For the last few months I have been playing Huge maps with low sea level on marathon speed. I can usually win 80% of my games on Emperor level on a standard size map. I can win about the same amount on Monarch/Huge. But to be honest I am winning maybe 10% of my Emp/Huge games. Which means I am at right about the proper difficulty. Eleven civs is the default number on a huge map so that is a 9% chance for each civ. I do not want to be average. I must kill kill kill....sorry I digress. I am looking for advice on beating Emp on marathon huge. Preferably advice that does not rely on a certain leaders traits or a certain civs UU/UB. IE: Play Rome and kill everything.
Differences in game play due to speed and size. This is NOT an attempt to convince people that marathon/huge is more difficult. But rather some of the issues i have been trying to deal with.
1. Getting a military tech advantage lasts longer on marathon. On a standard map you could leverage this into wiping out an entire Civ...or Two. On Huge maps the time needed to conquer a civ or atleast cripple it is much longer. It also requires a LOT more troops which eats into your window of opportunity.
Being on the short end of a military tech can be lethal as well. You can lose a lot of cities while you tech Engineering to deal with enemy knights.
2. Barbarians. Huge marathon is a nightmare of barbarians. They spawn like raging barbs on standard maps. There is too much land to fogbust and you spend a pile of hammers replacing barbkillers. Right around 2000B.C. the waves begin. And they just keep coming. I beeline BW to prechop TGW while researching Masonry. The Great Wall costs 450
on marathon. Axemen cost 70 You will lose more than 6 axemen fighting barbs. A sound hammer investment.
3. Axe rushing, chariot rushing etc etc etc is just not feasable the majority of the time. The enemy is just too far away to stage a war that early. Even keeping just the capital can crush your economy.
4. There is so much land that you cannot REX until your bump borders with someone. Your economy tanks to the point you can barely afford one unit in each city @ 0%. This problem will be alleviated when your neighbor takes those costly cities away from you.
On Emp the AI can afford more cities than the human in the first land grabbing phase. It recovers faster and then grabs more land in the 2nd phase. This leads to a larger disparity in the number of cities than you would have on a smaller map where the lack of land stops the AI from city spamming. The more cities the AI has @ emp (and higher) the more the AI research and production bonuses benefit them.
5. Diplomacy is a nightmare. On a standard size continents map you will usually have 3 neighbors. Maybe 1 maybe 4 but the average will be three. Keeping 2 happy and killing the third gives you 1/2 the continent which eventually means with twice the cities the entire landmass is yours. Huge maps start with 10 AI. So that means 5 neighbors on average. 5 times the war checks.About twice the join our war/stop trading/gimme something for free requests. Actually triple that again due to the number of turns between checks/requests not scaling with speed. Also the more civs the more "worst enemies" you have to be aware of when making deals.
6. Resources seem to be more spread out. I am not sure but I think the same number appear but spread across more tiles. many cities may only have one food source. Some may not have any. Metal or horses are more commonly 3-4 cities away rather than close enough for a well placed 2nd city.
7. Due to the increased cost of city/civic maintenence and beakers on huge maps. A single super science city has less of an impact on your overall beaker needs.
And with an SE a cottaged Bureaucracy capital will not produce enough gold to pay the bills. Even under State Property with a courthouse each city cost 3gpt just from number of cities. You are going to have a LOT of cities.
A single super military production city will not be able produce enough troops for the job, so you get better return by spreading out your settled GG's to multiple production cities than by lumping them in one city for uber units.
All this must be taken into account when determining what role each city will play. If you start in a production heavy area you may be forced to cottage cities that you normally wouldn't. The opposite can be true with workshopping grasslands with just guilds or Caste. Not the best use but if you are hammer poor you need them from somewhere.
8. On a standard map, AI civs usually have 7-8 decent cities. A quick strike at the start of a war can take 4 or 5 thus crippling their ability to produce enough troops to mount a counter offensive. On a huge map 15-20 cities is the norm. Taking 4-5 hurts the AI but with the bonuses from Emp, 10-15 decent size cities is more than enough to crank out some serious troops. Taking into account the diplomatic situation created by more civs per landmass, the odds of them bribing another AI into the war are much greater.
9. With more AI the chances of bulbing/researching a monopoly tech are much slimmer. Though if you do manage it, you have more AI to trade it to so you may get a better return.
10. I play with tech brokering off. This slightly slows the AI tech speed but it also makes abusing it impossible for the human player. The main reason I do this is because it means I can not trade techs I steal. Since i always build the Great wall because I hate the freaking barbs (translation: they kick my but on marathon/huge) I frequently get an early Great Spy. Early infiltration is overpowered enough as it is without giving it more leverage.
11. micromanagement is not as important. Shaving a single turn off a building/tech/unit is a much smaller percentage of the unit/tech/building's cost.
12. Whipping units is not as efficient on marathon because whip anger triples to 30 turns while unit cost only doubles. Early game units are usually a 1pop whip. Even in HR you will need to keep the unit in the city for 30 turns to combat the whip anger.
Once again I ask that advice not be based on traits, map types, UB's or UU's. While I fully understand that leveraging a leader's traits plays a large part in being successful, I am looking for more general advice that can be applied to any leader or civ.
Differences in game play due to speed and size. This is NOT an attempt to convince people that marathon/huge is more difficult. But rather some of the issues i have been trying to deal with.
1. Getting a military tech advantage lasts longer on marathon. On a standard map you could leverage this into wiping out an entire Civ...or Two. On Huge maps the time needed to conquer a civ or atleast cripple it is much longer. It also requires a LOT more troops which eats into your window of opportunity.
Being on the short end of a military tech can be lethal as well. You can lose a lot of cities while you tech Engineering to deal with enemy knights.
2. Barbarians. Huge marathon is a nightmare of barbarians. They spawn like raging barbs on standard maps. There is too much land to fogbust and you spend a pile of hammers replacing barbkillers. Right around 2000B.C. the waves begin. And they just keep coming. I beeline BW to prechop TGW while researching Masonry. The Great Wall costs 450
on marathon. Axemen cost 70 You will lose more than 6 axemen fighting barbs. A sound hammer investment. 3. Axe rushing, chariot rushing etc etc etc is just not feasable the majority of the time. The enemy is just too far away to stage a war that early. Even keeping just the capital can crush your economy.
4. There is so much land that you cannot REX until your bump borders with someone. Your economy tanks to the point you can barely afford one unit in each city @ 0%. This problem will be alleviated when your neighbor takes those costly cities away from you.
On Emp the AI can afford more cities than the human in the first land grabbing phase. It recovers faster and then grabs more land in the 2nd phase. This leads to a larger disparity in the number of cities than you would have on a smaller map where the lack of land stops the AI from city spamming. The more cities the AI has @ emp (and higher) the more the AI research and production bonuses benefit them.
5. Diplomacy is a nightmare. On a standard size continents map you will usually have 3 neighbors. Maybe 1 maybe 4 but the average will be three. Keeping 2 happy and killing the third gives you 1/2 the continent which eventually means with twice the cities the entire landmass is yours. Huge maps start with 10 AI. So that means 5 neighbors on average. 5 times the war checks.About twice the join our war/stop trading/gimme something for free requests. Actually triple that again due to the number of turns between checks/requests not scaling with speed. Also the more civs the more "worst enemies" you have to be aware of when making deals.
6. Resources seem to be more spread out. I am not sure but I think the same number appear but spread across more tiles. many cities may only have one food source. Some may not have any. Metal or horses are more commonly 3-4 cities away rather than close enough for a well placed 2nd city.
7. Due to the increased cost of city/civic maintenence and beakers on huge maps. A single super science city has less of an impact on your overall beaker needs.
And with an SE a cottaged Bureaucracy capital will not produce enough gold to pay the bills. Even under State Property with a courthouse each city cost 3gpt just from number of cities. You are going to have a LOT of cities.
A single super military production city will not be able produce enough troops for the job, so you get better return by spreading out your settled GG's to multiple production cities than by lumping them in one city for uber units.
All this must be taken into account when determining what role each city will play. If you start in a production heavy area you may be forced to cottage cities that you normally wouldn't. The opposite can be true with workshopping grasslands with just guilds or Caste. Not the best use but if you are hammer poor you need them from somewhere.
8. On a standard map, AI civs usually have 7-8 decent cities. A quick strike at the start of a war can take 4 or 5 thus crippling their ability to produce enough troops to mount a counter offensive. On a huge map 15-20 cities is the norm. Taking 4-5 hurts the AI but with the bonuses from Emp, 10-15 decent size cities is more than enough to crank out some serious troops. Taking into account the diplomatic situation created by more civs per landmass, the odds of them bribing another AI into the war are much greater.
9. With more AI the chances of bulbing/researching a monopoly tech are much slimmer. Though if you do manage it, you have more AI to trade it to so you may get a better return.
10. I play with tech brokering off. This slightly slows the AI tech speed but it also makes abusing it impossible for the human player. The main reason I do this is because it means I can not trade techs I steal. Since i always build the Great wall because I hate the freaking barbs (translation: they kick my but on marathon/huge) I frequently get an early Great Spy. Early infiltration is overpowered enough as it is without giving it more leverage.
11. micromanagement is not as important. Shaving a single turn off a building/tech/unit is a much smaller percentage of the unit/tech/building's cost.
12. Whipping units is not as efficient on marathon because whip anger triples to 30 turns while unit cost only doubles. Early game units are usually a 1pop whip. Even in HR you will need to keep the unit in the city for 30 turns to combat the whip anger.
Once again I ask that advice not be based on traits, map types, UB's or UU's. While I fully understand that leveraging a leader's traits plays a large part in being successful, I am looking for more general advice that can be applied to any leader or civ.
). You're a better player but I'll throw in my ideas. The advantage you have aside from decision making is production in the late game. I have no idea why but the chart shows you outproduce the AI's of similar size all the time.
. Seriously, I do like the GW on marathon but not for its anti barbarian effect, the ealy spy GPPs and extra GGPs when fighting on home ground are superb benefits that I can't overlook the way I play. But also I like the barbarian challenge and unit training without the GW and often have a scheme of rotating units so they end up with the 10 exp max. It really annoys me when I have to fight another barbarian with a unit that can't gain anymore exp and losing a carefully nurtured and maxed out unit to another barbarian annoys like few other things in the game. That tempts me to reload and replay an entire turn to avoid the "disaster" 
- but I have gotten over that now and accept my losses stoically 
. I do tend to do things like whipping and drafting military in 30 turn cycles. That means all my cities recover at the same time and might need attention for a few turns at that time and can be ignored for at least 20 turns afterwards while they recover happiness and pop. That means there is less micromanagement per turn, but it is essentially the same way I run my game at normal speed.
) and always found them to be equivalent to one difficulty level higher at least for me. I'm a Monarch/Emperor player, but I find that a huge map can be a challenge even on Prince and barely beatable on Monarch. I've seen 50+ unit SOD's in the Medieval Age quite a few times from Monty and Shaka, even fought against them. Not pretty.
