Any Emperors out there!!

[Stefan]

I played four games on emperor and I always get crushed at some future point in time. The first time I started in europe with the GReeks. Everything was going pretty good. I had all Europe and all it's resources only for me. I just managed to battle coruption when some chinnes and roman settlers came and build cities on my borders. Nothing bad I said. I tried some negotions. I already had the Collosos and Oracle. But even on my first meeting they were anoyyed. Soon after that the roman wanted my nearest city as a gift. F*k you I said and In the next 15 turns every civilization except the indians declared war on me. There were embargos, alliences all against me and I had 6 civilizations trying to kill me. TRoops were pouring from every direction till I had all my land pillaged because they were so many I couldn't get even a single unit out of the cities without attacking someone and although I had hoplites and swordmen and they were attacking only with different kind horsemen (no knights or anything bigger) and some special units. Well I was starved to death and I lost.
The second time I was on a huge map and I ended in Australia. Corruption is a huge problem on huge maps when I had all Australia I had 50% corruption and only the forrbiden palace saved me. Well with no other civs to trade in the beggining with you can gess what happened. The colonizators came, saw and concured.
The tird time I ended in the middle of the huge egyptian empire. Well having surrounded me from everywhere they afcourse made demands I coudn't fulfill and what I get killed again.
Whats wrong with civilizations on emperor. All they want is to kill. They just treat you as a piggy bank that they can drain everytime they want even if you have stronger troops. I never even had a deasent peace treaty except with civs on other continents. Are there any emerors who managed to survive? How did you do that?

 

[eyrei]

I have won my last two games on Monarch pretty handily, so I will probably move to Emperor soon. The diplomatic problems you are experiencing sound annoying, but I am sure there are ways around them. I have found that giving small gifts to civs that are not happy with you often heads off their ultimatums, even if it doesn't improve your relations. Eventually, you will discover Nationalism. Maybe MPP's are a necessity on higher levels to keep the entire world from declaring war on you. I am sure they cost a pretty penny though.

 

[Stradius]

Ive won twice on emperor (moving to diety now but thats a different story heh.. can you say AI cheating?). The best way ive found to do it is be a civ that has a fast, early unit (jaguar warriors/impis/war chariots). In each game i was able to focus on military strength early on and capture all of my immediate neighbors cities, giving me an edge in territory, military, resources. EXPAND LIKE A MADMAN. You need at least 30 cities to survive (one game, a civ with about 8 cities managed to keep up in tech with me compared to my 40 cities). Always try to cause havoc with your the civ rivaling you the most so you always are on top. (germany was about my equal, so i paid off the whole world to declare war on them). If you can survive this far and get a decent arsenal of ICBMs, do what you like (if someone messes with you nuke their capital hehe).

It takes some luck and a few tries to beat the AI (which has a huge advantage), but its doable. I dont think it is possible to win on emporer/diety peacefully.

 

[FullofHoles]

Survival, I can explain. Winning on Emperor is not something that I have any experience with, but....

One of my key objectives is to control the entirety of the island or continent that I am on. The AI does not handle ships very well and, between that and the fact that anyone invading a foreign continent can't be bringing replacements in quickly, defense of an island is much easier than defending against a land-based invader. When I own my own continent or island, I leave NO defenders in any of my cities. I keep OFFENSIVE forces located in positions where they are flexible enough to rush to attack any invading force. I do not bother with DEFENSIVE forces much at all so far as defending my island goes. VERY IMPORTANT CAVEAT: ONCE THE ENEMY REACHES THE ABILITY TO MAKE MARINES, IT IS NECESSARY TO HAVE DEFENSIVE FORCES IN YOUR CITIES BECAUSE MARINES CAN CAPTURE CITIES FROM SHIPS. No other piece can move into an undefended city from the ocean.

MPPs, Mutual Protection Pacts, are very useful once the world reaches the industrial age. What is more important, in my opinion, is bribing other countries to attack anyone who is attacking you. This makes it MUCH easier to convince the original enemy to go to peace with you.

The other way to make an enemy accept a peace is to capture one of their cities and immediately ask for peace. (This only works if the war has been going on for a while.)

The most important thing, in my opinion, is the placement of the Forbidden Palace. I nearly always use my first Great Leader to build the Forbidden Palace. (Great Leaders are pretty rare, in my experience, on Emperor level. I fight virtually all the time and I have yet to exceed three GLs in one game.) I do not even START the Forbidden Palace until I have a GL (there being no point in trying to build a 300-turn project and there being equally no reason to use a GL to complete a project that is already considerably under way.)