Worth continuing or am I screwed?

[JustBen]

I'll second all of the Big Z's advice. I refuse to believe that stack of glorified Cavalry can make it all the way to Salamanca when you have access to Infantry. We humans don't lose cities often, so it hurts when it happens, but you hvae to lose a lot of cities post-Industrialization to lose. I don't think I could conquer you with that many Sipahi, so I don't think your Pentium can either.

Oh, and to Zerksees -- my link to the Defiant Nationalist game was in no way an attack on your attempt to save that hopeless Regent game that even I was dumb enough to claim was still easily won. I'm very impressed by both your resourcefulness and determination to salvage that piece of work.

 

[me_and_kg]

Well i must say you were right, I was able to defend against that many Siphai! It was just a case of moving all possible infantry to the cities that were at risk. I think I'll try and play it through a bit longer.

I'm interested in your comment about my cities being too far apart - reading on the war acadamy led me to believe they should ideally be far enough apart so they don't overlap, thus allowing maximum growth. But I suppose that doesn't matter until near the end of the game.

By the way the Ottomans sneak attacked me, otherwise I would've given them what they wanted!

 

[JustBen]

Originally posted by me_and_kg
I'm interested in your comment about my cities being too far apart - reading on the war acadamy led me to believe they should ideally be far enough apart so they don't overlap, thus allowing maximum growth. But I suppose that doesn't matter until near the end of the game.

You got it right yourself, but I'll give you the really short version anyway since you asked for it:

By the time you can build Hospitals, you have already won the game. Therefore every city only needs 12 workable tiles to maximize relevant production. That makes 8 tiles of every city radius safely overlappable. Place your cities accordingly.

 

[zerksees]

justben - no offense taken. I read a little bit of that thread. That approach redefines war monger to me.

me_and_kg - nice job hangin in there. The AI is not as strong as you might think. In my only loss on emperor, I defended a walled city on a hill with about 6 spearman. The AI brought about 30 or more medieval infantry and swordsman. It was scary, but it held. I was so far behind in that game, but I put a can of whoop-a** on them that time.

I suggest you spend some time with the combat calculator, you will understand the odds better and be more confident about your chances.

In reality each city would need about 7 or 8 good tiles (pre-hospital). You will want enough extra food to support 4-5 scientists or taxmen. Build a few settlers and start some more cities. Read up on ring city placement so you know where to put them (if you haven't already read about this). Don't be fooled by those cultural borders, if you don't have a citizen working every tile under your influence, then you are wasting resources.

Also build some workers and make sure all of the tiles being worked are railroaded and mined or irrigated. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. Even when you are at war. Start far away from the front lines. The AI has a decent production advantage at emperor, and you have to be fairly efficient with your tile improvements to keep up.

 

[JustBen]

Originally posted by zerksees
In reality each city would need about 7 or 8 good tiles (pre-hospital). You will want enough extra food to support 4-5 scientists or taxmen.

Wow. That's dense. My main concern is that your shields-to-food ratio would start to drop dangerously low. I mean, aren't irrigating tiles to feed specialists that might otherwise be mined to support a less dense build?

I can see this is being a mighty powerful commercial strategy -- that counts double for actual Commercial civs. Especially post-Conquests (with double & triple specialists), this could involve some serious bank. I'd never considered that angle. But then again, I find putting the torch to my enemy's homeland to be more fun -- and for that I need shields.

I know my way can carry the day on Deity; is your way how you got your win (cf. Z's sig)? This is an approach I've never seen articulated explicitly, so I'm now very curious about how it treats you.

 

[zerksees]

justben - the great thing about this game is there are so many ways to succeed with it. You can use the extra gold in so many ways. Use it to buy alliances, rush build units (if you are short on shields), upgrade units, whatever.

I should restate a little. It is nice to have that many taxmen or scientist if the land supports it, but I wouldn't completely sacrifice the shields for the taxmen. I still support the dense build though.

In your productive area around the capital (and/or FP depending on your approach), I do space them further apart if I can, but I always balance the shield and food production.

If the cities come up short of size 12 who cares - I waste very few of the tiles I control this way. If there aren't enough good tiles and you are concerned about that then you can give them a little more room.

BTW I have little experience with commercial civs. My deity win was as the Americans. I was using cannons, cavlary and riflemen in my final assaults. I plan to go back and play deity more but I have been having fun experimenting with huge map HOF attempt and with Groobz's game on the other thread.

 

[me_and_kg]

Hey, I know this thread's getting a bit old now, but I thought everyone might like to know that I've finally won the game in question! I achieved a domination victory with a rather modest score of 2638.

It took me a long time to gradually built up my defences while under almost continual attacks from the Ottomans, but eventually I was in a position to begin taking back all thew land they took. Then, it was a case of fighting quite a few wars to take a couple of cities at a time and stretching my forces to a maximum to try and defend me cities. Eventually however, it worked and I crippled their economy and just went around mopping up cities until I had domination. I had to destroy their spaceship twice, as there was no way I could beat them on science with such a bad reputation.

This is my first emperor victory and I've learnt so much from it. I can now see they value in using artillery in great numbers as part of your attack - I don't know how I ever won a war without them! Also, I was a bit surprised the Ottomans never built the Manhattan project. I was greatly worried that I would be screwed if they built it, but they never chose to - maybe they were too busy building units to defend against my armies !

Anyway, thanks guys - your good advice has finally taught me to play civ properly!

 

[Rik Meleet]

well done.

 

[zerksees]

nice job staying the course! emperor will get easier each time as you find more ways to make it easier on yourself.

 

[KingBruiser]

Yesterday i made a great defense using what alot of people are mensioning.
I Placed musketmen along my border with forts build by the workers.. i was able to do all this after they declared war.. i also had 12 ansar warriors in the nearby town to finish off any LUCKY Passers of the ARAB MAGINOT LINE!