The Emperor Series #01: Sitting Bull

[Gwaja]

Welcome to the very first "The Emperor Series" hosted by... ME! ^_^

The idea came upon as a gathering point for any players interested in having fun or improving their games on Emperor level maps. Sharing of ideas, suggestions, advices, and criticisms are welcome and appreciated here.

I ask that everyone, including myself, give the community an update of our experiences in spoiler tags, except for the very 1st discussion on where to settle our capital city at the start of the game. Feel free to be as detailed as you want.

Preferred Checkpoints:

Turn 100
1 AD
1000 AD
Liberalism
1500 AD
End of Game

Okay! Let's get started! Ready to school the Emperor AI? ^_^

Here is our 1st honorary leader:

Spoiler :

Game Settings:

Spoiler :

And here is our starting position:

Spoiler :

Food Galore! And we are near jungles... someone mentioned that I am pretty good at rolling near-jungle starts. I guess my luck is with me here.

Please notice that "Choose Religion" setting is turned on. So do not panic if you see Islam being founded at Turn 9 or so. ^_^ Also, all huts and events are turned off as well. No lucky techs from hut popping!

For links to my hosted games, please visit my page for links! Thank you all for participating and don't be shy to share your thoughts! I certainly won't. ^_^

 

[vranasm]

very interesting start... I kind of don't like to settle on GH, but I just kind of don't see any other possibility here...

 

[Gwaja]

I don't like settling on grassland hills either.. would much rather work them. But settling here, I think, gives us 4 hills to work with, as well as the 3 food resources and fresh water bonus. We won't get the levee bonus here, but it shouldn't be a big deal.

It would have been super awesome if both of the corns were wet.

 

[GKey]

Warrior SE first, depending on what he finds there, settling 1E may be an option. 1NE of warrior looks coastal.

 

[vranasm]

Warrior SE first, depending on what he finds there, settling 1E may be an option. 1NE of warrior looks coastal.

loses 2 hills if there is no more of them to the east

 

[Gwynnja]

Thanks, Gwaja. I'll shadow/lurk/possibly chime in from the peanut gallery. 1st suggestion: move the O.G. warrior 1se to see if moving the settler is worthwhile, although in place seems like a pretty legit spot even if it is on a green hill. Worker 1st (duh) research animal husbandry->mining->bronze working.

 

[shyuhe]

Mining--BW--AH may be stronger here because of all the forests. You'll want 2-3 workers pretty early.

 

[vranasm]

@shyuhe

it has a lot of truth in itself

played to T112, no screens (playing in windowed mode sorry :-()

Spoiler :

Well what to say? I managed nice rex, sitting at 7 cities and place for 2 more (1 good one, 1 mediocre one). Oh one thing! Commerce is the bottleneck here! I underestimated science and went with ah->min->bw sitting at 40T with 2 cities but no way to get commerce and TW->pottery->writing still to tech! That really slowed me.

The AI's are so dumb I had to completely selftech Alphabet :-(. So sitting with Alpha and Aesth now, can backfill basically all I need (IW, math, sailing, medi).

Got 2nd GS, will probably use him for Philo bulb if I get medi.

I didn't went for any wonder, didn't felt like. basic plan would be from this point -> currency->col->CS-->Lib->MT -> get my continent.
That should bring me to 18 cities +- and then the options are open.

 

[Riflin'Joe]

What's so great about jungle starts? They drive me bananas!:

 

[Gwaja]

What's so great about jungle starts? They drive me bananas!:

Well I said "near-jungle" starts... which gives you higher probability of getting more grasslands and rivers than plains and deserts. ^_^

 

[vranasm]

to 800AD

Spoiler :

well all peacefull, some more expansion, some more teching.

This game I FINALLY managed to pull of the trick 1 GP -> 3 GP's, has to be really the Philo trait.
generated already 6 GS's. I have 1 now for usage, next GP's I should probably switch to GM's, but since I went back to slavery will be problematic.

Plan is simple, whip around Unis + OU while teching for lib->MT, should be interesting since I need music (lit I don't have yet), gunpowder, nat...
The unis+OU should help with it.

I plan to take the silver barb city on the other island nearby and would be nice to get there 2 more cities (which would be actually 4 on that landmass bringing hefty colonial maintenance, well if Pericles wants more cities there...all power to him).

Main target for my continent holds -> cuirs -> get all cities on my continent, then I will worry about getting the rest of the world

 

[GKey]

loses 2 hills if there is no more of them to the east

Lose 1 Plain hill (trade 1 green hill for another) lose 1 forest and gain river. May be worth it on poor commerce start. Depends on what warrior will reveal.

Despite all hatred regarding SB he is just perfect leader for Oracle-MC-GE-Machinery gambit. Drill III x-bows out of the gate anyone? Heavy food+forest start looks exactly what we need.

Hopefully we have iron.

Now, do I need add techs to AIs (and barbs) to make WorldBuilder save for deity?

 

[Gwaja]

My Cathy game is almost finished! As soon as I am done with that, I will get started on this game as well.

For capital: I think it is a safe bet to settle in place, as I don't see anything spectacular around after having moved the warrior.

 

[Noogai]

I would preciate if someone gives me a worldbuilder save. Normal saves complain something about version 301 and 302 so they don't work at all.

 

[GKey]

I would preciate if someone gives me a worldbuilder save. Normal saves complain something about version 301 and 302 so they don't work at all.

Spoiler :

Does message look like this?



That's the message you get when you don't have 3.19

Here 3.19 patch.

 

[yanner39]

@shyuhe

it has a lot of truth in itself

played to T112, no screens (playing in windowed mode sorry :-()

Spoiler :

Well what to say? I managed nice rex, sitting at 7 cities and place for 2 more (1 good one, 1 mediocre one). Oh one thing! Commerce is the bottleneck here! I underestimated science and went with ah->min->bw sitting at 40T with 2 cities but no way to get commerce and TW->pottery->writing still to tech! That really slowed me.

The AI's are so dumb I had to completely selftech Alphabet :-(. So sitting with Alpha and Aesth now, can backfill basically all I need (IW, math, sailing, medi).

Got 2nd GS, will probably use him for Philo bulb if I get medi.

I didn't went for any wonder, didn't felt like. basic plan would be from this point -> currency->col->CS-->Lib->MT -> get my continent.
That should bring me to 18 cities +- and then the options are open.

@vranasm

Spoiler :

You say commerce is the bottleneck early on and mentioned that you went ah-mining-bw. Are you saying that you should have gotten pottery before, say BW? Or Writing before BW? I understand that copper isn't needed for Dog Soldiers but with the amount of trees in the capital's BFC, I don't know if early bw was that bad.

 

[huerfanista]

@yanner39

Spoiler :

There's no point in going pottery before BW, since you can't build any cottages until you cut down some of those trees.

 

[ABCDPuppies]

Played to about 400BC..

Spoiler :

Have to say this map is a little too easy to keep my interest. I played about as badly as I could have, and still ended up with about 7 cities at that point, and enough good land blocked off to settle at least 5-6 more in the near future. Meanwhile Pacal is twiddling his thumbs with 4 cities and Pericles is expanding off into the desert apparently for lack of anything better to do.

Specifics:

Moved warrior, decided to settle capital 1E. Turned out to be a fine move, as it loses 2 hills but you regain the grass hill you started on plus another PH — plus river access and several more riverside tiles.

Next city settled south for sheep/ivory to block Pericles, then west to that insane gold/corn/2x fish spot. Couple more random cities then clam/horse/marble to seal the block on Pacal.

My tech order was abysmal. I think I went Mining -> BW -> AH -> Myst -> Writing. Unfortunately this was way too long to writing, and all the expansion crashed my economy before I could get there.

Eventually I limped to writing, built libraries, and was fine, but I think it would have been much better to just go AH -> Writing followed by Mining -> BW and just build workers settlers at size 3 with the 3 food resources in the meantime. I went for Myst to get blocking border pops, but with earlier libraries that might not even have been necessary.

Anyway, my play was so poor, and the situation so boring so far I'm not sure I'll continue, despite being in a very comfortable position. I'll be very interested to see what others come up with though!

 

[ABCDPuppies]

To people discussing Pottery vs. Bronze Working:

Spoiler :

To me, Writing should really take precedence over both of these. It's true there's a lot of tasty riverside, but Libraries can carry your tech through the early part of the game without needing to clear forest to build cottages. There's plenty of food to run scientists, and since SB is philosophical I think it should be a top priority to start doing this asap.

Of course, if you read the recap of my own play above, you'll see how little I practice what I preach on that.

 

[Noogai]

Spoiler :

Does message look like this?



That's the message you get when you don't have 3.19

Here 3.19 patch.

Excatly! But...Is there an OSX version?
http://www.firaxis.com/games/downloads.php ...There it seems to give me only windows patches.