Emperor Cookbook Shaka

[Nares]

Edited

 

[mc-red]

For next time some of the submitted file names make it hard to review other games as they are all the same name.

 

[mc-red]

@nares

Spoiler :

Archers cannot spawn because all three fogged tiles are within two tiles of my warrior.
A city can spawn i thought in fog but maybe I am wrong about this second point.

 

[kossin]

@Nares,mc-red

Spoiler :

Barb cities can indeed spawn in any fogged area, even in you have a unit 2 tiles away.

 

[turkis]

Further starting location discussion

Starting screenshot discussion

Spoiler :

Looks like the northern plains band; hopefully there's a juicy resource site somewhere in the tundra that's undoubtedly to our north.

Of course, there's grassland/plains leading into desert to our south. We probably won't be able to expand as far as the jungle, but you never know.

I'm looking to settle 1E. It may very well miss a resource 2W of the current settler position, but it holds onto the six other possible tiles a resource may be hiding in.

Then again, 1E sacrifices the city's chain irrigation, meaning one tile will need to be wasted on a farm to irrigate that rice (especially annoying because apparently all the surrounding tiles are plains or hills).

Because we're expansive, I'm working the 3h plains hill while building a worker first. In this regard, 1E is certainly superior, because it picks up the plains hill in the inner 8, though it does move the rice to the outer 12.

Spoiler :

I agree with east being the direction to head, but what about moving the scout on the hill 2E first and seeing whats on the otherside. If there is another forested plains hill, pretty likely given our surroundings, what about building on the plains hill 2E. This would give us our worker 2 turns earlier than settling 1E (even with the delay of 1 turn settling). With agri/hunting I don't have the exact numbers, but I assume we can develope animal husbandry before finishing our worker, especially since it has to move one turn before working the sheep.

We lose the rice, but unirrigated rice is only 4 food. While foods arguably>resources at the start even assuming that we don't have as good of a food spot east of the forested hill, the extra resource from our city plus working a 3 resource tile (such as the wine) would result in 4 units of production (plus 3 commerce in this case). Also, it would likely benefit us in producing our next worker.

Much of this banks on having a second resource east of the forested plains hill, but even without that it seems tempting to me, given how bad unirrigated rice is.

Ahh, just saw that you had already posted your play to 1500. Somewhat removes the usefulness of my post.

 

[huerfanista]

I'll bite. I'm a monarch player, with a little success on emperor. Round 1:

Spoiler :

I moved the scout SE-SE, and decided to settle 1E to grab some nice riverside cottage land. All those brown tiles were depressing. The opening build order was worker, warrior, warrior. I started research on mining and sent the scout to explore eastward along the southern coast. I found Gilgamesh east of the peninsula - ugh! No rush in that direction. I then circled him around the coast counter-clockwise and revealed all the tiles in our part of the world.

When mining completed I started mysticism, planning to chop out Stonehenge, one of my favorite wonders: cheap, and we'll pop borders quickly, especially for those fish to the north.

The worker farmed the rice and mined the 2 hills. Tech order was BW, AH, wheel, pottery. Once BW came in, the worker chopped the plains hill 1E of Ulundi and then went to pasture the sheep. 1 warrior was sent east to the blocking city site. This city would be able to built 3 workboats for its' own fish and the 2 crabs to the north. The second warrior was sent to the northern fish site, which also has the copper revealed by BW. The copper will come online a lot faster if I can grab stonehenge.

With the single chop and working the 2 mined grass hills, stonehenge finishes in 2650BC, with the city at size 4. I start building 2 settlers, and will whip the 2nd one for 2 pop. I adopt slavery in 2075BC and whip the second settler in 2000BC. The first one is sent east. Once the worker finishes mining the plains hill, he starts roading to the first city, uMgungundlovu. Once there, he chops a grass hill to push out the workboat, and starts the city on a second one. He is currently 1 turn from finishing a mine on that hill, which will get the 2nd workboat out in 11 more turns.

The second settler is sent to the fish site, and 2 more warriors are built. The are sent west to spawnbust the remainder of the island. Ulundi gets to size 4 and a worker and settler are queued. Current research is writing, which will finish in 9 turns with a little defecit research. Borders on the first 2 expansion cities have already popped.

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[mjg5591]

@dualmaster

Spoiler :

What part of philly you in? I live in philly also.

 

[MaximumPain]

Here gos my offering. I am a Prince player who tends to open well but fall behind later. Not sure how I feel about this start as Im not familiar with how I should look at this point on Emperor except that its not as good as Im used to lol.

Spoiler :

Boy I sure hope there is some Iron around but I decided to get other techs first as Im scared of a Tech deficit against the Emperor level AIs. My start was an attempt to get my two best commerce cities running ASAP. I think I went to crazy on the roads and should have gone straight for more chop and development except there's not really much to build with the tech choices I made. Please critique my start as Im here to learn to play at the real difficulty settings.

 

[kossin]

@MaximumPain

Spoiler :

You don't need to connect health resources at the start... you don't have unhealthiness. Especially the Sheep, they are riverside so you already had them. Those worker turns would have been better put:
chopping
roading to Gilgamesh and your other cities.

Try to avoid unhappy citizens: they cost maintenance and don't add anything. You might also want to choose riverside improvements over non-riverside ones, for example, the mine in the capital is non-riverside while you can get an extra commerce by building a riverside one.

 

[Teelman]

To 1500 BC

Spoiler :

Build order was : wrker/war/set/wrk(chop)/war/set/wrk/war etc
Research: AH/Min/BW/whl/myst/now writing

empire

This looks very interesting. Boxed in by our creative/prot friend gilgi...who I hate. Settled the blocking city first to the east then filled in backwards. Was thinking get to writing as quick as possible for open borders and explore rest of island. But, my research rate has been atrocious. However, I am done writing in 9 turns I think but no pottery... I probably should have went wheel pottery to start cottaging the eastern cities especially the one in the middle by the cows. However I do have ikandha's in all cities cept the southern one and just chopped monuments in all cities except for my cap. I have some more potential city sites mapped and most of the island already barb busted. Any constructive criticism is welcome.

 

[mjg5591]

So many saves to go through,

@huerfanista

Spoiler :

Try and connect roads to gigles for trade routes. The worker near uMgungunlovu didn't finsh the road from capital either. This will help with your economy.

@MC

Spoiler :

Like how your already scouting giggles area. Only save I've seen so far that has.

@WFU

Spoiler :

Yea that gold popping in capital is huge. Not just for the economy but for the happiness. We only have 1 resource (wine). Try to connect to ggiles for trade routes with roads.

 

[MaximumPain]

@MaximumPain

Spoiler :

You don't need to connect health resources at the start... you don't have unhealthiness. Especially the Sheep, they are riverside so you already had them. Those worker turns would have been better put:
chopping
roading to Gilgamesh and your other cities.

Try to avoid unhappy citizens: they cost maintenance and don't add anything. You might also want to choose riverside improvements over non-riverside ones, for example, the mine in the capital is non-riverside while you can get an extra commerce by building a riverside one.

Spoiler :

Yeah I was mostly making them because I didn't want to super chop just yet as I don't have a lot of great stuff to build yet. A road to Gil would have been a good thing instead of just connecting the already connected by river health resources it was just busy work for all those workers. Whats interesting is that this is the first game where I feel Ive built enough workers normally I always have a shortage and its a definite weak spot in my game. Now I need to get better at what to actually do with all those workers.

Thanks for the input.

 

[cripp7]

Spoiler :

I think the wheel + pottery is stronger than fishing + sailing to connect your cities, because it allows faster cottages. Sailing opens the possibility for the great lighthouse, but it doesn't really look like you are going for that. Right now your workers are making useless farms (you have enough food to grow in those cities) instead of powerfull cottages. Other than that good city placement + expansion.

Spoiler :

ah, thanks. Itend not to build cottages soon enough. The jump to emp is pretty big. but that's what this is for

 

[mjg5591]

@MaximumPain

Spoiler :

Try not to have angry citizen's they hurt the economy. Also might want to whip the library in city#1 it will become unhappy next turn. Then maybe run some scientists. Maybe whip granary in ither city also. Maybe OB with giggles and scout his land.

I like that you have pottery and writing though for the economy.

 

[Kbo]

Emperor player

Spoiler :

Didnt like the look of the capital with plains all over the place, tried my luck further south and got REALLY lucky that there was some wheat below me along with another river area for more sexy cottages. Lost a turn moving the settler but i feel its worth it.

Scouted around, met giggles, definetly not one of the first people i would have liked to see on the list, but i guess we had to have a protective trait early or it would have been too easy eh. Vultures are going to rock a sword army and theres no horses around for a HA + cats rush either, not to mention that we can expect to be trailing behind in tech unless theres some juicy islands around.

Tech went the usual, AH / mining / BW / wheel / Pottery / myst ---fishing (current). Made a few warriors to fogbust so i didnt have to worry about archery for a while, threw three cities up with rivers around to cottage the crap out of incase an axe rush became no longer viable, and moved the last settler up there where im still debating on whether to settle on the copper and rush giggles, or to use mysticism/slavery and get a monument by the time fishings done to snag the two crabs and the ore aswell and make a better city about it, though the hills would make a nice production site...still not sure Really wish i could have gotten some sort of cash from failing a wonder or whatnot, just didnt have the time to tech anything else or the econ wouold have crashed big time. Also didnt get a chance to cottage the wine in time, that should bring a lot of commerce aswell.

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[Kbo]

sigh, always forgetting something small and dumb. sorry about that

 

[Gooblah]

Planning on throwing my hat into the ring, but a quick question:

Spoiler :

can we WB the save to eliminate the odd coastal/ocean problem in the northern region?

 

[Gumbolt]

I keep falling asleep so not had a chance to play my round yet! Will do Friday/Sat. Its always nice to get as many saves as possible on the first round.