Emperor Level Strategy

[Dactyl]

I've got Civ 3 with PTW expansion. For the longest time, I've played on the Monarch level and I win the overwhelming majority of the times. Recently I've started playing on the Emperor level, but I've been getting my rear kicked. My usual strategy is to expand quickly early on, going to war to seize cities and then to settle into a builder strategy. I was usually dominant around the Industrial Age and didn't go to war much after that since I could generally win a Space victory without doing so. Well, this doesn't work on the Emperor level because I can't keep up with the AI civs in tech. I've changed strategies, employing a radical archer rush that becomes a swordsman rush as I get iron and slightly larger cities. This works well early on, but unfortunately in the mid-Middle Ages, when I'm the second or third largest civ, one of the civs that is larger than me goes to war with me, and they just inundate me with units. The handwriting is on the wall then, so I've quit since I don't know how to proceed. Does anyone have any suggestions for a strategy?

[vmxa1]

I take it that you have looked at some of the thread that are in the forum here that cover the main strats.
I don't think there is a generic tip that would be all that useful. I would think you may benefit from takign this thread and creating some reports of the action as you go along, we call them DAR's here. During action report or AAR (after AR).
In this you could give the game settings and some highloghts of the first turns up 2150 BC.
A save at teh start and a save at the report time.
Maybe a few screens.This would allow others to see what was going on and maybe add an insight.
Look at some of the AU threads for spoilers and you can see what players you doing for their reports.

[vmxa1]

What this will do is force you to see what your process is and then evaluate the feed back.
The main difference to me of Emp vs Mon is that you have less room for errors and bad starting locations.
The boost the AI gets lets them do better with the same tactics (it is the same AI).
You will have to get the most from you workers and your tiles. You have to use luxs and the slider better than at Monarch.
It is good to find a tech to get that is likely to not be researched by the AI, so you can get max trade vaules to stay up with them, until you have the production to hold your own.
It is much harder to get by without using diplomacy.
You need to be able to use a good city placement such a Zenning.
If the 2150BC break is good, try the next one at 1000BC. Keep going until you find a place where the game has gotten off the track (if any).
All of this presumes that the game you had was winnable and that we have some people that have the time to particate and the skills to help.

[trev]

I have several suggestions that may help, but to some extent I guessing about aspects of your play where you may be making errors.

First point is that it is impossible generally to maintain a tech lead or tech parity, you will begin to drop behind inthe late first age and stay behind until about the beginning of the third age. Set your science to zero, use a scientist to learn techs unwanted by the AI's and generally buy techs by running a tax rate of 90% with 10% luxuries (republic or democratic gov't). If you develop your cities with marketplaces, banks and roads, your earnings will gradually increase until you can buy techs as quickly as they learn them.

Second point follows on from the first - To be able to trade money for techs, you MUST have a good reputation, do not break or cancel deals b4 20 turns, do not sneak attack anyone ( go to diplomatic screen and declare war, making sure all existing deals with civ are cancelled first)

Third point is slow the AI's learning curve by encouraging them to fight, you do this through selectively joining military alliances usually siding with a neighbour against a civ further away, this means that you can generally avoid getting in the battle leaving you to develop your civ while they do the fighting and waste resources

I have sometimes been attacked without warning, I always immediately sign military alliances or mutual protection pacts with all of my neighbours not involved in the war along with right of passage agreements, this will usually stabilise the situation. These agreements will almost always involve payments of gold/turn, which will be difficult to achieve if your reputation has not been maintained previously, so always protect your reputation

If a neighbour begins to collapse and lose cities quickly, join in on the action if there is no deal that will be broken, claiming cities for yourself, also building new cities in the gaps between the culture boundaries of captured cities now belonging to your allies and rush a library and temple. As they always delay building culture buildings until some time after capture this strategy can allow you to culturally claim most of the land of the destroyed civ even if you have captured almost no cities yourself.

Hopefully this ideas will assist you, I currently play with PTW at emperor level and can win about half of my games, if my situation is reasonable at about 1000bc, I am almost guaranteed a win

[Dactyl]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have read a lot of the postings and such about strategy. I'm guessing my problem is with diplomacy and reputation. At the Monarch level, I pretty much ignored them because I figured that, sooner or later, the other civs are going to come after me anyway. I've been making the same assumption on Emperor level. That's apparently a mistake.

[Dominae]

You've identified your problem, Dactyl.

On Monarch with a good start, you can pull ahead and out-research the AIs all by yourself during the Ancient age. This happens very infrequently on Emperor. Tech trading is an integral part of success on Emperor. In other words, a "no trading" Emperor game is quite difficult.

Making deals for techs (or anything else) with the AIs will make them like you more, by the way. If you just ignore them they have no reason to like you or dislike you, and the more aggresive civs will tend toward the latter, resulting in the inevitable SOD marching into your lands.


Dominae

[vmxa1]

I think AU208 or whatever the total war map was shows this very well. No trade or deals at all after first contact really increases the difficulty.

[Theseus]

I think it was Catt that actually first got me on to the power of diplomacy and trade (which eventually showed up in my Seven Pillars thoughts).

I play mostly Emperor, and I actually sorta pride myself on my style in that regard... in AU 402: Gargantua, for instance, maintaining just about all of the AI civs at Polite, or at worst Cautious, made a huge difference in how I was able to play the game.

[Dactyl]

How do you keep them Polite or Cautious. I've given them money and that will raise them to Polite or Cautious but a couple of turns later they'll be Annoyed again.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Dactyl
How do you keep them Polite or Cautious. I've given them money and that will raise them to Polite or Cautious but a couple of turns later they'll be Annoyed again.

Don't over look the empires power vs a given civ. If you are very strong and trade/gift with them, you have a better chance to stay polite. If you are weaker than they are it seems to lead to difficulties.

[Dactyl]

I've attached a copy of my latest game in a .sav file. It's 430 A.D. and I'm playing the Japanese on a standard map at Emperor level. (I got the Japanese because I'm playing everything set to random.) I'm on a continent with the Indians to the north of me, the Chinese north of them and the Koreans to the west of me. I feel I'm in pretty good shape but this is the point at which my Emperor-level games usually go awry. I have been bribing the Indians to keep them Polite or Cautious most of the time while I've gone to war against the Koreans, taking cities and technologies. A turn ago the Chinese showed up trying to pull a sneak attack on me. It looks like I'll be able to handle that threat, especially since I've bribed the Indians into declaring war on the Chinese. I would welcome any suggestions on the best way to proceed from this point.

[vmxa1]

As Henry Lee said in the OJ trial "something wrong here".
The save seems to be 1788AD or there abouts on MOnarch as Cleo. The game is a bit different than the one mentioned.

[Dactyl]

My apologies! I uploaded the previous .sav file from the Civ3 directory instead of the Civ3 PTW directory. This time I have the correct one.

[David Murray]

I've been trying to play on Emperor recently. I am confused as to how one is expected to keep civs polite *and* to buy tech off them, at the same time being expected to hit neighbours with military sorties to expand territory ... at the same time being expected to build workers, marketplaces and cathedrals to keep the economy ticking over (to buy techs of course) and keeping the people happy ... nightmare, absolute nightmare.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Dactyl
My apologies! I uploaded the previous .sav file from the Civ3 directory instead of the Civ3 PTW directory. This time I have the correct one.

Well that's cool, I was afraid I had lost my mind.