Emperor walk through

[zoiks]

Here's an Emperor game. All help and advice gratefully received!

I'm playing as Victoria on a Pangea map with five AIs. Barbarians and espionage are on, huts and random events are off.`

Opening screenshot below. Settling in place gives three resources but I might prefer settling 1NW on the plains hill for an extra base hammer. We will lose ivory and not be close enough for deer, but ivory is on a river so we should be able to get that with another city. 1NW also gives plenty of coastal tiles - this would make it a fantastic location for the GLH but how many coastal cities am I likely to get on Pangea? I could probably get the deer with a later city if I get GLH and could maybe settle on the coast to get the ivory.

Moving the warrior 1SE doesn't reveal much more so decision number 1 is made. The capital will be 1NW.

Spoiler :

 

[zoiks]

Settling reveals no seafood for London, which is a shame. Corn is the only food, so first steps will be a worker and researching agriculture. The warrior will explore.

On T6 my borders pop and I meet my first opponent. Oh dear, it's Monty and he must be close - probably to the west. This isn't good news.

I meet Kublai Khan on T10 and AG comes in on T11. The worker is three turns away and my next big decision is which tech next? As far as I see it, my options are:

-Masonry to hook up the marble and start working towards Oracle.
-BW to reveal copper (might need to get axemen asap with Monty close by) and chop the seven forests surrounding London.
-Sailing to work towards the GLH


I'm not so bothered with the GLH and my instinct is to go for BW to find copper and let my worker get on with pre-chopping for the first settler. And here I will pause for advice.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

Settling NW is wrong.
I would almost 100% certainly settle on the ivory given that starting location. Only alternative would be on the marble as that would give you 3 base hammers and reach deer. But on ivory is much stronger as it moves inland and claims more land, and better land too.

Financial coast is ok, but nothing you should aim for or prioritize imho.
Nothing in the situation I see so far tilt me one inch toward GLH.

As your T11 situation is, I would for sure go for BW next. Absolutely not sailing and I would refrain from any oracle play here.
After BW, likely TW and then pottery.

 

[krikav]

Oh, another piece of feedback, your scouting pattern is off. Your warrior went too far east and then to far south.
Extremly important tiles close to the capital on the river is still not uncovered.
Revealing the area around floodplains+oasis should have been prio #1!

 

[sampsa]

Agree with krikav, settling on phant would be my clear preference, too. Allows you to settle on marble later. Coast indeed should be avoided, especially on pangaea. Financial doesn't change much, as it also boosts river cottages.

 

[sampsa]

Tech path is good, I guess after improving corn you should mine the marble, switch to settler size 2. Waste pre-BW worker turns on farming the starting tile barring a lucky forest spread, but move forest for chops 1T before BW is finished.

2nd city almost certainly 1E of ivory to claim oasis+fps, 3rd city maybe towards south by the river or to claim dry rice.

 

[Fippy]

Yep you picked a spot in middle of Ivory & Marble,
settling on marble is also stronger than your current cap.

You could rely on 3 good early tiles (inlucing 3h city tile, and picking up deer),
while moving your Palace along the river later.
But settling on Ivory is certainly more straight forward.

Counting early power tiles is also why Sampsa suggests settler at size 2 (mined marble gives 5h),
no decent 3rd tile could be improved (no other hill for a mine).

Oracle with financial Civs is usually not a good idea
Pottery takes priority, and no mysticism makes teching towards priesthood fairly expensive early.
I look at gained tech - minus invested beakers - minus what i will give up instead, and usually the result looks very bad.
On Emp you can still go there later, maybe.

 

[sampsa]

Yeah, if you can get decent cities up just do it asap and you'll beat strategies involving Oracle or GLH (on pangaea). Here both your traits also support this "default strategy": expand to around 5-6 cities, build cottages, get writing and take it from there. And from there the typical peaceful paths for me are either aesth-line (marble suggests this is a good possibility) or CoL intending to bulb philo. War path is construction.

I know I have said this a million times but my play level skyrocketed when I stopped racing for Oracle (usually with 2 cities in order to get it, because going for it and losing hurts). I know that on emperor you are more likely to get it, but you can also do it after initial expansion to say 4 cities, then losing it won't hurt that much. The thing is that expanding earlier and starting to work cottages will in the long run get you more ahead in tech than oracle combined with slow expansion will.

 

[zoiks]

Nice advice, thank you. I will restart with all this in mind.

I never think to settle on resources first, I'll remember that. Settling on marble for 3 hammers in the capital is excellent, but I prefer going for ivory because of its position, so I'll settle there. I can also do that on the first turn, and not wait til turn 2 to settle as I would with marble. With ivory, I get to AG by T8 rather than T11 but my worker is still four turns away. I'll go for BW next. My ivory capital has two floodplains to cottage, but also two desert tiles (one is oasis). There are ten forests to chop and also the corn, so the worker will be busy. He might need a friend to help.

On T8, my situation looks like this.




Next tech is BW, and I'll continue to explore. The worker will head off to the corn first.

Yeah, if you can get decent cities up just do it asap and you'll beat strategies involving Oracle or GLH (on pangaea). Here both your traits also support this "default strategy": expand to around 5-6 cities, build cottages, get writing and take it from there. And from there the typical peaceful paths for me are either aesth-line (marble suggests this is a good possibility) or CoL intending to bulb philo. War path is construction.

I know I have said this a million times but my play level skyrocketed when I stopped racing for Oracle (usually with 2 cities in order to get it, because going for it and losing hurts). I know that on emperor you are more likely to get it, but you can also do it after initial expansion to say 4 cities, then losing it won't hurt that much. The thing is that expanding earlier and starting to work cottages will in the long run get you more ahead in tech than oracle combined with slow expansion will.

I don't normally go for Oracle, it was just because marble was there so I wondered what I could 'do' with it. One WW that I do tend to go for if I can is Stonehenge. I know the consensus is not to, but popping borders in new cities asap seems much better to me than waiting for the monument to build/chop and THEN wait for the pop. With this game, I will avoid building SH.

Oh, another piece of feedback, your scouting pattern is off. Your warrior went too far east and then to far south.
Extremly important tiles close to the capital on the river is still not uncovered.
Revealing the area around floodplains+oasis should have been prio #1!

I understand what you're saying about revealing tiles, but I will get them unfogged before the settler. I assume the reason is that the warrior may get killed or delayed whilst recovering from an attack?

 

[sampsa]

One WW that I do tend to go for if I can is Stonehenge. I know the consensus is not to, but popping borders in new cities asap seems much better to me than waiting for the monument to build/chop and THEN wait for the pop. With this game, I will avoid building SH.

Stonehenge is good in some ways, yes, as it allows more freedom when choosing city spots. If you don't go for it, you need to put food to the first ring (and this is my preferred solution). Reason why SH is bad is that it comes at a time when expanding is very lucrative. When you are putting hammers into Stonehenge you are not putting them into a settler. Also, those great prophet points are not very good.

 

[zoiks]

On T12 the worker arrives and he is despatched to the cornfields. Production moves to a warrior to grow the capital. The first warrior has found Kublai Khan of the Mongols and also where Monty is (we knew they were on the map from the first run in post 2).

On T18, the corn is farmed but we're four turns from BW. What can the worker do? He can either farm the grassland 1S of the corn, or farm the floodplain 1S of the capital. It'll take two turns to get that far south, so one turn will be lost. But farming 1S of the corn will only give the tile 31, which is the same as those floodplains. I've no need to work this tile at any time. And the farm will take five turns, with BW arriving in four - so that's one wasted chopping turn if I complete the farm.

I'm quite bad at wasting worker turns early on, so what do with him?

Spoiler :

 

[AcaMetis]

If you're sure you want to farm that floodplain long-term, go down and farm it until BW comes in and you can start chopping. Otherwise put worker turns into the river grassland tile, but don't bother finishing it either over getting ready to chop. If you want to finish the grassland farm later for spreading irrigation or for that future city on the Marble to take, you'll be able to get it done quickly.

 

[Windsor]

Depending on timings you can choose to road. You can go into the forest now, road, and then walk into a second forest just in time for BW to finish. That saves you one turn chopping two forests and hopefully also starts a road towards a future city compared to only getting two turns of farm into the floodplains. I really don't see any reason to farm the grassland. The corn will get irrigation from the tile 1S of the deer.

edit: I just realized you are the English and not the Mongols so you don't have TW. Makes this post seem a bit dumb :\

 

[zoiks]

I started a farm on the grassland then moved the worker ready to chop as soon as BW came in. And once it did, copper appeared to the west of the rice. Lovely stuff.

Spoiler :

Bismarck popped by to say hello and the next tech was TW. London churned warriors until it grew to 3 on T24 and i switched to the first settler. Victoria is an IMP leader, so I used as many hammers in the city as possible to get the trait benefits. 9 turns for the settler to build. I've no idea how to work out the whip calculation so I'll just chop and whip when it says I can.

One chop done and I can whip on T27. London drops to size 2 and I have to decide where to put the settler.

Spoiler :

Three potential spots chosen. One is north, on the marble. But I'd rather make a break for the copper before Monty snatches it. So I could go in the furthest south spot, which would put five resources in the BFC, including gold and marble, for a good production city. But to get the rice in this city, I would need to wait for London to pop (24 turns). So settling between copper and rice seems the best choice to me.

 

[Zavior]

I'd go for 1NW of the southern cow for the first settler.

1E of the incense lacks any food in the first ring and will be useless for a while.
Between the copper and rice would have 2 good tiles to work, but I don't think Monty will be settling that spot anytime soon.

Also not having a land border with Monty might save you from early war dec.

 

[krikav]

Good worker micro stopping the farm and going into forest!

I think I would prefer inbetween copper/rice, cow site is much better but requires an expensive tech (AH) to be profitable, and it's kind of far away.
I would feel much safer with copper in hand sooner rather than later too.
Monty is already annoyed, and a suprise DoW can happen very early if we are unlucky.

Having rice/copper in second ring probably isn't worth it, you could go with a disgusting city 1E of the gold just to grab the resources and stay at pop1 and work gold building wealth for the rest of the game.

Is the worker chopping now? Not sure if the timing would have worked out, but roading the tile he is standing on, and then roading the rice would connect both cities for +2C, also would probably have speed up city settlement by one turn.
Perhaps the whip of the settler was premature?
Sometimes it makes sense to fill up the food bar for a turn or so at pop4, before doing the 2pop whip, that way it reaches pop3 way faster again after the whip.

Overflow and chop should go into another worker.


*EDIT* Oh, yes I agree that there should likely be no worry what so ever that monty steals that copper! It's too close and he has other spots closer by. He is more likely to settle like... ON the gold, like they usually do. >_< */EDIT*

 

[Fippy]

You may not want to go this way here,
but normally i would settle as Krikav suggests (between Copper & Rice) and Axe rush Monty so he cannot cause problems later
(and for fun ofc, i cannot deny that..! IMP generals yay)

 

[drewisfat]

Am I the only one who wants to follow the river? I woulda picked SSE of London and shared FPs, one of which I'd have farmed before chopping.
The only reason I'd look twice at copper is we don't have a lot of fogbusters.

 

[krikav]

Yes, I like 3S1E of capital with a farmed FP, it can sport alot of it's own cottages and help the capital with it's too.
A disadvantage is that we would have to farm a FP that would be a good cottage for the capital right away though...

And rice/copper city looks really good in my eyes, grassland copper is a awesome tile, dry rice helps it grow (can be suplemented with a farmed riverside that will later spread irrigation. And it can help capital develop a lone grassland copper.
It has 2 forest available, so either just a build of the granary with the aid of two chops and the copper, or a 1pop whip.

There might be the off chance of some seafood out there too!

 

[zoiks]

The site between copper and rice was always my favourite. Even if I don't go to war with Monty, I will eventually somewhere else and I'd rather have the copper sooner than later (or maybe not at all). I hadn't considered the spot by the cow yet, but without AH it would probably not do much good so that can be pencilled in for the third.

So the settler arrives and heads off with the London warrior towards the copper. I'll follow the suggestion of building a road from the river to the new city via the rice farm. Unfortunately on the next turn, my exploring warrior is defeated by a panther, so I'll have to build at least two warriors in London (one to garrison the city and one to explore).

Two turns for TW to arrive. Next will be pottery. As for Monty, he's not happy with me so let's see how he goes. Maybe if his religion spreads, I'll adopt it to stay in his good books.

Is the worker chopping now? Not sure if the timing would have worked out, but roading the tile he is standing on, and then roading the rice would connect both cities for +2C, also would probably have speed up city settlement by one turn.
Perhaps the whip of the settler was premature?
Sometimes it makes sense to fill up the food bar for a turn or so at pop4, before doing the 2pop whip, that way it reaches pop3 way faster again after the whip.

Overflow and chop should go into another worker.

I need to do some pencil and paper calculations with reruns to figure out the best times to whip. It's something I've never got my head around. I'll follow this advice of getting a worker next in London as there's lots to do around the cities - the forest the worker is currently in will be chopped in the next turn so we're not far from getting worker number two.