Is this winnable? (emperor/fractal/normal speed)

[psifaktor7]

I'm wondering... I am playing with Charlemagne, almost isolated, and my main opponent turned out to be Darius who is a late game monster anyway but here he expanded to 17 cities I couldn't keep up with his research pace and lost.
So how to beat such a monster if this is possible? I'm sure some of you deity players will have an idea...
I've added the first and the last save, so if someone could tell me if I did something wrong it would be nice.

 

[Fippy]

Yeps sure, every Emperor game will be won by higher level players
It's hard taking conclusions from your last save, but most likely you did not make use of military advantages earlier ( involves teching / bulbing towards them of course )for taking more land or even beating Darius with something like Cannons or Cavalry combined with Galleons.

 

[Major Tom]

Make life miserable for your nearest neighbour straight out of the gates. Steal his workers. Kill his scouts. Take his daughters. You are supposed to be Emperor.

 

[Ghpstage]

Its probably too late at this point, as he's only got one spaceship part left to build. To win you would need to capture his capital, avoid getting crushed and do enough damage to prevent him making another run while watching others and winning yourself....

With an earlier save you would have time to prepare and make use of the games general purpose catchup tool


In this situation, there isn't a single one of Darius' cities that couldn't be taken on turn one of a war using, tactical nukes in subs, paratroopers in transports and something to do aerial recon with. Bonus points are available for abusing Open Borders with your target prior to declaring, by using his cities to teleport and load your nukes, airlift your paras and to run the necessary recon missions from on the turn that you declare

Unfortunately the saves too late to pick out key mistakes you made earlier, but as Fippy says, it is obvious you didn't go on a military rampage. Getting a lot of land sets you up for a strong late game position, even if it had just been swallowing up Toku's seven cities in the Renaissance.

EDIT - There isn't actually a city in that world that would be safe from capturing on turn one of a para nuke war. Hypothetically you could have declared war on everyone and captured every city in the world in the same turn at a rock bottom cost, with enough investment and planning

 

[georgjorge]

Well it's not QUITE as easy as Major Tom makes it sound...bad leader, bad land, semi-isolation. But it's not totally dire as well.

Fippy is right when she suggests war - the area where humans have the most advantages over the AI. With bad land, going for space just won't work most of the time.

I took your starting save and played a couple of millenia, very sloppily and with lots of errors. Still don't have a single happiness ressource (though Monarchy will soon come in), and the capital doesn't lend itself to cottaging anyways. So I went for lots of bulbs, and built first the Oracle for Aesthetics (in 1760), then the Great Library, National Epic, and soon the Parthenon in the capital. While doing that, my other cities didn't have much to build, so they build every wonder available for fail gold. I'm still unsure WHAT exactly I'll be bulbing - I first thought of going for Astronomy (bulb Machinery, Compass, Optics, Astronomy) for trade routes and invasion but Toku was backwards enough that gifting him Aesthetics + Alpha made him Pleased and he opened trade routes, giving us that. So maybe I'll bulb towards Liberalism (Philosophy, Education, Liberalism) for Military Tradition or Steel instead, put these things onto a lot of boats, and go for Toku and then some other players. If Darius again grows as big as before, I would go after him last, and just overwhelm him with numbers from 30+ cities (and if all else fails, nukes).

The game isn't won by far, but I'll play on this week and tell you how it goes.

 

[FlyingSwan]

Yep the start is real nasty,but has the potential to be great HE city.I think psifaktor7 may of made the mistake of following the blue circle to the coast-which takes 2 turns to get to.1SW to settle the PH gets the sheep and a faster worker,but to be honest Id cut my losses on this one and keep the plains cow-you can tell Aachen is never going to be a cottage capitol or GP farm so I would SIP initially and be resigned to move the palace or capture a capitol.

In there lies a problem being isolated.I think the initial mistake was moving that far-charly being IMP with a plains cow,settlers wont be a problem.

EDIT.actually 1NW to the PH keeps 8 hills and opens up a grassland,keeping the oasis in the initial square for tech.Il move there.

 

[sampsa]

I don't see why the start is that hard. I wanted to move to a plain hill, so scout 1SE, 1NE to reveal what would I miss in the non-forested tile 2E of settler.

Spoiler :

Settle 1S to claim both AH-resources (later it dawns that I settled on iron, but that is not the end of the world). Cap has good hammers and you have marble, so I oracled aesth (certainly not the only way to do it) and nom nom all them nice marble-wonders. Had Glib+NE by 500BC. -luck wasn't bad as I got GP (settled), GS, GS, GS and i think with those three I can bulb astro 500 AD at the latest. Should be in the bag then. Besides, you have contact to 2 AI's pre-optics.

 

[vranasm]

this map looks so unforgiving that its almost not worth the time

the deck was seriously stacked against you with bad first neighbor, small island AND really bad capital + city 2 (more like no real city 2)...

maybe some immortal+ player would make some win of this, but to me it's not worth the time.

 

[Fippy]

Not sure what's so bad about this start
With the right scout move, you reveal sheep and with that + cows + Oasis? Nice enuf Capi.

Then you have marble, not a great spot but 1 sea resource.
And there are some floodplains areas.
I will play this quickly, but a bit interrupted by sgotm.

 

[psifaktor7]

I'll try this again later with bulbing technologies which I never did before. I have always settled them in a cottaged capital with bureaucracy. It worked in over 70 games before but not here because Darius became such a monster. I also have to try the nukes one day.

 

[georgjorge]

Settling specialists will eventually give greater returns with all the multiplier buildings including Oxford, so it might be the right choice for a space race after you already have enough Academies (though note that Bureaucracy doesn't do anything for the specialists since it multiplies commerce while specialists give either beakers or gold). But going for a space race victory usually isn't the most efficient/succesful way of playing since war - done at the right time - is so strong against the AI.

So if you're NOT going for a space race victory, bulbing beats settling by a lot (unless we're talking Great Prophets here) because you'll get more than a thousand beakers instantly which would take a lot of time to get by settling, and earlier gains are always better than latter gains. Bulbing to Steel/Military Tradition/Astronomy/Engineering NOW and taking many cities with it will give you more commerce earlier than settling.

 

[Iwo Jima]

Perfect start for Cultural Victory. Protective leader on Island, so easy do defend.
Marble, Hinduism (and possibly other religions), 9 cities, farms, ToA, Oracle, GL, Parth, Sistine, (+all that possible of Mausol, HS, Taj, Versailles), distributed in 3 cities. +3Cathedrals for each religion, +nat. wonders.

Early Diplomacy Victory via AP also possible, but you need research Theology early, and convert at least on city of Zara to your religion, before he changed to Theocracy. So, you need early Optics as well.

 

[pigswill]

Tried this. Quit in 1130ad after losing lib race by 3 turns .

 

[Shiffmeister]

Tried this. Quit in 1130ad after losing lib race by 3 turns .

In my game lib was already gone at 1040AD. Unfortunately it wasn't me.
This game is quite tough indeed.

 

[sampsa]

I advice people who think a map like this is close to impossible simply play it out over and over again, trying to find the optimal line.

T56

Spoiler :

T0: Like I said in my earlier post, the best move with scout is SE, NE which happens to reveal sheep, making settle 1S the obvious choice.

Tech: mining(hut)-AH-wheel-fishing-pottery-masonry-poly-priesthood-writing (note that I skipped agri and BW for now)

Cap builds: worker-warrior-warrior-settler(size4)-worker-settler-warrior-warrior-Oracle

Spawn bust and road to 2nd city, then build cottages on the floodplains. Both the road and cottages are high in priority as capital doesn't have long term .

Fp-city goes monument-settler and clam+marble goes wb-wb, 1st one for clams and 2nd one for scouting.

Oracle and writing in next turn (T57=1720BC), will take Aesthetics which I prefer here over CoL. Marble makes the game so much easier. Capital isn't weak at all for this type of game...

 

[sossos]

I advice people who think a map like this is close to impossible simply play it out over and over again, trying to find the optimal line.

T56

Spoiler :

T0: Like I said in my earlier post, the best move with scout is SE, NE which happens to reveal sheep, making settle 1S the obvious choice.

Tech: mining(hut)-AH-wheel-fishing-pottery-masonry-poly-priesthood-writing (note that I skipped agri and BW for now)

Cap builds: worker-warrior-warrior-settler(size4)-worker-settler-warrior-warrior-Oracle

Spawn bust and road to 2nd city, then build cottages on the floodplains. Both the road and cottages are high in priority as capital doesn't have long term .

Fp-city goes monument-settler and clam+marble goes wb-wb, 1st one for clams and 2nd one for scouting.

Oracle and writing in next turn (T57=1720BC), will take Aesthetics which I prefer here over CoL. Marble makes the game so much easier. Capital isn't weak at all for this type of game...

It seems that no one would think an emperor game is impossible to win with so many flood plains and marble, but it's a good trick to attract people to reply and replay, isn't it?

Spoiler :

BTW, T56 may be too early at this level. An early oracle means that some other good investments are sacrificed such as the city spot with 1 fish + 3 flood plain. It's stronger than the marble city and no road is required to connect.

 

[sampsa]

@sossos

Spoiler :

It seems that no one would think an emperor game is impossible to win with so many flood plains and marble, but it's a good trick to attract people to reply and replay, isn't it?

BTW, T56 may be too early at this level. An early oracle means that some other good investments are sacrificed such as the city spot with 1 fish + 3 flood plain. It's stronger than the marble city and no road is required to connect.

Yes, you are probably right, I am more used to immortal dates and thought waiting for cap pop 3rd ring (T50) to gain marble was too late (improved and connected T53).

T125

Spoiler :

Forgot to mention in my last post that this is the 2nd time I play this map, but the overall strategy is the same. I didn't save the first attempt for some reason.

Tech: aesth(oracled)-lit(1320BC!)-BW-sailing-math-calendar-alpha

Gifted Toku a city - at 3 cities the AI will accept a city no matter how far it is (I think). It was also possible to get a galley out asap and put the gift city into his island, but I don't think it matters much. I will capture it later anyway, when I have an army.

Getting open borders for inter-continental trade routes is huge, by itself worth the of the gifted city. Decreasing the possibility of getting declared is a bonus.

Wonders in capital (BC):

• 1760 Oracle
• 950 GLib
• 825 NE
• 600 ToA
• 275 MoM
• 75 Parth

OB with Toku also allowed me to find this dude. Giving away so many techs for only one AI sucks of course and probably accelerates global tech speed a lot, but I want to get a military tech advantage on Toku asap. Especially monarchy is very welcome at this point.

Love them events. Always play without them, just too random.

Settling the game winner. Just need a border pop for access and trade routes to new civs (can see from that Zara has met other civs). Popping the hut with city (got ) and taking care of barb warrior with a chariot, that gets promoted to sentry. (important!)

-lotto in action. Got

• 875BC GP (settled)
• 625BC GS (saved, bulb machinery 100AD)
• 425BC GA (saved)
• 150BC GA (started golden age 50BC)
• 50AD GM (saved)
• 200AD GS (saved)

Will fire another golden age later.

Sentry chariot in action. Met Darius's work boat next turn.

Teching engineering for trebs and them schknecshts. Toku is going to get it, as I heard he was giving some of you guys a hard time. Probably it means that I won't win liberalism, but who cares.

 

[nate45]

slightly off topic, but I wonder if it would be possible to have an emperor start so bad that a diety player couldn't win it...

you'd need one of those starts where your only food resource is separated from your cap by water.

You'd be on a peninsula blocked off by some warmonger with a 10 rating for build units. Most of your land would be random coast tiles... no horses, no metals, no elephants. I think capital squares need to always have at least a few bonus resources, but stuff like coal/aluminum/oil/uranium counts towards that, right?

On another continent you'd have like 4-5 different tech whores + an imperialistic civ to take them all over quickly.

...you could probably still win cultural if you play it right, LOL

 

[Ghpstage]

slightly off topic, but I wonder if it would be possible to have an emperor start so bad that a diety player couldn't win it...

In my time here I have seen only one game that fits this, and was only (almost certainly) unwinnable as the OP had already settled.
I don't remember the specifics of the island, but if I said it was 5*5 it would be a reasonable approximation. And on that island the capital had been settled in place.... in the middle.... with no coastal access.... and no possibility of settling any other city

 

[Shiffmeister]

@sampsa: looks good. I'll follow up your advice and try again. My approach was to research monarchy as soon as possible to grow many cottages in the second city. It just didn't seem to do it for me.