Help with some rough (for me) starts on Emperor

[Antalia]

I decided to turn my difficulty up to Emperor, since my last few King games were completely non-challenging. I play on Standard turn length, with Standard maps (my computer is too slow for larger ones), and Ancient Ruins disabled. I have a preference for Continents maps since my favorite things about the game are exploring distant lands, taking a whole continent for myself, and invading the other continent over the sea. I like domination and culture victories best, but I sometimes do the other types for fun too. I don't have any purchased content other than Genghis Khan, and I don't play with mods (I find it annoying to remember to select them).

My first Emperor game was a hilarious steamroll. I got a slightly advantageous start as Bismarck (river and two gold mines; nearest neighbors didn't expand their first cities in my direction). I quickly conquered my oil- and unique-luxury-rich continent, and then finished off the last capital on the other continent in 1850 AD with my bombers and mech infantry. (This is probably slow by other people's standards--but it's fast for me!) Only one civ (Persia) even got close to me in tech during the game. So I thought that I could handle Emperor after my easy victory...

But no!! My next ~six attempts have been dismal failures. I played them through to see if I could learn anything and apply it to the next try, but nothing is seeming to work. Here are the three (or two...) scenarios I can't seem to deal with properly, that seem to be repeating over and over now. Could anyone advise me how to do better?

Scenario 1. I start on tundra/plains, near ocean, with Whales/Pearls for my luxuries. My "continent" turns out to be quite small, and to have only three unique luxury resources (those two, and one unit of Furs in the very furthest corner). There are almost no forests, no rivers at all, and no iron. That's okay...after scouting nearby territory at the start, I quickly prioritized exploring the seas and finding the other continents. I discovered they were overrun with riflemen/infantry when I completed my general survey...in *1100 AD*. That is something I never saw on King. How do I beat this?

Scenario 2 (To be clear, this is a different game. I restarted.) On Turn 23 my nearest neighbor, Egypt, pops up a city right against my capital's border on one side. I take Honor since scouting had revealed several very close neighbors. When that city popped up, I concentrated on establishing a decent military. On Turn 29, to my astonishment, my second nearest neighbor (Iroquois) pops up a city right against my capital's border on the *other* side. This left me room to expand only into featureless tundra, snow, ice, and ocean.

Meanwhile, Egypt spams out about six more cities behind the one crowding me, and it is not long before the Iroquois have matched the effort. Both my neighbors have access to large amounts of the resources needed for their early-game units, advantageous terrain (theirs is all rough and Egypt has cut raceways for his war chariots through the forests; mine is all flat), and large quantities of horses and iron. I have none of this--and I can't get out of my city without going through deep ocean or their land. My two neighbors are also already Hostile ("They covet lands we currently own!") and soon announce a Declaration of Friendship with each other.

They both declare war on me around Turn 35. I spend the next 20 turns completely focused on saving my capital from them while slowly wrangling diplomacy with the civs on the other side of them (Aztec, Ottoman, Rome) in my favor. Finally the third-nearest neighbor, Montezuma, pops up a city on the other side of them from me, and takes both their cities with his superior military tech--allowing my capital to heal to full in the meantime. Hooray?

I try to befriend Monty. (I have meanwhile convinced Rome and the Ottomans to declare war on Egypt/Iroquois, but it isn't helping me much). But Monty is not interested (thanks to more coveting of my crappy, wonderless city). Then Monty continues by declaring war on me and hammering my capital. I am hit by waves of his cannons, trebs, and longswordsmen when before it was war chariots, swordsmen, catapults, and mohawks. My triremes are getting a lot of experience, but they're only doing 1 damage to these higher-end units. At this point my science has fallen behind. My capital is very stunted due to the low number of useful available tiles. I decide there is not much hope for getting out of this (with the brain I have available to me) until I perhaps have airplanes. What should I have done differently about this type of start?

Scenario 3. I am especially interested in what to do about starts involving only ocean luxuries, a lack of rivers anywhere nearby, and terrain which is 90%+ flat plains or tundra. These seem to suddenly get thrown at me each time I play now, no matter what civ I choose! (I know this happens to England. So I have avoided her on Emperor. I have tried: Persia, China, Songhai, Aztec, Greece, and America recently--and it has happened to each of them.) I normally greatly enjoy a challenge, but I feel like I've thrown everything I can at this problem and it just keeps happening.

I will go back to King until I figure this out Thanks for any help!

 

[chazzycat]

1) if you have more than 1 seafood resource, llighthouses are awesome, prioritize that. If you only have room for one city on your island go tradition and maybe build the colossus. Basically play like an OCC, focusing on gold and trying to sign lots of RAs. Get a couple triremes out ASAP to see if you can get lucky and make contact with othe civs. Do the HG/PT/astronomy sling to get caravels & rationalism ASAP then keep signing RAs with the other civs you meet.

I play mostly random/random maps on immortal and have turned starts like this into OCC victories many times.


2) I'm not a big fan of honor starts, because if you don't get any iron it's a real uphill battle. That being said, if you make that choice, you gotta go all out. Get some iron from a city state or something, or try and make do with spears/archers. Who cares if the AI settles right next to you if you have an army...just take the city.

There was some bad luck here as well. You won't always get dogpiled, there is a large luck factor in the maps.

Also, trying to make friends with Monty is not advised. He's just crazy, it's not generally worth the effort.


3) If you are isolated with no good land available for expansion, try the tradition/OCC type of playstyle. You can always expand later if you find good land. If there IS decent land available, just not in your starting location, go liberty and expand to the good sites ASAP.

If you do go the OCC route, make sure you thoroughly understand how RAs work. That is the most important mechanism to master. There is a great article by vexing in the war academy.

 

[Antalia]

Thanks, these are great ideas, and you helped me see several errors. The same Liberty-based expansion approach worked for me a lot of games in a row, and I did not fully adapt my plan when the game threw a new kind of start at me.

Also, I think you're right - I could have bashed my way out of Gao in that second scenario. I think the main problem was that I was not patient enough when positioning my army. It was truly ugly, with both the neighboring cities positioned on the opposite side of a river, and ranged units everywhere. I panicked a little, got in a hurry, lost some units, and then the enemies started upgrading further. Still, I had the human advantage. Prior to that, I have never seen the computer keep me out of a city I really wanted to take.

Lighthouses - I tried another Emperor game and got yet another snow/tundra/ocean start, but this time I was less intimidated. I planted my second city on a site with four (!) fish and a whale (also on coast and adjacent to a mountain...). Even before the work boats finished their job, the growth from the lighthouse was incredible. It is better than a hospital on a site like that... (If only it happened more often.) So far this game is going a lot like my first Emperor one...I'm ahead at science and just about everything else, and steamrolling the computer. It feels kind of mean.

One city & RAs - I have been trying to understand Vexing's RA guide for some time now, and I am finding putting it into practice a little...vexing. I think I mostly just need more practice. I have some trouble predicting where my tree will be in precisely thirty turns. I know what techs I'll be getting next, and where I would like the tree to be when the RA completes, but I have trouble factoring in how much more science I'll be generating during that time than I am now. I often have RAs completing one turn off from when I wanted them to finish, in a bad way. I also seem to have a lot more trouble than I ever remember, finding AIs with any money on them when I need an RA. Anyway, at least it is less fussy than the old way it worked, when the game was newer. (I started playing again recently after a year or more off.)

Thanks again for your help!

 

[Scarpa]

Also, I think you're right - I could have bashed my way out of Gao in that second scenario. I think the main problem was that I was not patient enough when positioning my army. It was truly ugly, with both the neighboring cities positioned on the opposite side of a river, and ranged units everywhere. I panicked a little, got in a hurry, lost some units, and then the enemies started upgrading further. Still, I had the human advantage.

I find my human tactical advantage is often well outweighed by my human impatience as well.

I have some trouble predicting where my tree will be in precisely thirty turns. I know what techs I'll be getting next, and where I would like the tree to be when the RA completes, but I have trouble factoring in how much more science I'll be generating during that time than I am now. I often have RAs completing one turn off from when I wanted them to finish, in a bad way.

Remember that you can switch away from a tech if you need it to be 'available' for an RA resolution. Especially for the techs above the median, just leave them at 1 turn left and make sure they are queued to research again after/when the RA hits. Also, make sure you are actually clicking on your 'target' tech early on to verify the prerequisite techs. I've been burned before by not realizing there was another pre-req and it really sucks to see a whole RA wave screwed up by something like that.

I struggled with RAs in general too, but realized eventually I was trying to be too ambitious about getting big 4-5 RA waves to resolve in sync, etc. I kinda of backed off for a while and got less 'optimal' about things and eventually picked up the nuances. Another tip is you can just look at the short 'available tech' list to see what you median would be at any given time. For some reason I didn't pick up on that for a long time and was often miscalculating the median.

 

[chazzycat]

yeah about the RAs, you really don't need to go as extreme as Vexing to have good sucess. I have never reached chemistry with the first wave, for instance, which he takes for granted. A good understanding can still take you a long way though.