Monarchy or Rebublic?

[Theseus]

I'd say that for a slower advance, earlier in the game, city capture is fine...

It's when I am blazing through enemy territory (think: Cavs and MAs), and want to keep up the momentum, while knowing that there is significant accumulated culture and perhaps a nearby enemy capitol, that I get paranoid about CFs... and raze like the Grim Reaper.

Also, if you think about it, Cavs and MAs will typically correspond to excess population problems as well, so building a bunch of Settlers is actually a good thing.

[Wildbulldog]

This game I packed my cities closer together than I normally do (2 diagonal & 1 to the side between each city). This really helped in the early game but led to excess corruption later on (or it could be due to the harder level).

All of my cities are at population 12 and I haven't built a single hospital (maybe I should for battle field medicine though). I've optimized my terrain so that there are very few unused squares and no excess food. Most of my cities have production in the 50-60 shields per turn with several that are higher.

I built J.S. Bach's Cathedral and the Sistein Chapel. Combined with 6 luxuries, 10% on the luxury slider and all happiness city improvements except coliseums, I have all 12 citizens happy in every city.

Getting settlers wouldn't be a problem with a few terrain improvement changes. I'll have to try razing more in the late game next time.

Wildbulldog

[Jawa Jocky]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Ducki, you can out research the AI at monarch with a good empire.

In my last Monarch game I was the tech leader without extorting or raising science rate above 10% until the AI starting building universities.

Now if I can figure out a way to do this on Emperor

[Jawa Jocky]

Culture Flips

I've found the 2nd easiest way to deal with these is...

Leave two offensive units next to the city and only put units you can part with in the city. If it flips they will only get one defender that you can easily defeat and reclaim the city. (The guerilla actually make this a little harder now). These reserved units are also quite helpful when you are in a jam.

[vmxa1]

Jawa Jocky move your research up to normal and beat them to universities.
At emp the only way I can get ahead by industrial age is to do some serious whacking on std map.

[Jawa Jocky]

Interesting. I've never had any luck what-so-ever doing my own research on Emperor. I've always resorted to osciallating tech extortion, with a 10% science rate to buy and trade for what I can't take. I don't even try to research until I have universities.

[nbarclay]

My policy when I'm using fast-movers is that if a city wants to flip during a war, I'll let it and then recapture it. Units park in whatever city is handy long enough to heal, but aside from protecting border areas, I don't generally bother to keep units in captued cities at all during wartime. That lets me maintain a much faster pace of operations - hopefully completely eliminating the enemy and making flips impossible. And as long as my culture is a match for my victim's, flips are infrequent enough not to be more than a minor nuisance the vast majority of the time.

Nathan