ok, so how do you win on emperor?

[make]

I started a Pangea game. Emperor / Marathon / All standard settings.

Its about 650AD. I must say I enjoy it.

My experince with Pangea so far is that diplomcy is much more important than on continent maps because all civs are potential enemies from the start and theres no sea to stop them or slow there invasion in the beginning.

Khan declared war on me, because I would not pay 250 gold in tribute, at a point where I actually was quit strong, but he was over twice as strong as me, and he would have broken my back like a really dry and thin matchstick, or if i was lucky, only set me back to the iceage, if Ceasar did not help me. What a nice guy .
I did not even give him anything to be my war ally, it was just for old friendships sake. He was pleased with me because of fair trades and because we share Christianity. I did have some foresight of that this could happen, so I gambled with religion and choose to please Ceaser by adopting hes religion, and that was a good move it would seem.

I toke out 2 of Khans Keshik raiders and a warelephant. Ceasar toke out the rest of Khans army. You should have seen the drastic drop on the powergraph after Ceasars Preatorians ran over Khan. Glad it was not me .

Ceasar is the also the gameleader and have cities right next to my capital, so I have to deal with him sooner rather than later, but this seems impossible. I hope I can cultureflip 1 or 2 of them. Wonder if cultureflip can trigger war? I have alway turned cultureflip off before.
I guess i will have to try to take out 2 weaker civs first and then see if im strong enough to beat
Ceasar then.

Have a nice day

[Shaka II]

It sounds like you'll have to contend with Caesar at some point, but only if you have the strength. Going after the smaller civs is OK, but it's best not to expand too much so that your economy is weakened due to maintenance costs. Maybe double the size of your empire, but then it's time to take on number one or two, to keep them from getting too strong.

In other cases, if a civ is strong, but doesn't go over 25%, it's possible to stay friends the whole game, while taking out all the other civs to get over the 64% level. It's different every game.

Here's the game I'm playing now (Roosevelt). In 920AD, I have recently discovered paper and have traded for a nice world map to show me what I need to accomplish to achieve domination. Paper seems to be the pivotal tech in my games for this reason. It looks like Montezuma (green) is next, after taking most of Frederick's empire and one of Hatshepsut's cities. Caesar (maroon) does not share my religion and he wants too much to fight Monte , so I'm going alone into war as soon as I have Chemistry. Five techs is way too expensive, though I have given three as a trade before.



After taking most of Monte's cities, I made peace, and now set my sights to the North upon Cyrus' empire, which completes an elliptical shape if acquired. Besides, Caesar has chemistry now and a substantial army considering the size of his empire. Plus, I would also have to take out Frederick and Elizabeth to gain 64% land area. The collective size of the armies of Caesar, Frederick, and Elizabeth, is probably twice that of Cyrus and he doesn't have chemistry yet. So, he's the obvious choice. I just have to watch out for an attack from the rear by Caesar if I'm totally committed to the North against Cyrus. Attacking Cyrus will hurt my relationship with Caesar (-2 you attacked my friend), so I might change to free religion soon to cancel out my practice of a heathen religion penalty (-2).

I'm quickly building a courthouse, followed by pop rushing the FP in Tenochtitlan to reduce the maintenance cost burden. Having switched to police state, vassalage, and theocracy takes its toll on science and income, but with the end game is in sight, the experience and military bonuses of those civics are attractive. A final push with grenadiers and cannons, before Cyrus gets cavalry should do it, probably 80 to 100 years from now.



Another deciding factor is that I captured the Hindu holy shrine, so I can see into most of Cyrus' cities.

[cgrecu77]

ok, since my last post I've been refining my strategy and all I can say is this: the biggest exploit of them all is the praetorian unit. It's way too overpowered and it allows quick conquest victories on any decent map (in marathon, pangeea that is). On emperor there is a slight challenge but on monarch and prince it is trivial. I managed to finish on emperor as soon as 700AD (130k score), on Monarch as soon as 300AD(160k score) and on Prince I even manage to finish before 0AD, but the score was in the 130k.
The advantage you have with an early maceman (since the AI rarely builds axemans, usually it relies on archers for defence) combined with the slow technological progress of the marathon age makes it possible to eliminate everybody just using praetorians. In the Prince game that I've won before 0AD I only built ~60 troops and I've only lost ~10 of them. Once upgraded with 2-3 city attacks they have huge odds to win even over capital cities. Since culture progress is also slow, cities usualy only have 20-40% def bonus so that helps too.

I usually start with 2 cities and research this path: BW - Wheel-Pottery-Writing-Iron-Alphabet-Code of Laws
I only divert if nearby resources require something like agriculture. I optimize the capital for science and the second city for production, I chop all forests around me to quickly build granary + library and then I usually go for an academy, although it might be overkill since I don't don much research after the code of laws.
If I don't have iron nearby I try to acquire as soon as possible. Not having iron is a serious drawback if you want a very high score.
Once I get iron I start building praetorians and in ~40 turns I usually have 5-7 depending on the conditions. As soon as I have this number I jump on my nearest neighbour and I also declare war on the most powerful civ that is not close to me. Using my alfabet/iron working I can usually convince their neighbours to attack them as well and that keeps everybody busy.

After that is academic, I usually kill the nighbour in a few turns and by the time he's finished I have at least 6 veteran prets and 3-4 rookies. In all new cities I build courthouse - barracks (by chopping if possible) and start pumping more units. It's best to try to conquer in a radial pattern to avoid as much as possible going under with your balance. Using courts I can usually manage to get about 3 civs before I start bleeding. Fortunately conquest yields enough money to keep it going till the end.

In all my games using this strategy I never had to fight anything more advanced then archers and axemans. From time to time I get to fight a horse archer but I never had to face them in big numbers, probably because the AI only gets the tech a few turns before its elimination ...

On emperor level it's very advisable to get the AIs to fight each other otherwise you risk them getting feudalism which would make your life miserable. Luckily it doesn't seem to be a problem, there are only a few things to keep in mind:
a. you need to declare war first on that civ - it seems to greatly increase the chances of other civs joining you
b. you need to try to ally with somebody that likes you a bit
c. also they must not be friendy towards the target civ
d. you must have some tech to give them
Don't be afraid to give them anything you might have, even Iron or Code of Laws is acceptable since they're not going to have time to use it properly since they'll be in a war for the rest of the game. And you don't mind them building swords instead of archers since they're more expensive and have about the same defending power. If they also build courthouses then it's even better when you conquer them ...

On the lower diff. levels you don't need to ally to anybody - you can just eliminate them one by one ...
If you want a very high score I suggest monarch, on emperor the AI has too many troops and it takes too long to win, on Prince you can win very quickly but the diff bonus is not high enough to compensate. I don't think it's worth going lower than Prince since winning much earlier before 0AD is probably impossible even if you stay in constant war.

My top score so far is 162k and I also have a few over 130k. When I got the 162k I got lucky early discovering the Wheel next to me so I was able to jumpstart about 15 turns on my usual strategy.

Thanks everybody for your advice, my quest is over, I'll probably come back playing civ in a few months when I'm going to take a shot at deity ...

[Shaka II]

It sounds like your experience with Praetorians relied on using the constant anarchy exploit.

Also, how does your strategy work if you don't have iron? If you aren't Roman?

[cgrecu77]

I don't have to rely on anarchy, why would I need that? War weariness is not an issue since my cities are small, only the top ones get close to 10 and I have plenty of resources.

If I don't have iron nearby I obviously can't apply this. However, I've yet to play a game where Iron is not somewhat close (remember, it's Pangeea so resources are not isolated on some islands only). If I don't have iron next to my cities I usually at least have copper and then I have to try to plant a city somewhere with iron - or conquer. I would suspect that on emperor that would be very hard to do, on lower levels it's not that hard to take a city with minimal losses with axemans.

If I bump into a tough start where I don't have iron/copper than I usually restart. On monarch I should be able to win in the end but with a poor score and on emperor I will probably lose if I have a poor start location - the AI is just too fast if you don't go to war early. Without Iron/copper you can't go to war until cavalry/grenadiers and by that time they probably have infantry to defend ...

[make]

Shaka II, in regard to youre game.

I guess Ceasar has good relations with Monty, or Monty is more powerfull than him, since the price is so high for war.

I was wandering how you can have so many techs to trade with. I am almost always behind everybody else in techs this early in the game.

I can also see that you run at 90% science with -96 gold.

I always struggle to keep science above 60% with green numbers at this point in the game.
Do you have any special strategy to achive this awsome good economy?
Most often I run hereditary rule, buracracy and slavery. I don’t know if Mercantalism is better than free market. Sometimes I run freemarket if i have many open border agreements. If i only have few open border, I wiill run Merc. Mercantalism is clearly better if you run representation also. If I run Mercantalism, I use as many merchant specialists as possible to offset the trade loss.

I love cottages, but also want a balance between crops, hammers and commerce.
A typical size 10 city in my games, before windmills, watermills and lumbermills, and counting specials out, will have.

3 farms on grassland to support working mines
3 mines on hills
4 cottages

Ofcourse this is very generalized, but I hope you get the Idea.

In regard to my current Pangea game.

The one tech I managed to get before a few others is guilds. I bribed Ceasar with it to get him to continue the war against Khan. Short after, Ceasar asked me to join in the war, and I did because Khan was ripe for picking now, after Ceasar had him on the defensive.
I have now taken 5 of Khans citys, made peace with him (hmm, he wouldnt give me any techs). I am waiting 10 turns to take hes last, to get rid of the “we yearn to join our motherland”, and ofcourse, get one more city my self.

Ceaser is becomming weaker and weaker because of all that warfare. Napoleon and Mansa declared war on him...great...soon I will join them and take on Ceasars fat land, and the Christian holy shrine, wich is in a city right next to my capital. It is one of the cities I hoped to be able to cultureflip, but that did not seem to work. I even used a Great artist as a culturebomb in my capital (Washington). I am playing as Washington. What a waste, Washingtons borders did not even expand. I guess theres a lot of culture in that Roman city. Not that I was trying to get a GA. I had 3 merchant specialists in Washington + The heroic epic (The on with +100 GP generation).

But first on the list of victims is Bismarck. I just dont feel safe with him in my back, because he is friendly with Ceasar. I dont have a big enough army to fight a 2 front war. If I can get rid of him first, then I can use my entire army to conquer Ceasar.

Elizabeth is now the Gameleader, but she is on the other end of the continent, so it would be very difficult to take her on and dont suffer to much. She has not been in one single war. I have tried to get her into one but it dosnt seem possible. I guess Eleizbeth is what is called a Castle player or Happy camper

[make]

Originally posted by cgrecu77
I managed to finish on emperor as soon as 700AD (130k score),

Holy guacamole! Thats an unbelievable achivement .

If you truely did that without exploits, reloads, or being incredible lucky, I think you should go for Imortal or Deity in youre next game.

I also think you should try and play on a continent map and see how fast you can get a domination victory. I would be very interrested to hear about that.

I also think that Continent maps is the map type Civilization was always ment to be played on.
Theres a big chunk of the game left out in Pangea maps. Ships can be ignored as well as all the city improvements that have to do with the sea. It seems like a different game than Civ. Maybe Civ. light, hehe.

I enjoy Pangea, but i dont think this is truely a Civilization game, as it was designed to be played.

[fed1943]

In Pangea(if not Huge and with less Civs Than standart)you win quick,if you don't lose quick.
A small navy still needed,to protect the fishermen.
But you right:not the whole game.
Best regards,

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by make
Elizabeth is now the Gameleader, but she is on the other end of the continent, so it would be very difficult to take her on and dont suffer to much. She has not been in one single war. I have tried to get her into one but it dosnt seem possible. I guess Eleizbeth is what is called a Castle player or Happy camper

If you want to soften her up a bit then get yourself a half-decent navy of frigates and stuff and declare war. When the galleys start floating over stuffed with her best troops, send them to the bottom. If you have OB agreements with a common ally then you can choose to fight on neutral ground or wait for her land troops to arrive in yours where they can be chopped up.

While she's building her armies she's not able to build other things.

p.s. She might just decide to wait for your armies to arrive so perhaps this wont work.

With regard to a shrine city, you're unlikely to flip this ever. It is well defended by its own cultural bonuses.

[cgrecu77]

Originally posted by make


Holy guacamole! Thats an unbelievable achivement .

If you truely did that without exploits, reloads, or being incredible lucky, I think you should go for Imortal or Deity in youre next game.

I also think you should try and play on a continent map and see how fast you can get a domination victory. I would be very interrested to hear about that.

I also think that Continent maps is the map type Civilization was always ment to be played on.
Theres a big chunk of the game left out in Pangea maps. Ships can be ignored as well as all the city improvements that have to do with the sea. It seems like a different game than Civ. Maybe Civ. light, hehe.

I enjoy Pangea, but i dont think this is truely a Civilization game, as it was designed to be played.

I'd like to think that, but unfortunately as I said, it can be achieved almost every game (or at least games with decent starts). It doesn't take great game planning, just following the steps I described (which is pretty standard tech path) and then start attacking. You might fail the first tries because a little tweaking here and there is required to avoid the need to go into anarchy at the end, but once you play one or two games it should be very easy to do it. You don't need to get lucky although for the high score on Monarch I did get an early tech which probably added at least 5k to my score in the end. I'm not sure if the higher levels could improve the score since winning is much harder (if possible). Even though you can beat everybody quickly and get a vh score, you have to keep in mind that the last one you beat is very close to longbowmans. If you don't get them before that you are pretty much doomed since your budget is screwed beyond repairs and even though you have say 58% of the land it won't do you any good since you will die by attrition. So going even one step above it might make this strategy useless although it could still be possible with some special starting conditions.
Unfortunately the whole game is quite boring since all you do is build the same unit and attack the same unit (archers usually). No special strategy is required and there's no fun.

Also I don't think this is even doable on anything but pangeea since it requires quick access to everybody. It is absolutey crucial to eliminate or at least acquire 64% of the land because your only chance to win is to do that. Failing to do so will result in 100% chances of defeat. This is not a foolprof strategy, it's geared towards achieving the highest score possible - and Civ4 gives you a much larger bonus for finishing early than for anything else.
With any other civs you must wait until you get at least macemans to attempt taking over the world (which was my previous strategy with Napoleon). What Caesar gives you is the ability to do the same thing with swordsmans many turns earlier.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by make

Shaka II, in regard to youre game.

I guess Ceasar has good relations with Monty, or Monty is more powerfull than him, since the price is so high for war.

Yes, Montezuma was more powerful. The aggressive leaders often do well on pangea for obvious reasons.

It was way too much tech for a bribe, I just thought it was funny that he would ask for 5 techs. I kew it would be steep, since I asked him earlier when I had two or three and he got mad at me. He was hinu and I was Taoist. Of course now I can switch to Hindu, since I captured the Hindu holy shrine. But Hinduism hasn't spread to my key production cites yet. The diplomatic benefits to Caesar may be worth it though. An insurance policy against a surprise invasion on my Eastern border.

Originally posted by make

I was wandering how you can have so many techs to trade with. I am almost always behind everybody else in techs this early in the game.

I can also see that you run at 90% science with -96 gold.

I was deficit spending. I did a fair amount of trading as the science leader or at least tied for the lead with Cyrus. I am Roosevelt in that game, plus I had stone, so the Pyramids were pretty cheap. I also built the Great Library in the capital. The first GP was an engineer. I used him for the GL. My second GP was also an engineer, he got used for Hanging Gardens. Finally, my third GP was a scientist who built an academy in the capital, so with Bureacracy, it powers the whole civ in science. The other cities were made more for production, a lot of farms, forges, but with the usual granary, library, lighthouse. Organized/Industrious is a fun combination. you have your builder stage and then your warmonger stage.

Originally posted by make

I always struggle to keep science above 60% with green numbers at this point in the game.
Do you have any special strategy to achive this awsome good economy?
Most often I run hereditary rule, buracracy and slavery. I don’t know if Mercantalism is better than free market. Sometimes I run freemarket if i have many open border agreements. If i only have few open border, I wiill run Merc. Mercantalism is clearly better if you run representation also. If I run Mercantalism, I use as many merchant specialists as possible to offset the trade loss.

Probably my break even point was about 70% spending, maybe 80% at one point. But as I capture cities, tripling my empire size, the maintenance costs add up. Building the cheap courthouses is requried to reduce those costs. But by then, the focus is on military production. Switching from representation to police state, from organized religion to theocracy, from bureacracy to vassalage, and from mercantilism to free market, so you can imagine the hit in science and income.

Originally posted by make

I love cottages, but also want a balance between crops, hammers and commerce.
A typical size 10 city in my games, before windmills, watermills and lumbermills, and counting specials out, will have.

3 farms on grassland to support working mines
3 mines on hills
4 cottages

Sounds good. To make full use of bureacracy I like to have an equal distribution of farms, mines and cottages to make use of the 50% production and commerce bonuses. If it's all cottages, you don't have the production to build key buildings, such as national epic and heroic epic, both which are in my capital. We're not going to need Wall Street or the late national wonders, and generally not banks or even universities, except perhaps in the capital. But it's also nice to be able to switch between high commerce, high production, and even high food, depending on what the immediate needs are. Flexibility is nice.

Originally posted by make

Elizabeth is now the Gameleader, but she is on the other end of the continent, so it would be very difficult to take her on and dont suffer to much. She has not been in one single war. I have tried to get her into one but it dosnt seem possible. I guess Eleizbeth is what is called a Castle player or Happy camper

I make a decision as to who to take over based on several factors such as geographical data, power data, and technical advances that the civs around me have. I like to have a circular or a mild elliptical shape to my empire. It's easier to defend and costs less to maintain. I almost never have a segmented empire, partly because of the cultural discontinuity and the difficulty in preventing culture flips, etc.. Keep it all together in one contiguous land mass.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by make

I also think that Continent maps is the map type Civilization was always ment to be played on.
Theres a big chunk of the game left out in Pangea maps. Ships can be ignored as well as all the city improvements that have to do with the sea. It seems like a different game than Civ. Maybe Civ. light, hehe.

It depends what you like. if you want an Earth like map, and if you want navies to play a strong role, then continents are for you. On the other hand, if want the intense early action provide by pangea, the land war on asia effect, the rush for resources, then pangea is for you. If you're playing for domination, then pangea will get you victory sooner, since you don't have to build a large navy.

Also, consider that my games last 10 hours on average, which means that I get to play many more games than the average standard map player. I think 18 to 20 hours was more typical for a continent map on normal or epic speed.

But like any map or playing condition, you may tire of one map after a while. Fed1943's huge pangea sounds appealing, but I think I might rather play with +2 civs vs. -2 civs, to spice it up bit, make for more combinations in diplomacy. I'll make an exception to playing a longer game to get that more immersive feeling of a huge pangea. I'm just afraid that I might not reemerge.

Originally posted by make

I enjoy Pangea, but i dont think this is truely a Civilization game, as it was designed to be played.

From the perspective of a person who grew up in central Asia, one may say that pangea resembles his world view and how civilizations interact. From someone growing up on an island nation, a small continent or even archipelago map may seem more natural to him. I grew up along the coast of the U.S., so a continent map seems natural to me. What attracts me to playing pangea is in part that navies in civ and modern warfare in general get boring after a while, while ancient or medieval warfare do not. It's much more fun to have an army of fewer than 100 units than it is to have one with 400 to 500 units. But also the strategic chess like movement of fewer pieces in the ancient and medieval eras is more fun for me.

Originally posted by cgrecu77
I don't have to rely on anarchy, why would I need that? War weariness is not an issue since my cities are small, only the top ones get close to 10 and I have plenty of resources.

I was refering to your description of having to go into anarchy to prevent disbanding your army. That's considered to be an exploit.

Originally posted by cgrecu77

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.

I'm not saying that it can't be done on emperor with the Romans, but it may not be that viable in general without using the constant anarchy exploit. Also, when you factor in the need to be playing as the Romans and the need to get quick access to iron, the strategy becomes limited to that set of conditions. Now, if it is a fun strategy, that would be one thing, but it sounds like you didn't have much fun either.

Exploits in general don't provide the same feeling of satisfaction. Of course in civ, there's a fine line between playing well and being an exploit. If you can maintain the costs of your army without being in constant anarchy, then it's not an exploit, so, show me a game where you've done that and I'll be suitably impressed.

Playing for domination or conquest is always going to have periods where the AI offers almost no resistance. It's nice to have at least some contest. If it gets too easy, then a change in difficulty level is required to help the AI even the odds.

[cgrecu77]

Originally posted by Shaka II
I was refering to your description of having to go into anarchy to prevent disbanding your army. That's considered to be an exploit.

Since conquering cities one after the other yields quite a lot of money you only risk suffering from negative budgets at the very end of the game, usually the last 30 turns or so. In order to prevent this you need to concentrate early on making money - as soon as you get code of laws you must set the science at 0%. Also you must build courts in all conquered cities as soon as possible using a combination of chopping and sacrificing. Once you get the hang of it it's quite easy to stay afloat all the way to the end.

If you don't consider chopping an exploit than I only used "legal" strategy.

Originally posted by Shaka II
I'm not saying that it can't be done on emperor with the Romans, but it may not be that viable in general without using the constant anarchy exploit. Also, when you factor in the need to be playing as the Romans and the need to get quick access to iron, the strategy becomes limited to that set of conditions. Now, if it is a fun strategy, that would be one thing, but it sounds like you didn't have much fun either.

Not only it can be done, but it's so easy that it could be considered an exploit. The problem with emperor is that you can't really have a fun game because you are always catching up and you are constantly at the computer's mercy. If you get attacked you usually lose the game even if you don't lose a single city. The difficulty levels are way too imbalanced in Civ 4, the last 3 are basically unplayable (not unwinnable, but unplayable) ...

[make]

I seem to have gotten myself into a mess here. I declared war on Bismarck (Grey).

I am Washington (Blue)

Ceasar (Purple) was friendly with Bismarck, so he declared war on me.

I guess i made a mistake to convert to buddism to improve my relation with Lizzi. If I had not done that and stayed with Christianity like Ceasar, he would probalby still be pleased with me, and not join Bismarck in this war. But then again, Lizzi might have declared war on me instead, who knows. Now she has free religion, but i couldnt know she would switch to that.

Lesson learned: Think twice before you upset youre friends before they are to weak, in relation to you. to do anything about it.

Now I have the 2 front war I was trying to avoid.

The good news is that I am the first to discover Chemistry and have grenadiers. The best unit my enemies have yet is knights.

I hope I survive this war. Nobody want to ally with me. Have any of you ever been in a situation like this and still come out ontop?

I dont have time to play anymore until the weekend. Kindoff a bad time to leave the game hanging.

[make]

Here is the powergraph