Emperor/Immortal Strategies

[Wild Pig UK]

I'm playing more and more on Emperor and Immortal, and I was wondering how these levels have affected other people's starting strategies.

Starting with 2 gold maintenance from the onset is a pretty big deal early on for tech development, and having your palace city cap at 4 people before unhappy faces and other cities at 3 people before unhappy faces without resources kind of changes the initial strategy.

Unless my starting position is fairly good, between the low happy people cap and maintenance from the onset, I can quickly find myself without anything to build in a city because of slow tech development. Even units start to become counterproductive from a maintenance stand point fairly quickly.


I'm curious how others are dealing with these eventualities at the higher difficulty levels.

[gentle]

I guess the main shift in playstyle is that on the high diffs one needs to emphazise military approaches.
Having good units early and in "masses" gets important, so there also appears a shift in tech evaluation.
Techs like archery or iron working become more important very early in the game in contrast to lower diffs which allow builder apporaches that do not research these techs but wait til someone is willing to trade them.

[couerdelion]

I can’t say I’ve encountered the problem of having nothing to build in any of my games. I’m currently playing immortal level to get the feel of the game and played one as far as 1300 AD.

I’ve found that the need to plant strategic cities t counter the threat of other civilisations, has always led to cities continually being developed and the barbarian threats as each time notched up to require a certain amount of resources to be diverted to military needs – my philosophy being that military investments are always a drain on finite resources if they are not generating some revenue.

Of course, it could be that my research level has been high and I am playing a financial civilisation which helps a lot in this regard.

The happiness and health limits are another drain and one that I have only half-experienced (playing an expansive nation helps a lot with the health). The only answer I can provide here is to gather as many happiness/health goods as you can find and also use trading opportunities when you are able to. When you have a few goods spread around then the granary, harbour, market, buildings will double some of these and you may then start to gain a little room for expansion. Don’t forget that the old arbitrary limits of 6 (without aqueduct) and 12 (without hospital) have gone now

[xxFlukexx]

Yeah, the -2 gpt you start out with is canceled if you choose Organized (because it rounds down) so that helps out a lot, you might get -1 gpt for civic upkeep after you found your first city but hey +2gpt in the beginning of the game is a good boost. I usually can't live without Fin or Org on Emperor+ yet because of that initial -2 gpt hit. Yeah somtimes I get stuck with nothing to build, but just build an axeman/spearman/worker, even if they will cost 1 gpt it is worth it.

Happy's are also a big problem, you need to pick your happiness path from 4000 B.C. or be stuck at a pop of 4 for your cap and 3 everywhere else. If you have a lot of calendar resources, go for calendar, founding a religion is risky but very doable, and lastly going for hereditary rule. You can grab Monachy fast with the Oracle or do an Alphabet rush and trade for it or just trade for the techs in the mysticism line and then research Monarchy yourself.

Personally I micro my capital like a fiend, at first I prioritize growth and work specials in my area. After my cap is done building most of the settlers I need (and after popping a GS for an academy) it switches to say 3 grass cottages and a plains hill or 2 grass cottages and 2 plains cottages. That way I get maximum cash for my 4 pop until I can grab monarchy or calendar.

Also gotta watch our for unhealthy's a little bit. A city with 8 floodplains in it's fat cross looks great, but even if you settle it next to fresh water, it will start out with -1 healthy.

Usually my tech path looks something like: BW to Pottery to Writing to AH to Alphabet to Monarchy. But if you don't get Alphabet pretty darn fast (in the B.C.s) then you probably should delay it, as you won't have anything to trade except alphabet. Just my favorite way of playing though, going for Hindy then to the Oracle for Monarchy or CoL works like a charm too.

[trev]

My approach on Emperor has been to found my capital only, then build units, learning bronze early for axemen. I then attack a neighbour, taking 2 cities. This will be sufficient to tame that neighbour for the est of the game. I wait to economy develops enough to allow for more cities, then gain those from another neighbour. In my current game I moved onto a 3rd civ who I attacked in 3 waves which captured all their mainland cities, and also founded a 2nd of my own because an uninhabited area had a food resource I did not already own.
But I renewed a friendship with my 1st victim and 2 other civs who I traded techs with for the rest of the game, this being helped by about a 40 turn lead to alphabet, which I prioritized after bronze, pottery, and AH, ag. Iron working I ignored, totally unnecessary for early wars and take too long.
I also built stonehenge before my first war, and the Great Prophet it generated was used to learn theology and found christianity.
I do not on higher levels attack barb cities, they are left as a distraction for the AI's, very effective too. While they are present, your chances of being attacked are significantly less as they focus on those barb cities. Leaves you to build your weaponry and choose your victim.
I find that AI's mostly choose the tech paths of lower priced techs first, although with some exceptions, so regularly researching higher priced techs( not usually the highest) will usually give you the best odds of trading for techs.

[couerdelion]

Now this time I had a problem with finding things to build

I’ve run into the same issue now in a game where I didn't had many build options. The early game situation was that I had a lot of food resources and jungle to deal with. The lack of rivers meant that my initial commerce was very weak.

There were significant luxury resources just a short hop away. Including potential cities with

1) 5 dye/2 gem
2) 5 ivory
3) 4 spice/1 ivory

I also found these areas were quickly inhabited by barbarians which hit my early game strategy from one that could churn out settlers to one that created axemen. Other civilisations dealt with two barbarian cities while I was left dealing with the ones sitting in the first two positions.

I guess my mistake was to go for iron working before pottery and writing and this led to no buildings and a flood of units. Settler units were also needed to keep down population pressures. One example was in my capital where, if it were to produce gold, it will also create +8 food on the sea tiles it works.

The higher unit maintenance, coupled with the city expansion meant that science was down as low as 40% so new scientific advances were slow leading to longer delays to discovering the technology for new buildings.

Like I say, the decision to go for iron working ahead of writing probably cost me on the city development side and I expect that the 9 workers I currently have would still have founding something to do (clear forest, build cottages, roads, etc).

One way of solving the unit maintenance cost might be to start building things and then leaving them in the queue before they get finished. In fact this has the advantage of allowing a “quick build” if the units are needed.