Emperor difficulty

[TheBossInTheWal]

I've been playing at Emperor difficulty level and am finding it very hard. Not looking for advice, but wondering what other people are experiencing. For example: in my current game its 580 AD and the Russians have Cossacks.

 

[mrjepson]

The AI gets a free settler to start on Emperor, it can make a big difference.

 

[kamex]

Play Scythia, spam Horsemen - All other strategies are redundant in this imbalanced turd of a game.

 

[jbavon]

Emperor level (standard size) has become a lot more dificult since the recent patch. I coasted through all my games during vanilla and first patch. Now everything is very competitive. The AI is aggressive and settles every spot of land. They are far ahead of 'recorded history' in both tech and civics. I think India was pumping out 400 tourism around 0 AD. At 1000 AD Kongo researched Robotics.

I was an emperor/immortal player on Civ5 and could usually control my games once I got past 0 AD and could leave the AI in the dust and take what ever win I wanted. Civ6 is definitely forcing me to shake up my game. I have to aggressively fight down the other AI's so they don't grab the win.

 

[Jabulani]

That's not difficult, I have always won at emperor, you just need to be aggressive and expansionist from the beginning and be the most warmonger ever seen in history, always happily at war with someone.

Check the score section while playing and attack the most powerful civ to prevent it from winning, easy. It just needs practice and be against the devs and their warmonger obsession. Just think about other civs as they were civ vi devs and you will win every game, cause you use the brain while the AI is dumb as a San Francisco traffic light, which also cheats as hell like a child

 

[Skulbow]

Yes I must agree...the game has become so much harder now that I have had to drop back some levels. I am using some mods as well which makes the game a lot more competitive. The Crazy Scotsman's omnibus and Chorace's interface mod plus some others. I think it is definitely now on a par with CivV now in difficulty but it does seem more complicated to balance the mechanics well.

I agree about being aggressive as this certainly makes the game easier but there are a lot of civ players who prefer NOT to be aggressive all the time. I will be if an AI civ plants a city in my space I will certainly declare war and take that city.

 

[Jabulani]

Yes I must agree...the game has become so much harder now that I have had to drop back some levels. I am using some mods as well which makes the game a lot more competitive. The Crazy Scotsman's omnibus and Chorace's interface mod plus some others. I think it is definitely now on a par with CivV now in difficulty but it does seem more complicated to balance the mechanics well.

I agree about being aggressive as this certainly makes the game easier but there are a lot of civ players who prefer NOT to be aggressive all the time. I will be if an AI civ plants a city in my space I will certainly declare war and take that city.

Agreed, true.

The fact is that I like going at war so it is part of my strategy but of course is not mandatory.

 

[TheBossInTheWal]

Yes I must agree...the game has become so much harder now that I have had to drop back some levels. I am using some mods as well which makes the game a lot more competitive. The Crazy Scotsman's omnibus and Chorace's interface mod plus some others. I think it is definitely now on a par with CivV now in difficulty but it does seem more complicated to balance the mechanics well.

I agree about being aggressive as this certainly makes the game easier but there are a lot of civ players who prefer NOT to be aggressive all the time. I will be if an AI civ plants a city in my space I will certainly declare war and take that city.

Yes I prefer not to wage war too often. Everyone hates you, yr always at war. The game becomes boring because its just about staying in offense mode the entire game.
Yes, the AI is quite poor in regards to settling near the player. They'll go far away from their home area to do so. So I can take it or more often raze it and replace with a city in a better position. And the AI is too far away to defend its city.

 

[Jabulani]

Yes I prefer not to wage war too often. Everyone hates you, yr always at war. The game becomes boring because its just about staying in offense mode the entire game.
Yes, the AI is quite poor in regards to settling near the player. They'll go far away from their home area to do so. So I can take it or more often raze it and replace with a city in a better position. And the AI is too far away to defend its city.

It's also true the viceversa from my point of view, I mean, if I do not go at war I have nothing to do but building and working tiles, building and working tiles....

AI can't do anything good in civ vi true as well, but it cheats a lot, so I have to find a way to win a war with stones and sticks against AT Crew, that's how the devs intend the AI.....

 

[iammaxhailme]

Maybe it's because I have played civ 5 more, but Emperor difficulty seems a lot harder on Civ 6 than 5. I always play Emperor in Civ V. I usually play Prince or, uhh, I forget the name of difficulty 5, in Civ VI.

I almost never play aggressively though. I usually go for science or culture victories and only fight when forced to (or diplo victory in civ v)

 

[gimper42]

I am currently playing my first full game as Scythia on Emperor difficulty. Warmonger all the way from the start. Cleared my continent on turn 135 (had all but the last Greek city cleared off by 115 then allowed him to sue for peace to drop some weariness and march to his VERY distant city). I'm finding this to a very smooth and rather easy domination run. The only civ challenging me in tech is Sumeria. They seem to be about on par with me in the modern era while everyone else is up to 2 eras behind us. Arabia has practically zero military and has not been at war with anyone that I can see. France, England and Japan were total pushovers. I'm definitely moving up to Immortal for my next game.

 

[Balkans]

If i play slow concentrated min max game i find emperor ridiculously easy. If you know the game inside out you can't avoid snowballing the AI quite easily on emperor.

 

[Jabulani]

If i play slow concentrated min max game i find emperor ridiculously easy. If you know the game inside out you can't avoid snowballing the AI quite easily on emperor.

Agree.

The AI doesn't know air units exist, pretty much the same for naval units, AI can't defend cities and can't attack, AI can't use ranged units and can't properly upgrade units.

Thx to the superlative devs in Civ VI you basically play alone, I wonder why before the game release devs posted a video every week, now rumors say that devs have escaped on planet Mars and Jupiter but I am not convinced that is true, I suspect civ vi devs do not exist instead, those we have seen in those videos were just muppets.

 

[Victoria]

Peaceful is more of a challenge now the Civs expand more. It can be done but you have to be quite focused on science and culture at emperor, its about the highest I can go peacefully... do not even try peaceful on Deity.
Understanding that AI weaknesses helps... and the fact they used to be limited to about 5 cities was a huge help as you just had to out expand.

Now you have to outplace them within cities, using the terrain better.
In the same light, the AI does not choose their first city while you can restart until you get a good one.
You have to be clever with City states, there is a thread on this... but the AI does not get x2 envoy for first meet.
I have not looked into this deeply but the AI does not seem to get Eureka's making it a catch up methodology (can anyone confirm/deny?)
The AI does get % benefits that mean you need a catch up methodology so the way I look at it is you have to aggressively expand at first and concentrate on getting science and or culture underway soon after. Choosing a country that suits your needs is also an added bonus.

Played 6 emperor games and won 2 since patch. I often mess around though as it is not the winning but I am not sure I could have won any of those 4 I lost.