Schooling the AI (Emperor Edition)

[Benginal]

What's been done:
Worked food tiles while growing and building a warrior. It should be easy to replicate.
Tech went BW (want to whip here with all the food) -> hunting * -> AH (horses).

* Could've went immediate AH, but hunting first gains some beakers. It's needed for the ivory later and allows archery. Usually I would not go for archery, but given the abundance of resources revealed already I imagine I have less copper/horses nearby. I find it typical to not have a strategic resource until iron in this climate.

While I like the saved research by getting Hunting I don't think it's necessary on Emperor. Warriors should be fine to deal with barbarians and you should have IW, and hopefully Iron, before Barb axes and spears start showing up. I'd skip hunting until you get ready to settle by the elephants and skip archery all together.

1st settler will be whipped for 2 pop after 3 turns of production and the city will go NE of the cow.

Good play, this is what I did too. Did you consider settling anywhere else, and if so where?

Pyramids looks likely here seeing as there's no competition for the stone and my first 2 cities have great food surplus.

Alright, you go Pyramids and I'll skip them. This is going to be incredibly biased as you're way better than I am and therefore the addition of the Pyramids is not going to be at all exogenous, but whatever.

 

[babar]

Smaller maintenance just means earlier REX. Early beakers are always very good.

Won't settling a marginal city because it will cost you fewer beakers in the short term be self defeating, because it will increase the maintenance costs of subsequent, more important cities? In addition it isn't gaining any land or doing any barb busting and isn't in the direction you want to expand. I can see the value in using the pigs as a cheap settler/worker pump (which may speed up expansion more than other sites available), but not really how it will increase beakers early on. I must be looking at it the wrong way.

 

[kossin]

2 commerce/turn from trade route via the coast inside culture. Also it is slightly closer so may end up costing 1gpt less in the early stages.

Raising the maintenance cost of other cities is something that will always happen regardless... might as well put the cities down while you can so that they become a strict positive earlier.

edit: I'm not saying this is the better approach, grass cow is a very good tile and the city spot is better in general to the north however there are a lot of techs required here with little commerce so it could be one way to deal with that problem.

 

[Rusten]

While I like the saved research by getting Hunting I don't think it's necessary on Emperor. Warriors should be fine to deal with barbarians and you should have IW, and hopefully Iron, before Barb axes and spears start showing up. I'd skip hunting until you get ready to settle by the elephants and skip archery all together.

Forgot to mention this, but the ivory is accessible once the capital reaches 100 culture (takes 50 turns+anarchy) meaning +1 happy.

Good play, this is what I did too. Did you consider settling anywhere else, and if so where?

Technically I didn't settle yet -- just the plan. I considered the pigs for the same reason as Kossin, but I don't think the immediate +2 commerce (with fishing) is worth it. No forest/hill there which means getting the library is difficult.

- - - - - - - - - - -
I take back any thoughts on immediate writing/library. It's simply bad (at least if I settle cows). Getting the wheel for trade routes and hooking up ivory, fishing (work water) and pottery (cheaper writing, cottages and cheap granary) is much more beneficial.

@kossin: Don't you need fishing for connecting via coast?

 

[vicawoo]

You have an odd scouting pattern. Makes exanding earlier unreliable.

 

[vranasm]

I will probably shadow too...later after I get other games first (like IC, my MM game).

@Benginal
I like to cottage riverside sugar too.
At first I thought 1NE of rice would make good city, but would kill the fish, so the 1NE of cow seems great. I would explore east of capital to see if there is some good place for city that could help grow cottages for cap.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

On the lower levels, it usually works best to just expand as fast as possible, since the maintenance costs are a lot less severe. Forget the pyramids and just spam cottages all over the place.

better than what (I won't talk about the fact that cottages slow down expansion greatly...)?

What works in deity should at least works at lower levels. Even better, you should be able to win earlier in lower levels. I fail to see how cottages will help more in levels where the games are shorter and with smaller maintenance.
Truth is that the cottage spam is easier and will work whatever (basically) you do.

... but let's see how this game plays out

 

[christopher1234]

i,ll play a shadow game on this one.my first shadow game ever.

 

[christopher1234]

i played a few turns and its clear that when setling on the sugar like what rusten did makes the capital a really good production city in the early game.although the research does suffer without huts for gold initially.

i,m gonna start the game again from scratch and go for the pyramids in my capital asap and run scientists in every city,because if i,m going to struggle with reasearch in the beginning yet i,ve got a strong capital then thats it.

 

[Rusten]

You have an odd scouting pattern. Makes exanding earlier unreliable.

I found this cow+fish spot immediately and it's unlikely I'd find a better city spot to the east (jungle everywhere). Much better to go far with the warrior then IMO. It gives a better possibility to find AI borders and stealing a worker.

 

[christopher1234]

I found this cow+fish spot immediately and it's unlikely I'd find a better city spot to the east (jungle everywhere). Much better to go far with the warrior then IMO. It gives a better possibility to find AI borders and stealing a worker.

how do you steal workers?.do you declare war or just point the mouse cursor over the worker?

 

[dirtyparrot]

Truth is that the cottage spam is easier and will work whatever (basically) you do.

I always that the cottage spam was more work and I would rarely start cottaging at an early enough date. So, I usually find myself with farms/mines/specs/wealth.

how do you steal workers?.do you declare war or just point the mouse cursor over the worker?

Yep, that's pretty much it. You can always pillage whatever food resources they managed to improve and park a unit (with support later from other units) on a forested hill and that will completely stifle their expansion.

 

[christopher1234]

I always that the cottage spam was more work and I would rarely start cottaging at an early enough date. So, I usually find myself with farms/mines/specs/wealth.



Yep, that's pretty much it. You can always pillage whatever food resources they managed to improve and park a unit (with support later from other units) on a forested hill and that will completely stifle their expansion.

wont that negativly hurt your economy or are the nagative effects minimal?
secondly is one not in danger of been over run when that early in the game you aint going for an axe rush due to distances that need to be travelled.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I always that the cottage spam was more work and I would rarely start cottaging at an early enough date. So, I usually find myself with farms/mines/specs/wealth.

What I meant is that farm-based eco usually needs more local decisions based on land type, and more micro (since you will be switching tiles very often, and even changing tile improvements from mostly farms to more production enhancement with the gains of the proper technologies). Thus it's generally less obvious for someone learning civ management (thus this thread ). I can't deny some come to this naturally.

Cottages is more about being disciplined in laying them down and working them early on.

Sorry to disrupt the thread Rusten.

Cheers

 

[Rusten]

No please, disrupt as much as you like. The less I need to post the better.

wont that negativly hurt your economy or are the nagative effects minimal?
secondly is one not in danger of been over run when that early in the game you aint going for an axe rush due to distances that need to be travelled.

The benefit of an extra worker usually far outweighs the negative sides. Most people overrate the AIs amount of units early on and especially the amount of units the AI will send towards you (they have different orders -- most are city garrison early). If they send units they will come 1 or 2 at a time -- easy to handle.

You can usually obtain cease fire without much trouble. You don't need to follow up worker stealing with a rush.

 

[Rusten]

(I will probably play faster than this in the future).

Also, Kossin is right. You get trade routes without fishing if your culture is connected. This is what happens when you don't play for a while.

Meet Babylon turn 29 and Isabella turn 30.

Spoiler :

After whipping the settler I put overflow into a worker and chop a forest. To my great annoyance I am 1 hammer short of finishing it in 1 turn. Annoyance further boosted by me having missed out on a hammer by revolting to slavery 1 turn too late!

Micro matters........

Spoiler :

Send settler 1NW for cow+fish. AH finished IBT and reveals horses in the BFC.

Spoiler :

Changes everything -- I decide to settle by the pigs instead.
Put a couple of turns into a worker while it's low on food.

Spoiler :

Find the first AI border. Charlemagne....

Land turn 40 (that's grass pigs 1W of the southern warrior). About to hook up horses.

Spoiler :

The settler can be whipped next turn. Where to settle?

Despite Charlemagne being protective the goal here is to take his fruitful land with elephants. With that in mind it's not essential to claim land over there by settling suboptimal cities. Thinking it might be best to claim the grassland pigs anyway for production during the war (whip and chopping its forests).

 

[kossin]

Lucky to find horses there!

Next city... either by the cow+fish or by gold+cow. Dunno really!

 

[vranasm]

what gold+cow spot we are talking? I don't see it in any of the screens from round 2...

if the plan is elepult war then research is big priority now and gold makes sense (happy + pays for itself and some surplus).

 

[vicawoo]

I don't think fishing helps you at all in terms of trade routes, since warlords.

 

[WelshGandalf]

I'm curious as to why discovering horses made you change where your settler was going. The horse is still in your BFC so you could still hook it up just fine. I quite liked the cow/fish spot with 2 inland lakes too.

Also,

what gold+cow spot we are talking?