Moved up to Emperor

Won 2 science victories with only 7 cities!(Pangea Epic) On King I would have 10-12 cities because of my warmongering. This is a lot harder on Emperor as the leading 2 civs runaway with wonders, huge armies and lots of gold. I have to choose my moment more carefully usually when a neighbour attacks or is attacked by another Civ I then move in and take his cities, but that is all I can acheive in this respect. Building a massive army would wreck my economy.

I start with being friendly with most civs, and much more micro management. But winning by science victory alone is getting boring. In my last game I had 650 tourism and 685 culture, and still could only influence 1 civ! Also how can leading civs build so many wonders and still create massive armies? In my last game it was Washington with 27 cities, over 800K soldiers and more beakers tham me. What more do I have to do to get a culture victory, the numbers mentioned above are the most I have ever had,
and still not cose to a CV.

PLaying at lower level was more fun, but I will probably stick with Emperor. Maybe its time to stop playing after 4305 hours!! Keep threatening to play EU4 but never do. I wonder if it wise to play wiith modded civs, in this case Hitler.

Tony.Uk said:

Won 2 science victories with only 7 cities!(Pangea Epic) On King I would have 10-12 cities because of my warmongering. This is a lot harder on Emperor as the leading 2 civs runaway with wonders, huge armies and lots of gold. I have to choose my moment more carefully usually when a neighbour attacks or is attacked by another Civ I then move in and take his cities, but that is all I can acheive in this respect. Building a massive army would wreck my economy.

I start with being friendly with most civs, and much more micro management. But winning by science victory alone is getting boring. In my last game I had 650 tourism and 685 culture, and still could only influence 1 civ! Also how can leading civs build so many wonders and still create massive armies? In my last game it was Washington with 27 cities, over 800K soldiers and more beakers tham me. What more do I have to do to get a culture victory, the numbers mentioned above are the most I have ever had,
and still not cose to a CV.

PLaying at lower level was more fun, but I will probably stick with Emperor. Maybe its time to stop playing after 4305 hours!! I wonder if it wise to play wiith modded civs, in this case Hitler.

Click to expand...

i just moved up to Emperor recently myself, and it is harder but mostly just in the beginning. You should be able to compete for wonders, you just can't have them all like you can on King. I still get the majority. But, to be honest, I reload if I miss, so it's not really a fair test.

Seasoned players will tell you that trying to get lots of wonders is a strategic mistake at "higher" levels, but I just like the false sense of accomplishment when the wonder screen appears.

I'm pretty sure you can get all the wonders on Emperor. That's still pretty much doable with some of the better civs.

Be sure to start trading your strategic resources for 2 GPT and luxuries for 7 GPT (the AI will also accept 2 for 15). This will fund the purchase of earlier settlers and military units (preferably the archer line). If you do this and build the National College as early as you can, the AI will be the one trying to catch up to you.

Idleray said:

I'm pretty sure you can get all the wonders on Emperor. That's still pretty much doable with some of the better civs.

Click to expand...

It might be possible if you took Egypt and tried specifically to do that, but you can't just grab them all casually like you can on King difficulty. The Great Library and Stonehenge in particular seem to go very fast on Emperor and above.

lockandload said:

Seasoned players will tell you that trying to get lots of wonders is a strategic mistake at "higher" levels, but I just like the false sense of accomplishment when the wonder screen appears.

Click to expand...

Agreed, exactly why I like to play Emperor but not higher.

You can't get all wonders on Emperor, that's simply impossible. Great Library, Great Lighthouse and Temple of Artemis go quite fast and lie in different parts of the tech-tree, so already there you have a problem. Also, Alhambra and Notre Dame generally go fast, and AI seems to have a ridiculous love for the more dubious cultural wonders like Globe Theatre, Uffizi and Broadway. I have quite a good succesrate with Stonehenge and, ironically, Sistine Chapel (given the AI's love for the other cultural wonders).

lockandload said:

...but I just like the false sense of accomplishment when the wonder screen appears...

Click to expand...

There's no greater feeling (in civ terms) than beating the AI to a wonder that your spy says they are also building but are winning the race.

kaspergm said:

...Sistine Chapel (given the AI's love for the other cultural wonders)...

Click to expand...

I would argue that the AI probably never researches Acoustics to enter the Renaissance era but rather the bottom half of the tech tree where all the military techs are. Probably why Alhambra and Notre Dame goes quite quick.

Idleray said:

I'm pretty sure you can get all the wonders on Emperor. That's still pretty much doable with some of the better civs.

Click to expand...

I got a total of 25 wonders (including GL ) in the Egypt Immortal map, which I even OCC'd but didn't finish. I would have also gotten a couple more if I could manage to stick around

stormtrooper412 said:

I would have also gotten a couple more if I could manage to stick around

Click to expand...

Before getting assimilated?? Because I guess that is sort of the problem with focusing on Wonders.

General rule of thumb on emperor is don't waste production building wonders when you can build a military and conquer cities with improvements, buildings and wonders. Maybe build one or two wonders that are going to greatly improve your production/growth such as petra or hanging gardens or use an engineer to 1 turn a wonder, but other then that it's better to take them.

I regularly hard-build wonders like Stonehenge, Pyramids and Parthenon on Emperor, so I don't really agree with that assessment.

Having at least a wonder up in emperor will bring you a bit more respect from the other civilizations and won't make your conquest a hard time. I say that because I tried a conquest on emperor with America once and I didn't build any wonders and had specialists only. I had civilizations attacking me from all sides. I felt that I was defending more rather than being the dominant attacker.

Just play a few games on Emperor. You might not be successful but keep try. After a couple of games, you will not want to go back to King. I remember when I was trying to survive on King difficulty. But now, Emperor is extremely easy. So, no worries. Changing difficulty level is always challenging but you will survive.

Emperor is quite playable, especially if you only play with 6 civilizations instead of the default 8. I generally play continents as well. You need to pick your wonders, and I regularly get Stonehenge and Pyramids. Was thinking of going up to Immortal on my next game, but I seem to remember the top two levels have just plain ridiculous AI cheating so it might not be a good idea.

Currently playing on Immortal for DV as Mongols and dude, Khans are epic. I didn't declare war on anyone (I was waiting for my Keshiks) then suddenly France DoW me. Fight back for couple of turns than converted all my Chariot Archers to Keshiks and bumm! Poor napoleon lost 4 of 5 cities he has (His last city is under siege as well)

But I think you can even win on deity difficulty as Mongols. Those Keshik + Khan armies are insane.

Khagan Bek said:

Currently playing on Immortal for DV as Mongols and dude, Khans are epic. I didn't declare war on anyone (I was waiting for my Keshiks) then suddenly France DoW me. Fight back for couple of turns than converted all my Chariot Archers to Keshiks and bumm! Poor napoleon lost 4 of 5 cities he has (His last city is under siege as well)

But I think you can even win on deity difficulty as Mongols. Those Keshik + Khan armies are insane.

Click to expand...

Some upgrades can be really expensive particularly if you have a lot of units. Theyre a lot cheaper with military tradition social policy.