Emperor, always struggling against the always ahead runaway.

hello,
i stepped up from King to Emperor lately but i never managed to get far enough to actually compete to win.
the issue i encounter every single game is there is always that runaway civ very far ahead of everyone in tech, military, score and gold.
for example my last game a standard pace small communitas map, 6 civs 12 CS playing as Authority zulus, founded 4 cities and had more than enough units to kill Denmark my closest neighbout .... it's t140 when everyone is still around mid 20 techs there is Russia 4 cities with tradition around 35 techs bringing canons and knights to a war decimating both Brazil and Denmark and capturing their cities, no one stood a chance after this war Russia ended up with 1200 score, 8 cities, 11 wonder of her own, two holy cities and an army to wipe everyone.
this happens every single game no matter what i do there is always someone i cannot deal with.
any idea what should i do or any viable strategy to emperor ?

 

I'm curious about a few things. If you have enough units, then why does Denmark still stand? If you went Authority, you need wars to get ahead of your neighbors. In addition, Authority is tricky in that you need Barbarian Camps, tributes and to taking cities to do well. If you have went on a conquering spree yourself, then you'd in a pretty good position to challenge Russia. It also sounds like that your UU is coming up soon so, if you beeline for it, you can be very dangerous. Of course, a bit more information is appreciated to give some some viable strategies.

 

35 techs at turn 140 sounds like a glitch happened...

Regardless, on Emperor you are generally going to be a bit behind early game and that's fine.

For strategy, I have found you should declare early war on a neighbor just to cripple them and get a free worker or two. Even just capturing one worker with your pathfinder really helps. Later in the game, if any neighbors hate you, you might as well go on pillaging sprees in their lands. As long as you have ONE friend you're OK. Its also good to know trade routes are godly early game. Don't waste production on walls unless you feel you really need them, and even then, most of the time you're better off building another unit anyway. Religion is also extremely important. Don't neglect it

 

There is one thing I want to ask because my game is heading in a similar direction:

If I want to make a game harder or easier lets say on turn 400, it seems I can just delete the cache and change AITrainPercent, AIConstructPercent or AIPerEraModifier in the DifficultyMod.xml.
Does anyone know for sure if this works and is savegame compatible?
If I look into the city of a civ where my spy is located the production costs have changed so it seems to work.

 

I wouldn't call it a glitch. An AI can do very well depending on a couple of things. Russia could've gotten the Great Library that gives a free tech and the Oracle that gives a decent amount of Science as instant yields. With religion, it's possible that Russia got one of those beliefs that gives Science like Scholarship that gives +1 Science for every 2 Followers. If the Founder belief is Council of Elders, then that's another big boost. Finally, it does sound like Russia is very powerful so there's a good possibility that Russia got a reformation belief. Jesuit Education and Knowledge through Devotion can both give powerful boosts to your tech count. Since the other civs are roughly 10 techs behind, it's generally what we expect.

 

There's just not enough information here to know. Also, maybe there's still a chance to catch up. Russia is likely hated now and may be subject to reprisal in the world congress. They may over expand and have happiness issues. Other civs can ride Russia's coattails by sending them trade routes.

In any case, run aways can happen from time to time. It's certainly not every game though, at least in my experience. I'd estimate that about 1 in 10 have a runaway so strong that the game becomes hopeless but for the most part the games stay competitive.

 

You received good advice re: playing Emperor. But with regard to there being a runaway in every game, your own performance aside, my own experience over the last several patches is that there have never been less runaways. It's one of the most impressible gradual achievements of the mod, in my opinion.

 

I dont know why everyone is seeing a runaway as a bad sign for balance. For me, its more a bad sign, if there are none.
Nobody has a problem, if the human player is leading by 10 tech or a lot of policies or is an unstoppable might. Everyone thinks "Uh... Iam leading, Iam so good..."
Why do you all want to deny the same right to be a runaway for the AI?
Assuming that every AI makes equally good decisions, the circumstances ultimately make the result. And if these were very favorable for an AI, then they should also have the right to lead the field.

 

I didn't say it was bad for balance (although it might be). I think they make the game less fun. No problem if you don't agree. But I have zero interest in debating it with you.

 

The common response to being a runaway is "I'm bored now, when will the game end?"

I'm pretty sure we don't like being a runaway any more than we like the AI being a runaway.

 

This I agree with.

Btw, I feel like there should be an intermediate difficulty between King and Emperor.
King is a bit too easy, but to be winning on Emperor one needs luck or a strong civ.

 

Nahh, just need to remove the freebies on Emperor+, and have it just be yield and hammer bonuses that differentiate difficulties.

There's more discussion on all this in the new version thread.

 

You don't need luck or a strong civ to win at any difficulty, deity included. You don't have to do things like worker steal or play only a certain playstyle to win at any difficulty level either. If Emperor feels too strong all you have to do is play it more and you will catch up as long as you are thoughtful about how to improve. If your mind set going into an emperor game is "I can't win because of the ai advantages" then you will blind yourself from seeing your mistakes and never improve.

 

Some people like me just want to enjoy the game, not try harder to get better at it

 

All difficulties are irrelevant. The challenge is only that which you set yourself.

Personally, I play on deity because I like to set myself a high challenge; but it never ends well.

 

I agree. Also when I want to season the game to my particular taste then I adjust an sql file.

For example, I prefer zeppelins that can move after attacking. So I guess you can say I’m playing on emperor minus or king plus.

 

These are all legit comments. Basically the difficulty can be tweaked in many ways. The size of the map vs players to name one. And the pace of the game means more than you might realize. Choosing epic as opposed to standard gives you, as the human player, more turns to be smarter than the AI

 

I thought that was made standard a few months ago. Are you playing with an older version? In any case, I would like to know exactly how you did this as I would like to mod it into the old version that I still play about half my games on. I did take a look at doing it, but was concerned it might affect upgraded paratroopers or even break the promotion for other units. Could you please let me know the details of what you did?

I also don't seem to be able to make the move from King to Emperor, so I'm currently playing at "King-plus". I'm using king settings for most things but the emperor values for AIPerEraModifier and DifficultyBonusBase, so the early game is basically king and I can usually manage to get a reasonable start, but the AI's get a bit stronger than king later in the game. Seems to be working fairly well so far. Once I can win a good proportion of those games I'll look at increasing other values.

 

Ive feeled that the step from king to emperor was really hard. And thought, King is the last difficulty you can play for an "enjoying" casual game.
Maybe simply the removal of the food bonus for the AI made it or some other changes, but now I play emperor very comfortable.
Since some time I start always with IGE and give me a free worker at the start. The free worker for the AI is an annoyance, but this way, its more fair, but the AI still has an advantage, cause their workers are still double as fast as mine.

 

In the file newunits.sql between lines 358 & 359 inserted:

('UNIT_ZEPPELIN', 'PROMOTION_CAN_MOVE_AFTER_ATTACKING'),

No problems up through version 5-19. Haven’t built zeps in 6-2 yet.