What things actually matter on Emperor

[Alkis2]

Since several good players showed an interest, here is a save. Have a look at it and play it and then we can exchange strategies.

I would also like your opinion on the position. Is it good, bad, ugly, lost? What do you think?

You are Mao and you have Stonehenge, Oracle and Angkor Wat. You have some cities but you can't expand more peacefully.

[Saurus]

I have now several weeks of gameplay on Emperor and more and more I start to think it is mostly (sad to say) luck dependent. I only play pangea so if you guys play continets or other such maps then you may be in a better situation.

On pangea the situation is this:

1) The beginning:
Let´s face it. From the very start you are very, very weak compared to A.I
By the time you have built your first wotker, warrior and settler, A.I is roaming around with Horse Archers, Axemen and Spearmen. That said ... you ARE dead if the A.I decides to kill you and some leaders almost always decides that you must die (Alexander beeing the worst example)
(Still you have no choice really - On a Pangea, you MUST expand! Otherwise you will lose ALL land and this happens very, VERY quickly!!)
What makes things so very bad on Pangea is that since all Civs meet each other early and quickly, it is almost guaranteed that at least 1 warmonger will show up and start looking for a target and this warmonger is likely to find you the most appealing target.

2) The rest of the game
If you can make yourself through the first phase of the game...then you are now dependent on mainly one thing: A.I wars!
A.I-players MUST fight each other ... otherwise you are doomed. This is also more a factor of luck than skill.
( of course you can with skillfull bribery start A.I wars...
the problem is that once an A.I gets a lead...it is difficult to get anyone to attack him, and you probably won't have anything to bribe with anyway)

I have had several games with good resources+good land witch I have lost and not getting past medieval age beacuse A.I has won a spacerace victory around 1650-1700AD.
I have also had games with poor resources+extreamly poor land witch i have WON (cultural victory) becouse of constant A.I wars.

Overall I have to say that playing emperor is not at all that much fun really since whatever you do, it feels as it makes no difference. It too much feels like luck, not skill, determines the outcome.

[Shaka II]

I play mainly pangea maps too Saurus and agree. The AI is on you fast, though not always. Sometimes you have a bit of growing room and can build 5 or 6 cities. Other times, it's a battle to get the third city out before the AI has moved in. I don't know what is worse, being next to Alexander, or being next to one of the cultural giants like Hatshepsut or Catherine. Getting killed by culture is not much fun either.

To reinforce some of the ideas expressed already, I would say yes, the AI is often too peaceful, and that is bad, since they are allowed full use of their bonuses. Likewise if one AI is dominant, conquering neighboring civs, that is far worse. It depends a lot on what type of win you are going for, not that you can't change your goal midstream. Domination requires controlling 64% of the land mass and a certain proportion of the population. Letting an advanced civ gain 40% of the land mass means that you'll have to go to war with them at some point, which is futile if you're behind in tech. So, the idea is to not let it get that far to begin with.

Alternatively, civs with smaller landmasses can be just as problematic if they're friendly with each other and post MT have signed defensive pacts. Are you strong enough to take on two at once, one having a tech lead on you? These are all situations that occur when you're playing for domination. By waging war, you're diverting resources that could go to establishing a tech lead. I once broke a love fest up between Mao, Ghengis, and Tokugawa, but it cost me dearly. Mao wanted 29,200 gold to attack Ghengis, which activated his defensive pact with Tokugawa. It was in the modern era (me Washington). It worked like a charm, all three of their armies dropping by 50% in 10 turns, especially leader Mao's, leaving me as the new world power. And then I double crossed Mao. It cost be -1 with Ghengis for bringing a war ally against him, and nothing with Tokugawa. But they won't vote for me for the diplomatic victory. I left the game at about 42% of the land mass due to war weariness, probably would have just been a time victory.

As Fluke said, you want the AI's to be at war, but don't want them to be too successful. In the present game which I have 59% of the land mass, and population requirement is a steep 70%, I'm faced with Catherine who has 40% of the land mass, a technological lead, and wants to sign a defensive pact with me. . It's hopeless, unless I want to go all the way into modern armor warfare and reach the miltary unit limits. I've done it before and I'll win in the end, but it will be a long drawn out ordeal. As Aginor said, it's more fun to play before the full modern era than fighting one of these wars with 300 to 400 units.

I see you mention normal speed, which is good for the builder, for space victory, etc., but not so good for the conquest type play. units are obsolete before they get to walk from one side of the map to the other. Marathon is the best speed to have a game with meaningful ancient era or medieval era warfare. It's fun and fulfulling. It depends what you like.

As far as gaining the upper hand on emperor, I'd say that even if you were playing for a space win, even on normal speed, I'd do some early warmongering to take over a neighboring civ or to gain the upper hand on economics. Having too large an empire can be and usually is counterproductive, but that is one of the challenges of domination.

There is a small window for axemen if you have copper. If not, forget early warfare until you have catapults, unless you are Romans, in which case, by all means, try your luck at iron working. If I don't have copper, I invariably have iron. But I've had games without even building a single Prateorian, just because the copper was close by and the opportunity was such that to go for IW was not necessary. Plus I had ivory. So, an axeman rush turned into war elephants and cats with construction, later followed by MT and cavalry. I usually trade monarchy, or if I have to, alphabet, for iron working. I find monarchy to be essential to avoiding a population cap on the capital. So going for monarchy, then alphabet or vice versa is good for me.

I generally only build early wonders if it looks really good, like stone nearby and some forest. But going for oracle is a good way to lose the game. So many things can go wrong. you generally need to chop it in, so you have to go for BW. If you go down the priesthood path without researching archery and have no copper (axemen), the barbs are apt to get you. Or Alexander. A recent game, I built Stonehenge and was building the Great Pyramid (I had stone), when Alexander decided to archer rush. So just as I lost the GP, I had about 3500 gold on hand and upgraded 10 archers to axemen. Boy was he surprised, but he took out a couple hamlets and a gold mine. I couldn't take his city (Athens) either with 10 fortified archers, or a second one with about six. So, I just stomped over his improvements and called it even. It was just one of those games that I took a look at it and did a reset. Though Stonehenge culture was taking over one city. But so much jungle to my North, it just looked like it would be a long uphill battle.

In summary, early war? Yes if you have axemen, but only if there aren't more than two or three defenders. No axemen? Wait for catapults, unless you're Romans with iron, then go for it. Barracks are essential of course. Diplomacy and strategic decisions seems to be what wins or loses the game in the end. As someone else here said, at some point, it's necessary to go up against number one, or two in the case you're number one, before it gets too late and they're too strong or too advanced. They reach a runaway condition very easily mid game. But, usually you are starting from way behind, so to think of going after number one, it is midgame. So, planning an ally relationship with a 2nd tier civ is probably a good idea. One who you can bribe with tech. Another reason to be a tech leader or at least vying for tech lead, and to not make too many enemies early on.

It might be a good idea to not adopt a religion until you had some strength, or at least be very careful about which religion you adopted. Make the wrong choice and your fate may be sealed.

Lately, I've been enabling all victory conditions, since most of the ones I play on marathon don't get as far as SS or culture wins . I am sort of tempted in my present game to see what happens if Catherine tries to leave Earth. By that time I'll have reached military parity and Moscow is not that far away. It would be an easy domination win if I wait that long.

[uberfish]

There are lots of windows to attack:

1) Axe rush. Mainly good when boxed in by nearby opponents, as you're a long way away from the early economic techs when you hit with this one and can't afford to take too many or too distant cities.

2) Quick city raider swordsmen (no catapults) combined with resource denial. You don't need praetorians or aggressive to do a lot of damage, barracks will start them off at 4/5 XP and the computer usually has many unpromoted archers sitting around, kill one and you're city raider II and can take on the harder cities. If you can cut off their metal supply early in the war, they'll be unable to build axemen to fight you off.

2b) Horse archers + resource denial. While it's easy to cut off resources with horse archers, taking cities is tougher without access to the city raider promotions, and both horseback riding and archery are dead end techs.

3) Early Cat stacks (quick construction). These are good if all your opponent has are swordsmen and lower. Elephants are a major bonus to this strat.

4) Macemen. Despite the weird tech requirement of CS+machinery, these guys stay current for a long time and are a natural choice for builders transitioning out of one of the various oracle slingshots who can get them early. However, this is also where armies and AI city garrisons start getting pretty large. Bring a couple of extra catapults to soften up cities with a lot of longbows bearing in mind that the AI might sacrifice some catapults on you too, and have counters to crossbowmen (and knights later) ready if they show up.

5) Grenadiers. The AI is quite slow to get to chemistry and not only do grenadiers beat every medieval unit, they beat riflemen too! You can get them even earlier by going through Guilds to get gunpowder and temporarily bypassing paper and education. While you're waiting for chemistry to research you can build catapults, or prebuild some of your grenadiers as city raider macemen to upgrade later.

6) Cavalry. With a strong research focus you can beat the AI to liberalism, take nationalism as free tech and be just 2-3 techs away from cavalry. Best used on a slow teching opponent who will be stuck in medieval for a while, against whom you can rampage around at 2 movement speed and take many cities without waiting for the siege train.

[Alkis2]

There is something I want to clarify, when you trade techs with an AI do you get the penelty, "you have traded with our worse enemies"? I know that for open borders you get the penalty, the AI considers that trading for some reason.

Techs trading is, well, trading but there is no record about it in the active deals list so I wonder if you get the penalty there too.

Some info about getting AIs to war each other. Most of the times they can't be bribed. Or they can but only against weak civs (which you don't want).

On the other hand if an AI attacks you, then the option is there. You can finally bribe someone to join the war on your side. It's fun to piss Isabella to death to make her attack you and get attacked by many just the next turn she declares war. This works.

Be sure to have technology to give !

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Alkis2
There is something I want to clarify, when you trade techs with an AI do you get the penelty, "you have traded with our worse enemies"? I know that for open borders you get the penalty, the AI considers that trading for some reason.

Yes, you do. I just confirmed this in my recent game.

At the very moment I traded tech with Alexander, a -3 penalty appeared to Cyrus and his stance had changed to "annoyed" and he was not willing to trade anything anymore. (I think I will start to think a bit more carefully from now on when trading ... trading or selling a tech to everybody for instance will most likely cause tension in ALL A.I opponents since everyone dislikes somebody)

This I actually like ... If you try to benefit from trading a certain tech to everyone .. then you have to pay a diplomatic price

[Alkis2]

Thanks. It seems that the optimum is to have 1-2 trade partners (who like each other). You form a gang with those and leave the others out. No open borders, no tech trading etc. OTOH, those outside your group will like you even less...

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Blake
IMO there is only one way to wage war on emperor - with catapults! The reason is firstly the bombarding and secondly that catapult damage is fairly reliable, it's impossible to say how much damage an Axeman will do, but for a catapult you can bet on at least some collatoral damage, and the bigger the stacks get the more reliable it is.

Have you had success with Cho-Ko-Nu in place of Catapults? Granted, there are a couple of issues with the unit (cost 60 vs. 40 and necessity of having Iron), but it's generally much more versatile than the Catapults, since it has those first strikes as well as the massive bonus vs. melee units. I generally find them to be a more than acceptable substitute, especially given that with the classic Farseer Oracle and the attendant Great Engineer you can rush with them a lot earlier than you can realistically grab Construction.

[uberfish]

There's one important point I forgot to mention. The window of tech superiority to attack isn't defined by any particular unit. For example, Blake uses catapults as main assault units a lot and I prefer melee troops, but both approaches win wars on Emp anyway. You create the window of opportunity by taking a relatively focused path through the tech tree to the unit you decide on so you get it early, and then taking appropriate measures to stop the enemy counter-units.

I've tried the Mao Machinery slingshot and it works quite well, it's like a medieval machine gun. You have forges to speed up their production, and metal casting is good trade bait. I think the best promotion for Cho-ko-nu in this case is cover since melee units more or less automatically die. Horse archers are the only early unit you don't get an advantage against so bring a couple of spearmen. You will want to tech to construction pretty soon anyway though, longbows are coming and you'll need the catapult support against them.

[Alkis2]

Actually that's a good example to calculate the costs and benifits of war. When that engineer pops up you can use him to build Pyramids for example. If you build Pyramids and you have an engineer assigned in your city, in 20 turns you will get another engineer, which you can use to take machinery.

So in order to compare, you just have to prove that in those 20 turns you will get something more valuable than Pyramids.

Those of you who have tried attacking with CKNs what did you find? Is it worth it? I agree that cover is the best promotion, but without vassalage or theocracy you will have to fight in order to get it.

Another thing I want to ask is whether you build barracks first or you build them without barracks to save time.

[trev]

I find an early war against a top opponent is useful at emperor level, and any weapon available early is good enough in numbers. I just won a game as Washington, where I built a lot of chariots (better than horse archers because they require a lot less shields and horse archers also require a lot of science time that is not affordable). Just position an archer in their territory on a forested hill and they will focus on that and not move into your territory, given you the freedom to choose your time to attack each city. I captured 2 cities and razed another, also razed a barb city to have space to found 2 more. The civic cost was initially terrifying ( 60%tax AND losing 14 gold/turn) but had several hundred gold in bank to run down from the conquest earnings which got me through to code of laws, and growth of cottages into villages towns etc. A long way behind in techs (several AI's got alphabet probably 50 turns before me) but good choice of techs, a scientific GP giving me philosophy, being able to trade Code of Laws, Civil Service and Philosophy for an average of 5 techs each got me to the tech lead where I never strayed from for more than 2 or 3 techs thereafter. I finished the game with the same number of cities I had after that initial conquest with 90% science, and was first to build the spaceship, being the first to several crucial spaceship techs.
I must admit I was tempted to throw in the towel when losing money badly with 40% science, but it is possible to come back from poor positions even on emperor if the tech trades fall your way which they did in this game. Just about all trades were with 3 friendly AI's who I matched religion with, using the religion they founded rather than Taoism which I founded ( I never had a great prophet, so never even built the shrine to it), so shrine income is unnecessary to win as well. The AI's never redlisted many techs at all, just about every time at least 1 of the three AI's would trade a tech to me even if all would not, I think because I restricted my trades to several people only and kept their religion.

[Alkis2]

Trev, can you be more specific?
How many cities did you have when you started your war?
How many chariots did you build?
What was your race?
Did you also build the Oracle?

I agree that sometimes you get a position that seems hopeless, but if you play on you can win because of AI inefficiency. That's my experience too.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Aginor


Have you had success with Cho-Ko-Nu in place of Catapults? Granted, there are a couple of issues with the unit (cost 60 vs. 40 and necessity of having Iron), but it's generally much more versatile than the Catapults, since it has those first strikes as well as the massive bonus vs. melee units. I generally find them to be a more than acceptable substitute, especially given that with the classic Farseer Oracle and the attendant Great Engineer you can rush with them a lot earlier than you can realistically grab Construction.

I'll try that next time I play as the Chinese. In the game I just played as Mao, they really didn't help much as they got on the scene a bit late and the neighboring civs had longbows and cats. So, I had an equal number of CKNs, macemen, and cats, and a few war elephants that Mansa traded ivory for me to build.

In the Mao game, I went a conventional tech path, building Great Pyramid with my stone. Copper and stone were right next to each other, so I built my second city one square away from each, since I have no culture until writing and chop in libraries. With copper, I avoided dead end techs of archery and horseback riding in favor of alphabet, CoL, and Civil Service, trading for the rest. My great scientist built my academy and the rest all fell into place to put me into tech leader along with Frederick. I went the paper/education/liberalism(got there 1st) route as he got to CoL and Philosopy first.

Regarding having the AI fight with each other, I decided to use my substantial tech lead to have the two most powerful armies (Napoleon and Frederick) go at it, so I paid Napoleon an exhorbitant 3 techs to get him in (725AD, with guilds, education and printing press). I know, that's a crazy amount to pay, but it did the job, and it was starting to look bad with them being pleased with each other. Plus Nobody likes to have Nappy on your back doorstep, even if he loves you. In 965AD, I bribed Mansa to attack Napoleon, and in 1022AD I bribed Frederick to attack Napoleon, each with reasonable one tech bribes. That allowed me time to take over Peter's empire and strengthen my army to superiority and take over Napoleon. From then it was the technological backward Hapshepsut and the long drawn out show down with Mansa, who had gotten strong over the years, partly because the pangea map had generated a substantial terra incognita island that Frederick and Mansa expanded to.

I usually avoid the MT path in favor of chemistry, riflemen and assemby line for infantry, since cavalry is a dangerous tech path with a short shelf life, except that they upgrade to gunships which are essential in the modern era. So, beware my riflemen! They don't move fast, but neither do my cats and grenadiers.

So, a final domination win in 1790AD and my third best score of 33,800. Marathon though, so it's easier than normal or epic speed to get an early dominantion win (and high score), though this was not very early tech-wise. Mansa was building SS parts, so I had to time my final war well, just as I was fully defended with fighters and had a good balance of mech infantry, tanks, gunships, marines, SAMs, and some artys. I tried balancing my tank promotions to give half city raider and the other half collateral damage (barrage) in the theory that I'd need fewer artillery (which I use mainly to take down city defenses), which I traded for later with Frederick. A win with infantry and cannons like my last two games is what I think of as early, but those games didn't have the runaway techies like Frederick and Mansa with their own private research island. I had to turn on the tech after burners to catch up after my other warmongering. I built 4 cities and had 33 cities at the end, which is about typical for a domination win on standard pangea. I let the AI and barbs build the ones after 3 to 6 self built cities. The capital though is a very impressive city.

I don't know if the tech bribe was worth it in the end, or just waiting might have been better, since Nappy and I had the same religion. I actually checked to see what religion he was before I chose Buddhism, otherwise I may have had a disastrous early war with him as our cultural borders clashed. It just looked like a good gambit that seemed to work, and it was fun. Sorry for the drawn out war story, but that's usually how I relate to strategy, eperientially that is.

[Alkis2]

You know, sometimes when you ask somebody to attack another you can also add one of their technologies in the deal. Sometimes it works.

[couerdelion]

Turning off tech trading is a little bit of a cheat, IMHO. If also allows you to be a little less concerned about diplomacy because you won’t get trades from them anyway. It also practically obsoletes Alphabet.

Tech trading is a bit double-edged and we’ve all be in a situation where the tech leaders in a game are sitting pretty in the game with friendly relations to several other civs and happily trading among each other while you are just heathen scum and they wouldn’t even give you Fishing in exchange for your ideas on Philosophy and Education. You, OTOH, have managed to build some good relations with Johnny no-mates who is yet to learn to write.

Basically, everything matters in Emperor, you want to expand fast (for production, commerce and resources), snag a religion, build some wonder, develop a strong tech lead, keep friends with the right people, and not expand too fast so that your costs cripple your tech rate. You’ll often need to develop the military up to strength at just the right time so that you can deal with those Mongol, Aztec, or French nutters while taking the rich cities from those too weak and feeble to protect them.

Although it sounds like a tall order, even a seemingly weak starting position will have something you can use to propel you into a strong mid-game position.