How the heck do you beat this game on Emperor?

Right I bought Civ V last week, so am still largely clicking buttons rather than having great strategy already worked out. I've been playing the 'duel' maps (1 other civ, and 4 city states) on the 'pangea' map.

On Prince I've done fine, and can hold off the enemy until I get nukes, at which point I blast them from the Earth. I've played a couple of games on King, with the same basic strategy, and had decent results.

But I don't know what it is...I tried loading up a game on Emperor yesterday. I was assigned the Mongols/Ghenghis Khan as my civilisation, and the other civ was India. I was been torn to bits from start to finish. Not in terms of war since I never went to war, but...

1) India's capital was way bigger than my capital. The difference started around turn 30 or so, and just got wider and wider. Their subsequent cities were also bigger than my cities

2) Unhappiness slowed my growth to a crawl.

3) Here's a big one - I founded a religion, and normally pick the + happiness options. But India kept sending great prophets to convert my cities. I've NEVER had this on Prince or King, normally when I found a religion, it's relatively easy to keep my cities following the religion. Not so here. They seemed to spawn these great prophets at a ridiculous rate.

4) Somehow, despite expanding their cities massively, they also had a huge army, with much more tech than me.

5) Oh yeah, wonders. I keep getting beat to every decent wonder in the whole game.

How the heck do I counter this stuff? Have I just run into a horrible civilisation to play against since I've never played vs India on Prince or King? I keep trying to beat the game with the Mongols vs India as this is the only matchup I've struggled with, but the 5 above things cripple me. Is India just ridiculously overpowered? I honestly have no idea what I'm supposed to do...it's not like I can get an edge anywhere. They beat me on military, expansion, tech, culture, religion...everything. Anyone got any tips?

Concerning my early game strategy, I try and find a river and put my first city next to that (so when I get civil service all my farms make more food), then I build a scout to explore, a worker to put camps/plantations etc in my first city, then I build a granary for more food...then I build workers/buildings according to what I need...for example if I don't have much science I try build library etc.

OK lets valid that with someone who played one on one before, but I assume that basics are kind of the same.

Cites:
Founding on a river is indeed great idea... Ideal spot is river, hill next to a montain with 3 lux including 2 different and some other resources like cattle, wheat or others, also make sure to have a good mix of hammers and food tiles... but you just try to max this out... you wont have all of this... Try to have enough workers so your cities never work an unimprouved tile! NEVER!! Try to pop all 4 of them before turn 80... if not 3 at least! (even faster but youll come to that whit more exp)

Science:
Its the key!! In every type of victories! (Domination being a bit of an exception)
For science, it seems obvious why, but even for cultural, you will need to beat you opponent to key wonders. Same for diplomatic, even if less key. Even for war. it will help you to make sure you keep up with an up to date army to insure proper defense and offense if needed.
Way to achieve that:
1: National college before turn 100!! If you cant achieve it with 4 cities, go with 3 and then found the 4th one. (even I would say turn 80, but dont put to much pressure on yourself, 100 is perfectly fine)
2. Universiities ASAP
3. Fill back tech trees to techs that you cant live with
4. then public schools ASAP
Its not even 100% optimum, you could even be more drastic and continue the drill until research labs!!

Gold and growth: (dont seem related, but it is)
Most of your gold, and science will come directly from you population size! So GROW THOSE citeis. Early on in the game, gold is not that key. As long as you can get a lil extra and pay for maintenance, its all good. So use those trade routes to grow your cities. Also trade your lux ressouces for other lux ress (not gold) so you can sustain that groth. If you have extra horses or iron, sell them for 2g! (same for coal or others later, but it becomes less critic)

Culture:
Even if you are not going for cultural vic, never neglect that. its how you grow your borders and get new policies to start with, but its also key to make sure other civ wont influence you to the point of create revolt in your empire and ultimately turn cities to them. You dont have to go nuts, but still.

Religion:
Again, its not that of a key, but if you can get a good one without having to concentrate on this its nice! I like tithe, sword/plowshare, 15% production (1% per poeple) and religious texts some others... buildings that give you +6 (mix of happynes-culture-and faith) Those are good beliefs... choose according to your needs and strategy. Pantheon is really situational, but with no evident one, pick fertility rites or god king.

Policies:
For now (later you can fool around), ALWAYS OPEN AND FINNISH TRAD... then pick left side of Piety or cherry pick in Patronage... ASAP you open and go as dpep as possible in Rationalism... until you pick Ideology (according to need and strategy)

Army:
Do all this being sure you get enough units to defend and keep you ennemies quiet and or according to your expansion strategy. For defense, only range units is almost enough, but if you plan to expand, you need good mix of range, siege and melee.

Relation with CS:
If they have missions that you dont have to bust your Axx to fullfil, do it!! being friend and Ally with those will help you to grow your culture, cities, money, faith ect... signifiacantly! When you have extra money and no particular needs, you might even want to feed city states with it!

Great person:
Early in game, use cultural ones for great works. Scientists prior turn 150 for acadmies (never next to river) And KEY: Great Engeneer ALWAYS to produce wonders!! ALWAYS!! Basicaly most of your wonders should be completed with them! That way you dont spend insane amount of time building them and you also reduce to almost 0% the chances to see them snatched away from you after wasting tons of hammers on it.

If you do most of this (not hard), I predict that you will crush the AI!

Again, lets see what others have to say.

The problem seems to me that you lack a general understanding of the common strategies and you move up the difficulty too fast. Maybe you could try a standard game on King first?

On Emperor, you slowly stop building wonders and focus on units. You need to grow your cities constantly. You need to settle new ones for ne Luxuries and you need to know the other ways to get more happiness (Religion, Buildings, Social Policies, Ideologies, Trade). You need to know how to attack before nukes, there are other milestones like Composite Bows or Dynamite you cpuld use.

And there are a lot of other basic things.

DocRock said:

The problem seems to me that you lack a general understanding of the common strategies and you move up the difficulty too fast. Maybe you could try a standard game on King first?

On Emperor, you slowly stop building wonders and focus on units. You need to grow your cities constantly. You need to settle new ones for ne Luxuries and you need to know the other ways to get more happiness (Religion, Buildings, Social Policies, Ideologies, Trade). You need to know how to attack before nukes, there are other milestones like Composite Bows or Dynamite you cpuld use.

And there are a lot of other basic things.

Click to expand...

So true!! Played at least 15-20 games on Prince + King before swtching to emperor... and even there I could feel the gap. Maybe going back to King and play a 8 civs 16 CS game would be better...

Im not an expert Civ Player but I know one thing, in poker, the less player around the table, the harder the game is! If its the same thing for Civ, (hardly the same game tho haha) you might be trying to learn the hard way!

Well on Emperor the AI has a small head start but you should catch up in late Medieval or early renaissance. What social policy track did you get? A good choice for the learning phase would be tradition.

Science wise you should build National College ASAP (there are various strategies some players build the NC at 3 cities some at 4 cities or 2 cities), and grow your capital. Build/buy granaries and libraries in your early cities fast and send food caravans to capital as soon as possible. After Philosophy you should consider getting Civil Service and Education sooner rather than later because they will help your growth and science, and will help you militaristic with the pikemen.

To solve the happiness problem improve the luxuries tiles first, settle near new luxuries. Don't over expand, 4 cities may be a lot better than 5 if your 5th is not good enough. Your first cities should have a unique luxury in it's range to counter the unhappiness. Sell luxuries for 7 GPT to the AI if you have multiple copies or extra happiness, if you have a declaration of friendship sell them for 240 gold. On emperor it will be hard to find an AI with money so that is not always a viable option. Open borders is worth 2 GPT so you can sell a lux for 5 GPT + open borders if you do not have a better trading partner. You can also trade them 1 on 1 for a luxury you don't have if the AI has at least 2 copies, but early game you should do it only if you have happiness problems, or it is a resource demanded by your cities (preferably the capital) - this will make the city enter in a We Love The King Day state and grow a lot faster (do not ignore this if you want to grow).

You can steal workers from city states or from AI's to develop faster but this is not necessary. If you do steal from CSs be careful because if you declare war on multiple CSs you will have penalties the whole game. Regardless if you steal workers or not developing tiles is essential. Some say 1.25 workers per city owned is good, i have also heard of 3 workers for capital one for each other city, of course early game you will not have that number so try to prioritize the land improvement order (luxuries should be first though). Even if you waste 2-3 turns traveling it is worth getting a pasture on that sheep rather than going for a farm now and pasture later.

Regarding wonders, you will not be able to build most of them so try to get the ones that are most important for your strategy. Great Library goes fast and is a bad investment even on Emperor. Stonehenge can be done but you will sacrifice expansion. Temple of Artemis is on the edge (at least for me) sometimes it goes fast sometimes you can build it after Oracle. Pyramids or Hanging Gardens are doable if prioritizing them (keep an eye on the civs that opened liberty or tradition); sometimes you get lucky and you are the only one who opened tradition (or liberty but that is very rare). Oracle is easily doable on Emperor I have never missed it and it also helps to finish a policy track. If you went liberty you can get a Great Engineer and rush build a hard to get wonder like Petra or Alhambra. You can also get the religious ones (with some luck you can get all of them if you go religious).

Early wonders have a low hammer cost so you can chop forests around your city do build them faster (a lot faster!). You can also do this for the National College or settlers. It is rare that you actually need forests. Forrest near rivers should be chopped, forests on hills also (unless a really bad food location). Forests on resources can be chopped and they will eventually get chopped when you improve that tile (unless it's a camp resource). Chopping forests is an early source of hammers that will help you a lot early game, try to chop them while workers are on route to improve another tile (this requires timing in order to get those hammers in the project you need).

Try not to focus on wonders, if you plan on building more than 3/4 (excluding a free one you might get with liberty) up until renaissance, my opinion is that you are focusing too much on wonders. You should get enough units to defend (ranged units are good, you only need a few melee) and buildings that will help you grow.


Also playing the Huns peacefully does not help. The Huns are a very good early game civ if you warmonger. On a duel map you will not maintain a good relationship with the AI, so you can capture and raze some of his early expansions just to cripple him. If you go peacefully you still have the advantage of +1 production from pastures and free Animal Husbandry. Settle near lots of horses/cattle/sheep to benefit the most out of it. A capital with 4-5 pastures around will have +4/5 production (+8/10 with the stable), this is very important early game.

But as I said don't go peacefully with the Huns, even if you do not plan do win by domination you can harass the AI enough to get the ahead of him. If I rolled the Huns on a duel map I would go straight domination. Build order: Scout, Monument, Worker, Horse Archer, Horse Archer, Battering Ram, Battering Ram and then just Horse Archers. Start Honor and take Warrior Code and then Discipline, after that Military tradition (but the game should be over by then).

Watch this Let's Play series to learn how to play on Emperor+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR0zxOO2T18

I've noticed conquest games have gotten way harder at Emperor. I used to be able to win fairly easily, but lately every time I get a great map, there is a runaway Civ of the other continent.

Is there a recent patch that helps AI in conquest games in G & K? Science and Culture are still pretty easy at Emperor.

Forget about building Great Library on Emperor and above. Build Stonehenge or any other Engineering wonder instead. This will give you the GE to rush Leaning Tower, then you get another GE to rush Porcelain Tower. You'll never miss GL.

DarkestOnion said:

Watch this Let's Play series to learn how to play on Emperor+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR0zxOO2T18

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This is a G&K thread

For G&K, see MadDjinn's Babylon LP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3gfRmWNVKQ).

Emperor is the last difficulty level every person should be able to beat without resorting to quite gamy mechanics like tormenting city states. IMO, emperor in gods and kings is the best possible experience in civ 5. Brave new world killed a lot of that dynamic flavor.

Some of what has already been said here is not exactly suitable for gods and kings. For example, national wonders like national college. Crazy focus on science we experience in BNW was not present in GnK. What you need most of all is expansion and you should harm your closest neighbor as early as possible, preferably by stealing his workers and killing his first settler.

Don't play on tiny pangea maps if you want to learn. Go with standard size, standard or epic speed, and set everything to default. It will allow you to really learn game mechanics. Also, if you get a bad start (i.e. with low production and/or little food), restart the game. You want to feel cozy at the beginning.

Pick a civ with a nice, early unique building. Mezoamericans are neat for that, especially the ones with that little pyramid that grants extra science. Then, as soon as possible, scout your neighborhood. I've noticed that beginners often neglect this aspect of the game even though information is the most valuable asset. Remember that scouts can fight. Maybe not as well as warriors, but still.

Now, start your culture, start your faith, and expand. You want your new cities to be next to 1 unique luxury resource. Why one and not 2, as it was said earlier by others? Because there will be your 3rd, 4th or 5th city. EXPAND. When you'll study panthon and beliefs, you'll learn that there are many great things for sprawling empires. Ignore tradition, go for liberty. Study exploration, commerce and honor, take a pick into piety. There are policies that greatly boost your happiness and culture.

Build your cities near rivers, connect them with roads and you'll be swimming in gold. Pick messenger of gods and you'll be ahead of ai in early medieval era. Later, when you'll have bonus science from trading posts, you'll be like South Korea surrounded by North Koreas.

If you play your cards right, you can easily get a medieval city with 6 pop without any penalty for population, only for the number of cities, and you'll be able to offset that easily with luxuries. As it was said before, science is earned through population and while you can't afford cities with 8 population in Brave New World, you can easily go for it in GnK.

Don't watch let's plays. You are not a hardcore gamer and you don't need the critical path to everything. It's plainly boring. All the fun is drained from the game when you stop playing civ and you start managing a spreadsheet. Also, if you are an adult, you are most likely surprised that people watch "let's plays" at all. Do you know who Pewdiepie is? If you don't know, you should consider yourself a lucky man. I don't get this generation...

Just remember 2 things:
- archers (and their successors) can kill everything and then all you need to do is to grab undefended land;
- universities add +2 science to all jungle tiles. build a trading post on it, get the right policy from the rationalism tree and watch in awe your scientific progress

Right thanks for the help. I've noticed a few of you saying you don't build many workers (or any in some cases). How do you manage that? I find that I build around 4 or 5 so I can upgrade my tiles as soon as the borders expand in my cities (and if I have 4 cities I'll need workers in each one so I can upgrade tiles, build roads etc).

What's the best build order and civ out there? I've decided to switch to another civ given that I've been told Ghenghis Khan prefers early wars...I'd rather have a civ that prefers building up peacefully at first.

England any good with those longbows? I remember them causing me big problems on Prince until I got air bombers.

I am playing England at the moment on a small continent map and they are amazing. The Longbows come with Machinery, which is pretty late so can build up a few turns. After that, due to their 3-range, the English Archers are destroying everything from a safe distance. I steamrolled Venice and Arabia so far (on Immortal), without even losing a unit.

But be aware that half of the English bonus help their navy. So if you plan on playing Pangea, England might not be the best option. Small Continents, Archipelago.. that's where they shine.

Considering the build order I go Scout (always) - Monument - Scout (only on Pangea/Large Land Masses) - Shrine or Granary (considering the tiles) - worker (mostly.. on Immortal the CS don't have so many workers so often that you can steal enough). After the worker it all depends on the conditions.

Regarding the workers: ideally you never want to work unimproved tiles. But you also do not want to have that many workers that you improve more than you can work. Because they are costing the regular unit upkeep and take a lot of time to produce (-> hammers that could be used elsewhere). You are pretty save with 1.5 workers per city.

Persia is a great Civ to play on Emperor. The +50% Golden Age length is very powerful. Create some GAs and maybe conquer Chichen Itza and you will have ridiculously long Golden Ages. Found a religion and go for max happiness, and you can win with Persia.

Great info here. But I`m curious...

Scientists prior turn 150 for acadmies (never next to river)

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Why never next to a river?

You sacrifice too much mid-game food yield. A farm by a river (or other fresh water source) will yield 2 more food, while a non-fresh water farm yields just 1 more food. Drop your academy on a non-fresh water grasslands tile (yields 2 food and 8 science), and farm the river-side tile (4 food). If you do it the other way around, your riverside academy will still yield just 2 food and 8 science, while the farmed non-riverside tile will just yield 3 food -- net loss of 1 food.

Browd said:

You sacrifice too much mid-game food yield. A farm by a river (or other fresh water source) will yield 2 more food, while a non-fresh water farm yields just 1 more food. Drop your academy on a non-fresh water grasslands tile (yields 2 food and 8 science), and farm the river-side tile (4 food). If you do it the other way around, your riverside academy will still yield just 2 food and 8 science, while the farmed non-riverside tile will just yield 3 food -- net loss of 1 food.

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Wow. Thankyou for that detail.

I should have noted that, when you research Fertilizer, non-fresh water farm yield rises by 1 food, equalizing them with farms with fresh water access. However, researching Fertilizer comes quite late, so the guidance still holds.

Socratatus said:

Wow. Thankyou for that detail.

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I was playing Emperor when I noticed that too lolll
Can make a big difference espcialy when playing Babylon... can be up to 8 extra food!!

Is it better to have a lot of small cities or focus on building up a few bigger ones? Switched to playing as England now. Feels like a few bigger cities would be easier to defend?