Defeating the emperor level in c3c - help needed!

[lancealot]

Hello there.

I am a veteran civer who played this game from the title first days as civ1.
I don't have much time playing this game these days and as a result a game of civ lasts few weeks sometimes (ia mplaying at a rate of 2-3 hours a day).
I beat the game on the 4th difficulty level but my last game playing the emperor level (5th) - i was banging my head against the wall.
My empire was large with 20-22 cities located on excellent positions. i waged a short war against the english to block their settlers from entering my territory, but my biggest problem was happiness and research.
My cities kept slipping into disorder when reaching level3 (a temple managed to delay this till level 4-5), raising the luxury bar was no use as the research level dropped to absurd levels.
When i finally managed to switch into republic (only around year 700AD - i know , i know..) the situtaion wasn't getting any better: my treasury was minimal and to keep from getting bankrupt i had to keep research on a 20-something turns per advancement.
I was so bar behind after every other civ that it was no use to keep on civins so i terminated my game.

Any ideas how to beat the game on emperor? how to keep my people happy with a reasonable research level and not getting bankrpupt??

[Rhothaerill]

Post a save and we can take a look at what you've done so far. It's one of the best ways to get some advice from this board.

[lancealot]

OK.
Ill do it later today when i get back home from work

[Aqualung71]

AS Rhoth said, post a save and then somebody may be able to help.

With regards to happiness, there's a couple of things to keep in mind - you've been playing for a while, so apologies in advance if you already know all this.

First, on Emperor you start with only 1 citizen born content compared to Monarch where you get 2. As you've discovered, this is quite a difference. However, you should be able to deal with happiness problems by nudging the slider only slightly in the Ancient age. Remember that the luxury slider diverts part of your income to entertainment on a city by city basis, so the higher the income in a city, the more content faces will be generated by using the slider. Extra commerce is generated by making sure all city tiles worked by a labourer are roaded. If you don't have enough roaded tiles being worked, using the slider has less effect, sometimes even no effect. This of course also means that you need to make sure the distribution of terrain improvements (ie, roads) in your cities is relatively consistent, since the luxury slider percentage is applied to all your cities but it affects each city differently depending on the commerce generated by that particular city. You will also find when using the slider that swapping worked tiles sometimes helps to increase happiness, for example a gold hill generates more commerce than grasslands, which at a 10% or 20% slider level may convert into an additional content face. To do all this of course, you need to build workers and lots of them. Workers = money + production!

Just some initial thoughts....post the save and someone will have a look for you. Make sure you tell us which version you are using. Presumably C3C, but which patch?

[lancealot]

Hi again.

I have attched my save-game file

Thanx in advance for your help

[Krill]

What version is this? 1.22?

[lancealot]

Yeah. version 1.22
is it a problem?

[Krill]

I patched up to 1.22, but it would not load my 50+ saved games that I have yet to finish. It should, but it does'nt. I am, therefore, using 1.15. So I can not load the game and can not help you. Sorry.

[chuckdelicious]

What is your luxury/resource situation?

[Aqualung71]

Ok, I've had a quick look and it's doesn't seem to be the terrain improvement problem I mentioned earlier - you have a reasonable number of workers (especially with an Industrious civ) and a good road network.

The first thing to consider is that you really scored badly from the random map generator. You've got a decent land area with 18 towns, but not one luxury resource within your borders. This really hurts for happiness. However, you need to trade for luxuries if you don't have them. I played a turn and after putting all your entertainers to work, you have enough money and income to buy a luxury from Persia and 2 from Spain. This gives you enough happiness to run the slider at only 10% and still be able to get to Currency in 7 turns with your current income. I paid something like world map + 10g to Persia for a luxury and 30g + 28gpt to Spain for 2 luxuries.

Which raises the second problem - you are still missing the 2 most required techs for an early Republic government - Currency so you can build Marketplaces to help offset the higher unit support costs of Republic (and also give you happiness bonuses once you have 3 luxuries or more), and Construction so you can build Aqueducts and get your cities over size 6 (since you only have 2 towns on fresh water that don't require Aquaducts). This has 2 significant consequences - firstly, higher population means more tiles worked and more income....secondly, under Republic a town gets only 1 unit of free support whereas a size 7 city gets 3 free units support. Under the current setup, you have 43 units, and 18 towns with 1 free support each, so you are paying 2gpt upkeep on 25 units. So if 13 of your towns were size 7 cities, your free support would be 44 units and your support cost would be zero compared to 50gpt now. Another benefit of getting your towns to size 7 cities quickly, is that you get a 50% defence bonus and so don't need to build Walls, which I notice you have in almost all of your towns.

I suspect your slow tech advancement is largely due to a lack of early tech trading with other civs. At Monarch level you can generally research at a good pace yourself and keep up with the AI, but at Emperor the AI is able to trade techs between itself at a lower cost, so the tech advanacement rate is correspondingly higher. To keep up, you need to be in on the trade cycle. This also means you need to get out and meet your neighbours more quickly, either through land or sea exploration, and trade techs with them as soon as you meet them, then check the diplomatic screen regularly to see if any new trades are possible.

Another thing you may want to think about is city spacing. Your cities are spaced quite far apart, which allows you to grow them into mega-cities once you discover Sanitation, but that means you will play probably 60% or more of the game with a lot of tiles within your territory being unworked by citizens, which means less income. You may want to think about building more settlers and plugging some gaps, prereferably on your single short river, the scarcity of which also handicaps an Agricultural civ in Despotism. Also, you are playing Maya who are agricultural - this means that huge area of desert to the north is reasonable settling land, since Agricultural civs get an extra food for irrigated desert, effectively making irrigated desert the same as irrigated plains.

These are just a few ideas - I'm sure others will have more. Don't despair - we have all been where you are right now. At Emperor level and above it's all about micromanaging, which slows the game down but pays off big time - explore early to meet other civs, check diplomacy screens regularly, trade techs whenever possible (at least until your research pace picks up), and securing luxuries early (impossible on this map).

It may be difficult to catch up from this point, since you could be nearly an age behind on research....but once you get Currency and Construction, you will be able to increase your income and research rate quite quickly.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!

[lancealot]

Thank you very much for your answer
I had no idea about all those different strategies on the higher level and their inportance.
I am currently playing a monarch game along with my emperor game and the differences are quite big.
I know that my city spacing is quite large due to my love for mega cities during late game era is problematic - iw ill try to change that.

Cheers

[Aqualung71]

You're welcome.

On city spacing, you can still have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. One popular method is to set up temporary towns in the gaps to produce mostly workers and the odd settler, thereby freeing up your build queues in your permanent towns for other improvements and military units. The temporary camps are later abandoned and the tiles they took up are available for expansion of your permanent cities. You may have an excess of workers, which can then be added to your cities for instant commerce and production increases.

[Mountain Sage]

You can look at the thread 'Emperor games: how to improve your skills' in the strategy forum. You can post your 4000BC start and then compare with other people who will play your game.
I will bump it for you...

[joncnunn]

Without looking at the map or save but routintely winning Emperor if I haven't lost by very early in the middle ages, additional comments:

1. Not having at least 2 luxaries within my natural border would cause me to hit the restart button.

2. If you go denser, be sure after the first couple to send the next group out to where you intend to be the final border and back fill in. Otherwise you won't be able to expand as far in REX which would lower the probability of having each resource.

3. Don't reserach techs that are currently more advangeous for your opponets than yourself. (e.g. Map making if you haven't settled your coast.) The reason is that in Civ 3, the more civs with a given tech, the cheaper it is to research.

4. Block the AI and yo-yo their settler-unit pairs.

5. At war, you can also lure the AI towards an empty city 6 turns away and pick the force off gradually with fast units running back to safety.

6. When an AI is seeking to attack you from another landmass, he usually tries to land one to three tiles from the city he wants to take [and will land prior to declaring war]. So just plant your own surplus military units there and prevent him from either landing or declaring war on you.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by joncnunn


1. Not having at least 2 luxaries within my natural border would cause me to hit the restart button.

Wow. You must have a LOT of restarts. It's extremely rare for me to see this. Two lux within a few city radii of my start sure, but two within your natural radius?!