What is the toughest civ to play on Emperor?

I am 3-0 on Emperor right now, not quite ready to try Diety. I have won with the Romans (pretty easy), Japan (still pretty easy), and India (i got a lot of breaks).

Who should i try next? I was thinking Cleo cuz I never really use her.

And I don't ever, ever ever ever ever ever... Save/Reload. That's cheating.

Russia and Egypt are the two worst, IMO.

I disagree with the general thought that Russia is bad. Russia is great if you play the right way. Russia is made for culture victory imo. They don´t need to be close to sea and therefore avoid naval support. They have good defence (loyalty) and therefore don´t have to care too much about war. They have extra food from plains which make their cities grow quickly. So given all this, grow your cities like crazy and build temples, and cathedrals. Then get the wonder (name fell off my mind right now) that make courthouses produce culture and there you are. If you are not done by modern age (usually you aren´t on cultural victory) build spies (at half cost) and go get extra GPs from the other civs. Straightforward and easy.

In other words, use someone else if you want a challenge. However, all civs have great bonuses if you play them right, i.e. there is no civ that give you an increased challenge, it is your way of playing that might make a few civs more challenging as you don´t know how to play in a certain style.

You can do all the above with any civ, apart from the whole +1f from plains thing which is almsot as situational as +1 trade on deserts (Egypt). And saying half cost SPIES in the Modern Age is good is silly....

I'd say that France is the hardest civ to play since all of their bonuses are pretty mediocre IMO.

Quotey said:

You can do all the above with any civ, apart from the whole +1f from plains thing which is almsot as situational as +1 trade on deserts (Egypt). And saying half cost SPIES in the Modern Age is good is silly....

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No you cannot do all of the above with any civ. +1 food is important to grow your cities quickly and thus get more culture. Loyalty from defensive units is important to have good defense and thus not care too much about war. Half cost spy is good if you don't have too many cities close to hills/mountains but rather focus on plains. For me these are traits that are all important to run the strategy I'm suggesting.

It is your opinion that it is silly with half cost spies, my opinion is that it is very good given the abovementioned circumstances. We are all allowed to have different opinions so I'm not going down that route of discussing intelligence or personal traits, but I do disagree with you.

I play russia the most because the're so good. By the end of the medevil era at least on city should have 32 population, and you should be cranking out 3 - 4 archerers per turn by that city ALONE. Make a couple gold producing citys and build roads from your main 32 pop city to all your other citys, allowing you to focus on culture. I always laugh when someone says that russia is one of the worst civs in the game because i find that they are one if not the best civs in the game.

damnation said:

I play russia the most because the're so good. By the end of the medevil era at least on city should have 32 population, and you should be cranking out 3 - 4 archerers per turn by that city ALONE. Make a couple gold producing citys and build roads from your main 32 pop city to all your other citys, allowing you to focus on culture. I always laugh when someone says that russia is one of the worst civs in the game because i find that they are one if not the best civs in the game.

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Yes, it is all about play style, and I agree with you. We are not that many that have realized how good Russia is to play with. Perhaps that changes over time.

I tried the Greeks last night. Just turtled up and locked down a few bottlenecks, and grinded to tanks, then smacked the French, and the Russians first. The Russians were actually pretty tough with the Loyalty bonus. I am a bit nervous about the Indians though they were right behind me on tech. They always seem to be fast on that.

I will continue tonight. I am going to try Cleo tonight if i get a chance. The Office is on so I might not.

bryce00 said:

I tried the Greeks last night. Just turtled up and locked down a few bottlenecks, and grinded to tanks, then smacked the French, and the Russians first. The Russians were actually pretty tough with the Loyalty bonus. I am a bit nervous about the Indians though they were right behind me on tech. They always seem to be fast on that.

I will continue tonight. I am going to try Cleo tonight if i get a chance. The Office is on so I might not.

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Yes, India is always quick on tech - at least in the beginning - due to their trait to have access to all resources. And they are usually very aggressive due to the same fact, they want everybody to stay behind since they have such a quick start.

Definately Egypt, they are fun because of the wonder. Its not too powerful, but it does add a new element to early play.

Russia is fairly weak, but any food bonus is crazy powerful if used right. Half cost spy is silly because they are only 25 full cost and thats cheap to rush in late game. And how many do you really need?



As an aside, how are you getting 32 pop, my cities seem to max at 31.

Smirk said:

Russia is fairly weak, but any food bonus is crazy powerful if used right. Half cost spy is silly because they are only 25 full cost and thats cheap to rush in late game. And how many do you really need?

As an aside, how are you getting 32 pop, my cities seem to max at 31.

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First, Russia is not weak if you play them right. All Civs are strong if you play them right. That was the initial intention of Sid Meier who claimed that all Civs should feel "overpowered".

Secondly, I hear you and others saying that it is silly with half cost spy. I disagree. I get out two spy rings in the time you get out one with another Civ. Two spy rings are twice as effective/efficient. You can steal double amount of money and double amount of GPs. Just put them on ships and you have tons of good stuff from your enemies.

Thirdly, I don't like the use of degrading words like silly and stupid. We are all allowed to have our views. Please state why you don't like something instead of claiming that I'm stupid who think differently from you.

Smirk said:

Definately Egypt, they are fun because of the wonder. Its not too powerful, but it does add a new element to early play.

Russia is fairly weak, but any food bonus is crazy powerful if used right. Half cost spy is silly because they are only 25 full cost and thats cheap to rush in late game. And how many do you really need?



As an aside, how are you getting 32 pop, my cities seem to max at 31.

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opps sorry the cap is 31 i just typed it wrong.

bryce00 said:

I tried the Greeks last night. Just turtled up and locked down a few bottlenecks, and grinded to tanks, then smacked the French, and the Russians first. The Russians were actually pretty tough with the Loyalty bonus. I am a bit nervous about the Indians though they were right behind me on tech. They always seem to be fast on that.

I will continue tonight. I am going to try Cleo tonight if i get a chance. The Office is on so I might not.

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I finished the Greek game,... ran into Indians and English at the end of my continent, pumped my culture up huge and took a couple of cities then got a culture GP and took another one from India. Took last two India cities with artillery while building United Nations.

Culture win. Yay.

I am going to try Cleo tonight. Any tips on her? Settle next to lots of desert tiles? never played her before.

bryce00 said:

I am going to try Cleo tonight. Any tips on her? Settle next to lots of desert tiles? never played her before.

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If your free starting wonder is the Oracle (only played them once, don't know if it's always Oracle, but that's what I got) then go for a quick offensive. You can take out a neighboring civ or two before they have a chance to build up. That way you get a couple of quick cities and a whole lot of space to grow. Easily counteracts the bonuses the AI gets on emperor, and can be a good way to get a quick domination win.

And yes, settling next to desert tiles is good, too.

Desert tiles are your best friends while playing as Egypt! You don't need to settle by an plain or grassland tiles because you'll be getting food from the desert tiles. (Try to be near a river, getting irrigation for makes your desert food tiles work the same as grassland tiles do!) Like suggested, try to take out a civ quick by warrior rushing, then focus on tech and beeline straight to Code of Law! Code of Law helps a lot for Egypt, as you get 4 or 3 (I forget >.>) trade instead of the 2 from Desert Tiles if you build, or get for free, a trading post.

From there you should be pretty good. Egypt is a great civ for an Economical Victory, because of all their great bonuses for Desert Tiles, and because you might get lucky and start with Colossus!

Hertsh said:

First, Russia is not weak if you play them right. All Civs are strong if you play them right. That was the initial intention of Sid Meier who claimed that all Civs should feel "overpowered".

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They are, despite my own statement that they "can be" powerful. And here is why, at the start Russian plains are no different than grasslands, so there is no benefit for spaces worked. Only after a city has granary is a plain much better. Compare that to Japan who will work sea spaces anyway for trade but will get a bonus food alongside the normal value.
In other words, there is no good reason to work plains prior to granary production.

So Russia will place granary as a higher priority? Great, how soon will that early production pay off, even just using it on a one-on-one basis (one hammer = one food) its many turns for it to pay back.
Then considering you are usually sacrificing food for early production, you've actually lost some growth by building the early granary.
Its still best to just get the free granaries at 1000g, but to make that most effective you want to have 3-5 cities when you reach it so you are focusing on growth and settlers. And thus you are settling around good food resources with few hammers (forests for early game). So where does that leave the 1 food plain cities?

In a sense you have to follow an early non-optimal path to fully realize the potential of the Russians.

Secondly, I hear you and others saying that it is silly with half cost spy.

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They are cheap to rush, assuming you are playing a typical strong strategy. More specifically, you have couple strong gold cities with markets and banks and maybe merchants, you should be getting 300-1000 gold per turn which you can easily rush a few spys when needed. Unless you are facing a ring in the city (in which case I would just not bother with spys) you can usually just throw a few veterans at the city and eventually win out. A single ring is mostly all you need otherwise, and then a spy rushed anywhere (non-vet) to get the GP or destroy fortifications.

Since you can at best have a vet spy ring, and you have no way of knowing what the enemy may have in their cities its always a guessing game. Is it worth the effort to build a spy ring only to have that lose to (by its very nature) a heavily fortified spy ring in an enemy city? I find its not, although around mid game I do attempt a spy ring rush and attempt to round up all the AI GP, but once my spys die I give up on that strategy. I use one spy ring to test the waters or kill the enemy (then leave) and then an expendable spy to get the GP. I do this as long as the spy ring lasts.

Although, if I don't have a large tech lead and the game isn't almost done I will easily expend as much resources as is needed to get a great leader.


There are possibilities for games versus humans, but the non-optimal path Russia would have to follow would preclude a late game advantage because you've already been destroyed by the early game weakness.


An all Russian game might be fun with other humans, but that doesn't seem possible, and I've not been able to play any network games anyway.

Rereading part of your post made me realize I think you are using spys for a purpose that I see absolutely no need for, stealing gold? Versus humans? A strong gold city is all I ever need versus the AI, they don't know how to make a gold city and thus have no gold. I think there is a lot to be said about late game strategies, but I never see them because I've already won by that point. The only time I see late game is when I go space, and then there is usually only 1 enemy civ and he has one city.
For instance I'd use the 60 or 80 hammers for building a granary to instead build 4 catapults and take out 3 civs, meanwhile I'll just be using grasslands/forests and bonus tiles.

The plain bonus along with the +1 hammer for hills is just an ability to look at the map differently early game that may pay back later on with buildings, but not usually in any game I've played.

I'm itching for some MP play but as I've said even opening my network completely doesn't allow me to play online.

Smirk said:

...at the start Russian plains are no different than grasslands, so there is no benefit for spaces worked. Only after a city has granary is a plain much better...

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This is assuming that a city always have enough grassland, and I very seldomly see a city location with more than 2 grassland squares. With this benefit there is much more city location options. This is the benefit, and yes you are right the benefit kicks in mainly after building a granary. I think this is strong for getting very large cities and thus growing culture. But if your strat is to dominate, use another civ. I´m not claiming that Russia is good for all strats, only for culture wins.

Their loyalty benefit is for ensuring good defense and thus avoid building of too many offensive units, rather focus on the city development. Your point that it is better to build offensive units instead of cheap spies goes against this strategy of being defensive and then stealing what is needed in GPs (and of course potentially gold if you haven´t found a GP city in the vicinity). It is cheaper to build/buy a spy ring than a very strong military army, especially with half cost spy.

We do obviously think different but my point is that Russia is strong for culture victory and not for all victories. Therefore I find your argument to win early based on taking out cities is invalid. If I wanna play a military strategy I would use another Civ, or try Russia but with a late game victory when I have granaries and workshops in several cities.

Thanks folks. I started with Cleo and got Colossus and eventually an economic victory. They put me on a fairly large island so I settled it, focusing on desert tiles, then planted a little city on the main continent close to England but not so close i couldn't build it up a bit. Had a huge tech lead and pretty much rolled everyone but China. Caravan gold and rifleman +1 move seem mostly useless.