Help on emperor

I have just started my first emperor game after a very convincing King victory and pretty much everything is going wrong. I'm barely generating positive GPT, my happiness is fluctuating from negative to positive all the time, and despite an aggressive (for me, at least) expansion including taking over a capital I'm lagging behind in terms of score. Could anyone take a look at my saved game for improvements? (edit) - the only thing I can think of is trying to attack Hiawatha - he has so many wonders I could steal from him and I could use turtle ships to take the first city and then move my units there to take his capital, but my military is one of the weakest in the game and I don't have the GPT to fund a larger one or the gold to upgrade.

I have all leader DLCs and the wonder DLC. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Good job trying emperor and good job learning to "early rush" a neighbor on emperor. Next time plan accordingly to accommodate the anticipated "happiness hit".

Most economy/happiness problems are caused by setting too many tiles to "food" and not enough tiles to currency, and/or tech choices non-conducive to economy. If you want to continue this game, halt all additional food income (stagnate) appropriating plots where possible to currency and beeline the next "currency tech". Build trading posts by rivers instead of farms. Get your markets and banks built. Explore for other AI's and garner whatever income you can from selling unused horse/iron/luxuries.

Once you're balanced, or near balanced, you can "turn the lights back on" in the farms.

Thanks for the help. How do I incorporate increasing happiness with this strategy?

Adjuvant said:

Good job trying emperor and good job learning to "early rush" a neighbor on emperor. Next time plan accordingly to accommodate the anticipated "happiness hit".

Most economy/happiness problems are caused by setting too many tiles to "food" and not enough tiles to currency, and/or tech choices non-conducive to economy. If you want to continue this game, halt all additional food income (stagnate) appropriating plots where possible to currency and beeline the next "currency tech". Build trading posts by rivers instead of farms. Get your markets and banks built. Explore for other AI's and garner whatever income you can from selling unused horse/iron/luxuries.

Once you're balanced, or near balanced, you can "turn the lights back on" in the farms.

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All good stuff. Also, my impressions:

1) Your hammer production sucks. Your capital has no mines, no lumber mills. You've built or captued seven cities, but you only have 3 workers hopelessly trying to keep up with the need for improved tiles- particularly hammer production tiles. Food and science are good, but if your cities are pathetically slow at building things, you're on the road to fail. Need better balance in resource tiles improved/worked.

2) You're very heavy on military. Does't look like a lot of threat from anyone else nearby right now, so instead of building more pikemen and turtle boats, I'd fast track at least 4 more workers at a minimum ASAP. Also, each military unit sucks more gold out of your treasury for upkeep every turn.

3) Happiness- you can build theaters, be sure to fasttrack them in every city that can build one- or circus/colesseum if not built yet.

4) Consolidate, improve, strengthen. It's not the time yet to be chasing off after Hiawatha, it's time to get your economy in order, improve and work the right tiles in your cities, and get them healthy and happy and productive and pumping out gold. Science victory = wide, strong cities.

civnoob13 said:

Thanks for the help. How do I incorporate increasing happiness with this strategy?

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Happiness increases over time with choices of policies and build order. For the meantime, halting population growth awhile gives that "pool" a chance to replenish. Once you have consistent +2 to +4 happiness, put food growth back into your capitol. When you have a handle on the population growth/happiness there, "turn your other cities on" one at a time, preferably starting with the "smallest" so they can get a better-balanced ratio of food/currency/production plots.

Further, if/when you anticipate a "big" happiness boost coming up from policy, wonder or new building potential, be sure to get your aqueducts in place so you can quickly take advantage of the "jump".

edit: reading smokey bear's post, I'm not sure about "4 more workers". Those will hurt your economy in the short term more than help it. If indeed your workers can't improve plots "fast enough" make two more workers. You don't need "every plot developed", especially, right now, if that development means farms. I'll generally work a number of workers 50% or fewer vs number of cities, with 5 being maximum, but not always that "high of a ratio".

Thanks for all the help so far. I've stopped building up my military (although Hiawatha did just fail to attack and Genghis Khan has randomly denounced me out of the blue because 'they have denounced us!') and I have changed the focus to economy. I'm already at +37 gpt as if from nowhere. I'm building workers now to try and improve stuff, I didn't realise realise how abysmal my production was.

Adjuvant said:

edit: reading smokey bear's post, I'm not sure about "4 more workers". Those will hurt your economy in the short term more than help it. If indeed your workers can't improve plots "fast enough" make two more workers. You don't need "every plot developed", especially, right now, if that development means farms. I'll generally work a number of workers 50% or fewer vs number of cities, with 5 being maximum, but not always that "high of a ratio".

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Yeah, I confess to being addicted to lots of workers, but on higher difficulties, you do have to restrain yourself and factor in the need vs. cost of everything, too true. Definitely need more production tiles improved and worked, though. That whole section of the continent is kinda low on hill/mine tiles, so you definitely need to take advantage of the ones you do have.

I've seen the save and my conclusions are:

- too much military, too few workers
- 2 city's not connected means less trade income and less safety
- you are neglecting your national wonders! You throw everything on science but still you don't have The National College! Neither do you have National Treasury and Circus Maximus.
- Still 3 unmet civ's! You must scout a lot more, find the Natural Wonders for happiness and find the other civ's to trade with. You can already sell 6 iron and open borders. You already have astronomy, so discover the ocean!
- There are lot's of iron and horses and also citrus you can get into your borders or already have , improve those and sell sell sell.
- Just outside your capital you should long ago have put a city to grab 2 ivory and horses you could have sold many times.

Good luck.

Damn, I really thought I could have won it there but I lost the science victory by about 10 turns. I realised far too late that I had been monumentally stupid and I had forgotten to build my research labs. I may or may not have won if I'd built them earlier. Ugh. Anyway, sorry for resurrecting this dead thread, just wanted to vent a little.

An old piece of advice that is not of my creation: when you go up a level in difficulty, simplify what you are trying to do. Stick to one thing and try to nail it -- expansion, conquest, wonders, faith, whatever. The higher you go the harder it is to be good at everything.

Okay, I started off a new game and I'm off to a good start (at least I think). I expanded very aggressively, selling off luxuries and embassies to buy settlers and was very lucky in that I found an encampment that two CSs wanted destroyed AND those barbarians took a worker from each of them. The extra influence I got allowed the the happiness I needed to expand and the faith and culture for a very strong start. I'm now by far the best player in the game, for now at least, and I'm unsure what to do. I have the happiness to expand, I need to get exploring the oceans and I don't have a single coastal city, but I'm wondering whether I should delay to get the NC or expand now. I've also been dowed on by Dido, who is now suing for peace - she's willing to give 1500 gold and two of her three cities. Should I take the cities and raze, take the cities and keep (I strongly doubt this one, the cities are terrible) or let her keep them? Finally do you think I need to take over a capital to ensure a very strong start or am I doing well enough as it is? Answers to these questions and help in general, as I'm sure I must be doing things wrong, would be greatly appreciated.

Of course, again I have all the civs and the wonders expansion and I'm playing on emperor.

I'm not going to download your game because I have my own game atm, but...

1. Sounds like a good start
2. Sounds like a good job in war.
3. Yes take peace and if her cities don't mesh well with yours, yes raze them.
4. No you do not "need to take a capitol" to win, altho I'm wondering why, in the previous game, you didn't "hit" the rival civs the instant you noticed there was competition that close for victory...

Science victory and Domination victory (unless your tech victory is by such a profusely "tech focused, non-production/income" mechanism) go hand-in-hand. You "should" have the time, resources, and techs to build a massive and advanced air, sea and/or land force, complimented by nukes. The reason to go "one over the other" would just be "which one takes fewer turns".

disclaimer: this isn't to say you can't win domination long before science, because you can, but emp+ is just so much easier with bombers and all the other fun stuff.

edit: I had a huge immortal I played days ago, aimed at science victory. I realized Ramkhamhaeng (of total 13 or 14 civs including me) was very close in tech with potential to build UN and an indomitable stranglehold on most (almost all) of the city states, so I floated a few nuke subs over by him, DoW'd and put many of his cities back to 5-7 population. He still finished UN, but I won 5 turns later, 5 turns before the vote. If I hadn't done that I'd surely have lost.

Do you mean I should have nuked him? I did briefly consider it (but not nearly enough) but I was worried, because his military was so much stronger than mine and I only had three uranium and he had lots, that if I dowed on him any nukes on him would be nullified by the carnage he'd release on me. I probably should have done it anyway though.

Eh, my aim was to take him down a notch so he'd make less money and build UN slower. It did the trick. In other games I've militarily rolled over rivals other ways.

That Harun immortal huge win is in this thread with one of my new maps I've been playtesting.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=469678

If you check that out, don't complete the spaceship, unless you want a bunch of free achievements you may not have earned yet... fair warning. It's the save right before the win.

Okay, I'm really unsure whether to accept her cities and raze (giving me unhapiness over -10) or just let her keep them and take her gpt and silver (which I would get soon anyway). Any help again would be appreciated.

That unhappiness is temporary (4-5 turns) while you raze. Of course take that temporary hit to significantly weaken your aggressive neighbor. She'll never catch back up.

If the cities were terrible how does it significantly weaken her?

No city is terrible to an emperor+AI. It's not like "lack of luxuries" hurts them. They're all just baby-makers, basically. Fewer unit spawnpoints, fewer units.