One of my cities flipped to the AI which was miles away from my territory....

[Kampus majore]

Originally posted by DeepO
Kampus, I never disband slaves, that is a waste. Indeed, they trouble your relations with the original civ, but who cares? If you want to get rid of them, there are a couple of possibilities:
- you can disband them (baddest solution)
- you can add them to one of your own cities (look out if you have cultural problems for flipping)
- you can destroy the other civ (free slaves!)
- you can sell them back to the same civ, which will improve your relation with him. However, it will also give him an advantage
- you can sell them to another civ, thus making his relation with the original civ worse
- personally, if I want to stop the slavery, I add it to a city which is at the point of building a settler. With a bit of luck, the settler will take 2 pop points: one of your own, and the slave. If you later build a city with that settler, it will be your own nationality.
You could of course also do this with a settler with multiple foreign citizens, but if you take 2 foreigners of the same kind, the settler will be of that nationality. If you later build a city with it, it will start with a foreigner as pop.

How to keep up with tech on Emperor: trade techs (researching yourself the techs the AIs won't research first), or extort them through war. Or, if you see someone gains an important tech, buy it from him (will be very expensive if you're the second to get it), and sell it to everyone else to recuperate the cost. In the right situation, being a tech broker will even profit you.

Further, look out for the 2 tech wonders: in Emperor it is possible to get the great library first without a leader (on deity it is not), through this wonder you will be able to set research to 0% and still be up to date. Use that money to build either research infrastructure, or wage war.
The ToE is, in my mind, the best on Emperor: if you bee-line towards it, and gain atomic theory and electronics through it, you can sell atomic theory to everyone else for all the techs you might have missed, plus most of the times all the money the world is rich. This will keep you one tech in front, and is most of the time the turning point in a game that wasn't superb to start with.

DeepO

I don't seem to be able to trade workers....

If I go for the GL, I allways end up with a lot of production in a city, while someone else builds the GL first and all other wonders are gone too! I usually put the production in the Forbidden City, although it is not so effective (in a city almost next to my capitol....).

The ToE is never within reach...

I already try to trade tech as much as possible, but my economy is not good enough to buy tech I'm afraid....

In my latest game however I am doing okay. I am behind, but I am closing in. Hopefully in time to battle the Babs, the big superpower which at the moment is destroying the other big superpower, the Aztecs. When they are finished they will meet me, the third big superpower. But before that I think I will conquer the English, a small island country, but also ahead in tech...

Thanks for the advice!

[DeepO]

'Kamp.... you need some finishing touches on those Civ skills, but I'm sure you can do it too. On Emperor it is hard, but nearly always possible to get the GL, below that it is even rather easy to do. On Deity, you need a bit of luck or you'll miss it.

First of all the workers: you can only trade these when they are in the capital. If you want to trade workers back to a civ, you need to bring them into your capital. If you want to buy workers, they have to be in the other capital. This means you have to look out for them, and certainly in the beginning check every turn if you want to be sure you don't miss any... Also when a civ is in war, there is a bigger chance he retreats his workers back into his cities, and thus also into his capital.

GL: If you want to be sure to build the GL on emperor, you have to focus on it. On lower levels it is possible to deviate from this path, and still get it, but emperor does not leave much room for change.

The first thing you've got to do is, from the start, designate a wonder city. This city can build one worker or settler if it's one of your first 3 cities, otherwise you start immediately on a temple. In the mean time, work the land around it. It works best if it is situated on a river or lake so that it can grow to 12 without needing an aquaduct, and of course some bonus resources are also nice (those that will give you extra shields). Further, it is possible if it is your capital, but this is a bit risky, it is better to have a city close to your capital as your wonder city.

Then, while the city is building a temple, you work as much tiles around the city as you need, so 12 in the ideal case. After this, you add workers to the city to get it to size 12 fast. Adjust your lux rate so that none of the citizens are entertainers (adding troops as police also works in despotism, don't forget this!), and after the temple is built start on either the pyramids, or a palace. (pyramids if it is your capital, palace otherwise).

In the mean time, expand as usual, fight wars, build cities, do everything else you'd want to do. But research is something else: you will need to be the first to research literature, or at least don't be far behind. So, if you're a peaceful type, beeline for literature, and after the first 40 turns set your research so that you go broke the moment you discover literature. Trading for alphabet and writing is possible, as is snatching it from an enemy.

If you took your capital as the wonder city, the point where it can get tricky is if someone builds the pyramids before you research literature. As a result, your prebuild shields will be lost, and you'll be hardpressed to build the GL without starting shields. (It is possible, though, but you'll need luck). If your wonder city is not your capital, you have to make sure your palace isn't built before you discover literature, the amount of shields in a palace depends on how many cities you have. If you think you are not going to make it, conquer or build a few cities and the cost of the palace will go up, thus leaving you a larger margin.

In every game I played, doing it like this has lead to the GL on Emperor. But, it comes at a price, so I didn't do it in each game: you give up a lot of early expansion... a GL is equal to 15 archers IIRC, and with 15 extra archers I can extort a lot of techs anyway, possibly even conquering the city that has build the GL in my place. So, it depends on the situation if you have to go for it or not, but if you decide to go for it, know that you can always build the GL, most of the times even when over half of the AIs don't know literature yet.

The ToE is about the same thing: time it so that the moment you discover it, your palace would be build. When it asks for your choice of tech, open up the F1 screen (from where it let's you choose a new tech), change the order on the city that has been prebuilding the palace, and if timed right you gain 3 techs in 1 turn as the ToE can be build in the same turn as you discover the tech for it.

You can be extremely unlucky to be outrun, but at Emperor it only happened to me once, and this in a game where I didn't build the GL, and was a bit behind in tech. If you have consistent problems with it, you need to change strategy on the tech level: beeline for Scientific method at once, not stopping at steampower or industrialization. Also, don't research demo or mil. trad. before you get the ToE. Normally, it is possible to have all of these techs, but if you run into problems, leave these alone, you will be able to trade these techs when you trade atomic theory to the AIs.

BTW, when you get the GL, you can set your tech spending to 0, but make sure you have libraries everywhere. You'll need them if you want to do your own research...

DeepO

[Kampus majore]

Thanks! I will try that next time.

First that game with the great battle between me and the Babs!