Is it a bad idea to play peaceful on emperor? Good idea to war early and war often?

I am new to BNW emperor and see that other civs runaway when i play peaceful. Do I need to war early and war often on emperor level and up? No matter what civ?

I don't think war is necessary. The player can usually take the tech lead in almost any difficulty, and then it's at the least an easy science win. I think culture is harder because you want to be ahead by archeology so you can mine some good artifacts since you're not collecting them from conquest. If there is a runaway civ, you might need to focus on diplomacy and getting all his/her neighbors to hate them faster and help motivate them to war each other through bribes.

If you're just looking at land area and calling that AI a runway; that's not enough to make that call. Check the Demographic screen; if you are #1 in science, you are perfectly fine.

War imo is an effective defense against a runaway, whether you join in or not. If you work on your diplomacy as paralistalon has suggested you will be able to have most of the world DOW a runaway, or a potential runaway. Don't let DOFs fool you as this means nothing to the AI, it is possible to bribe an AI civ to DOW a civ they have a DOF with.

In saying that it should be you that is the runaway as you don't have to concentrate on building units. If you are the tech leader most AI civs will want a RA with you and thus they will offer a DOF.

paralistalon said:

I don't think war is necessary. The player can usually take the tech lead in almost any difficulty, and then it's at the least an easy science win. I think culture is harder because you want to be ahead by archeology so you can mine some good artifacts since you're not collecting them from conquest. If there is a runaway civ, you might need to focus on diplomacy and getting all his/her neighbors to hate them faster and help motivate them to war each other through bribes.

Click to expand...

When I played Emperor (many post-patch games before stepping up to Immortal where I can't always win) most of them were relatively peaceful or totally peaceful games using what I consider to be this game's better civs and I found CV to be considerably quicker than SV and often won CV well prior to turn 300 (std). Sure you can win a SV well before any AI is threatening to win by any means on Emperor, but I found CV lots easier.

CV requires you to research fewer techs than does SV and since the patch, those rocket parts take a long time to build and are expensive to buy. Often I was able to bulb my GS to internet after getting just my research lab built/bought in my capitol and would have science to spare.

Rarely do the AI's have tons of culture to overwhelm early on when playing Emperor. Whereas on Immortal they can have a large 5 figure amount of culture to overwhelm and you need a few GM's.

But yeah..getting back to the OP post, there's often no need to fight.

Artifex1 said:

Do I need to war early and war often on emperor level and up? No matter what civ?

Click to expand...

No, definitely not. I play on immortal, and prefer a peaceful playstyle. 100% pacifistic victories are almost always viable, unless you just get really terrible land. You probably just need to practice some of the tech-heavy strategies needed for the higher levels. Tradition openings in particular: focusing on getting a few cities, lots of food, and early national college/universities. Once you get the hang of this, you should find yourself passing the AI in science probably in the medieval age.

The way warmonger penalties work, at least on pangea, conquering any cities in the early game is quite painful. You won't be able to get good deals selling resources for like the entire game, and some civs will be completely belligerent (no trading at all, constantly denouncing, etc.). And there is always the threat of AI ganging up on you and DOWing, which even if you hold them off, you can lose all your trade routes.

On continents or smaller landmasses you can get away with early attacks much easier, because if you kill your enemy before meeting other civs, they won't know about it.

you could wait until you have researched artillery or even battleships before warring. getting autocracy's 2x tech steal speed also helps.
being bombarded from 3 tiles away is when the AI shows its stupidity, so wars in late eras are actually easy!

paralistalon said:

If there is a runaway civ, you might need to focus on diplomacy and getting all his/her neighbors to hate them faster and help motivate them to war each other through bribes.

Click to expand...

This is my biggest problem on Immortal. I just can't get the runaway to be beaten down. I tried culture victory the other day. It took me no less than 25 nukes to convince Poland of my superior culture- in fact, it was Gajah Mada who took their last city and won me the game. It always seems so easy in all the deity LPs- bribing people to war. I seem to create the most imbalanced power black hole every time I do that. Just what is the secret? I am aware I am hijacking the thread slightly but I think this is related since this is the main reason why I go to war all the time. Anything else just sets you up for failure.

There is no such thing as a runaway AI on emperor. Builds like one worker, builds no buildings, has no gold, and it has an abysmal tech rate. You overcome it's free starting techs on turn 30, and you win when you build the nc. Plus tactical AI is stupid on every difficulty.

Ex.1, emperor AI. It does not reach level 20.

I'm not sure there is any secret to bribing. The aggressive civs are very easy to bribe to DoW someone, while the peaceful flavored ones are almost impossible. I typically use the bribe to get a neighboring warmonger civ to focus on someone other than me so I can focus on infrastructure and science rather than military. By the time we are ready to clash, I would ideally have a tech lead and could win the war (also considering that they would have hopefully lost some troops in their wars).

I suppose you do have to be careful of getting them to take over weaker neighbors, because this could just strengthen them more. I think you generally want the most powerful civs to eventually end up in a feud for most of the game if possible. Granted, if you are friend with one, the other will start to dislike you.

Culture leaders can be very difficult to overtake for a culture win if they're far ahead. You can attack them when you're ready, but they will likely close their borders to you forever, making a great musician attack after internet the only way of beating them short of a complete annihilation.

bison21 said:

This is my biggest problem on Immortal. I just can't get the runaway to be beaten down. I tried culture victory the other day. It took me no less than 25 nukes to convince Poland of my superior culture- in fact, it was Gajah Mada who took their last city and won me the game. It always seems so easy in all the deity LPs- bribing people to war. I seem to create the most imbalanced power black hole every time I do that. Just what is the secret? I am aware I am hijacking the thread slightly but I think this is related since this is the main reason why I go to war all the time. Anything else just sets you up for failure.

Click to expand...

I usually only bribe pure warmongers like Shaka and Genghis. These guys are never really threats to win the game, they just suck at science/culture too much. The puppet empire they acquire will just slow down their tech more than anything. I would never bribe a civ who is doing well in tech and culture to attack someone else, unless I was desperate. But a pure military power is totally fine - you know you can stop them from winning domination, and they aren't going to be a threat for other victory types.

Shaka is a bit of a special case IMO. You REALLY don't want to fight this guy in the early/mid game. So if he is anywhere near you, I would advise constant bribes to keep him busy. After he has attacked everyone else nearby you can set up a trade route and become friends with him by default (all AI like to have at least 1 trading partner).

I would say my games involving Shaka average 3X more bribes than non-Shaka games.

But for culture games, you shouldn't need nukes. Either you get the good Renaissance wonders, and win before nukes, or you don't get those wonders, and you pick another victory types.

paralistalon said:

I'm not sure there is any secret to bribing.

Click to expand...

Perhaps one is that an early bribe to start an early war not only gives you time to grow during that all-important early period from turn 70-140, but sets up bad feelings between other AIs for the rest of the game that makes it easier for you to turtle (as long as you don't engage in Declarations of Friendship with whoever your immediate neighbors hate).

And early bribes are often kind of cheap. I was just playing a game yesterday where Assyria was getting feisty with siege towers right next to me, and I bribed Songhai to attack him, and then 20 turns later, bribed Oda to attack Songhai. Turtled my way to an easy victory after that, they were too busy beating the crap out of each other to look my way.

Magma_Dragoon said:

There is no such thing as a runaway AI on emperor. Builds like one worker, builds no buildings, has no gold, and it has an abysmal tech rate. You overcome it's free starting techs on turn 30, and you win when you build the nc. Plus tactical AI is stupid on every difficulty.

Ex.1, emperor AI. It does not reach level 20 15

Click to expand...

(More accurately, emperor AI is like a Magikarp who doesn't even know tackle)

I think it depends. Always look at your neighbor strategy to define your playstyle.
If you have 1-2 aggressive neighbors who choose to follow honor social policies, you MUST go to war. However, choose to go to war peacefully. I seems contradicting but I will explain below.
So you don't want to have the worst soldier score because the AI will target you. So, build your warrior or just be friend with military CS so they can gift you unit.
For sure your neighbor to target the civ with the worst soldier scores, usually is the one who builds a lot of Wonders and dont have enough production for military forces. The question is should you let your aggressive neighbor to take their capital or you save them.
I played as Brazil the other day and choose to let them take their capital and I will claim it back when I out teched them. I was WRONG. You should help your neighbor to defense because if the aggressive AI takes it, they will have the wonders and will out tech you, not you will out tech them. However, don't denounce them. If they declare war with the the worst soldier civ, trade for some gold so you can go to war with them. Most of the combat will happen in their lands, so you will still grow while making some aggressive mission on your neighbor's land. Try to defend their capital and kill most of the aggressive civ soldier. This is what you get.
1- The aggressive neighbor will lose a lot of military units, transformed into production. Build 1 warrior and 2 archers to go to war against them. Just fortify your warrior and let your archer do the rest, don't go too aggressive.
2- The wonderwhoring AI will start making more military unit after this incidence plus their capital is pilaged from the attack. So they will fall behind while you can grow constantly and consistently.
So go to War with the one who chose to follow Honor social policies and avoid to have the worst soldier score. You dont want the battle to happen in your capital!

I usually play on Emperor and I *never* start wars on my own - and it works very well.
I rarely encounter runaway CIVs - and even then, I am usually able to either vin my CV or switch to SV and build the spaceship before they are able to unlock all parts.

So if you find yourself in these situations I see two main reasons:

(1) Your selected map: I usually play 8-player Pangaea, in my experience maps like Continents tend to give AIs a better chance to reach a runaway status.

(2) Your playstyle: Maybe there is something left to optimize. Your tech path, your early build order, policy selection, rate of expansion. In theory you shouldn't have any problem with the emperor AI if your early game is strong enough.