Emperor Level Strategy

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by 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.

No doubt that is a challenge. The two biggest things to me are
1- micromanage workers and to a lesser degree citizens
2- a good start location, great would be better.
Without those two I am not able to do it.
Well I do not try to keep the AI polite. I mean I will try to, but I will not cut my throat doing it. In the the haul I will not be able to do it. I can postpone the time it unravels.
Buying tech is best done with ohter tech or lux. Something they need more than money. Get a tech that the AI will likely not have researched and peddle it around. The tech you get may not be known to all, sell it to the others.
Nightmare, may be a bit strong, but it is not a cakewalk that is for sure. It can be done at deity, so it can be done at Emperor.
You must maximize your tiles and citizens. Making workers and units in early game is easy at EMP/Deity, because you have no other way of preventing unhappiness. At least not until you get a few luxs. Using the slider or jokers is painful before then, so keep cranking out units.

[vmxa1]

Let me see if I can remember what I saw. Number one problem is you are in Despotism in the year 430AD. You must get out of it ASAP. As a non religious civ I will head for Republic and never switch again. If you want to be a flat out warmonger, you could go to Monarchy and not switch until very late or never. If religious you can switch from one to another. Say get to either Mon or Rep and switch to Demo later.

The next thing is you have very few workers and of course hardly any mines. As an industrious civ, I would want at least 1 worker for each city. If non Ind, then you need more. At emperor, it often is easy to have cities after the first 5-6 make a worker first thing. This is because it will take 10 turns and that is how many turns it takes to grow in most of those cities. If you have a worker pump, then you could send workers from the pumps. Core cities often can make workers early as they will have unhappy workers very soon, especially if you do not have an MP or two.

[vmxa1]

Now to continue. Capitol has only 5 shields and is not growing. This is is leathal. You can not hope to get any wonders in these cities without a leader. In fact the start looks ok, but to me it is not good. You have no rivers in sight. It is very key to have your capitol and a few core cities on a river, so they can get to size 12 with no aquaducts.
I have an emp game going now where my capitol has only one irrigated tile and 11 mined ones. This puppy can make some shields and toss a wonder up faster than any AI city.
You in fact have two mined tiles in the capitol and one of them is not being worked.
Ok you get my point here, production is way to low for this point in a EMP game. The ai boost will let it out produce you unless you have solid cities.

[vmxa1]

This is maybe a debatable point, but here is my view point. I do not want to see so many cities with barracks considering the size of your cities and their production.
I would maybe put one up near each flank and one in the unit producing cities. I would not be making so many units as you can not afford them. I would not be making any archers at this point in the game either. I do not like them, unless I am going to do an early archer rush. They can not be upgraded for a long time and when they can they are too late. It will be longbows verse knights, not my cup of tea. Spears and Swords at this point or Horsemen. I make a few archers very vry early, but none after horsemen and swordsmen.

[vmxa1]

Now I see that Leo's and Sun Tzu are under construction in several civs. This means you are behind some key techs and have only a slim chance to get either of those wonders.
Put an embassy in on one of the civs that has it and steal the tech. You will not be able to trade for it, you have nothing to offer.
I would not have headed down the Monotheism path and ignore Pike and Invention. Now here I am mabe out of line with others, but I rarely ever get the Sistine Chapel. Yes it would be nice, but I want some of the other things more, namely Pikemen and Muskets.
Now in my current game I only got the GL out of that age, so I was able to go down the Chapel path as I was strong enough to fight off the AI without pikes and I knew the GL would give me that tech soon.

Not sure if I covered all teh questions and f course everything I said maybe wrong, but now you have it.

[Dominae]

Dactyl, hope you do not mind, but I'm posting a screenshot of your game (many people like to comment but do not want to spend the time opening up the save).

vmxa1's advice is sound, as usual. There's just some things I want to underline myself:

1. You're way behind in tile improvements. I'm not at all surprised that you run into this "stumbling block" at this period in all your Emperor-level games. Your economy is simply not good enough to compete. I suspect you've survived this long by building a lot of military units, which has kept the AI off your back. Unfortunately, it's a losing battle, as you'll eventually be outmatched technologically and outnumbered when the AI goes for you.

Back to tile improvements. This is the key to Civ3. Building Workers and making sure your Laborers are working nice, productive tiles is just as important as expansion. By 430AD, every tile within your borders should have a Road on it, and either a Mine or Irrigation. Forget that it looks bad, we're talking strategy here. By putting Mines on every tile Osaka is working, you could be producing an Archer there every 3 turns instead of every 7 turns. Mostly you want Mines because your cities cannot grow beyond size 12 for quite a while. Roads should be everywhere, not just as connectors between cities. Think of every Road as +1gpt, and you'll see what I mean (it's not that simple, of course).

2. You're still in Despotism. This is the worst government other than Anarchy, and you've no reason to be in it when Monarchy and Republic are available. If you're going to war, Monarchy is simply better than Despotism in every way. If you're not, Republic is again far better than Despotism as a economy builder.

3. You're letting your Governor regulate the moods of your Citizens. Do not do this! Learn what makes them Happy, what makes them Unhappy, etc., and figure out ways to deal with this problem yourself. I guarantee you'll be more efficient than the Governor is.

4. You're using a lot of Regular Warriors as Military Police (you've got 31 Warriors!). That's not a very good use of your resources. True, you're not paying for their upkeep since you're in Despotism and have enough cities, but there are other problems. Unless you plan on upgrading all those guys, you're wasting a lot of Shields on something that could be accomplished more easily another way, such as with improvements, Luxuries, the Lux slider, or a combination of all three. If ever you switch to Republic, that's going to be 31gpt down the drain, unless you disband all the Warriors, which will have been a waste of Shields. 31 Warriors is 310 Shields which is in the Wonder range in terms of Production.

5. City improvements are good. You've been focusing on Barracks and Temples exclusively. Although this is sometimes the right thing to do, I suggest you try and be the "Builder" before the "Psychotic Warmonger".

6. You're earning 73 Commerce per turn. That's really, really low. This is due to your lack of Roads, your government, and the size of your cities. No matter what your goal, what you'll need to achieve it is many productive cities. Currently you have many cities, but they are not productive. You need much more Commerce in order to kee up in research and upgrade your units, among other things.

7. If you continue playing this game, here is my plan for you: 1) get every city to build about 2-3 Workers and make these build Roads everywhere, 2) switch to Republic, 3) set Science to 0%, 4) get Feudalism from some other civ (or research it yourself), 5) hoard up a lot of Gold to upgrade your Warriors to Medieval Infantry, and finally 6) take down the Indians, then the Chinese. Your Medieval Infantry should still be useful by the time you get enough Gold to upgrade a nice bunch of them. Meanwhile build some Horsemen to upgrade to Samurai for use against the next opponent when you reach Chivalry.


Sorry for being hard on you, but you simply must understand that Workers and tile improvements are at the core of success in Civ3.

Good luck, and have fun!


Dominae

[David Murray]

Thanks for the words of wisdom, vmxa1. I've been in dominating positions in couple of Emperor games and yet the one thing that stopped me from winning was the fact that I was midway through the Middle Ages while the AI was entering industrial at 1030 AD. Knights are no use against riflemen and infantry. But I never even considered the posibility of stealing techs .....

[Dactyl]

vmxa1 & Dominae,

Thanks for the blunt appraisal. I appreciate it. It's interesting. By temperament, I'm not a psychotic warmonger type of player. When I originally started playing on the Monarch level, I played a builder strategy, which suits me better, and with success. However, in an effort to attain higher scores, I changed to a strategy where I played as a warmonger until the middle of the Middle Ages, then switched over to a builder strategy. That way I got higher scores and I was generally able to catch up with the AI economically and technologically. I figured that on Emperor level I would have to be even more aggressive early on just to keep from being overwhelmed. Obviously I was wrong. That said, are there any documents I can download that contain your strategies for approaching an Emperor-level game?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by David Murray
Thanks for the words of wisdom, vmxa1. I've been in dominating positions in couple of Emperor games and yet the one thing that stopped me from winning was the fact that I was midway through the Middle Ages while the AI was entering industrial at 1030 AD. Knights are no use against riflemen and infantry. But I never even considered the posibility of stealing techs .....

The best thing is not arrive at this point with a large empire. It hopefully will be starting to become productive. Check the screen to see where you are in the production race. It can be hard to catch up in culture for a long time as they will have most of the early wonders, but you can start to get ahead in tech. This may take as long as the ToE, but should be done sooner.
You will need to have libs/universities in all solid cities.
You will need to trade well and get some tech. You may even beat some out of the AI, but this is usually harder to do at the point you are talking about.
It is easier to do it to weak civ before this time. The AI will have lots of troops by now, so you will have to pick your spots. I can often get one to attack me and get others to help me and then do very little to get a pay off.
It depends on the civ and where they are. If they are very large and near you it is harder.
I let them toss lots of units against my defense and then strike out. This gives the AI time to feel better about peace. It does not want to talk about peace after just a short time. So if say 9-10 turns as gone by and I have smacked some of their invasion forces and then grab a city or two, I can get a deal.
Calv can take down rifles. Just aviod the size 12 and the bonus defenses. I will have maybe two armies to use on cities as they can bust the defenses.
In the main I will do only a little work on cities at this point. Pick the right spots and you can hurt them.
I want tanks after rifles. Just use your defense to hang close. Grab all the opportunities that come your way.
Ai vs AI, I look to join in at the best time to snag a twon or two. Building my troops and improving my production.
You should be able to start out researching, if you production is where it should be.

[vmxa1]

Dactyl

Somewhere here we have topped thread for strats. I am sure that some exist there.
To me the war or not war is not even part of the issue.
I mean it is sort of true that you can have some sucess with war monger tactics, but it is not required.
I would just work on getting more workers and making mines in the core cities. Then you will be stronger and choose to war or not.
Play with sedentary barbs for awhile to allow you to ignore them while you manage those workers.
I like to check the citizen when I create a city. See where it was placed. Normally it will be on the best tile. If so then I will send my worker over to mine it. Sometimes I will irrigate a tile for a worker or settler pump or if that city can not grow any other way.
The key is improve it with mine or irrgation before roading. Next plan where the worker will go next. Sometimes you will need to move a citizen from one tile to another to save worker moves. I see this often when a bunch of tiles are the same. I have worker on one and the gov drops a new citizen on a tile that is not adjacent to that worker. Why move my worker twice or more to get to that tile when they are the same?
Anyway look at Crackers thread on CFC for this whole topic. It is called something like improving opening moves. It will teach players how to evaluate tiles and conserve workers to get the most out of them. This is critical after Monarch.

[vmxa1]

If you want to see a well layed out empire look at AU208 post by Nbarclay. You will see tile after tile all mined. I am sure there are many others, but that si the last one I remember seeing.
Of course I never automate workers until I have may RR up, even then I usually will not automate them, but you could. I is ok if you have your own land mass, but if you have neighbors, the workers will get into trouble.

[vmxa1]

I forgot to mention something that could be useful in Emp/Deity games. That is to understand the requirements and timing of a city having a citizen to become unhappy.
If you look at a start for Emp you can see the next pop bump coming. If you have sent your warrior out and the city is empty, you must be ready to take action on the pop to prevent unhappiness and the loss of production.
These will add up in the first 40 turns. I suspect a lot of player will see the disorder after the fact. Now you lost a turn of production.

[Theseus]

Dactyl, I was about to open the save myself, but vxma1 and Dominae are spot on, and seeing the screen shot spoke for itself.

Run, do not walk, RUN to these two threads:

Winning Early: What do YOU do?

Improving your opening play skills

Forget about grand strategy and things military for the moment... you will be blown away by how much tile improvement alone can improve your game. Once that's together, the other pillars follow.

[David Murray]

In my current Emperor game, I think I've hit the spot where I know I'm going to win. Biggest piece of advice I think you can give anyone intent on winning Emperor is to play on a small map. Or maybe a standard map. And build lots and lots of units like vmxa1 says ... you want to capture as much as you can, e.g. capturing the great library gives you an amazing boost if your research has stagnated. Capturing an enemy city with a wonder in it takes a lot less time than building an attacking force. Of course, generating a great leader 490BC also helps ....