I'm not so far ahead of you, Joey. I've won at Emperor 3 or 4 times. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that one must wage war a lot to win at Emperor. Recall what Ision says about this.
Originally posted by Ision
The Expansion phase: Lastly, and most importantly is the expansion phase. Before Emperor this phase of the game was still important to you but not so important that you could not take a couple of liberties (the early Wonder city, having only 1 settler pump, building culture before workers or troops, ect
). The single most frustrating aspect about making the leap from Monarch to Emperor is learning to part with these liberties. [...] I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to focus almost solely on troops/settlers/and workers in the early game. You WILL NOT keep up or even come close to the AI expansion if you indulge in these liberties. The goal is still overwhelming dominance you just have to get used to the fact that it is not a start to finish given any more. At Emperor you can still afford perhaps a single deviation but no more than that. At Demi or Deity youll be toast if you indulge in building at the expense of expansion.
Ision
I always lost until I came around to this view. Nowadays, I'm either at war or preparing for war. 90% of my production goes to troops. Cities can go 200-300 turns before getting temples. If you can get all of the luxuries, most of your citizens stay happy without temples or any other culture. I only build culture if:
I need to expand a city's area to gain access to productive tiles or increased mobility in wars.
I need to increase the area under my control for a domination win
I want to chop down a forest and need to build something that can make full use of the resulting shield bonus.
I increasingly go to Monarchy and stay there. There's no hurry to get there because despotism lets you reduce conquered populations through pop rushing.
Here's what Sir Pleb's "Maximizing Your Score" post has to say:
***Quote***
To maximize the scoring factors of course requires lots of land. So to get the highest score possible one must begin with a conquest approach to the game. You need to have the majority of the world's land under your control, and as soon as possible, and you will need to boot someone else out to get it. After conquering everyone else (and leaving just some weak and controlled Civ or Civs to keep the game going) you can then of course work toward any of the game's victory conditions.
***Unquote***
I took me a while to fully grasp these lessons (from gurus like Ision and Sir Pleb). When I finally made the leap, winning got a whole lot easier. Oh yeah, look at this saved Emperor game in the Hall of Fame:
8 Wohmongarinf00l 24539 2050 AD Domination Huge Iroquois
It's a Civ3 file, so you might not be able load this file in PTW. I'm sure the PTW games in the Hall of Fame are also worth checking out.
The link is
http://hof.civfanatics.net/
If you zoom to some of the cities in 8 Wohmongarinf00l, you'll see very few temples, cathedrals, libraries, etc. His game also shows how he milked the game after wiping out the opposition (except for one city).