For those interested in the SE: Win this game!

[futurehermit]

Ok, lots of people on these boards are interested in the SE and play at Monarch or lower. I assume people who play emperor and above understand the mechanics of the game quite well.

Here is a play-along game for anyone interested in the SE. What I suggest is that anyone interested in playing--regardless of skill level, I encourage experts to play as well and give advice!!--do so. Play until you win (or lose) and take screenshots and save at what you feel are key points. Then come back to this thread and post a write-up of your experience (please put spoilers in spoiler tags so you don't ruin it for others!!). Then, feel free to ask questions. What could I have done here? What would you have done?

I'm heading on holidays for a couple of weeks, but will have internet access, so I'll check in and field questions and give advice. For anyone interested in the SE, this should be a great resource if a number of people play and really get involved!

So, without further ado...

I am going to attach a save from just after 200AD--a date that I always keep in the back of my head for when I should have Civil Service by.

Keep in mind that we are not starting from 4000BC, so take a look around and see what has gone on. Try and visualize how things went down for the past few eras.

Spoiler :

For those not so interested in visualization, here's how things went down. I had horses in my capital and Bismark's capital reasonably close by. No brainer here. Immortal rush. I built one city just east of his capital to provide an invasion point. I made note of a city to fill the gap between my two cities at a later point, which I did build later (It was destined to be the military city with HE and WP). I easily took his capital since I attacked when he only had 3 archers. I then razed his remaining cities, but kept one that he built near my capital. This left me with 5 cities. I wanted to build a city to the east and had planned to whip a settler after the GL was completed. But, the sneaky, sneaky Ragnar shipped a settler up the coast in a galley and claimed it before I could get there That really cheesed me off! So, I ended up building far to the NW. I figured it was ok because the goldpit there would cover maintenance and give an additional happy face. So, that gives us 6 cities total and I decided to hunker down and make the zip to liberalism. No M*A*S*H* unit because I didn't end up needing one and my goal is to mass-produce 4-promotion cavalry from the military city post-West Point. That's why the first GG is settled there. Another one will get settled as well. That gives 4 xp + 3 from rax and 2 from stable and 4 from WP = 13, which for a charismatic leader is 4 promotions. Most will get blitz, but we can do a medic 2 and march unit as well.

We are playing as Cyrus and are picking the game up after an immortal assault wiped out Bismark.

We are on a continent with 5--now 4--civs, and therefore a domination victory is in order.

This is a learning game, so when you first open the save, don't just rush and play. Take a look around...what have I been doing? How many cities do I have? 6. Why is 6 a magic number I keep in my head?

Spoiler :

It's the number of theatres you need to build the Globe Theatre, which is great for drafting units post-Nationalism.

What else? Notice the location of the cities we have and some city ruins around the map. I razed some cities. Why?

Spoiler :

Too far from the capital, would cost a lot of maintenance. I didn't want to build the city furthest West, but I had to because Ragnar beat me to the Eastern city I wanted to build while I was building the Great Library.

What wonders do we have? Check out the city specialization.

What about diplomacy? Who are the other civs? We have a protective neighbour

Spoiler :

Who has built the pyramids, check it out.

. We also have two aggressive civs. There are a few religions kicking about. Diplomacy is no easy task this game!!

But, most importantly, what was I planning toward when I was playing this game? Check out what the cities are doing. Hint: My capital and the former German capital are both running a pile of scientists. They both have Judaism. Check out the civics--caste system and pacifism.

Finally, what will you do as things go forward? How will you lead the mighty Persians to victory?

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, here is how things went for me until just before 1000AD. Don't read this until after you play your round because it contains spoilers! I put it here so people can compare their experience to mine, better or worse.

Spoiler :

The military city will be great long term, but it doesn't have any forests (it was nearly all jungle initially) and china's holy city is encroaching on two grassland tiles that I need to have to put farms on, since the city has no food specials. This means the HE is slow-to-build, as will be west-point. Once those two wonders are in place though, that city will kick-out 4-promotion cavalry rapid-fire. Speaking of cavalry...I got liberalism in the 900s AD and got Military Tradition as my free technology, having gunpowder already in hand. This means I can start producing cavalry before 1000AD--a nice time!

The crappy thing, the very crappy thing, is that despite being pleased, Kublai declared on me . That really sucked. The stupid thing was, he only sent in one lame keshik which attacked a fortified immortal, withdrew, and then ran away . But, I didn't know if a stack of death was due to arrive at any minute. All I had for military was a few immortals, a very few. But, that was taken care of quite quickly. I switched out to slavery and nationalism. I whipped some spears around my empire, drafted some maces, and whipped a couple xbows and an elephant and some catapults. No stack of death appeared. My plan is to use this meager army to raze his city North of my empire and keep the city between me and China as retribution for his betrayal. Then, I'll sign peace to keep him off my back. From there, it will be time to mass-produce cavalry empire-wide for a fast-paced assault on China, capital first. I bribed China to go to war with Kublai, so that should keep China busy while I then join the war as Kublai's ally...ah, the joys of diplomacy ! I will bribe Ragnar to help with China, which will keep him off my back. I will also revolt to hereditary rule which should bring me to friendly with him soon-after. Once China is ground to dust, I'll turn my sites to finishing off Kublai. He's the bigger tech threat between the two currently, despite Ragnar being financial (I believe Kublai has better land). I don't know if Ragnar will be convinced to declare on Kublai as they have been buddies. If not, no big deal. Then, mop up time on Ragnar. I could go for Ragnar first if he starts teching, but it's hard to say. I share a religion with him and will get him to friendly soon, so he will be a good ally.

Hopefully soon I will meet civs from over seas. They will probably be technologically backwards. But hopefully they will have some resources to trade post-astronomy...if I even get astronomy. My goal is to lightbulb chemistry to have access to grens in case either Ragnar or Kublai gets to rifles. Hopefully that will be all the tech I need, so I will probably shut down research very, very shortly. I'm hoping to clear the continent with mass-produced cavalry.

p.s., you'll notice that there is one turn left on a golden-age. i didn't want to trigger it yet, but kublai declared when i had nothing militarily and i was a bit panicky, so i triggered it mainly for the production boost, but also to finish the remaining turns on gunpowder and liberalism. since i lost the extra specialists when i switched out to slavery and nationalism, i used the extra commerce to run the science slider near the max to push through these techs on time. i had lightbulbed most of liberalism already, but there were 2-3 turns left on it.

Save is attached! Feel free to check it out

.

 

[Antilogic]

I'm not much of a specialist economy player (I tend to have one GPP and run a mostly cottage/hybrid economy, depending on what the map has for me), but I'm tempted to check this out.

Is there a good, reliable strategy for a specialist economy that does not rely on the Pyramids (building or capturing them early on)? Philosophical takes the place of Financial in the traits list, but the SE seems overly reliant on a single wonder (obviously because the Representation civic through the Pyramids can double the effectiveness of your scientists).

 

[futurehermit]

Try this game out. I'm not playing a philosophical leader and I didn't build the pyramids. Check it out and see what you think. I would say how I played was quite effective.

 

[Giaur]

I am not an enthusiast of SE. There was open game that encouraged players not to build cottages. Many players resigned and made the second attempt (with cottages). If you want play SE, without Mids, you are limited. Unfortunately I do not know how to explain that, I tried this only once and in the end I completely resigned from both cottage and specialist economy and converted to workshop economy. Summarizing SE gives less beakers than CE and that's the main reason I am not convinced to it. Burning great people is not also an escape - Liberalism is a bit old-fashioned. Everyone keeps to it, because of it gives satisfaction to get it first and noone realize the benefits of both lib-race and resigning from lib-race. It's a dead end. Maybe next open game will deny player right to liberalism.

 

[futurehermit]

I am not an enthusiast of SE. There was open game that encouraged players not to build cottages. Many players resigned and made the second attempt (with cottages). If you want play SE, without Mids, you are limited. Unfortunately I do not know how to explain that, I tried this only once and in the end I completely resigned from both cottage and specialist economy and converted to workshop economy. Summarizing SE gives less beakers than CE and that's the main reason I am not convinced to it. Burning great people is not also an escape - Liberalism is a bit old-fashioned. Everyone keeps to it, because of it gives satisfaction to get it first and noone realize the benefits of both lib-race and resigning from lib-race. It's a dead end. Maybe next open game will deny player right to liberalism.

Well, feel free to check out this game.

Spoiler :

Cavalry ca. 900AD isn't anything to sneeze at, especially with 4 other civs on the continent and one of them 6 feet under already. The strength of the SE is not to win a long-term beakers competition, it is to catapult you into the renaissance era first so you can use cavalry or grens to mop up the rest of the world. I've tried CE many times and I always feel like it just takes so long to get rolling in terms of its limited production capabilities and its lack of the bursts of research the SE provides. Plus farms make for incredible whip-drafting, which is pretty much all I do once I'm in the renaissance era.

 

[mice]

Liberalism is a bit old-fashioned. Everyone keeps to it, because of it gives satisfaction to get it first and noone realize the benefits of both lib-race and resigning from lib-race. It's a dead end. Maybe next open game will deny player right to liberalism.

This is a good idea. I dont know how a feature of gameplay that gives about 2400 free beakers can become so central to every strat.

Out of respect for Futurehermit and this thread I dont want to nurture a discussion about other econs, but Giaur I am interested, what is workshop econ?

 

[futurehermit]

It's not just liberalism, It's the combination of lightbulbing and liberalism. It allows you to really leap-frog ahead of the AIs in terms of tech and then use your renaissance era units to beat up on their medieval ones. Especially cavalry. Their fast-moving ability allows you to really zip through enemy territory.

But, anyways, I don't want to derail this thread either.

The point of this thread is educational. There are 2-3 SE threads each week and I figured this would be a good way to help new players get a sense of the SE. I find that playing from 4000BC, too many players get lost. Inheriting an empire in solid position I think will give players an opportunity to get a handle of what a SE empire should look like (one example of it anyway) and then try and work from there.

 

[mice]

Mmm, inheriting a solid empire is a good idea. I'm going to spend some time in this save and see how the other posters do things. It's about now and a bit later in the game that I get lost with SE.

 

[futurehermit]

I think a lot of people new to the SE, especially those who play on the lower difficulty don't know 1) how to set up a SE empire and 2) how to leverage it.

When I was playing this game, at the point of this save, I thought to myself "hmm...this empire is nicely set up, I think it would make a good training game." So, I saved it and here we are.

Inheriting a set-up empire I think provides a unique opportunity. It gives the opportunity to see how the empire is set up by an experienced player, it gives the opportunity to investigate it, to see what that player was doing, and then it provides the opportunity to play on to see what a less experienced player can do with what they've been given.

And then I can field questions and give feedback, etc. Since I played the game up until this point I have a really good feel for the map, the cities, etc. If everyone played from 4000BC I'd have to check each and every save--even if they all started from the same beginning--to see how they developed their empires, etc. And that would take forever.

Here, everyone can start from the same developed empire and we can discuss how it was developed (it's imperfect I'm sure, so we can discuss that) but also how different people took it further.

I think it's a good idea, but it will only go somewhere if people get involved with it

 

[bryanb2007]

I took over from FutureHermit's stewardship and immediately kicked in our research.

How it went down

Spoiler :

I beelined for liberalism and used lightbulb's where it made sense, and some extra GS' on building an academy and an extra GS specialist in each Science City (the GPP and the Specialist city).

I got liberalism around 860 AD and popped Printing Press, thinking that i would beeline to democracy and build SoL.

In retrospect I should have taken Military Tradition and started researching GP to get calvary. I replayed back from liberalism and got Military Tradition and then researched GP and its pre-reqs.

I attached my save game. I can now build cavalry, and have switched civics to slavery and nationhood.

What I did right

Spoiler :

Beelined to liberalism. Lightbulbed and Tech traded well (IMHO) . Used civics efficiently. With some decent diplo I had good realtions with KK and Ragnar, friendly and pleased i believe.... Mao was cautious but i was planning on invading him anyways.

What I did wrong

Spoiler :

Built a whole bunch more Immortals thinking i could DoW on Mao or upgrade them to cavalry and then DoW, but as it turns out the upgrade was prohibitively expensive. Even after trading around to scoop up all the available gold and possibly running with slider on low % i'd still only be able to upgrade a handful. It did increase my status on the power graph somewhat so i guess it prevented Mao from declaring on me, but i could have used those resources to build cats.
I really didn't get much else built, now that i've switched to slavery I can get those universities, HE and NE built.... but i felt I could have done alot better on this part.

Future Plans and Thoughts

Spoiler :

Is shooting for SoL a good plan ? Should I have invaded earlier to make use of my immortals. I have a tendency to build too many buildings in my cities (umm i dunno what to build i guess i can use a X..) for non prod cities what do you recommend building ?

P.S REALLY liked this thread, thanks FutureHermit.

 

[Wlauzon]

Actually, my biggest question is.. where did the labels for the types of cities come from?

 

[Giaur]

@futurehermit: I'll look at the save and will play

@mice: Workshop economy i simply changing farms to workshops and watermills under State property.

Plus:
- you do not have to maintain big cities to have good output (very helpful in domination)
- still 3 hammers is better that 2 hammers (from engineer). Also these 3 hammers are multiplied by forge, factory and coal plant. You gain 2 hammers.
- more flexibility: If you want good research, produce wealth and research in workshop cities. If there is war, produce units.

Minus:
- less Great people
- less efficiency

This economy is limited, but sometimes you do not need a tech lead. I always use this economy in my domination games, except that our mature cities (those which were found by us) are cottaged (but possibly could be farmed in SE).

 

[DaveMcW]

"Workshop economy" is not an economy, unless you're building Wealth.

 

[futurehermit]

@bryan:

Spoiler :

Yeah, I don't think more immortals was a good idea. The pyramids is a tasty-looking prize over there, and you're right to attack Mao first, but my sense is that getting to cavalry--you're right on that thought--is the better move because then, once Mao is quickly mopped up you can steamroll down to the Mongolian capital. Once you have control of China and Mongolian lands, Ragnar would fall in an instant.

Re: Democracy and SoL. SoL is great, but unnecessary in domination games. All you need for domination--if you are fast enough--is renaissance era units. Cavalry, grenadiers, drafted rifles, and some catas to minimize cultural defenses. If you are quite fast you only need cav or grens (i.e., if you are only facing medieval units).

Overall, it sounds like you played well. I rarely take PP from lib, only if I am going for fast-grens. It is easily lightbulbed, so kind of a waste of lib imo. Nationalism is difficult to lb, so it's usually a much better choice. In my game though I was able to self-research nationalism and get miltrad post-gunpowder, which is the best imho if you are going for a fast domination victory.

Did you play on to the end? It would be nice to hear about your end-game.

 

[futurehermit]

Actually, my biggest question is.. where did the labels for the types of cities come from?

alt-s gives you the option to make labels. it is handy, especially as a reminder for city specialization. i have a very bad habit of forgetting about city specialization once i get going. and that is a very bad idea.

 

[Giaur]

"Workshop economy" is not an economy, unless you're building Wealth.

It does not give commerce in direct way - I guess it's what you meant. I could disagree, but basically you are right. It's definition issue ...

edit: I mean if hammers are included to word "economy" or not issue. I guess someone before defined "economy", because he liked that. I do not argue with that. My use of "economy" is implication of my intuition and I would certainly included hammers as "economy" factor ....

 

[futurehermit]

Well, in real-life economy the production of goods is certainly part of the economy...

 

[DaveMcW]

In that case, we need to rename some other terms.

CR = Cottage Research
SR = Specialist Research

 

[Giaur]

I am afraid I do not understand. Better give a link to some article.