futurehermit
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2006
- Messages
- 5,724
I started an emperor game today and got a really strange start! I was on the northern coast of a smallish continent. Saladin in the middle with Liz on the southern coast.
The strange thing was there was VERY little production to be had on the northern coast. I had copper, but it was two city spots to the E and it was on a desert tile surrounded by some other desert tiles. The spot in the middle was a great GPP with wheat, two fish, but having to build right on a sheep, which I felt was ok.
The spot to my immediate W was the only production city available with fish, a couple whales, and some hills (grasslands and plains). There was another spot W of that which was a coastal city with fish and sheep.
I was able to get one city to the S which was between my capital and Saladin's capital. It was on a long, snaky river with only one desert hill. I had NO production in my capital (unless you could a couple plains tiles...) prior to iron (which I delayed because I had copper and there was neglible jungle).
As a result, I had a really hard time building an army to go after Saladin. My capital was very low production and needed things like libraries, etc. My GPP was busy running specialists. My copper city was very low production and had to work coast tiles for food. My one produciton city built and whipped units, but I still ended up having to delay an attack until I hit the middle ages (I upgraded my handful of axes/swords to maces and had catapults vs. Saladin's protective longbows...).
I couldn't really stay peaceful because Saladin and Liz hated each other having founded different religions and Saladin was encroaching on my lands and was very demanding with me.
I know that one of the best ways to win emperor is to be aggressive early, but what do you do if you get a start like this where raising an army is no easy feat?
(p.s., I stayed in the game thks to a nice early rex helping me keep up cities-wise with the AI and I lightbulbed Philosophy which helped me with trade to keep up in tech)
The strange thing was there was VERY little production to be had on the northern coast. I had copper, but it was two city spots to the E and it was on a desert tile surrounded by some other desert tiles. The spot in the middle was a great GPP with wheat, two fish, but having to build right on a sheep, which I felt was ok.
The spot to my immediate W was the only production city available with fish, a couple whales, and some hills (grasslands and plains). There was another spot W of that which was a coastal city with fish and sheep.
I was able to get one city to the S which was between my capital and Saladin's capital. It was on a long, snaky river with only one desert hill. I had NO production in my capital (unless you could a couple plains tiles...) prior to iron (which I delayed because I had copper and there was neglible jungle).
As a result, I had a really hard time building an army to go after Saladin. My capital was very low production and needed things like libraries, etc. My GPP was busy running specialists. My copper city was very low production and had to work coast tiles for food. My one produciton city built and whipped units, but I still ended up having to delay an attack until I hit the middle ages (I upgraded my handful of axes/swords to maces and had catapults vs. Saladin's protective longbows...).
I couldn't really stay peaceful because Saladin and Liz hated each other having founded different religions and Saladin was encroaching on my lands and was very demanding with me.
I know that one of the best ways to win emperor is to be aggressive early, but what do you do if you get a start like this where raising an army is no easy feat?
(p.s., I stayed in the game thks to a nice early rex helping me keep up cities-wise with the AI and I lightbulbed Philosophy which helped me with trade to keep up in tech)
and, no, i wasn't running SE. I like to have pyramids for that, but with the production I had, it would've took about 300 turns 
