The Birth of an Emperor?

TheMeInTeam

If A implies B...
Joined
Jan 26, 2008
Messages
27,989
Or so I wish :rolleyes:. Having tried a few emperor games, it indeed seems the biggest difficulty jump I've come across to date (though noble ---> prince taught me quite a bit too!).

As I feel my diplomacy choices and war knowledge are more than sufficient to beat AI's at this level (backstabs are rare occasions for me, even at this new difficulty, and I've won many a war with a fraction of the AI power rating), it seems that my economy is NOT. I'll focus on the early game once again in this thread, which looks the most different at emperor difficulty and is almost surely where I'm flopping:

1. I tend to fall quite behind in tech at emperor. Having seen a few high level games, this appears normal. However, not to the extent I fall behind. I've gotten some useful advice from silverbullet, suggesting that I focus on researching something I can trade the AI (this makes fundamental sense, since doing so effectively doubles up your beakers). HOWEVER, I get to the point where I can't research anything like that because I'm too backwards! OK, that's a problem. Let's see why then -------->

2. Opening build/settling decisions: I admit I could specialize my cities a lot better than I do as the game draws on. However, it looks to me like I'm failing prior to seeing the negative effects of weak specialization regardless. Specifically, I'm finding my economy tanking on me considerably after settling 4 cities! (capitol included). Prior to now, my usual opening usually involved 3-4 cities, well improved, then picking up code of laws or currency (depending on short-term intentions, as IMO currency seems a stronger play in desperation, such as overexpansion). After having 3-4 cities, I'd choose either war or further peaceful expansion depending on the map. This works great on Monarch, so well it's easy even.

Of course, that's assuming someone isn't in my face preventing expansion. That calls for a rush, but rushing before economy techs isn't usually my priority unless I'm walled in.

On Emperor, I can still settle 4 cities by 1 AD and have them all reasonably improved, but I run into a somewhat difficult problem: I'm at 30% research or so, and far below the typical BPT I see from players who know what they're doing. I'm often told that what matters is your position relative to AI's, and I know it's true, but I'm routinely too far behind other AI's, which only supports the idea that my BPT are too low ^_^. This opening may not be optimal (I may be settling cities 2,3, or 4, or some combination too slowly or quickly, for example). I know I have enough workers, as it's rare that I work unimproved tiles. Usually have slightly more than 1/city.

3. On wonders: This isn't advice I need, as I never favored wonders (unless, or course, I'm capturing them!). It's not that I don't build the oracle, pyramids, stonehenge, GL or the GW in my games, it's just that I almost never bother making more than one (and I usually build that one with a strategy in mind), and about half the time I don't even do that. I like my units, be they military or workers/settlers. Is this a mistake? I can't imagine getting more than one of these without killing my expansion at emperor anyway (actually, i've long practiced not getting tons of wonders for just this jump :lol:). I love Obsolete's writeups, don't get me wrong, but I like warring early :).

4. On emperor warfare: This might be the single hardest adjustment for me. Is warring and still keeping up reasonably in tech impossible at emperor? It doesn't seem to me like it should be. However, as my economy already seems bad to me, massing units seems like it would get me so backwards that I couldn't war effectively after a short while (even at epic speed!). My intuition tells me that this is moreso derived from a lack of economy management, rather than the inability to war in late classical/early medieval/basically any time someone's vulnerable. However, if I'm mistaken, I'd of course like to know :).

So basically, from the late BC's through about 1000 AD, how do you guys bet your BPT higher than, say, 20-30 and still expand? While I'm teching at that rate, I won't be hitting beelines for techs fast enough to trade and keep up, so apparently I need to get this up (and ideally still field a military!).
 
20-30 bpt is pretty low for that era. How are you getting the gold to fund your empire? For both FE/CE, you want to try settling near rivers as it enables riverside cottages and/or farms. Maybe you're putting off researching code of laws + currency? Those two techs are necessary to really build a large empire at the higher levels as the city maintenance cost goes up pretty fast.

Could you post a 1 AD and 1000 AD save from a recent game?
 
However, it looks to me like I'm failing prior to seeing the negative effects of weak specialization regardless. Specifically, I'm finding my economy tanking on me considerably after settling 4 cities!
Specialization can happen before you even found the city -- if your suffering from crippling financial problems at this point, then that probably means you aren't doing a good job of selecting good commercial city sites, and improving the land with cottages... and/or you haven't selected a good food site for running scientists.
 
4 cities isn't enough. You need to claim land more aggressively even if it sinks you into a tech hole. Also consider getting monarchy early and running HR and expanding your cities vertically more quickly. There are few problems that horizontal expansion causes that can't be fixed by vertical expansion.

I hate war in this period. Either war very early or later once you have a tech lead. A medieval slugfest is difficult to pull off without losing a lot of ground relative to the non fighting AIs.
 
If i was stuck with 4 cities I would go for a war almost immediately. If you don't you're going to lose, plain and simple. You might do ok techwise up until liberalism, but after that you'll fall way behind.

As for when to war, i'm the same as InvisibleStalke. I'll do an axe rush in the beginning, but it's rare that i'll fight again until rifles and cannons. Though joining a dogpile for an easy city or two is always a good idea, plus you get diplo boosts with the attackers.

I always try to go for the kremlin too, since I play marathon and there rushbuying is more effective than drafting, imo.
 
what seems to be the problem is that your beakers are characteristic of a CE during that period. now i love cottages, we all do, but scientists can heal a myriad of tech problems early on (ie until currency/CoL). whip out libraries in each city after expansion/rushing and run two scientists in each until CoL and/or currency. then you can cottage up to your hearts desire. btw it is important to get each of your cities in places with good food resources (not plains cows or an oasis).

also i completely agree with InvisibleStalke, don't war in the classical period/early medieval. catapults and swords won't cut it against longbowmen.
 
My latest CE game had 7 cities at 675BC. Unfortunately I don't have many savegames around 1AD - probably because I'm at peace usually then and turns go quickly. Another game had 7 cities at 100 BC (was about to found two more) and 45 science per turn.

With 7 cities you can specialize. Say 1 heavily cottaged capital, two cities running scientists off high food, 2 production cities and 2 cottage cities. Early on you need specialists for intense research and cottages to pay the bills. Running a mix at this stage is probably more efficient than either on its own.

Make sure you capture enough land to be able to fill in to 10-12 cities. Otherwise you won't be able to compete. Then beeline deep into the tech tree to get a military lead. Expand rapidly through conquest. Consolidate. Beeline. Conquer. Repeat.
 
If you are playing with 4 cities too don't bother with COL or currency - you don't need them - you are paying very little maintenance on 4 cities and have too few cities for currency to help either. Games where I optimize a small number of cities involve lots of wonderbuilding. Eg Great Library, Pyramids. Its a viable alternative to REX, but techs like currency and COL aren't priorities in that case - Literature is.
 
If you are playing with 4 cities too don't bother with COL or currency - you don't need them - you are paying very little maintenance on 4 cities and have too few cities for currency to help either. Games where I optimize a small number of cities involve lots of wonderbuilding. Eg Great Library, Pyramids. Its a viable alternative to REX, but techs like currency and COL aren't priorities in that case - Literature is.

7 cities in the BC era? Does that not push the slider to 0? Apparently per your advice though, this isn't an issue (I'm assuming you're using libraries and bulb trading to tech at this point then?) If I'm not mistaken this approach seems to rely on cottages solely for keeping you afloat at or near 0% slider, using the libraries for early bulbing while the cottages grow.

I had more land available...I could easily have settled 8 cities or more, but got pretty un-nerved by 4 dropping me to 30% science. This could also be a function of settling on land that was pretty commerce poor (nothing I could do about that since there weren't many river/commerce tiles, so I have to adjust), but the situation just seemed so ugly.

And in my OP I admit specializing is a weak point, that doesn't imply I don't do so :). Generally I can identify strong specialization sites (it's pretty obvious in terms of general locale), I just have to be careful not to lose focus.

I don't understand how to get 7 cities that early unless I'm playing marathon (which is never, I play epic), but I can probably have 7 by 50-100AD or so. Maybe via chopping/whipping more than I already do a bit faster. However, it seems based on this that if I want to run CE I need to get my cities settled or captured quickly, even if it screws research. The only problem is, how do I even marginally keep up in tech in that scenario?

I always feel like a sitting duck when I REX past 4 cities early (though I often use them to wall off at least), unless I'm isolated, where I fall behind in tech pretty badly at emperor (though I win iso games easily on monarch :lol:).
 
Hi,

I've been mostly lurking around this forum and such, I think this might only be my second post. So bear this in mind. I do win all of my games on Monarch with random leaders/random map, but I mostly play small maps with the standard number of AIs as my computer can't take the bigger maps in the later eras. For some reason I like Terra maps.

With this being said, I've won quite a few games on Emperor (thinking of moving to Immortal once I win very consistently with all leader types), but I was struggling at first as well. The jump in difficulty seemed huge. What helped me immensely was:

1. Play financial leaders. Playing financial makes creating a good economy quite easy (I'm mostly using hybrid SE/CE economies, with the emphasis being on specialists in the early game). Settling a riverside city and cottaging it is a very good source of income with financial even in the early game, as you get 3 commerce from a riverside cottage.

2. On wonders: Build the Pyramids. Essentially doubles your beaker output from scientists and is very good with caste system. The Great Library is also a good one to get in your science city (which is mostly my capital in my games).

3. On Science: Also tech to writing after your have your most needed worker techs and run 2 scientists as soon as you can. Settle the first GS and after that bulbing a few key techs (philosophy and education comes to mind) can put you back in the driving seat even after extensive warfare and over-expansion.

4. Warfare. There's 2 approaches here that have worked for me consistently: either war very early with axes, taking out your nearest neighbor or war in the riflemen era when you have a tech lead.

5. Whipping/chopping. One thing that was very difficult to get used to was the increased usage of chopping/whipping. Normally in my games I'd leave much of the forest around my capital for later use. On Emperor it's crucial that you get out as many settlers/workers/axes (depending on your needs) as quick as you can.

6. Emphasize food rich city sites first.

Anyway, just my 2 cents, take it with a grain of salt, as I'm not a very experienced poster/player, but these things tend to work for me. The most important lesson for me was to run a scientist based early game economy (you can mix in a few riverside cottages if you're financial for an added boost).
 
I believe I'm at the same point as TheMeInTeam. I'm trying to learn SE better in an attempt to get myself over that emperor hurdle where I can win sometimes but not as consistently as I'd like.

And I think Mr. TwoPosts is right about the whipping/chopping. After trying SE a few times, I realized that I wasn't whipping NEARLY enough. I foresee myself become a downright sadist now. I'm guessing that whipping/chopping and better specialization is what we need, TheMeInTeam (TMIT).

Like you I play on epic and have trouble sticking to my specialized cities. There just seems to be a lot of "down time" in epic. So I'll build a market where I shouldn't. And since it has a market, why not give it a grocer? And it could use a bank too, right? Every little bit helps, right?! Right!

And that goes on until I have a bunch of vaguely specialized cities that are barely different from each other. Is that a bad thing? I'm not sure.

Edit: LIAR! Mr. TwoPosts has three posts!
 
I play emperor/normal speed and win about 3/4 of the time. I prefer CE because it requires less MM, but I am forcing myself this week to play a pure SE with Gandhi - no cottages except those I capture. I think I must have a better understanding of the SE mechanics to tackle Immortal.

To help me stay focused on city specialization - I often rename cities with a suffix - Bombay/military; Calcutta/superscience; and so on. Then everytime I dial up the cityscreen I am reminded of my original plan.

In my GOTM I am winning with a significant tech lead, but I can feel my SE slowing down as the Modern era begins. I don't know whether to stick it out with the SE or to transition over to a CE. I am targeting Biology to see if that can kickstart my fading SE.

I ended up creating in effect two GP farms; my capitol which had several wonders and a megafloodplain city with tons of food and the National Epic. They did a pretty good job of alternating in GP production.
 
7 cities in the BC era? Does that not push the slider to 0? Apparently per your advice though, this isn't an issue (I'm assuming you're using libraries and bulb trading to tech at this point then?) If I'm not mistaken this approach seems to rely on cottages solely for keeping you afloat at or near 0% slider, using the libraries for early bulbing while the cottages grow.

Yep it sure does. In this game at 675BC my slider would have been at 0% except for deficit research. But a couple of libraries, some scientists, some riverside cottages and a few turns later and its humming again. Maybe at 30% or so - but with more cities and some scientists thats easily enough.

As an extreme example in one game at around 100AD I had 12 cities and was losing 20coins a turn at 0% science. But a switch to caste system to run some merchants and nearly 10 scientists in the capital (love HR) meant that by about 500AD my economy was really humming.

I am probably settling scientists at this point and building academies. Lightbulbing comes a bit later if I do it.

I had more land available...I could easily have settled 8 cities or more, but got pretty un-nerved by 4 dropping me to 30% science. This could also be a function of settling on land that was pretty commerce poor (nothing I could do about that since there weren't many river/commerce tiles, so I have to adjust), but the situation just seemed so ugly.

If you are running entirely a food based economy (ie using scientists for research and no cottages) you should plan on dropping to 0% science. It will be fine - great people can make up for any deficits. And once you get to 0% science, then add some cottages and expand again as soon as you can afford it. Once you get COL you can even run merchants instead of cottages.

I tend to run cottage economies where I have lots of river and jungle - lots of green tiles. If your land was mainly brown with some food specials then an early SE would serve you a lot better.

Something you might want to try is building the great lighthouse and settling along the coast. I've had around 13 cities packed in peacefully before 500AD on Emperor and my economy has been humming.

And in my OP I admit specializing is a weak point, that doesn't imply I don't do so :). Generally I can identify strong specialization sites (it's pretty obvious in terms of general locale), I just have to be careful not to lose focus.

Early game specialization is easy. You need a couple of cities for production for units and workers/settlers. High food cities build libraries and run your scientists. Low food river cities build cottages.

I don't understand how to get 7 cities that early unless I'm playing marathon (which is never, I play epic), but I can probably have 7 by 50-100AD or so. Maybe via chopping/whipping more than I already do a bit faster. However, it seems based on this that if I want to run CE I need to get my cities settled or captured quickly, even if it screws research. The only problem is, how do I even marginally keep up in tech in that scenario?

I play standard speed. 7 at 675 BC involved an axe rush. 7 by 0AD is kinda mandatory though and easy to do off standard production. I will tend to clear cut forests at this stage in the game for the production boost. Whipping I am doing less of than I used to as I'm going into caste system earlier.

I always feel like a sitting duck when I REX past 4 cities early (though I often use them to wall off at least), unless I'm isolated, where I fall behind in tech pretty badly at emperor (though I win iso games easily on monarch :lol:).

If two of your cities are focussing on production you should be able to defend yourself with more cities. In fact you are safer - since you can whip a bigger army more quickly if you need it and more cities for you means less land for the AI.
 
I have quite the same problems in immortal :o
I think I do understand the theory, but just cant apply it.

You (good players) always seem to get everything easy, you have many&big cities, incredible science output, good military, you stay alive in the tech race etc...

I just dont manage to : get my Great scientists out AND get enough military to aggress anyone AND get the mid or the GL AND build enough infrastructure AND get monarchy early AND ...

I would really love a 'replay' mode in civ4 so I can get all the details of one's games...
 
I would really love a 'replay' mode in civ4 so I can get all the details of one's games...
Unfortunately it is not there.
You can look at several games in the immortal university thread. Some players rushed, some REXED, and have recovered the economy there.

Another great game to look at is Snaaty's guide. With a financial and organized leader he settles 8 cities very quickly and gets liberalism around 300AD.


I think one of the key points at this level is that you need many workers. Cities should get their borders expanded ASAP, and get crucial improvements quickly.
A financial leader has a big early game advantage if you can settle a riverside cottage - the city would pay for itself right from the start IF you send 2 workers to cottage some tiles ASAP.

Other traits have their own things that help early game (just don't play Toku :)).

In general:
New cities should get monument as the first building and it should be whipped at pop 2.
The food resource should be hooked up first, as whipping is the main source of production early game.
You could go cottage economy (work farms and cottages only - don't waste time on mines) or you could go farm economy. Farm economy doesn't mean you run specialists everywhere, it just means you focus on growth and whipping, and sometimes run specialists. When I first played emperor I found cottage economy to be easier, since the commerce comes more directly.

Regardless of the way you go, one city (usually capital) should run 2 scientist specialists ASAP. An academy in the capital combined with Bureaucracy and monarchy can generate 200+ beakers in mid game.

I suggest you start a new game and ask for advice every 20~40 turns or so.
 
My latest CE game had 7 cities at 675BC. Unfortunately I don't have many savegames around 1AD - probably because I'm at peace usually then and turns go quickly. Another game had 7 cities at 100 BC (was about to found two more) and 45 science per turn.

With 7 cities you can specialize. Say 1 heavily cottaged capital, two cities running scientists off high food, 2 production cities and 2 cottage cities. Early on you need specialists for intense research and cottages to pay the bills. Running a mix at this stage is probably more efficient than either on its own.

Make sure you capture enough land to be able to fill in to 10-12 cities. Otherwise you won't be able to compete. Then beeline deep into the tech tree to get a military lead. Expand rapidly through conquest. Consolidate. Beeline. Conquer. Repeat.


Yea I agree, 7 cities around 100 bc with 45 science a turn is what I aim for. This is generally the time that AI gets longbows and expanding further is difficult, so might its a good growth era. Grow your cities up, whip the buildings, get a gp farm and heroic epic rolling, and mid fuedal ages you should be good to go and easily beat an emperor ai. Even immortal games become relatively straightforward if you can get yourself in that position at 100 bc.
 
Unfortunately it is not there.
You can look at several games in the immortal university thread. Some players rushed, some REXED, and have recovered the economy there.
i read most of the guides here, looked to many games.

I am able to win liberalism race, or to rex up to 8 early cities, or to axe rush an opponent, but my problem is whatever the path I choose there's always something going wrong : I get DoW by massive stacks of units, or i fall far behind in tech (and once you cant exchange anything you're lost), or I realize my empire is far too small compared to the AI.

My pb is not to loose, I like civilization to be a challenging game, but in immortal it seems to me that I did not progress at all since my first try (I had some wins though, but these were good maps + favorable conduct of the game - you know when everything seems to go fine).
 
Top Bottom