Various questions to succeed at the Emperor level

[FlashOGroove]

Hi everybody, and thank you for the precious materials available on this forum. I have been able to progress a lot by reading things thanks to you.

Recently I bought BNW, won a few game easily on king level, and tried the emperor level, and I'm meeting with some difficulties: I need some more specific help on 3 topics:

- maintaining happiness, especially during war time,
- maintaining revenue, especially during war time,
- doing something useful during the renaissance era.

Here is a story of my first game:

I had the arabs in standard pangea map, quick speed, normal settings otherwise, with a very good start in a desert full of rivers and encens. I was located on the easternest part of the continent, with two city states between me and Japan north of me, America west of me, tundra south and another city state.

My start was very good, I was able to grow to develop the first pantheon thanks to barbarians and then the first religion thanks to desert folklore. My science was very good too, I build the national college as fast as possible before funding my second city near America, and researched all the techs needed to grow my two cities, build an army and continue to tech the scientifics tech. I even build Petra in my capital, which ended useless because I had only river tiles.

At some point I planed to build a new town next to the Sinaï, but America built Boston first in an inconvenient place. I razed Boston, conquered Washington and made piece, leaving America with New York in the middle of a desert, as a weak buff state. I then built Damas on my ideal place near the Sinaï. My incomes were good, science was good, diplomatic relations not so good but it didn't mattered much because west of Washington was a mountain range which made it impossible for India to attack me. I was friend with Japan who was attacking everyone, conquering Egypt and Assyria far away.

At this point I began to play without purpose, not knowing precisely what I should do and teching a bit at random, things that I thought could be useful for growing my cities even more. I was allied with a lot of city states, but it was consuming a lot of money because India was into city states as well. Japan begin to be less friendly as I they were now looking to my lands, so I figured I would denounce them to become friend with everyone else, which happened.

A few turn later, I declared war on japan, thinking that my camel archers could do a good job until artillery came into play. Obviously, my two buddies America and India declared war on me, destroyed all my trade routes (being in a corner, all my trade routes went though neighbors I was now at war with). My incomes went between -50 to -100 GPT/turn, and my happiness -10, because I lost several commercial deals and city states which were providing precious luxuries.

I was able to fend off the Americans and Indians, and the rebels who began to spam here and there, but soon become bored and abandoned, seeing that I was now behind in tech (Rome was doing good), military (Japan was huge), tourism (Brasil).

So my empire was flourishing one turn thanks from GPT and happiness out of trades and city states, and crumbling down the next due to war. I understand I didn't use the renaissance era correctly and allowed other civs to catch with me or runaway, through bad teching, bad international relationships, and lack of purpose.

How could I improve in the renaissance and modern era? I'm good at making strong cities, but when I do have strong cities, I don't know what to do except managing it?

How can I deal with the GPT and happiness issue? What should I do better?

PS: I have also seen a lot of people mentioning moving food from one town to the other with cargo ships or caravans, something I don't do because I generally (and especially with the arabs) prefer to send them to other civs for money and religious influence (which worked really well in this game by the way). Of course, when Islam was the main religion on my side of the continent, I didn't knew how to take advantage of it (I know how to do a few things, I don't know how to take advantage).

Thanks for the long reading (remembering this game was fun) and your advices.

 

[Dr. D]

I'm sure more advice will follow so I'll just touch on a few things.

Petra is good for the extra trade route, but if you don't have any riverside desert hills/desert resources/oasis, I wouldn't sink the hammers into building it, especially if you only have flood plains.

With desert folklore, you're likely to be generating a lot of faith per turn. Make sure to pick a faith building or two as a belief, particularly pagodas.

I wouldn't be spending my money to ally city-states unless they have a key resource you'd like to acquire. The AI loves to outspend you if given the chance, and if so, your gold would have been better spent elsewhere.

For Arabia, instead of building a ton of buildings in each city during Renaissance, build a number of camel archers instead and kill your enemies/neighbors: they are one of the strongest units in the game. Take advantage of them while they are in their prime.

As for happiness, try trading with other civs for their luxuries, build religious happiness buildings through your faith, and try fulfilling city-state quests for luxuries you don't have - particularly mercantile city-states.

As for the gold plummet from trade routes being plundered, I try to plan my trade routes and not send them into dangerous areas if I know I will be declaring war in the near future. That's a little 20/20 hindsight sort of thing, but one to keep in mind when setting up routes in the future. While at war, try to pillage AI tiles to help recoup some of that lost gold.

 

[DarkestOnion]

It sounds like you may have badly managed your Warmonger Penalties. I suspect that America/India were paid to come after you because they saw you as a Warmonger. It also sounds like you were relying on Trade Routes for GPT and they were pillaged by America/India/Japan. It also sounds like you were focusing too much on Happiness from Luxury Trades. If you play as a Warmonger on Emperor+, you need to generate GPT internally (Trading Posts, Commerce Policies, Tithe) and generate Happiness internally (Pagodas, Monarchy, and Happiness Buildings).

 

[Primacide]

Your playstyle sounds similar to mine. I encourage you to view religion as a source of happiness first and foremost. There are many other ways to handle religion, but as a warmonger myself, I select beliefs that provide happiness and nothing else really. This has secondary benefits (golden ages etc) but will greatly help with conquests. I find that I can make it work for short periods without money or science, but happiness is just crippling.

 

[FlashOGroove]

I'm sure more advice will follow so I'll just touch on a few things.

Petra is good for the extra trade route, but if you don't have any riverside desert hills/desert resources/oasis, I wouldn't sink the hammers into building it, especially if you only have flood plains.

With desert folklore, you're likely to be generating a lot of faith per turn. Make sure to pick a faith building or two as a belief, particularly pagodas.

I wouldn't be spending my money to ally city-states unless they have a key resource you'd like to acquire. The AI loves to outspend you if given the chance, and if so, your gold would have been better spent elsewhere.

For Arabia, instead of building a ton of buildings in each city during Renaissance, build a number of camel archers instead and kill your enemies/neighbors: they are one of the strongest units in the game. Take advantage of them while they are in their prime.

As for happiness, try trading with other civs for their luxuries, build religious happiness buildings through your faith, and try fulfilling city-state quests for luxuries you don't have - particularly mercantile city-states.

As for the gold plummet from trade routes being plundered, I try to plan my trade routes and not send them into dangerous areas if I know I will be declaring war in the near future. That's a little 20/20 hindsight sort of thing, but one to keep in mind when setting up routes in the future. While at war, try to pillage AI tiles to help recoup some of that lost gold.

Thanks for your help. The issue is this game is that I had nearly all hapiness building possible (mosque and monasters among religious one), yet without luxuries form city states I was in red!

As for the camel archers, I didn't took advantage of them because I didn't intend to wage war. The first war happened early (with composite bowmen) because an ideal spot for my third city was spoiled by a stupidly placed american town.

I understand that completing city states quest is much more efficient than buying them, and in my current game I have been able to have all of them while investing little money in them (quest and elections are enough). But that's a specialy easy game because I received Poland on an archipelago map with Solomon mine for my second city. I'm currently cruising toward any victory I might want (diplomacy will be the easiest).

 

[FlashOGroove]

It sounds like you may have badly managed your Warmonger Penalties. I suspect that America/India were paid to come after you because they saw you as a Warmonger. It also sounds like you were relying on Trade Routes for GPT and they were pillaged by America/India/Japan. It also sounds like you were focusing too much on Happiness from Luxury Trades. If you play as a Warmonger on Emperor+, you need to generate GPT internally (Trading Posts, Commerce Policies, Tithe) and generate Happiness internally (Pagodas, Monarchy, and Happiness Buildings).

Yes you are right. My early war with America was maybe a bad choice, considering I didn't intend to push to a domination game: yet my reputation was badly hit.

Regarding the internal generation of GPT, I nearly always play tall (because my computer isn't very powerful and I find wide empire game too long) and focus on growth: as a result I have few trade post. Next time I will try to build more of them, and focus a few cities to generating GPT (I won't build a lot of building in them to cut maintenance cost as well).

2 others questions:

1) Do you recommend internal caravans or cargo ship, to bring food or production from one town to another? How does it work?

2) In the base game, I understand it was recommanded to burn the scientist or engineer to rush technologies or wonder. Now they doesn't generate the same amount of beakers or hammers, and it seems that people use them for tiles improvement more than before. What do you recommend in this regard?

Thanks in advance.

 

[joncnunn]

- maintaining happiness, especially during war time,
- maintaining revenue, especially during war time,
- doing something useful during the renaissance era.

PS: I have also seen a lot of people mentioning moving food from one town to the other with cargo ships or caravans, something I don't do because I generally (and especially with the arabs) prefer to send them to other civs for money and religious influence (which worked really well in this game by the way). Of course, when Islam was the main religion on my side of the continent, I didn't knew how to take advantage of it (I know how to do a few things, I don't know how to take advantage).

Thanks for the long reading (remembering this game was fun) and your advices.

Cargo Ships / Caravans don't MOVE food, they CREATE it out of thin air.

The main keys to that if this is a war of conquest are:

1. Have surplus happiness going into the war so you can afford the extra unhappiness from conquering.

2. The AI tends to found cities too close together in the sense that they often have a city that if removed entirely wouldn't lose any key tiles from the empire (and would in fact make the neighboring cities somewhat better). Raze those to the ground to avoid carrying extra city unhappiness.

3. If you know you are wanting a war and you found a religion (which is normal as Arabia due to the Desert bias, so you'll probably have an excellent Desert Faith pantheon), pick a happiness belief as your first follower belief (even if you can't actually use it until you enhance). If planning on domination victory, you may want to have BOTH beliefs be happiness boosts.

Money:
1. Build Marketplace in your capital.
2. Build roads for city connections, but use the minimum number of tiles needed. (As Arabs you have an income boost to these so you can build them earlier than most civs.)
3. Making your capital grow via a Food Cargo Ship will help income a lot.

The Rean era is actually a fairly exciting time, Astronomy opens up ocean exploration
World Congress gets founded
Those going for cultural victory find several key world wonders in this era.
Navigation brings good naval combat ships.
Chemistry boosts production of mines.
Those playing tall tradition can build a lot of national wonders (some of them unlocked from a tech in an earlier era)

 

[EgonSpengler]

It sounds to me like your war strategy needs some polish. I see three questionable moves.

1. Razing Boston. Big warmonger penalties. I think I've only ever razed a city once, early in a game, before I had met any other Civs. America will be the most angry, making it all the more problematic to leave them alive afterward.
2. Leaving America alive. I've tried leaving a weak AI in the game a few times, and it always bites me in the [butt]. Just whomp them. Also, I think George always hates warmongers. He was probably plotting against you while the ink on the peace treaty was still wet.
3. Attacking Japan, which you say was huge, without getting the other Civs to sign on first.

 

[reddishrecue]

If you want to achieve a domination victory, why not try the honor social policy tree? Your units will have less problems going to war with civilizations that you don't kill off because you decided to keep a good warmonger status with other civilizations. Instead of attacking the civilizations' last left over cities, defend your cities that you captured by killing off their units. Your units will also get the promotions and the payment from honor kills.

 

[joncnunn]

It sounds to me like your war strategy needs some polish. I see three questionable moves.

1. Razing Boston. Big warmonger penalties.

Actually, with the exception of the AI you are fighting, none of the AIs care at all if you raze a city vs puppeting. The warmonger penalty is the same either way and is based entirely on number of cities that player has remaining.
If planning on basically crippling an AI, you should let them keep a worthless city or two that's far enough away to not interfere with the cities you are keeping.

 

[DarkestOnion]

2) In the base game, I understand it was recommanded to burn the scientist or engineer to rush technologies or wonder. Now they doesn't generate the same amount of beakers or hammers, and it seems that people use them for tiles improvement more than before. What do you recommend in this regard?

My recommendation for Great Scientists is to create usually no more than 2 Academies in any city radius. After that you should save them up for Bulbing to get ahead of the AI technologically. (As a side note, did you know that an Academy placed on a Strategic Resource counts as a Tile Improvement providing that Strategic Resource?)

My recommendation for Great Engineers is that they are most effectively used to Rush Key Wonders. As such I tend to save them up more often than I use them to build Manufactories.

 

[Rathelm]

My start was very good, I was able to grow to develop the first pantheon thanks to barbarians and then the first religion thanks to desert folklore. My science was very good too, I build the national college as fast as possible before funding my second city near America, and researched all the techs needed to grow my two cities, build an army and continue to tech the scientifics tech. I even build Petra in my capital, which ended useless because I had only river tiles.

I really wanted to hit upon this paragraph. Without pictures or numbers how do we know how good your start is? It is very hard to help you improve without those specifics. As an example you say you built the NC as fast as possible but you don't tell us the turn it was completed. Most people would argue that if it's after turn 90 you messed something up. So what turn did you complete it? Then you talk about researching techs but don't talk in turns. What turn did you get Education? If you were going Domination what turn did you get Artillery? This stuff is important to know.

At this point I began to play without purpose, not knowing precisely what I should do and teching a bit at random, things that I thought could be useful for growing my cities even more. I was allied with a lot of city states, but it was consuming a lot of money because India was into city states as well. Japan begin to be less friendly as I they were now looking to my lands, so I figured I would denounce them to become friend with everyone else, which happened.

What are your goals with CS? Are you going for a Diplomatic Victory? Because otherwise you don't want to waste your money on CS. Spies and CS quests work better and you should only be going for the CS you need (Mercantile for happiness, Maritime for food, Militaristic if you need units, and Cultured is always useful).

How could I improve in the renaissance and modern era? I'm good at making strong cities, but when I do have strong cities, I don't know what to do except managing it?

How can I deal with the GPT and happiness issue? What should I do better?

How do you define strong cities? How much production are your cities at turn 200? If they were strong you wouldn't have happiness and money issues. I know you're asking about those two particular things, but you have to get in the mindset that your cities have to be weak because if they were strong you wouldn't have issues.

My questions to you would be when you have happiness issues have you built the national wonder CM along with Zoos in all your cities? If you don't have all your happiness buildings constructed then there's where you should start. The next thing would be religion, as has been mentioned. Also you can always just ally the mercantile CS. Gold is a bit trickier because it is more dependent on trade routes now, but if, as mentioned, your capital doesn't have all the money buildings you're losing out on quite a bit of cash from internal trade routes (pretty certain they're affected by the modifiers).

 

[phillipwyllie]

Your problem is you DOwed twice and captured a city early on without allies. Furthermore you DOWed a seemingly friendly Japan who was on the warpath and probably would have access to many luxuries. To remove that warmonger hate you would either have to wait about 250 turns or liberate some cities.

Early war in BNW is very costly, except when you haven't met anyone yet.

Gold is gotten from ((terrain + buildings) * multipliers) + trade routes. Multipliers come from having connections to capital and markets/banks/stock exchanges. Also selling all your strategic resources and any spare luxuries will give you 2/7 gpt a piece. Normally one would send all available trade routes to the capital for maximum growth rather than gold so your capital is free to work tiles as needed.

Happiness is gotten from buildings and luxuries. Your biggest source of luxuries will be from trade.

 

[linaker]

My recommendation for Great Scientists is to create usually no more than 2 Academies in any city radius. After that you should save them up for Bulbing to get ahead of the AI technologically. (As a side note, did you know that an Academy placed on a Strategic Resource counts as a Tile Improvement providing that Strategic Resource?)

Why? Early GS's planted as academies can give you far more science than bulbing them. I regularly have around 5 academies in my science city. Academies do give access to strategic resources on that tile, but they don't improve them, ie increase the yield from the resource like mines, pastures and wells do.

My recommendation for Great Engineers is that they are most effectively used to Rush Key Wonders. As such I tend to save them up more often than I use them to build Manufactories.

Whether it is more efficient to rush wonders again depends on lots of factors, like game speed, stage of the game and what your objectives are. It's not much use rushing a wonder and losing it a few turns later, because your empire doesn't have the production to build enough defences.

 

[reddishrecue]

That's right.. You can't always rely on wonders because there's always an ai that could attack, but you could always make production making buildings so that you can be ready to build units while you are being attacked..

 

[DarkestOnion]

My reasoning on 2 or less Academies is that there is little room for more than 2 Academies near any given City I tend to settle. I must also mention that I play on Deity/Standard Speed and I focus on Food as I play Tall. This means that I need Farms more than a half-dozen Academies. I understand that I do not get Tile Improvement Bonuses using Academies on Strategic Resources, but instead I instantly remove Jungle/Forest and do not have to wait for a Worker to build an Improvement. While others do that, I have produced another early Building/Unit. That being said, I am still learning how best to play Deity so my strategy might not be optimal.

As to World Wonders, I tend only to Rush one or two Renaissance ones and The Hubble Space Telescope. As such I do not get too bogged down Wonder Spamming. In the early game the only occasional High Priority World Wonder for me is Stonehenge. World Wonders are not typically crucial to my strategies on Immortal or Deity. However, I again offer only what I am experimenting with…not the end all Alpha Strategy.

 

[Acken]

Rush wonder with engineer. Dont plant more than 1 or 2 academies (depending on how fast you tend to finish your games), keep the rest to bulb the key techs.

 

[reddishrecue]

Beakers from great scientist bulbing are more when you bulb in the later years than in the earlier years.. So for example, you'll get more science from academies when the scientist was born in the earlier years while you'll get less beakers from great scientist in earlier years.. When you place an academy in later years, you'll get a lot less from the academy than a bulb since you get way more beakers from a great scientist free technology in the later years than in the earlier years..