[BTS] Looking to improve- Emperor Shadow Game

[CTG16]

Wouldn't going wheel before BW defeat the point of the 1E move? I thought the idea of the 1E move was to get more forests for chopping out settlers? Or is the idea here that there is enough production + Imp that I don't need the chops for settlers and can use them on other things later like for just workers or for building a quick army?

 

[lymond]

Yep, I think the idea here is that with 2 cows and ivory you have strong production for IMP settlers. Ofc, chops would speed things up, but TW will allow for setting up trade routes to help with that expansion. Generally, I'd go BW but I can see the merit of the TW here.

By the way, I opened the game and AH times perfect with the worker...wasn't sure on that, so absolutely the best play.

You might Size 2 the first settler here with cows..depends on timing but that should work well.

 

[lymond]

Tested the game a bit. TW worked out quite well and timed perfectly to have a road in place (started road on original forested PH for sampsa's rice city - can now chop that tile easy later and that road worked well for another reason too..ha) My size 2 settler finished around 2850bc. I took OF from that settler into new one and then queued a warrior to size 3 and that settler finished at 2520BC (2 very fast cities).

I started settler at size 2 with completed cows after finishing 2 warriors.

(attaching 2520bc save for you to review after you hit that point if you wish)

Debating now on whether to go FISH (reasons)>POT>Writing or straight to Writing first. I'm thinking Writing first, as it will allow me to run 0% research for a while as I rex. These types of IMP starts can easily get you 4 cities by around 2000BC, which is very strong.

(Nice start here...pretty good land with little to contest it)

edit: In case you are not aware and your worker turns/settler times like my game, note that having a road in place - on same turn - before the settler settles on the adjacent tile will provide and instant trade route. But not if you complete the road after settling.

 

[Fippy]

My suggestions are often directed towards deity, not difficult to take BW quick on lower levels and still be fine.
Wheel first prepares you better for higher tech costs & maintenance, with double cows + PH expansion flows like a stream
So i try making sure there's also some coming in.

Doesn't mean BW before Wheel cannot be better (sometimes there are river connections, or you have very high tiles like wet corn and just want Slavery).
But at least considering it makes you better.
I just noticed you want to reach Deity, so even better

 

[lymond]

Attaching 2080BC for your review later CTG (no peeking ). 4 cities - all connected by only 4 roads. Only one chop so far.

 

[CTG16]

This is awesome thank you so much @lymond
**Quick disclaimer I realize that this was a lot of moves quickly and generally that is a huge no-no with shadow games as these are the most important turns in the game, but I plan on playing this start over and over again until I get everything right. Also with @lymond generously playing through this I think comparing what I'm doing to him will really highlight a lot of my mistakes and be incredibly beneficial.**

So I decided to follow along with what you did as best as I could (Didn't peek no worries ) I think I did a fairly good job following your first moves since you pretty much wrote them out for me already, but after that things fall apart a bit and it's mostly centered around dun dun dun..... workers. Apparently I'm worse than I thought with them lol.

First settler was out at 2840 B.C and I settled it on the plains hill as was suggested by @sampsa previously. I believe you said you did the same. Made it at size 2 like you said after making 2 warriors. I'm guessing the size 2 decision was because the ivory doesn't add enough to the settler speed to go to size 3 yet? Also my city got settled a turn before the road was completed. Should I have waited a turn for the road to finish before settling the city or did I mess up a worker turn?
Right after settling this city I ran into a problem. I had no idea what to do with my worker here. Cows were set up, ivory was set up, BW was on the way but still a while off and I didn't have agri yet so I couldn't improve any of the tiles in the new city. I ended up pointlessly roading the cows and ivory to connect them to the city which I am very certain was not the correct play. What should I have done with the worker at this point? Also do you think agri before BW would be better in this case since we don't really need the extra production that badly and agri is vital to making St. Petersburg into a good city?

Spoiler Worker when 2nd city placed :

Next settler was out at 2520 B.C after growing Moscow to size 3 with 3rd warrior built. Again so far so good following your moves.

4th city gets built in 2120 B.C.

Techs went: AH, TW, BW, Agri, and was working towards writing as I liked your logic of getting writing quickly to fund rexing.

Overall, my city timings are about the same as what yours are but I feel like they would very quickly not be due to some problems in worker turns and city builds (I end up with only 2 workers out by 2120 B.C which with 4 cities feels very wrong).

Worker turns: Pointlessly roaded cows and ivory as mentioned before, no tiles in St.Petersburg ended up getting improved all the way through 2120 B.C. After improving the pigs in my 3rd city I had no clue what to do with the worker and ended up sending him to the rice 3 turns away to finally improve something in St. Petersburg (this was 2120 B.C). My 4th city is not connected to any of my cities and ther is no worker in sight of it.

City builds: Only had 2 workers @2120 with 4 cities which seems terrible, ended up building 2 warriors in St. Petersburg while growing to size 3. This ends up being the classic "Idk what to build so I guess i'll just build units" that happens to me very frequently pre alpha/currency.

Also am curious about my city placements and city order. I'm never sure how important it is to settle towards the AI and leave land that you can easily backfill vs settling all of the land close to your capital first.

I have attached both saves of the points at the screenshots.
Am going to check out lymond's saves now

Spoiler State of the empire @2120 B.C :

 

[CTG16]

Ok after looking through your save I realize I was doing a lot better than I was giving myself credit for!
So I can see that when I first couldn't figure out what to do with my worker I should've roaded to connect where future cities would be going so that they are connected ahead of time. I see that you settled the pigs, gold, marble city first before the fish city closer to the capital when I did it the other way around. Is that super relevant or more of a preference?
You skipped agri completely and went fishing instead. I thought that agri would be super important for St. Petersburg since you can't improve any of it's important tiles without it?
You only have two workers as well so I guess I was very wrong on how many workers I needed at this point. Someone once told me that I needed 1.5-2 workers per city so that's where I was coming from with that idea.
Fogbusting was something I did not do. Can someone explain to me how one goes about doing that properly? I've read about it a few times and have tried my hand at it but usually still end up with barbs showing up somehow anyways.
I also didn't swap into slavery which is mostly due to being too focused on trying to replicate your worker and settler movements. Would you go slavery right away or wait until a settler is on the move first?
Last two questions before I call it a night and since I have bombarded you with questions in this post and my last.
1) Why did you place rostov with the 2 fishes instead of with the fish and pig?
2) Why are you chopping out a barracks in the last save? I don't see the benefit currently and have a feeling it has something to do with overflow (which I also don't fully understand).

One again thanks so much for playing through this a bit I already feel like jsut comparing my saves to yours has been a huge help!

 

[lymond]

Ok after looking through your save I realize I was doing a lot better than I was giving myself credit for!

First off, you did very well here in terms of getting the settlers out. In fact, I think you beat my date in both cases. Actually not sure how your first city was settled faster unless you simply did not build two warriors.

Don't have much time here right now, but I'll try answer these best I can.

Oh...from first post above. No ..settle your city. I'm just saying if you have a road in place the route will be instant. Like in my case the settler was on the hill ready to settle while the worker could complete the road on that turn. Point is to complete the road first.

So I can see that when I first couldn't figure out what to do with my worker I should've roaded to connect where future cities would be going so that they are connected ahead of time. I see that you settled the pigs, gold, marble city first before the fish city closer to the capital when I did it the other way around. Is that super relevant or more of a preference?

Well, gold/pigs is a great site. If this was a more hotly contested area I'd probably be grabbing that with first city...in fact in hindsight it probably should have been settled first. The key here is the gold especially combined with a super food resource. That early commerce is huge.

Cities to the E of Moscow are basically "backfill" in the sense that the map ends there, but fish spot I like for a quick Library to get those scientists running, especially since Moscow is not good for that.

Any, Pigs/gold is a pretty ideal spot here for a Bureau cap if playing the long game here.

You skipped agri completely and went fishing instead. I thought that agri would be super important for St. Petersburg since you can't improve any of it's important tiles without it?

Actually, not really important at all for a couple of reasons. The Pete spot is not really a super early city but it's functional enough and with copper reveal can share that early. Dry rice is really not that great and the city as FPs to use early at 3F1C vs. 4F. There is no other agri resources scouted.

Fish stood out to me because of the great spot below Moscow, especially with a CRE leader that gets the fishies fast and the library fast. So scientists asap there. I chose to grab both fish with the idea of using the pigs for another city 3S of Moscow, but your spot is not bad as the other fish can feed horse city. I just resigned myself to horse city being a "resource city" grabbing the horses and eventually all the furs.
So Fish for that food and to unlock POT instead of using AG to unlock POT. Yeah, I coulda grab AG too for the bonus but felt it a diversion at that point as the tech was not of much value here. I teched it like in 1 turn not long after Writing.

So really those decisions boil down to a key piece of advice: "Play the map"

You only have two workers as well so I guess I was very wrong on how many workers I needed at this point. Someone once told me that I needed 1.5-2 workers per city so that's where I was coming from with that idea.

Yeah, 1.5 or something along those lines has been written before, but it is more about good worker management. Granted more workers are nice, but it also depends on how you settle your cities and what needs to be done.

Anyway, I soon had 5 or 6 workers not long after but at the time it was sufficient.

Fogbusting was something I did not do. Can someone explain to me how one goes about doing that properly? I've read about it a few times and have tried my hand at it but usually still end up with barbs showing up somehow anyways.

A unit busts a 5X5 tile area from the tile he stands on, so you can bust a pretty nice area. Visible tiles do not spawn barbs, ofc, but "dark areas" (not fog) can spawn. So setup your units accordingly. If you have something more specific in mind though let me know.

I also didn't swap into slavery which is mostly due to being too focused on trying to replicate your worker and settler movements. Would you go slavery right away or wait until a settler is on the move first?

I think I switched to slavery when the 2nd settler was moving to its spot so that new city never feels the anarchy. BW was not in yet before the first city was settled.

Last two questions before I call it a night and since I have bombarded you with questions in this post and my last.
1) Why did you place rostov with the 2 fishes instead of with the fish and pig?

I noted this above. Your spot was not bad at all, I just went with the idea of make 2 cities in that corner. And actually you can still do so. Technically, you split the 2 fishes and pigs into essentially 3 cities, with one actually grabbing horses too (on wine). And all very close to the cap. So that is a good thing.

2) Why are you chopping out a barracks in the last save? I don't see the benefit currently and have a feeling it has something to do with overflow (which I also don't fully understand).
!

The chop had nothing to do with the barracks. i had queued the barracks simply for growth, as opposed to building...say..more warriors which I had plenty of at that point. I would build one axe later just for handling any frisky barbs. I want Moscow at size 4 soon to work more good tiles. The chop woulda gone into a settler. (If ..say..I had discovered POT or Writing I'd build using a granary or Library instead).

Anyway, one thing I'd point out about your last save is too many roads, yet one road on either tile 1W of Pete's would have connected Rostov. The roads on cows and ivory are unnecessary at this stage. Only 1 road need S of Moscow to connect river.

Rostov should have a worker there already.

Worker 1 is taking a very odd path down S there. Think about your movements. Might as well send him due N to some chopping. You are building 2 more workers.

Pete's does not need MP. These units could be out spawnbusting.

 

[Jellybug]

Visible tiles do not spawn barbs, ofc, but "dark areas" (not fog) can spawn

I had no idea that the mystery unexplored black tiles could spawn bad guys!

@CTG16 I'm trying to find you a good thread on whipping/ overflow, as it's one of the reasons food sharing is good. This way you can juggle the ten turn whip cycles and swap the food/cottages around as you re-grow. Whipping tends to keep your cities size 1-6, so it's very useful esp. before monarchy/representation/calendar luxuries as you simply won't have the happy cap to grow more anyway. Every whip generates +1 unhappy for ten turns, no matter how much population you whip away. At 30 hammers per population, 1 3pop whip gets you an instant 90 hammers (before multipliers like *1.5 for IMP trait settlers or *2 for pyramids with stone)

You mentioned, though, that it was overflow specifically you didn't understand. Let's say you 2pop whip an Ax. Axes cost 35 hammers, and every population yields 30 hammers. Meaning if you have 5 or more hammers invested in the axe, it will be a 1pop whip--- same unhappiness penalty, but fewer hammers generated instantly, since you only need up to 30 hammers to finish. So you have to 2pop the ax with 4 or fewer hammers invested in the ax. So turn 1, you put, say, 2 hammers into the axeman. Turn two, you two-pop whip the axeman. Your city was size 4 now it's size 2. Ax comes out turn 3. If you check the hammer bar, you'll notice you have 27 hammers coming on turn three as well. If you're doing an ax rush, just put these hammers directly in the next Axeman, which is almost done (only 8 hammers to go, minus the actual city production from last turn, so like 6 hammers left, should be 1-3 turns). But if not rushing, you can also direct these hammers into something else, like a wonder or a settler or a worker. Elephants/ catapults are easier to two-pop whip because they cost more/ there's more leeway on the front end before you're forced to 1pop. 1pop isn't bad esp if you only have 1 food and no other good tiles.

Regarding more costly builds like settler or granary, you'll generally have a choice whether you want a sooner build or more overflow. I think granaries you pretty much want ASAP, but otherwise it depends on what you're whipping away. Maximizing overflow lets you work more tiles for longer, delaying the production of the first thing in favor of more tiles worked and a quicker overflowed-thing. One common technique is storing the overflow into a worker or a settler for 1 turn, then switching back to unit/building/wonder to grow back, then finishing the settler/worker when you have grown back enough to whip it. Especially once you have granaries, you should look to whip workers and settlers whenever possible, as they delay city growth.

I hope this helps in some way

 

[CTG16]

Sorry to take so long to reply to this got caught up in school stuff. I attached my second go around for the 2120 save. I think I have fixed the things that I needed to and I definitely feel better about this one than my first go around. Amazing how much of a difference the little things make in this game! I wrote a few things out on this save such as future city spots and some next move thoughts.
One of the cities I'm not sure about. It's a plains cow gold spot with an oasis, a lot of desert and some coast. Not ideal but the cows and oasis are enough for it to run the gold, get a lighthouse and just run coastal stuff. Could be ok for an early research city.
As far as the overall game plan here I guess just rex until I can't and prioritize currency asap to fund it? Which brings me to my next question how wide should I go before getting alpha/currency? I'm never sure how to best balance grabbing all of the land I need and getting as many good cities as I can with tanking my economy too much before I can just build wealth or at least build research.
Also tech paths: I'm going writing currently for the library scientists in my fishing city and in the pig gold city(?). After that I was thinking I would go for pottery for the cottages as I have a few good cottage spots. Not sure where to go after this. My usual plan in games is to get all of my resource techs I need, pottery into writing into aesthetics, 1 turn or so into alpha then trade aesthetics for alpha, math and iron working. Not sure if that is still the plan here or not. We do have marble so I am looking at getting the GLib at some point.
Not sure what to use my capital for. I guess it has to be a production specialized city with what it's got? Farm the rivers so it can continue to grow and just mass produce whatever I need at that point in the game?
Worker turns: Chops and set up roads for future cities I guess? The one coming out in St. Pete's is going to mine the copper but the other ones I'm not 100% certain on what their next moves are. I have one mining the gold in the pig/gold/marble city. Pig has already been improved. After the gold mine then what for him? The other worker just finished roading to connect the fish city, which was just placed so that timed out nicely, to the city network. 10 turns for fishing boat so I guess I could chop that out to speed that cities growth along? 5 turns until border pops cause creative so maybe I can time the boat and the border pop around the same time? Not sure if that works out or not.

Anyways once again really appreciate the time spent helping with this game it means a lot!

 

[CTG16]

@Jellybug That is very helpful actually I'll see if I can try and get some optimal overflow going in this game with whips and chops. I'll almost certainly mess it up many many times but hopefully I'll get it down by the end of this game.

 

[Henrik75]

Wow you sound similar to me, I used to play the game when I was 7 or something and bee lined longbowmen and then tanks because they were cool (sometimes i made myself go on strike in the process) dont think i ever got past warlord. XD I've come back to the game this year and slowly climbed my way up to deity recently.

Anyway, for your start, I would move the scout south on the hill to see if there's anything fantastic you're missing otherwise settle in place. Those flood plans on the left look like an optimal second city. You're starting on a plains hill which is an immediat 12 turn worker, very nice for early expansion. You start with hunting so you can immediately go for animal husbandry to improve your cows. A lil min max trick you could do is after making the working, improve the plains/cow tile for 1 turn then move and improve the grassland one, because 4 food is better. After improving the two cows you can go straight to mining the hills which is nice.

After teching animal husbrandry, see if there's any horses nearby, you could possibly horse archer rush someone or get out a few charriots to defend yourself. If so then probably get the wheel. If no horses anywhere then either bronze working or aggriculture if there's a aggri-food source nearby for a second city.

 

[floydmcw]

Thanks for the save CTG16. I had fun with it.

Chose an odd tech path ...

Spoiler :

Saw marble in the 2nd city site and decided to go for Oracle. AH -> TW, then Myst -> Masonry for marble. Fishing -> Pottery for cottages and granaries; then back to Med -> PH for The Oracle.

All this took me till T58. I thought the gold would lead to faster teching. Finished BW on T65 along with Oracle; took Monarchy for the wines and HR.

Had to research 4 techs to make the no-chop Oracle happen, and they were almost as expensive as the free tech. I guess Oracle is best when you start with Mysticism and chop it.

On the other hand, the marble is a nice tile so I would have wanted Masonry at some point. And I got to trade Meditation for Agriculture.

 

[CTG16]

So I caught the civ bug and ended up playing this game to it's end. 1765 Domination win, was 1 civ off of conquest. My fastest win date ever! (not counting duel conquest wins). After going through the start with @lymond I realized pretty quickly that I play way too fast in the sense of real time. This game I spent more time thinking about what I was doing and what my goal was. That plus the help you gave me on the started really snowballed this game for me. I still have tons to learn as I have seen many players beat that win date by 500+ years on harder maps, but it is certainly a start.

Spoiler About the game :

I ended up being able to peacefully expand to 10 cities by 250 B.C. From here I peacefully tech until I get cuirs as I got super lucky in diplomacy this game. Diplomacy in this game was super straight forward and easy, as this is probably my worst area in this game, I was super happy to see this (will almost certainly be looking for help in this specifically soon). Everyone had Judaism except for Sitting Bull and Suryvarman. Neither of which shared a religion, Sury was Buddhist and Sitting Bull was Hindu. Naturally, this lead to a dog pile on Sitting Bull cause for some reason nobody ever seems to like him I find. Anyways, world war everyone vs Sitting Bull breaks out, quite literally everyone even sury declared on him even though he too was outside of the common religion. This lead to the end of sitting bull in 880 A.D. During this time I was teching to cuirs ASAP and had pretty much got them. Was just getting the last bit of gunpowder teched after having already won lib for MT (fastest date for MT lib for me as well. Still room to improve I can see). Sury ends up declaring on me around 1000 A.D or so but this quickly backfires as I brought in all of my Judaism friends into the war. That and my cuirs destroyed his stack pretty quickly. After taking him down to 3 cities he vassals to me. Sometime around this point I tech cannons, but I realize that was probably a mistake as I had some many cuirs switching to cannons felt useless as few of my rivals had gunpowder let alone rifles. I decide to make Hannibal my next target and he falls after 2 cities taken. By this point I have managed to get to rifles and mass upgrade to Cossacks before taking out the Aztecs. Every city I had except for 2 were spamming Cossacks for the war effort. I manage to convince Genghis, who was rather backwards, to declare on Alexander for a few techs. Not enough to get him up to rifles or anything big like that, but I was worried about Alexander as he did have rifles, I wanted to try and slow him down a bit as I prepared to take him out next. This plan ends up working as Genghis ends up taking 2 of Alex's cities initially. Alex ends up regaining one of these and one of Genghis's by the end of this, but I think the set back was good. I declare on Alex while he's still in war with Genghis and the war on both sides ends up being too much for him although he took a lot longer than others to finally cap. 4-5 cities were needed even though it was a very one-sided war. At this point I prepare to take on Genghis but as revolts end, borders pop and vassals heal from the wars I end up braking the domination limit at 1765 A.D.

This game more than doubled my top games ever on normalized score as seen here:

(Ignore the other two games above it those were just reloads seeing if I can improve the date by culture spamming after capping Alex)
Thank you so much to everyone who commented and helped me along this game. Once again special thanks to @lymond for playing through the start and giving me so many in depth pointers it helped a lot!

 

[Tobiyogi]

I'd go 1E, catches 4 more forests and slightly better tiles overall (more river, less hills).

Good point. I wouldn't have thought about it. Saves 1 forest, gains more river tiles, keeps fresh water. The lost turn will pay back quite soon.

 

[Tobiyogi]

I checked some screenshots because I wouldn't play it on Emperor. To me, it looks like the perfect map for moving a level up with "Always War" checked. So all those who found the BotM 195 (AW, Monarch) too easy could probably try this. I will make it an ImmAW which I have beaten only once in my life.
Why is it so perfect?

Spoiler AW :

1. Leader with two strong traits, IMP being even the stronger one for AW. But CRE helps too, because you can reliably settle on hills while getting your food from second ring. And you don't waste many hammers on 2-3 libraries (which lose a lot of their value here)
2. Early strategic resources, you can settle the horses or wait for Construction rush. Copper also there. So in no-time, you will have a second capitol if you do it right
3. Overall very strong production which is always an issue in those games. Happiness and commerce too.

This is certainly one of the most balanced maps I have ever seen...

 

[floydmcw]

This is ... not a normal Emperor map.

For instance Monty just beat me to the Great Lighthouse by one turn ...

Spoiler :

because I was racing to get Liberalism before anyone finished the GL.

(And I could have done it, but I took about 7 turns off for Nat so I could Lib Military Tradition.)

 

[floydmcw]

I managed to win T204 (1440 AD) by an unusual route ... The Apostolic Palace. Most of the votes were mine, the rest were my vassals. I would have won Domination 10-15 turns later.

This game also heads my Hall of Fame. Thanks for posting it!