The Emperor Masters' Challenge 3 (on Warlords)

[voek]

How can you be so sure of that? There are a few plain tiles that may hold a secret The lack of hills, again doesn't worry me that much. We can always settle a production city. We can cottage our capital and still enjoy the bureaucracy bonus.

I am comparing settling in place with moving 1 tile north. Moving 1 tile north means you only miss out on the forest in the south(east), but still catch the plains tiles in your BFC. Therefore you still have the chance to reveal hidden resources settling 1 tile North. Well I hope i have explained it more clearly now, but it isn't that important anyway.

About the hut popping. i dont think you can pop hostile wariors when you do not have a city yet. So you should be safe to pop. However, as Aelf stated the culture pop has higher chances to pop something 'good'. Next to that I doubt the chance of popping a map, warrior or scout weights against the 'loss' of exploring the two tiles you will reveal when you would have moving NE. Those tiles are prob. more important in the decision where to settle.

If you consider getting a map good enough for the pop then I should pop, since there are almost no 'bad' results left. I would choose the higher chances of a culture pop, but I don't think it will have a dramatic impact.

The lack of hill does worry me. Sure you can get another production city, but the captial is often one of the biggest hammer contributors. Lacking production guarentees a slower start. The only hope is more food for whipping production. Well not to get you worried, but just too stress the importance of hills, at least in your capital. Maybe the abundance of forest make up for the lack of hills.

 

[malekithe]

The lack of hill does worry me. Sure you can get another production city, but the captial is often one of the biggest hammer contributors. Lacking production guarentees a slower start. The only hope is more food for whipping production. Well not to get you worried, but just too stress the importance of hills, at least in your capital. Maybe the abundance of forest make up for the lack of hills.

As long as you have a food source, hills are a lesser concern in your capital. Most hammers needed in the early game can be obtained through chopping, whipping, straight food-hammer conversion (settlers/workers), or even working a couple forest tiles (a grassland forest is about the same quality of tile as any regular mine you could build). Additionally, your capital will have more turns available than any other city to devote to the maturation of cottages. Some other city can build mines in the hills and be up and running as soon as you need to start building things that are harder to whip consistently (military). Your capital can use its time advantage to build a solid commercial base.

 

[SchpailsMan]

Hi Aelf,

Tough luck on the previous game, but I'm glad you've started afresh so soon. Your first attempt at EMC3, if unsuccesful, was still really intructing to me. Somehow, failure may well be even more instructing than success, since this time we can all sit back and try to understand what actually went wrong with this game.

I'm eager to read updates for this new start. Best of luck for this game

 

[joyodongo]

Hi all!
As in EMC2, I'm only going to write about initial situation of the game. I've been playing CIV games since december last year (I was before, and keep on being, a fan of the TOTAL WAR series). I find CIV much more complex and deep, but it lacks the exciting 'real time battles'. Well, there's a moment for each game, IMO. Now I'm starting to play on emperor after a few wins on monarch. I have a victory on emperor but in duel playing with incans (vanilla), so this doesn't count that much.
What I try to do is win with something like standard conditions and, of course, without re-loading games and so on. My tactical approach isn't very wide, because I never tried with cultural wins, nor diplomatic, and 90% of my wins were by space race.
Well, going to the point of what I wanted to say: when I start a game on emperor, most of the times the starting position is as bad as the first EMC3. For example, one out of ten times I had a starting position as good as in EMC2 playing Ramsess. Many times, no horses, no copper, no iron, no hills in capital... So, after seing the first 2 EMCs, well, I was a little surprised about the very good starting positions they were.
I find this ones in EMC3 more normal, but, what's your opinion anyway? And, how do you play usually? Do you play all the games you start or you just wait until you see one with chances to win? The problem I have is the lack of more skills to be able to get through a bad initial position and have any possibility to win or at least 'be there'.
So, I think this will be a very interesting game just to see how to handle the lack of hills, and in general a not very good starting position (at a first glance it's worse than in EMC 1 or 2).
After this, I only have to say thank you for these excellent threads, and good luck with this one. I'll follow this one and see how it goes. Of course, if I have the chance, I'll make my comments but I think that there are people here much more skilled than me to make this.
Saludos.

PS. By the way, aelf, could you please put the new savegame so we can download it? I think it's a good exercise to play by oneself and then see how the 'masters' have done.

 

[aelf]

Thanks to all of you for your comments and advice. Great stuff.

I think moving the warrior NE at this point has the highest potential of revealing important info, so I'm going to do that. However, what is revealed NE of the corn must be interesting enough to warrant us moving the settler 1N. As it is, I'm inclined towards not wasting the fresh water bonus and settling in place.

I find this ones in EMC3 more normal, but, what's your opinion anyway? And, how do you play usually? Do you play all the games you start or you just wait until you see one with chances to win? The problem I have is the lack of more skills to be able to get through a bad initial position and have any possibility to win or at least 'be there'.
So, I think this will be a very interesting game just to see how to handle the lack of hills, and in general a not very good starting position (at a first glance it's worse than in EMC 1 or 2).

PS. By the way, aelf, could you please put the new savegame so we can download it? I think it's a good exercise to play by oneself and then see how the 'masters' have done.

Actually, this is as good as what I get on most of my Emperor games because of the rivers. The EMC 2 start wasn't that great because of the lack of those. Rivers make irrigation so much more convenient and are good for early commerce. I agree that the EMC 1 start was great, but other elements of the game almost ruined us, so it's still a good challenge I think you may be getting not so good starts because of the map size, but don't quote me on that. All the starts you see here are the freshest from the map generator shop, as is the case in most of my own games.

Oh, yes. How can I forget the save... Here it is.

 

[joyodongo]

Actually, this is as good as what I get on most of my Emperor games because of the rivers. The EMC 2 start wasn't that great because of the lack of those. Rivers make irrigation so much more convenient and are good for early commerce. I agree that the EMC 1 start was great, but other elements of the game almost ruined us, so it's still a good challenge I think you may be getting not so good starts because of the map size, but don't quote me on that. All the starts you see here are the freshest from the map generator shop, as is the case in most of my own games.

Yes, I agree, in ECM2 there were no rivers but there were horses in the capital (playing the egyptians), hills ... By the way, I always play standard size with pangea or continents.
Anyway, of course, if you say the starts are fresh, I believe you. As I stated in my other post in ECM2, it was not an inquisitorial question, it was just a question in order to know if I was a bit unlucky or not or... what is more likely, I don't have the skills to take benefit of a start I don't like.

Well, talking about this start, I'd move the warrior NE (I didn't know all this stuff about who pops huts) so that he can then explore inland and the second river, and then, if nothing special reveals, settle in place. I'm also worried about the lack of hills and maybe, I'm not sure, SSE of the blue circle there is a shadow... could it be a hill?

Saludos

 

[aelf]

Actually, this can hardly be called playing tonight I moved the warrior NE and it revealed... another forest.

So we have lots of chopping to do and a potential commerce capital in our hands. I'm in favour of settling in place for the fresh water bonus, since it seems there's nothing moving 1N can offer in return. Should we follow the same early game strategy and chop for the Great Wall again? Our trade route mission is still on.

 

[aelf]

Yes, I agree, in ECM2 there were no rivers but there were horses in the capital (playing the egyptians), hills ... By the way, I always play standard size with pangea or continents.
Anyway, of course, if you say the starts are fresh, I believe you. As I stated in my other post in ECM2, it was not an inquisitorial question, it was just a question in order to know if I was a bit unlucky or not or... what is more likely, I don't have the skills to take benefit of a start I don't like

Well, we couldn't see the horses at first so it couldn't have influenced the decision to settle in place or not in that game. For all we know there may be copper hidden very close to our start in the current game. Anyway, I think river > hills in the capital for the early commerce, especially if there are many trees to chop for production.

I'm sorry about my map size comment. You mentioned duel, so I thought you might be playing that regularly. From my experience, on standard size Emperor, you can expect not more than 2 resources in your starting location. More is a bonus, less hardly ever happens. I get rivers most of the time, and hills too. I don't know what you might consider a bad start. The one here is fine with me.

 

[MartinhoMukanga]

settle in place, because moving 1N is going to take u the river bonus and it doesn't have many advantages

 

[joyodongo]

Well, we couldn't see the horses at first so it couldn't have influenced the decision to settle in place or not in that game.

Of course, I know, but after all it was great

From my experience, on standard size Emperor, you can expect not more than 2 resources in your starting location. More is a bonus, less hardly ever happens. I get rivers most of the time, and hills too. I don't know what you might consider a bad start. The one here is fine with me.

Well, for me a nice start is, apart from food or sheep or cows (which is normal), bronze, or horses, and specially, hills, not to talk about gold/silver/gems. Maybe is, as I told you, that I don't have skills to take advantage of what you get (you always get something). Anyway, my experience on emperor is that normally I only have 2 cities before I have to go to war because there is no more fine area to settle, so sometimes in order to get, by instance, horses or copper, you have to settle on a bad second (and last) place, or maybe take the risk to wait for some iron nearby... anyway, I imagine this is emperor...

Saludos

PS. After watching the savefile closely, it looks like SSE there is grass, no hills...

 

[Zophos]

Actually, this is as good as what I get on most of my Emperor games because of the rivers....I think you may be getting not so good starts because of the map size, but don't quote me on that.

And here I went and quoted you.

I think the quality of start locations has more to do with the difficulty level than with the map size, per se. IIRC, there is code in the game that allows X% of the AI players to choose start locations before any of the human players do (regardless of the player order, so it doesn't matter that the human in SP games is always player #1). X is determined by one of the fields in the handicap XML (something like iStartingLocPercent), and gets bigger at higher difficulty levels (it's 70% on Emperor).

I can only presume that the players that get assigned starting spots earlier get 'better' starting spots (according to the AI's system for ranking city sites), but I haven't verified this. The upshot, though, is that you should expect an Emperor start to (a) be a bit worse than a Prince or Monarch start, and (b) be worse than about 2/3 of your opponents' start sites.

It would be interesting to test this with a fixed map, rolling starts at all the difficulty levels to see where you get assigned to start....

And why is it that I only seem to chime in on game-mechanics questions? Oh, right, because I can't play at work, but I can read code.

 

[Sisiutil]

Put me down if favour of settling in place.

And look--jungle! That bodes well, though you may not have much of it on this map type. At the very least, you're close to the equator.

 

[aelf]

I read somewhere that a lousier start is indeed one of the features of a higher difficulty level. I'm not sure about map sizes, but I thought maybe in smaller maps there would be fewer resources, and hence higher tendency for the capital to be resource-poor.

I'm not so sure that being close to the equator is always a good thing. Sure, having tundra nearby sucks, but at least you know you can't get swamped by AIs from all sides

Anyway, I can't play a proper round tomorrow. It would have to be on thursday. Sorry to keep you guys waiting.

 

[Sisiutil]

I'm not so sure that being close to the equator is always a good thing. Sure, having tundra nearby sucks, but at least you know you can't get swamped by AIs from all sides

Well, if there's enough of it, the jungle could hold the AI at bay for awhile--usually until iron working.

 

[Zophos]

Well, if there's enough of it, the jungle could hold the AI at bay for awhile--usually until iron working.

IMHO, jungle is actually a pretty good thing to have nearby, if it's only on one side of you. In the early game, it's a reasonably effective barrier to opponents, so you can concentrate on whoever's in the other direction. Later, if you let the enemy expand toward you in the jungle, (a) it takes them a while to get close to your borders, (b) they clear it for you (spending tons of worker-turns), and (c) when they're done, they've built some lovely grassland-rich cities that can immediately pay for themselves (and usually more) when conquered.

Timing is important, though...those grassland cities can become commerce giants in your enemy's hands if you wait too long to go after him. If you time it just right, you can capture a bunch of the workers that he's had in clearing jungle, too.

Starting in the middle of the jungle, or squashed between jungle and coast, on the other hand, is very painful.

 

[oyzar]

Here you go mining -> bronzeworking while building worker worker setler or put in a warrior somewhere there? How fast do barbs appear on empror? Starting with this many forests is nice though some more resources would have been good.

 

[NaZdReG]

I think the jungle is actually in your favor. remember in the EMC 1 it held kubla at bey as far as actual growth. so hopefully it will prove a similar barrier for you with the AI

definately settle in place who knows what the fat cross will reveal!!!

NaZ

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

I'm still with plant in place. Don't lose that nice river. Send the warrior to the NW to look for food and gold in the seas.

We shouldn't get too excited about one jungle tile.

Actually, this can hardly be called playing tonight I moved the warrior NE and it revealed... another forest.

actually, I kind of like how you 'play slow' and allow for discussion.

 

[aelf]

Worker first is definitely worth considering. I'll have to see when I play tomorrow.

 

[Tyrant Roger]

I suggest warrior, worker, settler build order. It allows your city to grow to size 2.