New to Emperor, at crossroads

After a bit of a hiatus, I fired up CiV again with hopes of working up to Deity. I previously beat the game at King (granted I steamrolled with Portugal on an islands map) so I decided to jump in at Emperor.

I started a standard size fractal map with the Celts. I'm now in the industrial era and I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Currently I have a tall 4 city country. My religion is possibly the most prevalent in the world (3 countries and several city states under sway). With my science city picking up steam and some successful espionage, I think I might be the tech leader now. Tradition and Piety trees are complete, and I'm working on Rationalism/Freedom now. I have most of the religious wonders, and I've picked up a couple of the renn/industrial science and cultural wonders. This is all to say that I do everything pretty well, but I'm not sure if I am good enough to win at any of them. About the only thing off the board for me is domination victory but I'm afraid if I don't start specializing now, I'll be stuck at second place to the eventual winner.

What is the best way for me to gauge which direction to go? I kinda feel science may be the path of least resistance, but I'm nervous a war would derail me there (it has been an oddly peaceful game so far.)

Thanks for any tips anyone can add.

Do you use any mods? If so, check InfoAddict to see how you are in tech ranking. Emperor really isn't that much of a jump from King so you should be able to steamroll the AI pretty handily. If you don't use Mods, use the trade routes screen to determine how you are doing in the tech ranking. If you are near the top them you shouldn't have much difficult going for Science/Diplo victory. Culture is the only one that can take a bit of work if one of the AI is really pulling in the culture. If you economy is good and you see some foes knocking on your door, just bribe them to go to war with someone, that'll usually get the dudes to go away so you can continue your focus. Sell resources, bribe AI to war, make money, roll to a science victory.

If you want some more help, why not try some of the Emperor Challenges. Though I think budweiser is going easy on everyone , they are a nice way to get answers about a situation on Emperor since everyone is playing the same map. Venice was posted two weeks ago and Shoshone this week.

You don't need Infoaddict to know how other civs are doing with stuff. Just hover the mouse on their score and a popup will appear telling what points they have in each category, "Tech known" is one of them.

Anyway if you are that good at this point I don't think you'll have many problems later but 4 cities are a bit low in number, usually at this point I expand, especially to get more late game resources. With internal trade routes and the gold gain you should have adding the increased bonuses from fertilization and such cities grow up very fast.
If there's no land or you have a problematic neighbor, then conquer. teching on artillery fast usually gives you a very huge advantage, but if the AI is strong and reaches flight you'll have to wait again until you also get bombers.

It may be that you'll find yourself slightly behind tech at this point but usually for me once I research plastics and build a research lab in every city my science skyrockets and in a few turns I'm first again.

By the way if you haven't cranked up your culture up till now, winning a pure cultural victory isn't very likely especially if you don't have the related wonders. You can still combine conquest+culture by taking out the most cultural civs, however, but that's probably not the easiest path.

The easiest path would be winning a diplomatic victory, but you need to generate more money and for that you need more cities (puppets are very good for that btw).

If you really don't want to conquer then science is your only option. It's feasible but you must quickly build those science building, population growth building and set internal routes to increase your population. Also make use of scientist specialist, make research agreements, and use your faith to buy great scientists as soon as you can.

I latched on to almost always trying SV as I work my way up the difficulty levels and try each civ. It seems to work pretty well. Diplo is too easy for me, Domination mostly too hard. Cultural I am still trying to understand, but I don't think it's really a good option for every civ. OTOH every civ can be used for SV. While pursing an SV, I have lost diplo and CV to AIs, so I like the time pressure.

As for the game you describe, being as you are leading in tech already, it looks to me like you have another easy steamroll under your belt.

SV used to be the second most easy victory in Civ V, now it's kind of the hardest one, and it just doesn't take the first spot because Domination victory is situational (small maps super easy, huge maps very hard).

For what it's worth: diplo victory is the easiest in my opinion. Also, I think some of your difficulty is coming from playing the celts. In my experience, they are one of the weaker civs. They just don't really give you an edge they way babs or Poland would. I suggest using a strong civ whenever you bump up a difficulty level. It's just my own experience talking, but I have just been awful when playing the celts.

Agreed Celts in particular might have an easier time with CV than SV, but I think CV is much less straightforward. But SV is very much in reach for any civ, which is why I like it as a benchmark default to play towards. I agree that SV is kind of the hardest ones, but that is part of the appeal to me. The strategies you develop pursing SV on Emperor will work for Immortal. It is an honest clean victory that works for peaceful games, but also compliments early or late warmongering because it feels like you earned it. I am always kind of disappointed when I get Diplo or CV while trying for domination. In contrast, the pacing for SV is very much under a players control.

Picture of my country in spoiler:



I think I will try to conquer Rome (although I need to build my military from pretty much scratch). They are the wonder-whoring civ this game so having Rome would help with any potential cultural victory. I am the science leader by a slight margin (my science score is 180 when the other top civs are in the low 170s) but that's mostly in cultural/religious techs and I'm lagging a little behind in military techs. I think I can get this game in the bag if I assimilate the Romans so I suppose it's worth the risk.

Your cap is way too small for that point in the game. That's probably the main thing hindering you, as it really stunts your science. Try to focus more on growth in the early game, use some internal trade routes, make those hills along the river farms instead.

You're might have have somewhat of a difficult time from here on out, and like others have said, your best route is probably diplomatic. You should get a caravel out to discover the remaining city-states. Then use your spies to rig elections/start coups, take the freedom tenet that increases city-state influence with trade, etc. Pass your world ideology if possible. You probably won't be able to get the first world-leader vote, but you might be able to get the second one.

Yeah, if you've finished Tradition your cap should be bigger.

Get Research Labs up ASAP and then start teching militarily.

Ok, so you're playing Celts, they're not bad for a culture game, but maybe SV is a bit easier if you don't have aesthetics and the wonders to support it. If you have PT and the left side of rationalism, get RAs and work the university slots, this victory condition is very viable for small empires and doesn't require as many wonders (part of why it's easy on deity imo).

I'm not sure how come your tourism and culture are so low, and you should be aware that it might hinder your happiness when the AI pressures you in ideology. are you working your specialist slots in the guilds?

Another thing I just noticed is that you're not farming all the tiles next to the river. If you want to grow, try that and use caravans if you have to, but make sure that Edinburgh has at least 30 pop for you to work the specialists.

I think SV might be my only option. I used battleships to take 2 cities from Caesar including Rome so now I have most of the wonders in the world. The problem is only one other civ went Freedom (an also-ran civ at that) so I have that pretty brutal ideology tourism modifier on most civs. Also civs stopped wanting open borders once we had differing ideologies. I'm definitely the science leader and I'm #2 in production. Once Rome comes out of resistance I think I can be #1. I was able to wrest control of the host seat and I was able to make my religion the world religion. I don't think I have the diplomatic power yet to make Freedom the world ideology and nominating it will probably make the whole world even more frosty with me.

Yeah I realized a little too late that my capital isn't as big as it should be. However it's still a pretty powerful city as its a Great Person and production powerhouse.

MrMitra said:

After a bit of a hiatus, I fired up CiV again with hopes of working up to Deity. I previously beat the game at King (granted I steamrolled with Portugal on an islands map) so I decided to jump in at Emperor.

I started a standard size fractal map with the Celts. I'm now in the industrial era and I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Currently I have a tall 4 city country. My religion is possibly the most prevalent in the world (3 countries and several city states under sway). With my science city picking up steam and some successful espionage, I think I might be the tech leader now. Tradition and Piety trees are complete, and I'm working on Rationalism/Freedom now. I have most of the religious wonders, and I've picked up a couple of the renn/industrial science and cultural wonders. This is all to say that I do everything pretty well, but I'm not sure if I am good enough to win at any of them. About the only thing off the board for me is domination victory but I'm afraid if I don't start specializing now, I'll be stuck at second place to the eventual winner.

What is the best way for me to gauge which direction to go? I kinda feel science may be the path of least resistance, but I'm nervous a war would derail me there (it has been an oddly peaceful game so far.)

Thanks for any tips anyone can add.

Click to expand...

Have you been saving your Great Scientists? If you have you can just tech to Plastics, then go to Railroad and after that just bulb your way into Satellites and you have a very easy SV ahead. If you haven't built Oxford yet it's even better.

Sessy said:

Ok, so you're playing Celts, they're not bad for a culture game, but maybe SV is a bit easier if you don't have aesthetics and the wonders to support it. If you have PT and the left side of rationalism, get RAs and work the university slots, this victory condition is very viable for small empires and doesn't require as many wonders (part of why it's easy on deity imo).

I'm not sure how come your tourism and culture are so low, and you should be aware that it might hinder your happiness when the AI pressures you in ideology. are you working your specialist slots in the guilds?

Another thing I just noticed is that you're not farming all the tiles next to the river. If you want to grow, try that and use caravans if you have to, but make sure that Edinburgh has at least 30 pop for you to work the specialists.

Click to expand...

I feel like SV is the easiest, maybe Diplo. The tech path is very linear and there is almost never confusion of where to go next. You'll be leading in tech most of the time so you'll have much better units than other Civs. Also you can keep bribing them to DoW each other so you'll most likely have a peaceful and fast victory.