[BTS] The (sigh) emperor warm-up exercise

[lymond]

@lymond what does LT stand for?
.

ha ha...LT = Long try

 

[Long try]

Ohh... just a starting pic and the thread busted up with life. Such a good bait it is
About the settings, everything is normal like you guys advised. Except: Unrestricted, low sea, 8AIs and K-mod.
I'd like to state my aim. Not only for this game, but the project forward. It's to stir up new adventures and novel experience for everyone of us. I do not like all the 'normal' stuffs, because doing them would be like cheating. Why? Because all of you know about it like the palm of your hands. What would be fun if you know for sure Isabella will turn a rage on you because of religion, or predict with 99.68% accuracy of how an AI will act during a situation? Or trade a tech with a specific partner because you know if you don't do that, it will trigger WFYABTA on some other? You have x-rayed every single AI since, like, 9 years ago, and would you find lots of satisfaction winning a predictable, senile opponent in real life? Or hanging out with a stupid and predictable friend?
My goal is not only to learn by absorbing your advice, it's also for you all to play the game with me and enjoy the novel feel it brings. Think of parachuting for a comparison. You folks are para experts. No matter how you love the sport, it can't be possible for you to enjoy it like the 1st time, if you do the same jump in the same spot with the same wind condition everyday. Now what if you take a para newbie to a different country and do a double jump? All your knowledge will get jogged as now you have to calculate everything on the spot in a new environment; meanwhile the newbie will still learn a lot regardless of where he flies, as long as he's under the hood of someone as good as you.

Your responses after the initial starting pic feel like they're from the pilots flying the plane where the parachuter jumps, or the veteran observer who oversees the jump from the ground. It's like, OK you're going quite well, remember to do this & that on the way down. On your fall I'll occasionally help you, don't worry. It's a bit different than the spirit of a jumping companion who is actually & literally on the newbie's back, who will address every little thing, because you're stuck with this rookie individual in the air!! That's the spirit I can feel in @Wrathful 's answer. Thank you for replying all my questions!

 

[Long try]

Now, as there are no other suggestion on how to move the scout, I will follow Wrathful's advice and go s-se. Here is what we find:

The rice is likely dry. Should we move the settler W to have a good look before deciding? I'm against it, since it's unlikely we'll have more or equal forests. Don't know about the number of hills. OTOH, we'll gain 1 hpt & 1 grassland if we move... We can always settle back here next turn if things doesn't look as good.

 

[lymond]

Looks like you found the bbcode on imgur. That pic is smaller, so no problem, but pics do add up in a thread and can cause loading and viewing issues. I recommend putting future pics in spoiler tags.

Best of luck to you here. I have no interest in the map, settings, or Kmod.....or huts, so I will be bowing out from this point forward. Your current objective seems to belie the initial objective you discussed in the general forum. Not a complaint per se, but it is why many folks here were giving you the subsequent advice.

 

[Olafeson]

Since i am also learning K-Mod at the moment i will stick with you on this map. But regarding the huts, i think lymond is right that they should be turned off in most games.
Main reason would be that they tend to boost the A.I. since they start with several scouts and archers right from the start, so will be able to pick up a lot more huts than you can.

Since huts provide you gold/techs and new units, they also impact your early game by a lot, and therefor the whole game. Huts arbitrate a very altered expierence which is rather counter productive to forum games. You pop 80 gold from a hut and voila suddenly you can tech all early game without collecting money.

 

[Olafeson]

With some luck the water tile that is covered in fog of war now could be a lake, but i guess you are right and the rice is dry.
My advice for settle would be 1E on the gold. Triple food and double gold would make for a strong start. Second city could be 1W of the lake, to grab the gold and share the food.

Your capital would lose fresh water but would make space for said 2nd city. But it could ruin some sea food spots to the east. Scout could move east to check the coast, then go back to the southwest.

 

[Wrathful]

Eh? Huts and events are on? Not good. I really don't want this thread to degenerate into another huts/events discussion, as this forum has already seen many of those. However, if the goal is to write a guide for beating Deity, having huts and events on is antithetical to that purpose. There's nothing strategic at all about them. Huts render games completely incomparable when one person gets free Bronze Working while someone else gets barbs. And events are even worse. On one end of the spectrum, a barbarian horde can randomly spawn on your borders, and on the the other end, you can get a free golden age for literally nothing.

All the other settings (unrestricted leaders, random personalities, more AIs, larger maps, no tech trading, raging barbarians, etc) are cool and an interesting diversion.

About the start: I agree with Olafeson.

you do the same jump in the same spot with the same wind condition everyday

This is a bit of an exaggeration. There are a great deal of variety even within the standard settings. Just look at Lain's games; he has 38 playthroughs posted on YT, each unique in its own way. And this forum does welcome deviation from the standard settings. I think it's really just huts and events that are frowned upon...for good reason.

 

[Long try]

Looks like you found the bbcode on imgur. That pic is smaller, so no problem, but pics do add up in a thread and can cause loading and viewing issues. I recommend putting future pics in spoiler tags.
Best of luck to you here. I have no interest in the map, settings, or Kmod.....or huts, so I will be bowing out from this point forward. Your current objective seems to belie the initial objective you discussed in the general forum. Not a complaint per se, but it is why many folks here were giving you the subsequent advice.

Thank you lymo, I will remember the spoiler tags. Uh, regarding my initial objective, it

• Is to help enliven our community by some degree by delivering quality contents. IMO people like something because it's interesting and novel, and especially if they can contribute to it, help it.
• For me to squarely conquer the highest level of difficulty, and
• To leave a legacy that encourage other newbies

I don't think my current actions belie those in any way. By 'squarely win Deity', I didn't mean 'everything normal'.

My advice for settle would be 1E on the gold. Triple food and double gold would make for a strong start. Second city could be 1W of the lake, to grab the gold and share the food.
Your capital would lose fresh water but would make space for said 2nd city. But it could ruin some sea food spots to the east. Scout could move east to check the coast, then go back to the southwest.

I disagree. My counter points:

• Dry rice is not a very strong tile
• By moving E we're sacrificing TWO gold in the capital and fresh water to gain possibly 1 forest (maybe not, or even less than 0 forest gained). I forgot most tricks about fog-guessing, so I think there's still possibility of forests SW-W & SW-S of the settler now, please correct me on this. Moreover, we're gaining an useless water tile being landlocked.
• IMO this is the tipping point: we know for sure that the ocean is to the north & east now. That means moving south and west-ward will be beneficial in a crowded map with 9 civs.

I think we are absolutely in agreement about the scout. He will go E to check out things, so maybe in the meantime we move the settler W? If stuffs look grim, we can backtrack on that E gold hill, only late 1 turn.

However, if the goal is to write a guide for beating Deity, having huts and events on is antithetical to that purpose. There's nothing strategic at all about them. Huts render games completely incomparable when one person gets free Bronze Working while someone else gets barbs. And events are even worse. On one end of the spectrum, a barbarian horde can randomly spawn on your borders, and on the the other end, you can get a free golden age for literally nothing.

All the other settings (unrestricted leaders, random personalities, more AIs, larger maps, no tech trading, raging barbarians, etc) are cool and an interesting diversion.

Yes, what you said makes sense & I concur. Let me rearrange the view like this: the goal is to beat Deity. Therefore, huts (and events) are bad and should be turned off in that real Deity game, because they tend to help the AIs, not us. Now we're playing only Emperor. So isn't it better to leave them on so we have more of a challenge? Because, you know, overall, on Emperor they're still malevolent toward the player. So actually they're assisting us in simulating the difficulty of Deity.
BTW, are events tend to be of more bad luck when we play at higher levels?

 

[ArchGhost]

Holy cow, that start!

Without going too in-depth would also recommend moving. You'll have a happy cap limit to deal with early on and if you want to work all the golds, better to split some of that food with another city.

In addition to going east, you could settle on the gold 1W as well:
-save worker turns on mine + road for +1 happy at Mining, will give bonus commerce immediately
-Keep the fresh water (though I admit I never care about this)
-Keep the 2 stronger food tiles for the cap
-use Dry rice and share Dry corn for city 2
-move away from the coast and into the interior
-scout can go EastSouthEast since you know tundra is North (yuck) and there's a coast to the East. Mostly checking for seafoods

The others can probably argue 1E or 1NE better, but this is the sort of thing I would do to split food and get a stronger 2nd city too. Pushing into the interior is also usually a good thing as you can contest more land, explore a tiny bit more tiles.

 

[Kaitzilla]

About the settings, everything is normal like you guys advised. Except: Unrestricted, low sea, 8AIs and K-mod.

K-mod, I've heard that is one tough mod.

Settling in place looks pretty good.
2 Corn, 5 forests, Fresh Water, and 4 Gold are all very good.

There would be room to cram more cities 3N and 3E1S later.
Moving 1S would lose 5 decent tiles, 2 forests, and fresh water bonus for ??? brown land.


With 8AI, things will be more crowded than usual yes?
I've heard with K-mod, the AI whip armies like crazy so military is more important to build.


If it was me, I'd just do a nice steady start with Worker, Agriculture, Archery, Mining.
Farm both Corns and maybe one of the grasslands near the lake before doing gold.
Try to grow to Size 5 before making a 2nd Settler.
No real point growing to Size 6 to get that last gold mine before roads and a 2nd city are up.

Explore with Scout and Warrior with eventually a Protective Archer guarding the capital.
Happy cap is 4 without a garrison, 5 with a garrison, and 6 with gold connected with a road.
Health cap is 6 with 5 forests and fresh water and no corn hooked up yet.

Settler at Size 3, Size 4, or Size 5.
I'm not sure what would be best to do.

 

[Gumbolt]

Sorry what level are you playing. Deity or immortal?

Are you planning to upload saves? You will get limited advice from pictures if that is indeed what you are after.

 

[Long try]

-Keep the 2 stronger food tiles for the cap
-use Dry rice and share Dry corn for city 2
-move away from the coast and into the interior
-scout can go EastSouthEast since you know tundra is North (yuck) and there's a coast to the East. Mostly checking for seafoods
The others can probably argue 1E or 1NE better, but this is the sort of thing I would do to split food and get a stronger 2nd city too. Pushing into the interior is also usually a good thing as you can contest more land, explore a tiny bit more tiles.

We have pretty the same line of thoughts

Settling in place looks pretty good.
2 Corn, 5 forests, Fresh Water, and 4 Gold are all very good.
There would be room to cram more cities 3N and 3E1S later.
Moving 1S would lose 5 decent tiles, 2 forests, and fresh water bonus for ??? brown land.

With 8AI, things will be more crowded than usual yes?
I've heard with K-mod, the AI whip armies like crazy so military is more important to build.

If it was me, I'd just do a nice steady start with Worker, Agriculture, Archery, Mining.
Farm both Corns and maybe one of the grasslands near the lake before doing gold.

Yeah, I'm torn between SIP for a monster capital & going 1W & share stuffs. This will depend a lot on the overall view of the bigger picture.
If K-mod is very difficult to conduct wars, then would it be better to rush a lot of cities ASAP & play diplomacy to maintain peace?
Also, I'm not sure about the farming of an extra grass either. We'll have +9F after working the 2 corns already, so still +3F after getting all the 3 golds online... right?

Try to grow to Size 5 before making a 2nd Settler.
Settler at Size 3, Size 4, or Size 5.

This is where I couldn't follow you

Sorry what level are you playing. Deity or immortal?
Are you planning to upload saves? You will get limited advice from pictures if that is indeed what you are after.

It's Emperor FYI, in the thread title.
Well, maybe I should have stated clearly in the OP that nothing discourages me more than seeing people playing past me in an ongoing game, because I keep stubbornly thinking: what's the point of continuing if they've done it, even in a slightly different way? I would send saves to people who specifically promise that they won't shadow past my progress though (and vote in the other thread to help me through, lol)

Now for the T0 update:

Spoiler :

Analysis:

• The land is barren around, looks like all our luck have concentrated into the starting position.
• That makes settling 1W more favorable than SIP grassland (or 1E) IMO. Counter argument, please?

Guess I'll make a poll for this foundation city, since the capital is kind of really important

• q10: Where to settle?
• q11: What are the words for 'city' or 'town' in their name usually used in English? Like, -polis, -burg...? All suffixes, no prefixes?

Edit: I couldn't make use of the spoilers tag. If I copy the imgur BB code & simply paste it inside the spoilers than nothing appears. If I delete the " " wrapped outside the BB code then it only displays the link. @lymond? Summoning you again

 

[AcaMetis]

Looks like you're missing a tag. You want it to look like is this:

[spoiler][img]https://i.imgur.com/O1ZzXb9.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

Spoiler :

 

[Long try]

Tks AcaMetis, you're fast to save the day!

 

[Olafeson]

Guess since you already moved the settler 1 W i would be best to settle now on hill 1 W from your starting position. 2nd city later to the east, maybe on the spot where the hut is now. Since you have more A.I. than usual, securing land is a good idea. You lose the very powerful capital 1E of starting position though. Triple food + double gold would probably been the stronger play in my opinion.

But I would stay on this hill now, you already invested a turn in moving anyway and it also does free up the 2nd city to the east.

The surrounding land looks a bit too brownish for my liking. Maybe scout the coast and check for seafood for your next cities.

Looks like to the north there is only a bit more tundra. Go to the east to scout for seafood, then scout the coast to the south and move southwest for scouting later?

 

[Long try]

You can vote in the linked poll, I keep it that I'll follow the democratic choice of the more experienced folks. I consent to your thought on the surrounding land. Anyway, I've popped the hut for 44 golds and moved him SE next as we all planned.

Spoiler :

I'll wait some hours for people to vote for q10. In the mean time, I think next turn's scout move can be SW or 2xSE. I'm more inclined toward the former. What do you think?

 

[krikav]

Gold, mods, huts, events..? Not my cup of tea.
Have fun everyone!

 

[Olafeson]

Have fun everyone

You forgot K-Mod, emperor and 9 A.I. on standard size map

 

[krikav]

I can't stand watching lains videos because of NTT and now random personalities either. I seem to have a very conservative taste!
I do mean my have fun sincere though!

 

[Long try]

Thanks, krikav. Not mean to persuade you, but Random personalities is like the ultimate antidote to weak & predictable AI.

p10 result: 100% voted that hill 1W. I've founded our capital to conclude T1:

Spoiler :

It's named after @Wrathful as a token of my appreciation!

Now this is the demo at the end of T1:

Spoiler :

Analysis:

• How can we & everyone have 16+ GNP??
• At least 1 is working a 1F tile, so that their crop is 3. That means the tile is 1F1HxC because
• 5 AIs have 2 Goods, which mean at best 4 of them founded on a plain hill
• I can't make out any observations from the soldier count.
• At least 2 of them are coastal.
• 1 has Mining & founded on gem or gold, otherwise how can we account for that 85% approval rate?

Now the questions:

• q12: What else can we deduce from the demo? Pls correct my analysis if they're wrong.
• q13: Where should the scout move next? I prefer SE-SE because that route will take advantage of his 2 moves, and Wrathful city will expand in 5 turns, giving a partial view of the SW route anyway. Any other ideas? Should we backtrack to that hut on the left side of capital? Do you think the AIs can appear within 5 turns & grab it right under our nose?