Domination wins in Emporer 2.08

[Pete2006]

I took a break from this game around the time 2.08 was released. Gears of war is pretty addictive. Anyway, I tried out 2.08 and while it seems like the AI is stronger, it still isn't too hard to win domination style victories.

I've read a couple of the other threads and it looks like the main changes to the AI are better city placement and tech trading which results in advanced AIs.

Here are my normal game settings. I used to play marathon but people take the view that it makes the game easier - I disagree - so I switched to normal speed. The only thing harder about normal speed is that war weariness can get very brutal, very quickly.

Here is my start. It a very nice starting location. Two food, a river and lots of hills.

The Inca is still my favorite civ even though they took away the aggressive trait. The quecha + the starting techs make the civ hard to beat. If I start with a grain, I'll always go for a religion to begin.

I begin research on meditation and my first build is a worker. Sometimes I'll build a quecha first to explore faster and make worker stealing easier but since I have corn, I want to start making improvements asap.

 

[Pete2006]

I meet Cyrus to begin. I love having him in the game because he likes to trade tech, rarely builds a huge army, isn't very aggressive and unless he has a huge land lead, he's rarely a threat to win the game.

However, since he is Imperialistic, he grabs land pretty quickly and can necessitate a very early war.

I meet Qin next. Early wars with him are hard but it is nice to weaken him before longbows because that it where Protective begins to shine.

Buddhism is founded in Cuzco. I get some early culture and if the religion spreads, I can make some serious money with a shrine.

Hello Catherine. Another Imperialist nearby. Imperialist + Creative means she expands very fast early game.

And Mr. Musa is the last of the civs on my continent. Glad he is on this continent than the other. I'll have to kick his butt fast or he'll discover Liberalism in 800 AD.

OK. Let's scout our surroundings. I'll stick City 1 west of the spice and City2 two north of the crab. Then I can check out what is east of Cuzco.

 

[futurehermit]

Nice play so far. Looks like you will have a shot at Qin...but, how do the incan UUs do against protective archers???

 

[Idiodyssey]

That potential city location with two flood plains, gold, two silk, and two spice is prime real estate, I'd be surprised if you got it especially with two imperialists. I find I usually lose out on my number one choice locations on higher difficulties even if I chop the settler.

 

[futurehermit]

It's actually three floodplains if you settle in the right location. And you're right, I'd be shocked if he was able to claim it, especially with China so close to it.

 

[Pete2006]

I stopped chopping workers and settlers after the last patch. It just isn't effective anymore.

Quecha v. Protective archers doesn't work too well but since quechas are so cheap, it is easy to mass a small army.

 

[Pete2006]

You were both right about those city locations. I lost out on both and neither are where I would have built them. Restart the game? No way! We can let Qin and Cathy improve those cities a bit and then take them by force.

I can stick my first city on this hill and still work the gold and the horses.

Cathy decides to tease me with a free worker. Who is she kidding? Let's take him and double our workforce!

One benefit of expanding through force is there is no slow growth phase of continuous worker and settler building. I can invest those hammers in a military and even some wonders.

I like having at least one worker for every city in my empire. If I can cottage all the grassland early, I don't need to build lighthouses and work coastal tiles. I can build a solid foundation from the beginning. That saves hammers and pays off later.

Popped a gold near Cuzco. That's pretty rare. That results in one less hammer but 7 extra commerce. Sounds good to me.

Still at war with Cathy. The AIs all seem to have different rules for agreeing to peace after stealing a worker. Some will agree immediately and other will only agree to peace after you've killed a bunch of their soldiers or have taken a city. I'm not really interested in peace as long as Cathy only has archers defending St Petersburg.

I send out another settler for my third city and work towards finishing Stonehenge. ~1800 is the deadline here. I almost always build Stonehenge and the Oracle. 4 priest points alone gets me two early prophets. I usually use the first on the Mahabadoobie and the second to found Christianity.

 

[dragomaster]

Nice to find som gold in cap. this will help your science greatly.

the starts is most interesting. what more than crabs and sheeps is within st. petes fat cross. nice to see that you have incens around, beside gold, silver and gems, incens is the best strat recource in my opinion. espeshaly when you run religions.

ar you going to axplore the eastern land, it could be a nice city spot there.

 

[Pete2006]

I hit the Stonehenge lotto ~1800 just in time. Very easy to build this wonder with an industrious leader. That'll take care of early culture issues.

The Incan civ really shows how worthless the creative trait really is. It starts with Myst so it can get a religion or it can build stonehenge easily after building a worker, a couple quechas and two settlers.

After researching priesthood I start on the Oracle. Goal here is 1250 BC but since I have marble nearby, there won't be any problems at all.

I nab the Oracle in the 1500s. Most people would choose CoL but I will usually go for either Metal Casting or Monarchy. Here I choose monarchy so I can build a winery and run hereditary rule. I only have 1 precalender happiness resource and I can't convert to Buddhism so even though Monarchy is worth fewer beakers, it will let me grow my cities to their health limits.

Civics switch. HR is probably the best civic in the game.

Since I declared on Cathy, she has built nothing but archers in St Petersburg. So I have to build quite a large quecha invasion force. Since quechas are so cheap and attack almost as well as axes, it took very little time to amass the army.

I take the city and lose roughly half my invasion force.

Looks like I really stunted her growth as she only has two cities left. I sign a peace treaty because I don't want to expand too quickly. I still have some room to the east to build some cities.

My first prophet comes along in 800 BC and I build the shrine. Not much income there as the religion failed to spread but it is something.

 

[carl corey]

Have you ever considered settling the first Great Prophet? I've done it in a Hatty game: settled three prophets in the capital for huge production and lots of gold. I skipped the shrine until later since I was going to get more prophets anyway and it wasn't particularly useful early on.

 

[futurehermit]

I'm really confused about picking monarchy. The ai always seems to beeline monarchy-feudalism so surely metal casting would've been the better option? It's the most expensive classical tech and you could trade it for monarchy + x with one civ and then for y, z to another civ? Not to mention you're industrious so cheap forges everywhere?

 

[Pete2006]

Have you ever considered settling the first Great Prophet? I've done it in a Hatty game: settled three prophets in the capital for huge production and lots of gold. I skipped the shrine until later since I was going to get more prophets anyway and it wasn't particularly useful early on.

Not really. I'll usually only settle them if there is no worthwhile tech for them to discover. Here, the shrine is worth the same or more than settling and a couple hammers won't make much of a difference.

I'm really confused about picking monarchy. The ai always seems to beeline monarchy-feudalism so surely metal casting would've been the better option? It's the most expensive classical tech and you could trade it for monarchy + x with one civ and then for y, z to another civ? Not to mention you're industrious so cheap forges everywhere?

Because monarchy is +2 happy immediately and +infinity with troops. Forges will be +1 happy after I build them and I'm planning my next attack now. I don't want to spend 6-8 turns in every city building forges when I need to press the attack before the AI gets longbows.

Monarchy is tradeable as well.

 

[futurehermit]

True enough I suppose. I just feel like you would get less in trading with monarchy than you would with metcast, esp if the ai has started researching part of monarchy...Just seems like it would be worth delaying the +2-3 temporarily until the ai researches monarchy, which always seems to be asap, esp if they are at war. Might even be possible to get it via suing from Cathy since the ai seems to prioritize it once they're at war?

Like you said, the ai gets longbows soon and monarchy is on the path to longbows. Trading them monarchy earlier would only accelerate that process imo

Anyways, it's water under the bridge now, I just thought that was a surprising choice.

 

[Dirk1302]

^Agreed, Monarchy is bad for trading. It helps the AI no end and they have it before i have it most of the time. Even if i had it before the other AI's i probably wouldn't trade it to them.

 

[Pete2006]

^Agreed, Monarchy is bad for trading. It helps the AI no end and they have it before i have it most of the time. Even if i had it before the other AI's i probably wouldn't trade it to them.

Why not? They'll get it eventually.

I needed it to grow my cities without investing more hammers or converting to an unpopular religion which hadn't even spread to any of my cities beyond Cuzco.

 

[Pete2006]

Qin comes begging for a weak tech. Seeing as he may be my next victim, I politely declined.

Cathy, looking past our previous disagreements, wants to take our relationship to the next level. Let's do it, baby!

Qin doesn't seem to like Mr Musa. I though everyone loved Mansa. I know I want to stay on his side so I can tech trade with him. Request denied!

Did you just open your borders for me to take advantage of my charity? Pass...

Monarchy FTW!

Quite the invasion force eh? Should I wait for catapults or no?

 

[futurehermit]

I would say no assuming cathy has only archers. You'll probably want to upgrade your best quechas to axes at the point when that situation changes. But you should be able to do that with the spoils of war assuming she still has only archers and you can take another couple cities?

EDIT: On 2nd thought, it looks like you're going for China next...Ok, well same scenario: only archers, go go go. Qin seems to always get feudalism asap and he's protective so I wouldn't wait if you don't have to. If you can take a couple cities now it'll be easier to take him out in a bit...

 

[Pete2006]

I decided to cripple Qin before he could get stronger. Besides, Shanghai is a sweet city and Catherine's cities look too far away from me.

Waiting for catapults would take too long and then I'd be fighting longbows. Not fun.

I start the war by nabbing a couple workers.

Qin had a couple archers and a spear defending. I sacrificed several of my quechas so my axes and chariots would survive.

I trade a couple techs to Mansa so I can benefit from Qin's improvements in Shanghai. Unfortunately, Mansa would make the monarchy exchange.

I have no invasion force left, so I sue for peace and will continue later with catapults. War is just too costly without them.

 

[Pete2006]

Cathy prefers the short-term unison over the long term relationship.

I've got my army ready to finish Qin off. Hopefully no one vassalizes him while we're at war. I hate that. You can see my mostly catapult army in the background. I'm a big believer that the seige weapons should be your main attack force and the other units should be used as support.

Pop a GG. My first I believe.

Mansa begs metal casting and, like an idiot, I agree. I'm trying to keep a good trading relationship here and maybe I can beg some techs later.

Collossus built. If I ever build the great lighthouse, I like to put them in the same city. Although I can rarely do that even if I really try. Stonehenge+Oracle is usually better anyway.

Seeing as I can't pick a religion, I can;t run theocracy, so I settle my GG as an instructor.

Beijing easily falls to my catapult onslaught.

Trading with Mansa.

Nanjing easily falls. Not much of a city but it can work 3-4 cottages. If I raze it, Cyrus will settle it.

China is down to Xian - total garbage - and Guangzhou. If I take Guangzhou, it'll flip to Cyrus so I'll pick it up later.

Mansa is right next to China so he's the next logical target. Cyrus will stay out of the fray if he knows what's good for him.

I'm in spitting distance of Maces, so I'll get those first and then move in to the Kingdom of Mali.

 

[Pete2006]

OK, Let's make some trades. You must keep a couple friends on this level to trade and keep up in tech. All trades will favor the other side so get used to it.

Lightbulbing theology. No point in running the civic since I don;t have a state religion but maybe I can trade it. Would later discover that it was untradeable.

Remember how I gave away metal casting so I could beg some techs from Mansa? He never gave me anything. Tightwad!

I was too lazy to scout Mansa's lands before the invasion. 20 units should make up for that omission.

I knock out Djenne by sacrificing a bunch of my older units. Bye bye axes and swords.

Onward ho!

I hate hills. Fortunately Mansa never builds much of an army.

Lost a couple catapults. His capital is mine.

Let's pause the war machine to bring some longbows to the front for defense.

I'm racing towards the Liberalism finish line. My old path, pre 2.08, was through guilds and banks but I have to postpone that since 2.08 requires ~1000 AD or earlier to win this race.