Monarch to Emperor: the Great Leap

The barb huts is up to you. If you feel that this will ease you into Emp feel free. Personally I do not think it will make much of a difference in your favor - and it may hurt you later on when you 'turn' them back on. Leave it on 'Roaming' - that is a very manageable barb level. Also, if you like to play 'expansionist' civs - it will work against you.

Continents demands that you have at least an average skill with naval units - if you do not - then stay at Monarch and play some Continents and Island map games before you move up. Also, on Pang maps players often get used to having a high number of luxury resouces available or just 1 successful war away - on Continents you can easily play through 2 whole ages with only 2 or 3 luxury resouces the entire time. Now if your a warmonger, and usually play at Monarchy gov - it won't make much difference- but if your used to going Republic everytime - the 1 or 2 lux resouces will make great demands on your playing skills.

Hope this helps.

Ision

Hmm, I play Celts and usually use Monarchy. I guess I will leave barbs on roaming and play 60% Pangea which is what I normally have it set on anyways as I like luxury resources regardless of being in Monarchy or not. I never use Republic so I don't think I will go that route in my upcoming Emperor games.

on emperor the chances of popping a goody hut and getting tech is pretty slim, so there is a decided advantage in not having barbs as you don't have to have so many defenders. Indeed on an island, if you play with 20% luxury, you can build carraghs before warriors, since the chance of being attacked are pretty slim.

I'm playing Japan, large map, at Emperor for about the fifth time. I have plenty of good land, and my neighbors are fighting each other. At some point, Germany came down to one pop 2 town, which happened to be along the coast right next to me.

The land's not worth much, but Germany is six techs ahead of me. I'd rather extort all he's got than take the city right away, so I attack and kill everyone but one spearman.

After a war starts, a few turns always go by before the enemy talks to you. Can someone explain how this works? Is it always four or five? Is there any variability?

Anyway, he's finally started talking, but he won't even give me two techs. I try to pressure him by killing the archers he completes, but over several terms the deal hasn't gotten any sweeter.

Any ideas? Would it help to bring in more units? Does # of turns affect this?

I ended up getting two techs when I threw in a gem, then wiped him out the next turn. No one cared.

All the while, China was taking over US cities next door. My map was mostly black, so the conflict seemed localized. I thought China's new territories would be thinly defended, so I made a military alliance w. US v. China in exhange for abt. 100 gold ( I was broke), 4 techs, communications, a world map, everything Lincoln had. Of course that was a bad move. The map showed that China was a collossol empire. I tried to get others to join in the fight, but couldn't bribe them enough. When my podunk swordsmen attacked, China came back with knights. I saw musketmen in every city and an army on the way. America folded the next turn. I quit.

To Wafna - Bismarck is a bonehead, and can be counted on to be hostile/belligerent no matter what. Chieftan level, staring a bunch of whatever in the face, you'll want to swap maps with him and he's "make it quick, I'm busy ensuring the world dominance of Germany". Yah, right - dispense with him and be done with it. There are only one or two other leaders that might be bigger buttheads... Shaka, Montezuma...

Ision - I've followed a few threads you post in - some of the advice you gave in an earlier post is good as far as playing different styles of maps, barbs on and off, etc.

Though I don't consider myself a "good" player yet, I have tried to broaden my experience by playing different civs, different types of maps, etc. (I'm back to Monarch level after switching to C3C from Vanilla CivIII a month ago...backed off the levels to get the feel for the differences.) Couple more games and I'll be ready to get my nose bloodied at Emperor again.

I have found that playing different civs and map types adds to my enjoyment of the game. IMHO, those who like blitz warfare and cavalry charges should try to set themselves up for a combined arms conflict, just for the experience...

Ision - I've followed a few threads you post in - some of the advice you gave in an earlier post is good as far as playing different styles of maps, barbs on and off, etc.

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thanks for the kind words -

Ision

I don't like the so called great "leap". I've played deity and I have won, but I will never play it again. Deity is for anyone who likes the kind of game were a weak ai get's a thousand troops. The ai doesn't improve because his strength increases. I hate games on emperor difficulty for that very reason.
Ofcourse it's kind of cool to actually have to care for your peoples happiness, even if I believe the happiness buissness is worse then the new corruption. When you don't have any luxeries it's kind of interesting, but once you get luxeries it's not very hard. In fact you will always get the necessary amount of luxeries if you got any trade skills at all.
Too bad enough, you are still stuck with a stupid ai. The ai on a game like this could easily have been a lot more skilled. The reason for this is that this game is a turnbased game. Any turnbased game can have an enormous ai which could easily beat most players without having to cheat. Therefore it feels bad that no one actually tries to program a smart enough ai. Why not???
Well the answer is simple, it takes away much time and it doesn't add to the FIRST IMPRESSION! This thing called first impression is worshipped as the greatest god of our time by any commercial empire worth the name. Through first impression you control the market of the world. However first impression doesn't last, instead the first impression is the perfect oppurtunity for the first lies, later people will not be so easily fooled.
The best time to lie to people, is when they don't know you yet, the second best time to lie is when people thinks they know you.

THE AI shouldn't have a problem to destroy me without cheating, the only reason for this is because some gamecompany just didn't care about playing the games they produce. The reason for this are that they are afraid of what "serious" people would think of them if they did. Any serious adult knows that he can't tell his workfriends that he plays computergames, so for this reason nobody does anymore. Instead they just make them. It's like war policy, we don't go to war, we just make weapons!

Doshniel,

After reading your post, perhaps you should seriously consider taking a little 'Prozac'.

Ision

Ok, Ision, no offense meant...
I mean you're just trying to help out and thanks by the way that you even answered my post. I know I wrote that post just in case someone might find it interesting, but I don't expect anyone to appreciate it. After all it's just my oppinion. See I've always wondered why chess computers tend to get better and better, while turnbased ai on other games doesn't change...

I'm on the cusp of domination victory. Any turn now. Within three turns the only countries left will be the Persians (me) and the Chinese. We're about to end our 2nd MPP. When the 1st MPP began, my score and land were about twice China's. Japan and the Aztecs were far behind.

Basically China and I agreed not to bother each other while we raced to conquer the weaklings. I have a feeling that, when they're gone, the Great Sino-Persian War will begin shortly thereafter. Aztec Persia is on C's continent, and the Japanese Persian Islands are nearby. I just started getting tanks; C has mech infantry. But I can produce armies faster than C can.

I might win before it starts. I hope so. I'm rushing temples in newly conquered cities to build up the territory, then turning them to wealth because they'll never build anything on their own. On the home continent: tanks and transports. It's the end game; I only need to hit the winning percentages for one turn, and nothing else matters.

I was failing in my first emperor games, partly because I was also checking out random civs when I started at emperor. When I went crawling back to Persia, things got a lot easier.

I settled a total of three cities in this game, including the capital. The rest was war spoils. I mostly built barracks, Immortals and workers for a few thousand years, toppled my neighbors one by one, and took everything they had. It seems formulaic to me now, but it usually works.

It's an all-offense strategy until I run up against a significant adversary, and even then I can't wait too long. The AI have an uncanny way of declaring war just a couple of turns before I would have done so myself.

I still waste troops with poor tactics. I'm concluding that there's little point to attacking a city unless you have enough force to do it all in one turn, with enough left over to hold down the resistors and fight off counter attacks. Otherwise the enemy forces can recoup and get backups.

Do any of you let cities you've taken flip back instead of risking your troops to fortify them? If the enemy has a stronger culture ( which is usually the case), you cans lose huge stacks all at once by fortifying.

I'm thinking it's easier to leave one or two units there, let the city flip once, and retake it. This safeguards your troops and knocks down the city's "foreign" population.

OK, I just have to comment on Doshniel's criticism of the Civ AI.

Sure, it is stupid. But I seriously doubt that Sid Meier and Firaxis did any slacking at all in developing the AI, and I doubt that it could be made "much better" even with substantial re-working. You brought up chess, so lets take a look at that:

A chess board has 64 squares, and 32 total pieces of only 6 types. "Combat" between the pieces involves no random calculation--the attacker wins. So chess is a much simpler game than Civ 3, with 10,000 squares (on a standard map, with different kinds of squares, that can be modified), more than 60 types of units (with different experience levels for each), etc. etc. etc. Even then, it took Deep Blue, a SUPER COMPUTER (close to the most powerful in the world at the time) to beat a human chess player. And a Pentium 4 ain't no Deep Blue.

In Civilization, there are so many different rules to follow that it becomes very hard to write an AI behavior without unintended consequences (hence all the "exploits" in the game). The AI also has to be able to complete its turns quickly--we don't want to sit around and wait for it--so it can't consider the future many turns in advance. It would just take too much time and computer memory.

I'm just a n00b, and I'm annoyed when the AI refuses to pay even 1gpt and a map for 3 techs, a luxury and a strategic resource, when I'm stomping around the world on Chieftan level, but I understand how hard it is to make a computer "think".

DogmaDog

I hear you, DogmaDog, but I'm with Doshniel on this one. The way they program an AI in a game like this (according to Sid Meier) is program the basics, then play it and see what it does wrong. Fix those problems, play it. Repeat. If you do that for enough iterations, you'll get an AI that is more like a human player than the AI that ships with Civ3. The fact that the difficulty levels are about giving the AI unfair production advantages, not about the higher-level AIs having better tactics, is an admission of failure by the programmers.

Chess is in many ways much more complicated than Civ3 - the beauty of chess is the huge complexity from very simple rules. It's not that hard to program a reasonably realistic chess program; it's just hard to program one that can beat Gary Kasparov. It should not be too hard to program AI that can beat most humans without cheating.

Having said that, I'm a lawyer, so what do I know.

Oh, I remember what I was going to say. I agree with Doshniel because Firaxis *could* have made the AI better, but the quality of the AI is not something that is immediately apparent when you look to buy a new game, so it's not a very good selling point. Better (from a sales perspective) to put the effort into flashier graphics or a new feature.

But if they take a longer view, better AI does make for a better game in the long run, and shoddy AI does leave a sour taste in the mouth.

My first post here, been reading for awhile. Great site.

This great article inspired me to jump from Monarch to Emperor.

So far so good. Of course I fell way behind in the tech race, I was 3-5 behind most of the others when I researched Polytheism and Literature, which almost none of them had (I've got 6 neighbors already - none have attacked so far - but that prick Bismark is one of them, so I'm a little nervous).

I was able to flip literature to each of the other civs for cash and tech, to the point that now I'm tied with Spain for the tech lead, just by dealing properly, which was cool (it was fun flipping between the 6, looking for the best deal). The series of deals was enough to push me into the beginning of the Middle Ages. I'm doing okay 9 cities and #3 world population at this point, but a terrible economy, I might be 15th in GNP.

I was able to pawn off alphabet earlier to catch up in a similar manner. There's no chance at building a wonder yet, so I didn't have a problem with giving everyone a shot at the great library, which expires soon anyway now that we're in the Middle Ages.

It's wild playing behind and having to scramble for everything, it's definitely an awakening to find two Greek Hoplites on your border 8-10 turns into the game, worried they'll sneak attack the worker.

I also had to bite the bullet and give Alexander 9 gold (my whole treasury) at one point to keep the peace and make hope dope.

So the question now is what to research? All will take 50 turns even at 100% science, except Republic is 47 or something (I'm a science and culture guy, don't need Monarchy since I can't build HG).

Should I pursue Monotheism, Fuedalism, Engineering or Republic? I'll be sliding to 0 science (with one scientist in an unhappy city to keep things creeping) obviously, since it doesn't matter, but I'm wondering what the AI will go for, I'd like to have something they'll need. Any advice?

This great article inspired me to jump from Monarch to Emperor.

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I am happy to hear that - thanks for the compliment.

Sounds like your having a great game! Enjoy!

It is hard for me to give direct advice without a screenshot, but heres my 2 cents: Buy Republic or Monarchy from the AIs, do not research them. Your don't need Monarchy statement becoause of the HG - is poor thinking. If your a warmonger go Monarchy, if peaceful Republic, if in-between go Republic if you have plenty of happiness resources go Monarchy if you only have 1 or 2. If you plan to be peaceful go Monotheism and beeline to Music Theory, if you plan to be a warmonger go Fuedalism and beeline to Military Tradition. If you're in-between - go with your instincts (I would still go bee-line to MT). Never mind what the AI 'goes for' or needs - if you beeline, you will eventually have it.

Ision

Originally posted by Ision


Your days of tech hording are over. Prior to Emperor many players have never bought a tech for gold from an AI – you will need to learn the nuances of proper tech purchasing. Amazingly new players often use the 0 research gambit in their games – amazing because at the lower levels you will almost always out research the AI from beginning to end if you choose to – so there really was no need. This strat was originally designed for upper level players finding methods to keep up with the AI. So what you toyed with before without need, is now a crucial strat to master.

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I have struggled with this immensely, any source of good tips to master this?

Sysyphus,

It is really quite easy. As soon as you meet another civ, trade as many techs with them as you can. Repeat for each civ you meet. Of course, you shouldn't wait for them to contact you. Click on the first AI unit you see.

I used to keep my science slider at 10% to keep research going while I traded or bought techs, but discovered that I would often end up buying techs after I had spent some shields researching them.

It's almost always faster to buy or trade than to research. To test this, put the slider as high as possible without going negative and see how many turns it will take to research a tech. Then put the slider at zero and see how much gold you can make over the same number of turns. If you're at Emperor, you probably have a feel for prices in the early game. Shop around if possible; some AIs are more generous than others.

I usually research at 10% until I meet someone, and then go to zero when I finish the tech I was researching. That first tech should be in a branch where your civ has a head start because other civs will probably not have it.

if a neighbor is going for Great Library, you're in luck (especially if he is the first to start on it). Wait for him to finish, then attack the city that built it. This will take you all the way to Education without buying anything.

In general, war is the key. I find it's often good to alternate between limited wars with two or three enemies. You can only get the next tech in each branch of the tech tree from a peace treaty. So if you take a few good cities with lux or resources from one civ and trade peace for techs, this opens up the next layer of techs when you attack the other civ. Once you've caught up with a civ, you might as well wipe it out. Sometimes you have to buy a tech to get past a bottleneck, such as the last tech in an age, or to win a war (Chivalry, Military Tradition).

Finally... determine the techs you really need right now, and don't bother buying the others. I pass on most or all optional techs. You usually get them from peace treaties anyway. Likewise, don't buy or trade techs, maps or anything if you're confident you will get them from war reasonably soon.

Thanks Ision!

I'm definitely not a warmonger, I only fight if attacked first - rarely I'll try to provoke an attack, but I try to win peacefully whenever I can. So I'll head down the Monotheism road and buy Republic down the line. Because I don't warmonger is why I said Monarchy would probably be useless to me.

How much gold does it generally cost to buy a tech? I would imagine it varies depending on the stage of the game, but if you could give me an idea of what it costs at different times, that would help - so I can decide if research or purchase will be quicker.

Thanks again!

Joey, that is a VERY difficult question. Not sure if anyone has the numbers, this will require extremely experienced players to answer this one.

It depends on a number of factors:

difficulty level
number of civs
already discovered techs
you relationship to them
patch version...

perhaps someone can give you a very rough estimation... :-/

Map size is a factor.

Theres a tech calc somewhere. Look in the C&C forum or forum member Grey Fox's signature.