Emperor Tutorial Series I - The Pyramids based SE (Monarch/Prince players welcome)

[michmbk]

I finally got around to a shadow round of this and played to 10 AD. There's just too many games going on to keep up, but this was emperor and my second shot at emperor, so I wanted to give it a shot.

I haven’t peeked at any spoilers so this is pretty much going blind at it, but using some of the recommendations and ideas from the original post. Actually played this round on a plane on my trip. My first game on my laptop, so we’ll see how the speed of the game and the quality of the graphics goes. My home computer is pretty souped up, and civ runs great on that – this will be interesting if nothing else. Second emperor try, as I said, after playing the Washington aggressive AI game and failing awhile back. Hopefully this one will go a bit better – at least I should have a better sense for diplomacy without aggressive AI.

Spoiler :

Settle in place, start AH while moving my warrior. Figure if I can find chariots, that’s a good early defense and possible rush option. I know we’re focusing on mids, but I assume with IND and stone, it should be a pretty fast build. Meet Brennus, who founds hindu on turn 20, so I expect he’ll spread it to me. Finish my worker at turn 23 and start building a few warriors to grow the city. Worker can improve pigs and corn while getting a road toward the stone. Once I hit size 4, will switch to getting some settlers out. At this point, I think a rush is not as optimal, because it seems like there’s some decent land with good happiness resources around, so I’d like to try to claim some of those while getting mids built. Rep with enough happy resources is fantastic when trying to run the SE. Meet Pacal at turn 32, Willem a turn later and Justy a few turns after that. A little worried we’re crowded, but haven’t found any of their city sites yet, so maybe ok.

While trying to evade a barb bear, I had to go on open ground with my warrior, and a lion showed up and beat the warrior down – figures. Started on Stonehenge in 3000 BC – not sure if I should have gone for a settler beforehand or not. Meet Peter, then success on this:

Immediately start getting some workers/settlers out to claim the good sites close by. I get two settlers out before starting on mids. Settle first near the horse, and second here to block a bit of land:

One away from coast, I know, but wanted the corn in my BFC. Immediately I feel like this level is ridiculous. I’m 12 turns from writing, and Willem offers me this:

So he has alphabet already. I figured they’d tech better than at monarch, but alphabet in 1925 BC? Boy, I’ve got my work cut out for me. I decided to take a brief diversion to this, because it was 5 turns and 2 chops – couldn’t resist – it’ll save me defense hammers later (just hope for no great spy).

Start on mids in 1725 BC with 3 cities, and losing money at 60%. I’m still unsure about how tough the economy is on emperor. I know I’m going to be running a bunch of specialists in Thebes, but it’s time to get cottages up in my horse city too. The good news is that with my three cities, I appear to have blocked off a decent block of land on the peninsula to the east. I’d like to perhaps settle one more city close to Brennus, but that may not even be necessary if he beats me to the spot. And then a barb warrior defeats one of my exploring war chariots? How on earth does that happen – the odds have to be microscopic on that.

Thankfully, this guy shows up and helps:

I need something for the economy fast. And this gets successfully built:

pretty fast – hopefully this will help with research. Brennus claims the site to the southwest, as I expected he would, so I’ll be left expanding onto my peninsula. There is a decent barb city between me and Peter that claims ivory and silk – maybe I need a few chariots to take it.

And it’s 1175 BC and my laptop is slowing down – man, this sucks. Not sure how far I’ll be able to go on the laptop as it’s a bit annoying. I built a settler after the mids in Thebes and whipped him because I was racing to the ivory site – I figured someone else would try to claim for sure. And here’s Elephantine – you’ll notice that Peter settled the city just southeast of me 1 turn after I settled where I did, so I bet he was racing to claim the ivory.

I liked this site for ivory, gems and rice, although god knows how long it’ll take me to get iron working at this level. In a perfect world, I would have founded this city right as I hit the ADs as I could get it up and running faster then, but really wanted the ivory for defense. Looks like we’ll both have ivory though, because he’s got ivory there in his location as well. No one has spread a religion to me yet – I’m waiting for that to pick a side – everyone else has religion.

I hit Aesthetics in the BCs, and ask both Peter and Willem if they’ll trade Alphabet for it to open up trading for me – no. Well, that really sucks as well. I really hope that this level gets better because it’s frustrating as hell in the early game. Hinduism spreads to me (Brennus and Willem), so I have to decide whether to be hindu and align with them. I go for it, but Peter terrifies me because he’s close and I don’t have great defenses yet. Time to build a few chariots for protection.

Three turns into Alphabet, I go for my Aesthetics deals – here goes:

That’s about all I could get, because Justin hates me and won’t trade anything, and Peter and Willem have monarchy and currency and I have nothing to trade them. Poly got me closer to literature, which is important in a minute. This is feeling like someone is going to invade me soon and I don’t have enough defense yet. Building only units in one city, but it’s slow going. Generate my second priest, he gets settled in Thebes – this should allow me to start claiming more of my peninsula. Then Peter converts to Hinduism, so there are now 4 of us – that’s actually nice, because even though I think he declares at pleased, this should help my diplomacy with him. Especially if I can get to civil service so he and I can run bureaucracy. First, the below wonder gets built (poly got me there a few turns faster), and COL results in the other screen below:

I meet JC, who appears to be a bit further away and a bit backwards, so that’s good. With 2 settled priests, it’s time to stretch the economy a bit – a few settlers being built and some chariots to take the barb city on my peninsula. Barb city is mine:

some nice gold plus a barb worker was nearby, so I grabbed him too. Now sending all spare units to my border cities – there’s another barb city I wanted to take near there, but Peter got there first. Tech rate is going pretty well now thanks to rep. I’m also building units to make sure my power rating gets up, because jerks like Justy and JC keep demanding I join them in war or stop trading with my hindu allies. I have to keep declining, so one of these days, they’ll DOW me I’m sure. I need to get to construction so I can get elephants up and running – that’s my focus right after I tech civil service. All in all though, this seems like it’s starting to go ok. My computer has become abominably slow, so I’m cutting off at 1 AD. Going to try the next round at the lowest graphics settings – if it’s not faster, this might be it for my trip, because I can’t deal with the slowness. One last deal before quitting:

[/IMG]

I know, giving the tech whore a great tech like civil service probably isn't brilliant, but it got me all important construction. State of the empire and of tech at 1 AD:

I feel much better than I did at 1500 BC, that’s for sure. I'm actually ok in tech, and about to do another round of expansion. Hoping I'll pull a scientist or two in Thebes now. Thebes has generated three prophets so far, all settled in Thebes, so I hope it’s going to be a crazy wonderspam city the rest of the way. It's now running 4 scientists to try to generate that next. I only have 5 cities at 10 AD – on monarch I’ll often have 7 or 8 at this point – that’s my normal target. But this game was tougher to tech. A few civs have a tech or two on me, but I have COL and CS on almost everybody. Only JC has COL because I traded it to him for HBR and gold, and Willem has CS because of my deal with him. I’m currently starting the beeline. Also have a couple settlers teed up as I have three more sites I want to claim as soon as I can – the three settled priests are ensuring my economy is doing ok. Once I have 8 cities, I should have enough production to be able to expand militarily, perhaps by taking Brennus first, as he seems to be a bit beaten down in score. He’s last in score and has been at war with JC and Justy – maybe they have him boxed in. I know he’s got the hindu holy city, and if he hasn’t shrined it, I have a great shot to pull a prophet to be able to shrine it if I can take from him.

The next 50 turns will be very interesting, as I need to get my military up and running – I’ve started, but know I need more border protection, so 2 cities are focused on units, 1 on infrastructure, and 2 on getting those settlers out. Hope to get another round in Weds night if the laptop won’t be too slow. We’ll see.

 

[feralminded]

Your game is looking fine man. About the only thing I think you could have done a bit better was focus more on working scientists in Thebes earlier. Getting early GS's is really nice but if you get one soon you should be looking to bulb Philosophy so you can run some Pacifism and really crank out the great people. Other than that I think you're seeing kind of how Emperor works. Its REALLY uncomfortable until you get your hands on Aesthetics but then its not so bad as you can trade around. Don't be afraid to trade to the backwards AI's for pure so you can deficit research like mad. Any time you can get 200 or more for a non-critical tech its usually worth it. I'm pretty sure I spent the majority of my 400AD-1400AD stint running a deficit slider powered by mostly tech trading.

 

[zizzeus]

1400AD - End

Spoiler :

Domination - 1810AD

Not a single cottage built in my land. I did inherit a few from Willem, which I kept.

I would have won the AP religious vote if I had waited for it too.

Essentially, I drafted a large army of rifles while building trebs everywhere else. I took Brennus' capital, and he capitulated. I then took 4 of Willem's cities before running out of spies and siege. Also, JC was marching a stack of grenadiers towards Peter so I wanted in on that action. He asked me to switch to Buddhism, and since I was killing the former Jewish block anyway, I switched. It brought us to please, and Justinian to Friendly, while dropping Pacal from Friendly down to Cautious. O well, he's next anyway. And just in case anyone is wondering, you can still hit the WFYABTA limit at Friendly.



I was stupid in the war with Peter, having let my spying go and not checking the trade screen. Plus, I think he popped a Great Spy and infiltrated me, so I couldn't see what he was researching. One turn before I was to take Moscow, with all of the defenses already bombarded, and he upgrades EVERYTHING to rifles. Seriously, where do they get this cash so fast? I could have faced longbows and xbows, but instead CG2 rifles. It took longer than it should have, and I left him with two cities - again due to lack of siege. No tech, no problem.



Back to Willem, and I only needed one more city before he'd had enough. I gave in, because I wanted to get to Pacal before he had infantry. I didn't make it, but it didn't matter. Cannons + flanking II cav will weaken anything. My tech was back up by now, so I researched assembly line myself. The invasion force:



And finally some love: only second worst now!



After that it was just a race with my vassals to claim as much as possible. I missed one pop 1 city (to Brennus), but had enough for the domination without declaring on my friends.



Fun game! Thanks for organizing. I haven't played a spiritual leader in forever. I forgot how abusive it can be.




Strengths of my game:
Excellent drafting: I was able to draft almost every turn in Heliopolis,
thanks to the banana. I got the globe up early and even drafted some
muskets before rifles came online. Most of my army was trebs and level 1
draftees, aside from some specialist CG3 and CR3 upgrades from macemen.

Good Diplomacy: Aside from my refusal to give Willem Ivory and his
subsequent declaration, I didn't get any DoWs. I was actually happy to
get the DoW from him, as it netted me an early GG. I was able to keep
Brennus and JC busy while I built my army. I had trading partners the
whole game up until the end, and got the AP buildings in every city for
some ...

Great Production: All my workshops, AP buildings, and my settled
engineers and priests led to a pretty powerful war pump. Cheap forges
helped as well.

Rifling Monopoly: Despite being behind, I got rifles 2 techs before
everyone else, which was enough to vassal three civs.

Weaknesses:

Poor scouting/expansion phase: some bad luck with barbs, but some stupid settling in the jungle early meant I was behind in cities, and thus beakers.

Very poor tech rate: I was late to both lib and rifling, compared to other SE games. I guess there's a reason why everyone runs so many scientists. If it ain't broke ...

Wonders: Wasted time on the great wall and the hanging gardens, when I could have expanded faster. Did not leverage the great spy well either
(I only stole HBR and Lit before my points were too low) although I did get to see research of everyone for a long time.

Granaries: did not build them fast enough.

HE: did not get it unlocked early enough - another reason not to build
the GW.

Glib: missed it, since I needed to expand more in this phase.

 

[Tempesta13]

1400AD - End

Spoiler :

Domination - 1810AD

Not a single cottage built in my land. I did inherit a few from Willem, which I kept.

I would have won the AP religious vote if I had waited for it too.

Essentially, I drafted a large army of rifles while building trebs everywhere else. I took Brennus' capital, and he capitulated. I then took 4 of Willem's cities before running out of spies and siege. Also, JC was marching a stack of grenadiers towards Peter so I wanted in on that action. He asked me to switch to Buddhism, and since I was killing the former Jewish block anyway, I switched. It brought us to please, and Justinian to Friendly, while dropping Pacal from Friendly down to Cautious. O well, he's next anyway. And just in case anyone is wondering, you can still hit the WFYABTA limit at Friendly.

View attachment 203526

I was stupid in the war with Peter, having let my spying go and not checking the trade screen. Plus, I think he popped a Great Spy and infiltrated me, so I couldn't see what he was researching. One turn before I was to take Moscow, with all of the defenses already bombarded, and he upgrades EVERYTHING to rifles. Seriously, where do they get this cash so fast? I could have faced longbows and xbows, but instead CG2 rifles. It took longer than it should have, and I left him with two cities - again due to lack of siege. No tech, no problem.

View attachment 203527

Back to Willem, and I only needed one more city before he'd had enough. I gave in, because I wanted to get to Pacal before he had infantry. I didn't make it, but it didn't matter. Cannons + flanking II cav will weaken anything. My tech was back up by now, so I researched assembly line myself. The invasion force:

View attachment 203528

And finally some love: only second worst now!

View attachment 203529

After that it was just a race with my vassals to claim as much as possible. I missed one pop 1 city (to Brennus), but had enough for the domination without declaring on my friends.

View attachment 203530

Fun game! Thanks for organizing. I haven't played a spiritual leader in forever. I forgot how abusive it can be.

View attachment 203531
View attachment 203532

Strengths of my game:
Excellent drafting: I was able to draft almost every turn in Heliopolis,
thanks to the banana. I got the globe up early and even drafted some
muskets before rifles came online. Most of my army was trebs and level 1
draftees, aside from some specialist CG3 and CR3 upgrades from macemen.

Good Diplomacy: Aside from my refusal to give Willem Ivory and his
subsequent declaration, I didn't get any DoWs. I was actually happy to
get the DoW from him, as it netted me an early GG. I was able to keep
Brennus and JC busy while I built my army. I had trading partners the
whole game up until the end, and got the AP buildings in every city for
some ...

Great Production: All my workshops, AP buildings, and my settled
engineers and priests led to a pretty powerful war pump. Cheap forges
helped as well.

Rifling Monopoly: Despite being behind, I got rifles 2 techs before
everyone else, which was enough to vassal three civs.

Weaknesses:

Poor scouting/expansion phase: some bad luck with barbs, but some stupid settling in the jungle early meant I was behind in cities, and thus beakers.

Very poor tech rate: I was late to both lib and rifling, compared to other SE games. I guess there's a reason why everyone runs so many scientists. If it ain't broke ...

Wonders: Wasted time on the great wall and the hanging gardens, when I could have expanded faster. Did not leverage the great spy well either
(I only stole HBR and Lit before my points were too low) although I did get to see research of everyone for a long time.

Granaries: did not build them fast enough.

HE: did not get it unlocked early enough - another reason not to build
the GW.

Glib: missed it, since I needed to expand more in this phase.

AFAIK friendly does in fact = no WFYABTA. If you have a vassal, which i'm assuming you did at the time, then they really aren't friendly to you - it just tells you that you are while it's actually averaging attitudes.

Nice game... oh the power of drafting...

 

[zizzeus]

Hmmm, I had a vassal but he was much friendlier with me than my vassal, so maybe it's the other way around. His trade WFYABTA is based on the average of both of us, while his status is based only on me. Good point though.

 

[feralminded]

Alright so I know a lot of people are finishing up their games but for the purposes of the walkthrough I'd like to go over the goals for 1400AD+. Feel free to debate or contest these but this is what I would aim for if my game still needed heavy play beyond 1400AD.

1. Biology is a big priority for SE. It nearly doubles the number of scientists you can effectively run and turns a lot of borderline cities into research powerhouses. Once you have teched Biology you can seriously focus on specializing your cities and this will be important to keep up with the AI.
2. If you don't have oxford yet, make it so.
3. Wherever your financial capital is going to be you need to cottage the crap out of it (some players like to cottage up their capital even in SEs ... which is fine to serve our purposes as a financial city). Regardless you want to cottage up your city and drop the stock market in it ASAP.
4. State Property is going to be a big deal. imho SE's are better served with SP than corporations ... but only if you are willing to abuse the hell out of it. SP helps us warmonger through the really bloody Renaissance->Industrial era. Ideally we would already have a hefty number of workshops since we'd have been working Caste System a lot but if possible future production cities really want to get their hands on watermills too. SP watermills are broken and its worth building them ahead of time knowing SP is coming. Ideally when we turn the switch on SP it's a serious boost.
5. Get your war on! If you couldn't ride out your Liberalism prize to total victory you need to just keep your head down and keep the pressure on. With Bio-farms powering your research cities and SP/Caste workshops/watermills powering your production cities and a Stock market cottage city pumping all that through at 0% sliders you should have a sufficient war machine to simply overrun your enemies. Basically the only really threatening situation is if the AI beats you to Infantry but even then you can simply overwhelm them with numbers while you make it to that critical tech. Beyond infantry you have no worries until armor which is actually a fairly large amount of time.
6. Don't be afraid to set aside a couple of decent food cities or ideally freshly conquered cities to build and the proper buildings. While I rarely build a Scotland yard unless I built GW, the AI always seems to manage this somewhere. Forget libraries and barracks and markets in that city ... build the espionage buildings and work as many spies as you can. You can have that city just crank out infinite spies and build tons of

Ok that's the general advice. As for my game, well I think its pretty simple. I just need to crank units and run over another 25% of the world. Willem is next, then Pacal, and I recon that's enough.

 

[feralminded]

Finished up my game tonight.

Spoiler :

Well it really was fairly academic from the last save. I had an unstoppable army, mop up ensues. I finish off Russia on 1405 and then head for Willem. I probably take one too many cities, pretty sure he would have capped after the first couple but oh well ... here he is with that lovely sourpus.

Fast forward another dozen or so turns and I do the same thing to Pacal. This time I'm lazy and make him cap after only one city.

Unfortunately thats not enough. I'm at 60% out of 64% so I decide to go after JC. Only problem is he's half a continent away. Click enter a bunch of times and ...

1670AD. Probably could have been sub 1600 if I had been less sloppy at the end but whatever ... I'll take it.

And here's the play by play

Spoiler :

1405AD - Finish off Russia, bribe JC to attack Justinian to buy some time.
1425AD - Decide Moscow is going to be center since it has a Scotland Yard, St Petersburg is going to get stock market since it has close to 10 towns. Pi-Rammesses is getting IW.
1465AD - Finish Biology, start corporation. Go Slavery/OR to whip out some infrastructure. Trade Bio to Willem for Astronomy and some gold. DoW on him.
1485AD - Take Jute from Willem. He's got nothing.
1490AD - Finish Corporation, start on Communism.
1500AD - Finish off some whippings and drafts, go to Rep/FS/CS/FM/FR.
1515AD - Utrekt falls, Amsterdam is in sights.
1535AD - Amsterdam falls, Willem Capitulates. Pacal next.
1550AD - Finish communism, go SP start on Assembly Line.
1580AD - Take Uxmal. Pacal capitulates. Not sure this will give me the win though. Might need to roll on JC a bit which is going to delay this another 100 years .
1655AD - Push into JC's turf ... almost over.
1665AD - Take Antium. JC capitulates. Game over.

 

[TM Moot]

i've followed this thread with interest (as a decent Monarch/poor Emperor player) whilst playing a shadow game with similar settings...

i was doing well, probably in a winnable postion, but unfortunately shaka shared my continent, and after vassaling isabella/cyrus/churchill i was the only one left, needless to say, despite preparing for the envitable invasion, i got overrun...which probably highlights my lack of diplomacy skills, amongst others!

but thanks for the advice, and i look forward to the next installment

 

[michmbk]

feral:

Thanks - I played a bit last night, but my laptop got too slow by 610 AD, so I cut off. But the scientists started coming thanks to pacifism/nat'l epic - 2 in a short span for part of education and most of lib. Will have to finish when I'm back home from my trip this weekend. Because of those scientists, I cut off 1 turn from lib in 610 AD, so that was pretty amazing. I've never hit it much before about 950-1000 AD. At this point, I'm going to try to pull off steel with it, for fun with cannons and elephants. The second choice would be the nationalism/cuirassiers-cavalry move.

I had tried to get more scientists up and running early, but it took awhile because I didn't get COL until after Aesthetics. Do you think it's better to go COL before or after Aesthetics? My gut would be before to run caste, but I did it the other way this time and used Aesthetics to do some backfilling. As a result, Thebes was running 2 scientists and two priests for quite awhile (probably why prophets were my first 3 great people, followed by two scientists).

Another question - would you consider switching to merchants in lieu of scientists in the mid-game, say 600 or so AD? I tend to really like merchants for upgrade power in this stretch of the game. Thoughts on that?

 

[feralminded]

feral:

Thanks - I played a bit last night, but my laptop got too slow by 610 AD, so I cut off. But the scientists started coming thanks to pacifism/nat'l epic - 2 in a short span for part of education and most of lib. Will have to finish when I'm back home from my trip this weekend. Because of those scientists, I cut off 1 turn from lib in 610 AD, so that was pretty amazing. I've never hit it much before about 950-1000 AD. At this point, I'm going to try to pull off steel with it, for fun with cannons and elephants. The second choice would be the nationalism/cuirassiers-cavalry move.

I had tried to get more scientists up and running early, but it took awhile because I didn't get COL until after Aesthetics. Do you think it's better to go COL before or after Aesthetics? My gut would be before to run caste, but I did it the other way this time and used Aesthetics to do some backfilling. As a result, Thebes was running 2 scientists and two priests for quite awhile (probably why prophets were my first 3 great people, followed by two scientists).

Another question - would you consider switching to merchants in lieu of scientists in the mid-game, say 600 or so AD? I tend to really like merchants for upgrade power in this stretch of the game. Thoughts on that?

I find that you cannot run Caste too early because you NEED slavery at that point in a big way. My typical tech path is Aesthetics->Literature->CoL and this seems to work fine. After CoL is the real question ... currency or Civil Service. CS is on the lib path, but currency really helps the economy. Its a tough choice but I'd say half the time I have a realistic shot at trading for currency so I just go for CS and the other half I have to tech out currency myself which slows down the beeline to Liberalism. Regardless I never tech philosophy myself and I *almost* never trade it once I bulb it ... it gives the AI too much of an advantage in their lib race. This game I didn't trade it until someone else teched it.

As for merchants ... I rarely find myself running any merchants in SE's. Honestly towns are better for raw production since we run such a low slider and as I did in this game I took a city I conquered with 8-10 towns around it and then simply plopped down wallstreet there. I ended up shifting to Free Speech after I was done drafting and this city was producing 150 / turn with no shrine or corp HQ. Honestly the "cleanest" way to do it is cottage up your capital ... assuming you have a second high food city to run scientists in ... and have it be a Bureaucracy capital early game for and drop the Stock Market there late game. This game we didn't have much of an option to do this because we only had one high food city (capital) but that's a fairly strong way to power an SE. Otherwise Bureaucracy ends up being a fairly weak civic for us.

I guess this isn't a "pure" SE where you run crazy culture sliders and probably more of a hybrid-ish economy since I do heavily advocate using cottages in financial cities ... but really the source of our is almost universally scientists powered by Representation.

 

[michmbk]

That's interesting on the COL/Aesthetics debate. I've almost always gone COL first for courthouses as well as (possibly caste). I did follow the same approach on CS - teched that next and traded for currency. Didn't bulb or trade for philo, but it was only 9 turns to tech it thanks to my scientists.

I thought when this game first started that thebes was a fantastic bureaucracy capital, and normally would have cottaged it to the hilt, but was trying the specialist economy approach and farming most spots instead (except what it shared with Memphis, the horse site - those ended up being cottages so both cities could work). Memphis is sort of my cottage city now, but it only has 5-6 cottages - most of my beakers are still coming from the settled prophets and scientists in Thebes.

Also a good point on conquering a cottage city. I'll need to explore my first target this weekend if I hit the lib-steel slingshot and maybe focus on someone nearby with cottages. I'm assuming cannons with elephants moving towards rifles will own the AI - the key will be producing enough of them to really abuse my tech advantage over as many AIs as possible before they catch up. Trying to get the infrastructure down now to do that.

I also haven't really dropped the slider to zero and have used techs for my source of gold. I think that's why I'm actually ahead of everyone else in tech at 610 AD in only my second emperor game (and the fact that this appears to be a map set up for success).

 

[feralminded]

To get those cannons out you are going to want to switch to PS/Vassalage/Slavery/Theo the second you tech Steel and whip/chop them out with a vengeance. Also trebs upgrade fairly cheaply to cannons so if you time it you can have 8-10 trebs ready to upgrade as well. Don't screw around ... you want to be attacking within 10 turns of teching steel. You will need to be building your non-cannon troops now.

Also the solid option for this game was to cottage up Thebes and grow it as a Bureaucracy capital and once it gets big enough just give the corn to Memphis. I think pre-biology with low whipping memphis could have easily supported 4-5 scientists which is what I ran in Thebes most of the early game. The real problem with Memphis was getting the Glib down was going to be hard since it didn't have that beautiful forest to chop down like thebes.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Here's my 400-1400 round:

Spoiler :

Not happy with this game, but it's very winnable.

Techs: currency + calendar (Bren) - MC (Bren) - edu (bulb) - compass - hbr (Bren) - lib+nat - music - machinery - drama (Pacal) - engineering (Bren) - mil trad - gunpowder - feud+theo (Peter) - printing press - guilds (Peter) - banking - rep parts

475 - GS bulbs part of Education.

685 - GS, will bulb Lib.

820 - Lib is researched/bulbed to 1 turn from completion. I try to delay it and get free Mil Tradition.

920 - GS settled in Thebes.
Pacal has researched Nationalism. He's friendly, so even if it's a monopoly and he wants the Taj, he'll trade anyway. Sadly, I don't have anything to offer, so I switch back to lib. I don't want to miss my double golden age.

930 - Lib + free Nationalism.

1010 - I join the war vs JC for diplo bonus with Peter.

1080 - GS starts a GA. Taj is done in 1 turn.

1090 - Double GA completed:

1120 - Peace with JC.

1200 - Peter almost beat me to the barb city:

1240 - Barb city replaced with Giza:

1315 - Another GS settled in Thebes.

1385 - Ready to declare vs Brennus. He adopted hinduism for some reason:

Gergovia captured in the first turn.

1390 - Bren bribes JC vs me.

1400 - Bibracte captured:

Tech board is BAD:

Diplo is under control. Pacal is friendly and Peter is almost there. I'm a bit worried about Willem, but he doesn't build a lot of units, so power alone is probably enough to keep him quiet. War vs Brennus will be quick, he's defending with longbows, pikes and some muskets:

Capital:

I'm obviously falling behind now. Specialists allowed me to generate 100-200 bpt at a stage when I'm usually in the 60-100 range. But usually at this point I'm around 400 bpt, while this time I'm struggling to make 200 bpt. All renaissance techs are coming VERY slowly.
Not saying that SE doesn't work, because it obviously does. But it doesn't fit my playstyle. It was amazing in the early game, but now it just doesn't cut it anymore, for me.

Feralminded, in your game I see farms everywhere, so that's my mistake right there. I was thinking that a couple cities running a lot of scientists was enough to keep a good research rate. I suppose you are running at least a couple scientists in every city, with all those farms?

Overall, the game is still winnable. Brennus, Justi and probably JC are easy pickings. With their land I'll be able to catch up easily or get a diplo win.
Still, I've learned a lot so far. Well, I've learned how NOT to run a SE .

I think I'll try a serious SE again, because it obviously works for some people, with great results.
I just feel more comfortable with my usual "cottages everywhere + a good GP farm" style.

 

[michmbk]

feral - I'm right on with you. One thing I tend to do well is maximize my civics when spiritual. Asoka is my favorite warmonger for that reason. But I'm ready for the PS/slavery/vassalage/theocracy switch, and am building phants right now. Will build knights the minute I can as well. I unfortunately only have about 5-6 cats right now (no trebs), so upgrade will be tricky, but figure I'll be turning slider to 0 for upgrade, and whipping cannons everywhere to try to get 10-15 of them in 10 or so turns and attack. Because I was focused so much on tech, my military is not where it should be. But if i recall correctly, the stack I'm readying currently has about 5-6 elephants, 4-5 axes, 5-6 cats and I have elephants being built almost everywhere. So should have about 15 or so elephants soon. With a bunch of level 3 cannons, they'll mow through LBs and even muskets if the AI gets there. Hoping to get them with longbows though.

 

[feralminded]

@Ai Shizuka

Spoiler :

Feralminded, in your game I see farms everywhere, so that's my mistake right there. I was thinking that a couple cities running a lot of scientists was enough to keep a good research rate. I suppose you are running at least a couple scientists in every city, with all those farms?

Overall, the game is still winnable. Brennus, Justi and probably JC are easy pickings. With their land I'll be able to catch up easily or get a diplo win.
Still, I've learned a lot so far. Well, I've learned how NOT to run a SE .

I think I'll try a serious SE again, because it obviously works for some people, with great results.
I just feel more comfortable with my usual "cottages everywhere + a good GP farm" style.

Yeah aside from maybe a Bureaucracy capital you don't need a single cottage until mid-game if not later and then ONLY in cities you want to produce . As I said in another thread, pre-FS/PP tows are 4 filtered through your slider (which will be very low), 1 grassland farm is .5 which is half of a scientist who himself is 3 / 1 (run through library and/or university ... as well as Parthenon/Pacifism/NE for the ). Honestly the scientist is the better deal for research. For the 400-1400 span I typically ran 5-6 scientists in my capital and 2-4 in memphis. I'd say 1-3 in other cities. I kind of screwed the pooch here though and half cottaged up my capital ... it really should have been all food instead of half and half. Anyhow I fueled my research mostly through deficit research based on conquered and traded I think I war running a 60% slider for the majority of the 400-1400 span even though my economy could only realistically support about 20-30%. Most of my tech came from hardcore bulbing.

This map wasn't super SE friendly. Honestly my favorite way to run an SE is to cottage up the capital and to have a second city with good food (2 resources or more) run the scientists and NE/Oxford. This gives you the benefit of Bureaucracy early from the capital paying all of your bills and then late you can just drop the stock market in your capital and pay all your bills late game. It's not hard to run FS under SE and with PP this means 7 per town funneled all through a very low slider into the stock market capital. You can nearly pay for your entire empire on that one city alone with no shrine or corp HQ. You just food up the rest of your cities and run scientists (late game 1 grassland = 6 before multipliers regardless of slider settings ... VERY competitive with cottages which max out at 7 assuming 100% research slider). Therein lies the key to a solid SE ... hyper city specialization. Since you can assume a low slider you can count on towns for efficient production and farms for efficient production. I often find under CE's financial buildings specifically get under-utilized because they are only multiplying a fraction of overall since your goal is to run the highest slider possible. Who cares if that bank adds 50% when you're running a 90% research slider and only .7 per town is making it to the bank. This is why the irony is CE's prefer merchants to fuel their while SE's prefer Towns ... but Towns are the better deal in the end since it's more effective / tile (a merchant is only 3, a town is 7).

This game it was probably possible to cottage up the capital and run memphis as a science city but you would have had to transfer the corn and 2 FPs to memphis to support it ... which was a fine idea but sub-optimal as your capital would need to farm up a couple of ideal cottage tiles in order to work any tiles. Ideally we would like to have a second food city to run a strong SE and let the capital serve as a / city.

Perhaps after I make it through all of the other economies planned (Phi-SE, CE, TRE, RE, and maybe EE) I might have another go at this one with a better map. But this is a lot of work and if I even make it through all of those alive I might be burned out

 

[djvandrake]

To say I learned a lot from this thread would be an understament. Many thanks to Feralminded for hosting this and for the insights.

Very impressive.

I won the liberalism race in my last monarch game around 1300 ad, so to see players hitting it here 500 years earlier is just wow.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To say I learned a lot from this thread would be an understament. Many thanks to Feralminded for hosting this and for the insights.

Very impressive.

I won the liberalism race in my last monarch game around 1300 ad, so to see players hitting it here 500 years earlier is just wow.

That about sums up how I feel when players get it in 100 AD or sooner.

Yes, that's possible. Often on standard setting maps. No, I haven't done it myself. Yet .

 

[Ai Shizuka]

FM:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the pointers. Don't worry about another SE game, enough material to learn a lot from this one. I'm going to replay this from the start when I'm done.


Just one more question. If the game drags to the late industrial or even to a space victory, do you keep running specialists to the end? Or there is a point where a SE simply doesn't cut it anymore?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can keep up with a good # of cities and biology/rep specs. Even I did it once (futurehermit's cathy no wonders/cottages space game a long time ago), and I was pretty bad back then. I HATE massively running specs though. It's annoying.

 

[feralminded]

Yeah late game your Bio-scientists are better / tile than FS/PP Towns at sliders 80% or lower. That said you are losing 1 per Bio-scientist that the town would be turning into for you but still your city is dramatically more efficient than the equivalent CE gold city running bio-merchants as long as your SE science slider is under 60% (it should always be down in the 0-30% area). If you can run a science slider under SE higher than 30% without deficit you are not working enough scientists or have too many cottage cities and should have more farms to support those scientists. Of course its really hard to pave over those cottage cities you inherit but I make myself feel better by simply pillaging like mad on AI cities I don't intend to be revenue generators. The you can produce with a just a couple of extra calvary roaming around while to sack cities is insane.

Really the key to SE is hyper specialization. It does fine late game as long as you can manage that thanks to efficiency of multiplier buildings. I won't go as far as to say that due to the hyper specialization SE can actually out-produce CE on a tile by tile basis but I think they really do come damned close to each other late game. What might give CE the edge here is US. If not for US I think the SE would be dead even if not a little ahead.