Announcement

**trev** · February 10, 2006, 00:52

I agree that wars between AI's are neede to win at the higher levels, all games that I have won at emperor have included late game AI vs AI wars.

**xxFlukexx** · February 10, 2006, 01:32

Errr, well yes and no to AI fighting. Yes you want the AIs to fight, but you definetly do *not* want the AIs to win any of their wars. Trust me an AI that wins an early war with the bonuses on Emperor+ is near impossible to beat, I have done it only a few times and it was neck and neck the whole time. On Monarch and below I could always ally with the strongest Civs and later wipe them out at my leisure, but I have had games where Monty or Julius gets out of control with successful early wars and then it's just game over. Even as you have stated, if Egypt or Mansa Musa grab a lot of territory in the beginning of the game, all of a sudden, they grab Liberalism in 1040 AD and I see tanks by 1750 AD. so you really have to regulate their expansion as well, phew so much to handle.

What matters? Well there is no general research order or build order that you can just copy and use to win like in Civ1-3.

Stuff that helps:
-Good terrain
-Room to grow
-Having AIs not blitz to your good city spots
-Strategic resources(especially copper and iron)
-Not starting near any Aggressive Civs
-Wars between AIs
-Lots of different religions (which usually results in the AIs fighting AND not trading)
-One to three good trading partners
-Staying in the "tech trading cirlce" Once you are out, it is very hard to squeeze back in
-Lots of GNP
-Lots of Military
-Good end game plan (whether by spacerace or domination or diplomactic)

I was thinking about starting an Emperor workshop, but it's gonna be titled watch Fluke lose and comment and try to help him beat Emperor consistently. If I don't have to work much tommorrow and this weekend I'll probably start it up.

I've gotten my spacerace path down pat, and I am trying my hand at non-Japan and non-Roman domination and having a large army while keeping up in tech is very hard to do.

For a normal speed game with all defaults on, it is very hard on Emperor. Wish I could help out more.

**Alkis2** · February 10, 2006, 02:30

Yes, normal speed and defualt settings, that's what I had in mind. Also, no cheating on and no save reload. If you are given a tech from a hut you have to reload. In other words you are not allowed to be exceptionally lucky.

About starting positions, I don't consider starting alone on a continent bad any more. The reason is, there are starts even worse

You know what I mean.

Anyway, a good method of attack is something badly needed imho. The problem with normal speed is that by the time you are ready, your units have a few turns before they become outdated. Attacking with cavalries is possible, I know that because I did it in practice but what about earlier? Any good opportunities to attack earlier?

Good point about an AI killing another AI and becoming a monster. In one game Ghengis wiped out the Incas. Actually the last two cities were taken by me who saw the opportunity but he did most of the job. Unfortunately for poor Ghengis he didn't know when to stop and he then attacked someone else. Meanwhile I completed the space parts and won.

In another game Huayna killed both Fred and Isabella. He completed the Apollo last of the 4 civilizations competing, but then he started producing spaceship parts at crazy speed and won eventually. So, yes it's very dangerous when an AI has SUCCESSFULL wars.

About military, I am always last in all my games. Definately you need an army but even being last it's acceptable imho. Usually I get attacked by the standard 2frigates +4 galleons + troops but I have no trouble to kill them eventually. Sometimes I have a ship or two patrolling my waters especially where I expect the invasion to come.

With land borders I have an army near the border always, preferably fortified on a forest/hill. If you don't have a safe borderline it's very bad. You are open to all sides and you don't know where to defend.

About good endgame plan which technologies do you research first if you are going for space victory? Do you go the electricity/computers route? Do you go for Industrialm for better production, or do you go artillery/rocketry to finish the Apollo first and then all the rest? Most of the times I go computers first.

**couerdelion** · February 10, 2006, 04:22

I guess the simple answer is to get ahead in the tech race and stay there. How you do that is something that has been covered in numerous threads so I’ll not try to repeat them all here.

With regards to the threat of a strong AI, I can only suggest that the simplest way of dealing with this is to make sure that you are the one calling the shots in the war. In other words, you’ll have to use a combination of diplomacy and military planning to choose the time when you fight and the time when you have no option but to be nice and friendly. Your long term goal will be to attack the strongest AI as soon as possible. Even if your goal is to simply harry them stall their own progress.

Finally, you have to use your leader’s abilities and try to find ways of compensating for their weaknesses vis-à-vis your rival civilisations.

Of course a poor starting position can make this a serious uphill struggle and I am not, for a minute suggesting that this would be easy without a great deal of practice, trial and error and the development of sound strategies for all situations.

**Alkis2** · February 10, 2006, 07:46

I guess the simple answer is to get ahead in the tech race and stay there. How you do that is something that has been covered in numerous threads so I’ll not try to repeat them all here.

Apparently you refer to the many slingshot threads. However by performing a successfull slingshot that doesn't mean you are ahead in technology. You just have one tech, CS (or Philosophy) at the expense of having fewer cities. There are times I get first to liberalism but even then I don't consider myself ahead since the others have several technologies I don't have.

About attacking the strongest AI, do you do that when he is on your continent or do you go as far as to invade another continent? When exactly do you do that? Do you have certain examples or are you talking theoretically?

Of course a poor starting position can make this a serious uphill struggle and I am not, for a minute suggesting that this would be easy without a great deal of practice, trial and error and the development of sound strategies for all situations.

What exactly are those sound strategies? Can you be more specific? The purpose of this thread is to gain more knowledge to deal with a difficult level.

**couerdelion** · February 10, 2006, 07:57

Originally posted by Alkis2

Apparently you refer to the many slingshot threads. However by performing a successfull slingshot that doesn't mean you are ahead in technology. You just have one tech, CS (or Philosophy) at the expense of having fewer cities. There are times I get first to liberalism but even then I don't consider myself ahead since the others have several technologies I don't have.

I've played a few slingshots with Lizzie and have generally been able to turn this into a very big tech lead. The slingshot gives you an immediate tech lead but also the capacity to extend it.

About attacking the strongest AI, do you do that when he is on your continent or do you go as far as to invade another continent? When exactly do you do that? Do you have certain examples or are you talking theoretically?

Largely theoretical. The point being that you probably have to work on the assumption that you should attack them sometime. Just find the time to suit you best, there's nothing that says you can't clear a few weak civs out of the way first.

What exactly are those sound strategies? Can you be more specific? The purpose of this thread is to gain more knowledge to deal with a difficult level.

Slingshot is one, Axeman rush another, Cottage spam another. Crudely speaking, any strategy that works and can be applied to the specific situation you are in. I also believe that my tech path and trading strategy works very well once you have got the lead. At least you should give it a try to see how it works.

**Blake** · February 10, 2006, 08:28

Apparently you refer to the many slingshot threads. However by performing a successfull slingshot that doesn't mean you are ahead in technology. You just have one tech, CS (or Philosophy) at the expense of having fewer cities. There are times I get first to liberalism but even then I don't consider myself ahead since the others have several technologies I don't have.

When you get Stonehenge And/Or the Oracle, you deny the AI prophets, and thus they can't (easily) lightbulb religious techs. In particular missing the Oracle immediately puts you in a deep hole relative to that AI, a hole you wouldn't be in if you had the Oracle. You can predict to a degree who will get Theology first, like when a philo leader gets stonehenge, and leaders without a religion or stonehenge or oracle are highly unlikely to get a prophet.

One of the most important concepts of high difficulties is there is one, and only one, reason the player can win: AI Incompetence. You rely on the AI being incompetent. Due to bonuses, in many cases when the AI acts competently (ie Monty rush), you tend to lose.

Basically, to me, victory at emperor seems to come down to three things:
1) Maximizing the benefit of your leader's traits.
2) Adapting to the start.
3) Luck.

I think that requesting only non-leader specific strats is folly. It' not as if there is some big-picture issues, it comes more down to extreme optimization and finely tuned strategy to get a lot more benefit out of the leader traits than the "passive" benefits. For example with a philo leader it's possible to get all religions except Hindu and Juadism, which is also a HUGE pile of tech to trade around an incite wars - but that's for Saladin only, really.

And I do think that Emperor may be the first difficulty level with true lost-cause starts, which MIGHT be possible with the benefit of replaying. The main starts I'm inclined to think of as lost causes are the Monty/Napoleon "no questions asked" rushes, in situations where there is no way to bring allies to bear on them.
Take Diety OCC victories, it seems to me they are only possible when skill and luck collaborate, and in most cases omniscience (reloading) needs to be added too. The game largely becomes one of finding winnable maps. I suspect at emperor the win chance for the perfect player might be about 70%, or 90% with omniscience.

Now, one of the easiest ways to lose is a series of bad combat rolls and it's another thing that in theory can just go so badly that however well you're strategy SHOULD have gone, it ends up failing. It's just plain HARD to have the required numeric superiority vs emperor AI's. One of the few determinstics things is the AI war behaivour - when they can be bribed, how they tend to act while at war etc. I'm thus inclined to agree that victory is ultimately a matter of dimplomatic manipulation since an unplanned war always carries a risk of undignified defeat by bad RNG streak.

Or to summarize: Alphabet is important.

**Thrar** · February 10, 2006, 08:31

I agree about having the AIs go to war with each other, that's an important point.
Otherwise they'll just race ahead of you, unless you're really lucky about your territory and such.

I played AU101A on emperor, and even though apparently something went wrong there with the starting bonuses, the mid- and late-game AI should have been an emperor one.
Key to success in that case was expanding towards the AI first, and even though they had some colonies in my back, I gained a lot of territory. I attacked a neighbor (Spain) to gain a little more ground, and then kept peace for a while. Mid-game, some smaller AI wars broke up, but nothing really dangerous to have one becoming a super power. Later on I joined these wars as 2v1 usually, and eventually got to Domination.
Tech-wise, they all were ahead of me, I could just barely get the military techs to keep fighting. Two of them built spaceship parts, they must have been at least 10 techs ahead. But in the end it didn't matter that much.

**Alkis2** · February 10, 2006, 08:39

I see. Axeman rush is something I never tried, maybe I should.

Elizabeth used to be my favorite, but now I realize that on Emperor I played just one game with her (won). I remember that with Elizabeth your chances to get the slingshot done are better. She is good.

**Alkis2** · February 10, 2006, 09:21

Very good post Blake, thanks.

I agree about the Oracle, it's very importart to get it. Even to just deny it to the AI would be reason enough.

Good point about maximizing the benefits of your leader's traits. What leaders do you usually play? I like Saladin, Asoka, Elizabeth and Mao. I don't like to rush using a UU so Caesar and Toku are not for me. Also, I never reload so omniscience as you call it, is not for me either.

It's good to know that even for a Master like you Emperor level is not always winnable.

**couerdelion** · February 10, 2006, 10:00

Early rush

Obviously you need a source of metal but the trick here is not to allow the rush to stall your tech. It is also not so easy against creative civs or against ones that are too far away. It works well when civs start getting close and the simple rule is to hit fast and hit hard.

One minor problem with the fast attack approach is that you really need to be getting a good city return on your military investment. This will allow you to recover technology ground that you have lost during the war. Failure to do this will mean that both you and the target civilisation have both lost ground on the rest of the world so relatively you might not be much better off.

For slingshots, I generally find Lizzie gets the best results and is often the fastest. After that I’ve found Gandhi slightly ahead of Saladin in the Prophet first/Oracle next race but that might simply be terrain related.

**PaganPaulwhisky** · February 10, 2006, 10:49

I've seen some comments that emperor is not that much of a step up from monarch, but I just can't handle this level so far. Last game I got Caesar with a great start location and two free techs from huts. I thought I would have a pretty good chance. Boy was I wrong.

I was surrounded by 5 AI's who even without trading had far surpassed me in tech. I expanded nicely and took out a Chineese city with an axeman rush, but could not continue due to finances. I was able to secure iron and churn out a nice army of Praets and then *tried* to attack China again figuring he be weak from last time. By this short time he had managed to crank out around 15 units just defending his capitol plus a bunch of others that had flooded into my borders. He stomped all over me and he was middle of the pack (his catapults sure helped him out as he got the tech in the middle of the attack). I had alphabet, but no one would trade good techs for it. I was planning to off this for COL and monarchy both of which I needed very badly. Happiness was killing me and I was running 60% science while everyone else was cranking out the discoveries.

I would also appreciate some kind of workshop on this level because I can beat Monarch most of the time, but I just get thrashed on this level. I'm not much of a wonder builder and I usually ignore early wonders in favor of expansion or conquest unless I get certain leaders. I don't feel confident going for the Oracle since I usually get beat to it neway on monarch+. It just seems too risky to me and I don't like investing that much time and sacrificing in other areas just to get one free tech. Maybe slingshots are critical on this level and thats why I am struggling so much as they are not my forte. I guess you need to accumulate as many little advantages as possible and somehow figure out a way to keep pace in tech. Any advice is appreciated. I beat monarch pretty quickly, but I feel like it will take 10 years to beat this level.

**The_Paladin** · February 10, 2006, 11:21

Blake makes an excellent point about the oracle + subsequent prophets. Both grant the AI's free techs and set them ahead quite a fair margin. Denying that oracle (and stonehenge to a lesser extent) can be a surprisingly powerful play. Even if you waste the oracle on some little thing its better than letting the AIs have it (though of course you should use it for something decent if at all possible).

On the same hand, letting the AI get the pyramids isn't too bad. They already get such bonuses to happiness and everything else that the new civics from the pyramids don't really help them that much, IMHO.

To me, there are two ways to approach the emperor game. Either you are going to have an early war or you aren't. If you are planning a war, focus heavily on production (axeman rush suggested earlier is an example of this) so this means horizontal growth a lot of times.

If you aren't going to have a war, focus heavily on the GNP. The faster you can get it to be above the others, the better. It doesn't matter if you fall behind somewhat in the other categories. Once you have a GNP lead, you get a tech lead. Once you get a tech lead you get a ever cascading bonus to all your other categories because of your advanced tech. Even if you have fewer cities (which is almost inevitable on this difficulty) you can use that GNP lead to either wage a war or build a super empire of smaller cities looking elsewhere for more land.

So the key, as many have said here, is that GNP to tech lead (technically you don't have to have a GNP lead... just a research lead - so you could use specialists but without the pyramids that's pretty hard).

I find that if you want to learn to play on emperor and above, three things really helped me:

1) No Ancient Age Wonders - Proper builds can almost always snag a classical era wonder... but forget those ancient age wonders (save for maybe the oracle if you really want one because of what Blake mentioned). Relying on a wonder that you have a good chance of losing is a good way to lose the game before it starts. Forgetting those wonders lets you learn how to expand at your limits while still maintaining a growing research rate. Using a civ with the ORG trait will help you bridge the gap between monarch and emperor. It will help you learn to adapt your lower difficulty strategies to the harder one.

Even if you get the wonder you were after, I find the wonders force people into this "I have a few powerful cities for thousands of years mode." The wonder gives you a nice bonus but there is simply no way for those few cities to keep up with the AIs that will have many more very soon if they don't already by the time you get your wonder done. So whereas it may seem like you have some great bonus because you got CS early or you got the pyramids, you probably didn't if you sacrificed the rest of your empire.

As an example of that - consider Vel's orignal CS slingshot workshop vs his new one (1a). Remember he said in his new thread that he would expand first, as he normally does, and then continue on with the slingshot. In this way he hasn't made the CS slingshot his strategy... he has incorporated the concept of the CS slingshot into his own strategy. That original strategy of his is one that works for him and he's only made it more powerful by adding in CS. So what I'm saying is that don't start with a wonder strategy... get a working strategy that you are comfortable with and incorporate a wonder into it later. That way you can confirm if the wonder actually gave you a bonus over your normal approach.

Also don't assume just because someone (like this Paladin guy with all his lame great people strats

) has posted a strategy on the forums is going to work for you straight out of the box. Those strategies that are posted, no matter how detailed, are only a small part of that poster's overall working strategy and do not guarantee success on their own.

"Reading an idea will allow its use. Understanding it will make it your own"

2) Turn Of Tech Trading - Yes you heard me!! I know we all love to get that one advanced tech and go shopping for what we can get for it... but this can make for a bad habit. If you rely on tech trading you fall into this "I'll get this tech because I know the AI usually doesn't and I'll get a lot of free tech for it" mode. That's not a bad approach... but instead of researching the techs you need, you are researching things because the AI doesn't have it yet. If tech trading is off, you are on your own for all tech and you then are forced to get the techs that will benefit you by yourself. That way you learn what techs will help you the most early on and incorporate that into your strategy.

For example say you have a lot of neighbours on your island. With tech trading on you might, say, go for Music or Literature and shop it around to grab things like currency and construction (or whatever) but with all those neighbours what you really needed / wanted would be currency - it will boost your GNP by an extra trade route / city. So with tech trading off you would've got that yourself... you would've had to decide for yourself whether getting literature for the great library or getting currency would've been the better play. This forces you to think critically about what techs would actually benefit you more at each stage in the game... and then when you do turn tech trading back on you know what techs you really want and can decide if you should go for them yourself or get something else, wait a bit, and shop around for them later.

3) Great People Learn what great people can do for you at every stage of the game. Each one of them can give you a significant turn advantage if they are used right. Want those wonders? Save massive turns for each one with a engineer. Want those science techs? Get the scientist to get them for you. Want that religion founded? Find yourself a prophet. Each one should spell turn advantage if its used right. The AIs don't generally use them well... but you can and should!

The way to use them, for me, is to plan out a strategy for yourself, figure out the critical points in that strat (critical techs, critical wonders, critical resources, etc) and then figure out how GPs can help you get them faster.

Your strat involve getting cavalry fast? Well you should know that 3 scientists can give you philo, paper, and 1/2 of education for free speeding you along! Get those three and you are 4500+ research instantly closer.

Your strat involve starting a middle age war? Well get an artist to help research nationalism and get a engineer to insta-build that Taj Mahal for a nice wartime golden age.

You alone on an island - can't trade with anyone? Get an engineer and a merchant. Engineer helps with machinery and merchant helps with banking grabbing you the useful bank and giving you mercantilism.. you aren't trading anyway - might as well get a free specialist to make your cities better!

These are examples that I use... figure out your strat and incorporate GPs into them. Properly used, GPs get you whatever you want many turns earlier... we can all use that. Best of all - no one steals GPs from you!!! You can't lose them like wonders so your use of GPs can be 100% guaranteed.

**Blake** · February 10, 2006, 16:22

Good point about maximizing the benefits of your leader's traits. What leaders do you usually play? I like Saladin, Asoka, Elizabeth and Mao. I don't like to rush using a UU so Caesar and Toku are not for me. Also, I never reload so omniscience as you call it, is not for me either.

I like all those leaders (especially Asoka and Mao) altough I like Toku too. I don't care for Caesar because he's a bit reliant on being lucky with Iron. Yes, Toku needs iron too, but he has time to grab it with a catapult war.

On warfare. For many leaders and for many starts warfare is the only way to get out of the starting hole. 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. Taking cities garrisoned by archers with catapults is easy, you can pretty much bet on losing at most one catapult, while with axemen you could lose at least as many axemen as there are archers and prehaps more if the RNG hates you. Because you can't afford to throw away shields on Emperor I thus consider the catapults essential.

Announcement

What things actually matter on Emperor

What things actually matter on Emperor

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment