Divaythsarmour
Adventurer
I just thought I would share my experience playing Saladin at emperor level. It was my third emperor victory, but I went through several failed starts (with different maps) before I was able to make anything good happen.
My strategy was to get a horseman out as quickly as possible. On the first turn I set workers on food and beakers with a warrior in the build cue. On the next turn I switch from warrior to horseman in the cue and switch workers over to production.
I send the first horseman out quickly to look for barbarians and gain experience. The optimal scenario is to get a free horseman, so that I can have an army sooner. The second research is bronze to start building archers.
After the army gets some good experience, try to take a city. In my winning game, I was able to take Lincoln's capitol (and only city) pretty easily. This gave me a second city. I went looking for other civs. I was lucky in that with Lincoln gone, I had the better part of a continent to expand.
Eventually I found Montezuma and Isabelle (fairly close to each other). I stole a settler from Montezuma and created what would end up being my best city ever (so far). It was on a hill in the middle of the land narrows between my 2/3 of the continent and the other third being shared by Isabelle and Montezuma. I was able to stop both of them from expanding into my section. Using just the first horse army from this city (I'll just call it Riyahd). I just attacked everything that attempted to attack the city or get by the city. I built temple, walls, then cathedral first to stave of cultural pressure.
In the other 2 cities I started spamming settlers and archers and filled in my section of the large continent. After expanding and getting adequate defenses set up, I had already won the game (I realize in retrospect). The question was how would it happen.
Onefunny thing was that I could see that Genghis Khan was in a tech lead and eventually he starts sending over fighter planes, while I'm still building Pikemen. I figured that he must have built Oxford at just the right time. Eventually I would leave him in the dust on techs and everything else for that matter.
So at one point I had a great builder. I was tempted to settle him for the "long term investment" but I wanted to upgrade all of my military units. I mean think of the investment. I must have had close to a dozen cities with archer and pikemen armies. So I used him to build Leonardo's Workshop in Riyahd.
Later I would get a great person for 50% more income and I settled him in Riyahd. And then later I got another GP and settled him in Riyahd for 50% population boost. Then I built a market, a bank, a trader and then eventually got another great builder and went for the Trade Fair of Troyes in Riyahd.
But what I think really sent it into high gear was building the Internet for 50% economic boost. Toward the end of the game Riyahd was producing over 1700 gold per turn. I would go on to complete the Apollo program and switch all cities over to gold production. Even after I started building the world bank, so much money was coming in that I was paying for buildings in every city in a single turn and never going below 26,000 gold. It was really cool.
The official victory was in 2050. A better player probably could have cut several 100 years off that victory date. But anyway, it was a fun game.
My strategy was to get a horseman out as quickly as possible. On the first turn I set workers on food and beakers with a warrior in the build cue. On the next turn I switch from warrior to horseman in the cue and switch workers over to production.
I send the first horseman out quickly to look for barbarians and gain experience. The optimal scenario is to get a free horseman, so that I can have an army sooner. The second research is bronze to start building archers.
After the army gets some good experience, try to take a city. In my winning game, I was able to take Lincoln's capitol (and only city) pretty easily. This gave me a second city. I went looking for other civs. I was lucky in that with Lincoln gone, I had the better part of a continent to expand.
Eventually I found Montezuma and Isabelle (fairly close to each other). I stole a settler from Montezuma and created what would end up being my best city ever (so far). It was on a hill in the middle of the land narrows between my 2/3 of the continent and the other third being shared by Isabelle and Montezuma. I was able to stop both of them from expanding into my section. Using just the first horse army from this city (I'll just call it Riyahd). I just attacked everything that attempted to attack the city or get by the city. I built temple, walls, then cathedral first to stave of cultural pressure.
In the other 2 cities I started spamming settlers and archers and filled in my section of the large continent. After expanding and getting adequate defenses set up, I had already won the game (I realize in retrospect). The question was how would it happen.
Onefunny thing was that I could see that Genghis Khan was in a tech lead and eventually he starts sending over fighter planes, while I'm still building Pikemen. I figured that he must have built Oxford at just the right time. Eventually I would leave him in the dust on techs and everything else for that matter.
So at one point I had a great builder. I was tempted to settle him for the "long term investment" but I wanted to upgrade all of my military units. I mean think of the investment. I must have had close to a dozen cities with archer and pikemen armies. So I used him to build Leonardo's Workshop in Riyahd.
Later I would get a great person for 50% more income and I settled him in Riyahd. And then later I got another GP and settled him in Riyahd for 50% population boost. Then I built a market, a bank, a trader and then eventually got another great builder and went for the Trade Fair of Troyes in Riyahd.
But what I think really sent it into high gear was building the Internet for 50% economic boost. Toward the end of the game Riyahd was producing over 1700 gold per turn. I would go on to complete the Apollo program and switch all cities over to gold production. Even after I started building the world bank, so much money was coming in that I was paying for buildings in every city in a single turn and never going below 26,000 gold. It was really cool.
The official victory was in 2050. A better player probably could have cut several 100 years off that victory date. But anyway, it was a fun game.
