Ok, so I'm having trouble now that i've moved up to emperor. I could get domination wins in monarch without a problem, but so far the only ones i've gotten on emperor were with permanent alliances, which is pretty much just cheating. Once you get a PA in about 1400, the game's over. You won.

I've gotten multiple space race victories, and they were relatively easy. Even with just 6 cities and no warring I can outtech the AI by the end because each city is a science and production powerhouse. But whenever I try to war it just ruins my economy and I get outteched. I constantly have to beeline the military techs, just to keep up, and end up avoiding or trading for the other ones. The AI just builds ludicrous amounts of troops at this level, so war weariness is insane. and maybe it's bad luck, but on monarch i had more problems with health than happiness, usually i had a nice surplus of happy faces before going to war, but my recent games i haven't.

In my last game I was on a continent with Mansa, Suleiman, and me. I got boxed pretty quickly, and only my capital was what i would call a prime spot. I had 7 other cities, but they all sucked, lots of deserts, too many plains, no fresh water, mostly water tiles. I managed to keep up in tech in the early game, even got rifling through liberalism. but the only reason i managed to keep up was because i popped like 4 great spys, and no great scientsts, so i ended up stealing about 10 techs at least, from mansa. Even stole nationalism and astronomy. So i get my stack of rifles and cannons bribe suleiman to go to war, and then i hit mansa from the other side, i take 3 of his cities, sul takes 3 and he caps to suleiman. So i messed up, i shouldn't have bribed sul to war. I slowly tech my way to artillery and infantry, which sul doesn't have but mansa does. I'm sure I could take over my continent still, just turn off research, turn up culture, and just pump out infantry and artillery, but the guys on the other continent already have industrialism. Theoretically i could catch up and take over the last continent once i get caught up with modern armor, and the other modern weapons, but i dunno if my economy would recover in time.

Anybody have tips on this? It seems like every level I go up, i need to start my wars later so my economy can handle them. On price i'd start warring with macemen and trebs, in monarch I needed to wait untli i had rifles and cannons. If I wait until i get infantry and artillery on emperor, my production won't be able to keep up, just because the Ai can land grab so much better. and it's rare that i'll actually be #1 in land and pop.

I guess i just need to work on my starts and start warring in the classical age if i get boxed in, but then i'll be stuck with size 2 or 3 cities from so much whipping until the millenium.

What leaders are you playing with?

Usually with a beeline/sling or whatever other cheap strat you can get a short, early but profitable tech lead, try and use that towards the tech that has your civs UU, like that even once they catch up your military will be superior, since it will have fought a few wars already and thus will be expirienced, you will have units that unlock HE and GGs settled in it, alowing for some more war until they finally out tech you.

Then once you have atleast wiped out one or two civs, you will be able to turtle your way into another tech lead.

I can usually settle ten or so cities without early war on Emperor. Just expand out a bit towards the AI at first and backfill as your economy allows. Then if you beeline rifling first and mass draft you can have a big army quickly to take out an AI with longbows.

I don't like to war without a tech edge - otherwise you are fighting the AI against their strength which is mass numbers. Once you have more land than them you can play that game, but not before.

Modern war gets insane on war weariness but police state can solve that problem. Also the Eiffel tower is incredible for getting a lot of happiness out of the culture slider. Before then just use the culture slider for happiness and make your wars short and brutal. It doesn't matter if you end up at 50% culture for 20 turns or so if you manage to double the size of your empire in the process.

I can usually settle ten or so cities without early war on Emperor. Just expand out a bit towards the AI at first and backfill as your economy allows. Then if you beeline rifling first and mass draft you can have a big army quickly to take out an AI with longbows.

I don't like to war without a tech edge - otherwise you are fighting the AI against their strength which is mass numbers. Once you have more land than them you can play that game, but not before.

Modern war gets insane on war weariness but police state can solve that problem. Also the Eiffel tower is incredible for getting a lot of happiness out of the culture slider. Before then just use the culture slider for happiness and make your wars short and brutal. It doesn't matter if you end up at 50% culture for 20 turns or so if you manage to double the size of your empire in the process.

10 cities...! I'm doing something wrong in the early game. Is that really possible? Even if I expand aggressively towards the AI, I'm not sure I could get that many out without falling into economic collapse...

It depends how you define "early game" ... Invisible S refers to beelining Rifling, which 'in my book' is 'mid-game', but 10 cities after Code of Laws + Currency is more often than not a necessity.

As far as the OP's issues on emperor, I think that the problems simply lay in the details. Winning on emperor requires more attention and micromanagement than monarch. Your issues with warfare likely stem from this as well.
What leaders are you using? CE or SE? I really only started to win regularly on Emperor when I began employing SE fairly strictly (exceptions being financial leaders/certain terrain but I rarely go hybrid). I'm sure there are those who will say CE all the way but I have found SE to be unparalleled in the crucial early game/warring phase.

I also agree with Invisi that warring with a tech lead is the best way to go. This means managing your early teching really well to beeline those key military techs. If you can get rifling with liberalism on emperor then you are doing something right. Leverage this advantage for a massive drafted rifleman vs. longbow war. If you are unable to backfill the other techs then you need to work on your diplomacy.

Hope this helps.

Naw, i'm a master diplomat, even when I don't pop great spies to steal techs i have no problem trading for the engineering/banking lines.

I prefer CE, but I know how to run an SE. My first serious SE game I managed to win a space race victory on emperor. And i really haven't noticed SE to really be superior, maybe i'm just not good at it, but with Elizabeth, i don't really get to Libmuch faster than i would with a pure CE economy with Ragnar. The main advantage i found was being able to switch from science to production very easily.


I think the problem is my initial land grab. i probably need to be more aggressive. But I don't even bother getting stone henge or oracle anymore because of this, but i don't want to stop building the great wall either. That great spy is just too helpful.

10 cities...! I'm doing something wrong in the early game. Is that really possible? Even if I expand aggressively towards the AI, I'm not sure I could get that many out without falling into economic collapse...

Probably its city placement - not walling off areas you can backfill cities. But I pack my cities fairly close now. Its not that I get 10 in the early game - but I try to make sure I have the ability to settle this many altogether - probably 4 initially, another 2-3 with COL and the rest after currency/civil service.

As for SE vs CE, I know others swear by SE, but CE is certainly viable on Emperor and Immortal, and I find it easier to afford more cities and tech faster with a CE, although I will play both.

I also agree with Invisi that warring with a tech lead is the best way to go. This means managing your early teching really well to beeline those key military techs. If you can get rifling with liberalism on emperor then you are doing something right. Leverage this advantage for a massive drafted rifleman vs. longbow war. If you are unable to backfill the other techs then you need to work on your diplomacy.

Hope this helps.

Rifling with liberalism is impressive. I find I need to trade Education and Liberalism to get techs like printing press, engineering, guilds and banking. I'll take Nationalism, build the Taj and use the golden age for my civics switch and to power towards rifling.

sounds like you had a pretty rubbish map. axe rushing is always preferable if it is an option: especially on higher difficulty levels.

Anybody have any links to good games won militarily?

I tried this game again, from right when I attacked mansa. I delayed my attack, kept building rifles and cannons while i teched to artillery and infantry. once i reached those i turned off research and upgraded. i was able to take him out this time. I bribed suleiman again, but this time mansa had upgraded his army enough to not fold to suleman.

I still lost. Wang Kon got a cultural victory as i was racing augustus to a space victory. I could have taken out about 4 of augustus's cities because they were ocean based, and that probably would have kept him out of the space race game, but none of wang kong's cultural cities were on the coast. He attacked augustus right before he won, and my fleet wasn't able to get there in time, plus my 12 marines i sent got raped by all of wang kong's artillery.

And even spending the last 100 years after i beat mansa building nothing but troops, i was still about 1/4 of the power graph. I'm starting to hate this game.

And i've come to the realization that if i don't get 8-9 prime spots in the BCs, i might as well restart. Gonna have to start working on axe rushes too.

You don't need 8-9 prime spots. I might have 6 prime spots and 4 viable ones. I tend to settle a lot of coastal cities since they effectively expand the "land" you can work.

Don't worry too much about the power graph. Send a spy in to find the city(s) in which there are lots of troops stacked. Count that army - thats what you will face. AI will have a power graph higher than you - but can they field a bigger army in any given battle?

How big was your army in practice? I'm about to go to war with Joao who has double my power. But my attack army consists of around 80 units and I can't see him putting a stack of more than 60 together in any one place. My attack army went from around 25 units to 80 in around 12 turns. 36 infantry drafted and every city building units during a golden age including my HE city which builds 1 per turn. If you truly spent 100 turns building nothing but troops in the modern age and didn't have an enormous army, then one of two things:

- Either you aren't building troops nearly as fast as you think you are. Are you drafting? Rush buying? Whipping? Or just relying on normal hammer production?
- Or you have way too few cities for this time in the game. If you don't occupy at least twice the land of other AIs at this time you should forget about war - you should have made your move much earlier than the modern era when AI production is insane. Concentrate on space and diplomacy instead.

I've finished some games on Monarch and am ready to try Emperor. Could use adivice on the VERY early game, e.g.:

How do I get six cities before the AI boxes me in? In my last Monarch game I had to reload several times, eventually back to Turn 1, before I worked out how to reach the key chokepoints.

Even then I couldn't pay the maintenance; had to go down to 40% science. Will be worse on Emp, no?

Same Q re axe rushing: supposing I learn how to do this -- not sure I really see yet how it works -- what good is it to have more cities early?

CK

Its good to find where the AI is early and predict where they are likely to settle and where you need to rush quickly and where you can settle at your leisure. But remember you can settle 9 cities in a 7x7 area centered on your capital if you want to and 25 cities in an 11x11 area with your capital at the center. So settling just 6 tiles away from your capital and towards the AI can give you a lot of potential area to settle.

Chokepoints are great if you can get them. Settle them first. On a coastal map always settle towards the AI first and then fill in areas behind you later.

@ck07:
As far as settling quickly enough, invisi's advice is sound, especially on backfilling. I would just add that sometimes less early cities are needed and too many can be undesirable. I have definitely had games where I had a settler ready to go because I feared the AI would take a key spot and then just fortified him until I was either forced to build the city or I could afford it.
Invisi also makes a good point about city overlap. Its not always such a bad thing and can help keep maintenance down.

Speaking of maintenance, you are correct that it only gets worse as you move up in difficulty. There are many ways to manage it, but lowering the science slider is usually unavoidable on high difficulties. You have to get creative about where your funding comes from.

Some possibilities include:
-Trade routes, though this is not as helpful early on with the smaller AI cities in BtS.
-War!!! One of my favorites and here is where the axe rush you mentioned is crucial. You should definitely try it out. The money from plunder and pillage can go a long way toward allowing some deficit spending.
-If you are running a CE you need to get those cottages working early. (I recommend against this option but some will swear by it. It just takes a long time.)
-Settle any high commerce resources (like gold, gems) early.
-Workers, workers, workers. Most people (myself too often included) don't build near enough workers early and the maintenance costs are crushing because they don't have the improvements they need to pay for themselves.

In the end, you need to be planning clearly where your expansion funding is coming from, rather than just trying to grab some spare change and then wondering what went wrong when you can't pay the bills. This is a situation I have found myself in all too often. Pursue opportunities where you can get them and write off others if they are not worth pouring resources into (yeah, I'm talking about wonders).

Hope this helps.

My problem was warring too late, and horrible land. I also didn't start building my army until i got rifles, which was a huge mistake, i should have had my army of macemen ready to upgrade as soon as i got rifles. I need to work my own strategy at this level.

In my next game I think i'm going to get nationalism from liberalism, build the taj, use the GA to turn off research to get a ton of gold and switch to theocracy and/or vassalage for cityraider 2, and whip and build a stack of macemen, upgrade the macemen to rifles. Then build trebs while I finish researching rifles, immediately draft an asston of rifles, and march out. Even if i need to turn up the culture slider taking out that all important 1 enemy should let me keep going and catch up. The hardest one is always the first, after that, all the great generals and heroic epic, and momentum let you take the rest easily.

All right. Finally won my first emperor domination victory.

I was Wang Kon of Native America. I chose them because i wanted the heroic epic before my first war. So the totem pole + theocracy + vassalage lets you get there. Very nice.

It was a pangaea map, and it was mostly peacemongers, but monty was in there. The others were lincoln, victoria, zara, ramses, and pericles. Monty attacked victoria from the start, and he just kept going after her the whole time, by the time i checked the "you attacked us" was at -12.

So i get first to liberalism, get nationalism, but i get beat to the taj. Everybody is trading a ton and i never manage to get even a slight tech lead, other than on victoria and monty. So instead i use a GS to pop a golden age, while which i lower my science rate, and build about a ton of city raider 2 macemen, get rifling, upgrade them, and draft some more. Since everybody was teching so fast i was able to trade for chemistry, and teched steel 10 turns later, so I decide to wait till i have cannons before hitting monty. Build a ton of trebs while i tech there, upgrade them to cannons, and go to town on monty. Take him take him out and double my empire.

But by then the techers already have infantry, so i tech to infantry, and as soon as i do i take out vicotria and vassal her, while i take her out i trade for sci method and physics and tech artillery.

Take out ramses next, who can't reach my lands because he has to go through victoria and monty's lone city, and who was the score leader at the time. I use infantry and artillery. He had infantry but still had cannons. I take his capital which had the pentagon, statue of liberty, mauselleum, and tons of other stuff. I take out pericles next, who still only has rifles, and i think stopped teching for a culture win. By then the only 2 left are zara and lincoln, who have a pretty big tech lead on me, they both have industrialism, flight, etc. I start working on industrialism, but build a ton of anti tanks so i can start on them immediately. I declare, and turns out they signed a def pact, lincoln takes one of pericles's cities, but besides that, he doesn't do much of anything, besides pillaging a few tiles. Zara vassals to lincoln after i take his first city, he gets steam rolled, and would have been destroyed if he didn't have an island citiy. i won domination victory, and lincoln would have capitulated if i hadn't won that turn anyway, and so would have zara, giving me a conquest. Won in 1860, 66,000 points.

All in all, good game. I'm pretty confident i'll be able to win domination a lot easier now. Taking out that first opponent is always the most important part of the game, once you do that, that's it. You won, the momentum will keep you going. I used to do the city raider macemen>riflemen thing a lot back in prince, but for some reason stopped doing it on monarch, and was still able to win easily. But I'm gonna start working on that again. It might have been a bit harder with more warmongers, but at the same time a bit easier as they wouldn't have had a tech lead.

Nice thread, you're inspiring me to take the step up to Emp. I think Monarch is plenty of good fun, I don't often feel like it's easy even there. I can't imagine what a challenge the top 3 tiers are.

Try the standard expansion to 60%. Sword/Catapult rush a weak(er) AI, but only keep the capital and strong cities which can pay for themselves. This works on Monarch, but Emperor is a step up...

Maybe try rushing before rifles. A nice Mace or even swords rush can give you a nice base to start out teching the AI.

I recently stepped up to emperor, but got beaten sofar.

In one game i had a pretty good axe rush against Ragnar. (although he vassalized to Saladin) I then could win the lib race, but I tried a cav rush instead of rifles. By the time I was ready to go, Saladin (my next victim) had rifles. So I lost my momentum and never could think about war once I got to the modern age.