How to win on Emperor / Deity without Pop Rushing?

[gus_smedstad]

We all know it, rushing military units (and some infrastructure) under Despotism is very powerful. However, I've found I don't particularly enjoy playing that way. It's a bit boring, since you never really explore the building part of the game, you just crank out Horsemen as fast as you can grow new population.

However, the times I've tried playing at Emperor or Deity without essentially doing a rush, I've been mashed horribly. The AI not only expands much faster than you can, it gets research so quickly that you're far behind on tech. And heaven help you if the Zulu know you exist - even if they aren't adjacent, they'll incite your neighbors (even the peaceful Indians) to attack.

So has anyone had any luck winning at either Emperor or Deity without pop-rushing to get an overwhelming military advantage?

- Gus

[Robert]

I'm currently #2 (shared 2nd position) on Emperor 16 civs level.
I started expanding expanding expanding,
much culture (I'm the indians) by building temples as quickly as possible. Then sharing techs, because you expand much you have much resources. Try to know as much as possible civs, and trade techs with all of them.

After a while you're getting benefits for being large, and you can keep up with researching. Once in a while I put science on 0% and buy some temples again (libraries if I'm close to the border)

I'm now around 500 AD I think, and I'm 2nd position.
quite nice for emperor level I think without having had any war !

[aziyan]

Hi
I finish the game in emperor without any war in the ancient era. I built great library and than i dont care for science. All I do is to make my cities bigger (I only have 22) and when i get knigths I just built all knigths and conquer the world. By the time I found modern armor there is only one civ left (germans) and it took only 4 turns to crash them with modern armor (they dont have the tech for modern armor). I have 200 or more modern armor of course.

[dainbramaged13]

Originally posted by CyberShy
I'm currently #2 (shared 2nd position) on Emperor 16 civs level.

what they have rankings already!
show me them now!

[Robert]

it's 330 AD, I just 'retire' now and then to see how I'm doing (when I quit playing)

[Robert]

Zulu's and english are my neighbours btw

[solo]

I managed a deity win in a peaceful game. For details on strategy, see:

1735 AD launch in Deity

(Am trying a link for the first time, so this may not work.)