Best Traits for Monarch and Beyond...

[DarkSchneider]

After cleaning up my last game, with a 34k score on a Monarch, Standard sized map, I've decided to set my sights on Emporer level difficulty. Just curious, but what do you think the best traits are for winning at the Emporer level? My last run was with Financial and Industrious, but I'm not 100% sure that I want to keep Industrious.

I think I need to keep Financial to have any chance at keeping up technologically. The last game I got a sweet starting spot for financial, next to Marble, Copper and a freshwater lake, but I don't think I should count on this. I was thinking maybe Expansionist, since I know the auto-bonus for health goes down one from Monarch to Emporer. Also, the regretful rapid deforestation seems to be a permanent part of my strategy now, so I can't rely on forests for a health bonus either.

Any thoughts?

 

[Toastedzergling]

when the difficulty level rises, expansive becomes better and better and industrious becomes worse and worse, financial is still the best IMO, aggressive is also useful, you need war to expand and slow down AI a bit

 

[Shillen]

I'm firmly in the financial is overpowered camp now after playing a couple games with them. It's really ridiculous. Playing with a non-financial civ is like playing at one difficulty level higher. As for the accompanying trait I really like philosophical for the extra great leaders. Using great leaders to discover techs can leverage some really nice trades with the AI's to keep you caught up in tech. Not to mention academies and great merchants when you need some gold.

 

[anton_z1]

Industrious i spretty uselful if you can get stone or marble. In this case you can get almost all the wonders. In other cases get aggressive. Nothing is better then all the free wonders (acaemies and such) you can grab from ennemies .
Financial is a must. A good strat with financial and industrious is to 1) Get lots of costal cities, 2) Get great lighthouse and Colossus 3) get some fish ressources. For the rest, just see gold frlowing .

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I'd agree that financial is the slightest bit overpowered in that playing without it is like a half a step difficulty down.

Other than that, though... aggressive civs have a better shot at an early rush, which become the only equalizer against an AI with huge production bonuses. Military is still the one thing the player can do better at any level, so long as they haven't fallen behind in the tech tree. Still, you can get by without Combat 1.

 

[petey]

Financial is hands-down the best - there's really no comparison. Other than that, I'd suggest either Expansive or Aggressive, depending on whether or not you want to use a builder or combat strategy.

 

[Rhymes]

Expansinonnist here too.

Industrious is kinda usefull if you can manage to build the pyramids and hanging gardens.

Hanging gardens almost makes it all up for not being expansionnist!

 

[mrjepson]

Expansionist is very nice, otherwise jungles/floodplains really limit your cities in the begining when you have yet to connect to lots of resourses or build health buildings.

 

[DarkSchneider]

Also... do you have to pick a Civilization with Mysticism as a starting tech. If not, what do you do for religion? I don't think getting one of the two starting religions will be an option otherwise. Maybe using the Oracle tech for Theology or Code of Laws?

 

[Shillen]

Expansionist is very nice, otherwise jungles/floodplains really limit your cities in the begining when you have yet to connect to lots of resourses or build health buildings.

About expansionist I also think a lot of people undervalue it. They say things like "health isn't what limits my cities' growth, happiness is'. Well expansionist can also be a +2 happy boost instead of +2 health. What you need to do is trade two of your health resources (that you don't need since you're expansionist) for 2 extra happy resources. The AI is more than willing to trade a happy resource for a health resource. I actually find that throughout the game BOTH happy and health limit my growth. This is because I make resource trades that make my happy and health equal to each other. This maximizes my city size. There's no reason to be at 12 happy in your cities if you only have 8 health, or vice versa.

 

[mharmless]

A size 12 city at 8 health and 12 happy could have 12 productive workers. Granted you have to come up with four extra food, but that realy isn't that hard. Growth will slow till you run out of bonus food, but 8/12 isn't a bad arrangment.

The same size 12 city at 10/10 wastes the same ammount of food, but it is being spent feeding useless louts who do no work. Only 10 squares are being worked, which of course makes it even harder to come up with that extra four food somewhere.

Black smoke is a problem to be corrected. Green smoke is a sign of a large productive city. Pollute on, my children!

 

[Astax]

Hmmm so happiness over healthiness. However I personally will try expensive and build cities on rivers and I mean like all of em :/

Also I think focousing on happiness maybe spiritual would be very good for that strategy then, save you lot of hammers. Thou I dunno if you will get mroe than one religion from the start. I got 4 religions on Monarch so I was busy putting up lot of temples and spreading religion. My happiness went crazy, like 26 happy faces in my capital! So I think I over did it. I ended up building 3 tempels and one state religious building :/ Plus I had gold with forge, and marketplace with silk and fur and Heridetary rule with 5 defensive units. I think key to sucess will be focous as I move to Empror. I shouldnt all 3, use two happiness focous lines. Altough the religion and military is the only one you can depend on, the rest are resource dependant.

 

[Shillen]

Most of the time I'd rather have a size 8 city that isn't working all high food tiles at the cost of production/commerce. There is always the rare case where the city has extreme amounts of food and can continue to work its best tiles even while unhealthy, but I don't think it's that common of an occurrence. Especially since if I have a city like that I tend to turn it into a GP city anyway. Which means I only work the food tiles. But letting it get unhealthy means I lose half a specialist for each unhealthiness.

 

[Gufnork]

I prefer to conquer my neighbours holy city over founding my own, but I always get a religion if I start with Mysticism (just in case). Getting a religion is vital, but discovering it yourself is not. As long as one of your neighbours has one you'll get it eventually.

Financial/personal choice. Philosophical, Aggressive, Expansionist and Spiritual are your options. Industrial is rather weak and Organized plain sucks.

 

[Astax]

Also... do you have to pick a Civilization with Mysticism as a starting tech. If not, what do you do for religion? I don't think getting one of the two starting religions will be an option otherwise. Maybe using the Oracle tech for Theology or Code of Laws?

yes Theology is the one you want. Code of Laws is nice but its easier to research it. Theology will give you Theocracy for when you go to war. Its one of the points of my War-tech triangle: Theology, Feudalism, Construction.

If you miss the oracle, stonehange and use your GP to research Theology. Some might argue its a waste, I beg to differ! When you fall behind in tech/culture due to lack of religion you need to catch up with quantum leaps!

 

[Verax]

I'm also a big fan of financial. I'm also a warmonger / rusher. So I really like aggressive as well. That said, right now my pet civ is Inca. The Quechua rush is fearsome. I should add I play on Emperor right now, on Tiny maps, usually playing 2v2v2v2. (me and my partner, and 6 comps)

Verax

 

[Bezhukov]

I'll have to dissent and say that spiritual is very much worth having (second only to financial for me). The savings in anarchies add up to about a Golden Age and a half when all is said and done, and that's not even considering the value of the added flexibility.

The cathedral-spam made possible by the cheap temples is also not to be underestimated. All your tile are belong to us!

 

[Astax]

I'm also a big fan of financial. I'm also a warmonger / rusher. So I really like aggressive as well. That said, right now my pet civ is Inca. The Quechua rush is fearsome. I should add I play on Emperor right now, on Tiny maps, usually playing 2v2v2v2. (me and my partner, and 6 comps)

Verax

Verax just addmitt you cheese master that you trade tech with the AI.

 

[Verax]

Verax just addmitt you cheese master that you trade tech with the AI.

eh?

We actually turn the tech trading option off. I never liked how by the end game, all the civs ended up with the same homogenized muddle. I like the decisions that both I, and the computer make on the tech tree to actually mean something.

Verax

 

[Ungar]

I'm working on Diety right now and it's ugly.

Worker tree chop just won't work. By the time you even get the first settler out you've got angry hordes of barbarian archers on your doorstep.

I've been working on a Quecha rush and it is still dicey..

All units start with Combat I with Aggression. Quecha are good against archers whether they are AI or Barbarians. Unfortunately they still really are good enough to take out cities with high cultural defenses. You need Axemen if a city has expanded beyond it's two square cross. It helps to pillage copper mines to prevent the AI from producing units which can counter Axemen.

Build barricks first. Send your solo Quecha out and steal the AI's workers. Save 15 turns right there to start.

My Quecha was able to take one city solo within the first 10 rounds of the game. This is much faster than waiting 15 turns for a worker then chopping trees for a settler.

Promoted Quecha to City I after killing the first archer in a city.
Moved him out one square and healed him one round before moving back in.
Killed second archers in City. Got another promotion and put it into City II.
Killed third archer next round and took city over.

I got two cities and two workers after 10 rounds.

The key here is that promotions heal you unit like 50% which allows low exp single units to do a lot of damage to cities.

If you have one unit which is a medic you can keep a good stack of units massed in a single forest square next to a city and just wear it down via attrition.

The AI opponents are just nuts on Deity still.

So far I've wiped out one AI and got a second AI down to three cities.

In the meantime I've..

1. Captured two cities from the first AI I wiped out.
2. Captured three barbarian cities and made them my own. Barbarians spawn like crazy.
3. Only built two settlers so technically I've only founded three cities.
4. Captured five cities from the second AI. Two of them are holy cities. That AI founded Buddasim and Judasim.

At this point in time I've only researched WHEEL, MINING, BRONZEWORKING, PRIESTHOOD, MEDITATION and WRITING. I got no funds to research anything else. Trying to get MATHEMATICS and CURRENCY cause my empire is running a huge deficit. -17 gold per turn at ZERO percent in science.

Only thing that is keeping me going are the 12 workers I captured who are building mines and then razing them afterwards for gold.

Each city I capture give me 150 to 250 gold as well.

Sad thing is that even though I got the second AI down to three cities, every time I take one over he manages to get a settler out and start a new one. It's almost a stalemate even though my cities outnumber him thirteen to three cause of his crazy production speed.

I'm way behind in tech. I keep getting message that other civs are building wonders left and right and even theology has been discovered. At least I own two holy cities so I got religion covered.

Really need get currency so I can start building markets and wealth cause I can't spare anything for science right now.

So in conclusion.

Industrial is useless. Haven't even had a chance to start building wonders and I don't have the tech to build new ones since other AIs are way ahead of me.

Aggressive is working well. Starting out with COMBAT I helps tons. This sounds scary, but I got one Axeman who has Combat I, II, III, IV, City I, II, III and Medic I from running around just owning archers trying to pillage my farms. You can upgrade Quecha to Axeman if find and control some copper and still keep their old promotions. There's a ton of fighting going on Aggressive is a must.

Financial isn't working out this early in the game since tiles aren't developed enough to generate that extra gold per square.

Organized would help a ton here. Reducing my per turn maintenance would really solve my money issues. If I could I would stop expanding and grow my civ to generate more cash, but I got the AI on the run and have to finish him off. Plus his cities give a ton of gold when I take them over.

I still think I'm gonna lose once I find the other AI Civs.. They appear to be way ahead in the tech race even though I think we're close on land control. They probably won't be friendly either since I control two seperate religions now which puts stress on relations.

Oh yeah.. Regular settings on a huge map for this one..