Optimizing my game play: moving up to Emperor

[Seerah]

Greetings fellow civ 4 players. After shadowing a couple of games on here and learning how the basics of the game works, i've since moved up to Monarch. I feel reasonably comfortable at this difficulty level, and I can usually tell when I can win 90% of my games. Ideally, i'd like to get to the level where I can manage to get consistent victories before the industrial era.

I am but a novice and aspects of my play are no doubt sloppy and maybe suboptimal, so i'd like to take the opportunity to do a playthrough posting updates every once in a while highlighting the decision making processes I go through. It'll also help me as well, since i'd have an incentive to think things through and play a bit more slowly.

We'll be playing Emperor difficulty on Pangaea (a personal favorite maptype of mine, allows for nice and fast warring). Everything else is standard fare (6 opponents, no huts/events, normal speed).

I think i'll throw a wrench into the machine for variety and roll the RNG for our starting leader on unrestricted leaders (a first for me), and we'll see what we can get. We might end up with either an very amazing or very mediocre set leader/civ, but the same goes for the AI, so it's fair game.

Let's see what we get...

Spoiler :

Pacal of the Ottomans!

Techs: wheel, agriculture. Nice and solid.

Traits: expansive, financial. Faster settlers, more commerce.

Janissary. Eh. If we're getting a musketman UU, i'd rather have musketeers, since at least they can keep up with cuirs. Civopedia tells me janissaries get +25% vs. archery, melee, and mounted units, but I don't wee why we can't simply get a pikes/knights/maces stack. Oh well, at least our immortal leader shall not lack for a decorative guard.

Hammam might be decent. +2 happiness basically means two more tiles worked/more whip potential, or 2 garrisons freed up for other purposes under hereditary rule. We do get this a tech earlier than the ball court. Unfortunately, unlike the ball court, it gives 1 less happiness, comes at a +20 hammer cost, and doesn't get happy multipliers from culture. I rarely build aqueducts anyway, except as a prerequisite for the hanging gardens, at least not until the industrial era, so the comparison between the two buildings is debatable. I'd honestly rather have the Baray for an aqueduct, since it has good synergy with a hammer rich but food lacking capital, while happiness can always be acquired through other means.

Our start.

Spoiler :

Of course, the catch the RNG gods have not blessed us with any resources to farm!

Looks like we have to manually tech AH. Normally, i'd hate having that many water tiles in the BFC, but as financial, this may actually be a good thing as we may leverage this for a few turns shaved off our early research. I count 4 grass hills (including a sheep hill), which is very nice. A nice bonus with all these lakes is that we can farm all those adjacent tiles pre-civil service. Of course, we also end up with fresh water lake tiles which would give an equivalent amount of 3 plus 3 with a lighthouse, so we may not need to farm those. A caveat is we get no river and thus no instant 3 cottages, and no late game levee. Pottery (and early finiancial cottages) is probably deprioritized here (although we will want it eventually), unless we can find a nice riverside 2nd city spot soon, in favor of fishing. Sailing is an attractive option to take, since Moai would give us 4 1 3 3 and 2 1 2 3 tiles with a lighthouse, for 0 worker turns in lieu of a 60 (LH) + 250 (MS, without stone) hammer investment (in an already hammer heavy capital). Of course, we start with no fishing, so we have to actually commit to that tech path...

This is assuming we SIP, which I think is the most attractive option here.

I think i'll work on a worker (15t) while teching fishing (6t). This will allow us to work a 2 3 tile early. At the 7t mark, i'll switch from working either of the unimproved sheep, which will delay our worker a bit, to a lake tile whilst we finish AH (it takes 12t, I think?). I think a slightly delayed worker in favor of more commerce might be a good tradeoff, since we will probably want sailing eventually anyway. Plus, if we go fishing first, our worker would have nothing to do but build roads since it will finish well before AH. Of course, unless any seafood is revealed after settling, fishing doesn't give us any opportunities for early food, so this is one shortcoming...

Of course, this could all be and it might be better to simply tech AH outright.

Future immediate tech path is probably M > BW.

Warrior moves 1E to the hill. I think this would reveal the most tiles.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I'll be following closely, I'm still getting comfortable on emperor too. Once I get a win with plains cow as my Cap's only food source, or a win using Toku, the I will know I'm ready for immortal.

 

[Seerah]

2nd turn. Should I spoiler info so that those who wish to shadow may do so without foreknowledge?

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

We have stone! And fin gold.

Stone is not in the BFC, but it will eventually be swamped in the 3rd ring anyway within 45 turns after the first border pop with our capital. Warrior also spies some riverside grassland.

Next few turns, we meet Asoka of...Sumeria.

Spoiler :

I did go ahead with fishing first and AH second, and switched to a lakeside tile while finishing the worker The result is this:

Spoiler :

AH in 11 turns, worker in 10. If the worker finishes one turn early, that's fine, since if he goes up to either of the sheep, all his moves will be used up for one turn anyway!

My net gain is I get both fishing and AH within 16 turns (but AH 3 turns later than if I did AH first).

However, even if I did go AH first and get it within the first 13 turns, the worker would still not be finished within another 2 turns, and would take 1 more turn to move to a pasture and work it. It would take me the 16th turn to finally work on a pasture, whereas it still would take me the 16th turn to work on a pasture if I went fishing first!

Except, in the AH first case, I only have AH, while in the Fishing first case, I get to have both AH and Fishing!

Dotmaps soon, but I think i'll explore a bit more to get a shape for the land.

 

[Seerah]

Spoiler :

Next few turns we meet and greet our cadre of displaced misfits:

Sury of Persia:

Spoiler :

Khan of Korea:

Spoiler :

Wilhelm of England:

Spoiler :

That's a lot of creative civs!

Note: Asoka appeared from the north, while all the rest appeared in quick succession from the south.

Khan founded Hinduism. Put all my EP on Wilhelm.

Our land so far:

Spoiler :

Tentative pre-copper dotmap:

Spoiler :

I think I might found floodplains city first. That site is too good to pass up, plus, given the heavy AI activity in the south, it'll be a prime spot for their expansion. Expansive may actually be useful to us here. We're still 20+ turns from bronzeworking, so we can't really chop a second settler.

Horses are a bit far from us, unfortunately. Horse city might go 2w and have clams for food, at the expense of the grass hills, but nearer to the capital. And it also helps blocks off the south, if we can get another city to share the clams around thewine area.

An alternative floodplains city site, this one trying to work the gold.

Spoiler :

First city is a better long-term site (plus, it's on a hill). However, second one with the gold will give us a substantial boost to our early research, and +1 national . I also can't work all those floodplains early, since we are limited by our happiness (and we already will get mining soon, while we will need to detour to pottery to get cottages up. But second city is already pretty decent with 4 foodplains, a grass hill, gold hill, and plains cows... (yes, I omitted the rice from consideration, because all those floodplains really highlight how crappy it is). First city gains 2 more floodplains, wine in bfc, and 1 more grass hill. But we can't really work all those floodplains early anyway, and gold hill > grass hill at this point. So I guess second city it is.

Scouting warrior is now completing its round trip, and will eventually peek into corn site.

Current capital activity: Building a second warrior, working the lakeside tile, worker is building a pasture. Will switch to the pasture once it's finished, then work the lakeside tile with our second citizen.

Oh, and a free forest has grown in our capital. Yay!

 

[Fibonacci1123]

Interesting game. I wonder if Pacal can get Jannisaries fast enough to use their bonus?

I'm a struggling Emperor player, but I think I see a problem.

Spoiler :

You should tech AH first: 5 > 2 3. You need to grow your pop and have some production to build that first settler.

My tech order would be AH, Mining, BW, TW. After that probably pottery for cheap granaries, but maybe fishing.

 

[shulgi]

I like what you called the alternative site for the second city but you might want to check what the yield is for settling on the plains cow. If you dont lose too much that'd be a pretty great future bureaucracy capitol with same number of floodplains as the 'alternative' site, two less dead tiles and plus two wine. I don't see settling the grassland hill as very useful. I also think the corn/grassland sheep site to the West would be a good third city site. Try to road both as soon as possible, you'll need to defend the workers as well. Horse site is bad. Maybe 1W of horses but I wouldn't rush to that spot yet.

Bummer. No bonuses as pointed out by Voice of Reason. Too bad

 

[chopster]

IMO there's no reason for fishing to be in your first three techs here - there is no seafood in your BFC, or even visible yet. Exploring workboats are nice, but far from a priority.

AH first here seems like the best option to me. Any turns between completion of the worker and AH can be used to road that forest between the sheep and/or other tiles. You may even reveal horses and be able to build chariots for exploration and defense with one tech.

Mining next seems sensible to me based on what we can see so far, for some production to go with the food.

A couple warriors after the worker, and a settler soon after.
After AH and mining, I'm likely to re-evaluate based on what else is revealed with exploration and resources.

Getting your capital up and growing/productive early is a definite key to build a great start.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

2nd turn. Should I spoiler info so that those who wish to shadow may do so without foreknowledge?

Without attaching any saves, I don't think you need to worry about that.

Spoiler :

However, even if I did go AH first and get it within the first 13 turns, the worker would still not be finished within another 2 turns, and would take 1 more turn to move to a pasture and work it. It would take me the 16th turn to finally work on a pasture, whereas it still would take me the 16th turn to work on a pasture if I went fishing first!

Except, in the AH first case, I only have AH, while in the Fishing first case, I get to have both AH and Fishing!

I suspect this math is broken.

First - the timings you mention in your summary don't match you screen shot. Not clear if you are planning micro to make up the difference, or just transposing your numbers.

Second: your worker is three turns late on this schedule; you begin turn 18 with no stored food and no hammer overflow. That puts you behind by 9 food and 3 hammers. (double checking: you spent 12 turns working a 2F/3C tile instead of a 3F tile, so you should be about 12 food behind, and up the corresponding commerce.)

T18 the worker goes to the forest, 19-20-21-22 and the pasture is ready. So you are at 12F, 4H about to work the sheep for the first time. That cancels out the initial difference, but now you are behind three full turns with pastured sheep AND one turn of unimproved tiles.

Meanwhile, the fishing tech is just sitting there, unused.

The lead gets a bit worse in food/hammers, although it's really just the same three turn lag. And occasionally the multipliers will line up, and you'll get 4 beakers rather than 3 from the lake, a slightly better payoff than the one hammer the non fishing start gets.

(Given the awkward layout, the natural order of improving the tiles leaves the worker well stranded from the hills to be mined. Which may mean that AH->Fishing->Mining is on time, and that research line can pick up the same 4 beaker cases. So the gap between the two lines is at best fixed.)

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I like what you called the alternative site for the second city but you might want to check what the yield is for settling on the plains cow. If you dont lose too much

You lose everything - dropping a settler on a 2F/1H tile gives you a 2F/1H city; the play chucks 1F/3H. (You need green cows to get any magic, but the trade isn't favorable even then).

Personally, I'd push 1N of that site -- put rice/cow/gold into the first ring; later drop a city on the plains hill to pick up the flood plains and the wines (note that this city will be able to borrow the cows if the gold site is settled first).

Also, if you want audience participation, you should slow the !@#!@# down.

 

[vranasm]

couple points from me (I guess some will overlap with VoU, but that is not bad thing imo)

1) scout move... imo it was wrong. I would send it 1N or 1NE (on the forest), not sure about the rules, but if you can see the stone from the position after different scout move, you already did big mistake

2) with the way I see it after SIP... I would be very tempted to settle for stone in BFC, but I am usually weirdo with my capitals

3) it's pretty obvious you need AH as first tech, what isn't clearcut decision for me here is if you shouldn't approach the early game different though, there are 2 big options as I see it
a) you can build worker straight away asap and prefarm one of the lake tiles since it doesn't look like good cottagable capital (put 1-3 turns into farm on lake and then switch to the sheep)
b) grow couple of food with sheep on warrior then switch to worker, this one will mean some wasted hammers, so variant 3
c) grow couple of food with sheep on barracks then switch to worker to sync with AH, but you should have worker 1t sooner since from your position you need to move through forest so there is 1t delay

4) I don't see here BW very important if you find horses in reachable distance in good time, but since the horses are a bit off... well I guess BW is good plan

5) city 2 should definitely have gold, cows, rice first ring and don't forget to improve GOLD FIRST!!!! AND CONNECT to empire.
Dry rice is very weak food tile and you get only +1, cows after improving will give same food yield as rice without improvement (I wouldn't even hesitate much about working the gold for long time with that city on size 1 maybe)

6) you should plan for commerce here right now since even with the gold you will have troubles with no cottagable good land.
Seems to me like going with Writing early will be the way

7) there is another high food spot west from capital, don't forget about it, it's high priority spot

8) you should decide how you will approach the "stone situation"... it will be in your 3rd ring by turn 50 (if I remember right), pre-road, prepare masonry? forget about stone until OU?

bottomline is that if the stone is visible from first scout move I would be very tempted to run SSE/WWE here ;-)
the land except for 2-3 close city spots is very mediocre and would be very tempting to build high sized capital through SSE.

 

[hankinsohl]

2nd turn. Should I spoiler info so that those who wish to shadow may do so without foreknowledge?

I may shadow - can you please post a save file for this game?

 

[pigswill]

Its worth remembering that barbs are more of a problem on emperor than monarch so you should be considering how you;re going to counter them. Spawnbusting with warriors isn't too bad if you find high defence tiles for them.

I'd put my second city between gold, cows and rice. Distance maintenance is a factor to consider as well as connecting cities for trade routes.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Since I'm not the best player around here you may want to heed others advice first, but I do win 90% of Emperor games these days and I noticed a couple issues right off.

As others have said, fishing first was unnecessary. Your two main bfc resources call for AH which you could have teched straight off the bat without any wasted worker turns. In fact, avoiding fishing on a pangaea or other less coastal map is often beneficial for GS bulbs. I wouldn't get fishing unless one of my early cities would be crippled without it.

Secondly, your dotmap. I would get my next two or three cities a bit closer to the capital. At first glance I would settle my first three cities 1W of the gold, 3W of the capital, and 3E of the capital in that order. Being close to the capital saves on maintenance, and those sites have good commerce, food/hammers, and hammers respectively. The two main problems with this are 1. You may not have copper and thus have to get archery and 2. You will probably have to squeeze myst in for the gold and corn city border pops. Even still, these problems are manageable and, imo, better than having a stale economy due to maintenance.

 

[Pangaea]

What does SSE/WWE mean?

 

[pigswill]

Settled specialist/world wonders iirc. Its a bit Obselete.

 

[Pangaea]

Ah thanks. After all this time here, some of the acronyms still do my head in.

 

[Seerah]

To those who asked, here are the saves.

And bear with me, this is the first time i'm seriously posting a playthrough (2nd aside from my first posts here), so do tell me if my pacing is too fast or slow. I'll try to space out the updates a bit more.

Hm...after replaying the start to check, it appears that I have miscalculated the cost of fishing first. Fishy fishing start indeed.

Will post an update later on, summary is we've met met more of the civs and have explored our immediate surroundings. Good news is we have copper that is reachable in the bfc within the stone, and are ready to start on a second settler!

 

[LincolnOfRome]

I may play with you. I am learning to play emperor as well. It looks like an interesting map.

 

[Seerah]

2600 BC:

Spoiler :

Here is our explored area:

Spoiler :

Dotmaps:

Spoiler :

Corn site: should I found this on the coast (as shown), or found it 1 tile south and (gasp) 1 off the coast in order to pick up another grass hill? As you can see, sea access gains as no strategic importance as the north ocean is landlocked and looks to be a lake surrounded by ice. Eastern part is shrouded in fog and may continue along the coast however. I suspect it's a lake...but I really have no evidence other than my intuition here. We do lose the ability to build a lighthouse, and potential trade routes from the GLH. But I don't think we'll e able found many cities on the coast to take advantage of the GLH anyway, at least within the BC era. A lot of the coast seems to be tundra as well, even if we wanted to found coastal cities, they probably won't be worth it. And this is pangaea, of course.

Stone/copper site: should I found this 1e from where it is? We can still share the sheep, but the stone will not be in our first ring (but it will be in the cultural area of the capital by 15 turns. We can tech Masonry in 9, so if we want to improve the stone right away, we miss out by a 6 turn headstart should we go 1e from the dotmap. On the other hand, we can focus on prebuilding/prechopping the GW (without stone) without having to get ourselves a second settler. I dislike this second approach because if we fail to build the GW, then we end up with no-resource non-industrious failgold, no second settler, and no copper...

Techs open to us are shown on the screen. I think I might go Masonry and build the GW. It's worth 3/4ths of a settler with stone (do chops get the stone bonus? Unsure on this...what about overflow?), and in terms of barb defense only 5 hammers more than 2 axemen (plus the spy GPP), so it's very much worth it I think.

Of note is that De Gaulle is the only Industrious civ, and stonehenge has yet to be built. If 2000 BC is our benchmark for SH/GW build date, then we have about 15 turns at 40 years per turn to grab the GW.

Existing worker will want to road the stone (3t), then pre-chop some forests. I have a worker at 40/60 in the cap. I can get the worker out in 3 turns, and help it with the chopping. I think i'm going to chop part of my second settler (probably using the roaded forest since I think it would be considered as part of the 2nd city's culture), then save 3-4 forests for the GW (either make up the 15 hammer difference with overflow or raw hammers, or another forest).

Unsure if I should switch to slavery at this point, and if doing a warrior whip overflow is worth it at the expense of 1 turn...i'm not sure how exactly do we calculate the real cost of whipping a warrior.

Oh, an after copper city, if we do get the GW, then I might go ahead and found gold city before corn city, since that option is now much more attractive should we not need to worry about barbs, and can divert production from barb defense towards getting the corn site quickly afterwards. Corn site is relatively less contested, since Sury of Persia close, but far enough.

Suggestions towards approaching the tundra horse/marble are appreciated. But it looks like they're going to be filler resources/grabbing cities anyway. Unless I found 1 NW of the corn. But i'm half-expecting creative Sury to settle close by and deny my either horses or marble with culture

 

[vranasm]

now I wonder how much I am influenced by current knowledge of map when thinking

"If I saw the stone after scout move 1NE would I settle on the stone?"

looking at the map it is obviously the strongest move... but would I do it without map knowledge?

Will have to look at the T0 situation and do the scout move I talk too much about.

@Seerah

as per your question about the copper city position. Usually you can share food from capital with your city 2, this time I am afraid it's not the case.
I would most probably place copper city 1SE from copper, you will get eventually deer as food.

Even if we talked so much about capital overlap I very vaguely think making the corn+sheep city 1SW of corn so you get marble in BFC, but that is surely debatable, I don't see another good way how to get the marble.

with these 4 (I count the gold spot too) and hopefully some more southern expansion I think it's safe to go Music, Lib->Mt route if you secure at least one of the sources of horses.