Berserkers out of your Heroic Epic city and then promote them to Rifles when you have the spare change. Once you get Grenadiers, you can't built Berserkers any more.

It happens that I'm on a Fractal map that worked out to Pangea. I've got the largest land area of 12 rivals, but it's mostly landlocked and I only have 2 ports. (Viking UB useless on this map.) Although I'm confident of getting a UN Diplo win shortly, the balance of power on this map won't let me do anything else (I had turned off Culture and Space so I could focus on other options.) Bottom line: I won't get to take advantage of Amphibious Infantry and Rifles in this game.

But I may try Ragnar again soon on Archipeligo map or something similar. I'm thinking this should be ripe for exploitation. It's funny how maps go. In my last game (as Pericles) on a fractal map, I had to go for the UN Diplomatic win over trying for Domination because I felt like I couldn't crank out Marines fast enough.

Ah, you are the person I want to talk to about Ragnar (see my "winning with Ragnar" thread). If you start a game playing Rags and see that you have no Bronze available anywhere in sight, what you you research next -- Ironworking or Alphabet? Playing Ramesses, I would research Alphabet and trade it for Ironworking, Mathmatics, etc. later to other civs because I always play for cultural victory with Ramesses and don't need iron for that. People tell me to do the same thing playing Rags. I think that is a mistake, because Rags is not nearly as well suited as Ramesses to playing for a cultural victory. If you are playing Rags the whole game without metal, you have put yourself into a deep hole that you probably won't get out of it at Immortal level. That has been my experience so far playing Rags about 15 times. I say that once you see you can't get Bronze, then you need to research Ironworking to make sure that you can get your third city on the Iron. If not, you are just guessing, and the other civs will likely grab the Iron spot before you can get there. I have experimented with this issue playing it both ways a few times and I think I am right on this. What has been your experience with Rags>?

 

[EditorRex]

Ah, you are the person I want to talk to about Ragnar (see my "winning with Ragnar" thread). If you start a game playing Rags and see that you have no Bronze available anywhere in sight, what you you research next -- Ironworking or Alphabet? Playing Ramesses, I would research Alphabet and trade it for Ironworking, Mathmatics, etc. later to other civs because I always play for cultural victory with Ramesses and don't need iron for that. People tell me to do the same thing playing Rags. I think that is a mistake, because Rags is not nearly as well suited as Ramesses to playing for a cultural victory. If you are playing Rags the whole game without metal, you have put yourself into a deep hole that you probably won't get out of it at Immortal level. That has been my experience so far playing Rags about 15 times. I say that once you see you can't get Bronze, then you need to research Ironworking to make sure that you can get your third city on the Iron. If not, you are just guessing, and the other civs will likely grab the Iron spot before you can get there. I have experimented with this issue playing it both ways a few times and I think I am right on this. What has been your experience with Rags>?

I reluctantly have to agree about the importance of Iron-working in this situation, just to secure at least one Iron, although only if you don't have another workable alternative. I usually go for early Archers as cheap but strong early defenders who will pick up experience be good promotables later. However, considering the Berserker promotion edge, playing peaceful until your archers units can get up the pipe to Rifles just isn't good enough even if you don't plan to use the troops until they become Rifles. If I'm playing Ragnar, I'm a warmonger with amphibious skillz to exploit. So you need metal to build the armies you'll want to promote. There have been a few games (not sure it works on Immortal) where I've been able to persuade a friendly and DISTANT AI to trade a military metal to me, so that is your other option if you have a good start but no metal. I guess the one other thing is that you could be in a position to spam chariots and take out somone who does have Bronze, preferably before they know they have it. The big draw back to early Iron research is that it delays your other techs. The AI will trade for it, but typically they get it pretty quickly too, so it's not as useful for trade bait as something they value as a trade but don't research, like Aesthetics. I usually research along the lines of Food techs, Wheel, Mining, Hunting and Archery, Bronze, Pottery, Writing, Aesthetics, trade for Alpha and Poly and other fill techs, Literacy, and then Iron or a trade for it. Depends a bit on the map and who I'm playing as, not to mention AI politics. In your situation, more than once, I've had to go for Iron right after trading for Alpha if no one else had it or was willing to trade. And that's not just as Ragnar. Same situation as Pericles recently. Good luck.

 

[dirtyparrot]

This is a good tip. However, how long does the slider stay at 0%. I mean, the other 5 Civs are researching full throttle while you are at war. How do you catchup once the war is over?

I try to make sure that I have researched at least pottery or Writing (preferably both) before dropping down the slider. Aim to fight short wars. And if you've permanently crippled them, but it will take too long to finish them off that's fine as well. You can always finish them off later and in the interim demand techs for peace (and then keep demanding things). I also will drop the slider if I see a bunch of great land that I want to grab as much as possible.

I don't worry to much about falling too far behind the AI in an early war. You can generally broker Aesthetics for a bunch of techs and you'll be getting some research in by running scientists.

 

[Jamgaiden]

"Around the time Literature hits home your capital should have generated the first GS. Build an academy in your capital with him and have some workers start to cottage around your capital. Build the GL in the capital, followed by the NE and have it run 2 scientists all the time after the GL and the NE are finished. The next GS you use to bulp Philosophy (switch to Pacifism and adopt the safest religion), the next for Paper, the next for Education, the next for Liberalism (don’t trade for Machinery or you can’t bulb Liberalism). If a GS shouldn’t arrive in time, backfill some more techs or prerequisites for bulbing Liberalism (you need Calendar, Metal Casting & Compass). NEVER trade for cheep techs, that only helps your rivals. Like that, you are guarantied to get Liberalism first."

I haven't updated Civ4BtS yet, but in my current game I'm following the bulping path for the Great Scientists and after I get Philosophy my next GS can only bulp techs like calendar, optics, astronomy, metal casting, drama, theology before paper. Do you do these techs before getting Civil Service or afterwards?

 

[isomittari]

I tried this strategy on two of my first monarch games, won the first one (fractal, standard, epic -> domination) and still playing the second one (fractal, standard, normal -> going for either domination or space). Land blocking strategy is amazing, but I had some troubles in the way. In the first game Shaka was my nearest neighbor and had to do chariot rush on him in the early years, thus slowing the expansion a bit. But conquering his capital made me much more powerful and eventually I caught up with the expansion. Teching pace was much faster in the first game and I got Alpha pretty early by trade. Did some nice trades with Aest and Lit but had to do a lot of backfilling and my timing with bulbs was far from perfect.

In the second game I had a lot of troubles with the expansion and economy, I think I had 8 cities at 250AD and my science slider was at 0%, barely making my income positive. Alphabet came veeery late on my continent and this slowed down the teching, and I had to deviate from the lib beeline to grab currency and some other techs so my economy wouldn't crash. I actually picked PP from lib, then teched towards rifling and after that nationalism for drafting.

Some points/mistakes I noticed from my games:

* It's better to self-research Alpha on monarch
* I didn't build enough farms on my cottage cities
* You need some early happiness resources for the cities to grow quickly enough (or research/trade Monarchy after Alpha)
* Timing of bulbs is DIFFICULT and needs some calculations (snaaty's tech path does not work since AI techs slowly on monarch)
* Selling techs (especially Literature) is nice, since you get some euros for deficit research
* Should've got Currency/Alpha sooner for producing research/wealth, now my cities only produced troops which I didn't need

Some questions:
* How do you deal with unhappiness? I think this is one of my main problems, I try to trade some luxury resources or whip away to unhappy people but still I get sad faces all over. Should I just aim for HR and produce cheap troops like warriors? Or micromanage the cities so that they are stagnant?
* On monarch, is it better to build granaries before barracks in cities that are not for production?
* If your starting location has 4+ flood plains, is it better to cottage them from the beginning or build farms to maximize growth?
* Are there any threads/info about fogbusting (how it works specifically)?

 

[Nick Carpathia]

I tried this strategy on two of my first monarch games, won the first one (fractal, standard, epic -> domination) and still playing the second one (fractal, standard, normal -> going for either domination or space). Land blocking strategy is amazing, but I had some troubles in the way. In the first game Shaka was my nearest neighbor and had to do chariot rush on him in the early years, thus slowing the expansion a bit. But conquering his capital made me much more powerful and eventually I caught up with the expansion. Teching pace was much faster in the first game and I got Alpha pretty early by trade. Did some nice trades with Aest and Lit but had to do a lot of backfilling and my timing with bulbs was far from perfect.

In the second game I had a lot of troubles with the expansion and economy, I think I had 8 cities at 250AD and my science slider was at 0%, barely making my income positive. Alphabet came veeery late on my continent and this slowed down the teching, and I had to deviate from the lib beeline to grab currency and some other techs so my economy wouldn't crash. I actually picked PP from lib, then teched towards rifling and after that nationalism for drafting.

Some points/mistakes I noticed from my games:

* It's better to self-research Alpha on monarch
* I didn't build enough farms on my cottage cities
* You need some early happiness resources for the cities to grow quickly enough (or research/trade Monarchy after Alpha)
* Timing of bulbs is DIFFICULT and needs some calculations (snaaty's tech path does not work since AI techs slowly on monarch)
* Selling techs (especially Literature) is nice, since you get some euros for deficit research
* Should've got Currency/Alpha sooner for producing research/wealth, now my cities only produced troops which I didn't need

Some questions:
* How do you deal with unhappiness? I think this is one of my main problems, I try to trade some luxury resources or whip away to unhappy people but still I get sad faces all over. Should I just aim for HR and produce cheap troops like warriors? Or micromanage the cities so that they are stagnant?
* On monarch, is it better to build granaries before barracks in cities that are not for production?
* If your starting location has 4+ flood plains, is it better to cottage them from the beginning or build farms to maximize growth?
* Are there any threads/info about fogbusting (how it works specifically)?

I'm a lowly monarch player too, and I've found aesthetics before alphabet can be pretty viable when you war chariot kill 2 AIs (Hattie game), or start in terrible land (current Ghandi game). I've also been doing liberalism beelines at the expense of other technologies, which is probably a mistake at Monarch (I should have liberalism'd something like chemistry or steel instead of nationalism, that would have started my genocidal rampage dozens of turns earlier.

Hereditary rule is one of those essential cannot-ignore techs unless you have pyramids-representation. After all, you're going to go through civil service, and what better way to let your capital (possibly worth 50% of your empire's commerce) hit its food/health cap than HR garrisons? Capitals are typically your best cities, offering good commerce and production, and you'll need to work those tiles in order to fuel your planned liberalism beeline. Also, cottage those flood-plains unless you have no other food resources, because those tiles are food positive anyway, and you'll just end up hitting your health/happy cap if you farm them.

 

[Merzbow]

Got a domination victory on Monarch for the first time ever using this strategy. As has just been discussed because of the slower AI teching you're not going to be able to follow Snaaty's timeline exactly, but all of the essential points he makes still apply. One thing to realize is that you can't use this strategy if you don't have enough neighbors to trade with. If you're stuck with Izzy on a continent all to yourselves, forget it, go for a chariot/sword/cat rush (before city defenses get too high) instead. A great map to try this on is Inland Sea - plenty of neighbors, relatively easy to block off space with city placement.

Snaaty's focus on using espionage to take down city defenses is also spot-on. Cats and trebs are uselessly slow for bombard past a certain point, and you don't want to wait for both rifles and cannon to start your rush (although I haven't tried the alternative strategy mentioned of a mace/cannon rush). As long as your opponent has no more than musketmen a rifle/spy rush is more than enough to walk all over him.

And yes, HR is absolutely necessary unless you're lucky enough to have lots of happy resources or can trade for such. You can park all of those obsolete (and too-expensive-to-upgrade) early units you had to build so that you wouldn't get rushed early by psychopaths like Saladin...

 

[Dave Hartwick]

Great point about inland sea being a good map for learning this strategy, Merzbow. I'd say Pangea and Continents can also work well.

As a general comment to some earlier discussion, on Monarch difficulty you may be able to pick up Steel from Liberalism and still win the race to Economics for the free GM. I strongly prefer to avoid all warfare until either rifles or cannons.

* How do you deal with unhappiness? I think this is one of my main problems, I try to trade some luxury resources or whip away to unhappy people but still I get sad faces all over. Should I just aim for HR and produce cheap troops like warriors? Or micromanage the cities so that they are stagnant?

You can delay HR if you have a happiness UB such as the Ottoman Hamman. Two early luxuries (obtained through trade or REX) plus 2 for the UB gets a big enough capital to work your bonuses plus mines and also run two scientists. All you really need. Representation via the Pyramids is another option.

I'd suggest only picking up Monarchy in trade if possible as the AI likes to research it and isn't shy about trading it.

That means I have to micromanage a lot in the early game to avoid growing past happy caps. Cranking out workers and settlers does the trick and is a good way to wait out whipping penalties. It also means I can keep working my best tiles.

* On monarch, is it better to build granaries before barracks in cities that are not for production?

Snaaty's suggestion to build barracks first is at least partly to keep your power rating high enough to discourage attacks. My understanding is that you need a very high power rating (usually >1.2 if I recall) to do so. Standard diplomacy (i.e., giving into demands, avoiding religious antagonism, etc.) is enough IMO. You don't need a barracks in every city in the early game. Later, if you follow the nationalism phase of the Snaaty strat, you may want a barracks in every city for the +2 if nothing else.

* If your starting location has 4+ flood plains, is it better to cottage them from the beginning or build farms to maximize growth?

I'd go with cottages. The only time I farm flood plains is for a production city. A production city ideally will only have a couple FPs at most anyway. If I've run out of improvements for my worker and haven't learned Pottery, I'll go ahead and farm some FPs but replace the farms with cottages.

* Are there any threads/info about fogbusting (how it works specifically)?

Yes, there's an excellent one, but I can't find it, sorry. Basically, any unit (workers, even, and including barbarians) will prevent barbarian spawn for two squares in all directions. However, barbarian cities can appear in any suitable square not in line of sight of a unit, and I can't remember if that includes barbarian units, nor can I remember if there's a turn requirement.

 

[ReligionIsDumb]

I am having some serious problems with this strategy on the latest version of BTS. I am not sure why. So let me explain.

I am playing as the dutch (financial as suggested). I am playing a continents map on marathon difficulty on a large map on diety mode. I have beaten diety with Inca before, but that is kind of cheating since quechua are so OP.

My starting city had coast, river, and lake with two cow, corn, and ivory. Since I have to get archery anyway, I go hunting first to get the elephant camped after I am done with the corn (start with ag). Then I go straight to archery. I finish my worker and start a warrior. Then I build 4 archers while I grow and tech animal husbandry. I popped sailing from a hut during this time. I am able to block off my whole peninsula with one city which has horse, non-irrigated rice and some more cow and it is coastal...other side of the peninsula. I fog bust with the archers I built to stop barbs from making cities on my peninsula and get 6 workers and 4 cities failry quickly. City 2 I already described. City 3 has marble and MORE cow. City 4 has rice and fish. I have 6 workers after I build my 3rd settler busily building farms and mines and chopping....still no pottery

so my tech order so far is hunting, archery, animal husbandry, mining, BW...this takes forever btw. I have no gold or gems. I still need wheel to get the ivory hooked up and masonry to use the marble. I also need pottery if I want to cottage. However, I notice that an AI already has alphabet. This is bad news. So, since marble doesn't really give me anything I NEED right now and the city with the marble should be going commerce anyway, I skip masonry for now hoping to trade for it after I get aesthetics. I have 4 more city sites in mind in my back lands and I have them staked out with my units. The first city I built is using the cow,horse, and rice to get a barracks and troops. It is also the city most likely to be attacked, so this makes sense. Cities 3 and 4 are both coastal and are building the lighthouse and barracks to use coastal squares for commerce. Since I have plenty of coast and I am feeling a LOT of pressure to get aesthetics. I skip pottery for writing. About the time I get writing, things start to fall apart. Isabella sends a galley over to my peninsula and sticks a city behind my blocking city. It is a useless city site right now, but has banana in a jungle that I wanted eventually and it is coastal (Coastal cities are awesome for the dutch with their dike building).

My economy is also tanking. The upkeep from 4 cities and my 8 archers and 2 warriors is about 30 gold. I have access to horse, but chariots aren't really useful defensively, so I haven't gotten any yet. I am hoping to trade for horseback riding once i get aesthetics. My capital is building a settler and is working the corn, cows, and elephant with two scientists. All total, this gives me 10 gold and 6 beakers. It can only get to size 6 with my ivory. None of the AI want to trade me for any happy resources. My military production city is size limited to size 4 for now due to whipping a library. I didn't really want to whip anymore troops out, but I didn't have a way to slow the growth except making citizens out of them, so I whipped a library there so that I could use scientists to control growth. (I am creative, so it was cheap). Who know, maybe I will get one of my GS there eventually if I still can't find a way to grow. The problem is that this city is making only 1 gold from tiles and 3 beakers from the scientist. Cities 3 and 4 are still whipping their lighthouse/barracks, City 3 is working the cow and city 4 is working rice and fish. All together, they make 1 gold. Adding in trade routes gives me 4 gold. Note that I say gold rather than commerce because I am on 0% beakers. My only science is coming from scientists. And as you can see, I am in the red, hard. I can't seem to keep my economy from collapsing by expanding to 4 cities so quickly. I need currency (trade routes)before I can get up to 4 cities and CoL with courthouses before I can get up to 8. Otherwise, I am spending more gold on upkeep than I earn from my cities.

Just to keep my economy afloat, I have switched to working every water tile available in my capital and city 2. That lets me break even with a couple scientists plugging away towards aesthetics, but its really quite ridiculous.

Finally, and this is the really the death knell for me. Charlemagne researched aesthetics! ....yeah... I don't know why. I suspect he wants one of the wonders that require that tech. I JUST started aesthetics and with my economy, it is 60+ turns (remember I am on marathon) away. By that time, he will have traded with the AIs for it and I will be screwed.

Anyway, I can't figure out A) why isabella just invaded my peninsula (bloody city is on a hill too so it will be a pain to take) B) why I can't keep my economy going with 4 cities like the OP could and C) what circumstances make the AI violate the OPs statement that the AI never goes aesthetics.

 

[Snaaty]

to answer some questions quick:

at what time was aest researched? some ai go for it around 600 BC. lots of bad luck and a very fast teching ai can get it earlier (3 gems near capital will do)

you have to block your land via your culture, meaning also the costal tile. if you dont have culture there settlers will get shipped. another quick question: why didnt you simply close boders for 10 turns with the ai that sent the boat when spotting it?


more detailed questions (why you tanked your eco and such):

post a starting save and the save where you currently stand. another quick asumption: having 8 archers, 6 workers and 4 cities before pottery seems like you expanded too fast. you need to reach pottery or writing before you can tank your eco completely, or simply leave away bronze if you have enough archers and only need for 1 blocking city

on a side note:
i never have played marathon speed so far, so no idea if that changes things a bit (more turns might mean more turns upkeep for your army?). and i usually play on normal map size so on big size more ai´s with techtrading on might mean faster tech pace for the ai in the beginning (later also for you, once you enter into the trading aera, so this might be ok...)

 

[houseofordos]

Snaaty,

I ve tried out your strategy on emperor and immortal. It seems to work well although I ve not been able to keep pace with your timeline. I have been having problems at Deity for the past week... been reloading non-stop. My questions :-
1) I play Darius and I almost never get a starting location that has backlands. Also AI spawning locations are quite close by and I can never block them off in time You talked about early warring in the event I cant block the AI off in time. Can you elaborate further ?
2) You mentioned backfiling some techs and not trading for cheap techs. Deity level is not favourable in terms of trade fairness with the AI. Do you have advise on what techs to research myself and what to trade with AI (aside from aesthethics) so that they dont get too far ahead of me in tech ?

Thanks !

 

[ReligionIsDumb]

to answer some questions quick:

at what time was aest researched? some ai go for it around 600 BC. lots of bad luck and a very fast teching ai can get it earlier (3 gems near capital will do)

you have to block your land via your culture, meaning also the costal tile. if you dont have culture there settlers will get shipped. another quick question: why didnt you simply close boders for 10 turns with the ai that sent the boat when spotting it?


more detailed questions (why you tanked your eco and such):

post a starting save and the save where you currently stand. another quick asumption: having 8 archers, 6 workers and 4 cities before pottery seems like you expanded too fast. you need to reach pottery or writing before you can tank your eco completely, or simply leave away bronze if you have enough archers and only need for 1 blocking city

on a side note:
i never have played marathon speed so far, so no idea if that changes things a bit (more turns might mean more turns upkeep for your army?). and i usually play on normal map size so on big size more ai´s with techtrading on might mean faster tech pace for the ai in the beginning (later also for you, once you enter into the trading aera, so this might be ok...)

I am at work right now, so i can't look at my save right now. I gave up on the game and I now have a game going on immortal that looks promising, but it didn't use your strat. I did a variation that worked better for me.

600 BC for Aesthetics sounds about right. It was charlemagne first and then another picked it up before I got it. I have been noticing this a lot in BTS. If the AI wants a wonder, they will also prioritize the techs for it. I think charlemagne probably had access to ivory, marble, or gold (or all 3, he had a huge empire) and wanted one of the wonders that Aesthetics allows. I also got beat to the great library because the AI teched literature before I could.

Isabella was able to get behind my lines because she was on an island to the southeast. I had the land passage blocked to my southwest, but she didn't need to pass through my cultural borders to get to my peninsula by sea. She sent a galley across the gap between our islands(once her cultural boundaries extended to the intervening ocean squares) and plopped a city behind my lines. I had closed borders with everyone because I wasn't feeling confident they wouldn't just go right through.

I will try to figure out the save posting mechanism for this board when i get home.

As for my economy, I think that the big problem was that I didn't open borders with anyone. That extra 4 gold from better trade routes could have made the difference(and let me get pottery sooner).

I can't seem to get this thing to work. I follow the instructions precisely and build worker, archers to happy cap (usually 4 or 5 archers come out here), then worker, settler, worker worker. By the time I have finished my first settler on standard map size, the AI has taken my nearest copper. horseback riding is far out of my way for teching since I need to beat the AI to literature. So I am stuck with archers and chariots (if I manage to grab some horse) until feudalism...which I never survive to. I get taken out shortly after construction is researched. The first settler just comes really late. You claim it works on standard map size, but in every standard map size game I have played, I can not get more than 4 cities using this strat because the AI expands too fast.


The strategy that ended up working(so far) for me was a worker worker settler build where I rush BW and chop the second worker and settler. If my second city can grab copper, I have my capitol continue making workers while I settle and hook up the copper. As soon as I get copper hooked up, I make axemen for defense. On immortal, I can get the axemen up and running before the barbs start entering my cultural borders. I doubt this is the case on diety, but I am going to check after the next time I fail with your strat. Also that early second city really helps me expand faster since both cities are actually big enough to do something useful. Since you can get archers in time even if your BW gamble fails, it doesn't seem too risky to me.

I did this with Peter on a standard Terra map, and I have 7 cities compared to the AI's 9-10. I am able to keep up on tech and I am pumping GP like crazy in my capitol. I did a variation that involved building some wonders in this game. I started with stone, so I chop rushed the pyramids in order to get representation early. This made sense to me since I am philosophical and A) get more GP from wonders and B) want to run lots of specialists. It meshed well with representation. I didn't have access to marble, but I was able to get the great library and the national epic along with the hanging gardens in my capitol. Unfortunately, light bulbing liberalism may not happen this game. I have too large a chance of getting an engineer. But I have 3 super-engineers in my capitol busily building notre dame.

Anyway, this thread is about your strat, and it looks solid on paper, but I really can't seem to get it to work. Last time I tried it, I had just put my 3rd city put up when the AI put a city next to my capitol's cultural borders effectively leaving my only remaining city option a tundra city on the coast with one sea resource. 4 cities isn't going to hack it. That was a pangea map. The time before that was a continents map where I had AI on both sides of me in a long 3 city wide continent. I tried to block, but I wasn't quick enough and the top AI squeezed along the sides until he couldn't go any further. Then as soon as I blocked him, he declared war on me despite the fact that I had plenty of archers and he had an attacking stack consisting of an axeman and a chariot. If the AI is trapped and the only way for them to expand is through person X, their attack threshold is greatly reduced. Of course, since I didn't have any copper or horse (AI grabbed it all before I had my first settler out), his axeman and chariot combo got two victories in a row against fortified archers and razed my latest city. That's when I quit.

Perhaps you could include in the walkthrough how much one should be chopping early game and how much one should be doing improvements. Like, in those first 3 settlers and 5 workers, how many forests should fall? On marathon, that is 1500 hammers and forests give 90 hammers.

Could you post the years that each of your settlers come out in the demo game? That might help me gauge the right amount of chopping.

Another problem is the initial tech/build does not seem to work as advertised. In your guide, you say get techs to work your capitol squares, then get archery, then BW.
Techs to work squares may include fishing, Ag, AH, hunting, and mining. We probably don't need all of them, but we usually need hunting(for archery) and at least 2 others to keep our worker busy once he is done. You may start with as many as two of these, but still that is at least 1 tech (possibly more) before we can start archery, and researching a tech takes about as long as building a worker. So I build a worker and get techs to give the worker something to do. Now I am done with my worker and I can still only make warriors. So, your guide says that I should actually make a warrior(or scout). My question is....why? I am just going to delete it later ain't I? Wouldn't it be more useful to put some hammers into the barracks. Is a warrior really something worth building? Furthermore, even if you have a completely focused square for food, you still get a warrior in 20 turns. I don't have archery by this time. So now what...make another worthless warrior? Once I get an archer, it is still a long time before I get BW, and my worker has run out of tiles he can improve without knocking down trees. So now my worker is standing around with his dick in his hand. Also, I am at happy cap now, all my archers are out and about fog busting, but I still don't have BW and it is time to make my second worker. I can't chop help him because I don't have BW yet. In fact, I usually get BW about the same time I get my first settler out, which is WAY too late.

I guess what I would like to know is, in your demo game, what year you got each tech and completed each unit. Then I can maybe see how this magics together to make an efficient build. But I don't see how the timing works. It doesn't work for me. I always get stuck building 2 or 3 warriors because I don't have archery in time or have a worker standing around doing nothing for a while. It is always one or the other unless I get really lucky and pick up a couple techs from huts.

 

[Snaaty]

Snaaty,

I ve tried out your strategy on emperor and immortal. It seems to work well although I ve not been able to keep pace with your timeline. I have been having problems at Deity for the past week... been reloading non-stop. My questions :-
1) I play Darius and I almost never get a starting location that has backlands. Also AI spawning locations are quite close by and I can never block them off in time You talked about early warring in the event I cant block the AI off in time. Can you elaborate further ?
2) You mentioned backfiling some techs and not trading for cheap techs. Deity level is not favourable in terms of trade fairness with the AI. Do you have advise on what techs to research myself and what to trade with AI (aside from aesthethics) so that they dont get too far ahead of me in tech ?

Thanks !

these i can answer:

darius is a nice leader, maybe the best on deity (upkeep is brutal there). playing emperor or immortal, you might try eli of england (fin/phil). upkeep isnt that high and therefore phil might be better for earlier gps and therefore faster teching.

getting to a minimum of 6 cities peacfully:
this should be possible in most cases. if you arent able to, then you are using a different (for that approach wrong) settling strategy. your fist cities must be settled towards the ai, ideal are blocking cities. only the later cities should be in your backland, so you must force yourself sometimes to leave the juicy spots for later. post a save in the normal strat. forum with one of the starts you didnt make it and i´m sure you will get a lot of feedback where to settle in case you want to block the ai (for some starts it never will be possible, but that are rare cases, for most is should be possible)

tech-brokering:
you should use the 0% - 100% research strategy. that means:

after you have traded aest around (you need to go like 2-3 turns at 100% research into alpha to make a trade possible alpha-aest), you switch off research and keep the trading screen checked. if you have enough money in your pocket to research the next tech at 100% research rate (money you loose per turn at 100% reserach* turns you need for the tech = money you need to save) research the tech the other ai´s are missing (or most ai´s are missing). literature, drama compass, col are all nice trading baits. you also need to check the religious situation, meaning if a religious isolated leader gets col (after the reli is gone, the reli techs drop drastically in priority), all other leaders will delay it quite a bit. like that you wont be first to col, but you can trade it to the other leaders cause they very likely wont trade with the isolated one.

construction, math, hbr, ironw, alpha, mc are all high priority for most ais, so these are techs that you better trade for (most techs that give military power are priorized by most ai)

 

[Snaaty]

I am at work right now, so i can't look at my save right now. I gave up on the game and I now have a game going on immortal that looks promising, but it didn't use your strat. I did a variation that worked better for me.

600 BC for Aesthetics sounds about right. It was charlemagne first and then another picked it up before I got it. I have been noticing this a lot in BTS. If the AI wants a wonder, they will also prioritize the techs for it. I think charlemagne probably had access to ivory, marble, or gold (or all 3, he had a huge empire) and wanted one of the wonders that Aesthetics allows. I also got beat to the great library because the AI teched literature before I could.

Isabella was able to get behind my lines because she was on an island to the southeast. I had the land passage blocked to my southwest, but she didn't need to pass through my cultural borders to get to my peninsula by sea. She sent a galley across the gap between our islands(once her cultural boundaries extended to the intervening ocean squares) and plopped a city behind my lines. I had closed borders with everyone because I wasn't feeling confident they wouldn't just go right through.

I will try to figure out the save posting mechanism for this board when i get home.

As for my economy, I think that the big problem was that I didn't open borders with anyone. That extra 4 gold from better trade routes could have made the difference(and let me get pottery sooner).

I can't seem to get this thing to work. I follow the instructions precisely and build worker, archers to happy cap (usually 4 or 5 archers come out here), then worker, settler, worker worker. By the time I have finished my first settler on standard map size, the AI has taken my nearest copper. horseback riding is far out of my way for teching since I need to beat the AI to literature. So I am stuck with archers and chariots (if I manage to grab some horse) until feudalism...which I never survive to. I get taken out shortly after construction is researched. The first settler just comes really late. You claim it works on standard map size, but in every standard map size game I have played, I can not get more than 4 cities using this strat because the AI expands too fast.


The strategy that ended up working(so far) for me was a worker worker settler build where I rush BW and chop the second worker and settler. If my second city can grab copper, I have my capitol continue making workers while I settle and hook up the copper. As soon as I get copper hooked up, I make axemen for defense. On immortal, I can get the axemen up and running before the barbs start entering my cultural borders. I doubt this is the case on diety, but I am going to check after the next time I fail with your strat. Also that early second city really helps me expand faster since both cities are actually big enough to do something useful. Since you can get archers in time even if your BW gamble fails, it doesn't seem too risky to me.

I did this with Peter on a standard Terra map, and I have 7 cities compared to the AI's 9-10. I am able to keep up on tech and I am pumping GP like crazy in my capitol. I did a variation that involved building some wonders in this game. I started with stone, so I chop rushed the pyramids in order to get representation early. This made sense to me since I am philosophical and A) get more GP from wonders and B) want to run lots of specialists. It meshed well with representation. I didn't have access to marble, but I was able to get the great library and the national epic along with the hanging gardens in my capitol. Unfortunately, light bulbing liberalism may not happen this game. I have too large a chance of getting an engineer. But I have 3 super-engineers in my capitol busily building notre dame.

Anyway, this thread is about your strat, and it looks solid on paper, but I really can't seem to get it to work. Last time I tried it, I had just put my 3rd city put up when the AI put a city next to my capitol's cultural borders effectively leaving my only remaining city option a tundra city on the coast with one sea resource. 4 cities isn't going to hack it. That was a pangea map. The time before that was a continents map where I had AI on both sides of me in a long 3 city wide continent. I tried to block, but I wasn't quick enough and the top AI squeezed along the sides until he couldn't go any further. Then as soon as I blocked him, he declared war on me despite the fact that I had plenty of archers and he had an attacking stack consisting of an axeman and a chariot. If the AI is trapped and the only way for them to expand is through person X, their attack threshold is greatly reduced. Of course, since I didn't have any copper or horse (AI grabbed it all before I had my first settler out), his axeman and chariot combo got two victories in a row against fortified archers and razed my latest city. That's when I quit.

Perhaps you could include in the walkthrough how much one should be chopping early game and how much one should be doing improvements. Like, in those first 3 settlers and 5 workers, how many forests should fall? On marathon, that is 1500 hammers and forests give 90 hammers.

Could you post the years that each of your settlers come out in the demo game? That might help me gauge the right amount of chopping.

Another problem is the initial tech/build does not seem to work as advertised. In your guide, you say get techs to work your capitol squares, then get archery, then BW.
Techs to work squares may include fishing, Ag, AH, hunting, and mining. We probably don't need all of them, but we usually need hunting(for archery) and at least 2 others to keep our worker busy once he is done. You may start with as many as two of these, but still that is at least 1 tech (possibly more) before we can start archery, and researching a tech takes about as long as building a worker. So I build a worker and get techs to give the worker something to do. Now I am done with my worker and I can still only make warriors. So, your guide says that I should actually make a warrior(or scout). My question is....why? I am just going to delete it later ain't I? Wouldn't it be more useful to put some hammers into the barracks. Is a warrior really something worth building? Furthermore, even if you have a completely focused square for food, you still get a warrior in 20 turns. I don't have archery by this time. So now what...make another worthless warrior? Once I get an archer, it is still a long time before I get BW, and my worker has run out of tiles he can improve without knocking down trees. So now my worker is standing around with his dick in his hand. Also, I am at happy cap now, all my archers are out and about fog busting, but I still don't have BW and it is time to make my second worker. I can't chop help him because I don't have BW yet. In fact, I usually get BW about the same time I get my first settler out, which is WAY too late.

I guess what I would like to know is, in your demo game, what year you got each tech and completed each unit. Then I can maybe see how this magics together to make an efficient build. But I don't see how the timing works. It doesn't work for me. I always get stuck building 2 or 3 warriors because I don't have archery in time or have a worker standing around doing nothing for a while. It is always one or the other unless I get really lucky and pick up a couple techs from huts.

these i cant answer

problem here is that is is all very specific and detailed. and if you check the date of this guide, you will notice it already is hanging some time around here, so i simply dont remember all the details you want to know.

the best solution for you would be the following:

check out one of the immortal/deity games going on in the main strat forum (kossin is doing one just now, with hatty/egypt). shaddow this game or play it together with the other deity cracks in public in the forum posting your saves and some pics. like that you will see what and how things are done "live".

second option would be starting a public game yourself. simply post your start and such in the forum and play it public, asking for advice there if you get stuck. if you post an interesting save, chances are high some cracks will jump into the game and play it in parallel with you. if you decide to do so, send me a pm and if i find time (and the game looks interesting to me) i will also try to play the game or at least some turns into the game (most interesting anyways is the part up to 1 ad)

i also played in quite some public deity games here in the forum, simply use the advanced search and look for threads i posted in, in the strat. forum. maybe an even better option would be downloading some of these starting saves and try your hands with some of these games (the ultimate challenge or something like this was one series i still remember, hosted by various players (very hard starts and conditions))

another option is going into the succession games section (games played in teams), and look for games hosted by obsolete. he is doing some deity SGs (succession games) right now. joining a good team is another great learnign experience (is has been for me)