BTS - Emperor level

Finally won a game at emperor level. I dominated and eventually won a diplomatic victory from UN having 4/5 remaining civilization as vassals.

The key to winning for me was a targeted Immortal rush against neighboring Germany. Then managing diplomacy and picking off the weakest neighbor one by one. A Cuirassier rush later in game helped finish them off.

 

Good job ... I'm trying to get where I almost always win on Prince. Then I will move up and try to get good at Monarch. On my current game I did an archer/bowman rush (uploading the video now). Here is my start ... if you won on immortal you are good enough to give me ideas

 

Hey dgang - If you really want to learn the game spend time over in Strategy & Tips. I saw a lot of issues watching a bit of your Hammy game there. Like the poor settling decision and teching Archery. While you may get away with that somewhat on Prince..those decisions will make it very hard for you to move up levels.

 

I thought my settling decision was better than good ... it opened the grassland for food and added a hammer ... based on what was visible ... I thought that was a good choice?

 

ha..no it was terrible. First, always move your starting unit to get some visibility to make better settling decisions. Your focus on a settling decision is food specials. Generally, one can assume on standard map script that you will have at least one good food special (plains hill sheep is not a good food special but is part of the algorithm nonetheless). - even if you don't see that food initially. Instead you moved away from your food special and actually settled on food.

Settle in place (SIP) was the best decision here given the information, with pigs and sheep for food. Fairly strong start. Relying on grass farms as your food source is very weak.

AH would have been first tech here. I don't even tech Archery in most games. Bowmen suck anyway.

Yeah, an archer rush might work on Prince. But actually a warrior rush is better and faster if you are going to do that. Regardless, either strategy is going to get you no where on higher levels.

Almost always you are going to tech worker techs first..for your food specials, unless you start with the food tech. Then Bronze Working for chops and whips.

I assure you that if you get a little instruction from Strategy & Tips, you will totally rethink how you play this game and enjoy tremendous success

 

I read everything so far. The comments make sense but I was actually following things I have read from the Strategy and Tips section. I followed Sisiutil's games back in the day and read his stuff, by the way.
I largely followed Snaaty's guide from Strategy and Tips https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...s-for-standard-speed-and-maps-emperor.248435/
(1) I didn't waste a lot of time on other techs as archery on higher levels is supposed to be more important.
(2) I started with agriculture so I could irrigate immediately.
(3) I have seen several people suggest that it is either animal husbandry or bronze working but not both (early on) on higher levels.
(4) I did lead with the warrior to see what I could from the plains hill.
(5) Those pigs on top were not on grassland by the way. So all starting food sources were nerfed in some way.
Can you point to an article that you think I should read?

 

Not familiar with Snaaty's guide, but that is from like 2007. I'm not sure if was before BTS. Things have changed a lot. (ha..later on Snaaty was famous for is Deity AW games) Sis's article is very basic and geared toward noble. A lot of those guides are very outdated...even if guys like Snaaty later on became very good. Neither really address the finer details of the the "start". Early game is vitally important in Civ iv and getting right.

And honestly, though Sis's ALC games were fun to follow back in the day, he was never all that good of a player. But certainly would not start your game the way you did.

Archery is never important except sometimes on Deity level only for barbs. Archery is a dead end tech that does nothing for you here.

irrigate what? 3F farms are weak except maybe to augment other strong food resources.

This is tad more complex..but I'm not sure what you are basing this on. Really it comes down to what you need to improve your food. In this case AH was needed to improve pigs and sheep. Decisions from there can vary based on situations. Lots of forest or no horses then BW definitely next. I'd probably still tech BW next anyway, but other factors could play into the decisions in other situations. AH and BW are definitely not mutually exclusive.
BW opens the most powerful mechanic in the game

I must have missed that, but he did not show you anything that would have warranted moving the settler from his starting position.

Hill pigs are still very strong and your main food source. Combined with sheep you have two strong tiles for worker/settler production and some whipping. You simply do not move away from your best food resource. it's one of the absolute golden rules of this game. plain grass farms are not considered food..just augments existing food depending on the city

Really there is no recent definitive guide but a very recent new one has been started by a great player over in Strategy & Tips, which you can find here (it's stickied too):

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/beginner-help-the-basics.648469/

In the "Strategy Articles" subforum under S&T look for the "Civ Illustrated #" guides. There are 4 of them that are relatively recent that cover diplomacy (AI coding), city specialization, city placement and hybrid economy. All good stuff and I reference the "Know your Enemy" one a lot.

Watching some Let's Plays are always good. Lain and Absolutely Zero do mainly Deity ones. Deity involves some more advanced and unique early strategies, but you will still get a lot of good basics from it..like watching how they settle, what they improve and how they tech early. Here is Lain's ongoing thread in S&T..his YT link is in his sig:

note: Lain does love his archery...but, again, he is an advanced Deity level player and never does so at the expense of immediate worker techs and food.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/post-a-tough-deity-map-for-me-to-play.620140/


Next, I recommend simply becoming more involved in what is going on in Strategy & Tips. This is where I learned how to play this game 11 years ago and have been active there since. Run a shadow game there to get direct advice from folks while you play. For example, this is a guy we are helping right now:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/shadow-game-monarch-ramesses.652665/

Again, I would just like to emphasize that there is so much for you to learn about this game and I guarantee you that your perspective on the game will change dramatically once you take advantage of these resources. I take it that you've been playing this game off on on for at least 7 years or more, no? ..and still you are making decisions like I saw in your video. There is a better way

 

lymond I read your post. I will take some time to look over your links. Thank You.

 

The only time I research archery is for a horse archer rush.
On deity, if I'm down to needing it, I'll usually end up restarting because I figure I'm going to lose anyway. I lose a lot on Deity.