An alternate guide to OE

The current guide has a lot of useful information, and you should read it first, but...there are gaping holes in what it tells you. I've played the game over 100 hours, and this guide will cover my tactics and what I have learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Getting started

So the first thing you should know is that while the China map and each faction starting location is the same every time, the resource tiles (fish, jade, etc) are different with each new game-even if all you do is start a new game with the exact same settings (unless you save your random seed and re-use it). If you start a game and have no good resources nearby, consider restarting, the resources you have can shift the difficulty of the game.
The custom maps are different each time, though the sample pictures give you a good idea what the general design will be (the big ocean in the middle is good for sea factions for example). While your starting location will be random on custom maps, it will only be partially random, you will always be in the same rough area on the map with a given faction. If you want to start in a different area on a map, you will need to try a different faction.
The China map is HUGE, if you play on that map any wars will more likely be "hey, I wanted that city spot," not "I will conquer all your cities and make my empire huge!" 12 cities is a large empire. If you want a map where you will have to/be able to conquer other factions, a medium or small map is better. The AI is a little more tentative about making cities than you probably will be, so you will have a larger empire-and thus larger armies when you need them (see the war section). So the downside of that smaller map is that you may find your 8 city empire easily smashing 3-5 city AI empires at will.
Your first game you will be playing a farming faction, but once you play 200 turns (in a single game) you unlock the herding factions. They can be better in the long run, but start more slowly. Herding factions don't start with the technology to make farms-which takes 30+ turns to get-so city tiles are claimed by your citizens, not by your choices. Herding cities can get a bit larger than their level would suggest, but you get less food from your land than if you have farms.

Early game-cities

OK, you have started the game, you are now looking at your city and a few units, and a huge fog o war in all directions.
You have one settler-for now. Look at the areas near you for a good city site. The AI tends to make cities pretty close to each other, but if you want to have really huge, powerful cities in the late game, your cities will need space. A huge city can use all tiles within 5 spaces in every direction (meaning an area 11 tiles wide counting the center). If your cities are 6 spaces away from each other they will look great at first, then when you expand you will find you have greatly limited the farms you can build, which means my city is 180 population and you are lucky to get 110. Taxes and trade are both heavily based on population, so your smaller city means less money which means you can't support as large an army. Of course, if your cities are too far away from each other they can't trade until you get more expensive, later researched buildings.
There are a few good resources to look at for that second (and third, I'll get to that in a moment) city. I feel that especially in the early game, fish and game are the most useful. Both resources give you extra food, and your population will quickly grow to the amount of food you have-meaning more money. But it also means you can divert population to clearing land, building buildings, etc. earlier and more often.
The rhinos give 60 gold per turn instantly with no investment, and that is more gold than the population from fish or game will give you, but I still worry more about the food resources than rhinos.
Gold will take time and money to start your mine, but will give you a large amount of money every turn (the deep gold mine gives 220 gold per turn). Copper and Jade (once you have the jade scrape) give smaller amounts of gold per turn, but also count as trade goods, useless in early game but huge in the mid to late game.
Finally horses give a trade good (see above) and mulberries and adisite or whatever it was called each make one of your trade goods 30% more valuable, though you will have to research silk weaving and build a silk weaver to make silk trade goods in a city with mulberries, and ditto with pottery for the adisite.
But resources are not the only thing to look at for a city. Many of the mineral resources are in mountains, and you can't farm mountains. You can't even farm hills until you get terraced farming. The biggest cities are in wide fertile plains with few or no hills/mountains, where you can make 90 farm tiles and thus produce (in theory) 270 food. But to make such a huge city happy, you will either need internal or external buildings for happiness, and the external buildings that make your people happy are built in mountains! Also, sea trade is more expensive to start and keep going, but produces FAR more money because you can trade with more other cities. So a city near a river or even better the sea will make you a lot more cash-but rivers and seas flood more often, and a flood will wipe out your food production for a few turns. Starvation not only kills off your population but it also makes them unhappy so you get bandits or even revolts.
Oh, and terrain also affects battles and how many places people can attack from (and also where you can spawn troops).
It is all trade offs, but at least now you know what to look for. In my opinion, mining and trade good cites are not the thing to aim for unless you are worried about someone else claiming the area, instead work on a few fertile plains cities to give you income and population quickly, then you can grab those trade and mining cities. But there may be a site too good to pass up even though it will grow slowly and be a drain on your empire at first.
Oh, one other thing, buildings SUCK your gold. Be VERY careful what you build if it has upkeep (pottery and walls are nice in that way). A neat trick, instead of making all your cities have military buildings, pick 2-3 near your borders to build the armory and bowyer and whatever others you need, then have your other cities just produce spearmen and noble axemen. Combat in OE is heavily dependant on numbers, and while a core of quality troops can wreck havok, you only need a few.

Early Game-units

You have one leader, who is both a formidible combat unit in the early game, and has some abilities your other units don't. Most important in my opinion is encounters. Say you are playing a faction with a -20% to knowledge development, then you send a leader type unit to an encounter with a teacher, and boom, your penalty is now -6% because the teacher gives you a perminant +14% to that type of tech development. Oh, and the bonuses stack, I've had +30% to some techs in games. Other encounters will give you free money, a tech, military units, authority, or culture. Or they can cost you money (or the bandit leader can give you money in exchange for losing authority-a bad move IMHO).
TLDR, send your leader to the location of one of the encounters you can see. I actually keep my leaders exploring for much of the early game.
In the cities section, I mentioned getting a second and third city right away-but you only have one settler! Well, if you are willing to take a short term hit to population (that will be fixed in 3 turns), make a second settler immediatly. While you are at it, also make one peasant spearman. That spearman can be sent to explore, and if any of your units find bandits it can return home quickly enough (don't auto-explore, manually have your peasant walk around the edge of your sight area). That early knowledge of where good city sites and encounters are will pay the upkeep of that unit easily.
Also (maybe this should have been in the city section) build a farm. Once that is done, you should build a farm. When your farm is finished, build a farm. Until your peasants get unhappy from labor service (read labor service upset over 30, but sometimes 20 is too high, and sometimes 40 is fine), build farms all the time. Every farm adds population, which adds money, ability to build buildings quickly, etc. Each turn you don't build a farm is a decrease in population until the end of the game (I've yet to build all possible farms for any city by the time I win the game). Once you can clear forests, start clearing, even if you have farmland now. It takes 3 turns to clear forest and only 2 turns to plant farms, so if you wait to clear until you need the land, your farm construction will be at 2/3rds speed. Swamps take 6 turns to clear, and you get the tech later, so...
When you get the tech for roads they can be nice for your troops, especially if you have rivers. A road over (under?) a river includes a ford, meaning your troops can cross the river and keep moving, rather than spending a full turn to cross. They also help trade, build roads on the lines.
You won't need any external buildings, other than mines, for the entire early game. Trade is not cost-effective until you have at least 3-4 level 2 cities (population over 40). Don't build a bazaar until then. Don't build external sea trade buildings until well after that. Do build a wall, they have 0 upkeep and make your cities much safer (you will see why in a second).
The building you do need for conquest-the bowyer! You see, if a city has any wall, even if there are no troops inside, melee troops are incapable of taking the city. Only archers, crossbows, and catapults can knock down walls and let those melee troops inside. So if you want to ever take a city from a foe, you need archers. The other troops are "nice to have" but you can take any early game city with enough peasant spearmen, noble knife-axe men, and peasant/noble archers.
OK, so a basic primer on taking cities. Archers (and later catapults) will knock down walls, then sit around with their thumbs up their you-knows. Melee troops will sit outside a city absorbing arrow fire from the towers until there is an opening. You need both to take a city. I actually make a "standard stack" of 4 melee units, 3 archers, and one leader type. 3 archers can smash a few wall segments a turn. The city will rebuild 2 segments a turn, so one standard stack won't take a city. But 2 can, and 3 will almost always do it. If you can send 4 stacks after a city, more melee is better than more archers. 3 groups of 3 archers will destroy all walls by the second turn of the siege.
Unlike open battles, siege battles have a time limit. This is a BIG advantage to the defender, they don't have to win, just not lose. The long spear peasants have low attack, high defense. If you are the attacker and you send them in "hey, they are an upgrade from regular peasant spearmen right?" you will suffer. They are an upgrade because they are so good at defending towns, but regular spearmen actually have higher attack. Who cares how many of your peasants die in the battle, as long as enough of the enemies' troops die! Noble axemen and leaders have the best attack, but you don't want your leaders attacking if possible. You see, any time your leader fights, it is possible he will die. You get a replacement after a while, but if your faction leader dies you take a hit to authority, and can find your cities revolting. If this happens after your heir dies and before a new one pops, you will have a new faction leader with almost no authority (I've gone from 15 to 4 that way).
Now the big advantage for the attacker in sieges. A city can hold 8 troops. A city has 8 attack avenues. If your archers open a hole in the wall and your melee go in, one of the city defense stacks will plug the gap and fight to the death-as long as units remain. If you open a gap and send in melee troops and there is no defender unit to stop you, you instantly take the city.
So say the defender has a 5 star leader, 3 regular cavalry, and 3 noble axemen, and you have...I donno, 12 archers and 24 peasant spearmen. Note that he has -7- defending units, not 8. Your archers make short work of all wall sections, and your spearmen go in and get slaughtered-well, the first 7 do. The 8th spearman finds no opposition, so he takes the city, instantly killing the 6 elite troops and highest quality leader. A city with less than 8 defenders is in grave danger from an intelligent attacker.
Now you can do OK just controling where your troops go, but there are nice other things you can do with your troops if you want more out of them. The button with football strategy icons (X's and O's) lets you tell each unit how to fight. Why archers are not defaulted to skirmish I don't know, but set them all to that. Set your leader to defend or researve, he is there to command, not get his fool self killed in a manic charge (which is what they do far too often with the default stance, even if in the rear). Set your center melee troops to charge, and your side melee troops (especially cavalry) to outflank. Also, another button lets you change facing on your troops. Having the archers safely in the back is great, having your army backwards so your archers get hit from behind and your spearmen have to get around them to engage the foe...not so great. Also catapults sometimes won't fire at a city unless the unit they are in is pointing at the city as well as attacking the city (odd bug but...meh).
Um, basic primer on defending cities? See above, but backwards.
Also, troops have two bars, one showing how many men they have (of the maximum) and the other how tired they are. They will replenish men if in the area of a city that can make that unit (note that a city that can't make unit type x for three more turns can't make that unit, so can't replenish), otherwise the unit won't get more men, but can get less tired by not moving or fighting. In large unit engagements (each side has 2-3 full stacks) fatigue can cause your troops to become useless, if you can send your most exhausted troops to the rear and bring up fresh troops you will do a lot better. This is also how a lot of people fail to take cities. If you have been attacking a city for 3-4 turns and have not taken it, send some of your worst battered melee units to the rear and bring up fresh.

Early game-techs.

So there are four tech trees, each (mostly) independent, meaning you work on 4 techs at a time instead of just one-a neat mechanic.
Power, Farming, fighting and fortifying. Note that the farming and fighting being in the same tree forces you to make a decision. Do you want more food->more peasants->larger armies. Or do you want elite troops but smaller cities able to support smaller forces? I tend to go with the former, but it is a temporary decision anyway. You will pick up most of both sets of techs over time, the question is which you want first.
The rammed earth wall->roads tech branch looks really nice, but it is something you can wait on most games. You can't get a rammed earth wall without a palace, which is a lot of gold in cost and upkeep for early game. Roads take peasant labor, and if you have small towns, you can't afford the labor. "But the rammed earth wall unlocks the second level mines!" Yes, and maybe you have 2-3 mines and it is worth the time to unlock that tech early, but most games you won't have good mines in the early game-or the peasants to build the mines.
Flood control...either you desperately need it or it is just something to get to the irrigation and terraced farms techs. The latter two give you more food from normal farms (after you spend 4 turns improving them) and more places you can farm. Most good city sites won't need either of those techs in early game.
Seedling->wells, +5% to food sounds tiny, but...it isn't, trust me. These techs will get you to level 2 cities (and your cities controlling much more land each) a lot faster. There are reasons to not get these two techs first in some games, but mostly you will want to.
Drill->signalling. Drill gives you long spearmen, who are...meh, good for defending cities? They are also good in a mixed force as your center melee troops. Have them charge in and your noble axemen or cavalry use encircle and hit the foe from the side. Signaling gives barracks which gives professional troops. Professional troops cost money to raise, but they don't hurt morale (peasants don't like being drafted, and neither do nobles), and while nobles will supress peasant unhappiness, professional troops supress all unhappiness.

Craft, money and weapons/armor. This unlocks the trade goods and mines, but also gives you the armoror (defense buff for your top quality troops) and weaponsmith (unlocks troops who have higher attack so you can take cities). Also note the bamboo strips tech, this is a nasty thought/craft trap that can stymie your research if you don't keep it in mind. Also if you ever want a navy, this is where the tech to build boats is hidden.
Oh, ceramic roof tiles reduce quake damage and are needed for the second +5% food tech.

Thought, I can has authority and culture? Techs here fall into two broad groups, some give authority so you can have more cities, others give culture so all your cities are happier. Two of the techs improve your leaders, which can be a nice to have, but not a huge deal. A little further in are the religions, which allow you to build a temple that not only helps happiness, but can help tech too. Oh, and mid (not early) techs here boost future development of the techs. Tea and cannon of wisdom are worth entering the second age for.
Logographic script is needed for bamboo strips, which in turn is needed for said canon of wisdom, so work on that early maybe. Oh, but get yin and yang EARLY for the knowledge techs it unlocks.

Knowledge, horses and bows, medicine and science?
So the bow tech here only allows noble archers, and peasant archers will do the job. You need this eventually for crossbows though.
Horses...ugh, I love horses but the techs take SOOOO long! Worth it, but maybe wait for when you will need it soon (either for war, or because you really need another point of authority for that sweet city site).
Calander->astronomy. 2 points of authority and a complete negation of one type of negative effect, generally the first thing I get on this tree.
Katy Perry/medicine/pins and needles. The medical techs (once you get yin and yang from thought) are wonderful, not only for war, but because disease is a common occurance.
In warring states era, grab math, it will give you +15% on all the other knowledge techs. Plus it unlocks the abucus for +15% trade income. Fire arrows will make sieges faster, but if you are in warring states era, it is faster to get the catapult tech from power.

[bli-nk]

Nice, closest thing to a basic guide I have seen. Could be a bit more organized but the info is pretty accurate- only thing I think is wrong is about when/how to use encircle. Max line width is 5 for cavalry, 3 for chariots, and 4 for infantry. Only cavalry can really benefit from encircle if in the front line. 2nd or 3rd line may benefit from encircle but keep in mind it means units will take much longer to reach the battle so... might not even up fighting at all if the battle is over. Even worse, if they are trying to encircle and a 2nd enemy army arrives as reinforcements they can be caught alone and wiped out.

[ti3hjmd]

Very helpful! Thank you.

[Lateralus]

There's some great information in this guide!
Can you please place a paragraph every 4-5 lines? A wall of text is very hard to read.

[Mordachai]

another question: how do you trade across small unnavigable rivers?

[Mordachai]

I am running into problem of low-cash, and being defeated (troops) when defending a new city.
I drop the city with 4 or 5 units of peasant long spear and archers, and my leader, and a few turns later they're whittled down to nothing (I don't know why I drop from 5 units to 2 - apparently attrition during the battles?)

I win the early battles with enemy stacks having to run away (stacks of like 1-2 units) - but in a few turns, my stack has dropped from 5 to 2, and I lose (somehow their stacks - out in the wilderness w/o access to replenishment - manage to survive and whittle me down while I stand on defense, presumably with at least whatever initial defense boost from being in friendly territory).

What am I doing wrong?

[aaror]

@hobaphuc98, "Trade is not cost-effective until you have at least 3-4 level 2 cities (population over 40). Don't build a bazaar until then. Don't build external sea trade buildings until well after that."
Early game trade is a mistake, it will cost you gold, but since you get access to the bazaar right away, it is one of the most common new player mistakes to build it.
But a size 60 city with 4 other cities in trade range will make bank off trade, and when you get huge cities trading you can get double your income with smart trade.

[hobaophuc98]

may i ask why should i focus on trade ? i build foundry and bazaar but my copper value is only 6 while the upkeep is 40

[エナモカ]

needs some reformatting in the paragraphs because its kinda hard to read but still this is good guide.

[CtrlAltFunk]

This is a seriously well written and comprehensive crash course in Oriental Empires. It's an excellent guide.

But it needs a formatting overhaul to make it truly fantastic. Headings and spacing between paragraphs. Go crazy with headings. Break up all your amazing tips into different sub-sections.

[Smoky_TW]

Thanks, really helpful