ok, so how do you win on emperor?

[make]

Originally posted by cgrecu77
Having the epic in a secondary city and bureaucracy in the capital allows me to pump out macemans very quickly at a rate of 1 every other turn with just 3-4 cities.

Wow, thats some unit production powerhouse you have there.

I guess you have nothing else but farms and mines in that citys fat cross?

I can see the advantage of having a city which is dedicatet to producing unit (optimized fore production), but find it hard to afford it, especially, when I only have 3-4 cities.

[cgrecu77]

ok, I got it ... after 4 long hours I managed to win the emperor with the romans. I finished right at the 700AD mark with a score of 120k.

I started of a good location and managed to grab 3 cities very early by chopping them. I immediately build libraries and barracks and I started pumping pretorians. Next to me was Montezuma and I manage to get him to join me in attacking the northern americans. I also convinced mansa to attack them (they were the western neighbours of the americans). I had a sizeable 20+ army that was no match for the lousy roosvelt that had only 3 archers per city. I only took attacked 3 cities and razed the closest ones since they were pitiful. I only kept New York with the intent of trading it to a distant civ ... silly me, i forgot that in the new patch nobody wants those poor cities.

Anyway, then I moved my troops to the west and I attacked mansa who was the score leader and I conqured 2 of his closest cities from me and then asked for peace. In the meantime monty had grown restless since he was a close friend of mansa (imagine that!) so I had to take care of him.

At that point I was firmly in control having a large army, but my financial problems started to appear ... Even at 0 science I only managed to stay even. Since Louis was the farthest civ from me and he was isolated from us on a peninsula and blocked by gandhi I switched to Louis' religion and joined him in his war against gandhi (I had no borders with the indians).

In the meantime I turned to monty who was exhausted from the war against the US. I ramapaged through his land (he was at the far est, isolated and blocked by my territory). I only kept 2 cities and razed all the small ones because by that time my balance was already negative.

After that I had a huge number of units so immediately after cripling monty I decided to give him New York to keep him busy (surprisingly he was willing to take any city, probably because he only had one) and I quickly moved all my troops to the far west where lizzy was located (in the southern part of the map, on a peninsula simetric to the french). Again, i had very little trouble taking all the cities except for a few, isolated on small islands.

By that time I was eating quickly through my war chest bleeding money very fast so I knew my only option is to try to kill everybody but the french - so I decided to keep all conqured cities. In all captured cities I began chopping libraries.

At this point I was already the leader with Louis a distant second. Mansa was starting to recover and he was 3rd. Gandhi was very weak after the french wars and I made quick work out of him and I also eliminated a few aztec pockets. Now I was controlling most of the continent except for a small american pocket to the far north east and for the malinese who had a few cities to the middle-north part of the map. I decided to attack the americans first and I had to lose a little bit of time moving troops that were idle at the gathering point all the way to the east. In the meantime my veteran army was approaching the malinese from the west. After attacking the americans and destroying them I converged with all my troops on the Mansa.

However, I was surprised by how may troops they had by then so the fight took a little bit longer. By the time I finished them I was losing money at a 200gold per turn rate (+130, -350). Also, some of the cities didn't have forests around so chopping was not possible and I had to constantly stay in a state of anarchy to avoid losing my troops due to strikes.

Once I conquered the whole mainland I made peace with everybody and I had to exit the anarchy so my libraries would complete and I could start expanding my borders.

At this point (around 400 AD) the situation was like this:
I had a score of about 1800, Louis was second with ~800, all the others were around 300 or below. I was the tech leader with the exception of louis who was far more advanced, I didn't even have the code of laws or mathematics, and he had music and philosophy ... Luckily we were best friends with a rating of over 10+.

Once I got out of anarchy, in a few turns all my units were disbanded and I ran into an unexpected problem that forced me to reload ... Since I had quite a few dark pockets, barbarians kept popping up and I had nothing to defend since I had no army ... it sucks to see a little warrior conquering your capital and not being able to do a thing. The main problems were my capital, that had large unopulated tundras underneath, and in the far east where the barbs had 2 cities close to my border.

Then i had a life-saver idea, I rushed a settler and built a city between the 2 barbs and donated that city to monty. After that I had no more problems except for my capital. Since then I had a lone warrior supervising from a hill the few dark spots, but since I lost it in the strike, every few turns a barb was popping out. The solution was to always keep a unit with 1-2 turns before completion and then rushing it just when the barb was next to the walls. Using this trick I was able to hold up until I discovered code of laws that enabled me to switch to caste and soon after that I reached the 64% needed for the victory.

In the final turn I was bleeding almost 300 gold per turn even though I was maxed out towards commerce with as many merchants as possible (except for the small cities that had artists to expand).

I have to say that it looks to me that marathon is a lot easier than standard speed, it could be that it better suits my style of play, but I think that Caesar has a great advantage under marathon. Since he gets a huge unit very early it takes many turns for the AI to come up with a counter, on standard speed your initial advantage dissapers very quickly.

All in all was a nice game, but again, kind of boring since all I did was pumping out troops and killing helpless archers ...

[cgrecu77]

Originally posted by make


Wow, thats some unit production powerhouse you have there.

I guess you have nothing else but farms and mines in that citys fat cross?

I can see the advantage of having a city which is dedicatet to producing unit (optimized fore production), but find it hard to afford it, especially, when I only have 3-4 cities.

Since my cities are small (under 10) I usually start by building cottages on good spots and mines. I have to say that I cherry pick starting location since I was aiming for getting a very high score. 3 plain hills with maybe one metal and doubled by the bonuses are very powerful indeed ...

Also affordability is not an issue since my only goal is to build as many units as I can (once I get the civil service).

[mutax2003]

You can stay in perpetual anarchy as outlined by Moonsinger on CFC, and win deity conquest victory, but that's consider somewhat of an exploit, which will be fixed in the next patch.

[cgrecu77]

well than they should also fix the obvious bug where corruption and waste causes negative balance, I mean you can't really waste more than you could produce now, do you Without any army at all how can it be that a country have 150 income and almost 500 expenses? I really like the way Civ4 deals with overexpansion but I still think that the increase in maintenance should be a little less steep.

In my last game I had 1 size cities with no buildings and no units inside eating up 10 gold or more per turn. Maybe the maintenance should be weighted more heavily with the city size - you want to discourage overexpansion, but you should not make it impossible. Vast empires were possible in real history, they were shortlived most of times, but the romans had a large empire spanning most of the ancient world that lasted a few hundred years. Also the otomans had a very large and corrupt empire that had no problems being a dominant force until the industrial age.

The problem will all civilization games was that everything is a geometric progression that is very hard to balance. Remember corruption in Civ3? It was practically impossible to manage anything over a particular distance from the capital. The same here, the rate of growth should not be so linear, it should be a complex formula that takes into account all factors. For example in my empire, even having courthouses in all cities and a FP, I would still have lost money - and that is without having an army.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by mutax2003
You can stay in perpetual anarchy as outlined by Moonsinger on CFC, and win deity conquest victory, but that's consider somewhat of an exploit, which will be fixed in the next patch.

That was my question. cgrecu77, this is interesting, but I'd have to consider it an exploit. Also, not researching CoL means no courthouses, which is one of the organized civ's main strengths. This looks like a REX strategy work around. I can see how it might be boring being in constant anarchy. Don't you like to see your civ celebrate WLTK day?

I think playing without the exploit, by the time you get around 10 or 12 cities that early, you'll be close to bankruptcy, or at least a very low science rate, even with being organized, which puts you in danger of getting behind in tech, and/or losing your army.

[cgrecu77]

i agree that it's fishy, but what can I do, I was the dominant force of the world with a reasonable advanced culture but I had no money, it was the only way to end the game. I only was in anarchy in the very late stages of the conquest - so that wasn't the boring part ... The whole game was very onesided, war after war after war. After the initial stages even the diplomacy was worthless since I could have done anything, between me and Louis we were like US and USSR in a cold war era without China ...

I have no problems getting bankrupt, but existing units should not be disbanded at least. I could even live with having no production or whatever penalties, but at least don't take my army away.

I was researching code of laws since the beginning of the war almost, but with science at 0% only a few scientists were producing any research at alll.

[Shaka II]

Why should you get to keep your army if you can't support them? Clothes, arms, food, weaponry, forifications, roads. It all adds up.

It would be interesting to go back to a game save before the constant anarchy and see where the game goes, to see if it is a viable (nonexploit) stategy.

[cgrecu77]

I started the first revolution while Mansa had 3 more cities (on the mainland) and I would have taken those anyway since I had lots of praetorians, so this "exploit" didn't take a major part. However, there is no way I could have withstanded the barbarians without it. The only alternative might have been to "donate" a frontier city to a non-cultural civ like monty and let him deal with the barbs. I'm not sure if I could still have managed to achieve 64%, it would have been pretty close.
But the vast majority of the game I didn't stay in anarchy, so the strategy is definitely viable, I probably could have done many things in a better way, especially towards the end when it was getting pretty late and I rushed things a bit so I could go to bed happy

[cgrecu77]

One thing I should try (maybe even on the same map to be able to compare) is to wait until I get code of laws. Not sure it will make a difference though since my debt was over twice my income. The only thing I'm afraid is that by waiting until I get the code of laws I could give the AI the opportunity to get longbows which would be devastating for my strategy ....

[Shaka II]

If your debt is twice your income, I think you may have lost. Unless you can grow out of it. Either Louis or the barbs will get you.

Seems like a risky strat. I've seen it from a more subtle level of expanding too much, too early. I always keep science above 40% at the lowest, unless I'm in the end game, which is again, a gamble that I'll be able to sweep across the globe. But by then, my economy is huge, I can afford a large army, but I'm also pop rushing courthouses after my theaters to lesson the maintenance expenses. I like to have a fallback position. if I run into cavalry, it's not a big deal, it just might delay my eventual domination.

[fed1943]

Sure,it is an exploit.It turns one trait(Spiritual)into a disandvantage,and any trait is suposed to be an advantage,isn't it?
And about spending more than you have...is possible,even a common thing.
Best regards,

[Shaka II]

In real life, there are personal loans and credit, or bonds at the national level that allow deficit spending. But, eventually, the debts have to be paid. In Civ, there are no loans. If you can't pay costs, then units have to be disbanded.

I finished my Washington game last night (1248AD/92,000 score), emperor/standard/pangea/marathon. The ending income was 1000 gold with expenses of 430 gold, so plenty of net income remaining to pour into science or culture. It was fun, as I was rounding the home stretch, to take care of Capac on the other side of Washington, I noticed that he and Caesar both had cavalry, but I had enough riflemen by then along with my recent discovery of military tradition to start building and upgrading cavalry. It was a fun way to finish, not boring, since these civs had fresh forces and were competitive.

Caesar likes to have a large army, lots of cavalry at that point, plus he was my game long friend, so he was not a target. I only needed four more cities to get 64%.

Built Pyramids with stone, Hanging Gardens, Heroic and National Epic, and the Hindu shrine, and FP. Louis beat me to the GL.

Organized/financial got me to the end game sooner, but not much higher score than playing as Caesar (organized/expansive), apparently the city sizes were less. But the power of those two traits is readily apparent in a domination game. Only built three cities, which is typical for a pangea map.

[make]

Originally posted by Shaka II
I finished my Washington game last night (1248AD/92,000 score), .

Thats mighty impressive

I would also like to finish my domination victories much sooner, because I enjoy the preindustrial ages much more than the post ones. I play Emperor / Marathon / Standard size continent maps / NoTechtrading / No culture flips. The soonest I have finished is 16XX.

In my current game, Its around 1820, and Im currently forces to dig in until I can build MechInf, because my closest rival whent beserk with unit production.
Quin has almost twice the number of soldiers I do. Im number one in GNP, production and crop yield, and have been fore a while, so it puzzles me how Quin managed to build so many more troops than me and how he can stay in the lead with techs.
So I have to get more and better units before I push fore domination. I have 55% of the land, so its not far away.

I wonder if pangea maps allows you to finish that much sooner than on continent maps? Its hard to rule the seas. You have to have a better type of ship than the others. It take a lot of time and production to build a navy, and before fighter / bombers, the casaulties in naval combat can be extremly high and costly.

I was also wondering if Notechtrading slows things down because I cant get techs from peacetreaties and therfore cant aford to drop science in favor of producing units. I also cant bribe the AI with techs to join me in war, and therfore almost never gets any war allies and have to take out / absorb all the AIs units myself.

[fed1943]

Yes,mighty impressive,very quick.
I play most as ShakaII,also huge maps,but with -2 civs than standart.I found it more interesting,as it needs both war and build since the begining.
Have you ever tried it?
Best regards,