The Emperor Masters' Challenge

[acidsatyr]

Why do you want to go for hunting and archery when you have axes? It doesnt make any sense to me, so what if archery has your UU? It's absolutely pointless. Now that you secured copper and have units to defend/attack, why not try to build GLibrary? AH was a MUCH better option insted of pottery, you wont really do pop rush in capital since you dont have any happynes around , even so it was better to go AH->Writing directly.And you have BW chop those two forests on the river for settler/brax.

 

[Andrei_V]

Grab the CoL early = Confucianism (+1/2 happy).
Prophet from the Oracle = 90% of the CS.
You may or may not need Courthouses. The point is to get Bureaucracy early. With 2 Gold blah blah blah it is huge. There is no need for more than 2 or 3 cities, capital included. Since the Copper is close, the rest can be captured from the enemies after they do the hard work on improving tiles. Especially those jungles.

 

[acidsatyr]

GLibrary is much better than Oracle given current circumstances. And i doubt you can get Confucianism first.

 

[cabert]

Actually, working two farms will give us more hammers for the settler as the gold mines will only give us 3 hammers each while the flood plain farms give 5 food each.

it's 4 until biology, or am i wrong? And your gold mines should have 1 food too.
anyways, it's only 1 commerce vs 6 commerce from gold tile!
So if i get this right, it's 1F3P6C vs 4F1C : exactly the same "production", and 5 more commerce!
Of course, you'll need to grow when you're over settler building.

 

[Andrei_V]

GLibrary is much better than Oracle given current circumstances. And i doubt you can get Confucianism first.

Build the Oracle while researching Alphabet and Literature, then start GL. If you manage to get Bureaucracy early, your chances to get the GL are greately increased. Remember, it's +50% to the commerce and production. With the 2 Gold chances for Confucianism are really high.

 

[aelf]

it's 4 until biology, or am i wrong? And your gold mines should have 1 food too.
anyways, it's only 1 commerce vs 6 commerce from gold tile!
So if i get this right, it's 1F3P6C vs 4F1C : exactly the same "production", and 5 more commerce!
Of course, you'll need to grow when you're over settler building.

Oops! Yes, you are right about the farms being 4 food. I just noticed thick bunch of bread slices and thought there were 5. I should've thought that sounded a little too good.

However, the gold hills give no food, so the farms still win. And farming now will allow quicker growth to work both gold mines and maybe whip rush a bit. The returns should be good in the near future.

The choice of Pottery was spurred by the sight of flood plains and early Slavery. I think early whip rushing might be better than earlier AH. And we want to work the flood plain farms and the gold mines before the cow and sheep, don't we?

Oracle is a long shot, given non-Industrious and relatively few forests. Tying up the capital with the lack of such advantages is probably inferior to an early land grab.

 

[futurehermit]

aren't those gold mines on plains hills? therefore no food?

it's true that you only need 2 more cities, but i'd rather be building them than the oracle, despite the fact that it jumps you toward cs.

i find that being aggressive is so much better on emperor than going for wonder-based strats. this is imo.

in this case, i'd side with going for great library instead.

but, i would disagree on not building mansa's archers. any other situation i would say skip archery, but mansa's archers make amazing defenders and barb busters. the fact that they can handle barb axemen too is what does it for me. no need to leave an axeman around your city, your archers can do it.

 

[Andrei_V]

Building less cities = start the conquest earlier + a room for wonders.

 

[cabert]

a skirmisher on a hill (even without forest) is a tough nut for any barbarian, even swords = fogbusting with no loss (other than the occasional against all odds loss).

And skirmishers can be rushed for 1 pop!

PS: if farms still win on settler prod, i think the 10 commerce/ turn are worth it : you can have archery for free while building your settler. But working the cow is better : food and production= fast settler.

 

[aelf]

Skirmishers first = no conquests that early. Oracle = no conquests that early either. I would go for Oracle if I'm Industrious. Otherwise, and in this situation, like futurehermit said I don't think an attempt will pay off.

I am not against Skirmishers first, especially since we are probably going to wait for border expansion to get the copper. And it doesn't look like any AI is that near.

Unfortunately, I can't play tomorrow night. I guess the future of this game will be debated for a while more before I act on anything. You guys go ahead with your shadow games if you wish.

 

[aelf]

PS: if farms still win on settler prod, i think the 10 commerce/ turn are worth it : you can have archery for free while building your settler. But working the cow is better : food and production= fast settler.

I'd rather merge your high commerce idea with my quick settler and work the gold mines after the farms. AH takes time to research and pastures take time to be built.

When I had to make the decision, I did think of building a mine on the gold hill after the first farm. However, I also considered that farming first might lead to faster growth later on, after the settler has been completed with the help of one chop. I do want to work both gold mines and whip rush earlier.

EDIT: After taking another look and realising that ONE river gold mine gives a Financial civ 9 commerce (!), I started to have a paradoid feeling that cabert has a point. I hope working another farm earlier can be at least comparably beneficial by allowing faster growth vs later commerce. This thread is really starting to teach me that I need to pay more attention to figures.

 

[dutchfire]

Find the mongolians and axe-rush them, it will give you some additional room.

 

[cabert]

I'd rather merge your high commerce idea with my quick settler and work the gold mines after the farms. AH takes time to research and pastures take time to be built.

When I had to make the decision, I did think of building a mine on the gold hill after the first farm. However, I also considered that farming first might lead to faster growth later on, after the settler has been completed with the help of one chop. I do want to work both gold mines and whip rush earlier.

you're the boss

 

[aelf]

you're the boss

Lol. I edited and now admit you have a good point there. However, you can't work both mines at size two. The city starves. The question is whether one gold mine with 9 commerce and 1 less hammer/food for the settler production is superior to another farm with 5 food and 1 commerce that will help growth after the settler is finished.

 

[cabert]

it's something i did already :
starve the city while building the settler, and whip for 1 pop before reaching 0 food = pop loss.
In this situation all the food is used for growth. + growing back from 1 to 2 will be fast with sheeps! = one/2 turns, and you'll have animal husbandry researched in 8 turns with both gold mines.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You're going to have the copper in 34 turns just by border expansion. How can you possibly get it any faster than that when you add up the time to build a settler, move it to the site, chop an obelisk, wait 15 turns for expansion?? Putting a city in this useless position is obviously wrong. A settler also seems completely the wrong thing to be building.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Lol. I edited and now admit you have a good point there. However, you can't work both mines at size two. The city starves. The question is whether one gold mine with 9 commerce and 1 less hammer/food for the settler production is superior to another farm with 5 food and 1 commerce that will help growth after the settler is finished.

Floodplains farm does not have 5 food.

You only need one farm to work both mines, not two. You work one farm and one mine at size 2, then when you grow to size 3 you work one farm and both mines.

Unsubscribing....

 

[cabert]

Floodplains farm does not have 5 food.

You only need one farm to work both mines, not two. You work one farm and one mine at size 2, then when you grow to size 3 you work one farm and both mines.

Unsubscribing....

unsubscribing because of wrong figures?
wow!
It's already corrected by the way.

What you build?
barracks? warrior? worker? I think granary is built already, and i don't think any other option is open yet.

I would go for warrior personally, exploration isn't quite done yet.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Whatever you do, do not start settler at 2 population. If you delay settlers until size four, you will produce faster (+6 hammers, -4 food) and gain an insane amount of commerce. I don't know how this works out with worker turns and the really quick floodplains growth, but it should work like a charm.

The problem is, I'm not sure if you've got anything sensible to build meanwhile. Warriors blow, workers and settler stunt production. This is exactly the time that 2xSkirmisher build is so fabulous.

(Somebody else might want to look into the mathematics of growing before settler. If our benifits hadn't mostly been commerce, I think 1st or at least 2nd settler would actually had been quicker.)

Repeating what had already been said, copper will be gained from capitol's border expansion. Your A, atop of the plains hills, can at size 3 spit about 10 hammers, working copper, grass forest and grass hill. This is an awesome non-slavery production site, pretty much the best you can get without extra happiness. You might want to wait with settling this city, seeing as it does little for landgrabbing and has unimpressive lategame potential, but I would have loved to have it spit my skirmishers/axes.

 

[futurehermit]

too bad we didn't get a screenshot revealing more of the map, especially to the west. oh well, looking forward to it.