Tips for Emperor level?

[Aabraxan]

. . . . Wait...two civs I have contact with at the time of construction, I'm now thinking, right? So because in the example the Iroquois were not known at the time, but the Aztecs and French were, I'd only get it once one of those two got it?

You do not have to have contact with them *at the time of construction.* You only need contact with them before the GLib goes obsolete. In the hypothetical, the reason you didn't get construction from the Iros when the Indians bought it was because you did not know India. If the Iros have it and *either* the Aztecs *or* the French learn it, *or* you make contact with India, you get Construction. As long as the GLib is not obsolete, you can keep getting techs.

Edited to add: If I'm in a game in which I build the GLib (other than an AW game), I build lots of boats, so that I can make contact with as many civs as possible. If 2 civs on the other continent that I know learn a tech, hey, that's a freebie that I can trade around at home!

 

[Kaidonni]

Well, I've got boats sent out in two directions. One is on the way to the Americas, and one has just gotten to Madagascar, and will proceed to India and south-east Asia, and possibly also on to Australia (I put a starting location there...I am naughty ).

I've added two screenshots below. One with everything on the map, the other clean. Ignore my Wealth at the moment, haven't finished decisions this turn (well...Delhi can't produce anything of worth at the moment anyway, 3 resistors), and the Pyramids are the GL pre-build. I'm wondering...should I keep Delhi, or might my intended new-city spot be better (where I've pointed the Worker to)? Another city could go up where Denmark is, also, taking into account positions of worked squares and useful squares.

 

[Optional]

This is a strange map, with so much food. Normally I wouldn't keep a town that's built on a food resource, but here almost every tile has a food resource on it... I really don't know. If you keep Delhi, please starve it down once you can.

You're building too many regulars, I would say. You're probably underestimating the value of that extra hitpoint, and I would also say that generating a leader is a lot harder when so many of your units have to start as regulars. Please give a town like Rouen a barracks if you're mainly using it for building troops.

Why is Falaise building wealth? There's rarely a good reason to build wealth in the early game.

The best prebuild is palace, as you can't lose it to a wonder cascade. Now you're prebuilding in your palace city, which is the only place where you can't use this prebuild. You might get away with it, but I would certainly not trade Literature around once you've got it - the chance you'll be losing all your shields is still considerable.

 

[M60A3TTS]

On a world map, the total culture required is going to be over 100k. More like 160k, and remember, you have to have twice that of the second leading civ which isn't necessarily that hard at this level, but a consideration. Also, if you haven't decided yet, you've pretty much already chosen by default. Most people going for the 20k single city plan on how to do it from turn 1. The idea being to get every cultural building and wonder possible in the designated city. As far along as you are at this stage, the 20k may be viable, but the total culture is probably the one you would need to go by if that does indeed end up being your goal.

One other point on tech, on the world map, I often find that Persia, or whatever civ occupies that area tends to be the initial leader because of the speed with which it makes contact with adjacent civs and trades that much more often. So for your part, you want contacts and more contacts, so you definitely want boats and units out exploring the landscape.

 

[Kaidonni]

This is a strange map, with so much food. Normally I wouldn't keep a town that's built on a food resource, but here almost every tile has a food resource on it... I really don't know. If you keep Delhi, please starve it down once you can.

You're building too many regulars, I would say. You're probably underestimating the value of that extra hitpoint, and I would also say that generating a leader is a lot harder when so many of your units have to start as regulars. Please give a town like Rouen a barracks if you're mainly using it for building troops.

Why is Falaise building wealth? There's rarely a good reason to build wealth in the early game.

The best prebuild is palace, as you can't lose it to a wonder cascade. Now you're prebuilding in your palace city, which is the only place where you can't use this prebuild. You might get away with it, but I would certainly not trade Literature around once you've got it - the chance you'll be losing all your shields is still considerable.

Falaise is building wealth because I haven't yet completed the turn (I did say that in my post to ignore my Wealth ).

It is indeed a strange map. It's the Marla Singer World Map, the one that comes with Civ III Complete (I believe it is originally a PTW map, but it works for Conquests). I had to found on Wheat to build Caen (that was a tough decision, though, because I was thinking what squares it would take it, and I decided to put things like Shields above Food (plenty of Food to go around, and some of those Cows have 2 Shields without being Mined, which is why I'm going to Mine some of them). It's just that Delhi is in an awkward place. If I move any settlement a tile to the south east, and then get a culture building down the line, it has more squares to itself, less clashes with Caen (which is important, because at the moment it might not make much difference - but then when I get expansions of my borders, I don't get so many squares...). It's why I abandoned Thebes and built Rouen, and why I won't take Elephantine (I'd just be destroying the city anyway, so low a pop) - Rouen could have more squares to itself, and become a nice production centre.

Of course, there is the simple issue about Delhi not producing effective Workers as it is. Four citizens, all Indian - I'd have to wait until it grew to get my own Workers, the Industrious ones. And any Settlers will also be Indian, so if I ever go to war with India again, if I make peace any time soon, I have to keep an eye on that, even if I have just one Indian citizen (one extra unhappy face would be enough to bring down a city).

With so much Food, irrigating outside of Despotism seems less important, because I can gain plenty of extra shields. The hills with Iron will net me 4 Shields per turn (although just 1 Food, but all the 3 Food - and what will probably become 4 Food with a government change, it's off-set more than enough).

As for my regulars...I was just trying to get myself expanded. My Archers have done really well, and I have three Catapults to back them up now (seven Archers, one is a veteran). I will build Barracks in the future, but while I wanted a foothold on the continent and some nice spots, I put unit production up top. I'm the strongest in military so far according to my advisor.

I could make the switch in Cherbourg from a Temple to a Palace pre-build, then to the GL, then build the Temple. Get a heap of culture. Or I could add a Library to my capital at some point (Bayeux).

 

[M60A3TTS]

On the Indian workers, they are as any captured worker is, half as efficient at doing tasks. So if it takes 3 regular workers a turn to build a road, it takes the same 3 Indian native workers two turns. Granted because you are an industrious civ, the Indian workers seem much slower. But here are the things you want to remember. First and most important, they will never cost you any gold because they do not factor into unit support. So they are free to you forever. Second, and this comes later, once a civ is killed off, you can join those workers back into the cities for increasing production, science, wealth and so on without worrying that the city will flip back to it's native civ. Of course it might flip to another, but that is a different case. Merging workers is something of an advanced strategy, so I wouldn't worry about that at this stage, that's usually for the latter part of the game. For now, just remember they're free.

The other thing is, you really want to get the barracks built right away. Any experienced player will tell you that attacking with veteran units is always the preferred method. Let me say that again. Always. That extra hitpoint means a better chance of survival and veteran units promote to elite units. And only elite units will get you armies. You will want those armies to deal with much larger opponents lurking out there. I've heard it expressed before, and there is a lot of truth to it, that cultural victories mean lots of cities, and getting lots of cities means lots of fighting. So get the barracks (meaning more than one ) going ASAP and start churning out veteran swordsmen. vmxa who plays at the highest levels didn't really follow up on your point, but swords win out on archers, again always. Archers are only for if you don't have iron. Try and work towards getting at least one city producing 10 shields where you can crank out vet swords every 3 turns. That will help.

Then you want more catapults, or cats as we like to call them. Artillery rules in Civ. It takes a lot of them, but if you use catapults and later trebuchets, cannons, etc what you want to do ideally is bombard all the units down to one hit point remaining. In any case, at least knock some hitpoints off before attacking. Then attack with the vet swords. If you do it that way, you will see your casualties drop a great deal and victories go up. But again, it will take a lot of units. You might try a stack with a mix of six vet swords and six cats for starters. Personally, if it were me, I'd toss in a couple vet spears because the AI will attack your stack, and the spears always defend first ahead of the swords. So your attackers are preserved that way.

 

[Spoonwood]

Slaves have half the speed of *regular* workers until Replacable Parts, and post Replacable Parts have the speed of industrious workers if you have that trait, or the speed of regular workers if you have that trait, while your native workers have twice their previous speed.

Any experienced player will tell you that attacking with veteran units is always the preferred method.

I won't agree with this. If you have barbies around, there exist good reasons to not build barracks and just use regulars to fight them. Also, in my recent huge histographic game I used regular medieval infantry, and I think a few regular guerillas, to pick off some of the AIs archers/spears/pikes, as they had a good number of units running around. However, that's about the only two exceptions I can think of for the moment.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Feel free to disagree Spoonwood. Preferred method means that there are exceptions to the rule. He's playing the world map, so we can agree barbs aren't an issue here. Yes, greatly advanced units that are regular or conscript can kill off outdated ones. I'm trying to point out some basic concepts to Kaidonni.

 

[vmxa]

He mentioned Long Bows, so I did not address archers. I would agree, archers are not going to be used much, if I can avoid it. I will make some in tough spots like cannot make swords right now and have incoming. Lots of barbs very early or need to represent some power, where warriors and spears will not. They have that 1 defense, making them of limited use.

Not sure how anyone can disagree and be correct on the vets part. M60 said experienced players will go with vets, that is not up for debate, it is correct. He did not say all will and it is implied that there are exceptions to everything.

One of the things I usually tell newer players is to not make troops without a barracks after the initial warrior scouts. Of course that cannot always be done and there are games that it should not be done, such as some of the Greebly SG's. You just have to get lots of troops up and cannot get a barracks in all the places right off.

That is for advanced play. As far as counting on barbs to level up, not a good fall back strategy IMO. First who says there will be barbs to use for that purpose? Who says there will be enough ready at hand?

Second at Emperor and up the barbs are getting harder to kill. I do not like to attack barbs above emperor with warriors or even horses and archers, especially, if they are regulars. Sid barbs I do not like attack at all. The big thing is that the AI will do quite well at clearing them, unless that map has lots of open land.

In any event it is better to attack them with vets and get promote to elite, than with regs and try to get to vet.

The one exception to horses is the AC unit as it has that extra hit point and will do very well against barbs at any level.

At emperor or better I would try to prevent barbs. I would have sentries out to disperse the fog so they will not build camps. It is not fun the face an uprising while you are still in the AA or just got to the Middle Age.

I prefer to have someone else face the uprising.

 

[Aabraxan]

There have been times that I've had to fight barbs with regulars out of necessity. There have been times when I have had to fight them with elites, also out of necessity. I would not call either of those my "preferred" method, though. I would say that fighting them with vets is my preferred method, and probably the preferred method among experienced players. While I can imagine plenty of scenarios in which I would have to fight barbs with regs, I cannot imagine one where I would actually choose to use regs over vets, given the choice of either.

 

[Optional]

I very much agree with M60A3TTS on the points of the barracks and the free slaves. I think it was me who started about the barracks in the first place. That doesn't mean that I don't often start with building a few regular archers against the barbs, but that's because I think I don't have the time to build a barracks first; I need that vermin control quickly. Actually fighting other civs for expansion I would always do with vets.
When Spoonwood talks about the barbs and the histographic game and says he wouldn't build a barracks, he says himself 'that's about the only two exceptions I can think of for the moment', so there's probably not much disagreement among us about the importance of barracks.
In almost any strategy game adding 33% to the health bar of a unit that will do a lot of fighting is a big deal, and in Civ it's no different.

I agree with Kaidonni that with so much food around, it is shields that become more precious, and tiles with a food resource that would be irrigated on a normal map, here perhaps should be mined.

Are you still going cultural, Kaidonni? Spoonwood is more an expert than me, but I think the wide placement you're using is not that suitable for cultural; if you can get more towns in you can get more culture buildings up, and it's this quantity in culture that counts, rather than the quality of your towns.

 

[M60A3TTS]

The other thing is that Carthage is seafaring and industious, so no discounted religious or scientific improvements that are built to generate culture. So the civ and the victory condition aren't particularly suited for one another. I'm not saying it can't be done, but substantially more difficult.

 

[Kaidonni]

In that case, Cultural victory might not be up my alley. I like to maximise productivity, and I like settlements that can produce. The reason for me building certain buildings at the moment is to extend my borders to gain extra squares, so that I can rely on those settlements to build something quickly enough. Really, I sort of dropped corruption to 50%, so a conquest or domination victory might be best for me (and any AIs pursuing other paths, such as cultural, ought to shake things up a bit and get me thinking how I can stop them, keeping me on my feet ).

I might abandon Delhi in a few turns time, see what I can get out of it. It isn't right next to the River, so no fresh water (so hard to tell on this map, some squares should have the 1 Gold bonus being next to Rivers, but they don't...). I have to starve the population anyway, and I may aswell find a way to outsource it for the time being and abandon the settlement. I like fresh water, no time wasted on an Aquaduct.

And on my regulars - I just wanted to get my expansion in early. I'm not usually this aggressive. 6 regulars and 1 veteran Archer. My Catapults didn't do well against the Indian Spearman (they only had one), but my Archer took 2 hits and finished the guy off. I've opted for Archers because they've done quite well in battles so far. The first Swordsman I used, and he was dead. Dead! And when I first used them against Egypt, I didn't have as quick production as now (lower pops).

 

[Optional]

Delhi is on the river.

 

[Kaidonni]

You certain? It's so hard to tell, I did an experiment earlier by razing it. No gold for that tile. The editor also doesn't give the choice to delete the river. Unless there's a way to remove the Gold bonus for being next to a river...

Delhi is being a pain in the butt, too. Civil Disorder! Not sure if turning my one citizen who wasn't resisting into an entertainer would have worked (because as it stands, it would have been one content to one unhappy this turn, also - not good for me).

EDIT: And now I am peed off. My capital isn't on a river. Seriously. Bayeux is not on a river. It's stopped at 6 pop. Yet it looks like it's on a river. Grrrr! And I have my pre-build there.

 

[Optional]

You certain?

I looked at your save again, Delhi isn't on there, but I noticed tiles around Bayeux that are on a river also don't give a gold. Now I'm like this: EDIT: Crosspost with your own edit!
Once you have construction you could look whether an aquaduct comes up as a build option for a town or not. This map is just weird!

 

[Kaidonni]

Hmmm...Sumeria knows Construction. I could give Polytheism, Code of Laws and Philosophy...or wait until he trades with someone else I know, soon gonna get the GL for my main build. I can swap squares at Bayeux and get 15 shields per turn...maximum I can get from Cherbourg, another town I considered for the build, and partly wish I had chosen...although I need the Temple there to expand and get the extra shields to make that 15...nah, Bayeux is better for it, and besides, Cherbourg would be working ALL land tiles on Ireland then, so there's really no difference.

Just don't want him getting Map Making and Currency! Then he's MA...

 

[M60A3TTS]

My Catapults didn't do well against the Indian Spearman (they only had one), but my Archer took 2 hits and finished the guy off. I've opted for Archers because they've done quite well in battles so far. The first Swordsman I used, and he was dead. Dead! And when I first used them against Egypt, I didn't have as quick production as now (lower pops).

You can expect on average that artillery bombardment will miss on 4 of every 10 attempts. What that means is sometimes you will be frustrated with the results when you hit 1 in 10 times , and other times pleased when 7 in 10 succeed. The other thing is you need more than 3 in a stack to hope to achieve something approaching desirable results.

More on archers vs swords. I wouldn't be too quick to judge combat results based on a small sample size. The other thing you will find out soon enough is, archers may be ok against spears. But when the AI gets to pikes, you're going to be severely underpowered with your attack value of 2 vs their defense of 3 plus any additional defense bonuses. The upgrade path from sword (attack 3) to medieval infantry (attack 4) comes sooner with feudalism than archer (attack 2) to longbow (attack 4) with invention.

 

[Kaidonni]

Okay...considering abandoning Delhi now. But...2 citizens there. Might get a Settler out of them, and add this Settler to their succeeding settlement (so effectively I don't really lose any growing time, because it would take 7 turns to grow with 3 Food per turn anyway, and I get just one Indian citizen living in what will be named Dieppe).

EDIT: Okay, DEFINITELY building the GL. Sumeria now has Currency also. I am so not selling any techs to them! Hmmm...I only need Currency and Construction, of course, but you know... I could get to equal footing with him, of course, if I added some Gold into the deal. I dunno...I'd be MA then also. I might gamble on him trading with another power I know or will soon know, or that power having traded with him (I'm moving around there, reaching Ethiopia now with my one ship).

 

[Spoonwood]

Not sure how anyone can disagree and be correct on the vets part. M60 said experienced players will go with vets, that is not up for debate, it is correct. He did not say all will and it is implied that there are exceptions to everything.

No, that's not what he said. Nor do exceptions come as implied in what he said, because of the emphasis he used and the way he said it.

The other thing is, you really want to get the barracks built right away. Any experienced player will tell you that attacking with veteran units is always the preferred method. Let me say that again. Always.

If he hadn't have said always (emphasis in original), emphasized it, said it again, and said "right away", I would have agreed, as I almost always go with vets.

At emperor or better I would try to prevent barbs. I would have sentries out to disperse the fog so they will not build camps. It is not fun the face an uprising while you are still in the AA or just got to the Middle Age.

So, it's faster to get regular warriors out which only cost 10 shields instead of spending 30 or 50 shields to produce barracks and then warriors. So, you don't want barracks right away, but more-or-less right away after settling expansion to take care of the barbies/get contacts. My upgraded regular medieval infantry merely came as my inital contact/military police units which I kept around. I believe we agree here on strategy VMXA, but the emphasis of M60's post comes as misleading, as it talks about an absolute, instead of a general rule.