Emperor walk through

[zoiks]

By T32, York has been settled (alas, no seafood) and the next worker appears. He rushes over to help his buddy. Pottery is still 8 turns away as my research slider drops to 70% with the new city. I'll do the 0/100% thing to squeeze out as much research as I can.

At 70%, I get 0 and +8.
At 0% I get 9 and 0
At 100% I get -3 and +12

So at 70% over 4 turns I get 32
At 1 turn of 0% and 3 turns of 100%, I get 36
Both leave me with a total of 0

Now I can see how this works!

At T36, I find de Gaulle is my neighbour to the east. He's just settled a city quite close to me. Now, he could be a good first target for war. Paris is often stuffed with wonders. My workers are finishing the rice farm. I want to get those London FPs cottaged as soon as possible, so I think I'll send one over to do that while the other mines the copper. York and London are both two turns from a pop increase.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

It's only when France is piloted by Louis that you get those lovely wonderstuffed Paris.
Very nice job discovering the 0-100% slider thing, those 4 beakers in differance is the ones you lose in rounding errors. Not much to fuzz about in the late game, but this early they can make the differance of a turn or so and thats really significant!

Sometimes you can run at other levels too, without losing beakers to rounding errors, most commonly at 50%, say you have 26 commerce and you run at 50% you get 13 beakers and 13 gold, nothing lost.

 

[Fish Man]

By T32, York has been settled (alas, no seafood) and the next worker appears. He rushes over to help his buddy. Pottery is still 8 turns away as my research slider drops to 70% with the new city. I'll do the 0/100% thing to squeeze out as much research as I can.

At 70%, I get 0 and +8.
At 0% I get 9 and 0
At 100% I get -3 and +12

So at 70% over 4 turns I get 32
At 1 turn of 0% and 3 turns of 100%, I get 36
Both leave me with a total of 0

Now I can see how this works!

At T36, I find de Gaulle is my neighbour to the east. He's just settled a city quite close to me. Now, he could be a good first target for war. Paris is often stuffed with wonders. My workers are finishing the rice farm. I want to get those London FPs cottaged as soon as possible, so I think I'll send one over to do that while the other mines the copper. York and London are both two turns from a pop increase.

Spoiler :

Not a bad spot for a second city. You could conceivably axerush but a much better option one this map would be elepults. With fin you should get there very quick and after that it's murder time.

After the cow city, I'm actually favorable to settling 2W of the marble. That way you get 2 lakes (your cap will claim the further one with its 2nd border pop), which are decent tiles with fin and become very strong with lighthouses. You can work the deer and 2 lighthoused lakes eventually for a +6 food surplus, which is better than the +4 you'd get with just the deer (and also that generates 6 commerce, which is about the same as 2 scientists!). Yes, you'll miss out on a strong 3h city center tile, but fin quarries aren't bad either (effectively +1h3c), and if you really need food you can just not work it/improve later. More likely you'll work it some of the time but not others; it's more a matter of micro. More long-term, you get +2health from fresh water and auto-irrigate the corn once you reach CS.

Killing Monty could be your #1 goal, but if Louis builds mids you could go for him first for a fast rep (he's also more likely than the caveman to reach feudalism first if you don't stop him.

One final thing: always be mindful of what your citizens are doing. Here instead of the plains forest I'd much rather work the oasis tile, which is VERY strong for financial leaders, and in fact the only 6-yield tile found naturally in the game without any improvements. You research AND grow faster, and food is king, so I'd put that as one of two tiles you should virtually always be working in that city (the other being the corn, of course). City governor is quite dumb at times and afraid of growing into unhappiness, but angry faces just means more whip fuel for workers and settlers!

 

[Lennier]

By T32, York has been settled (alas, no seafood) and the next worker appears. He rushes over to help his buddy. Pottery is still 8 turns away as my research slider drops to 70% with the new city. I'll do the 0/100% thing to squeeze out as much research as I can.

At 70%, I get 0 and +8.
At 0% I get 9 and 0
At 100% I get -3 and +12

So at 70% over 4 turns I get 32
At 1 turn of 0% and 3 turns of 100%, I get 36
Both leave me with a total of 0

Now I can see how this works!

I thought you got one "free" per turn, so
At 70%, you get 0 and +9.
At 0% you get 9 and +1
At 100% you get -3 and +13

So 70% over 4 turns you get 36
At 1 turn of 0% and 3 turns of 100%, you get 40

Still works out that you get 4 more with 0 or 100%.

 

[AcaMetis]

The big issue with the 100%/0% slider trick is remembering to turn up your slider after bringing it down for a turn. I can never remember to do that, resulting in me uselessly collecting cash for far too long . Though that can actually be useful, saving cash for a few turns and turning the slider back up after you've build one or two Libraries, assuming there's nothing you need to tech right away, since you'll be able to bank at 100% efficiency and than spend that money to convert it into at 125% efficiency. But...forgetting is bad .

 

[zoiks]

So at the end of this T36, I followed Fish Man's advice and switched London to the oasis. On the end of the turn, it grew and the warrior came in. Next I started settler production, and moved by city tiles to get it from 10 to 9 turns.

T37 and the warriors go to fogbust. My workers finish their York farm and go over to the mine the copper. Pottery is nearly in.

T39 sees the copper mine completed. One worker stays to put the route in and the other races off to London to get cottaging. Next tech is Writing. Let's see what's happening inside Monty and de Gaulle's borders. My slider stays at 80% (12 per turn, 0 per turn) rather than 0% (12 per turn)/100% (15 per turn, -3 per turn). That gives 48 over 4 turns at 80% rather than 45 over 4 turns at 0/100%.

T40 and my warrior moves on to a square next to a barbarian warrior! Luckily the barb is at 1.0 strength and I'm in forest, so he should survive an attack on the next turn. York completes building another warrior (I kind of forgot about York's production) and starts building a granary. The new warrior goes off to fogbust, while my most eastern warrior pokes around in the gaps between France's cities. He's trying to see as much as he can before culture pops force him back.

T41 and the worker at the copper mine has finished his road. He goes over to chop the forest east of York. Not much else happening. At the end of the turn, the weakened barbarian attacks my warrior and is easily beaten. Next the same warrior finds ANOTHER barb warrior who is at 1.8. Who is doing damage to these barbs? Let's hope they've killed some of Monty's scouts.

T42 and my settler in London is 4 turns away. I can whip for 1 pop. Have I missed the optimum time?

Spoiler :