NC276 Emperor Shadow Game

[Fabled]

I've been struggling through noble's club games on emperor so I figured I would take one slow and try to really tighten up my play.

I don't think I have a good handle on specialists and great people, so I've picked Frederick. We have philosophical going for us... and not much else. Let's make some great people and win this game the hard way.

The map is continents, tropical climate, medium sea level. Standard options, no huts or events.

This is our starting location.

I'm thinking either settle in place, or settle 2N for a stupid amount of food. Either 1E or 1W of the sheep is a plausible second city, so my gut says settle in place. The scout is most likely 1W > 1SW to uncover the most tiles.

If I understand the format correctly, I post updates every turn until we settle, and then it's 5-10 turn increments after that, stopping early for major events?

 

[Fippy]

Going 2N should never ever be considered
You wouldn't get more long term (LH boosted lakes lost), but it's irrelevant anyways with so much already.

Around half a dozen turns would be lost in early development, slower worker and corn improvements.
There are more disadvantages like no extra later, worse placement for possible Pyras building, no fresh water (but that's usually not super important).

I go into detail here cos this move should be understood as being very terrible, not as possibility.

 

[krikav]

Yeah, if you go north, then it's because the scout went there and saw 3 fishes or something. And then you would settle on the sheep.

The only reason I see not to settle in place, is if you want to fool around with early stone wonders (Freddy is fun to go early TGW with, Phi+Org is uniquely suited to go for early espionage).

 

[krikav]

It's a really fun map btw. I enjoyed that one alot!

 

[AcaMetis]

Early game you're looking for a capital that'll get you the fastest, strongest start. It might be better long term to spend one or two turns moving, but something that benefits you now is better than something that benefits you a hundred turns from now. Especially if the early advantage leads to you getting a second city up and running earlier, or getting a tech earlier, or completing a wonder before someone else does, one turn can make a disproportionally large difference.

 

[lymond]

fwiw - LH is cheap here. I'd consider moving the scout 1E of the settler to spy any possible seafood. I might consider settling the stone here, but in place is obviously very strong - with nice food sharing with 1 if not 2 possible close cities.

To add to the already great advice regarding food and these start decisions, when presented with an abundance of food, think less about having 1 city possess all that food and rather how one can share that food with multiple close cities.

 

[SillyGoat]

Anytime I see a plains hill with stone on it I want to settle on it. In this case, it's good even if there isn't more seafood in the fog (Corn and 4-5 lighthouseable lakes).

 

[Fippy]

I would only consider settling on stone here with seafood, no faster corn improvement.
And improved stone actually makes a useful tile.

 

[krikav]

Yeah, Freddy starts with mining so mining the stone gives a nice 5-yield tile without additional tech needed.
So the 3 hammer city center is not as spectacular as it might first look.

 

[SillyGoat]

Settling the stone gives you +1 hpt over settling the plains hill and working the 4h plains hill with mine gives the same yield as settling the plains hill and working the quarried stone.
So you come out ahead on hammers any time you're not working the 0 food tile. And you save a couple of worker turns building the mine vs the quarry. It's not looking like an uber capital, but it'll get the first settler or two out quickly and should have enough hammers and forests to get GLH done in good time.

 

[Fippy]

Well without something in the fog you are not getting your settler out faster cos you miss a corn, and you cannot improve the other one faster.
Why would 1 more on your city tile be better than having another corn?

 

[krikav]

It loses the crab too.
Only concievable reason I can see for settling on the stone is if you want to fool around with some early stone wonder like TGW and thus can ignore TW and also save alot of workerturns.

 

[Fabled]

The plot thickens, we are dealing with seafood in the fog. I think the corn tile is more valuable than the clam tile, because a 5/0/0 tile grows faster and builds faster than a 4/0/2 tile and it allows us to delay fishing and the workboat in favor of faster bronze working. The food situation here is great so I want to start whipping ASAP.

Edit: The clam is in the BFC so we're not even losing the tile. I think this is an incredibly clear settle in place. We probably want 2 helper cities to eat through all this food.

 

[krikav]

@Fabled I like your reasoning.
I would be weary about agri->BW though, maybe commerce could become an issue...?

iirc I went fishing after agri on this map to gain access to a bunch of 2F2C tiles and not crash the economy.
Looks like such an approach might lead to worker turn issues though.

Kudos for starting a shadow game from a NC map, thats really neat in that you can consult other playthroughs as well.
Will try my best to give advice as if playing the map blind, but that can always be tricky.
Luckily this map was a while ago now.

 

[sampsa]

@Fabled The thing is, you have many good tiles so you can live without the whip. At size 3 you can work double corn and mined stone for +6+7, which means you can get both workers/settlers and units out fast if you need.

There may be more urgent techs than BW here, like krikav points out: fishing to gain some -tiles. Masonry for Mids, AH for the sheep and so on.

 

[Fabled]

Played to T5. Settled in place and started a worker T0. Ran the scout SW keeping to hills as best I could to try and meet someone before committing to agriculture. We found Churchill to our west. England is fishing / mining, so no known tech bonus for us.

I don't usually think about commerce this early, but the argument for fishing before bronze working makes sense to me. We'll see exactly what shape we're in after agriculture > fishing before I lock in more of the tech order.

Once the worker comes out, the natural path is:
- T12: NW and farm
- T17: E and farm
- T22-23: SE then S
- T24: mine
- T28: worker is available for the next action

None of our first 3 tiles (corn, corn, stone) will have any so the current rate of 9 / turn will have to get us through. Agriculture finishes on T10, so that gives fishing on roughly T15. We thus have 13 turns for the next worker tech. I think the priority is animal husbandry > bronze working > the wheel but I might be wrong here.

After the worker, we build warriors until it's time to start a settler. It looks like pop 1 -> pop 2 is 22 , so that's T17. I don't know what pop 2 -> pop 3 is, but assuming it's more than 24 and less than 30 we get pop 3 on T22. This gives us 10 turns at 2 , or 1 warrior and a second at 7/15 . At pop 3 we're +6 and 7 so the settler comes out T30.

I think either 1W or 1E of the sheep is correct for the second city, which is why I'm planning on animal husbandry after fishing. The settler can plant T32 for 1E and T33 for 1W, and if we move the worker immediately after finishing the stone mine it arrives at the sheep T31. This means 1E wastes 1 worker turn and 1W wastes 2. If I was playing by myself I would just accept the inefficiency (to be honest I wouldn't know it was coming until it happened), but since this is a shadow game maybe we can find an alternative plan to keep the worker busy?

This is my first time seriously planning micro like this so I have no idea if I'm even considering the correct things.

 

[krikav]

I like your analysis and counting. Pacticing that helps alot to make good decisions in the early game. In my experience, plans constantly change though.

The city spots you mention is exacly the ones I glance at too.
I was suprised of your priority AH > BW > TW. What would be the urgent need for AH? A helper city 3N1W (sharing more food) or 3N1E (Autoconnected) would have access to at least two food sources so getting the sheep pastured isn't crucial.
I think BW is the way to go, going fishing first is a nod to the map, acknowleding that commerce is abit poor. Going TW as well feels like overkill.
But there are probably arguments for TW->Masonry too, or perhaps some early sailing stunt?
But BW is probably most orthodox here.

AH after agri is certainly not a bad idea. With hunt+agri already in, it's also much cheaper than BW, and horses are more common than copper.
With BW, I think you will have more lost worker turns, but the worker can perhaps scout that northern peninsula while he is waiting to learn something new to do.
If you go AH, you will likely have more lost worker turns after the sheep is pastured too though.

Good practice to sprint out and try find AIs before T5. On immortal all AIs know agriculture!
The scout is looking abit too ambitious now though. Better backtrack abit to secure the region around wheat/pigs (scout abit more around them too to learn what's the best dotmap).

If you place a unit, any unit at the stone or 1S of the stone, the barbs will not go that way. It screws with their pathfinding, so they will go the long way around. Makes for a very nice fortress with only one vector for invasion.
A net of 2-3 fogbusters in the west would make things very safe.

 

[konata_LS]

Ah, this map! It's certainly a good map for practising GPeople management.

Not sure if I should say something here, because I'm afraid of spoilering the map and resource. When I played this, my scout went to another direction and found something which changed my tech path. Instead of Fishing or AH, I went to Agri-TW-BW.

Is it wise to put the scout on the grass hill 2E of the Wheat? Near Wheat & Pig spot would be a nice third or fourth city, 2 resources help a faster growth, and hills provide early . After CoL, that city may feed at least 4 specialists under Caste. Combined with PHI, it would generating 24 per turn. For such a nice spot, you don't want some barbs spawn nearby.

 

[Fabled]

Played to T22. We're just following the plan from the last post so far. I've hit everything exactly on schedule so far, which is gratifying.

The western food cluster also has gold, I think that land is fairly high priority for a 3rd - 5th city. The scout was forced to take combat 1 and is healing for a while now, we got caught by a lion on a grass tile but the promotion put us over the edge.

Here's a close up on Berlin. There's nothing particularly special here, we're working the high yield tiles, prioritizing food over hammers. I've started a settler immediately on hitting pop 3 since slavery will be a bit and we're working all the good tiles. An alternative plan would be to finish the second warrior to escort the settler north, but with cultural vision we're not going to be surprised by animals on the northern peninsula so I think we can skip the warrior.

At the moment I think we want animal husbandry after bronze working so we can pasture the sheep and reveal horses. After the settler Berlin can grow to 4 on warriors and a fishing boat, with a plan to 2 pop whip a second settler ASAP. An alternative would be to grow to 4, 2 pop whip a worker, and start putting overflow into something (barracks? fishing boat?), grow back to 3, and then hard build the second settler. I should probably count out the yields and get a more quantitative comparison between the plans, but I'm feeling a little lazy right now so it can wait until we get this settler out.

 

[krikav]

I think I would want to grow to pop4 woring corns+lake. It's really fast to get to pop4 with those corns (+8 food and a 26 food bar? Thats 4 turns, but you can also twiddle around abit with the third tile, perhaps "passing a turn or two by working workboat, and trying to reach 14/15 with the warrior, then the fourth turn when you grow then you work the 3H tile securing some hammers overflow.

By that approach you get another warrior and you can get more commerce since you can work a lake tile while building settler.
And it's not sure it results in a much slower settler either. If it takes 4 turns to reach pop4, the settler might only come out 2 turns later anyways due to the extra pop, and with the help of the warrior overflow trick.

But going straight settler and aiming to settle 3N1E (for insta-connection) is certainly a perfecly viable path forward too.
However, It's a path that emphasis production more and if you are going to emphasis production, then what was the purpose of fishing?