Winning on Emperor, Cathy, and random observations

[Aginor]

From finally winning a real game (ie: normal speed, standard map, continents) on Emperor (played as Cathy), some observations:

1) REX is strong on Emperor. The sheer impossibility of decent vertical growth in the first 50-75 turns dictates land grab. Exotic slingshots are hot on Monarch, but at Emperor level they tend to leave you highly compressed for space. Unless you've got a solid plan for battering your way out of the corner you're consigned to, pure land grab is the way to go. Odds are that even the most aggressive AI won't declare until around 750-500 BC, so you've got some time to get your defenses up.

Of course, the chop nerf hit REX quite hard, so deforestation with the objective of spamming Settlers is a bit tougher than it was last week.

2) Barb control is something I've always had issues with...best practice is usually a few extra warriors on hills outside your turf. Cuts down the odds of spawns, and thus being the target, plus it at least gives you time to adjust your defenses.

3) Pyramids and Rep are overrated. Unless you're Industrious with Stone or you're going to slingshot it with Farseer and the Great Engineer, don't bother. Much harder to pull off the latter with the chop nerf, by the way.

4) Instead of making the Rep grab, go for Monarchy ASAP. I had Wine in my borders, and basically beelined for Pottery, then Monarchy. I *did* manage to steal a late Oracle for CoL to found Confucianism...Hatty and Isabella were in the game, so God only knows how I managed to snag it around 1000 BC, but I figured worst-case scenario it would fund 100% research for a while longer.

5) Running Hereditary Rule does an absolutely amazing job of solving a Financial civ's commerce problems. Particularly if you have a river or two in your borders.

6) Keeping your finances in order is very, very hard no matter how many cottages you spam if you're not Organized, at least until Banking and State Property. Although I could get up to 70% science early on during peacetime, this frequently dipped to 50-60% during preparations for war and during the prosecution of the war itself. Knowing exactly what you need in advance is absolutely critical if you do not wish to get crippled by war weariness.



Long story short (sort of), the game itself went like this:

Founded in a nice coastal spot with Cows, a Flood Plains, a host of forests, a river and fish. Went Worker first, got VERY lucky and popped AH, found Horses next to the capital. Threw a pasture on the cows and chopped 2 Settlers, both with a Worker as first build. Sent out Warriors from the capital as usual during chopped Settler builds to keep pop growing. Built another Worker and a 4th Settler. By this point island is completely explored. Founding city #4 reveals Caesar on the next island over. Joy.

Signed Open Borders, went up to Sailing, built Galley in city 4. Had popped Scout, sent Scout to map Caesar, found 3rd island due south of both of us. Sent a Warrior to explore that, built Settler/Worker to claim part of it, with 5th/6th Settler in the works. Caught Oracle for CoL as noted. Found a barb city on the new island; founded city and sent an Axeman down there to fortify and take the Archer aggros next to the barbs.

So by 300 BC I'm running 7 cities. Capital and 4th city are heavily cottaged, 2nd city is a hybrid with *4* Plains Ivory squares and a Pig to fuel them, 3rd city is straight production. Running about 40% science by the time the 7th founds...slowly over 30 turns ramp it back up to 70% through new Cottages and existing Cottage growth. Easy choice here to turn the southern island's cities into commerce centers (one has gems, and there's a river). Alphabet is done around 400 BC, and Caesar won't trade a thing with me. Guaranteed tech hole for both of us vs. the field, as there's no one else around. Lovely.

Grab IW, exploration reveals that Caesar has no Iron. HA! Tech to Construction...end up building a combined force through the MM multi-unit stack trick (ie: build, switch turn before completion to new unit, rinse and repeat) which consists of Swords, Elephants and Cats.

Declare war around 250 AD, send over a dozen units in two stacks. Capture one city, raze one in bad position, and then steal Rome and the Great Lighthouse before the attack stalls and I have to sue for peace.

Regear to take Caesar all the way out. Liz shows up with a Caravel, as expected with a significant tech lead (+/- 4 techs). Monty and Hatty follow suit about 30 turns later, as I'm sending out my own Caravels. Through some slick map trading I manage to circumnavigate before Liz. Other players are Kublai and Isabella, but both have massive tech deficits and aren't factors. Trade my way to being even with the field (Monty/Hatty) and down two to Liz.

Eliminate Caesar, begin to tech to Liberalism for the Nationalism snag (ie: bring Cossacks online ASAP). Map suggests that Liz and Hatty are small on space (7 cities/5 cities respectively). World is factionalized as Liz/Hatty hate Monty, who is on another continent from them. (Monty/Kublai split the smaller, Liz/Hatty/Isabella split the larger.) Stand at about double the area and cities of anyone except Monty, but unless I do something fast I'm going to get buried in tech. Decide to do anything and everything to placate Monty/keep him fighting wars, as he's got the big army, and take out the tech threats.

Manage to get necessary techs for Cossacks about 5 turns before Liz gets Rifling and Redcoats. Double joy. Tech to Navigation, build mad Cossacks, run at a 200/turn profit to upgrade Catapults from the 2nd Caesar strike force (have about a dozen left) once I get Steel. Which should be right about when I launch the assault.

Get up to around 30 Cossacks, elect to forgo Nationalism and drafted Riflemen (for better or for worse) and just go with it. Run 2 assault forces, north and south. Stall after taking London and Coventry with those forces, have to wait for resupply. Long, bitter winning campaign ensues...by the end of it I'm running 40% culture and my people are still starving!

I'd bribed Monty into fighting Hatty to keep them busy while I dusted Liz, and this had the unfortunate side effect of leaving her with a massive army. Declare war about 20 turns after finishing Liz...big mistake. Lose Nottingham. Hatty inexplicably declares war on Isabella right after I declare...which pretty much ends the game. Launch my attack from York to her capital. Get caught by a second assault force in the field. Win, but lose a few units and have to retreat to heal. Send a depleted assault force forward, and it gets caught by a THIRD assault force of Hatty's outside Thebes (while she's conducting a southern campaign against Isabella - where DO all these units come from?). Clearly going to lose the force, I suicide-rush Thebes and...burn it. Among other things, the Buddhist shrine and 3 or 4 Wonders (including the Great Library) go up in smoke. Felt vaguely like I'd sacked Rome.

Manage to get some resupply in, roll Hatty. Isabella's still behind in techs, so I bribe Monty into attacking Kublai (and inadvertently eliminating him), and roll Isabella with Tanks. Domination in 1864 AD...messy, but it worked. I'll take it off an island start.

Worth noting that I had perhaps 3 times the GDP of the comp during peacetime and was unable to maintain a tech lead against Hatty's 5 cities, even with Liz eliminated. Long and the short of it is that you'd best practice your conquering skills if you want any hope of winning at the highest levels!

Played about as well as I am capable and won only with some good fortune all the way...my hat is off to those of you that can take down Immortal or Deity. Took digging a few deep tech/unit holes with several leaders to finally begin to understand the principles of early play at Emperor...think I'd best refine that before trying to move up!

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Congrats on the emp victory. I still haven't been able to get it done. I like the idea of beelining to monarchy (early pottery is crucial also) since in my last emp game, my research and income were totally crippled by unhappiness (with only 6 cities and organized).
I still don't see how you were able to run 7 cities so early. Even with organzied I have trouble running 4 cities and maintaining 50% + research with the amount of units I need to build (although being isolated with one opponent helps in this regard). I agree about the slingshot stuff. It just doesn't work on this level. I feel nervous even trying for COL sling.

I have been playing pangea maps and trying for domination, in which case expanding to 7 cities would be extremely difficult. I usually just build two and then take a few from the AI.

Nice detailed post. Maybe I will give continents a try next.

[Generaldoktor]

This is why I can't stand playing on the high levels, it is obvious the cheats are massive. It might take ten years, but I'm holding out for AI that doesn't require massive freebies to make them even.

Ref: Hattie and Liz at Emperor; if I wanted to be humiliated by female characters, I'd drop by a singles bar!

Great that you pulled it out anyway.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Its not really the AI bonuses that bother me. The comp needs them, otherwise the game is just too easy and not enjoyable. It is the stiff health/happiness caps and maintenance costs that make these levels so difficult for me. I would prefer increased bonuses for the AI instead of the human handicaps.

The low caps make it really frustrating to play the game. For this reason, I will probably stop at emperor as I just don't have the patience to deal with even harsher caps.

[Generaldoktor]

Replying, but check out new patch.

Yeah, the "caps" too. For the same reason, I usually stop at Noble, where supposedly we are equal! (You do have a point that it makes the game "easy", but Civ4 was never too easy for me anyway and is going to change again, see below. To quote a reviewer from GameSpy, regarding Civ3; "I like to win easy," {for my ego.} )

Civ4 is only less than six months old and did radically change the system. There's plenty I'm still digesting, without having to arbitrarily "go broke," be eaten by "bears" or gored by ten million axemen of various persuasion.

Off-topic alert! I'm sure there's a thread on this, but for those not checking, Firaxis is announcing on the game site, the new v. 161 Patch release, SDK and PitBoss! Aux Armes, Vive Le Republic of Civ!

[FocusAshtray]

quote:
Its not really the AI bonuses that bother me. The comp needs them, otherwise the game is just too easy and not enjoyable. It is the stiff health/happiness caps and maintenance costs that make these levels so difficult for me. I would prefer increased bonuses for the AI instead of the human handicaps.

Come on, the handicaps between diety and emperor on health and hapiness are identical, i.e. 1 and 3 respectively. What really makes it dificult is really different bonuses for AI, for instance building units. Do you know that on emeror their units cost only 40 percent what you are paying, and on diety it is only 25 percent. That basicaly means that AI having the indentical cities like yours could produce 4!!! times larger army.

btw, it is fun to deal with health and hapiness, at least for me. I.e. getting extra cow gives a vast ifluence to the whole empire of yours. You will think twice before spoiling your relationships with smb who is trading you three health resources. It is not only copper/iton, now and then, you choose your potential targets according to resources as well.

btw... my current chalange - I cannot get over is 18 civs, Monarch, Standart map, continents. Having three cities, three firends, and 15 angry potential enemies who wants to test their UU on your guts, made me believe that a sily stack of three camel archers could spoil the whole evening.

[One_more_turn]

So far I'm able to keep up until the Industrial age on the Emperor level, but AIs, especially those Financial civs, always pull ahead after that point.

[One_more_turn]

I think we humans are just too smart for the AI. On an equal footing, it has no chance against us.

[dregor]

I'm a newb, so bear with me, but what does

the MM multi-unit stack trick (ie: build, switch turn before completion to new unit, rinse and repeat)

mean?

[Blake]

I don't play much Emperor. I played one as Napoleon (Agg/Ind) a bit back, only managed to build one wonder (Colossus), mostly just used the aggressive trait. My start was bad (Ice age map with northen start). It was insanely hard. I won by space race after taking down an AI twice my size who had never engaged in a war and was a whole generation of military tech ahead (my earlier slugfests with Monty had done nothing to improve my tech rate). Near the end it was cannons and cavalry vs Infantry. A very Napoleon military strategy actually, advance at any cost...

At the point when I got cavalry I think I killed over half - possibly even 2/3rds of my population with the whip.

One important thing to know is just how stupid the AI is. against the advanced pacifist AI's you can pretty much just destroy their first offense then march into their territory with much inferior forces - basically relying on having enough units that you can afford to lose any defensive fight. The vast majority of the AI units will simply cower in the cities, waiting to die by city raider.

The warmonger AI's wont typically be more advanced than the player, so in some ways they are easier to fight, but they can also make meaner offenses.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Blake
I don't play much Emperor. I played one as Napoleon (Agg/Ind) a bit back, only managed to build one wonder (Colossus), mostly just used the aggressive trait...

At the point when I got cavalry I think I killed over half - possibly even 2/3rds of my population with the whip.

One important thing to know is just how stupid the AI is. against the advanced pacifist AI's you can pretty much just destroy their first offense then march into their territory with much inferior forces - basically relying on having enough units that you can afford to lose any defensive fight. The vast majority of the AI units will simply cower in the cities, waiting to die by city raider.

The warmonger AI's wont typically be more advanced than the player, so in some ways they are easier to fight, but they can also make meaner offenses.

I guess what keeps me off the higher levels and from winning when I stray there, is the part about "having enough units." AI don't win by strategy, they win by overwhelming, (when they win at all.) This can be local superiority or across the board. The barbs are the same, early on, with "raging." Your guys kill them with some clever defensive strategy and then out pop a few more, before you have a chance to heal and your veterans go down. Eventually you run out of veterans and then, everybody.

What I don't understand is how the players that use slavery heavily handle the multiple happiness hits. Somebody said once just slave off the malcontents, but when I tried this, at least post-v.161, it took a contented citizen instead and left me the malcontent. I might have been eventually able to get rid of him, but only by slaving heavily more in subsequent turns. Is this the strategy?

Dregor; I don't know what "MM" is, but I would guess the production strategy alluded to is producing one unit almost to the end, then producing another and leaving the first one almost done in the production chain. Then you can drop two units out of the same city within a turn of each other. I question if this would work, or at least work well for more than two units per city as you lose previously earned production turns if you have a unit more than one down in the queue. Also, while you are not "dribbling" units that way, you are waiting quite a while for the accumulated grouping, which may have consequences in the field.

[Blake]

his can be local superiority or across the board. The barbs are the same, early on, with "raging." Your guys kill them with some clever defensive strategy and then out pop a few more, before you have a chance to heal and your veterans go down. Eventually you run out of veterans and then, everybody.

Units only heal if they havn't moved, note that FIGHTING doesn't count as moving. A unit will still heal if it only defends. So whenever possible make the barb do the attacking so your unit can heal (and get a unit with the medic promotion).
It does mostly come down to those clever tatics. For one, know that barbs are deathly afraid of open areas, they like to take a "covered" path to their target city, put units in the cover and they'll try to fight through the unit. Note they aren't suicidal though, they'll only fight at bad odds if the unit actually blocks thier desired path.
Also note that you can't beat raging barbs in the open, you just learn to do without terrain improvements. Don't even train a worker unless it's for a resource on a hill (archers can protect those).

What I don't understand is how the players that use slavery heavily handle the multiple happiness hits. Somebody said once just slave off the malcontents, but when I tried this, at least post-v.161, it took a contented citizen instead and left me the malcontent. I might have been eventually able to get rid of him, but only by slaving heavily more in subsequent turns. Is this the strategy?

It's ALL about whipping more than one pop at once. You should almost never whip only 1 pop at once, this is because you'll then lose 1 tile worker to the angry. But if you are clever and kill off 3 population at once, you get 3x the hammers but with still only +1 anger for 10 turns, and just as the population has grown back the whip anger fades away. Don't whip if it'll cause the city to be angry and try not to whip more often than once every 10 turns (you don't want to stack whip anger). With a +3-4 food surplus you can usually whip 2 at a time, with a +5-6 food surplus you can whip 3 at a time.
If the city is growing too fast to whip away the growth with size2/3 whips, then put a worker on a mine or assign specialists (but ALWAYS continue to work the high food tiles).

When people talk about whipping away Malcontents... you can't get rid of whip anger with more whipping. But the happiness penalties of War Weariness and "We long to join the motherland!" is tied to city population - a size 10 city might get 1 WW, while a size 20 city might have 6 WW. So killing off 4 population might reduce anger by 3, you get the +1 anger from the whip, but in total you eliminate 2 anger. So the basic idea is to whip cities full of malcontents down to size 8-10 or until they're content anyway.

[Generaldoktor]

Thanks for the detail on slaving Blake, I might be able to actually use it now, besides for dire emergencies.

The insight on barbs broadened my understanding also. But my recollection from the last time I played Monarch or Emperor (if that's the level above Monarch,) is that I lost to the AI basically the same way. I don't know if you agree this is how AI fight stupid, but still overcome players not accustomed to the high levels, but this was my experience.

I didn't have enough units, while still doing the culture and infrastructure building I liked to do at lower levels, the aggressive AI had far more, attacked in waves and bled off all the military I did have before I could push out more. Of course I like the "raging barbs" too and big maps and marathon speed. Maybe some of the big winners on the higher levels don't play with all that. Or maybe they do. But I am feeling held back if I have to build all military from Stone Age on instead of the culture and infrastructure I'm comfortable with.