(December 20th, 2016, 03:43)haphazard1 Wrote: Sugar as well as three dyes at the barb jungle city? Mmmm, tasty. Sugar is more food as well as happiness, which is always nice to have. And if you have more than one source, you can always trade the extra for something.
I like the continuing expansion push, but make sure you also build/have enough units to escort the new settlers and garrison the new cities. Barb archers are now a known threat, and spears or axes could start appearing soon. Don't stretch your defenses too thin. Zalson's planning notes about roading to the new city locations is good -- a solid road net will help with defense if needed. Plus movement and trade routes, of course, so that is a win all around.
Also, be thinking about costs. As the new cities are founded your maintenance expenses will increase, maybe more than you are used to since this is Emperor. Your Organized trait will help a bit, but your research rate is likely to slow. Keep that in mind as you plan for finishing key techs like Currency, CoL, IW, etc. Getting some more commerce going (improved resources or cottages) or libraries and maybe a scientist or two (non-slider beakers can really help when your tech rate crunches) are possibilities if tech starts stagnating.
Under the circumstances, I'm hesitant to make too many comments, but looking around the save, there's a few things I'd like to note (psychologically, I see tend to see problems rather than opportunities, I'm afraid ).
1) Check the worker up near CP - I'm not sure that a plains riverside farm is a priority over roads or chops (although we'll want one on this tile eventually)
2) Our tech rate scares me. I don't think we can afford two new cities. I think we're about 20t out from currency, and probably as much again from CoL (OK, we'll plan to build more shiny mines and some libraries, but I don't think we can afford the second until CoL is due).
3) That's a pain, because we really want to whip in BS and let YM grow. BS isn't working gold and is at the happy cap; we want to get YM growing to get some value from the granary (payoff may be down the line, but at least food in the box now is worth something).
I'd consider a reversal of some of our planning - aim for one settler, chopped and whipped out of BS (once the foodbox is full, as Zalson says). Library and growth at YM (chop into the library? it's an efficient use of forests because we're CRE, right? Maybe even same at CP?). Hope we can get another settler out out of YM soon enough that we don't lose hammers. Settler has to go purple for sheep/gold/silver.
I'd roll the dice and pray we don't need copper any time soon. Do the barbs actually build spearmen (outside of events)? I'm straining my memory, but can only remember getting archers and axes in recent games. If so, chariots may be enough.
I do like the fact that we have workers read to finish key chops.
I could be wrong about all of this - I've just officially lost the emperor "shadow" game I was playing off the Huayna Capac start, so may be in a negative mood .
So for in-game as well as the (much more important) RL reasons, there's no rush on these turns.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore