Stuck at emperor

Update...

I have won once and yes, Boomsie, with the Romans... but it was an economic victory. Now I want to win with another civ, preferably a cultural victory, but dang, it's tough! I almost won a tech victory last night but all the other civs ganged up on me and I couldn't finish my ship. Oh so close!

When I launch my spaceship, I tend to go overboard with defense and rush an SDI defense and send all my defensive units to my capital so I can make sure I win, and I make all my offense units take over enemy cities only to have them get taken back a turn later >.<

Also, if you can't get a cultural victory with the Romans, you're doing soemthing wrong. They were pretty much made for that.

half price roads so your defense can move along nicely, so you lose no cities that are producing culture, plus the extra gold from the roads being at half price let you rush the half cost wonders, which also come at half the rush price. The Republic at the beginning gives you the chance to expand rapidly SO DO IT. Lots of cities= Lots of culture

Then the plus 1 population for new cities lets those cities work with multiple squares at the start, letting you rush in temples (more squares could mean more production, more production lets you rush for less)

There's must be something you're doing wrong. Remember, stonehenge is still useful, even if it gets taken out early, it'll still count for the cultural victory.
 
I realize after reading so many posts that I can be a LOT better than I am. Having said that, I play Emperor and typically win 95% of my games by means of domination, with the occasional culture win. I never do any city management (I know the experts will cringe) and I never super-think what I am building, for the most part. I play the game basically the same way each time I play.

I have found in Civ Rev that culture is king. If you have a ton of culture it will help you expand easier and create problems for your neighbors. And, along the way you will continue to flip your neighbors' cities. If you ignore culture, then the same will happen to you, especially with civs that are culture focused or can mass produce great people. This is why I try to rush to get Monarchy and let my culture expand from my core - the capital. I use every great builder to make wonders. Put the culture wonders in your capital. Monarchy is extra important in a game where you are immediately surrounded in all directions by your enemies, and the continent is small. Everyone is fighting for land.

When I start, I usually build 2 warriors, 3 if the map shows a lot to discover. Uncovering the map is super important. It's like a chess game. Once you can see where you are, where your enemies are, which direction you need to expand, and what real estate they have to work with, then you can make much better decisions about what you should be doing and how you can be bottling them up. Heal your warriors in between attacks on barbarians. Losing one of the early "explorer" warriors is silly. Don't take any risks.

My basic strategy, which seems to work all the time, is defense first, culture second, then science and so on. There are 4 defense groups - archers, pikemen, riflemen, infantry - each one is key so keep them in mind at all times (though I usually skip from archers to riflemen). Try not to put yourself in a position where you leave your cities too undefended. Build bronze working first for archers.

You'll find that on the higher levels like Emperor, the AI has a substantial boner for war. That's both good and bad. It's bad because it is annoying and you just need to keep a close eye on not getting overrun. It's good because they immediately send a continuous flow of junk armies at you which are not only easy to defend, but allow your units to jack up on bonuses. I've had archers fully loaded with engineer, loyalty, leadership, etc. last deep into the game thanks to the never-ending flow of legion armies from my neighbors. I've even had pikemen fully ramped and taking on tanks. Reminds me of the movie 300!

So get yourself defended well first and foremost (no cities, no victories). I'll usually build 1 archer army in each city. You won't even need the barracks right away. Build a temple before a barracks to get the culture. I usually build temple then library then the barracks then load up another army for 2 total. If you have a key city blocking your enemy and it continuously gets attacked, then build 2 armies immediately. After you build a barracks, build another army in your cities, and a 3rd in the "danger" city. Don't build something in it if you can't defend it against any type of attack first.

From there rush to get riflemen. As soon as you get riflemen, immediately switch any current building to riflemen and build riflemen armies. I won't even wait for whatever I am building to be finished. I can come back to building that. I would rather be defended. So if you are half way through building something large, then switch it and get 2 to 3 riflemen immediately with the production build up, then go back to building whatever you wanted to build. Defense first!

I build my first city, wait to get the bonus settler and build my 2nd city. When time is right I make a 3rd city, but often stop there. If the continent is massive, I'll go ahead and build one or two more if I see key locations I should take. If you are keeping a close eye on culture and defense, just be patient. With 3 cities, before long, your culture will spread like the plague and you will start converting your neighbors. Then voila, 4th city, 5th city and so on.

After you get riflemen, rush for combustion to get tanks. Just be patient and keep yourself defended till then and let your defense units bonus up like crazy and your culture grow as your city populations grow too. The amount of legion armies they send at you is a joke. And I almost NEVER build offensive units unless I absolutely must. (more expert cringing).

Once you get combustion/tanks, switch all your cities to tank production and switch them all to gold, not science. Whamo, you are America during WWII mass-producing and buying tanks on every round. You should be ahead of or tied with the AIs on tech, so their main defense will be riflemen.

Build an arsenal of tank armies and start stacking them up. Don't start attacking with one lone tank army. If you are lucky they will still have a bunch of junk armies around your cities - legions, horsemen, catapults, knights, etc. Do a little spring cleaning first by getting those lame units off your land and get tank bonuses easily. Stack about 4 tank armies. Then, from there, one by one, start taking over your neighbors' cities one at a time.

When you take the first AI city, chill out and produce riflemen and buy them each round until you have 1 riflemen army. Then set it to build walls and roll out to the next city. As you move one by one, city to city, your tanks will also start earning bonuses. A 4 to 5 stack of tank armies with infiltration and blitz are virtually unstoppable, even against infantry defenses. You will also be getting money from city take overs which goes back into more tank production.

When you feel you've done a good amount of domination and have a good stack that should do the job, change all your cities back to science. Then rush mass production for infantry. Once you get that, switch all your cities to infantry and build one infantry army in each city. Now you are a wall of defense and you're rolling on everyone with your tanks.

After Infantry I switch about half my cities back to gold and just load up buildings in each city so they are flourishing like weeds in all categories. There should come a point where you have to think about whether or not to carry along with a domination victory, or if you can switch focus to one of the other victories depending on what your civ is doing.

So there you have it, the lazy but often efficient way to do it. I confess that I have tried deity about 3 times and haven't won yet. Maybe I'll start to focus a bit more on city management and being smarter in general. But I have fun on Emperor and almost never lose.

Oh, last warning. Keep an eye on any civ you haven't made contact with. I've had a couple games where I was super lazy. I conquered an entire landscape, but France had like two cities somewhere on the map that I never got to. Paris was a monster. They sat there, alone, uncontested and built a spaceship for the win. I was like, "What?!"

Happy Hunting. :goodjob:
 
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