Emperor Tutorial Series II - The Fundamental CE (Monarch/Prince players welcome)

Thalur · Feb 20, 2009

I've made it to 415AD (I overshot a bit), but I don't think I'm doing as well as Feral. I'm way behind two of the AIs in tech still

and my power score is abysmal (despite two cities building units most of the time).

Spoiler :

feralminded · Feb 20, 2009

Thalur its really hard to tell without a play by play but that's a fairly late CoL ... you really want to under most circumstances be looking to get it by 0-200AD. Also thats a fairly late GLib ... I would not be surprised if someone doesn't steal it from you. I'd say overall your biggest issue right now is you are very short on workers ... and this might actually be your problem. I know it seems like its not a big deal but the sooner you can develop your land the sooner your cities evolve ... its really a silent accelerator of everything else. Also you will want to be looking to get Calendar soon because HR alone does not solve your problems. Getting that silk will help, not to mention those bananas and the ability to trade for some other resources.

Yeah if I had to put my finger on anything it would be workers. Also tech trading is very tricky. I don't know if you looked at my play by play but I negotiated some VERY shrewd trades in my game. Basically I brokered around techs every chance I got. I also traded with the more stingy AI's first and denied Willem every chance I could get.

dorkynorky · Feb 20, 2009

400 AD

Spoiler :

Thalur · Feb 20, 2009

@feralminded: thanks for the tips, that's exactly the sort of thing I was after from thee threads. I'll have a look through your play-by-plays when I get home on Monday, and see if I can go through and improve. I've definately been feeling behind tech wise compared to my normal games (on prince), so hopefully more workers will help. I normally get about 1 per city on average, and I don't whip or chop as much as I think I could.
As for trading, I never seem to be able to get food deals from the AIs - I always feel like I've helped them more than me. Definately room for improvement, I think.
Sorry for any typos, writing this on my iPhone isn't the easiest thing.

miked1991 · Feb 20, 2009

Heya again, I'm back with the series after pretty much giving up on that last one. CE time though now, back to my strengths

I've played through to 1000BC... got the blocker city down like feral but I saved that one till quite late, so I've yet to see a border pop or even finish the monument there yet. Going by ferals report I think I'm about 4/5 turns behind him in tech (I believe you comment on hitting alphabet on 1125BC, I got it dead on 1000BC). I think I got by #2/3 cities down slightly quicker. Settled that bronze city with bronze in the first 8 tiles and that notably helps with the barbs, they're nothing to worry about now. I put my 3rd city down for the horses though in the NW, thats just building the pasture now with roads almost completly to hook it up. Seems stupid to have the Immortals and not use them, so they'll be my unit of choice for taking out the 2 barb cities that have popped up near me, and they'll probably form most of my pre-macemen mobile defence. Didn't want to go IW as then I'd be using Swords instead of Immortals, but I think I'll have to get my hand on it pretty quick anyway as the jungles need to be chopped at some point.

On a side note, I think I've got my workers perfect for this game, and generally I seem to be getting them right in most of my games at least up until the 1000BC point. I'm placing improvements down before I'm working un-improved tiles, but not making the easy mistake of overdoing it and having a size 5 capitals with 10 cottages around it! (easy once you've been told to build more workers and you do

).

So far my games going well I think, but from here onwards I'll do a play-by-play and hopefully some advice can come my way when things start to fall apart. This next segment is probably a weakness of mine, as my economy almost always falls to a spectacularly low position and I spend 2/3rds of the game trying to recover it! I'm usually trying to recue the economy whilst getting an army online which hurts from the unit costs... and if i hold off the army a bit ofc a warmonger will be on my door

Validator · Feb 20, 2009

feralminded said:
I freely admit I am not the strongest CE player. All but one of my immortal wins are under SEs and my closest Deity victory was with an SE. That said I do feel comfortable cleaning out a CE on Emperor but again ... I know its not my strongest playstyle. That said in this game I did pull a ~800AD lib which I don't think anyone can consider "weak". How I got there was indeed a lot of tech trading but also pulling several Great Scientists out of my capital along the way.

I don't think we need to keep "spoilering" a discussion of the state of your economy (not sure why I did it in the first place). I guess I was reacting to the fact that you put "Tutorial" and "Essential CE" in the title of your thread. I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone reading that would think that the thread would contain an example of a first rate CE. And I don't think I'm going out on a limb to state that your economy falls short of that (at this point in the game at least).

Your tech progress to this point has been impressive, but I think your masterful tech trading is the primary reason, and that wasn't the point of the thread.

Now if you had titled your thread something like "Emperor Tutorial Series - Keeping up with the AI via Tech Trading while running a Weak CE" I wouldn't have said anything.

Seriously I wasn't trying to offend, but the tech trading issue is a bit of a concern for me in demonstration type games like these. It's really easy for good tech traders to use superior trading to mask a weak economy. Then lesser players who read the thread try to copy the play of the "expert" and wonder what they're doing wrong with their economy when their tech rate doesn't keep up.

feralminded said:
Not to sound too defensive but I did say almost exactly what you said above:

I decided since the land was so good to go for the Pottery gambit. Honestly I am not sold on this being a solid strategy and doubt it works on Immortal but I've done it a couple of times now on Emperor so I decided to give it a shot. The idea is shoot wheel->pottery first before going mining->BW. This means we won't be able to find copper until the mid 2000s and can slow an initial expansion if we have super close AI's. Still as long as we are aware of these facts and account for them ... with good land ... its a hell of an opening for a CE. We just will have to dance with some barbs for a couple hundred years is all.

Now I probably could have gone into greater detail and its absolutely a fact I only did this because of the Flood Plains ... which is something I glossed over with my handwaving about "good land".

Sorry about that. By the time I had read through a few first round reports and saw how frequently the Pottery opening was used I had forgotten about your disclaimer. :blush:

I don't think it hurts to reiterate the trade-offs involved here and the need for FPs should have been mentioned. Also I wanted to point out that this opening isn't really limited to a CE. Any type of economy can use it.

feralminded said:
I guess I am very comfortable tech trading and as a result never worry about what I'm going to get. Honestly even if I had prioritized Monarchy earlier I don't think I could have garrisoned up my capital much quicker without hurting the initial expansion. Ultimately with this quality of land my focus was on horizontal expansion as opposed to vertical expansion. I got Monarchy in 305BC this game ... I could have probably teched it myself maybe 30 turns earlier and certainly would have teched it myself within 30 turns if no one had it to trade but the AI always prioritizes it so there's rarely a need to tech it myself unless I'm pushing for a 1000BC HR ... which I only consider useful with less expandable land. I have played CEs where I get Bureaucracy up and running ultra early but I only do this when I am isolated or stuck with really poor land. In this case we are neither.

Well I suppose a good tech trader could decide that they have a good chance of trading for a needed tech like Monarchy based on the AIs who had been met and knowledge of their tech preferences and trading practices. But there is always a bit of luck involved since you can't 100% accurately predict the availability of techs.

And what would you have done if the situation was different? Say you were on a continent with only 2 civs, or even 3?

feralminded said:
The other thing is I whipped the hell out of my capital this game early to produce settlers and workers and whatnot which I would not have been doing if I was HR and trying to grow consistently. Its all a trade off. Grow up or out, hard to do both this early.

You bring up one of the key elements to the game: balancing horizontal growth with vertical growth (and doing both while maintaining military strength and a decent tech rate). I don't really see that you have to chose between them however. In fact I don't see how you can focus entirely on horizontal growth while ignoring vertical growth.

As I see it, the city maintenance system was designed into Civ4 to prevent REXing, so how fast you can expand your empire now doesn't depend on how fast you can build settlers, but instead on how fast you can build your economy to support new cities. For me vertical growth is the key there.

When you're talking about a cottage spammable capital location, any additional pop you can get in the capital can be assigned to work more cottages. Those cottages support more cities. Ideally I'd like to have another cottaged spammable location settled early, so this city can also grow vertically and take part of the economic growth burden.

Not all cities are going to benefit from HR to the same extent at this point. The capital will get the biggest boost, but other cities can benefit too. And not all cities need to go through an unrestricted growth phase. Your Pasargadae for instance has 6 good tiles to work. Station a couple of units there for HR

and grow a couple of pop. Then let it pump out settlers and workers. Other production cities can also produce the workers, settlers and military needed.

So the capital grows and works more cottages while other cities that don't need to grow produce the settlers/workers. Vertical and horizontal growth occur at the same time.

feralminded said:
What do you do with your capital in the end game? Do you pave it over with workshops? I think in many starts your CE capital will be a super science city until the day you win or lose. Not all starts, a brown capital does happen now and then, but in most green starts it only makes sense. Of course its percentage contribution goes down as time goes by but in green starts it is always guaranteed to have an academy + Oxford, and with a good start like this will more than likely have the most cottages and the most mature cottages. No other city can compare pre-emancipation. It's intuitively obvious that this capital on this map WILL be the best science city for the majority of the game even post Bureaucracy. I'm not trying to misdirect anyone, this is a fact. It cannot support our economy long term but it IS our economy for right now.

I wasn't trying to suggest that the capital isn't important or that it shouldn't be developed ASAP. (In fact as I stated above I actually think it should be developed earlier than you.) And I readily agree it will be the biggest :science:

provider at this point and in fact through the whole game if Oxford is built there (or else it was a real bad choice for Oxford).

What I was trying to get at is that with other cottaged cities the percentage of the empire's :science:

coming from the capital should not be great by the late stages. I looked at some old saves from late game CEs that I've run and on average I was probably getting about 400 :science:

/turn from my capital, but that was for a empire getting 3000 :science:

/turn. So the capital only accounts for about 15%.

The point I was trying to make is that the sooner you get the other cottage cities developed the sooner they can start contributing and boost the empire's :science:

output.

feralminded said:
I have finished this game already and it was a boon NOT to have the GL in my NE city because by the time the NE city comes online the age of GSs is usually over. Getting it out in your capital lets you focus on pure GS production (I got out 3 pre-liberalism) and get them done in time to matter. Then late game all I want is GEs and GMs anyhow so having the GS points polluting my NE city kind of sucks.

Well just to be clear you could have accomplished the same thing building the GL in a city other than your capital (Pasargadae for example). Just don't build NE there. The only advantage that you had building it in the capital is that you got the 50% academy bonus applied to the free scientists. But that only amounts to 3 extra final :science:

/turn (which shouldn't make a noticeable difference to overall tech rate). In exchange you had to run scientists in your Bureau capital, which just seems to be sub-optimal since they don't benefit in any way from Bureaucracy.

I'm not sure what you have against late game GSs. What do you use your GEs and GMs for? Personally I want as many GSs as possible since I can always use another academy somewhere. For late game I'm going to use GPs to trigger Golden Ages, and there the type of GP doesn't matter (just as long as they're different).

feralminded · Feb 20, 2009

Validator said:
I don't think we need to keep "spoilering" a discussion of the state of your economy (not sure why I did it in the first place). I guess I was reacting to the fact that you put "Tutorial" and "Essential CE" in the title of your thread. I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone reading that would think that the thread would contain an example of a first rate CE. And I don't think I'm going out on a limb to state that your economy falls short of that (at this point in the game at least).

Your tech progress to this point has been impressive, but I think your masterful tech trading is the primary reason, and that wasn't the point of the thread.

Now if you had titled your thread something like "Emperor Tutorial Series - Keeping up with the AI via Tech Trading while running a Weak CE" I wouldn't have said anything.

Unfortunately I think you might be right to a certain extent. Actually I made a lot of mistakes in the SE version of this (the first one) that I kind of covered up through shrewd tech trading. As much as I suck at diplomacy for purposes of starting/preventing wars, I'm fairly adept at tech trading. This very game ...

320BC - Trade Aesthetics/Poly to Shaka for IW/Priesthood/Meditation.
305BC - Trade Aes/IW to Willem for monarchy.
290BC - Trade mansa Monarchy/Aes for CoL.

So I started with Aes/Poly. In two turns I turned that into IW/Priesthood/Meditation/Monarchy/CoL. I think that was a huge turning point for me. To be fair I do try and write down every trade ... I do miss some of the lesser ones (mid-late game I continuously trade old techs to backwards AIs for 100 :gold:

a pop and I don't always write these down). I consider tech brokering a key part of any Emperor+ strategy but you are right in your assertion that the point here isn't tech brokering but solid economic advise.

I don't think it hurts to reiterate the trade-offs involved here and the need for FPs should have been mentioned. Also I wanted to point out that this opening isn't really limited to a CE. Any type of economy can use it.

Very true. As it is even with this opening the gambit almost got me into more trouble than I could handle. I ended up delaying BW until post 3000BC and since I laid down my 2nd city poorly (pasagarde) I got into barb trouble. With an earlier BW I could have settled that city sooner and not worried ... or had I chosen the stronger spot for the city I also would have landed ok but both mistakes nearly cost me everything.

Well I suppose a good tech trader could decide that they have a good chance of trading for a needed tech like Monarchy based on the AIs who had been met and knowledge of their tech preferences and trading practices. But there is always a bit of luck involved since you can't 100% accurately predict the availability of techs.

And what would you have done if the situation was different? Say you were on a continent with only 2 civs, or even 3?

Well while I agree my tech rate may have been heavily augmented by my trading the fact is winning emperor without tech trading I think is less instructive, specially for new players. While I agree with you brokering makes the game easier ... I think for a new player every advantage they can get will be helpful. So what if they take advantage of friendly trading AI's ... its what any good player WILL do. I feel like what you are advocating is I concoct a tutorial for an isolated start. While this could in fact be instructive and indeed would focus on a "pure" economy I don't think this is very helpful for a brand new (to the difficulty level) player. I think what's best for them is to learn every dirty trick to help them on their way while learning the ropes of the fundamental economy.

You bring up one of the key elements to the game: balancing horizontal growth with vertical growth (and doing both while maintaining military strength and a decent tech rate). I don't really see that you have to chose between them however. In fact I don't see how you can focus entirely on horizontal growth while ignoring vertical growth.

As I see it, the city maintenance system was designed into Civ4 to prevent REXing, so how fast you can expand your empire now doesn't depend on how fast you can build settlers, but instead on how fast you can build your economy to support new cities. For me vertical growth is the key there.

Indeed, it is a balance of both ... but there's no easy way to tell what is optimal without setting some kind of line in the sand. Of course with factors like tech trading and GP-bulbing involved it becomes far more difficult to tell. One of the upcoming tutorials will be a PHI-SE without building 'mids. I hope to illustrate a truly blazing early tech rate on the backs of GP bulbing combined with serious tech trading. Compared to either the CE I ran here or the SE I ran in the previous tutorial the Phi-SE will definitely crush them to Liberalism ... so if that's your line in the sand ... Phi wins. But the dirty secret of Phi is that it falls off the world after that so its either abuse your advantage immediately or fail.

When you're talking about a cottage spammable capital location, any additional pop you can get in the capital can be assigned to work more cottages. Those cottages support more cities. Ideally I'd like to have another cottaged spammable location settled early, so this city can also grow vertically and take part of the economic growth burden.

Yeah but at least on this map we had other considerations I considered more important. My #2 city was copper for obvious reasons. My #3 city was blocking. My #4 was horses. My #5 was the NE. My #6 was the 2nd blocking city. I didn't have a clear opportunity to settle the obvious 2nd cottage location (due south of capital) until #7. I think I actually didn't settle it until #8 or #9 in retrospect ... but #7 was as soon as it "felt" ok to settle it. So while it would have been ideal to settle it #3 or 4 or whatever ... I really don't think it was ideal for this map.

What I was trying to get at is that with other cottaged cities the percentage of the empire's coming from the capital should not be great by the late stages. I looked at some old saves from late game CEs that I've run and on average I was probably getting about 400 /turn from my capital, but that was for a empire getting 3000 /turn. So the capital only accounts for about 15%.

Just looked at my final save. When I launch the ship in the mid 1800s my capital is pushing 691 :science:

out of 3459 :science:

. That's just about 20% ... and at this point I am working on future tech and have about 20 cities. So even super late game its still a good chunk of the total. I mean I agree ... it isn't everything and early growth of secondary cottage cities is important ... I just don't think it was THAT important on this map. Those jungle cities became my #2/#3 cottage cities behind the capital ... outstripping even the FP city. The thing I don't think you're acknowledging is that while I didn't have heavily developed cottages in those cities by 400AD ... they were working gems which is what I focused on developing. As soon as I had IW I had workers breaking out those gems and they are HUGE. Again I am not denying your point, I'm saying this game situations were a little sub-optimal and we had to roll with it.

Well just to be clear you could have accomplished the same thing building the GL in a city other than your capital (Pasargadae for example). Just don't build NE there. The only advantage that you had building it in the capital is that you got the 50% academy bonus applied to the free scientists. But that only amounts to 3 extra final /turn (which shouldn't make a noticeable difference to overall tech rate). In exchange you had to run scientists in your Bureau capital, which just seems to be sub-optimal since they don't benefit in any way from Bureaucracy.

The scientists didn't much hurt me and they were the ONLY way I was getting GS's that early. I believe I started working scientists in the capital in 750BC. Nowhere else even had a library at that point. By putting the Glib down there I was then able to employ 4 scientists and really punch out the GS's which assisted me greatly in getting the early liberalism. Yeah its slightly sub-optimal in terms of Bureaucracy but I don't believe its sub-optimal in terms of overall tech rate. GS's are the real deal, specially that early. I built the GLib in 55AD and had an academy down in 100AD. While I am skeptical I could have built the GLib in any other city any faster its a simple fact if I had waited for whatever city the Glib was in to produce me a GS to produce an academy with it was going to be another 50 turns before I got the academy down in the capital. So while indeed not working those cottages to employ those scientists starting in 750BC definitely hurt my tech rate somewhat for that period (although not by much ... a fully developed town at that point is only 5 :commerce:

while the scientist is 3 :science:

I'm sure the extra :science:

I got out of the early academy more than made up for it.) ... I have little doubt it more than made up for it by getting the academy down that much sooner. As it is in retrospect I could not have been religiously working those scientists if I started in 750 and got my first in 100AD. But still the point is once the GLib is down now I can employ 4 scientists and get additional GS's that much quicker for useful things like bulbing Philosophy/Education/Liberalism/Printing Press. Sure if I had done it in Pasagarde I could have turned that into a GS farm for a bit but then I lose my primary unit pump.

I mean I agree with you, it's sub-optimal ... and I can't make a strong case why NOT to put it in the NE city beyond in this game that would have delayed the GLib and subsequent GS's by a non-trivial amount of time. Sometimes its worth sacrificing long-term growth for short-term gains.

I'm not sure what you have against late game GSs. What do you use your GEs and GMs for? Personally I want as many GSs as possible since I can always use another academy somewhere. For late game I'm going to use GPs to trigger Golden Ages, and there the type of GP doesn't matter (just as long as they're different).

I use the GMs to run my Wallstreet city and facilitate a 90-100% slider as well as sushi. The GE's I use for Mining Inc and to build oxford. Everything else I use for GAs when building ship parts. I mean you're right ... there's nothing wrong with laying down Academies in every major Cottage hub ... but I prefer to get my slider up to as close to 100% as possible to really push out the :science:

of my already established super cities.

I guess I should make it clear I don't disagree with your points. Indeed the pottery-gambit is just that ... a gamble. It pays off with good land and a little luck but its not a solid strategy. I agree with you tech brokering can change things dramatically ... but I don't see that as a bad thing. I also agree with you when possible I am not a huge fan of GLib in the capital of a CE ... just we don't always have another reasonable option. Also when Bureaucracy hits ... ideally ... we will be working every last cottage possible ... but sometimes you need a GS more than that extra :commerce:

... I mean in truth that early the conversion ratio of :gp:

/

is still extremely compelling so its worth thinking about. I can't deny these things but the game isn't static and when you have opportunities you go for it. I feel I played a fairly solid game outside of the first 75 turns and if anything I felt like I wasn't expanding horizontally quite fast enough. I felt like I didn't take strong advantage of the ORG trait and those cheap courthouses. I'm tempted to do a tutorial on power-rexxing and play Shaka and see about getting 10 cities up by 0AD. I'm not sure if this game I had 5 or 6 ... but that's a fairly low number for an ORG leader. Perhaps it was the right choice, tanking our economy for the hell of it isn't necessarily the best course of action ... but its all one big trade off. I know I'm not good enough to see all of them or take advantage of all of them which is partly why I tried to stick to what I knew here.

bobbyboy29 · Feb 21, 2009

Through to 970AD and i'm doing pretty well for my first shot at emperor, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Spoiler :

Mogur · Feb 21, 2009

Both Validator and Feral are being civil and courteous but its obvious Validator doesnt agree with some of things Feral did to showcase a CE. My question to Validator is: why dont you take the 4000BC save and show us what you would do?

So what if you know the map and rival civs. This is a tutorial right. It can only lead to more optimal play, which I dont think is a bad thing. I just wanna learn, its not a "how to beat emperor thread". I think it would help me and other players in the Prince-Monarch range.

feralminded · Feb 21, 2009

Mogur said:
Both Validator and Feral are being civil and courteous but its obvious Validator doesnt agree with some of things Feral did to showcase a CE. My question to Validator is: why dont you take the 4000BC save and show us what you would do?

So what if you know the map and rival civs. This is a tutorial right. It can only lead to more optimal play, which I dont think is a bad thing. I just wanna learn, its not a "how to beat emperor thread". I think it would help me and other players in the Prince-Monarch range.

Actually I think we agree on many things but his points are well taken in that my path through this game was not textbook optimal and as a tutorial that was probably the path I *should* have taken even if it resulted in a weaker game overall. Perhaps my path was more effective but his point is trying to emulate the path I took on this map for this game on a less optimal map may in fact get people into trouble. In essence I think he's right but I'm not sure I agree that taking the less optimal, but more formally correct path is necessarily more instructive. I think beating emperor is more than just the perfect economy and lessons like how to expand or win a war or bulb through liberalism or broker technology are useful to anyone trying to take on this difficulty level for the first time. Honestly I think his points are less Emperor specific and more for the Immortal/Deity levels of play where it takes more than a strong liberalism race to win ... but I could be wrong.

feralminded · Feb 21, 2009

@dorkynorky

Spoiler :

dorkynorky · Feb 21, 2009

1335 AD What next?

Spoiler :

Feral, you had said in an earlier post that you were going for a peaceful space victory, which I could use work on. You also said that at the end you had 20 cities. It seems like maybe you did some limited conquest, but I guess you could have really packed in the filler cities. Would you let me know which one? I've only really won space victories after some conquest which is probably how I'd continue here, but if you did it with our original lands (which were pretty good) then I'll give that a try and look forward to your next updates.

Thanks

miked1991 · Feb 21, 2009

For the overall series, I'd like to see at least one game where the blocking isn't so easy. In both games so far, we've had 2/3 of our borders to sea and fairly easy blocking off of our peninsula. But in 70% of games you might only get 1 side on water, with 3+ bordering civs coming from all sides. I'd like to know how best to get my land in those games as thats something I often struggle with.

I'll post my game up to 400AD soon, it takes a lot longer when your writing the play by play!

feralminded · Feb 21, 2009

Well it looks like this game is moving along faster than the last one ... so I guess I might as well put up the next segment. Previously (1000BC->400AD) we were focused on expanding and improving our land while getting to Bureaucracy to really accelerate our research. This would set us up nicely for a powerful and early liberalism. Now for the next section

Immediate Game Goals (400AD->1400AD):

Continue to grow our capital: While we should already be looking at a very strong capital the fact is in this segment its unlikely we will move away from Bureaucracy until very late which means every here matters. Most of the land should be improved already but don't fall behind.
Finish our Expansion: We have a huge parcel of land but with Org it should be a non-issue to fill it out. Don't settle poor positions but there's enough strong sites that we can get new cities online fast.
Liberalism: Getting a GS to bulb education is pretty huge here, though not strictly necessary. What you take from liberalism is up to you but if you are going for nationhood aim early. If you want more just keep an eye on the rivals.
Grow other cities: Without a strong focus on overall economy we are going to fall behind post 1000AD. A single city just isn't enough. We have several solid cottage sites ... they need to be built up like the capital was built up in the previous segment.
Post Liberalism: The post liberalism section is a bit sketchy. If you think liberalism will take you home then it won't much matter as your tech path is clear (get to rifles/cannons and win) but otherwise we will want to make a pit stop to democracy. We don't necessarily have to tech it ourselves but don't underestimate the strength of emancipation to help your new cities grow. Around emancipation is around the time that Free Speech starts to make a lot of sense as well. If we intend to win without a liberalism war then a heavy focus on broad growth is important. We will need more and better cottage cities than the AI ... which we have the land to do.
Oxford: This will be an important part of our tech race post-liberalism. 6 universities need to find homes before its unlocked. Don't break your back to put them in your best tech cities (though this is ideal) because sometimes those cities have horrendous output. Its not a big concession to build a couple in high production cities.

Now my game, as I already alluded to I went for a peaceful victory. A warmonger approach would have been quicker and easier but it had been a while since I've launched a space ship and with this much land this game was a good candidate for this win. Ultimately to win via space your goal is to simply keep the enemies at bay with diplomacy and deterrence while you secure yourself 5 solid production cities. The liberalism path is different as well as you typically want to shoot for either physics or democracy depending on what you think you need. The physics line nets to a handful of nice Great People as well as economic growth through quick Corporation and/or State Property while the democracy line can net you solid horizontal growth through emancipation.

Here's my playthrough from 400AD->1400AD.

Spoiler :

And here's the play by play

Spoiler :

feralminded · Feb 21, 2009

miked1991 said:
For the overall series, I'd like to see at least one game where the blocking isn't so easy. In both games so far, we've had 2/3 of our borders to sea and fairly easy blocking off of our peninsula. But in 70% of games you might only get 1 side on water, with 3+ bordering civs coming from all sides. I'd like to know how best to get my land in those games as thats something I often struggle with.

I'll post my game up to 400AD soon, it takes a lot longer when your writing the play by play!

Yeah fair enough. I am not sure what will be next but I'd like to focus more on the economies than game play at least for now. There's still TRE, EE, HE, Phi-Se, and maybe RE out there ... although I am dubious about how much of an economy any of those are besides Phi-SE. TRE is really not so much an economy as a Rexxing method and RE is ... well ... I'm not sure what it is. EE and HE's are not so much economies, at least not early game ... but are really ways to morph your economy mid-game. Also I'm not qualified to lead an emperor game for either of them so we'll see. As for non-economy based games I was thinking of a early warmonger game, a true Rexx game, and maybe an isolated start game. Perhaps a "surrounded" game is also not a bad idea.

miked1991 · Feb 21, 2009

Spoiler :

Ok I'm done up to 400AD. Not much point posting my full play by play as it would take ages to post up and be boring to read!

1000BC as I said I was about the same point as feral, about 5 turns behind in tech with a stronger army as I settled with the bronze in my inner circle. At 1000BC I'm just starting to tech Aesthetics and have already decided Pasargadae will get the GLib with 2 food sources there. Later game it will likely turn into more of a hammers city, but it does the job up to liberalism. Does mean it can build the GLib at a reasonable speed!

Horse connects up at around 800BC and I get 4-5 Immortals built across various cities to go with the 3/4 axeman from pre-1000BC that I got from early copper. The axes are fogbusting nicely, and the immortals start to make easy work of barb cities. 550BC I take Harrapan, a barb city on the floodplains south of the capitol. I lose 2 immortals as it was settled on a hill, but nothing too damaging. As soon as borders pop my workers are there cottaging all over it. Then I move onto Goth with is next to my blocker city on willem, and take that at 410BC losing just 1 Immortal this time (a couple of upgrades and no hill gave me some help). During this time I completed Aesthetics and started work on Literature. Traded Aesthetics to Willem for IW and Masonry. I hold a monopoly on Alphabet so nobody should shoot off in tech too soon.

440BC and Mansa Musa is looking like the world enemy. Willem is shooting off on score and pretty decent for tech to. I trade him Alphabet for Maths as he's started teching alphabet, he'd be at it soon and I want Math to chop the GLib more effectivly (and it also screws with my bulbing further on). 335BC and Literature is teched, get Priesthood to go either Monarchy or CoL next. The GLib starts in Pasargae.

250BC and the big tech trading starts. Priesthood finishes for me, I trade IW + Aes for CoL with Musa. Next turn I trade CoL and Literature to Willem for Monarchy, Meditation and Archery. At the same time, Musa turns buddist and suddenly he's got a couple of friends. He joins Willem and Shaka under that religion, and I decide I'd better join the group too. This leaves Monty as the lone and world hated hindu. I was happy giving Mansa such a nice trade and that military tech as he's been beaten so badly he's fallen behind a fair way anyway. I start teching Civil Service.

185BC and I meet an english boat from victoria, she's hindu, and on the same turn I notice Stalin has turned hindu. One civ left to find, but seems we have a 2 religion game in this one. Warmongering will be hard as I'm bordering buddist friends, its a treck to find some hindu enemies! Eco-wise, I'm building courthouses in the more distant cities, and Archers nearer the cap to get the most outta HR.

5BC - The Great Libriary is mine

in a few turns I'll be working 2 scientists on top of that for some good GP production.

160AD - Civil Service is done, into buracracy and a few turns later i decide to take Caste System on to as I've stopped all my whipping, and Pasar has the food to work 4 scientist ontop of the 2 from GLib! Tech starts on paper.

190AD - Mansa Musa becomes a vassal of Willem! No war there just willem is so far ahead of the rest of us in score, mansa is so low (at this point willems score was 900 and mine 600 before taking the vassal. Now he's up to 1100!). A GS pops in parsa and philosiphy is bulbed.

325AD - A map trade with Victoria shows me her island. She's sharing with Alex who has a fair amount of land. Paper completes and I start Education.

400AD - End of segment. I'll attach my save onto this. Compared to Feral at this point I'm a little further along the Liberalism path, with a GS coming in about 5 turns to mostly finish Education. I'm not gonna trade anything from CS on the Liberalism path, so hopefully I can get hold of as good a liberalism slingshot as possible. I think I'm a liitle weak in horizontal expansion but vertically I've got some nice cities inc a size 10 capitol working 9 cottages, and a size 8 FP city below it working pure cottages. I'm wondering if it would be better to get the acadamy down in my cap or bulb education with the GS. My target for the immediate short term needs to be settling cities. Its held off a bit as I can't grow my cities whilst making settlers!

I think things are going ok. Any pointers on where I could be doing a little better?

miked1991 · Feb 21, 2009

I'm done up to 1475AD... lost count of the turns lol!

Spoiler :

feralminded · Feb 22, 2009

@miked1991

Spoiler :

miked1991 said:
I'm done up to 1475AD... lost count of the turns lol!

My big problem atm is probably the Great People. I need merchant fast to get Sushi, similar for Mining Inc. Tech wise I'm running away with it, many techs ahead and I did manage to get Physics from Liberalism as nobody seemed interested in beelining Lib themselves.

My main worry is the military game. Mine is nothing short of pathetic. At the moment I've got a Shaka at pleased romping over everyone. Musa is completly wiped off the map, Stalin quite likes Shaka and can't decide if he wants to be his vassal or not. Willem is in big trouble with Shaka who's romping over him. I'm probably 25% of Shaka's power, so I need to keep him interested on other targets so he doesn't come for me! Trying to get some units together to go on the border but hammers are hard to come by in this game.

I think my lack of a proper HE city has hurt me. I didn't decide until very late to just make Pasaragae the GP Farm, and its only working 3 tiles at a time. Out of Caste System now and I can't work a single merchant there that I need! Will have to add some infra there so I can make some. Also a bit slow on the banks for a wall street, which will probably be the FP city south of the capitol, Harrapan in my game I think its called. Although it might just be best to throw it into the capitol along with Oxford, which just completed.

Starting on the Kremlin now as I try to hook up stone. Will certainly need that to try and produce some hammers in some cities!

Any advice?

You probably don't want to stock market your capital since the idea of a stock market city is to work a ton of merchants, not cottages so much. I personally dropped the NE and SM in the same city and while a little less than ideal, this isn't horrible. I'd say if you only have 1 good food city besides the capital NE/SM it up. If you have 2 then split them up. But yeah just leave the capital to its cottages.

tycoonist · Feb 22, 2009

you shouldn't need many GS for a CE. one for academy in capital, one for bulbing of education, perhaps one for philosophy. it isn't hard to get 3GS without GL, i never feel that it is necessary to build since it has been pushed back in bts.

TheMeInTeam · Feb 22, 2009

tycoonist said:
you shouldn't need many GS for a CE. one for academy in capital, one for bulbing of education, perhaps one for philosophy. it isn't hard to get 3GS without GL, i never feel that it is necessary to build since it has been pushed back in bts.

That and the opportunity cost is slower bureaucracy, which is oh-so-favorable to a commerce-based capitol.

I might still do it with marble if I were expanding like mad and aesthetics were to be the only tech I could reliably trade to multiple AIs after wheezing to it. At that point lit is a tech away and assuming marble, opens up some useful national wonders that aren't extra pricey too. In this game, darius' trait combo was absolutely overpowering for me and I never ran into financial trouble even with fairly quick expansion, so I just skipped it and went to power the cap further.

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