Level up: Emperor & Immortal with 4 games

[elitetroops]

On this start DO NOT SIP. 8 flood plains=+3. With a non-exp leader that's a huge pain and will hurt you all game long

Pedro, Pedro, Pedro... You're not thinking clearly.

-SIP has +3 from FPs and +4 from 9 forests, 2N has +1 from FPs and +3 from 6 forests. So 2N only gains +1 on SIP, assuming no forests are chopped. If both chop exactly one forest, they are equal.

-SIP is really not that bad at all, thanks to forests and immediate access to wheat. With only wheat hooked up and granary, it is still healthy at pop 7, assuming no chopped forests. Up to 3 chopped forests it is still healthy at pop 6 (chop 3 forests and 2N is also only healthy until pop 6). Usually you will have more resources hooked up before there is any need to grow larger than that. With this much food, you can wait with most of the chops until Maths and rely more on whipping in the early game.

-What happens when we grow beyond pop 6 or 7? Assuming we are going for a standard cottage capital, 2N has 4 FP cottages, the 5th goes on grassland and the 6th would already have to be a plains cottage. So if you are working 6 cottages, 2N is producing 3 less than SIP would produce at that point. With only 2 less , this means it is always behind in growth, regardless if you have health problems or not. When your cap grows to pop 10 and beyond, 2N falls massively behind in growth. Maybe it would be hard to avoid seeing a green face every now and then if you SIP, but despite the green face you are still growing faster than that ugly 2N capital can grow.

Apart from that, SIP has more forests and does not waste a forest by settling on it. The only benefits of 2N is that it is on PH and closer to the center of the map (likely to block off more land to the south. Other than that it is a lot worse than SIP.

 

[Pedro78]

Pedro, Pedro, Pedro... You're not thinking clearly.

I automatically panicked when I saw those FPs and did not do the maths, that's true. But it's also true that most of these forests are going to be chopped in the early game (you want quick BW here otherwise you don't have any production), and that +3 from flood plains is quite hard to live with. 2N gives you 4 FPs which is all you're going to work for a long time anyway.

2N has immediate access to the wheat. SIP requires a road . And that PH is very valuable aswell, so I wouldn't say that SIP is far superior but I'd definitely consider it as an option.

I did overreact a little bit, though

 

[elitetroops]

that +3 from flood plains is quite hard to live with

My main point was really that it is not hard to live with, because you have 8 flood plains. From your writing I do get the impression that you think the capital is doing badly if it is losing food to unhealthiness. That is no measure, since all that matters is your food surplus. A city working 8 FPs will have a greater food surplus than a city working 4FPs and 4 grasslands, even if it loses 2 more food to . And in this case we'll have a city working 8FPs vs a city working 4FPs, 1 grassland and 3 plains... Since the unhealthiness in this situation is unlikely to kick in while the cities are so small that they both work similar tiles, it only kicks in at sizes when 2N has to work worse tiles, SIP will always be equal or ahead in growth.

With a granary growing from pop 3 to pop 6 takes max 6 turns, so there is plenty of production even without going all crazy with chopping. With a start like this, unless I'm going for an axe rush or some other super early rush, I'd leave most forests until Maths. Also because more worker turns are required to improve those floodplains (which admittedly is one negative issue with them).

 

[Pedro78]

Hmmm that all makes sense... Haven't played starts with lots of FPs for a very long time. I hate to admit it when I'm wrong, but you have a point

I just used to think that "1-7 FPs is good, 8+ FPs is bad". Didn't even cross my mind that it was as situational as everything else in this game. A big part of progressing in this comes in throwing away one's old habits.

 

[Gasp]

Hmm this does not make my decision easy!
i haven't settle yet by going on the PH 2N my thought was to avoid having too many FP and being riverside with a view of settling other cities on this river. Also I was hoping one on these unforested plains will have a ressource such as Horses or any metal.

As for the number of forest there is a good chance that one will grow on this grassland hill and maybe north on these plains. When I'll need I prefer to mine a grassland hill rather than a PH (is this wrong?).

2N is on a PH which means faster 1st worker but I have to say I'm not sure if I really have a use for a fast worker. I suppose I'll have to farm 2 on these FP before I can improve (or chop) anything else. I was already thinking about sharing 1-2 farm(s) with a second city.

Finally, we can see jungle north and I believe that most likely there will be no good city spot further north until I can work these jungles.

So how I understand this is that I'll have a better capitol mid-term if I SIP than if I settle 2N. We only discussed 2 options, do you see any other place to settle? I could maybe settle NE of the Wheat on the FP we see that it's only forest after these hills?

 

[elitetroops]

Nah, I wouldn't move again. Settle the PH and accept that the capital won't become a massive cottage monster. Maybe it's a good thing. The original location would in fact be quite hard to manage, as it never takes more than 2 turns to grow a pop between 3 and 11, assuming you are working wheat and floodplains. Takes a lot of micro and planning to avoid constant unhappiness in a city like that. Until pop 6 your current location is stronger, since it is on PH.

Did you say the map type? If there is enough room to expand to 6-8 decent cities, maybe just go for the standard cuir rush? You are PHI and have all this food to create some scientists to bulb your way there quickly. I'd skip Academy if target is cuirs. Depends also on resources. You are right that there is a good chance this new location will have some strategic resource. The original SIP location cannot have any.

Opening tech path probably AG-BW. Haven't done any calculations, but I assume the best here is to temporarily farm a couple of the flood plains after the wheat, while waiting for other things for your worker to do. Those farms will quite soon be replaced by cottages, but help you get out the first couple of settlers faster. Mining the riverside grassland hill is also good for the turns you are slowbuilding settlers.

 

[Gasp]

Map is Shuffle.

so I'll play 20ish turns today until BW. My idea is to research Agg > BW.

 

[elitetroops]

Heh, I just edited in thoughts on opening techs while you posted that.

 

[sampsa]

On : I like to think that growing past the -cap just turns one of your worked floodplains cottages into a grassland cottage. The answer to question "can you live with that?" will usually be a clear "yes", because grassland river cottages are not bad at all. Thus being above the -cap is not a bad thing if it allows you to work more (bureaucratic or soon to be bureaucratic?) cottages.

 

[Gasp]

@sampsa It's a good positive thinking

I played to T24. We met 5 AIs, got Agg and BW so far. We also have a good view of what's aroud

Spoiler to T24 :

On T1 Berlin is founded and starts to build a worker while working a FP. My scout moves West
T2 I meet Joao II to the west.
T3 we see Joao's culture not far west. My scout will go south.
T10 Agg researched now BW. My scout found coast south of Joao and follows it until south of our position.
T13 worker is out and improve the Wheat
T14 we meet Gandhi. He is close East of us.
T15 we meet Peter
T18 we meet Alexander. Our worker finished a farm and will farm a FP 1E of Wheat. Berlin works the Wheat now.
T20 Warrior is out and goes South to discover 1 tile I missed...
We meet Ragnar and Vicky whom is very close to Gandhi.
T23 Berlin is size 3 and build a Settler
T24 BW is researched. Farm is finished.

1 more AI to discover here. We can assume we are on a Pangea type of map.

Where are food ressources

So here are 2 possibilities for cities. One is close and seems to me like a good option: 1-On the same river (no roads) 2-I don't want Gandhi to come too close (he has not much room to expand elsewhere than to his West) 3-That's the only food ressource close.
The other dot is far away and its only purpose is to grab Copper.
A 3rd option would be 3S of Berlin I think.

One thing I haven't done yet is Espionage. Toward who (and why) should I use my EPs?
The rest I let you tell me what's up but I don't think i could have done mistakes yet.

No Hindu yet, it's a bit surprising, I was thinking Gandhi is going to found it.

With techs I'm thinking to go for AH in order to pasture these Cows/Pigs and hope for Horses. So AH > TW > Pottery > Myst or Archery: how does that sound ?

 

[elitetroops]

AH->TW->Pottery sounds good. But don't tech myst or archery after that.

Hmm... Not sure if I should quite yet teach you dirty tricks like this, which turn the game into "easy mode".

Spoiler contains some spoilery info from a few turns ahead :

Oh, nice, free slaves!

Spoiler :

Advancing towards his capital is perfectly safe, because a lone archer will never ever move out of the city to attack me.

Spoiler :

Oh, nice, he built me more slaves! (That worker wasn't there last turn when I arrived.)

Spoiler :

To make sure that his worker will be heading to a good spot, I pillage his ivory.

Spoiler :

Then cease fire. (Cease fire, NOT 10 turn peace treaty!)

Spoiler :

As expected, more free slaves!

Spoiler :

And a couple of turns later cease fire again.

Spoiler :

By then he already had 4 archers in his capital, which makes it more likely they would attack me even if I'm in the forest, and one is quite likely to escort his next worker, so I'd probably leave it at this. But 2 free workers by t37 is a massive gain. It is also a big setback for him, and should slow him down enough to make him an easy target in the near future. If I really wanted, I could for example build a couple of chariots that captures all future workers he builds and makes sure he never ever builds any more cities or hooks up any strategic resources. But I'm not really keen on that. In this case I'd rather let him improve the lands a bit and expand a bit more, then I'd take the improved lands with HAs in the not too distant future.

Some things to consider if you try something like this:

• People don't like when you declare on their friends. In this case everyone is cautious towards Joao, so there is no diplo penalty with anyone but himself. The other leaders don't care. If I did the same to Gandhi, Victoria would already dislike me for attacking her friend. So choose your targets well!
• It is quite safe as long as they have only archers, but if they have horse or metal hooked up, you can forget about worker stealing.
• Single city defenders will never move out to attack you, with 2 archers in a city they are also very unlikely to do so. They might if you are standing on flat land right outside the city though, so avoid that.
• They can't see your unit the same turn you enter their borders if you capture a worker. I don't know why, but they just can't. Even if they have a unit nearby that could attack you, it won't do so on the first turn. If it attacks you, it is because it would have moved to that tile anyway, it is not because it decided to attack you. So declaring to capture a worker on flat land next to their city is usually perfectly safe, even if there are 3 archers in the city.
  
• They won't send units out to attack your city until they have metals or horses. If they have an exploring archer somewhere, it might randomly stumble across your borders, in which case it will come in and take the city if it is undefended. But I don't think anyone would have exploring archers this early on emperor.
  
• Do NOT let them kill any of your units (or recapture the worker you just stole)! If you do, it will immediately take 5 times as long before they are willing to talk or take a cease fire. Worst case this is long enough for them to build some offensive units to send your way.

 

[Gasp]

@elitetroops
I don't know if I should open your spoiler. But I'm pretty sure I know your trick. You're known to use a lot of the worker stealing technique
This is something I used to do on Noble a lot.

Ok I opened your spoiler because it sounds like fun I'm willing to try. Thank you for these advices.

Masonry is a tech I need for my Marble so I'll consider researching it after Pottery.

I'd like to chop 1 forest for my 1st settler. From the position of my Worker there are 3 forests I can reach (I don't count the PH one). I'm thinking the one 2E1N of Berlin is a good option. Or shall I rather chop 2S1E of Berlin?
Or is it simply not necessary to chop a forest?

Any help with city location ?
I take in consideration the fact that sharing ressources is important but in this case with so many FP I think I can avoid some cities overlap. And i want to place a 3rd city closer to the Stone so I have an option to build the Mids. What about 4S of Berlin? I'll need a border pop though.
Maybe it is better to have a 3re city 3S of Berlin and a 4th settled on the Stone ?
Thus I'm avoiding the copper location for awhile and will most likely let it free for Joao to take. I could conquer it later.

 

[elitetroops]

I wouldn't chop first settler. Worker mines the riverside grassland hill next. Make sure that city switches to work that mine the same turn it is finished, that saves one turn off settler. Once settler is out, switch back to FP and grow to pop 4 while finishing warrior. Need some more fogbusters, especially if one of your warriors is off harassing Joao.

One marble tile is not strong enough to justify teching masonry. You have plenty of good tiles to work already without marble. You only need masonry by the time you plan to do something with marble or stone, like build mids or put hammers into ToA failgold or something. That's not very urgent at this point. There is a very good chance you could even get it in trade before you need it. What comes after pottery depends a bit on how the situation develops until then. No need to decide yet.

I'd send first settler towards Gandhi. My options are 1W of cow or 1SE of cow, if I want to grab even more land. 1SE also comes with wet rice. With all these FPs and potential health issues once you start chopping forests, rice is a good catch. However, it wouldn't be automatically connected to your capital and can't act as a helper city for capital cottages. I don't really see a great need for a helper city here, since your capital probably won't get that many cottages anyway. The capital so far has only 8 kind of decent tiles to work, so there's not much to share. If you later put a city 3S of capital, that's enough for help with cottages. (A city 3S and another on stone sounds quite ok.) If you'll be stealing workers from Joao, that should slow him down enough so that you can get to the copper first, even with your 3rd or 4th settler. And depending on what else you find, you might not even need that copper.

I should mention that when I played on from your save, I put the 2nd city 1W of cow. Mainly to have immediate connection with capital. But also because if I were to continue the game, Gandhi's cities would very soon be my cities, so I don't mind him settling the rice at all. If you are planning for some kind of early rush, then having your early cities connected is still a lot more important to share strategic resources.

 

[Gasp]

Thank you for the detailed infos.
I'll follow your advice on mining instead of a chop. And for that 2nd city I will decide when playing even if 1W of Cow is my initial thought.
I'm going to limit myself and play very few turns this game to learn better.

 

[Gasp]

Played till T46 Pottery will be finished in 2T and 3rd city settled at the same time.

Spoiler T24 to T46 :

Not much to say I think. Oh yes they didn't build any wonder yet!
I followed elitetroops' trick and had stolen 2 workers to Joao at T40.
2nd city finally went SE of Cows because of Rice mainly and also because I don't care if this city isn't connected tight away.
I'm building roads with my workers because they have nothing really better to do at the moment. Oh well they could always pre-chop but i forgot.
They'll be super busy building cottages very soon.

The world as we know it

3rd city spot (unless advised otherwise)

I'm paying 2 unit cost and 1 unit supply (??) which is not too good. T51 Berlin's border pop will allow me to get rid of 1 or 2 Warrior.
I have to switch to slavery now that my Settler is out.
Pottery should have been done but I forgot 2T the slider at 0%...

- Probably 4th city will grab Copper in the SW and 5th will be on that PH just above Marble and Corn.
- After Pottery I'm thinking Writing > Alpha is a good option. I need to think about building the Mids though with this stone. And i could use HBR to produce some HA soon for our friends Joao and Gandhi.

 

[elitetroops]

Some thoughts:

-You still haven't met all AI. A shuffle map might be a fractal map, which potentially could mean Astro is required to reach the last AI. Nothing to worry about, but just something to note.
-No sign of AI borders to the north. Looks like you'd have a lot of room to expand if you take out Joao.
-Since you stole those workers, you also committed to take him out rather early. If you don't, he will eventually show up on your border with a stack.
-No happiness resources until calendar or monarchy is a problem.
-Almost all of the AI is the worst enemy of someone else. This makes Alpha less attractive. If you trade with Gandhi, you upset Ragnar, if you trade with Vicky, you upset Peter. Also, what would you expect to trade for? I'd rather tech something else here and prepare to trade for Alpha. Thanks to his flavors, Peter is often quite fast to Alpha.
-Gandhi founded Hindu. Let him spit out a Prophet to shrine it before you kill him. He should be pretty fast with that.
-Your southern fogbusting uses one unnecessary unit. A warrior NW of stone and another SE of copper would be enough. It leaves a few tiles uncovered in the west, but any barb spawning there would head towards Joao. That third warrior you have there is actually costing you 1gpt for being outside your borders, so bring him back, or send him somewhere where he makes a difference. Of course, when you settle the new city you need even less spawn busting.
-You didn't switch to slavery yet. You should probably do so immediately, before you settle the new city.

There are many options for moving forward. Many will disagree, but I'd consider going writing->HBR and while teching HBR, whip a library and run scientists in cap to bulb Maths. You are PHI and won't have any shortage of GPs with these lands. Your short term goals are to kill Joao and build mids, bulbing Math speeds up both of those, so it is quite useful, even if you don't get close to max beakers from the bulb. Then after HBR, tech Archery for HAs and head straight for Currency, while expecting to trade Math for Alpha. If you want the mids, you might consider throwing Masonry in there before Currency. Also depends on if you settle any more cities before killing Joao. The fastest way to kill him is without any more cities, but you could also settle a 4th on stone and build mids with overflow from HA whips.

Ideally you want to get to Joao before he gets metals. If possible, scout around him to know if he has some other copper available. Also, keep an eye on his tile yields. You'll see an extra hammer on the tile if he has iron within his borders and IW researched. That grassland tile 1E of Lisbon is very suspicious, as we know it isn't horse or copper. It's almost guaranteed to be a strategic resource. If he gets metals it's not the end of the world. His capital isn't on a hill, so HAs can easily handle one or two spears if they have to.

If you feel your workers are running out of stuff to do while waiting for HBR, road to your opponent. Attacking one or two turns earlier thanks to prebuilt roads can make a big difference.

 

[gaash2]

Not sure I would bulb math but I would def kill Joao with HAs

 

[Gasp]

A lot of good infos here again!

A few things you said I need to keep in mind because I didn't think about them:
- No happiness res;
- Alpha not that useful (no need to self tech)
- No need for many cities if I use HAs.

I like the tech path you propose and I'm going to follow that Writing > HBR > Masonry > Currency
As for the Math bulb I'm not sure if it's a good use of a GS and also if I'll be able to get a GS on time, we'll see.
I'm thinking about getting the Mids and switch to HR this will help. Mids will be build in this 3rd city which has a lot of forest to chop.
So 4th city will come very soon (probably chop a settler) to settle on Stone.

 

[elitetroops]

I'd usually not consider bulbing Maths, unless I'm planning to take out the map with nothing but classical era units. In this case though, it seems to make sense to me, for a couple of reasons.

You're happy cap is 5 in capital. If you whip once, it will be 4 for 10 turns and if you work the tiles you want, you grow a pop every 2 turns (assuming granary). To avoid growing into unhappiness, you could build workers or settlers. But you already have a decent amount of workers with those you captured, and settlers won't help you get the HAs out any faster. On the contrary, the increased upkeep costs slow down teching of HBR and your workers would be distracted by improving the new cities instead of preparing your war. The other option is to work scientists. At pop 4 you can easily work 2 scientists and 9 turns is all it takes to get out the GS. The scientists will also probably cut a couple of turns off your HBR date.

As for wasting a GS, is it really a waste? With this start, I wouldn't bother with an Academy, the earliest strong use of a scientist would be to bulb Philo or Edu. Those are not any pressing issues and it shouldn't be a problem to get out the next scientist in time for those. I don't see this game going far into the industrial era, so that many GPs won't be needed.

Oh, and a micro thing I forgot to mention. You've built a ton of roads, but not the one road that would help you the most... 1S or 1SE of Berlin would allow you to settle city #3 one turn earlier. Unfortunately it's just too late for that in the save.

 

[Pedro78]

Hmm one reason that would make me not bulb maths here is that you have a landlocked start with a PHI leader that does not start with fishing. This makes the Engi bulb extremely sexy in this case. Can take out Joao, bulb Engi, roll over the map.

Oh and Elite's advice is great, takes a lot of time to analyze+write down all that stuff