Civ IV - Winning Emperor on Marathon

[ConfusedCounsel]

Is the salient point that I should be whipping more?

Probably yes. Whipping is very powerful. You should also whip at the right time. Having relatively large cities when you hit a military powerspike allows you to whip them several times, essentially 'storing' production for the right units. Keep in mind though that large cities grow slower, so you should whip things you want and can build now and use now.
Also, you should try to 2 or 3 pop whip wherever possible. I used to like 1 pop whipping because you only lose one pop, but that way you run into happiness problems way sooner, you get more unhappiness for the same production.

Spoiler :

My general strategy is to keep a few production cities and use them to churn out units near-constantly. From time to time, I'll rotate one of them out in order to build a forge, a factory, or a grocer, as needed. They're usually the only cities where I build barracks.

This is suboptimal. War should always be offensive in civ4 if at all possible so you either need no units or lots of them. And when you need lots of them, it needs to be the right unit, available with certain techs, to use whatever powerspike you have. Having one city, the one with Heroic Epic, churn out some stuff is fine, but most of your cities shouldn't be dedicated in that way. They churn out troops when you need troops and don't when you don't.
War means total war, and your whole civ should be helping the war by building units to finish your objective as fast as possible and to sustain the losses you'll bear, both during the war and in the build up phase. Teching/developing means teching and developing and your whole empire and you should not be building units.
I've mentioned powerspikes, essentially, these are military units available to you, generally before the AI gets them, that allow you to have effective offensive campaigns. These are:
-Immortals/War Chariots
-Horse Archers
-Praetorians
-Catapults + Axes, Swords are optional
-Catapults + Elephants if you have them are much better then axes.
-Trebuchets + whatever, usually mostly maceman. Many players prefer not to war in medieval times at all though, unless they are finishing up a game after starting wars much earlier.
-Cuirassiers, the most common one, I think.
-Cannons + whatever. Maceman are fine, later on grenadiers, usually.
-Riffles with some support, probably trebs.
-Cavalry

Try hitting one of these powerspikes as soon as possible, preferably Horse Archers, Elephults or Cuirassiers and then produce as many units as fast as you can.

Just plain whipping a unit in every city in order to build an army seems intuitively sub-optimal to me, as the majority of the units would be unpromoted -- unless you also whip barracks in your cities first? Do you generally keep a barracks in every city in case the need to one-turn a lot of units should arise?

That is fine. If you forsee using a city for a lot of troops, building/whipping a barracks is a good idea, perhaps before you hit your spike, but in the heat of war, if 3 marginal cities without barracks all produce 3/4 units, even if unpromoted, those are an additional 10 troops, which could definitely end the war sooner. In general, better units without promotions are still better, that is why powerspikes are so important.

Another thing I'm not clear on. Upgrades. Do you just disband the old units? Set your tech to 0 for five turns and accumulate the cash to mass-upgrade them? Only upgrade the promoted ones, disband the ones that aren't experienced, and whip the rest?

Depends. If this is the last war, you'll need no further techs and upgrading is a good use of gold. If this is a war to conquer my continent but I still have to conquer others (likely in your settings), I tend not to upgrade as it is very expensive. I never disband units, however.
One note you should make is that you will only have old units to spare if you have fought a war previously, because you should only produce for war. So often, you wouldn't have any old units at all.
But lets say I have a stack of elephants with 2 catapults left of an old war while cuirassier warring. Uses for them include: garrisoning your new cities, defending against a counterattack on one of your cities, or building just a couple of trebs and have them take one city close to your borders while the cuirassiers zoom accross the map.

Research priorities. There are certain techs I almost never go for until it's very late. Meditation and polytheism, I usually hold off on for a good long while. Horseback riding. Compass and Optics. Literature, Drama, and Music. Divine Right and Theology. They just never seem to be a priority, because there's always something more important to go for -- Code of Laws for courthouses, Feudalism for bows, Engineering for trebs, Civil Service for irrigation spread and Paper and Liberalism. Am I doing wrong by neglecting these?

Yes. It would seem you think about teching the wrong way. Teching and tech trading go hand in hand. That is the way you keep up with the AI. You shouldn't just tech things you need, you should tech things you need and you can trade for things the AI has for trade you want. Getting one tech which you can trade with 3 different civs, it is almost as if you got 4 techs, and they all get one.

On the particular techs:
Meditation and Polytheism: unless you are going for the oracle or, it is better to trade for these. Sometimes you might need to self tech poly anyway for literature though.
Horseback riding: if you are going for Horse Archers, this is the first thing you tech after worker techs if you go for Elephants this is something you need. Otherwise waiting and trading for it later is fine.
Compass and Optics: actually quite good on maps with multiple continents. Getting to know people on other continents can give you trade partners and the +1 movement bonus for circumventing the globe is nice in later intercontinental wars.
Literature is very good and something you should tech for yourself early if you aren't fighting any early wars. Great Library is awesome, as are National Epic and Heroic Epic.
Music gives a free Great Artist if you get there first. This is great. Many (good) players beeline Aestatics, Literature - (trade for math/poly) - Music after worker techs, if they are doing peaceful expansion. This gives you a free GA for your first golden age, and the GL NE combo produces a lot of scientist for the lib race. Music is good for trading too.
Drama is something you should only research yourself for trade potential. AI's tend not to prioritize it, so you can trade with a lot of them and catch up. Shouldn't come up often on Emperor.
Theology isn't great unless going for some weird AP victory.
Divine right is terrible, indeed.

Code of laws. Something you can trade for. Might still be worth going for if no has it or no one wants to trade. Occasionally you want to be there first for the religion, but often, not. Generally a high priority because it leads to CS. Unless you expanded like mad, the courthouses aren't necessary very early.
Feudalism. Don't tech this yourself. AI's often beeline it and are generally willing to trade it. Longbows are defensive units and war should be about offensive. I only tech this if I want to capitulate an enemy very early and can't trade for it. Very, very very rare.
Engineering: only if you are going to war with trebs. In which case, as early as possible. If you aren't planning a medieval war, quite reasonable on most maps, trade for it later.
CS is great and is often something you should tech for yourself.

One the map: it is weird. There is very little food it would seem. Anyway, why didn't you move one west for you capital. You get an additional land tile, and additional gem mine and switch one sea tile for a lake tile. Seems worth the turn to me.

 

[Seraiel]

Hi Sonicboom,

Emperor require that you pay attention to diplomacy. With Shaka on one side and Isabella on the other you need friends. Isabella is a prime candidate. Join her religion and you got a strong ally until modern era.

Kaitzilla has an excellent writeup going on in the Stories&tales section. Read it to learn about the importance of diplomatic relationship (among other things), I guess around 50% of the writeup is about diplomatic matters. He also has a great guide in Strategy articles: Know your enemy. Of course you need to get the early game going well, so adopt the basics about worker techs, growth and hammers outlined by many here.

Also get a couple of caravels going so you get more trading options for your hard earned techs.

Don't let Serials posts put you off. His posts are not very elegant written and revolve much about himself and his exhausting playstyle with a flavour of humiliation of players below deity. And for Obsoletes (another deity) post, I am speechless.

Good luck!

Could you plz explain to me where you got that my posts are not elegantly written and mostly resolve around myself while I humiliate others from plz? Send me a PM if you like.

 

[dutchfire]

Moderator Action: Please try to focus on civ, not on critiquing other posters' comments.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Pangaea]

Very good post by ConfusedCounsel. Despite registering so recently, (s)he obviously has a good grasp of the game, and it's worth listening to

Most things have been said, so I'll just try to recap a fairly usual opening. Admittedly this can be different on marathon if going for a risky plan (no worker first, but try to steal your early workers from neighbours), but this opening is more common:

-Build worker first
-Research food techs
-After worker, build a warrior or two
-At size 3, build your first settler
-If playing with barbs (as most do), after initial scouting with the warrior(s), place them where you plan to settle city 2 (and 3, 4 etc), so the settler won't be eaten by barbs on route to the location.

This means you should get 3 cities by around 2000BC on normal settings. I've only played marathon a handful of times, and things can be very different there indeed, which makes it a somewhat unideal environment for learning the early game better. The first 100 turns (normal settings) are the most important. Here you set up your early empire, get a good economy (hopefully!), and maybe rush and kill a neighbour. From here, the game snowballs. If your opening is good, you will get into a winning position pretty early on.

Worker first (in almost all scenarios) may seem counter intuitive, but it's been prove time and again to be the best start. Once you get that worker you can improve food and quickly grow. Often you need worker techs to improve food anyway, so by the time the worker is out you have the needed techs to improve the food. Barbs are no threat in the very early game either - they don't invade cities until a bit later (at first they just roam and attack units out in the wild, and animals never invade cities) - so you don't actually need barb defence in the first 40-50 turns (standard settings).

One thing that particularly struck me as odd is that you built so many Longbows. These are defensive units, and you don't want to fight defensive wars. Offensive units like horse archers, elephants, catapults, maces etc are better. Then you can use the military to grab new cities and grow your economy, instead of mostly have the units sit around in your cities and costing you money (they cost maintenance). As long as you don't get attacked, it's fine to have warriors and such guarding your cities, especially your core. They're just there to prevent unhappiness (without a military unit in a city, you get +1 per 3 citizens).

 

[sonicboom12345]

@ sonicboom12345:

Wow, that IS impressive!

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

Very good post by ConfusedCounsel. Despite registering so recently, (s)he obviously has a good grasp of the game, and it's worth listening to

Why thank you!
Also kudos for not assuming someone is male on the internet, even though I am.

 

[Seraiel]

Wow, that IS impressive!

TY .

Don't think wrongly though, that was the best out of 30 games. Results like this are, why players like Obsolete call Marathon speed-cheating and think that the HoF-players cheat in general with generating 10k of maps and only playing the one that is best. He doesn't understand, that it's simply our style to like playing games that are "out of the box" and mostly have demonstrational value, and that cheating actually is something completely different. Cheating i. e. would be, if we competed in the same game that he does, change the speed to Marathon to be able to conquest faster, and to change the speed to normal again afterwards, and then compare the results towards his. None of us does this though, it's actually the opposite, we even play with a mod that wouldn't allow for such manipulations. It's actually us, who could make that accusal to him, because the mods he uses are further developed than ours, so offer functions that we could call unfair from our point of view. I can't talk for the others now, but only say, that I prefer spending those resources on trying to create understanding and acceptance. I don't know yet, if I'll ever succeed with that on him, but before I don't have a definite answer towards this, I won't stop trying.

@ MajorTom: This post seems, as if it was self-centred, because of the last two sentences. The intention writing them is neither humiliation nor egomania though. They're actually almost the most self-centred of what I've ever written, I can identify at least 3 different people, to whom they're directed though. I'm actually surprised, that I'm below those 3. Thinking they'd be 33% or even more for me though would be wrong, they actually are 90%+ for a person who will understand them, and their true intention is to make to think. The offer for the PM btw. has no timelimit, and is hereby extended towards that person.

--------------------

New map and new screens plz .

 

[pigswill]

Huge marathon is not ´cheating´ imo. Its a diferente playstyle for sure and compared to standard normal you´ll tend to advance faster (fewer years but a lot more turns).

With regards to this particular game one ting that strikes me is that OP has 24 cities in 1300ad but only 12 workers. I suspect that this is a major reason why he/she is struggling. Its much eaiser to rex and neglect economy on huge marathon. Once you get to higher difficulties city maintenance from overexpansion can wreck your game (particularly if you have 1 worker per 2 cities).

 

[Bjarkov]

Seraiel can be rather harsh in delivering his advice, good as they are Try not to be offended and focus on the points he is making

On Marathon speed, military is key. 1 Normal speed turn is equivalent to 3 Marathon turns for most things, but not all:
1) Units move at the same rate
2) Units heal at the same rate
3) Units only cost twice as much to build (opposed to other stuff, which is a factor 3)

Watching a Marathon game at Normal speed, you would see units zipping around at triple speed, healing back up almost immediately and gain a production bonus of 33%. This is why some people label Marathon as 'cheating'. Don't be put off by them, Marathon is merely 'Military Mode' of Civ4.

Take advantage of your military. Persia gets a very good and very early unique unit which pretty much dictates their early game if horses are present (conquest!) prioritize locating and securing Horses, build an army and take over the continent. (or the best parts of it, at least.. raze bad cities). On Marathon speed, you can conquer quite a bit before the immortals are obsoleted by better defense units, as long as you can keep your target off metals.

There's a bunch of other advice, but early conquest is the best way to get a large empire on higher difficulties, and a large empire is the best way to win if you can manage it well.

 

[Virupaksha]

Have never played on marathon but having moved fairly recently from Monarch to Emperor I thought I'd share a few things.

Worker first is a must. To be efficient a city needs to not work unimproved tiles. If space is short for early expeansion sometimes you have to settle cities without workers to improve them but in this case worker should normally be the first build. One worker for every two cities is not enough. One worker per city is what I try for.

Whipping - on monarch you can compete without whipping but on emperor for me not. I really struggled with whip unhappiness to begin with and got advice from Serariel that my cities were too big. This advice was very good. if you could the food, hammers + gold of each tile (eg farmed floodplain is 4 food, 1 gold =5) tiles with 5 and above are worth working, 4 is marginal and 3 or less need to be whipped away. The exception to this is growing cottages. I find 2 pop whip is better than 1 pop generally as unhappiness is easier to manage. if the unhappiness gets out of hand build another worker to stop growth (or settler).

Teching - try to get Alpha asap and trade as much as possible. On monarch its fairly easy to be tech leader but on emperor good trading is needed. Prioritise the techs the AI do not. AI likes maths, IW, monarchy, feudalism, machinery, engineering, generally no need to self-tech these except maybe maths. AI likes to be the first to techs founding a religion but once founded doesn't bother with these so techs like Theology can be really good for trading. If you can get a tech no-one else has and trade it for 2 or 3 techs its a major boost.

Capital should have as many cottages as possible as early as possible and CS for bureaucracy also as early as possible. at least one worker needs to be dedicated just to this, preferably two. If you settle cities close to the capital they can grow cottages for it while waiting for bureaucracy. CS is also a good trading tech. Early library is also important. On monarch this doesn't matter too much but on emperor it seems necessary.

Maintainance is much more unforgiving on emperor than monarch. Be careful of expanding too quickly. I'm too war-averse but cities with unworked tiles that are not contributing drain money and lead to being behind in tech.

I'm not such a great warmonger but my approach to war is to try to get a tech advantage, first to macemen for instance and then whip the empire to shreds amassing them. I dont build defensive units except if attacked, many games I wont build a single archer or longbowman.

Diplomacy is much, much more important on emperor than monarch. On monarch you can basically just bully the AI, refuse demands etc but on emperor you need friends. I try to ally with a neighbour, best is one who founded a religion. Adopt the religion, trade techs, give in to their demands and give bits of gold. Then you have a safe border and if you are attacked you've a good chance of an ally. On monarch I never really bothered with diplomacy, this was the single biggest difference for me.

Hope this helps

 

[Lexicus]

The whole time when I was thinking the OP, I was thinking two main things.
1) not enough whipping
and
2) building too many buildings.

The only buildings needed in every city are the Granary and Forge (and some would argue the Forge is situational).

Like someone else in this thread (I think it was ConfusedCounsel but not sure) said, building wealth is generally the best move, unless you're at one of the 'power spikes' in which case you should be building units like mad, in every city.

Barracks, are overrated. It's much better to have 2 rookie units than 1 unit with a promotion or three.

EDIT: And pay no attention to snobbery. This game is about having fun, people who look down on others for the Civ 4 settings they play really need to get a life.
Listen to Seraiel, I have been reading his posts for a while and what appears 'harsh' or 'insulting' is just his style. He knows the game inside and out and people trying to improve can definitely benefit from what he has to say.

 

[rah]

If you're only going to build 2 units there, that makes sense, but if it's going to crank out lots of units the Barrack becomes a better investment.
9 units with a promotion can be better than 10 rookies because if that promotion(s) adds even only 7% to you winning odds, the odds are you'll lose one more rookie attacking and those that win will take less damage. Later in the game when you're on the conquest roll, whipping units is all my cities are doing. If I think a city is going to crank enough, I'll build the barracks.

 

[Lexicus]

If you're only going to build 2 units there, that makes sense, but if it's going to crank out lots of units the Barrack becomes a better investment.
9 units with a promotion can be better than 10 rookies because if that promotion(s) adds even only 7% to you winning odds, the odds are you'll lose one more rookie attacking and those that win will take less damage. Later in the game when you're on the conquest roll, whipping units is all my cities are doing. If I think a city is going to crank enough, I'll build the barracks.

Yeah, all this is true. I was actually thinking, Barracks are probably better on Marathon since you're building proportionally more units-per-turn.

Still, though, I think the OP was valuing barracks too highly. Those promotions are more of a luxury than a necessity. I certainly try to make sure I get barracks in any city where I'm going to be whipping a lot of units, but I don't consider it a big deal if not.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

If you're only going to build 2 units there, that makes sense, but if it's going to crank out lots of units the Barrack becomes a better investment.
9 units with a promotion can be better than 10 rookies because if that promotion(s) adds even only 7% to you winning odds, the odds are you'll lose one more rookie attacking and those that win will take less damage. Later in the game when you're on the conquest roll, whipping units is all my cities are doing. If I think a city is going to crank enough, I'll build the barracks.

Definitely true. Whether or not you need a barrack when a-warring depends on roughly 3 factors, imo:
1. How many units will this city produce?
2. How desperately do I need these units NOW? In the above example it could still be worth it to not build a baracks if those first couple of units a couple of turns earlier make a huge difference. Most obvious example if you are caught on the defense.
3. How valuable is the promotion to the unit. If you are looking to war with cannons, having a city without barracks produce some footsoldiers with barely any promotions to finish up after the cannons and garrison the captured cities is perfect. Cuirassiers and horse archers on the other hand do want the promotions.

 

[rah]

Of course both of you are correct.
Despite what I said, late game where speed is of the essence, I'll forgo the barracks because I NEED THE UNITS NOW.

 

[Lexicus]

2. How desperately do I need these units NOW? In the above example it could still be worth it to not build a baracks if those first couple of units a couple of turns earlier make a huge difference. Most obvious example if you are caught on the defense.

This definitely applies to me. I actually ignore diplomacy on purpose (and play with Aggressive AI) so that the AI will attack me unexpectedly. The most fun I have in Civ games is an unexpected "total war" invasion by the AI that starts with me frantically whipping units to defend the empire, and ends with the AI in question utterly laid low by my awesome military power

 

[rah]

I play with AGG AI also, and like to piss the AIs off so my experience is similar. But I build the army only if I'm going to use it, so most of my core cities will have barracks because I know eventually I'm going to get my money's worth out of them. A couple less turns of building wealth is usually worth it. Now if you had to pay maintenance for them, that would be different.

 

[6K Man]

I’m not going to give advice on your gameplay, because other, better players have already done so.

I will provide this piece of advice, which you may already know: You can receive contradictory, situation-specific advice from 2 different, good players and both sets of advice can be correct. Don’t let that frustrate you. Try to pick up on universal themes that everyone emphasizes (improving food is key, whipping is key, building Wealth is key) while recognizing that if you play non-standard game and map settings, it’s that much harder for others (who don’t play those settings) to provide situation-specific advice.

Oh, and there’s an ignore feature for those you find gratuitously insulting.

 

[Lexicus]

You can receive contradictory, situation-specific advice from 2 different, good players and both sets of advice can be correct.

Yep - and this is an indication that Civ IV is a good game.