The Emperor Masters' Challenge 2 (on Warlords)

I think you need to explore a bit more before deciding on your next city site. The west does look promising and you should probably get a city over there as soon as humanly possible. From my experience, HC is not so scary in the beginning of the game, but he can be quite powerful later on. So it is probably good that you started close to him. Jaca brings up a good point about him being your biggest competitor for the Oracle though. I think you should try to steal his worker to slow him down if possible, that way he won't be such a big threat for the Oracle. And while you are building the Oracle, start preparing a chariot army to take care of him. HC likes Hinduism, so you could probably steal that from him and that'll give you 2 early religions.

By the way, good call on settling in place. I would have moved my settler and would probably be kicking myself right now.
 
Scout North-Northwest of the pigs. I think that there will be a good site for your second city somewhere in that area. I also agree that mining/BW is the best next research plan.

There should also be some discussion of the worker actions. Farming Corn is obviously first. After that, though, what next? I see three options: Pasture the horse, mine the grassland hill NW of the corn, or chop + mine the hill NE of the city. The first option loses the most worker turns in movement, and gives +2H1C, making the square 1/4/1. The second gives the hill +2h, making it 1/3. The third gives +20 hammers, and makes the squar 0/4/0.

I'd say the first option gives the best square, and also unlocks WCs. Perhaps farm the corn, pasture the horse, and then make a road back to the capital? It'll waste one turn compared to roading the forest between the capitol and the horses before building the pasture, but it'll bring the pasture online something like 5 turns earlier, which I think is worth it. After that, chopping the forest on the plains hill would be the next action, followed by mining it.
 
Don't worry too much about Huayna. I doubt the AI can really take advantage of his traits. He's going to be about the same as Qin in vanilla, and I think CKNs are much more dangerous to us than Quechuas can be. And since he's near we can kill him with WCs. About him competing for the Oracle, I agree stealing a worker is a good idea to stop him. Or, since it's harder to do that on Warlords, we could just pre-chop and finish the Oracle several turns.

Jaca made a good point about money. It doesn't look like we can get another hut and there are no rivers around the capital. We have silk (but that comes later) and the lakes (for which we need to research Fishing). Maybe we'll have to squeeze Fishing into our research plans, somewhere it won't cost us the CS slingshot. Our research path can look like this:

Mysticism -> Polytheism -> Mining/AH -> BW/Mining -> AH/BW -> Priesthood -> Writing -> CoL (with the Oracle) -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Meditation -> CS (slingshot) -> Alphabet -> Masonry (traded?) -> Monotheism (traded?) -> Monarchy (traded?) -> Theology (with GP?) -> Paper -> DR (with GP?)

Any other suggestions?
 
Aelf,

thank you for showing citizen micro, please do a little more of that when you settle your 2nd city and start gearing up towards the oracle.

I thought one of the reasons to pick egypt for this run was to look into the power of running prophets earlier than any other civ can.. off of the obelisk
I know you'll probably want to run a couple of scientists off of a library to get an academy for your 1st science city, but remember that w/o masonry you'll be able to pop civil service off of your 1st prophet.. which should arrive right about the time the oracle pops.

dunno if you want to try that path, but I had good success with it on a shadow game I played yesterday. ran 2 priests in the capitol while I built the oracle in city #2, popped a GP and used it on civil service. switched gears and ran 2 prophets in the oracle city to very quickly get another gp for the confucionism shrine which helped auto spread that religion. stopped at that point but the UB gives you that advantage well ahead of other civs. something to consider while you're planning at this stage.

other than that I'm just going to watch and learn, your threads are always informative

NaZ
 
NaZdReG said:
I thought one of the reasons to pick egypt for this run was to look into the power of running prophets earlier than any other civ can.. off of the obelisk
I know you'll probably want to run a couple of scientists off of a library to get an academy for your 1st science city, but remember that w/o masonry you'll be able to pop civil service off of your 1st prophet.. which should arrive right about the time the oracle pops.

Writing isn't for the library. It's to get CoL. And yes, I'm thinking of using the UB to speed up GP generation. However, I don't think we can risk trying to build the Oracle in the 2nd city, and I also don't think we can take the risk and run priests in the capital before the Oracle is complete. That will probably have to come after.
 
I know writing pulls double duty in that sence. since I play on a lower difficulty I have to assume you're right about that risk. might want to run the priests then after the oracle is finished in the capitol??

just going to have to watch and see, your last game taught me quite a bit so I just have to rely on the fact that you're able to play at a higher difficulty

NaZ
 
NaZdReG said:
just going to have to watch and see, your last game taught me quite a bit so I just have to rely on the fact that you're able to play at a higher difficulty

Don't let ideas like that stop you from giving your opinions. I recall you've given sound advice in the previous game, so keep it coming.

Anyway, you did make me think about the UB. I had a vague idea about using it, but your raising the issue made me think about when we should build it and use it. I think it's after the Oracle, for sure. But I suspect the obelisk won't be build yet by then. Should we chop for it?
 
I'd say forget the Early Religions, Egyptian Prophets make it better to sweep the Late Religions, Let Confucianism be our 'Early' religion

Mining->BW->Fishing->Mysticism->Meditation->Priesthood->Writing

The Worker can be building the Farm+Pasture, and by then Mining+BW should be available, then go for the Grassland Hill, then go for the Other Hills... Soon as the Worker+Settler is built focus on food+ Commerce instead of production
(Corn+Silk->after settler Corn+Lakes->Corn+Lakes+Horse)

And I'd put the Settler to the West, that spot looks Very nice, although slower to start... the one in the North is also good but less contested.
 
aelf said:
I agree stealing a worker is a good idea to stop him. Or, since it's harder to do that on Warlords

Can you elaborate on this? What is it about Warlords that makes worker stealing harder? Is it something about the rebalancing of the early units (ex. chariot vs. axeman)?

Maybe we'll have to squeeze Fishing into our research plans, somewhere it won't cost us the CS slingshot.

I'm not sure how the math and the timing work out, but it might be worth getting Fishing early. The whole point of the argument is that not having Fishing is costing you gold which in turn is costing you research which in turn could cost you the CS slingshot. If Fishing would sufficiently accelerate the research, it might pay for itself quickly enough to make it a priority.
 
I think there's a high price for putting off Pottery or Fishing as proposed. Otherwise we're looking at many turns of poverty. $ is needed for both research and expansion.

I prefer Pottery, because it's land tiles that are in the direction of our neighbor, and around the capital which we're putting effort into getting CS for. Or with Fishing we'd want cites N and SE as commerce farms. Or, it would be interesting to try running 2 priests in every city, mainly for the wealth, and then micromanaging GPP generation later in an effort to not waste any of the GPPs. Maybe not real effective, but interesting!

I suggest Pottery -> Mysticism -> Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Writing -> CoL (with the Oracle). But if we really like BW, I might try the crazy priest thing!
 
Krikkitone has a great point. Can we skip Polytheism until after Alphabet, with just Meditation for now?
 
thanks for the credit aelf!

here is something to throw a spin on the whole idea. stonehenge gives you an obelisk in every city... I dbl checked to be sure about running priests from them.. meaning you can just auto run 2 priests from wherever you want. not sure if its worth the trouble but thought I'd throw that in there.

if you pre-chop you could just build an obelisk in the capitol, run 2 priests to combine with the oracle for 8GPP towards a prophet.
(and get 2 hammers + 2 commerce towards research so 2bpt)

the tradeoff is lowered growth and production.. you have to decide if its worth it. you'll be able to use that prophet for CS MUCH sooner than otherwise though (I'm assuming you are going to use the oracle towards COL instead of waiting to hit CS) and assuming you have meditation, poly, priest and NOT MASONRY so the prophet doesnt target one of those...

so the temporary slowdown at the capitol will pay off quite sooner than if you just let the oracle's gp points build up.

at that point i'd probably take the prophets off and work forested hills or whatever for higher production, making bureaucracy MUCH more effective.

but if you do that i'd advise running 2 priests in the city that founds confucionism.. speed up getting that shrine online for quicker religion distribution and gpt.

the only game I focused on religion (pre warlords) I did have some success by using ankor wat but I think you can do better with other specialists. 5 priests producing 10 hammers and 5 commerce is cool though :D really up to you. the prophets a city would generate though would let you pop for techs in order from this list:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952

I can't completely wrap my head around this yet but if you do run priests.. the GP tech popping path is pretty damn good and may fit in with your strat to race towards the techs for the wonders you want to build...
maybe it will be worth it to run 3 or more priests in your shrine city..

lots to think about and plenty of time.. none of this comes into consideration for quite a few turns.

NaZ
 
It seems to me that you can have 10 production in Thebes at size 4. That means you can pump out a war chariot in, say, 5 turns. Build four of them, (if you have enough time), and thats all you need to completely stifle Huayna. He will probably build his first city before you can get a single WC, but they can raze it and then prevent him from building any more.
 
Jet said:
Krikkitone has a great point. Can we skip Polytheism until after Alphabet, with just Meditation for now?

Well you need Polytheism before Prophet popping CS, but It can definitely wait until after Writing.
 
Krikkitone said:
I'd say forget the Early Religions, Egyptian Prophets make it better to sweep the Late Religions, Let Confucianism be our 'Early' religion

Mining->BW->Fishing->Mysticism->Meditation->Priesthood->Writing

The Worker can be building the Farm+Pasture, and by then Mining+BW should be available, then go for the Grassland Hill, then go for the Other Hills... Soon as the Worker+Settler is built focus on food+ Commerce instead of production
(Corn+Silk->after settler Corn+Lakes->Corn+Lakes+Horse)

And I'd put the Settler to the West, that spot looks Very nice, although slower to start... the one in the North is also good but less contested.
These are great points and Krikkitone's research path seems very good. Mining and BW first may be best indeed. We can switch ealier to Slavery -- and without anarchy -- and we may can benefit from chopping sooner and discover earlier where the Bronze is, if any. Fishing will help us getting the research a little faster for just a little less production before we get Priesthood.

Btw, thanks NaZdReG for the Prophet light bulb link. It helps me understanding why you can use him to go to CS and why Masonry is out of the question this early in this strategy.

NaZdReG said:
I thought one of the reasons to pick egypt for this run was to look into the power of running prophets earlier than any other civ can.. off of the obelisk
Right! I'd forgotten about that. Aelf initial strategy sounded very interesting indeed.

Dr Elmer Jiggle said:
Can you elaborate on this? What is it about Warlords that makes worker stealing harder? Is it something about the rebalancing of the early units (ex. chariot vs. axeman)?
In Warlords, when you try to steal a worker, you can't move him the very same turn.

Jaca
 
Do you need the wheel for chariots or did you start with it?

If you haven't explored north west already there's a reasonable chance of some floodplains around there.

Maybe chop Thebes for settler, chop second city (Memphis?) for oracle; advantage of oracle in Memphis is that it puts all your Prophet points in one place. Not sure how practical this is at Emperor.
 
I have a brand new Warlords DVD waiting for me at home, so count me in! :)

Edit: wow, coming in way to late and missed out 1 entire page resulting in old advice... deleted

About the GL. Maybe you don't want to mess up the GPP production, but I have build the GL in other city's then my capital. Often an early conquered capital (warchariots :) ). If it still has a few forest around it you are good to go. Throw in a libary and an extra GS and you have a small GS farm for you academy.

I am looking forward to the game!
 
Krikkitone said:
I believe you Can Delete him though, so it still works as a Crippling strategy

You sure about this? I'll experiment on worldbuilder before trying it, just to be sure.

Whoops, I was still using the old research plan from the pre-thread. I think the proper plan should look something like this:

AH (done) -> Mining -> BW -> Mysticism -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Writing -> CoL (with the Oracle) -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Polytheism -> CS (slingshot) -> Alphabet -> Masonry (traded?) -> Monotheism (traded?) -> Monarchy (traded?) -> Theology (with GP?) -> Paper -> DR (with GP?)

We could slip Literature in before Theology or Monarchy (if we can't trade for it). The Great Library in another city does sound very tempting with the marble there.

I am going to play the second round today. I'll stop when we've researched BW. I think it's better to take it slow. I don't want to mess up and not get the Oracle. Big question facing us after BW: When should we research Fishing? After getting CoL or before? Or should we forget Fishing and just get Pottery?
 
Quick point: it might be worth researching polytheism rather than meditation coz AI seem more reluctant to trade poly (probably because of parthenon)
 
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