Challenging Emperor game

[Pengu]

If you think you've got emperor difficulty covered this is a game for you.
Fractal+BAT mod and BUG mod no huts or events

 

[sampsa]

I'll play if you can get it without BAT

 

[krikav]

I loaded the game with BAT, made a worldbuilder save, then started a scenario with that with Buffy5.
This should create a normal save I think, however... The flags of civs will be all funky.
This should be perfecly doable to fix with some sort of script if someone has the savvy and the energy to do one.
As it is... we have to endure funky flags with these dirty conversions of BAT-saves!

Spoiler Starting Screenshot :

 

[sampsa]

@krikav Thanks!

I think people should try to play it themselves first, then see my first spoiler for my idea of what to do

Spoiler :

The issue: Not many -resources. Pretty much only the dry corn and two clams available. 2nd issue is that you seem to be semi-isolated with a warmonger, but I would say that is a much smaller thing. He can even get to friendly in the BCs if he founds a religion. Need to gift a city too of course.

To me, everything points towards a

Spoiler :

construction attack. Traits are very good for it, land is decent (lots of green river cottages, lots of forest to chop).

T50

Spoiler :

SIP is a bit annoying because it's not on a river, but at least it keeps a ton of forest. Settler @2 seems best because lack of good tiles. Not using the dye would be a big mistake. With copper I kept producing settler/worker. Maybe should've been faster with the 4th city 1W of northern clam. Then just cottage the green and go towards construction.

 

[Pengu]

@krikav Thanks!

I think people should try to play it themselves first, then see my first spoiler for my idea of what to do

Spoiler :

The issue: Not many -resources. Pretty much only the dry corn and two clams available. 2nd issue is that you seem to be semi-isolated with a warmonger, but I would say that is a much smaller thing. He can even get to friendly in the BCs if he founds a religion. Need to gift a city too of course.

To me, everything points towards a

Spoiler :

construction attack. Traits are very good for it, land is decent (lots of green river cottages, lots of forest to chop).

T50

Spoiler :

SIP is a bit annoying because it's not on a river, but at least it keeps a ton of forest. Settler @2 seems best because lack of good tiles. Not using the dye would be a big mistake. With copper I kept producing settler/worker. Maybe should've been faster with the 4th city 1W of northern clam. Then just cottage the green and go towards construction.

View attachment 633257

I did settle the first 2 cities as you did. Interesting how you solve the map

 

[pigswill]

sampsa

Spoiler :

A major advantage is that the player is the only civ that attacks at Friendly

 

[sampsa]

T95

Spoiler :

Turned tech off for many turns waiting for a library. A bit too long.

After construction I had enough gold to get alpha, so why not. Maybe get a trade or two before attacking. Getting pillaged by barb galleons. 1 library, monuments everywhere for . Surprisingly fast expansion by emperor AI.

 

[sampsa]

T115

Spoiler :

Declared T100 or so. Texcoco-Tenochtitlan-Teotihuacan(Mids!). Lost 3 cats . The biggest difference between emperor and immortal seems to be that emperor AI doesn't spam units. Resistance was very mild, just waltz in and take. Took IW+sailing+40g for peace. Oh got AH via trade before attack. Then went medi-ph-CoL, now philo to switch to caste+paci post war to generate the for astro bulb. Won't be a great date, but decent. Also will have +10 cities soon. Have enough units to just grab what I want. Probably can't get any decent tech in peace deal anymore, unless he happens to go say calendar now, but I'm guessing it's construction.

 

[sampsa]

T135

Spoiler :

Re-declared and took some cities. Got only archery and poly in peace deal, poor punk had nothing else. Switched to caste+paci immediately when available, one GS out 2nd one coming in 7. Perhaps too many cities delays optics/astro a bit. I don't build courthouses, a bit hard when not in slavery, too. Trying to fail Chichen Itza but I'm afraid it won't get built in a long time, even if someone got CoL 1000 years ago.

edit: oh also forgot to mention earlier, 1st GS was used for an academy in capital.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

^

Spoiler :

You left him alive, don't you have any mercy ?!
Please, put the poor boy out of his misery !

 

[sampsa]

^

Spoiler :

Indeed maybe a bit moot for techs that I don't really need. Just wanted to stop the war for a while due to unhappiness and my units being out of position. But no worries, his suffering will end soon!

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Oh, it was just a light-hearted comment, Sampsa,

Spoiler :

I'm sure you can capture the remaining no-food cities at your leisure.
I didn't mean to seem to criticize/recommend anything.

Gratuitous :spam:

 

[sampsa]

T150

Spoiler :

Finally Monty is gone. For motherland unhappiness it was probably better just to take him out earlier instead of extorting some useless techs. Got Chicken failgold at a nice time some 6 turns ago. Optics is in this turn, have astro bulbers ready, but need to trade for calendar+aesth. I'm settling 3 more cities at astro. I think I'll just see the tech situation and then decide when to go inter-continental conquest. Game is clearly in the bag though.

 

[sampsa]

I try to finish the game, but the rest is not really interesting. Everything of importance happened

Spoiler :

before and right after the first war declaration. In the first 100 turns. First step is to get the cities (4 in this case) up and contributing as fast as you can. Improve food, get granaries up as fast as you can and start growing on cottages. Monuments for are a nice bonus, so you can just slow build them or put a chop in. I wouldn't whip them because it's costing you . If you whip something other than a granary, it should be a worker/settler (minimize the amount of turns you slow build for max efficiency).

Border pops are even more irrelevant here than usual, just place your cities well. Land is awesome for cottages, CHA is good for cottages also since you have higher -cap. Next you can go barracks-axes. The moment construction is in you should focus on whipping enough of cats asap. Now is suddenly not so important, you've reached your tech goal and declaring asap is the next goal.

I declared T98 with 8 axes and 5 cats, with 4 cats ready to be whipped or nearly done next turn and many of the units still in transit towards front lines. I would say this army is easily big enough here. Emperor AI is totally helpless if you can produce such numbers pre-T100. Just stole 4th worker on the turn of declaration.

Tech screen. Nothing surprising I suppose, well except that I banked too much so I breezed through alpha already (got AH for writing via trade also). With better play you could probably attack 5T earlier. Sailing is pretty useless here. I've noticed many players overvaluing lighthouses! It's 60 and turns weak tiles into decent tiles, but the main use is +1 per seafood. So here it's pretty much +1per turn for 60, it takes a lot of time to pay back. No way you should even consider it since it slows down your main goal. Also, here you have lots of green river grass so lighthouses go even more down in value.

Biggest use for sailing would be to be able to fight against barb "galleons". I failed to fog bust north, so lost the seafood. It's not as bad as it might seem at first glance as the sea food cities have grown already and are suffering whip anger anyway. Anyway, two wb:s cost 60 which is not nothing, even post-war.

War planning. First of all, it's important to reach the first city as fast as you can. Thus the attack should start either 2NE or 2NW of Texcoco. I chose NE because it needed less roading. I just deleted my scout (no need for it anymore) but I knew that Texcoco was currently extremely lightly defended (one jaguar). I don't think it changes much, though of course facing 4 archers on a hill I'd lose some cats, so probably couldn't declare with what I had in the front line. Then just proceed towards enemy capital and let the reinforcements roll in. I healed for one or two turns after taking capital, then towards Mids-city, after which the first phase of war is over and I sued peace for some techs. Also nicely currency in on the same turn so got 40 on top of it.

It's also quite clear you should simply ignore weak spots like Tlacopan here. Just let him improve it a bit and grow some cottages or something before you take it, some 25T later.

 

[konata_LS]

It's also quite clear you should simply ignore weak spots like Tlacopan here. Just let him improve it a bit and grow some cottages or something before you take it, some 25T later.

That is a golden advice for new players who want to make successful military progress. Choosing the first target city requires much experience and practise. When I started fighting wars in BTS, I often threw my units onto the first city I could see, even it was only a 1 pop city on a desert hill without resource. As a result, the war often became slow and tedious, as my main stack was wounded, AIs core cities unharmed, and AIs kept building/whipping units from their high or high capital. Attacking AIs' good/strong cities first makes the conquest much shorter and more efficient.

Nice gameplay as always

 

[sampsa]

When I started fighting wars in BTS, I often threw my units onto the first city I could see, even it was only a 1 pop city on a desert hill without resource. As a result, the war often became slow and tedious, as my main stack was wounded, AIs core cities unharmed, and AIs kept building/whipping units from their high or high capital. Attacking AIs' good/strong cities first makes the conquest much shorter and more efficient.

Yes! It's very important to kick them where it hurts. Look which cities are on a hill. Look which cities you really want and what the cultural border will roughly be. Plan, but adapt when executing if things don't seem as easy as you thought.

 

[Pengu]

Nice! Actually the rest of the game wasn't that easy for me