Moving up to Emperor. Any advice or tips?

Well I have finally gotten all the victory conditions completed on King so I figure it's time I start trying out Emperor. I have done the Fall of Rome scenario with Eastern Rome on Emperor but that doesn't really carry over into nonscenario single player. So any tips or advice for playing on Emperor? Is it possible to get any of the early wonders without chopping forests on emperor?

Even though still easily built, emperor is were you start to not to build early wonders because of the risk of lose them to AI.

It's also were early defense and settle land fast start to be important.

When I move up I always start with my favourite civs and try to beat the game the way I think is easiest. Or with the OP civ Poland.

So: No early wonders, don't forget defense. Good luck!

Except the oracle, you can get that reliably on even deity, and is rly good

i would suggest going with some of the more interesting opening actions strategy threads.. like tommy's poland strategy... that's a fun/powerful opening to play i've done it twice... or tabernak's tradition/food caravan opening...

otherwise there are strat threads all over the forum.. just figure out from your own experiences which particular area you feel most weak.. maybe its citizen management or military tactics.. for sure you'll need to begin more concentrated focus on choosing which tile each individual citizen works in your city screen.. and there are a few threads detailing that on the first forum page..

The players choice of Stonehenge or Oracle is normally still buildable on Emperor. But due to timing its difficult to build both of them in the same game.

Great Library would require a very good raw hammer start to have a shot at building on Emperor. Fail gold never worth it.

Then there are also a host of early wonders on this level that you have a shot at but only at the cost of delaying NC due to not being on that path and so are normally skipped.

Magma_Dragoon said:

Except the oracle, you can get that reliably on even deity, and is rly good

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The mayans seem to favor the oracle, if they are in your game on deity it will go early

Yeah, because it's on the way to theology

CBs are your best friend.

.... it's very possible to nab virtually all (and by all I mean not all of them, but a couple per game, but you can get the ones you decide to beeline too) the early wonders on emperor, but keep in mind that usually comes at the expense of growth.

On emperor, aim for Stonehenge if you want to... (religion can snowball into something truly frightening), or ToA, but the others are not worth it early on. And don't waste hammers on defenses... (ally military CS instead once you have a tech lead, which you should...), early game, if your faith output is high, holy warriors will do. Pay attention to growth and infrastructure and you'll leave the emperor AI behind in the dust as soon as Classical era.

On Emperor it starts to get important to "play the board". I think on lower levels you can get away with picking a strategy before the game starts and still winning, it's a lot harder to do that on Emperor. But as long as you take your civ and environment into account, you should be fine. For example don't go for a religion unless you have a civ with religious bonuses or you have a lot of terrain that works with a faith pantheon or can settle a faith natural wonder.

I seem to recall Barbarians being a little more annoying on Emperor the first time I played. Im used to it now. but if you have a lot of open space, beware the barbs.

I worked my may up in emperor by winning small games, then medium games, then standard games. This allows you to get used to the pace of the game without getting steamrolled the first time you play it

Good luck!

On emperor, the small details start to matter more. Loose play is harder to recover from. Think about your build order. Make sure that you are paying attention to the tiles being worked and your specialists. Prioritize science and you should have multiple victory conditions to choose from, eventually.

Chop forest. It's nearly always need of higher difficult level (except in square place with no mountains) for early buildings/settlers or wonders.

I found King->Emperor to be a baby step, almost unnoticeable in difficulty. AI weren't building wonders too much faster nor rushing my borders that much earlier. One or two games at this level are all that's necessary before moving to Immortal.

However, Emperor->Immortal is a significantly more noticeable jump. Spend your time at Emperor learning the diplomacy game. Not just making friends for RA's, but war-bribing, creating an AI pariah, and keeping the competent AI warmongerers (Shaka, and a few others) focused elsewhere while you're building the strength to deal with them. This aspect of the game isn't too relevant at king and below since you snowball ahead of the competition so early, and you can get through most king games without doing so. But playing immortal and deity games without familiarization with this tactic can be frustrating in all but the luckiest of starts.

DarthSheldonPhD said:

I found King->Emperor to be a baby step, almost unnoticeable in difficulty. AI weren't building wonders too much faster nor rushing my borders that much earlier. One or two games at this level are all that's necessary before moving to Immortal.

However, Emperor->Immortal is a significantly more noticeable jump. Spend your time at Emperor learning the diplomacy game. Not just making friends for RA's, but war-bribing, creating an AI pariah, and keeping the competent AI warmongerers (Shaka, and a few others) focused elsewhere while you're building the strength to deal with them. This aspect of the game isn't too relevant at king and below since you snowball ahead of the competition so early, and you can get through most king games without doing so. But playing immortal and deity games without familiarization with this tactic can be frustrating in all but the luckiest of starts.

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Can you speak to that at length, please?

I play at Immortal, and I find the AI/Diplomacy so erratic and unsatisfying - as no less than J Shafer admitted (http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/14/j...-civ-v-explains-how-at-the-gates-will-differ/) - that almost ignore it. I presume that is why I lose so much, but please, tell me how I keep the AIs focused elsewhere? I really don't know.

I find that usually they backstab me relentlessly once I get moving and eventually I am gang-tackled by two or three of them at once. That - fighting two or three civs simultaneously - is the hardest part about Immortal to my mind. The punishment for taking cities is relentless.

first off pay attention to who is friends with who.. who has denounced who.. because you dont get a chance to check this out when someone asks you for a DOF.. you have to go by memory.. and one of the easiest ways to make an enemy is to be the friend of someone your warmonger neighbor hates..

next up is how to deal with a warmonger (potential) neighbor.. your intent is to keep him at war with somebody (multiple AIs if possible) and preferably someone AWAY from you where he isnt crossing your borders to get to the fight... so if he is east of you send him further east..
how you do this is bribe him to declare war on somebody.. if you can bribe him against somebody he has a DOF with then now you have created a pariah because that's a major no no for the AI... if you can bribe him cheaply to DOW 2 AI even better... so now this guy is well occupied for some time and wont be DOWing you anytime soon..

a way to make more friends is to denounce the guy that everybody else has denounced.. now you have to be careful with this as he might just have a couple of luxuries you need so use that sparingly.. but if he isnt close to you and doesnt factor into your economy then denounce away..

use the WC to your advantage not detriment.. yeah you might want your religion to be world religion but that's just gonna piss everybody off.. look at what makes who happy and go with that unless you have a specific agenda for victory.. in that case if you're going to do things to piss off everybody then build a good military..

as for the surprise DOWs that catch you off guard its a good idea to station some scouts outside your borders.. when you see a whole army heading to your territory you can take action and bribe him to DOW someone or someone else to DOW him.. the sooner you do it the more likely he'll turn around and go fight somewhere else..

as for fights you cant avoid and you know its coming prepare yourself.. stop building whatever you were building and build some ranged units.. buy walls.. make roads around your city to give your archers more mobility (over rivers and hills).. you always want to be able to kill at least one unit per turn.. you dont want to leave something almost dead because they'll end up healing or pillaging a luxury and then killing one of your units..

dont block off access to your city.. leave some space for him to get in front.. keep your archers behind.. he'll typically hit his head on the walls hurting himself making it easier to kill.. also you wont risk losing a unit by getting pelted by archers and then finished off by two melee..

Playing this kind of diplo game, which has been very well described above, is very important on higher difficulty levels and IMO crucial on deity.

I've occasionally taken it a little too far though... I twice remember creating an absolute monster out of the Huns, who wouldn't just be at war but would absolutely decimate whoever they fought, taking capitals and razing big cities all over. In one of those two games it was great, because everyone else was hurt, and I was able to go to war with the huns and liberate a bunch of cities for great diplo, and sell the rest for lots of gold. In the other occasion, Frankenstein Attila said "You're next " and brought his absolutely unending horde of trebuchets plus a bunch of other units when I was still on comp bows...

robertkelly260 said:

Can you speak to that at length, please?

I play at Immortal, and I find the AI/Diplomacy so erratic and unsatisfying - as no less than J Shafer admitted (http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/14/j...-civ-v-explains-how-at-the-gates-will-differ/) - that almost ignore it. I presume that is why I lose so much, but please, tell me how I keep the AIs focused elsewhere? I really don't know.

I find that usually they backstab me relentlessly once I get moving and eventually I am gang-tackled by two or three of them at once. That - fighting two or three civs simultaneously - is the hardest part about Immortal to my mind. The punishment for taking cities is relentless.

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Novalia beat me to the punch (thanks ), and either way you kind of called my bluff I do use some degree of diplomatic trickery in every game but by no means consider myself an expert in this area, in fact its probably the aspect of the game that I need the most improvement.

So... while I do have a few things to add on the topic, I'm no expert and please disregard anything I add that conflicts with something said by someone more competent

1.) religion - while it may be contrary to logic, I find that its more important for you to have the same majority religion as your enemies than it is to have friends of the same religion. The reason is that religion doesn't have such a strong diplomatic impact that it will prevent you from befriending someone who otherwise would, but it does grease the wheels of war between your friend of a different religion and your enemy of your religion. Also, your enemy will have a higher disposition towards you which should make them favor a different target (although this really isn't the case; AI's prioritize their targets based 2% of diplomacy and 98% on opportunity.) Speaking of opportunity...

2.) borders - Aggressive AI are like cheetahs hunting a pack of gazelle - they pick out the lamest and target it. Make sure that's not you.

3.) pariah - when 6 civs all denounce the same leader, hop on the bandwagon. More often than not this results in a big war that you're not in, which is a good thing. EXCEPT when that AI is adjacent to you and more powerful.

4.) buffers - consider all AI which are adjacent to you as "buffers" and all AI which are on the further side as "targets." You want the buffers and targets to be fighting. This way A.) the battle lines are far, far away from you, making it very inconvenient for them to redirect and target you, and B.) the buffer's units are all on the furthest side of their empire, allowing you to walk in if you wish (but tread carefully)

Honestly King to Emperor is not too huge a gap, you should be fine. Focus on science, aim to build the National College as soon as possible, work the science specialists as soon as you get them, don't go for ancient wonders aside from some very specific ones (Oracle, stuff like that). I mean you can actually get ancient wonders on Emperor but there's always risk involved.

Teproc said:

Honestly King to Emperor is not too huge a gap, you should be fine. Focus on science, aim to build the National College as soon as possible, work the science specialists as soon as you get them, don't go for ancient wonders aside from some very specific ones (Oracle, stuff like that). I mean you can actually get ancient wonders on Emperor but there's always risk involved.

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I found leap from King to Emperor a pretty big one, personally. King i could win 95% of games, emperor like 25%