Emperor difficulty in BNW

Finding emperor to be pretty easy myself. Just build an early army to keep the hounds off you until you can get Consulates. Throw in Pledge to Protect and friend all the militaristic City States. Army problem solved so you can focus on other stuff (science). My last game I was receiving enough of an army I was able to basically ignore the bottom half of the tech tree until the science started steam rolling and I was hitting the bottom half techs every turn. shot from 5th in literacy to first and pulled far with the quickness
 
Thanks for the thoughtful replies, all. I really have been relying too much on my own counsel and not so much on the communal think tank, but I guess with these advantages spreading like a cancer isn't so surefire anymore.

Oh well, time to scrap the third dear Portugal game and keep an eye on science boosts next time.


One thing I really wish they would change, or at least add an option for, is to make it so that AI players target runaway civs more aggressively. Or whatever. I mean, sometimes the best way to catch up to a runaway civ is to take out a weaker civ, thus "catching up", not attacking it directly. I hate it when the AI ignores a runaway civ.

I don't know, I feel like the AI has always bet on a favorite horse to win the game throughout the saga, and this only became more transparent with Civ5. If you take out the runaway civ, the next one in line will get a massive boost and become the new contender.
 
I find Emperor now to be really hit-or-miss:

I've had several games that I had in the bag already by the Renaissance, mostly because the Zulu, the Huns, or some other warmonger started a continent-wide war on the opposite continent from where I started. In several of these particular games, I was able to hard-build wonders I usually only hard-built for gold (for getting beaten to them) in G&K, presumably because at least half the world was just trying to build units and maintain the military dead-lock.

On the other hand, I've had games where the continent opposite of me had 3 peaceful civs that traded with each other, established RA's with each other, and ended up spitting out at least one massive runaway that was way ahead in tech and went on to conquer the other 2.

The issue is that early-war, if it becomes a dead-lock, makes those AI's participating in the war stagnate very quickly due to not having trade-routes and/or focusing on building large numbers of units. Conversely, if I'm the one on the continent with two war-mongers, I may not have any safe trade-routes, nor will I be able to have RA's unless I meet the other continent(s) and the AIs on them have enough gold and are willing to DoF.

Thus, because of the peace/war dynamic now, I find Emperor games to be sometimes as easy as King or even Prince games, and in other cases almost a half-step above Immortal games, all because where the war happens and how it plays out can either cripple several AI for a long time, or cripple me for a long time, mostly now because of how war disrupts trade-routes and a couple of other issues.
 
Thanks for the thoughtful replies, all. I really have been relying too much on my own counsel and not so much on the communal think tank, but I guess with these advantages spreading like a cancer isn't so surefire anymore.

Oh well, time to scrap the third dear Portugal game and keep an eye on science boosts next time.




I don't know, I feel like the AI has always bet on a favorite horse to win the game throughout the saga, and this only became more transparent with Civ5. If you take out the runaway civ, the next one in line will get a massive boost and become the new contender.

It depends on what point in the game you're at. Early on, you can get away with attacking weaker civs. Later in the game if you don't cripple the runaway you just lose. :p
 
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