how to win at the emperor? ,please

[vodkak15]

i only managed to the monarch, then ..
the AI's damn fast, anyone'd tell me how to beat this ?, please

[Nikolai]

Try the strategy forum. And welcome to the forum.

[Blake]

I'd suggest getting good at playing Monarch first, emperor is a fair bit more difficult.

If your warmongering skills are top-notch it's always possible to warmonger yourself to victory (unless isolated). Peaceful victories (space race) are still possible, especially if you get both the Pyramids and Great Library. Cultural victories are possible too, if isolated.

[kittenOFchaos]

Simply put, an aggressive civ, add a nice dose of barracks and send out the swordsmen (getting the iron may be easy/interesting/difficult) to get enough land to get a victory.

Course, you'll need to be able to still tech effectively and avoid getting dogpiled - careful choice of religion to be honest.

Now, if you're isolated and not near enough for warmongering fun...oh my, diplomatic or cultural...

[trev]

If techtrading is on, beeline to alphabet plus 1 other good tech, ie Code of Laws, Iron Working, trade for all other early techs without trading alphabet for about 40 turns, build about 3 -4 cities then build axemen/ swordsmen. Go conquer cities off the strongest neighbour, about 3, then get courthouses everywhere, repeat conquest against someone and continue. Later beeline Paper, PrintingPress and other techs AI do not prioritise and trade to tech parity.

[vodkak15]

@ everyone: thanks alot
i used all the tricks, didn't turn out somehow, the AI's just too fast in anything,well, how loser i'm, maybe i've not enough knowledge about how using the techs, have to think more, train more, pff...

[Cort Haus]

Have you dominated Monarch level yet, vodka15?

[Senethro]

My only win on Emperor so far took the following shape.

Small, crowded pangaea.
Augustus.
Built 3 cities at food resources, whipped out some praetorians, attacked France which had the majority religion, the Pyramids and only archers defending.
After acquiring 5 cities I settled down and built until cavalry.
I invited Genghis into a Permanent alliance and we've been steadily chewing everyone up since.

War on Emperor is painful as the CPU has so many free unit slots that they can win by attrition. I made the mistake of letting Mansa Musa upgrade his siege units to artillery and hes been giving my stacks hell.

[trev]

Swordsmen are unnecessary, just make sure your early attacks with axemen take place prior to cities generally gaining 40% cultural defence, 5 axes with city raider of archer bonus will take cities easily, at this stage rarely more than 2 archers in a city. Works on immortal, so should be easy on emperor.

[hannehanen]

1:Great plains (funniest map tbh) and get a nice location with many cows to your first 3 cities atleast.
2: research animal husbandry, get out a worker or two.
3: research priesthood asap and build the wonder it provides, meenwhile research writing, and take Code of laws with the wonder.
4: spread religion to everyone while your researching ironworking..
5: when you have iron working, just smash one or two weak civs.. you will propably get short of cash, but after a little while you will have your great prophet etc so the cash will come...
6: no idea

[Gibsie]

How is it viable to smash civs so easy? The AI beelines to Copper and it's rare it doesn't have it connected to its city by the time you get it...

[hannehanen]

forgot to mention that i am rome
Well, they might have axemen/legioners, but you have pretorians(you dont get em that late).. but you never jump on the biggest one, always jump on a weaker nation for a fast and safe win.


and for fighting in the future, just jump on a guy who already is in war.. really a must..

[DrSpike]

That's very underhand.

















ok, I do it too.

[Gibsie]

Yet the strategems I've read advise you to go straight for the jugular of one of the larger civs, too... it makes sense, as weak civs have weak cities. Well, usually. In my latest game I attacked my neighbour and took his capital with the Great Wall, Pyramids, Notre Dame, Sistine Chapel and one other wonder. And this was Mali! MALI!!!

[Saurus]

Emperor is really a true challenge.

If going for a Peaceful victory on a pangea, then for me theere are 4 golden rules.

1) Find a religion! You must have a religion of your own.
The income provided by the holy city IS your budget!

2) Make a GOOD friend. You need at least one or two
good friends who you know you can trust. Both when it comes to defense and tech trading.
Convert them to your religion, bribe them with free resources, whatever it takes...
(give away free copper, ivory etc)
Ivory in particular is my favorite as it cannot be used for anything except happiness during early game - still the
A.I treats it as a valuable strategic resource.
Anyhow, just to remember is that one should rather have a few civs Friendly toward you and a few furious than everyone beeing cautious.


3) Alphabet!. A.I is somewhat slow to get this tech.
Get it early and don't trade it away. Now exploit your early tech-trading possibility.
Keep on researching techs the A.I is typically slow to get. Then trade them away to as many as possible.
The upper part of the tech tree is good (Music, Code of Laws etc) Code of Laws is particulary good since it gives you a Religion. Now trade Code of Laws for everything else you are missing. (Currency, Mathematics, maybe Monarchy, Organized religion, Iron working)
Often this is very critical - If you try to research the more common techs, you will have nothing to trade with and will lose out in the long run.
This can be easier or more difficult to fully take advantage of depending on witch leaders are in the game.
Some A.I:s (For instance Gandhi) have somewhat different priorities for techs and thus you will find that
theese leaders will often go for the same techs than you. Witch leads to more difficult tech-trading.

4) Take huge risks during the first 50-75 turns!
More than anything, luck is the key factor to success.
Playing it safe means A.I will defeat you on all fronts due to bonuses.
In order to be competitive later on, you must take risks during the first 50-75 turns of the game.
For instance, If you want to get the Oracle in order to find that badly needed religion and to get that wonderful "Trade-tech" Code of laws, then you cannot expcet to have anything more than archers by that time defending your nation from barbarians or hostile civs. You just won't have time to research "the wheel" OR build roads to that copper-resource anyway for that matter. (You need your workers to chop the first Settler and the Oracle)


Often enough, it just does not work out as planned.

For instance, If you start near Alexander, prepare to be be killed ruthlessly and quickly no matter what you do.
If barbarians decide to swarm you, then they will and there is nothing you can do about that.

All this told, I Typicaly lose some 30-40% of my emperor games during the Ancient era already. And if I survive, I only manage to win some 10% of the games. It's difficult and very much luck dependent and thus often very frustrating also.

But fun as hell