[BTS] Emperor Justinian

[reflec]

Hi, I've been playing a bit of emperor and it's quite fun! I can do fairly well and feel like I can make good decisions early game but then fall behind in midgame, just like in my genghis game.

Balanced, standard size, no huts/random events
Playing as Justinian (wanted to random until I got a not-top-tier civ so I can learn without any hanidcaps )

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Justinian starts with the wheel and mysticism
Spiritual is very nice but I probably don't take advantage of it enough
Imperialistic is always a fun one for super fast settlers

UB is a theatre that gives extra culture, looks pretty useless
UU is the cataphract and actually looks extremely strong. Basically a cheaper curiasser that's available quite a bit earlier.

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T0

Spoiler :

Moved warrior onto hill

This is exactly the game I wanted, where the start isn't super strightforward.

Moving settler 1SE onto PH is the obvious choice but you could also argue SIP so you could share the north improved corn immediately after making a city. Although if you go onto PH our 2nd city will likely share the south corn, and the borders will pop before our 3rd settler is out so that probably doesn't matter.
Regardless, I think agriculture is the obvious tech choice

Side question not related to this game: GLH vs Colossus? Seems like GLH is better but you kinda have to build it in capital or ai will beat you to it

 

[lymond]

Settle on ivory is the obvious choice here. Wet corn is the focus here - never move away from strong food.

your warrior move was pointless

 

[reflec]

Settle on ivory is the obvious choice here. Wet corn is the focus here - never move away from strong food.

Is that a 2 capital? I didn't know that, that would be the best move then

 

[lymond]

Neither here nor there in this case but your warrior move was incorrect and pointless since it revealed no new information.

bonus to center tile is simply visible on the map. What you see is what you get unless you destroy something

 

[lymond]

GLH is very powerful but map dependent. I would not assume that it must be built in the cap.

Colossus is nice - again, map dependent - but can be hard to get unless one prioritizes MC or Oracles it. Pretty easy to chop it out though with copper and forge whip

 

[dankok8]

I've never been big fan of Cataphracts. They don't really come much earlier than Cuirs because Guilds are hard to beeline and unlike Cuirs they don't have FS immunity and more importantly they don't ignore pre-Gunpowder defenses.

 

[reflec]

T0-9

Spoiler :

Settled on ivory which does indeed give a 2 capital, the more you know
Teching agriculture


Look at all that food
What lymond said about my warrior is definitely true, since I had already moved it south for no reason, I didn't want to waste 2 turns backtracking through capital to explore north.
I'm not used to playing with espionage yet so I figured it wouldn't matter and expected my borders to pop much sooner, they're actually not going to pop for 41 turns :/

Saladin is pretty close to me



Agriculture finished, next its either mining->BW or AH. I'm leaning towards AH, gives me access to that cow which will be great since I'm IMP.
AH takes 11 turns, mining/bw takes 7/17 or 24 total. Worker can finish and then improve all 3 corns in 22 turns if I counted correctly, and it probably won't take a full 24 turns if capital grows and works another commerce tile, so worker probably won't be idle at all.

The more I think about it, the more I actually like BW, that's a crapton of forests that is going to be really useful for pumping out settlers with IMP. I'll need bw eventually and it kinda seems like a waste to go AH just for 2 food sources. Plus I'm spiritual so no anarchy for slavery

And of course my decision could be different if I explored to the north instead...




Really curious to see what the experts think


Also attaching a T0 save if anyone wants to play along

 

[Fippy]

Finding a more obvious Agri - BW start should be really really difficult, maybe impossible.

Probably hunting afterwards for happy cos there can be lots of whipping.
Should certainly always come before AH for the 20% discount.

 

[lymond]

Adding to what My said above, it is very important for you to understand why BW is so valuable here. It seems you sorta talked your way to that decision, but it is a no brainer.

In fact, barring necessity, I have doubts on AH after BW

this is also a case where a fast 2nd worker is warranted. Maybe 4>2 whip into settler as 1st dude chops after farms. So much to do

 

[Fish Man]

Can you post the t0 save or autosave, if possible?

Edit: nevermind I'm dumb.

 

[reflec]

T9-24

Spoiler :

Warrior going to explore to north
Worker finished, sending him to farm corn in the north

Small detail, if I farm the north corn first then I can finish all farms in 18 turns, if I farm the middle corn first then I finish all corn in 20 turns but I also get to work a riverside farm for several more turns, and since it's the same amount of time to farm the first corn, it would probably be better to farm the middle one first



Met churchill, he's pretty close to me as well



I saw there was water to my north after moving my 1st warrior up there, I just assumed there were only a couple tiles of land W of capital which would be spawn busted but that's not the case. So my 3rd warrior is going to W and fogbust



Churchill and saladin are both quite close to me, I should have room for a little while but this might mean a war after construction.

Planning on starting a settler after capital grows to 4, then working+chopping out a 2nd worker, then 4->2 whipping a 2nd settler.
There's a lot of potential city spots, also need to see the land W of capital and if there's copper nearby

 

[Fish Man]

@dankok8 as promised, here is part 1 of the playthrough to sub-t250 space.

Spoiler :

I settle for the triple corn, on the ivory. Agr -> BW is the obvious tech choice, but after that I choose to go fishing and pottery first instead of hunting/AH. This start is relatively commerce-poor so if we're going to take advantage of the ridiculous amount of food + imp and settler spam, we need SOMETHING to keep our economy afloat.

Spoiler :

I steal a worker from Churchill...the first of eight. That's right, I do something here that I've never done before, which is to absolutely FARM a single AI for workers. His corn is in just the right position where a woody 2 warrior can kidnap his worker in a single turn of movement without his archers being able to do anything about it. For this reason, I've only had to build a total of three workers so far. This is game-changing, because as @lymond said there are so many workerturns needed in the beginning of the game on this map, with almost every single tile being a forest to chop. Pictured below is the...eighth and final worker steal, before I made peace for meditation and masonry (for extra humiliation). Thanks, buddy!

Spoiler :

My settle choices were, first, cities that gave me commerce besides having food sources, because again that was going to be the biggest early-game bottleneck on a low sea level map with an imp leader. The first city was on the fish, for an easy river connection. Then I grabbed the gold and copper to have another resource and troll Churchill (who was busy endlessly pumping out workers every 5-6 turns for me to take). With the worker shortage handled by my generous English supplier (how does it feel to be the target of colonialism, you colonialist pig), I spammed settlers in every direction, and built cottages to keep myself afloat. Hatty was conveniently teching alphabet, so I got math/currency, traded for that and a bunch of things, and got civil service at t102, hitting over 260bpt with buro. I think cataphracts are going to be a stomp here. They won't be stopped by longbows, and everyone is still quite a ways from even that.

Spoiler :

I haven't met the last AI yet, for some reason...

Tech situation:

Spoiler :

 

[dankok8]

@Fish Man

How did you get Churchill to give you techs? Generally the AI early on has a higher power rating then me due to spamming Archers and often refuses to make peace. This is actually the reason i find Worker stealing kind of risky. That and "You declared on our friend." maluses that can add up quickly. Stealing 8 Workers is impressive.

 

[Fippy]

Oops forgot you are IMP (wrote about size 6 settler before..).
Size 5 looks nice then to also keep all 3 corn on 2 pop whipping.

2N of spices for city #2 prolly (shares corn and can whip monument for fish later).
Connected via river, no roads needed.

Never move your worker out of culture like that
He can be eaten by a wolf or panther if unlucky.

 

[Fish Man]

@Fish Man

How did you get Churchill to give you techs? Generally the AI early on has a higher power rating then me due to spamming Archers and often refuses to make peace. This is actually the reason i find Worker stealing kind of risky. That and "You declared on our friend." maluses that can add up quickly. Stealing 8 Workers is impressive.

I got tired of this map, since low sea level means you end up with 40 or so cities late-game, and I just don't want to deal with that. I posted an actual finished playthrough of a sub-t250 emperor space win here, though. Regardless, I will answer your question below.

I got him to give me techs by being stronger than him, and accumulating war success (since each worker captured individually counts as +4, I think). What happens is you want to declare as few times as possible and stay at war, using a woody ii warrior to camp 2 tiles from a food special or strategic resource in the 2nd ring. If you pull this off correctly, every time you kill a worker and retreat, the AI detects you're not threatening a city and needs a worker, so it will keep spamming workers for you to steal and keeping at around 2-3 archers for all of the period you want to be at war with them. This makes them extremely weak over time, as just building a bunch of warriors for city garrisons/fogbusting over the early game will make you eventually stronger than an AI with just those 2-3 starting archers. And these factors combined make it so that you can both cripple an AI for VERY little cost while stealing an empire's worth of workers, and keep them weak enough to where they eventually give you quite a bit of tech or gold for peace. If done correctly you will not have to build a single worker past your first for a while, AND you will break a rival so completely they will never even come close to recovering or being a threat.

Do note that this only really works on difficulties below immortal. On imm/deity, the AI's free starting worker usually is escorted, or finishes improving tiles so fast it retreats into the city before you get a chance to come across or nab it. And on deity, in addition to that, the AI's lands are usually swarming with far too many archers for this type of play to be worth the risk.

 

[dankok8]

I got tired of this map, since low sea level means you end up with 40 or so cities late-game, and I just don't want to deal with that. I posted an actual finished playthrough of a sub-t250 emperor space win here, though. Regardless, I will answer your question below.

I got him to give me techs by being stronger than him, and accumulating war success (since each worker captured individually counts as +4, I think). What happens is you want to declare as few times as possible and stay at war, using a woody ii warrior to camp 2 tiles from a food special or strategic resource in the 2nd ring. If you pull this off correctly, every time you kill a worker and retreat, the AI detects you're not threatening a city and needs a worker, so it will keep spamming workers for you to steal and keeping at around 2-3 archers for all of the period you want to be at war with them. This makes them extremely weak over time, as just building a bunch of warriors for city garrisons/fogbusting over the early game will make you eventually stronger than an AI with just those 2-3 starting archers. And these factors combined make it so that you can both cripple an AI for VERY little cost while stealing an empire's worth of workers, and keep them weak enough to where they eventually give you quite a bit of tech or gold for peace. If done correctly you will not have to build a single worker past your first for a while, AND you will break a rival so completely they will never even come close to recovering or being a threat.

Do note that this only really works on difficulties below immortal. On imm/deity, the AI's free starting worker usually is escorted, or finishes improving tiles so fast it retreats into the city before you get a chance to come across or nab it. And on deity, in addition to that, the AI's lands are usually swarming with far too many archers for this type of play to be worth the risk.

I've heard of this Worker steal strategy you describe and tried it but I've rarely found it that strong... maybe I'm not doing it right. For instance if the AI is close, I would just outright wipe them out and if they are far the value of capturing Workers is less because it takes time to haul them back not to mention you have to escort them. Another thing is how to reliably get a Woody 2 Warrior?

 

[Fish Man]

I've heard of this Worker steal strategy you describe and tried it but I've rarely found it that strong... maybe I'm not doing it right. For instance if the AI is close, I would just outright wipe them out and if they are far the value of capturing Workers is less because it takes time to haul them back not to mention you have to escort them. Another thing is how to reliably get a Woody 2 Warrior?

I will admit that this doesn't work in many situations.

To get a warrior to woodsman 2 you let yourself kill animals/barbs by fortifying in forests and/or forested hills. Once woodsman 1 is in, your unit should be mostly impervious to anything that isn't an archer or a bear, on a forested tile. Of course bad luck can mean you die regardless, and you may not win enough combats in time to return to steal the second worker, but some gambling is inevitable in a strat like this. On emperor and below animals don't despawn for quite a long time.

As to wiping the AI out...early on, even against archers, that requires a LOT of resources. Best case scenario being a non-pro non-cre non-hill capital, you'd need 3 chariots every archer to be safe. That is a massive hammer investment that slows down your first few cities by a lot, and the new capital may prove to be even a greater drain economically than it adds at first. Whereas capturing workers requires nothing except for some luck and maybe 15 more hammers for an extra warrior to fogbust where you original warrior would've otherwise gone...and it gives a monumental return if done correctly. On the NC 246 map that I played through, about a half dozen workers stolen early on let me focus my hammers on settlers and wonders instead, and chop out the mids in less than 12 turns by clearing out nearly ALL the forests around my cap in quick succession with IIRC 4 workers chopping 4 forests every 4 turns.

tl;dr: luck-dependent but VERY powerful if done successfully, much better than taking out an AI in terms of cost/benefit.

 

[dankok8]

I will admit that this doesn't work in many situations.

To get a warrior to woodsman 2 you let yourself kill animals/barbs by fortifying in forests and/or forested hills. Once woodsman 1 is in, your unit should be mostly impervious to anything that isn't an archer or a bear, on a forested tile. Of course bad luck can mean you die regardless, and you may not win enough combats in time to return to steal the second worker, but some gambling is inevitable in a strat like this. On emperor and below animals don't despawn for quite a long time.

As to wiping the AI out...early on, even against archers, that requires a LOT of resources. Best case scenario being a non-pro non-cre non-hill capital, you'd need 3 chariots every archer to be safe. That is a massive hammer investment that slows down your first few cities by a lot, and the new capital may prove to be even a greater drain economically than it adds at first. Whereas capturing workers requires nothing except for some luck and maybe 15 more hammers for an extra warrior to fogbust where you original warrior would've otherwise gone...and it gives a monumental return if done correctly. On the NC 246 map that I played through, about a half dozen workers stolen early on let me focus my hammers on settlers and wonders instead, and chop out the mids in less than 12 turns by clearing out nearly ALL the forests around my cap in quick succession with IIRC 4 workers chopping 4 forests every 4 turns.

tl;dr: luck-dependent but VERY powerful if done successfully, much better than taking out an AI in terms of cost/benefit.

Well said.

Some UU's like Impis are also quite OP at Worker stealing. And likewise I find the Mobility promo means the AI doesn't see them as 2-move units.

 

[sampsa]

If you feel you have enough warriors, you can also gamble attacking lions/panthers. I think a kill is +4xp. Not too bad for 50-50. IIRC attacking wolves is also +2xp.