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**Aeson** · July 20, 2002, 16:22

The difference between Emperor and Deity is the most of any of the difficulty level jumps. I can win peacefully on Emperor, but Deity usually turns out to require warfare to do well. Winning is still possible with a decent start. The AI is pretty lax about building the spaceship (perhaps changed in 1.29, haven't played it yet), which gives the player a chance to build it even with a much smaller empire.

It really helps to cut back a bit on the number of AI. That way the expansion phase lasts longer, and the AI are less likely to attack if there is still room to expand. Make sure to never 'ruin' a civ with gpt deals, as if their economy goes sour they will end up attacking to break the deals, rather than sell off all their improvements and units. You can usually tell when this is going to happen. If a increase of 1gpt in the deal sends it from "this would be acceptable" to "they would never accept such a deal", it means that is the limit of their income, not counting what they reserve for research (you have to look at their cities to tell that). Let them keep at least a few gpt coming in.

**Aeson** · July 20, 2002, 16:30

Re: Winning peacefully on emperor, is it possible?

Originally posted by buiz
Oh, and why do the other civs never seem to want to buy one of your cities?

To combat exploits that were involved with city trading.

It was possible (in the original version) to conquer the whole world except for the AI's capitols this way, with just warriors and a handfull of little cities. Firaxis just decided to disallow any exchange for cities, other than the peace treaty itself.

**Chemical Ollie** · July 20, 2002, 17:46

Re: Winning peacefully on emperor, is it possible?

Originally posted by buiz

...
So my question in this long posting (sorry guys) is simple: is it possible to win peacefully on emperor/deity level in civ3? Anybody done it? Any tips and hints? Or is my peaceful dream an impossibility?
...

My best game was on Emperor level, apart from a very lucky OCC on Regent level, where all 4 civs where on the same tiny island and I razed them with a few units before 2700 BC, ~14500 score.

My best emperor game was as Iroquis on a large continent map with a good starting place. I went for blood quite early, with the excellent UU to help. It still took me a while of oscillating war/peace to finally conquer the whole continent in the industrial era. Then the civs on the other smaller continent declared war, and I used modern units to take the 2 last luxuries I missed before I made peace. Just a few turns later, victory was triggered by culture, at score > 6000.

So, to win peacefully with a good score on Emperor, you should have a good starting position, go to war early but still be a builder. The Germans you play are good for both early and late wars, as they start with warrior code. And imagine the production from a golden age with railroads, democracy and mobilisation - WOW!

**HazieDaVampire** · July 20, 2002, 17:57

i'm still on the second difficulty level on my 3rd game!

**Txurce** · July 20, 2002, 21:01

I've only tried a purely defensive game a couple of times, and a long time ago, so my failure then is probably not conclusive. Is the problem in your peaceful games that you get attacked, or that you can't acquire enough cities without war (or both)? If it's the fomer, then develop a credible defense, despite your peaceful aims. The AI will still attack, but you can fight them off, especially if you make alliances (or at least avoid having them made against you). That said, the AI is much more likely to sue for peace if you don't just fight it off, but take at least one of its cities. I'm not sure whether this breaks your ground rules, but if it does, try razing the city, or giving it away to a weak civ. More of a problem might be generating sufficient research on emperor with less than ten cities, especially if you wisely devoted some of your development to defense.

**buiz** · July 21, 2002, 06:05

The basic problem is that the surrounding civs quickly start extorting me and then shortly afterwards attacking me. Being a peaceful civ I can only defend and beg for peace, but it has not worked so far. The tech race is also quickly lost, since once you lose the possibility of devastating one of your neighbours and then sue him of all techs for peace, it is close to impossible to keep up with the AI.

Have anyone out there ever managed to win on emperor/deity level without attacking at all?

**NeoStar** · July 21, 2002, 06:39

If I want to win peacefully I've always used one method of keeping civs from attacking. I keep them with military alliances against one (preferably big) civ. If that civ dies I target another. It is expensive (unless you have a heap of luxuries) and I can't see it being affordable past a large map, but it keeps everyone on side.

**Cort Haus** · July 21, 2002, 07:35

Aeson,

When you win peacefully on emperor, do you mean that you don't start wars, or that you don't resort to them to make substantial gains once someone kicks off?

In my sole emp (Iroq) game, I only declared war once, getting in others to crush the Zulus early on, then built my second core. From there I was attacked by two other civs, both of whom I destroyed in reply and eventually built the SS (but only because the Greeks weren't trying). If I hadn't initiated the first war, would this have counted as a 'peace win'?

I've just posted 'Peace Dividend', my monarch peace-strat, and am wondering if it can be adapted for emperor.

**Aeson** · July 21, 2002, 08:11

I read through your post, a lot of good stuff there. I do think it can be applied to sparcely populated Emperor maps, though the crowded ones do tend to require early warfare (or an early settler from a hut) to get enough cities founded.

I haven't played many peaceful Emperor games, mostly just to see how many wonders I could build, and then end up as cultural or spaceship victories. I only fought defensive wars (declared by the AI), never actually taking cities. The leaders generated from the fighting help though.

In 1.16f it was possible to trigger domination without fighting in some Emperor games (Huge/Pangaea/Up to 8 AI). It wasn't truely peaceful as it relied heavily on renegotiating peace treaties to extort cities from the AI, and culture war after. But there was no conventional warfare or capture of cities required.

**Cort Haus** · July 21, 2002, 09:18

I might try a standard pangea with three rivals on emp to see how it goes playing peace/builder.

I'd also considered the variant you mentioned including extortion. But if this is part of a peace renegotiation, rather than just a threat, then failure to secure a deal starts a war which you've started, right?

**Aeson** · July 21, 2002, 09:44

Yes, you can make sure they will at least re-sign the peace treaty by checking the F8 screen. If on the power graph you are more powerful than the AI, they will pay something to re-sign.

It's a moot point now as I think they got rid of the 0 turn war trick in 1.29f, so cities for re-signing peace treaties would be no more. In 1.21f the only way to get the cities was to actually cancel the peace treaty, but stay in the diplomacy screen and offer a new treaty.

Still should be possible to extort techs and money this way though.

**DeepO** · July 21, 2002, 18:16

I had one emperor game with absolutely no war whatsoever. It was more or less by accident: I wanted to test how much city flips you could have to your advantage, and in order to have lots of city flips, you need relatively fixed borders. IIRC, I had 7 or 8 cities flipping to me.

The key in that game was that I was playing a huge large continent map, with only 6 AI civs. Further, I was playing the Persians, and had access to 3 luxuries myself, with the monopoly on one of them. I gave in to each extortion of the AIs, even if I thought they were not going to attack me. And, I traded with all of them, luxs but also each tech I got first. I researched most industrial techs, and sold it to all of them that could give anything for them (I remember I practically gave motorized transportation away, trading it to worldmaps etc. You wouldn't do this in a normal game

)

Finally, I built the UN, and won diplomatically... nearly all civs voted for me (one abstained, and of course one voted for himself)... score in the 4000s. A cultural win was also possible, but I was bored too much, if there is no war there is a little distraction.

After that game, I tried to recreate the experience a few times, but each time I was attacked. It truely was a one of a kind game, I'm sorry to not have kept the save game. If you want to try it, make sure all civs are always polite to you (by the end of the game I had to give techs, or several hundreds of gold to some, they wouldn't be bribed by 100 gold anymore). Further, keep a decent military, so they don't think you're an easy target. But, don't build too many troops, or the AIs will see you as a threat and will combine their forces against you. And make sure there is room enough for peaceful expansion or you will be attacked...

DeepO

**jshelr** · July 22, 2002, 15:05

buiz

I think your experience has been shared generally. Mini tourney IV and the Alamo game being developed now are really reflections of 1/ how routine it is to win a normal game below Diety and 2/ how overly long it takes to complete one after it becomes clear you will win and 3/ the size of the jump to Diety, which is too much for some of us and represents the "wrong type" of difficulty for others. Another way players seem to be responding is the search for the perfect game or attempting to be hyper-dominant right from the start. I've found playing the same game as a group and sharing stories about the experience to be fun and to be a learning experience.

**Alkis** · July 25, 2002, 14:41

Try these things:

In the beginning expand rapidly, build military units and yet don't go to war. If your neighbors ask for tribute accept. If someone attacks you despite all that, buy an ally.

About technology, don't research warrior code, horseback riding, iron working etc. Just try to get a later technology and exchange it. Mathematics-Currency or Writing-Literature these should be your goals. In the mini tourney as the Germans, played some while ago, I just researched Mathematics and Currency and that got me out of the ancient era (about 850 BC).

There are many other tips but these are what I remember now. Hope you find them simple and usefull.

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Winning on emperor

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