Do all games end up going the same way?

[Creosote]

I am fairly inexperienced but have been working my way up the difficulty levels.

On the easiest levels I could wage war, sit peacefully or really just play the game with whatever overall strategy I wanted, and won.

Now at the mid high level of Emperor I find its impossible to win without a total war commitment strategy. Build units fast and early and claim neighbours land, then build again and start conquering the civs further away. If I don't then they wage war on me, at best they destroy my improvements, at worse they just target whatever part of my civ that is weakest.
Unless I expand fast and early then I lag in the tech area and have nothing to trade.

Every game I am playing at Emperor goes this same way. I see no other way to keep up and compete. Every game is over with a domination victory around 1800. I could of course build the spaceship but somehow it seems pointless when the game is effectively won.

When I study the detailed Deity and Sid games in the forums here, they all seem to go this way as well.

I am just wondering if I am missing something. I read of people who post that they like to play peacefully and just develop, yet I see no way of doing that at Emperor, let alone at higher levels. Is there a technique to play peacefully, or is this really only viable at the lower difficulty levels?

 

[Creosote]

I'm on Conquests v1.22 and my scores no longer show.
I am playing on game generated maps with most options random.
They were showing in the Hall of Fame but last few won games, nothing.
I wondered if I have accidentally switched off an option or something, any ideas?

 

[a space oddity]

Yes, when played very carefully you can win at Emperor without major wars, read this thread were we played the non-militaristic Celts.

Re HoF, I have no idea. I know that when you play a scenario your result isn't added to the HoF, but say you let the game generate a map. Maybe there are others around that can anwer that question.

 

[nullspace]

Warmongering until you get domination is certainly an effective way to win the game, but there are other victory conditions. Just pick one of those and go for it. I kind of like single city culture, where the goal is to build one awesome city. It's a good excuse to build wonders, too.

Or just go for a diplomatic or space win without expanding your territory much. Role-play as a pacifistic or honorable nation if you with. You don't need to be the biggest nation to compete in tech. Simply having more trading partners (by being at peace and having a good reputation) allows you to keep up in tech. Spending shields on city improvements rather than units helps, too.

I actually think that domination is a rather difficult and time-consuming victory condition. You can generally win diplomatically or by space if you just survive to the modern era and play the last few turns right. And if you spend most of the game at peace, you don't have to spend as much time moving units, and the game is finished quicker.

 

[budweiser]

The only game I can remeber winnning recently that was not domination was my first DG win. I was so outclassed that I had to go for diplomatic. I could not dream of fighting a war. So, I play a lot like you and my games are over by about 1650.

But, I guess if you know what you are doing, then domination is the easiest threshold to achieve in terms of game turns, not real time. This can become boring after a while. One thing you could try is shifting your play style a bit and building more culture and see if you can get a cultural victory before your armies take over the world. I also know the good players can get a space ship win a great deal earlier than 1800. So if you work on trading and science you could try that too.

 

[Pentium]

I have some spaceship on Emperor (vanilla, but I think it's the same). It's not hard to win, but to win it early. You have to trade, give techs to some backwards civ and not make war. And of course it's easier to win before 1800 (I think I haven't won that early yet) on Pangaea. Huge, if possible.

 

[Dreadnought]

You can win without war, but it sometimes difficult. One game, I was the Byzantines, and Persia and China had taken all but three of my cities (Nicaea, Constantinople, and Andrianople) but launched my spaceship and won.

 

[Pentium]

War can help too. I usually conquer one civ when I go to space. Bigger civ => more research.

@Dreadnought: Why does an American have our city of Trieste (Trst in slovene) in his sig?

 

[wilbill]

Try playing OCC or 5CC. Play the "no military" variant. If your games are all turning out the same way, it's probably because you're approaching them all the same way.

 

[Pentium]

OCC SR is not very easy. You should have 2-3 high productive cities and at least some of your own research.

 

[Tomoyo]

I'm not very good at war, so I need to be able to win without attacking, which I can, even on Deity... (Oh, okay, with just a little warmongering...)

 

[tR1cKy]

...but just a little...and just to do something different...

 

[Tomoyo]

...but just a little...and just to do something different...

Right.

 

[SJ Frank]

I think your question is along the lines of "how do I keep up in tech if I don't war?" Well, I can tell you that it is certainly do-able at Emperor. You need to do a better job of :

1) micro-management, which means looking into cities, swapping tiles around, minimizing wasted food and shields.

2) tech brokering, which means checking the F4 screen more often, trying to catch the brokering opportunities, and do more early exploring. Never, ever, buy straight-up, always wait for 2-fer, 3-fer opportunities.

3) a greater focus on growth. In Civ, population is power. If you're not conquering other civs for the extra population, then you need to put a greater focus on growing your own population. It means producing more workers early, irrigating more "greens" once you're in Republic, and building those granaries once you're size 7. As a reference, I usually grow my core cities to size 12 within 40 turns of switching to Republic. When your cities are size 12 and the AI cities are size 10, you will have a stronger economy dispite smaller size. Does that make sense?

4) taking greater risks and learning how to manage those risks. Play with the minimal amount of military possible during peace (I sometimes average less than 1 military unit per city). And when war comes, use all the tools at your disposal to quickly field an army and win the war.

5) recognize the situations where you can play peacefully, and when you can not. Stuck on an island with the Zulus is NOT a good situation for the builder strategy. If you had a bad expansion phase, and the AI owns 2 out of your 3 first ring city sites, then it is time to attack.

 

[Rohili]

One last tip: If you find the going too demanding on Emperor, play on lower difficulty levels. No point forcing yourself to play on a level where you get too stressed up and feel that the game is becoming linear and repetitive. At least on lower difficulty levels you have the freedom to pursue more options and indulge in a few luxuries.

 

[Pentium]

One after-last tip: Build a lot of culture. Even if you don't go for 100k, the cities that were taken from you by the Zulus will flip back. If some AI cities flip to you, you have to do less attacking + you have larger population.

 

[budweiser]

I think if you do everything right, all that was mentioned above, and are winnning. There comes a point when you ouclass your enemies by a great margin. Like, at the end of the MI and the beginning of the IA (cavalry era). The temptation of military conquest is so strong because any other form of victory is still an age away.

I think this is what the poster is driving at. EDIT: Or maybe not, I just re-read his post and its more about struggling to win at higher difficulties.

 

[SJ Frank]

One after-last tip: Build a lot of culture. Even if you don't go for 100k, the cities that were taken from you by the Zulus will flip back. If some AI cities flip to you, you have to do less attacking + you have larger population.

Be aware that at higher difficulty levels, the benefit of culture is sometimes not worth the cost.

 

[InFlux5]

At Emporer and up, military certainly become more important; but not far behind is diplomacy. Hit F4 every turn, or nearly every turn. See what techs and how much gold your neighbors have. Try to anticipate which tech no one else is going for and go for that one. As I go up in the difficulty levels this is the aspect of the game that's becoming more important, and that I'm having more fun perfecting. Keep your reputation up and make allies early.

 

[Pentium]

Be aware that at higher difficulty levels, the benefit of culture is sometimes not worth the cost.

It works on Emperor. And on higher levels (well, there's only one in Vanilla) the AI have a lot of military to be worth the cost. Even if you're militaristic, you need some culture to prevent city flips from you. Nothing worse than a long battle for a city that flips the next turn.