Building up a huge empire relatively early on then catching up (Emperor)

[goraemon]

I feel as if I'm getting more comfortable on Emperor now. Latest attempt was a random civ (got Mongols), standard-size continents, epic, all default options. Fyi all my games are strictly no-reloading, ever.

As of 320 BC I rushed and took out Peter (axemen):



720 AD, took out Isabella (axemen):



Science is suffering and I'm rapidly burning through all the money I got from taking cities.

At this point Mansa Musa is having a field day taking out Montezuma on the eastern side of the continent. He's way ahead in tech, and still has a larger land mass than me. And I'm not even financial. He'll run away if left unchecked.

I must either cripple Mansa or get bigger myself. Mansa is currently #1 in military (despite my early focus on military all along) and much more advanced than me. I decide to go all the way and aim for Qin instead.

980 AD Qin's last dying breath (axemen, cats, elephants):



Near the end of my military campaign against Qin he got longbows which I didn't have. Doesn't matter, too little,too late.

Science is really plunging down and I wouldn't be able to research at all if not for the captured cities' plunder.

I shortly take out Qin, and finally my land size is #1. GNP is in dead last, and I'm quite behind in tech. I focus all my power to infrastructure from that point onward. As of 1145 AD:



18 cities strong and beginning to surge ahead.



That's all I've played thus far but I strongly suspect that the rest of the game will be academic. Mansa Musa is still up a few techs but they're stuff like theology and horseback riding, Education that I'm currently researching no one has yet. Victoria is on the other continent and I'm ahead of her in tech.

What I learned: don't be afraid to expand on higher difficulty settings, even if your science goes down to almost 0%. Generally speaking, land is power and the more you can afford to have, the better.

 

[MyOtherName]

I'm starting to feel the same way -- especially with organized!

I've been playing a bunch of Emporer pangaea starts with Julius Caesar lately. (I want to get a good conquest/domination win on my HoF, and maybe submit it... well, I just want a military win on Emporer period) I've been clear-cutting to expand as fast as possible, and it's struck me that I have no reason to stop expanding.

And the great thing about organized is that my science slider doesn't go down to zero. I do make it a priority to settle gold/gems a.s.a.p. in the initial rush, though.

Admittedly, I haven't played these starts long enough to start going on the offensive yet -- I keep making some silly error, and feel the need to restart. My latest is pretty good, but I accidentally turned into a builder since I was given room to plop down seven cities unchallenged, and had gobs of tech I needed to do something with! Of course Alex decided to come knocking shortly afterwards... and promptly fall down in the face of a praetorian stack!

 

[Lord Chambers]

I'm glad you made this thread. I've been maintaining that REX (Rapid Early eXpansion) is still the way to go, though I've never made a thread with any sort of evidence. In all my games I settle aggressively, picking city locations that genreally serve to occupy as many squares as possible rather than picking a few really prime locations. Then I work up the infrastructure and defense, and always end up equal or bigger (depends on the number of forests at my start) than any other empire, on Emperor. Land still = power, even though you can't be as single minded about it as Civ3. It's simply a matter of investing in your future. Provided you don't get struck by an early invasion before you get longbows in all your cities, it's hard to not win or almost-win after really REXing it up.

People worried about their slider and their "economy." Hah, I laugh at those people.

 

[Lord Chambers]

And yes, Organized isn't nearly as pooey as I once thought. Financial, Organized, and to a lesser degree, Creative and Expansive are quality traits for REX.

 

[goraemon]

Yeah I've heard more than once around here that Organized becomes more valuable in the upper difficulties. Prior to this game and the one before that (where I played as Inca and did the early rush as well), I was mostly a peaceful builder with occasional, focused war and depended on the financial trait for tech research. I was rarely the biggest civ esp. early on.

I decided to go with a random civ this time around because I didn't want to have all my strategies evolve around financial. Thing is in this game I never even got to use the Mongols' UU, Keshiks(sp?) or horse archers because the horses were in funky locations and so I never got to research horseback riding. Adapt and move on I guess

Another thing I find is that I used to become paranoid whenver my science slider would drop below 70%, now I hardly blink when it's down to 10% as long as I know it's part of the overall plan.

 

[joasoze]

A lot of people focus on the research percentage and they want to keep it close to 100% all the time. Being at 80-100% all the time is a sign of not playing well in my opinion. On higher difficulties things must be done as shown in this thread. I am not quite of emperor quality myself yet, but I am currently winning a game on monarch/marathon.

 

[East St Trader]

I suspect that a factor assisting you in this particular game is that your most dangerous opponents were close by. Had there been powerful opponents developing free of your attentions longbowmen would have appeared in the field against you before they did through tech trading.

I also infer that you were managing to avoid a high attrition rate as you took the cities.

I agree with your view that blitzkrieg is capable of being a viable approach. But not in all circumstances.

 

[goraemon]

East St Trader: Look at the following thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=153536&highlight=how+would+you+play+it
where I was completely isolated on a small continent at the start (also emperor, all standard settings, only difference is normal speed instead of epic). I'm highly aware that your situation largely dictates your course of action, and in that game, I never went on a single offensive war, and I never even left my small continent. I played a pure builder's game and won by SS.

It doesn't matter whether my most dangerous opponents are close by or not, and in fact I think I'm still more comfortable with winning via building up peacefully as opposed to having to go to war early. The strategy you see above is a relatively recent phenomenon for me personally, and merely something new I've realized as a developing player: overexpansion isn't a bad thing as long as you know what you're doing. This isn't an isolated example either: the game immediately previous to the above one I played as Inca and employed a similar strategy with success.

 

[sandman_civ]

My 2 cents. The AI expands at a crazy rate on higher difficulty so why not you? Not uncommon to see size 12-15 cities in deity by 1 AD. Given the AI has bonuses, but if you balance correctly, large cities become power cities midgame and beyond. I wouldn't get my science down to 0 though, there is a dangerous point you can reach where there is no recovery, or you get too far behind in science. I prefer REx the military way though, but I always reach a point in my games where I focus on strengthening economy.

PS/ One slight problem with the much vaunted "organised" in this thread, is sometimes you just can't find happiness in time to support your growth. I still prefer the financial of Qin (maintain a growth/economy smooth curve) and the bonus of a wonder every now and then.

 

[alexti2]

I have certain doubts that such strategy would work on higher difficulties (except on duel/tiny maps). OP is conquering Qin with (axemen, cats, elephants) around 1000AD. On Deity Qin would likely have riflemen in his cities by that time if HP is lucky and machine guns if not. It's also much harder to launch successful invasion early on. And to top that somebody on another continent is probably starting Apollo Program

 

[goraemon]

Who was talking about deity?

 

[atreas]

I still wait to see the Emperor game where I will find opponents at >500 AD without longbowmen, when playing with the default settings (i.e. with Tech Trading). How can it be explained?

Maybe this happens due to the small map you played (I tend to play Large map), and the less village huts (which mean less tech taken by the AI early on). My experience is that there is a "war period" with axemen/swordmen, a stop, a new period with Knights, etc. Did you happen to remember how many village huts you found around?

 

[Yzen Danek]

I can understand taking out that many opponent cities; what I can't understand is keeping them all.

At this point, you can't stop warring; you'll never catch up with Mansa's tech lead. You have a ton of underdeveloped cities, while his are all developed. Just get a barracks in each of them and keep up the zerg rush; the more of his cities you burn, the greater your unit output compared to his.

 

[alexti2]

What I learned: don't be afraid to expand on higher difficulty settings, even if your science goes down to almost 0%. Generally speaking, land is power and the more you can afford to have, the better.

That's what I was answering too. Generally your expansion needs to be very well thought out on higher difficulties. Emperor is not really a good testbed for the strategy, because you can win in a lot of ways using suboptimal strategies. The key to expansion is to make sure that every new city can become commerce-positive (total gold+science > extra maintenance) very quickly, because you can't afford falling back in tech. For example, on deity, if you fall out of AI tech "slipstream" you won't catch up, because you need to be able to trade techs to stay reasonably close, so criterion is not what is your science % rate, but how many beakers you make per turn.
Early on, you have only few choices to expand while maintaining commerce-positive balance in new cities: coastal city if you have GL, city with a good food source you can improve right away + either coast or ability to build cottages, or city that has immediate commerce (for example, gold). So your initial expansion is limited by availability of such options (even if you enough room). At some point, the best option to get commerce-positive cities
is to get them from AI. That happens when AI get their cities developed. Of course, they're becoming harder to capture. Cultural defense + longbowmen means that you need catapults (and plenty of them). So the pace of your expansion gets limited again.

So my view on that is that you need to expand carefully (which doesn't mean slow or fast). You just need to weight benefits from expansion against its cost (immediate and potential).

 

[KerThud]

Emperor is not really a good testbed for the strategy, because you can win in a lot of ways using suboptimal strategies.

Gulp! I hope I can write that (and mean it) sometime soon.

The key to expansion is to make sure that every new city can become commerce-positive (total gold+science > extra maintenance) very quickly, because you can't afford falling back in tech.

How does this relate to the question of city specialization? Specifically, do you try to make your production cities have a net postive commerce, or do you have a ratio of, say, 2 or 3 commerce-centric cities for each production city so that the sum total of commerce from the 3-4 city ensemble is greater than the maintenance, distance, defensive unit(s) and population-driven civic costs?

 

[goraemon]

I can understand taking out that many opponent cities; what I can't understand is keeping them all.

At this point, you can't stop warring; you'll never catch up with Mansa's tech lead. You have a ton of underdeveloped cities, while his are all developed.

This is completely wrong. I played a bit more today even though, as mentioned above, I strongly felt that this game was a foregone conclusion in my favor. Here is my empire, at 1380AD:



Nothing has changed citywise; still 18 of them. But science is now up to 70% with profit. Ever since taking out Qin I haven't gone to war at all, and just built up. As you can see I'm building Cavalry now and preparing to go to battle with Mansa, because....



Mansa doesn't even have Gunpowder, let alone Nationalism, let alone Military Tradition. And he's the 2nd most advanced nation so you can imagine what the others are like.

You see, Mansa's cities were far from "all developed" at the time of my decision to war against Qin (after taking out Peter/Isabella). As I said above, Mansa was busy almost taking out Monty at around the same time, which is how he was getting so big, and which is why I felt I had to do something about it.

I've already scouted some of Mansa's cities. They still have mostly longbowmen, pikemen and crossbowmen, and some knights, and not that many of them either because my production is superior to his.

I still wait to see the Emperor game where I will find opponents at >500 AD without longbowmen, when playing with the default settings (i.e. with Tech Trading). How can it be explained?

Rest assured that I played all default settings, and Mansa Musa did have longbowmen etc. at a bit over 500 AD and was growing rapidly by warring against Monty. If you remember I virtually took out Qin around 980 AD and you'll see I mentioned in the original post that Qin did have longbowmen sometime before then, but my numbers were too great for him.

As for Peter, duh. I took him out first.

As for Isabella, I took her out at 720 AD, and by that time she was too crippled to research well.

So I frankly don't see what you find unusual about the AI's research rate at this game. I'm sure Victoria (on the other continent) had longbowmen at >500AD as well.

Maybe this happens due to the small map you played (I tend to play Large map)

Standard continents, not small. This ain't exactly small pangaea we're talking about.

Generally your expansion needs to be very well thought out on higher difficulties. Emperor is not really a good testbed for the strategy, because you can win in a lot of ways using suboptimal strategies.

Well I've heard of people who correctly point out that you can win with lots of "suboptimal strategies" on levels like Noble or Prince, but what you said there is a first for Emperor as far as I can remember. Maybe this is because you keep bringing up deity, for the 2nd time in this thread:

For example, on deity, if you fall out of AI tech "slipstream" you won't catch up, because you need to be able to trade techs to stay reasonably close, so criterion is not what is your science % rate, but how many beakers you make per turn.

I'm certain there are new rules you need to learn and unlearn to consistently win at standard continents deity with all standard settings, and I don't know whether you're one of these people who do consistently win at these settings, but if you are, please make another thread discussing these strategies. This thread wasn't meant for deity and I don't plan to play that level for some time if ever.

So my view on that is that you need to expand carefully (which doesn't mean slow or fast). You just need to weight benefits from expansion against its cost (immediate and potential).

Well, by the same token, you should war carefully, trade carefully, build up carefully, etc. That doesn't really mean anything useful though. It goes without saying that everything you do in the game should entail sufficient level of care. My take is simply that rapid expansion is still a very viable strategy for at least emperor, especially if you can do it through capturing somewhat developed enemy cities (preferably with good resources), and that as long as you plan things out well, there is little cause to worry about your science slider plummeting initially.

 

[East St Trader]

Yes, learning that we need to be careful at Civ is perhaps not too shattering a revelation.

I am only a couple of weeks in to Civ IV and your thread caught my eye because the first thing you notice in the change from the earlier games is how stifling rapid expansion is. But the terrain and the various characteristics of the factions provide quite a long early window of opportunity for aggression - whether by way of wars of conquest or capturing workers or whatever.

But choosing to take advantage of that early window has long term diplomatic consequences. If my experience so far is anything to go by it, cuts you off from tech trading and from spreading any religion/s you found via open borders. And pretty well guarantees regular and inconvenient invasions from neighbours.

I have got as far as wondering whether it is possible to contain some of the unwanted effects by picking on one neighbour at a time but with the intent of eliminating that one before turning to the next. In the earlier games crippling all your immediate neighbours by short term early aggression was a perfectly feasible option but the developers have done extremely well at making it less of an easy route forward in Civ IV.

I can understand the comment that you are commited to continue your aggression. In this game you may have done so well that you will not lose out terminally in the tech race. But, so far, in my own experiments with early aggression I have had no trouble expanding rapidly but when I have paused to take breath and to begin sorting out my economy I have found that the stagnation is too deep rooted and my neighbours have been able to recover from a base of just a couple of cities. And then units start crossing my borders with which I just can't cope.

What your game suggests to me - and thanks for the care you have taken to set the evidence out so well - is that there are conditions in which the problems of rapid early expansion can be overcome. But, as some of the responses say, it will take speed. You have got to slow down the overall A1 tech advance - or at least the overall advance of all those in early contact with each other - not just the advance of one or two.

I look forward avidly to getting to grips with all this.

 

[goraemon]

What your game suggests to me - and thanks for the care you have taken to set the evidence out so well - is that there are conditions in which the problems of rapid early expansion can be overcome. But, as some of the responses say, it will take speed. You have got to slow down the overall A1 tech advance - or at least the overall advance of all those in early contact with each other - not just the advance of one or two.

I look forward avidly to getting to grips with all this.

Appreciate your appreciation. I used this game to illustrate the point although there have been other games where I performed similarly. For example I played as Inca in the game previous to this one, expanded till I was #1 in land size, then built up to eventually win by domination. The reasons I didn't use that game are a few:

-Inca is financial, and I often depend on the financial trait to surge ahead in tech. I wanted to do it this time without financial.

-I had deliberately chosen Inca. This time I wanted the challenge of choosing a random civ and got Mongol/Genghis (agg, exp) who I had never chosen on my own before.

-Inca's starting position was a good deal better than my start in this game - it had 2 seafood resources and 2 gold mines. So if I posted that Incan game cynical people would say "well you had a lucky start so it doesn't count blah blah blah."

Thus far the games I play tend to branch out in one of two ways: either I can afford to expand peacefully at my own pace and win via trading and eventual tech edge, or I cannot and must bring it to the AI to have a prayer. In this game, I suspect that had I stopped after taking out Isabella, I would have pretty much lost to Mansa, for at that point I was still #2 or #3 in land size, inferior in population, maybe #1 or a close #2 in production, way behind in tech and unable to research, losing money by the boatload, and having little to no infrastructure in place. I basically had NO advantage and NO POTENTIAL for advantage over Mansa at that point, and Qin (if left alone) wouldn't exactly be a piece of cake either, not to mention Victoria who had her whole own continent to work with.

At least after taking out Qin, I had something to work with - I had the most land, dominant production, most resources, and a rising population. Even though I was rock bottom in tech (well...ok, better than Monty because he was down to 1 city thanks to Mansa), I finally had potential. Then it was just a matter of managing my time and infrastructure well to catch up quickly. I started out on 10% science after Qin was gone. Courthouses and other financial buildings, an army of workers chopping, irrigating, pasturing, plantationing and cottaging. GNP begins to skyrocket. Couple of my best production cities even managed to build a couple wonders in Colossus and Hanging Gardens (one of them was rushed via Great Engineer). I eventually go for techs that other AI don't have and pull off good trades (Victoria was pleasant obviously because she had her own continent, and I kept Mansa pleasant too).

Having played emperor games through both peaceful and warlike means, I thus far find that you need to establish some sort of advantage or potential for advantage over all of the AI relatively early on to pull out a win. I've done it with 6 cities on a small continent I had to myself by focusing on almost all infrastructure and commerce, never going on an offensive war and never leaving that continent while the other AI's were busy fighting amongst themselves, some of which wars were incited by my...gentle persuasion (at the end I was #6 in land size but #1 in population).

Small, perfectionist empires can work as well as large, dominating empires. It's just a matter of how you adapt to your circumstances and how you play the hand you're dealt.

 

[alexti2]

How does this relate to the question of city specialization? Specifically, do you try to make your production cities have a net postive commerce, or do you have a ratio of, say, 2 or 3 commerce-centric cities for each production city so that the sum total of commerce from the 3-4 city ensemble is greater than the maintenance, distance, defensive unit(s) and population-driven civic costs?

City-specialization comes in a bit later. For example, when you put your second city your total commerce output might be 10. Your new city will give you 1 commerce automatically, but will cost more to maintain. And getting the total output from 10 to 7 or 8 is pretty big hit, which will slow down your research and critically, the time when you get techs for further growth. So, for example, coastal city with fish is a good proposition if you can get fishing boat quick. You will get 3 commerce and fast population growth which you can put to work the coast, thus quickly making the new city worthwhile. At this point I'm not specializing the city yet, that's just a matter of expanding without crippling research at the critical phase. This new city may very well be designated as a production city. But the switch will happen when I get other commercial centres up and running and getting extra 2-4 commerce is not an issue. That's the approach to the initial expansion.

Later in the game, when you capture far away AI cities, maintenance cost are pretty high, but after a while pretty much any decent city is going to become an asset. So it's a matter of making sure you don't take too big hit before it does. For example, if I need 10 turns to research some tech capturing couple of cities may make it into 12 turns which may mean that some other AI will research that tech before and I won't be able to trade it. So when taking such city I may consider switching everybody there on commerce (at least temporarily) and reprofile the city later. Planning on when/whether to rush Forbidden Palace is also important. In some cases it might be better to get it first and then capture more cities (even if you could capture those cities earlier). In fact it's a bit harder to calculate as you need to take into account "resistance time".

But at all stages the idea is the same: you need to maintain certain research rate that allows you to stay with AI. When you add cities to your empire you need to make sure that it won't decrease this rate (it may for a few turns, but you still don't want to arrive to your next research goalpost later because of that).

So answering your question more directly, I'd require some group of cities to be commerce-positive, it doesn't need to be individual for each city, except at the very beginning.

 

[alexti2]

I'm certain there are new rules you need to learn and unlearn to consistently win at standard continents deity with all standard settings, and I don't know whether you're one of these people who do consistently win at these settings

Not me, standard continents on deity seems to be the hardest setup to win. The key factor of difficulty is standard speed. If you try your strategy on Emperor with standard speed you'll have much harder time too (epic makes the game much easier by giving HP more time for war which is AI's weakest point).

And considerations that make you play better on Deity will improve your Emperor game as well. Difficulty somewhat vary depending on the draw of the random start and while typically you can ignore finer points and do just fine, from sme unlucky emperor starts you may actually need to implement some well thought strategy (similar to higher difficulty levels) to win.