Emperor Level--It's driving me nuts

[Wizard55]

Is it possible to win Emperor on a tiny map. That's what I have been trying to do for weeks.
I have been playing Monarch for months and win 9 out of 10 games by domination or Space Race. So I tought I would try Emperor.

I used the same strategy in Emperor that I had been using in Monarch, but the best I can do is 2nd place.

I play the Ottomans or Americans and play Random AI Civs.
I build 6 cities as fast as I can and then use 3 for culture and 3 for armies. I trade and give away everything to stay friends with AI Civs until I can hold my own militarily.

However if I go for culture I fall behind in military, and If I go for military I fall behind in the tech Race. yet the AI can get both.
Really annoys me to no end.

I've read some Threads on strategy but all were too general.
Are there any threads in the Forum that are more specific?
I'm not looking for cheats just ways to stay with the AI Civs.

Do you have to play on a large or huge mapto win Emperor?
I would appreciate any words of wisdom.

Thanks for listening.

[alexman]

Tiny maps are actually the easiest to win at higher levels. Forget culture. Just attack your first neighbor as soon as you can. Then attack the next one. Until they're all gone. Six cities are probably too many to build. Start with 3-4 and build a barracks and units and then more units.

See Sir Ralph's archer rush thread for a timeline. Follow up the archers with swordsmen/horsemen. You can easily win before the ADs come along, giving you a huge score.

Personally, I don't like playing tiny maps because they can be very one-dimensional in strategy.

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by alexman
Start with 3-4

The times I've played these settings, I've started with 1 and only built a settler after taking out my nearest neighbour with archers. On deity they probably have more starting units so more might be needed.

On a standard map, building is often best but on a tiny map fighting early is your only hope. It should be easy.

[Arrian]

On tiny maps, you may want to go with a civ that has early rush advantages, for example:

-China (great for archer rushes, and generally solid for setting up a war machine)
-Persia (Immortals. 'nuff said)
-Egypt, believe it or not. Hit somebody with swordsmen (warrior upgrade) while beelining for Monarchy and building War Chariots. Lots and lots and lots of them. Then hit anything that moves, and anything that doesn't.

alexman's right about # of cities. I typically build 8-10 on a standard map before attacking somebody. Translated to Tiny map, that should be about 4.

He's also right about culture: forget it. Go for the jugular.

Culture is important in games that you expect to last a few ages (or rather, games you expect to remain competitive for a couple of ages).

-Arrian

[Catt]

I too would say forget culture early. If you're having trouble keeping up, don't waste the production of half your empire on culture. I am probably viewed as a proponent of early culture -- but in my mind, early culture means several early temples or early libraries (depending on civ characteristics) on a standard map -- culture can be powerful but it is more of a luxury than a necessity. If not playing a religious or scientific civ, you're probably much better off bagging any thoughts of culture entirely. All this is even more true, IMHO, on a tiny map -- go carve out a nice empire and then choose the method you'll pursue to victory.

Don't worry about falling behind in tech. You will fall behind, period. Warfare can yield some tech, but I think it's real value early is in securing a decent amount of land and hurting a neighbor. Tech backwardness, against AIs (i.e., in SP games) is not fatal - it is not even particularly harmful. Focus on land, on the ability to acquire more land, and on throwing as many monkey wrenches as possible into your neighbors' plans.

Catt

[Robber Baron]

Speaking as someone who has recently made the jump from monarch to emperor level of play, I found that the most disruptive part of the change was adapting to lower unhappiness thresholds. You have to start playing with the luxury slider sooner. That, in turn, has a dramatic impact on either your research capacity or your revenue stream (unless you get lucky with luxuries). It sounds simple to spell it out so straightforwardly. But I think it took me some time to realize how sharply that was affecting various tactics and strategies I had internalized while playing at Monarch, and now had to reconsider.
It often becomes nearly impossible, for example, to keep pace with the AIs in research (assuming they are in contact with each other) from the middle of the ancient era through the late medeival or early industrial era -- which means you should abandon the effort, and compensate by collecting revenue more aggressively, brokering more creatively and more frequently, and selecting which techs you are buying much more rigorously.
You also need to weigh choices about city improvements much more carefully, to cut down on your upkeep expenses. Don't build that library until/unless you need it and are going to use it. Limit yourself to a minimum number of barracks. Etc.
In sum, if you don't need it yet, don't buy, build or research it. Make that a mantra, and repeat it at the beginning of each and every turn.

That said, for some reason my very first emperor victory came about on a tiny map while I was playing as the Arabs and following a varient rule under which I forced myself to buy, build, or whip mosques asap in every city I founded or captured -- and cathedrals in every city with a population of 6 or above.
Meanwhile, my ansars carved up the continent.
Which just goes to show, it is possible to conquer while establishing a respectable culture level.

[Robber Baron]

Follow up thoughts (sorry, still mulling this one over):
Another way to describe the transformation from dominant monarch to shrewd emperor is this:
You have to get comfortable with the idea of being behind, for long stretches of the game.
Behind in tech, behind in culture, behind militarily. Often in at least one category, sometimes in several at once. Learn to bide your time. You may feel horribly exposed -- with spearmen guarding your border cities, for example, as shiny knights and heavy-footed medeival infantryappear across your borders in foreign territories. Stay calm. Pay tribute, if you need to, or cultivate allies. Don't panic, just stick to a basic long-term plan. Build your revenue up, grow your cities, strengthen your infrastructure. Your time will come.

[Theseus]

Tiny maps are military maps.

Emperor on tiny maps requires MPs, and tech extortion.

'Nuff said.

[vulture]

I don't know about tiny maps, having never played anything smaller than standard, but I can keep up with the AI on emperor level without doing tech extortion. My current game, as it happens, is with the Ottomans as well. I was very lucky in one sense in being able to become the biggest civ purely in the REX phase - I had a peninsula blocked off at one end by the Germans, but they expanded terrible slowly. The nice size of my empire had little bearing on my tech strategy though.

My approach is to research the most expensive tech, and do so in 40 turns to rake in the cash. The first tech you chose to research is usually a choice between something like pottery in 30 turns vs writing or mathematics in 40. The AI isn't going to get the expensive techs any more quickly than you are, and usually doesn't research them first anyway. Net result is that you can get mathematics (as the Ottomans) and trade it for several other techs (including pottery, for instance). Then repeat with another expensive tech that only you are going to research (currency or construction - you should have traded for iron working by this point with a combination of maths and some of that gold that you've been storing up by virtue of having science at 10% all the way through). Since you are researching in 40 turns, it doesn't really matter how big your empire is - you won't get it significantly quicker with a bigger empire, you'll just have more cash lying around waiting rush-buying to become an option.

Doing this I managed to be the tech co-leader without having to extort any techs. My large empire kicked in around the late middle ages when my research began to outstrip the AI, but until that point I was never behind the AI except by 1 tech that I hadn't traded for (always wait for 2 AI civs to get a tech before buying it off them). You have to contact the AI very often to keep track of who has which techs to grab the opportunities for tech brokerage. But canny trading will almost always keep you at the front of the pack in research, at least for civs that can research expensive techs from the start (commercial are good, since they have alphabet to trade and can research writing immediately, industrious have masonry and can research mathematics - this gives you a good foot in the door of the research trade market - as the Ottomans you also get bronze working, which is a pretty good trade item too).

Doing this method, be prepared to fork out quite a bit of money for government techs (monarchy or republic) in addition to your nice expensive currency-branch techs. The AI demands a lot for them.

Beyond that - see what the others said. Go kill something early. With warriors upgrading to swordsmen if you get iron working early, or spearman/archer combos once you get warrior code. Since it is possible to keep up with the AI by tech trading, you only need barracks as infrastructure, and then lots of veteran units (and possibly city walls). Give in to demands from strong, nearby civs. Tell weak or distant civs to shove it.

And possibly the hardest lesson for the monarch to emperor jump - get used to being behind on the powergraph and in the game for much of the early game. If you are used to dominating from the beginning, it is too easy to get discouraged and give up. After playing a few games through you get used to it, and learn to be patient until you hit the late middle ages or early industrial where you really begin to pull away from the AI civs. Remember that in real terms, you are in a stronger position that the histograph indicates.

Hope this helps.

[Jamski]

I have a 5 ep plan for beating tiny Emperor mode. It relys on getting a reasonable starting position, ie no Tundra or Jungle etc, but it works for me.

1.) Start building a barracks, set the worker mining and roading, research (slowly) whichever you can from Warrior Code, Iron Working, Horseback Riding, Bronze Working etc. Basically a millitary tech. You can often get BWorking from a neighbour, its pretty common.

2.) When the barracks are built, then build a settler. If the city is not big enough yet, then change to vet. warriors untill it is.

3.) When the settler is built, change to vet. warriors untill the city is big enough to build a settler again. You should have used all these warriors to find your nearest victim by now. Use the settler to build a nearby city, and start on a barracks, as for the capital.

3.) As soon as the fourth settler is built, you should have an attack unit researched, and 3 citys with barracks. With luck you can upgrade all your many warriors to swords, but if not, then start all citys building archers/horses.

4.) You have built no defensive units, so now attack your neighbour VERY HARD ! Capture 2 or 3 cities and ask for peace. Get him to give you any small cities that would be destroyed if you had to fight for them. Then attack again.

5.) You are now the biggest baddest Civ in the world. Go to builder mode, or continue attacking the next civ.

-Good luck, and don't blame me if it doesn't work

-Jam

[yxhuvud]

WoA:

Regarding building barracks first, I disagree. I usually build as many warriors I can to keep the people happy and exploring, and then time the first settler to complete the same turn as the city grows to size 3. After that, I might build a barracks if militaristic, or a temple is religious.

If I ain't either I usually wait another cycle and build the barracks when the second settler wave is complete. It does depend a bit on the map though, and on how much land you can settle without the ai getting there first. Generally the closer the opponent the fast I build barracks

[laissez-faire]

I, too, recently made the swing up to Emporer (just a few days ago actually). I was a pretty dominant player at Monarch, winning 90% of the time. Early observations:

1) My biggest problem has been the tech race. When I get Republic, Xerxes is moving stacks of pikemen along my mountain spines. Thanks to vulture for addressing the question that's been looming in my head ever since that first game amidst the black fog of an Emporer map: Which tech do I research first? I think this is key and I'll shortly give vulture's strategy a go.

2) The AI seems to be much less reliable. On Monarch a random declaration of war from an "ally" was quite rare. Now, it seems, the AI can sniff out a weakly defended empire. I'll be doing fine forcing my colorful borders upon weaker surrounding kingdoms until Xerxes (with his mountain spine of pikemen) decides that being my wartime ally is no longer of epic interest and engulfs 60% of my empire like the green psychotic phagocyte that he is.

Biggest pet-peeve on Emporer? 8 Knights vs. 2 Impi and losing. Maybe this isn't level-related, but it has been for me.

EDIT: I play on standard maps.

[Arrian]

It isn't level-related. It just feels that way. On Emperor, you can afford fewer bad rolls... losing 8 knights to 2 impi (ouch, I feel your pain) hurts more than it would on Monarch (it would still suck, but not quite as much). Luck (good & bad) impacts you more on the higher levels, IMO.

-Arrian

[joncnunn]

Re: Emperor Level--It's driving me nuts

Yes; I've won every Emperor lvevel game on a tiny map that I didn't hit the restart button within 20 turns of the game starting. 1 time via Culture and the others via Space Race.

I play as a Random Civ with random AI Civs on a competely random map with random barbs.

One difference: I don't have PTW and only have Classic Civ. The AI is better in PTW than Classic Civ.

I sugest using the 1 beaker tactic in early game. Much cheaper than actually reseraching yourself, and occansionly you'll actually be the first to discover something if there's 1 or 2 lost AIs. Make most of your tech buying in a GPT while if you succeed in getting something first get the payments up front (usally in tech) One major catch: the one beaker tactic only works if you have contactact with at least 1 civ that isn't furious with you. Should that occur, the best thing to do is just reserach behind them at the cheaper rate while searching for the lost civs.

Originally posted by Wizard55
Is it possible to win Emperor on a tiny map. That's what I have been trying to do for weeks.
I have been playing Monarch for months and win 9 out of 10 games by domination or Space Race. So I tought I would try Emperor.

I used the same strategy in Emperor that I had been using in Monarch, but the best I can do is 2nd place.

I play the Ottomans or Americans and play Random AI Civs.
I build 6 cities as fast as I can and then use 3 for culture and 3 for armies. I trade and give away everything to stay friends with AI Civs until I can hold my own militarily.

However if I go for culture I fall behind in military, and If I go for military I fall behind in the tech Race. yet the AI can get both.
Really annoys me to no end.

I've read some Threads on strategy but all were too general.
Are there any threads in the Forum that are more specific?
I'm not looking for cheats just ways to stay with the AI Civs.

Do you have to play on a large or huge mapto win Emperor?
I would appreciate any words of wisdom.

Thanks for listening.

[laissez-faire]

Re: Re: Emperor Level--It's driving me nuts

Originally posted by joncnunn
One difference: I don't have PTW and only have Classic Civ. The AI is better in PTW than Classic Civ.

That being said, I play with AU Mod 1.15 which (IMO) boasts an even smarter AI (credit to alexman et al). Although my Emporer games are usually decided before the Middle Ages; and I'm not sure how much AU Mod 1.15 makes a difference in that time.

Just lost three more games since my last post. I don't play out the loss. You can just tell...