Crumbling economy

[kvn_m]

Hi,

I'm getting quite frustrated playing at Monarch/Emperor. Well, Monarch, I've won a couple of times... but I'm trying out different leaders and stuffs. I'm now trying to play as Pericles at Emperor level difficulty, putting my trust in SE.

I guess I just am not quite sure about how to play the game at higher level difficulties due to a couple of factors. One of them is when to hurt my first neighbor. I am fond to take chances of stealing workers, and then making peace for a while maybe, or go all out if I had axes. The problem I seem to be facing is after I wiped out the first neighbor, I seem to always fall in the pattern of falling behind the technology. After utilizing my phalanxes to the max, the next neighbor would've had horse archers and longbowmen, but I am only at the point where I either have Construction or is teching Construction.

If you're playing SE, when do you start building libraries? My friend told me I should only build buildings when they're absolutely necessary. Library is definitely absolutely necessary for SE, but of course the highest priority goes to courthouses. Is it right after you have access to Writing? By the time I have writing, I think I'm pumping my axemen to rush, but should I also insert to build libraries whenever I can?

It seems that when I intelligently select what cities to keep and what cities to raze, I'm always worried by not keeping some cities just because the AI will settle there sooner or later. ... I think I have a problem of knowing when to build units or/and when to expand.

I normally start with two cities... the 2nd city will be hooked up to a copper, and the first build is barracks. Then I start pumping axes as soon as I have them. Should I have built a third city too?

Due to whipping and happiness cap, I think most of the time my cities don't go above pop 2 for the 2nd city, and pop 4 - 6 for my first city. ... And I never seem to know what/when to tech for Monarchy/IW...

Any tips?

 

[weimingshi]

No wonder your economy is crumbling, 2 cities and all that whipping gets you no where. What are you trying to do with those axeman???? Early rush??? then you should have more than 2 cities to play with. If you plan early rush, do it early and get some more cities. Else forget about whipping axeman and build stuff, more cities, more workers, more buildings. And the best way to play emperor is hybrid of SE and CE, you only need to run SE in 1 city which usually is your capital.

 

[Quechua]

I can't give you too detailed advice, since I don't have BTS, but it sounds like you are always trying for an early rush. As a change of pace why not try expanding to the first four cities or so peacefully? From what I've heard, the AI expands much more slowly in BTS, and I don't think an early rush is typically the best option even on Vanilla Emperor.

Why does the highest priority go to courthouses? The economic bonus is tiny for your first cities, if you need to run scientists build a library. I've had no firsthand experience with the espionage aspects of courthouses, but I can't see how that could swing the decision when you are trying to base your economy on the scientist.

 

[weimingshi]

Another thing, if you don't know how to use whip, the best thing is don't use it, overwhipping hurts you more than what it gives. Unless you absolutely need one more axeman to rush another civ's capital, whipping axeman is a nono, the lost hammers and commerce of 1 less tile to work for x number of turns way outweighs the benefit. Because if you are not using that axeman to attack other cities right away, the benefit of having 1 more axeman is actually negative. your axeman sits idle on your border and you have to pay 1g to maintain it. Generally the way to use whip is to whip large items like a library. When you have 2 citizen too many over you happy cap, at that point whiping a building that will cost you 3 pop is a good way to do it. never whip somethings cost you 1 pop only, not worth it.

 

[weimingshi]

another thing, why are you so obsessed about courthouse? besides it add 2 espionage points, all it does is half maintenance cost. when you only have 2 cities and second city have a pop of 2, courthouse is next to useless, build the library instead. Courthouse only become important mid game, don't waste precious early hammers on something as expensive as courthouse. Besides, before you research courthouse, you should research, calendar and currency first, so you can connect your luxury resources and build markets so you can maintain a strong economy.

 

[kvn_m]

huh? by the time i have courthouses, i don't only have two cities. by the time i have courthouses, it's when i've actually razed my neighbor, and that's when i would have... i don't know. 4 - 6 cities. and they're far from my capital, so i'd need the courthouses.

yes, i'm trying to go for an early rush. the idea is to have my axemen have an ideal advantage of killing the neighbor who normally guards their cities with only archers then. or if they have axemen, then i'd normally pillage their copper/iron, and move from there.

does this mean i should try going for 4 cities and build the axes as per normal? let my cities go stagnant once they've reached the happiness cap?

then when is the first early war? what's the size of a typical early war battle, excluding against protective trait leaders?

 

[Quechua]

Well, what we're suggesting is that you don't necessarily go for an early rush, and work on the economic aspects of the early game more. Sure courthouses would be better than libraries in distant cities without much food or commerce, but it sounded like you were overvaluing them.

Even if you prefer playing for conquest, I think it may help your game to try not declaring on anyone in the ancient era, just to switch things up for you. Believe it or not, emperor+ players do not always start a war in the ancient era.

If you're absolutely set on not taking that advice, there's plenty of recent threads talking about an early rush.

 

[kvn_m]

hmm. i actually tried this strategy. it went pretty well, actually. even though the enemy's power chart goes up beyond me, i started attacking their weakly defended cities (they normally come with about two archers and one chariot to defend a newly founded city...) with a minimum army, enough to crush them and make them give me something for a peace treaty.

it went well enough... considering i had both Monty AND Shaka. they were friends, and after I obliterated Monty, Shaka just kept coming until Monty became Shaka's vassal. ... o God that was hard. I didn't have any chance to befriend any of them. Not far from when the game started, Monty and Shaka both declared war on me. Is this because they "sensed" that I was weak?

Ah, well. Maybe it'll work next time. ... I guess rush can be not the only answer. Hmm.

 

[weimingshi]

No, you don't have to rush on emperor, The only time i did a rush is if the AI blocked my settlers off. The thing is if you don't rush, you have to divert the effort into wonder building to get an edge. The wonders I aim for are artemis temple, great light house, great library. Pyramid only if I have stone close by.
When you start once u have bronze working, get 2-4 workers, start chopping for a settler, once artemis temple is available to build, which should be soon, start chopping that. Your second city, should link up important resource like copper, stone or marble. Build 1-2 axeman their, build another settler. If your second city doesn't qualify to be a production city, then your third city has to have good production. Then designate that city to produce units mainly, build barracks there and keep churn out units until you have a respectable power rating where other civ won't dow you because you are weak, they still gonna dow you if they are annoyed or furious about u though. But you should have enough units to deal with those.

Make sure to sign as many open border as possible. If you manage to build great light house, then start spamm coastal cities, you don't have to worry about maintenance, cause extra trade routes from great lighthouse will cover that and more. If you didn't get great light house, build no more than 6 cities before currency. Once you got currency, connect resources, build markets, when your slider is at 70% research then start expand again, Whatever you do don't let the research bar drop below 50% for long.

In a builder game at emperor, i usually manage to build about 80% of the wonders if I can secure marble early on. i can build 90% of wonders if I secure both stone and marble. If i don't have both, i can still manage build at least half of it. Most of the wonders are built in my capital, so lots of GP coming out, I tend to use early GP to pop tech, until they can only give me less and 70% of a tech, I stop and use them for other stuff.

My expansion phase usually start around medieval time, where I have maceman and catapults.

 

[weimingshi]

Oh ya, if you did manage to build atemis temple, i sometimes even managed to build stonehenge, not a whole lot though. Anyways, if did manage artemis temple. You shouldn't have any problem get a great prophet. Make sure to research all the previous techs before the apostolic palace tech, pop that tech with great prophet, you get christianism, switch to it, build apostolic palace. spread christianism around, once u get a second prophet, build the shrine and you are swimming in gold, rest of the game is a piece of a cake.

I once managed to get 4 holy cities into one place. christianity, taoism, islam, confucianism. built a shrine for each of em. Its not that hard to cram holy cities into 1, you just have to make sure, before u researched the religion tech, all your cities have same number of religions in it, if some city lack one, build missonary and spread to it, even if that religion is somebody else's. I then built mining co and sid sushi in that city too and built wall street, man that city alone can pay for all the maintenance cost of my entire empire.

 

[xanadux]

Here's an alternative:

Expand to 4 cities total. Have 2 production cities, and 2 cities build libraries and run science specialists. Once the 4 cities are up, have the 2 production cities build (not whip) axemen until you have 10 or 12. Tech alphabet. Build 4 spies (you should build the spies before the last few axemen if you have alphabet soon enough). You may have time for a wonder in here if your production is high enough. As soon as you have an early game target picked out, put all your EP towards that target. Send the spies in, 2 to the capital, and 2 to another city you plan to capture. Use the spies to drop defenses, and take 2 cities. Delaying the rush like this allows you to develop cities and get your tech rate going. If you have enough forests, or stone, definitely consider going for the Pyramids.