Emperor diff. is killing me HELP!

[mongo81]

First time posting on the forums but have been reading them for years, and yes i can't spell so try to ignore the typos. Ok when i play on monarch I can easy win a space race, or a domination victory however on Emperor i am getting destroyed. I have tried alot of different tactics such as early war with Mont., Early war with Romans, Peaceful builds with Ghandi and Mansa, but whatever I do I just cant survive the constant harrasment from nearby civs. The sheer number of troops they produce is impossible to defend against and even if i did do nothing but build an army my civ would be very small and have no tech. What am I doing wrong and how can I survive on the Emeror lvl, please I know there are people ot there that are SOOOOOOO much better then I am I need some help.

Thanks for reading,

Mongo

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Moderator Action: Moved to the Strategy and Tips forum.

Welcome to CFC, mongo81. Perhaps the best way to get specific help is to attach a save from your recent game to your post (click Post Reply and then Manage Attachments). Also, what game are you playing -- standard, Warlords, or Beyond the Sword?

 

[J-man]

Check the emperor's cookbook's, basically game where players 'learn' to play on emperor difficulty: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=305278

 

[madscientist]

Welcome to the forums!

I am an emperor level player but exclusively at marathon speed, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I have found the biggest obstacle in the successful jump to emperor is getting a alrge empire that you can sustain! If your empire is larger than you rivals, the difficulty is negligent.

Some advice

1) Consider an organized leader so you can grow and maintain the empire. Darius is teh first leader I used to "break" the emperor wall. He also has a dynamite early UU for some war-mongering to expand.

2) Get an economical tech early before the economy crashes, such as pottery/writing/sailing.

3) Aim for CoL and Currency earlier than later.

4) Take out a few rivals and maintain diplomacy with the otehrs.

As suggested, post a save and play it out looking for advice at each step.

By the way, don't worry about typos, noone has thrown me out yet for them!

 

[mongo81]

I didnt even know you could attach a saved game thats awsome, and im playing the standard game. Was thinking about getting the expansions, should I?? Im going to go read the emperor cookbook or whatever its called look foward to more tips.

Mongo

 

[madscientist]

I didnt even know you could attach a saved game thats awsome, and im playing the standard game. Was thinking about getting the expansions, should I?? Im going to go read the emperor cookbook or whatever its called look foward to more tips.

Mongo

My experience is that Vanilla (the first) CIV IV is more difficult at Monarch than the expansions although the expansions give you a much more balanced game. I believe you only need Beyond the Sword (last expansion) and it gives you all that Warlords (second expnasion) except teh scenarios (if you into those). I would strongly recommend them.

 

[mongo81]

Going to direct2drive the expansio now And by the way my economy is never the problem, in fact keeping my cities happy healthy and producing are my strong point, my main problem is getting attacked by numerous civs with armies the out number me 20 to 1 lol

Mongo

 

[madscientist]

Going to direct2drive the expansio now And by the way my economy is never the problem, in fact keeping my cities happy healthy and producing are my strong point, my main problem is getting attacked by numerous civs with armies the out number me 20 to 1 lol

Mongo

Simple, build more troops and stretch your economy. My suggestion is to get the HE city up and going and do nothing but spit out units. Next suggestion is to learn diplomacy, bigtime. Make sure you keep track of the power numbers (Caution, BTS power numbers requires a minimal amount of espionage to that civilization).

 

[civvver]

If your economy is great on emperor you're doing it wrong. You're economy should be in the tank from expanding fast and building a ton of units to keep the AIs off your back. Then build back your economy after you've either settled a ton of land or conquered your neighbors. I am by no means a emp level player, but any time I get crazy building infrastructure and a strong economy on noble/prince some AI comes in and smacks me upsdie the head. On the flip side, ignoring the economy, expanding til slider is at 50% and spamming units gets me a much better start, especially against the aggressive leaders.

 

[mago barca]

Going to direct2drive the expansio now And by the way my economy is never the problem, in fact keeping my cities happy healthy and producing are my strong point, my main problem is getting attacked by numerous civs with armies the out number me 20 to 1 lol

Mongo

if you a good at producing great citys as soon as you have nationhood build a globe theartre and draft if you surround it with food it will grow no problem i have always used that stratigy if you can be more advanced and get gunpowder early then you will get 1 musketeer a turn and kill some ai civs

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This brings back memories:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=271411

Get as many cities as you can, and do whatever possible to have 1) enough happiness to grow cities 2) enough commerce/gold to actually pay for your cities and 3) enough units to stay alive.

It took me a long time to get used to having 10 cities or so in the BCs or early AD's on emperor and immortal, and even longer before I comprehended just how many maps it's possible to get that many peacefully (with a rush is a little easier because you get a gold buffer).

As for techs, expanding sufficiently will often drag your slider to dangerous levels. I prefer expanding until it is 0 now, staying just above the threshold of strike. If your cities are growing and some are working cottages, you'll pull out eventually.

What to do in the mean time? The answer is specialists. Use the scientists off a library whenever you can afford it. This does two important things:

1. Nets you an early great person, which is very useful
2. Provides some minimal (or with pyramids significant) beakers towards your next tech.

Try to research techs that allow you to trade for multiple other techs. Aesthetics is frequently good for this, code of laws also can be for the early tech tree. Both are much better targets than math, currency, feudalism, calendar, or machinery in typical games, as the AIs will tend to get those early. Note this does vary somewhat game to game...keep an eye on the tech trade screen.

Other than that, as your cottages grow and you are able to trade for resources and build/whip some courthouses, you should take off with a lot of cities.

If you get boxed in, your only true options are typically an early rush or a bulb-fest to renaissance units and abusing the temporary advantage with superior units via drat, the whip, and/or mass upgrade of CR maces to rifles etc. On the bright side, you won't have the slider lower, but getting more cities is usually the better call.

 

[michmbk]

Reading this and TMIT's thread from April about moving up to emperor has inspired me to give my first emperor game a shot. I was thinking about trying Darius as madsci suggested. Never played him yet, but his traits should be a crutch when moving up, and should help if that's the first game I try at the new level. Busy week at work unfortunately, but if I get a chance, I'll try to post a Darius emperor game and give it a shot in next week or so.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I concur 100% with TMIT and can only add that on Emp I have been known to screw it up, especially in the area of not REXing as fast as the AI. Some maps I get what I need, city-wise, others I don't.

 

[mongo81]

I honeslty have never thought of some of the strats you guys have said, that globe theater/draft combo is genious I just DL beyond the sword today and there is alot of new content to digest so i will not be playing on emperor until i understand the new content. After beating prince today with a space race I still feel lost in the new spy tactics, i cant seem to stop them from happening to me, I also find the new corporations system confusing but after only 1 full game I guess it will come in time. Thanks for the tips guys really appricate it.

Mongo

 

[Shurdus]

After playing about 200 games or so I still find the corporation system confusing.

In addition to what TMIT is suggesting I would like to point out that there can be much, much learned from reading walkthroughs of other players. Seeying how others struggle and deal with the hardships that they encounter has really made me a better player. I wasn't able to beat monarch, then I read a game from Rusten and how he beat deity with Sitting Bull. I gave emperor a shot and voila, I now have 4 emperor wins out of 6 tries.

For getting the Ai's off your back you MUST learn how diplomacy works. there are some good strategy articles on how to do this n the War Academy on the front page.

Good luck and smash them!

 

[TM Moot]

This has inspired me to have another go at Emperor level. I regularly win on Monarch (Space, Culture, Domination) but until recently always bombed on Emp. I did win last week on Emp, but I played HC and hand-picked my opponents (all non-Industrious), which allowed a Cultural win on Hemispheres. So that doesn't really count.

Not sure who to try though. Darius, Memhed or Julius perhaps?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This has inspired me to have another go at Emperor level. I regularly win on Monarch (Space, Culture, Domination) but until recently always bombed on Emp. I did win last week on Emp, but I played HC and hand-picked my opponents (all non-Industrious), which allowed a Cultural win on Hemispheres. So that doesn't really count.

Not sure who to try though. Darius, Memhed or Julius perhaps?

I was never a fan of crutch-jumping levels. You have to *really* understand the game anyway, so unless you deliberately cook your map and opponents, merely picking one guy and trying to "leverage" something can sometimes hurt you.

After prince, each of my jumps came on forum games:

Monarch: Cam_H's open role play challenge. You used churchill, with the rules of no library, no caste system, etc. Quite honestly, a prince player moving up trying to get his first win on monarch probably had no business in such a game, but that just got me more fired up . It's still pretty high on my all time score list...over 126k. I'm amazed when I think how well that went, considering how bad I was . Note: this game included one of my earlier mass horse archer charges

Emperor: PYL II, backstabbers! I picked Cathy in that game. You'd think a backstab game would be harder, but that's only if you're the target .

Immortal: Immortal University - Hannibal. My first immortal win wasn't nearly as flashy. It was, frankly, lucky garbage. I axe rushed a neighbor, sputtered across the lib line, fell behind in tech, piggybacked a super AI and used that super AI to vote me AP winner since it wasn't built in his religion (someone else built it and I took that city).

Deity: TBA

Point is, you're better off/will learn faster by just raising your level and seeing where your game is hurting you, than by trying to contrive "easy" situations that are quite rare (and quite hard to set up w/o the world builder or opponent choice anyway).

 

[TM Moot]

Point is, you're better off/will learn faster by just raising your level and seeing where your game is hurting you, than by trying to contrive "easy" situations that are quite rare (and quite hard to set up w/o the world builder or opponent choice anyway).

Totally agree. Having crashed and burned on Emperor a few times, I just wanted to see if I could win 'with limited assistance'. I did pick Shaka, Joao, Monty, Ragnar amongst others, so it wasn't a cakewalk, I just filtered out any Ind leaders. As I said, I don't really count it anyway.

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums mongo81.

 

[mongo81]

Ok so my seond day playing beyond the sword and i am just squeaking out space races on prince... On the original civ prince was a joke, i am finding diplomacy impossible on beyond the sword, i use to pick the religion of either the strongest civ, or the religion that the majority have, this is not working on as well on this version. Also was wondering if any of you guys turn off espionage cause the spy aspect of the game is killing me, i am under constant attack from spys and it is driving me nuts. Well off to try a new game, any suggestions on a new space race civ im not much of a war guy unless i have to be.