Openings at Emperor difficulty

[Gus_Smedstad]

While I haven't played Deity yet, I understand that a rush is the optimal play because the AI players have enough resources (workers, a secondary city) to steal that there's no economic downside to it. Provided there's a civ close enough that it's possible to rush. At Emperor difficulty, though, it's a different story. Typically the AI has at most one worker to steal, and no secondary city by the time you arrive with an early army.

So here are the various openings, as I understand them:

• Warrior Rush. Build 4, possibly 5 additional warriors at the start, and take the nearest neighbor's capitol. This eliminates a threat, but is a relatively weak economic start. Teching to Iron Working soon after is important, because the 5-6 warriors are usually not enough to deal with neighbors 2 and 3, and you've already invested in infantry.
• Horseman Rush. Build scout, worker, settler, or scout, settler, worker, and tech to horseback riding immediately. Settle near horses (preferably 4 horses), and connect them with the worker. Buy 1 horseman and build 2, and take as much as many neighbors as you can. Also weak economically, but at least you have 2 native cities instead of 1, and stronger militarily than the warrior rush, at least for a while.
• Settler spam. Build worker or scout, settler, tech to Construction and start building colosseums. Any time you have at least 3 happiness, build another settler. Leads to tremendous income, but gives neighbors time to build a military.
• Settler spam up to -9 unhappiness. As above, but build settlers if you are at -6 happiness or better. New cities will be stuck at size 1, but can work a hill to push for a colosseum.

Things I'm not too clear about with the settler spam approach:

• When to build military, and how to divert? Sooner or later your neighbors will come knocking, and you need to be able to at least defeat an invasion by an aggressive player.
• When to build libraries? A big part of this is getting a lot of cities that can support 1-2 scientists. In my current game I kind of stalled out that way - it's turn 114 and I haven't completed any at all, not even in my capitol. Too many other demands, and building libraries requires production needed for military units and Colosseum / Settler expansion. Further, scientists don't produce hammers. "When to build Universities" is an extension of this question, but is late enough not to really be more mid-game than "opening."
• What about culture? I'm playing Arabia, I have 7 normal cities and 2 annexed ones, and at turn 114 still haven't unlocked Meritocracy. I have a Cultural city state, but that isn't producing enough.

 

[boehj]

I like the Warrior rush the best out of these because it seems to be the most stable for me. You've always got that army on hand. As you mentioned, the rush is pretty hard to pull off on Emperor as the AI generally hasn't planted a 2nd city when you're good to go. So what I do is grab a bit of XP from barbs, steal a worker from a (preferably military) CS and wait for Iron. Perhaps even kill a scout during this period.

I'm no expert on early settler spam. All my attempts have been pretty abysmal. But it's my understanding that if you choose this approach you want to beeline to Construction and get these cities building Colosseums as priority one. Libs or monuments would come next. A maritime CS is providing all the food and your mini-cities are working hills.

I have the same problem re: the military. How on earth are you supposed to get together a reasonable army from these crappy cities in the first instance? Seems way too unstable and stressful to play.

Again, I think this fairly extreme strategy may be better suited to higher difficulties. Martin Alvito has this idea of flipping and annexing a city with the intention of making that a settler pump and also the intention that it'll be razed when you're getting very unhappy. Obviously this can't be done with a capital so once again Emperor seems less suited to this.

Re: Universities, what I try to do is get one fully staffed along with a Lib in my capital ASAP (often bought) and just wait it out for the other mini-cities to get their acts together as they hard build them.

The only answer I have for the cultural side of things would be to play France or slightly delay the expansion.

 

[Gus_Smedstad]

France obviously is a special case. While I think it's also interesting to talk about civ-specific openings - should Germany take Honor to highlight barbarian camps? - I think it's important to discuss culture considerations with civs other than France.

 

[wurstburst]

I like to do a horse rush, while building one settler along the way. By the time I have 2 cities, 4 horses and a warrior or two, the other civs have 2 or sometimes 3 cities. You don't want to waste that early rush by only getting a single puppet out of the deal.

I don't build a worker too early, as I typically settle my second city on top of horses. Luxuries tend to wait, but the good part of this approach of delaying the rush a bit from a straight warrior rush is that the civ you conquer will often net you a worker or two and in a perfect world, some improved luxuries, too.

The benefit of horse rush is that you can be on the offensive for a long long time - until opponents get longswords. And even when they get longswords, you can at least hold them to a stalemate if you use smart tactics with well-promoted horsemen. This lets you spend your research on economy, culture or science techs, instead of being on the pure military tech route if you start all warriors. In addition, as you are developing your civ, by taking writing (libraries), trapping (TP spam) and philosophy (research agreements), you are also getting the pre-requisities for Chivalry. This is probably the best reason for horse rush. The tech tree is very favorable to a 3-step early approach: horse rush/conquer while filling in the core economy techs/chivalry. When you go warrior/swords/rifles, you tend to have to fill in more of the tech tree early, which leads to a lot of compromises in development.

 

[LordTC]

Warrior Rush variants have been best for me.

My most successful rush build for me is warriorX4-great library.

You often lose enough of the warriors in taking an enemy capital that you don't have to use them offensively or worry about how to upgrade them. The surviving warriors should just steal workers. You have a much better 2nd wave coming.

Tech order of:
Pottery->Writing->Philosophy->Animal Husbandry->Trapping.
Although something like this is fine too, and better if you get an early worker.
Pottery->Writing->Animal Husbandry->Trapping->Philosophy

Around Trapping finishing you should finish your great library micromanage it so that you get trapping first. At this point spam landsknechts for the 2nd rush. Once you've got the 2nd wave going take time out to get a library up and plan on getting a great scientist for a 2nd slingshot.

The landsknecht is one of the best units in the game, with 10 attack for 33 hammers on quick, and a massive bonus against mounted units, although the main purpose is to be a unit that doesn't require you to hook up iron (or even get the wheel), that can still rush after the warrior stage is over.