Emperor+ experiences?

[Marid Audran]

Who here in the community has experimented/played extensively on the top tier of difficulty levels, namely, emperor, immortal, and diety? And, perhaps more to the point, has won? I'd be interested in a recap of such a gaming experience so long as somewhat "normal" settings were used; at least "standard" sized planets with the 7 other civs (no duel quick wins). I know that Blake has quickly been moving up the ladder of difficulty levels, and probably quite a few other unsung poly members too.

[Saurus]

I have been playing Emperor for some time now. The gap from Monarch to Emperor is in fact not that big. The main difference is the much higher upkeep and civic cost - you will start to pay maintenace from turn one and the upkeep cost increases drastically when you find more cities.
This forces you to reduce your early research.
Thus, in particular, early game is heavily affected.
You are also forced to expand slowly - already your second city will cause your science to drop to around 60%.
I always play pangea were quick expansion is extreamly important so Emperor provdies a huge challenge here. Often in order to secure at least some land, research must be comrpomised heavily - you will have to accept those periods of zero-research. Though you must be extreamly careful theese periods do not happen before you are ready ... having research dropped to zero and you still beeing whitout pottery for instance will doom you into a situation were you will not be able to research anything more... ever! (I speak from personal experience)

If you can survive early game whitout losing too much ground in the reserach field and whitout sacrificing too much space, you will find that the game mechanics are pretty much the same than when playing monarch.
I was very close a cultural victory just recently but failed. It certainly is possible though.


More than anything ... luck has a bigger impact now.


Compared to Monarch:

1) If a A.I decides to declare war at around 2000 BC and swarms his early units against you ... take it with a grain of salt and restart!!
(A.I:s starts with extra techologies and units and workers ... so will destroy you if he decides to do this - a question of luck - not skill!)

2) Gems, silver, gold and also sea-bonuses are now very important for early game game because of much needed gold to pay for early upkeep!

3) Playing as an Organized civ gives you a bigger advantage than on Monarch since you won't need to pay upkeep from the very start.

4) Getting a religion is difficult (Again - because of reduced early science)
If you try to get an early religion and fail, you will be in a very, very bad spot. Now you will be whitout the techologies needed to improve land, yet you must still already start to compromize you research in order to expand! The worst possible scenario is that your reserach will drop critically low even before you have reserached even the most basic technologies.

5) Under normal circumstances, A.I players will be techonlogically more advanced during the classical and medieval era. By the time you reserach alpahbet you will usualy see the whole picture ... if you at this point has NO technology to trade with, your have fallen too much behind.


This is my experience playing on Pangea and while I cannot speak from experience,
Continents or Arphipelago of course should be quite a bit easier as you usually is not under that much stress
when it comes to quick expanding.

[uberfish]

Most of my civ4 experience is at emperor on standard continental maps, since I started playing at that level figuring two levels down from max difficulty would be a nice easy introduction to the game for a civ2/AC veteran (wrong, haha.) For me, the big keys to winning were focused research targets and city specialization.

I was stubborn enough to just stick with emperor until I could win, so I can't really compare to monarch but can offer a couple of key dates:

1500 BC - AI building oracle is a risk from this date on
1950 AD - AI can launch spaceship around here if it's been mostly peacefully building, this is the date I shoot to beat if planning an eventual culture or spaceship win.

In a winning game I usually get alphabet fairly early and trade my way to tech parity, then get outresearched by the AI in classical and medieval because it has larger cities and my upkeep expenses are hurting, but pull ahead in renaissance/industrial.

[Shaka II]

I've been playing emperor games for a while now and find that it's the right level for me to provide the most fun and challenge, without being too hard. I've played a number of civs, but like organized and aggressive the most, and everyone loves financial.

I like to win big, not just squeak by on time, so emperor still offers that. Domination is the victory condition I go for. I suppose it's possible for some really good players to be a pure builder and not take over neighboring civs, but that's part of the fun for me, like playing chess on a big map. I usually disable space and diplomatic victory, because I like to slug it out in the end game, but I still get to build some of the world wonders.

At emperor, usually the domination win is in the modern era with tanks, usually modern armor even, but in the present game (my best) I had an early win before industrialism, with only cavalry, infantry, and cannons. So, it was a tremendous amount of fun and got me a 50,000+ score. Previously, I had only done a domination win this early as the Romans on Monarch. On marathon, it's a bit easier to achieve an early win on domination. A standard pangea map, marathon, 7 civs, me as Tokugawa, who I finally played on recommendations (Blake?). So, I agree, they are great, but to take advantage of them (aggressive/organized), play to that strength by expanding early, building plenty of barracks to produced superior units, and building many courthouses, to allow that expansion without crippling the economy.

Meanwhile, a rapid buildup of the capital into a super city, building cottages, linking resources, and zooming off for civil service, alphabet, and then machinery to allow macemen(samurai). 1st war was with axemen/swordsmen to expand beyond my 5 cities, Napoleon declared early war on me, so I captured two holy cities, and booted him off of my pennsula. Ghandi also encroached on my peninsula, so I took two of his cites to give me about 9 or 10 cities, and a forbidden palace to reduce distance penalty.

From then on, it was steady expansion, while building some key wonders, both world and national. The 2nd war was with samurai/catapults 3rd war was with knights/samurai/catapults, 4th war was with grenadiers/knights/samurai/catapults, 5th was with riflemen/grenadiers/knights/catapults, and final two stage war with Mao was with infantry/cavalry/riflemen/grenadiers/cannons. Mao, in my opinion, is the best AI along with Washington, but that's just my experience. Don't let them break away from the pack or you'll never catch them.

I was first to discover liberalism, proceeding to economics for the great merchant, over to rifling, and then back to nationalism for Taj Mahal and constitution/democracy, then forward to assembly line (infantry) and communism (state property). Some key wonders that I built were hanging gardens, founded Confucianism, built the religous shrine, golden age, Taj Mahal for second golden age, Statue of Liberty, and of course I ended up capturing most of the other wonders in the game through expansion. Key national wonders of Oxford, National Epic, Heroic Epic, West Point, Wall Street (about 3 turns from completion).

My economy was starting to hurt with my later expansions, so as the game was nearing the end, I switched from bureacracy to free speech, and from free market to state property. That gained me +220 gold/turn, and I probably should have changed from bureacracy earlier, since my towns had become so numerous. My first time using state property, which is great for the empire builder, allowing me to put the slider back to 70 science/10 culture. I learned that from Aployton BTW. Someone said "once you go commie, you'll never go back". I won two turns after I declared peace and emerged from anarchy.

Marathon is the way civ was always meant to be played. The Japanese are a wonderful civ to play a domination game, and the samurai, is a great UU, just at the point, when the critical expansion comes that determines the success of the game.

Also, I've played as the Romans (my most games and wins, praetorians ), Mongols (both), Americans (Washington), English (liz), Persians, and with less success, the Mali and Incans. I usually play pangea, but highlands is great for a bigger challenge due to the barbarians and the rugged highlands terrain. In the end, pangea is really the most fun overall. I don't win every time, but every game is a learning experience, understanding more details that were previously overlooked. Civ4 is a pretty deep game when you think about it.

[player1]

I'm currently playing on Emperor settings.

While I casually win on Monarch, on emperor it's hit and miss.
If I played it out well, I win, if I get bad luck or don't calculate diplomatic situation well (like 3 enemies with large army) I lose.

[xxFlukexx]

Yeah I play on Emperor and see a lot of what Saurus has posted. Mainly #1 is what destroys most of my games. I have a screenshot of a massive war between me and Montezuma that just won't end. I mean I had a respectable army, Monty didn't even take one city, but some line was crossed going from Monarch to Emperor and I just can't keep a large enough army to keep the aggressive civs from attacking me. Well I can keep a large enough army but then I am paying 7+ gold per turn in unit cost and then my research is so low I'm dead anyways.

I was on a roll winning on Pangaea standard speed Emperor until I decided to switch it up and go for an early religious approach, now I have seemed to have lost all my skills.

The only one I know of who plays Immortal+ on normal settings is Dominae, would love to see some of those recs.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Saurus


Compared to Monarch:

4) Getting a religion is difficult (Again - because of reduced early science)
If you try to get an early religion and fail, you will be in a very, very bad spot. Now you will be whitout the techologies needed to improve land, yet you must still already start to compromize you research in order to expand! The worst possible scenario is that your reserach will drop critically low even before you have reserached even the most basic technologies.

In my experience, getting an early religion depends on who you play as. If I start with mysticism, I usually get Buddhism (at Emperor). With the philosophical trait, I expect to get Confucianism either from the Oracle or from my first GP as part of a CS sling shot. On the other hand, I'm yet to win my first Emperor game, so perhaps I'm putting too much effort into getting a religion.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Blake]

Latest emperor game as Asoka is shaping up good. For some reason I seem to do mcuh better with peaceful building as Asoka than any other leader. Altough I've dismally failed to convert any others to Buddhism, no-one has declared war on me, and the big giant hindu block is all infighting.

I believe a large part of Asoka's emperor strength is he is the only organized leader to start with Mysticism, Buddhism is pratically a gimmie. I founded buddhism and conf, the latter actually spread to 2 civs I hadn't met, and when I switched to do some religion-scouting I got free contact, woohoo.
During the medival age I was about 8-10 techs behind, I pulled ahead at paper and got to Liberalism first, and once I got Liberalism I was in #1 place with all the AI's only having Divine Right, and me having Liberalism and Nationalism.

Part of my success was based on luck, I got stone and thus build the Stonehenge, Pyramids. I also got the Great Lighthouse and Great Library. With enough open borders to really make use of the Great Lighthouse.

The only hiccup is that so far I havn't generated a single great scientist, so no acadamy. But I'm past the point where it really matters since soon I'll have blanket coverage of universities and the oxfords in my capital. I'm running 90% science with pretty much the largest empire in the world, and that's from peaceful expansion. I doubt I could have managed to expand so fast without organized, and the early income from Buddhism and Conf also helped greatly. Obviously though I had considerable scope for expansion, with a large island all to myself (an AI did manage to found 3 punk cities, but one flipped to me).

In another game I'm attempting peaceful victory with Elizabath, where I pulled off a Philo-slingshot, building the Oracle and founding both Conf and Philo in my 2nd city. The problem with that game is my territory has nearly no food, there isn't a single city with more than 1 food resource, which really dampens GPP generation. But that should improve with Biology.

I find it very hard to resist going to war though, especially when I'm first to nice toys like Cavalry, cannons and redcoats. ESPECIALLY when I hit 100% science with positive gold income and the only way to increase science further is by militaristic expansion, I should probably just not resist the urge.

[player1]

In my last game when I played emperor I was attaced by 3 civs while I had only bronze and axemen and they has longbows and swordsmen and catapults.

Eventually I got catapults and then longbows and macemen, but they were always in from with units type.

At the end I succeded in getting peace with 2 factions and continues the war with once remaining one, but now in his territory.
After some pillaging and heavy fightin I conquered one of his cities and razed two. Then we made peace, but was cirppled for whole game.

Later one of my friends attacked one of the 2 other my forner enemies, and a bit later I joined in and made revenge.

Eventually I won with space victory and had most of the territory from 2 of the civs that attacked me when I was outnumbered.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers


In my experience, getting an early religion depends on who you play as. If I start with mysticism, I usually get Buddhism (at Emperor). With the philosophical trait, I expect to get Confucianism either from the Oracle or from my first GP as part of a CS sling shot. On the other hand, I'm yet to win my first Emperor game, so perhaps I'm putting too much effort into getting a religion.

RJM at Sleeper's

If you start with mysticism you obviously have better odds of founding a religion.
However, here again luck will decide witch way things will go.
If an A.I civ instanstly start researching budhism (Isabella always will for instance) and you do the same thing, you will lose due to decreased early research you are experiencing.

The best Civ for anyonw wanting an early religion at Emperor level is clearly Asoka.

[uberfish]

The best bet is Hinduism if you want an early religion at emperor+, any civ that starts with mysticism is almost a guaranteed lock to get it if you research poly straight off.

I have been messing with immortal, standard speed continents, but haven't scored a clean win yet. My experience is it's really unforgiving of both overexpansion and underexpansion. I should probably stop playing around with fancy oracle builds at this level, tech/religion wise they're great but the tradeoff in terms of city sites and production is proving a really serious problem.

I'm enjoying emperor more, because I can win by focusing on the strengths of my own random civ and starting position.

[player1]

I don't know, but usually every time I tried to get early religion on Emperor (when starting with Mysticism) I succeeded and then lost the game due to serious laging because of not reaserching proper techs at proper times.

[Blake]

Ugh, I decided to play emperor with a random civ and got Loius (ind/cre). Does he have any redeeming qualities? He's the leader I rate as weakest, there's not even a weakest-equal in my mind. Should I just (*ahem*) be a good frenchman and surrender?

[player1]

Weak? hardly...

Creative is good for early expansion (no need for Obelisk), especially if you want to get that marbe and stone you'll use together with Industrial trait and get Early Piramids or something else...

[Blake]

Yeah, I spoke too soon. I managed to chop the Pyramids and my start, despite having extremely "mixed" resources (ie I had to research pratically every worker tech) did at least have good food. So 4 scientists later and I'm at construction. Now I just have to fight off the #1 AI, Qin. And isabella is up my backside. She's my religious ally (which means nothing to her*), but I'm defering bribing her into the war until I can actually make a real offense against the Qinster, last thing I want is for her to pull out as I go in, so I'll invite her in the turn I go to war, I'll take the near cities before she pillages them properly, and she can tie up his reinforcements and act as extra pressure for him to sign a peace treaty with me. Or she'll just backstab me before I'm ready, or she'll grow some balls and dogpile Qin without my bribes.

However I still feel like I'm playing with half a leader, so Ind (probably) got me the Pyramids (of course I'm bitter about that, one less potential spoil of war ), but Creative? More border pressure to make the AI's hate me . I'm researching Drama anyway to get a quick +5 culture in captured cities, as luck would have it I have a metric asstonne of happy resources (or will once Qin is subdued) and only a few happy resources so the "creative happiness" wont mean much. Oh well, at least I have no warmongers near me.

Oh yeah, the cool part is I havn't lost a battle with Qin yet except the foregone conclusion ones, I've had 4-5 Combat1 Chariot vs Combat1 Chariot fights, and my chariots won every one of them. And I killed a swordmen with 2 chariots and the 1st withdrew. I suspect without this luck I'd be stomped. The luck has carried me through to construction, and with catapults I don't need luck.

* Is +12 with Isabella enough to make her not declare war? I know some of them have some sort of override when the bonus gets high enough to stop them declaring war...