Emperor level w/o cheats:possible?

[cmotdibbler]

HI All,
Well I've spent a great deal of time playing CivI (mac version) before finally trying to tackle Emperor level. I don't see how *anyone* can beat the AI, wonders dished out lavishly to the AI, while my forces are barely holding on. I found a patch that gives you $32 k per sell but kind of hate cheating. I don't mean to whine, but is it possible to win at the hardest level without cheating? Hats off to anyone who can pull it off. This is such a great game, but looks like I'm doomed to playing at King level using the occasional restart cheat.

 

[stormerne]

I sympathise, and I hate cheating too. The answer is you have to play very aggressively - starting by seeking out your prey with chariots immediately and not letting up in similar vein right throughout the game. And expand ruthlessly.

It's possible in Civ2 to play more relaxed at the highest level, but not in Civ1 if you want to win. But don't expect to win every time. When the bombers and the armor roll in from the dark, and you still have only musketeers, it's time to give up and start a new game!

The random AI wonders are a pain I know, but there are some wonders you should shoot for, even if you don't get them all. First and foremost, you've gotta have the Pyramids. They're a must.

But do eschew the cheat patch!

 

[cliff]

You have to concentrate on the right things in order to win.

Du you spend a lot of time on building wonders early in the game? Don't. At that point you are weak both in resources and cash so early wonders are very expensive for you. You could found new cities instead and then build several military units or city improvements. That would be much more helpful than a pyramid or colossus or something like that.

Start building a new settler as soon as you have founded your first city. You need to have several cities before you can become powerful. Repeat this procedure when you founded your second city. Make both cities produce settlers. If you see enemy units or barbarians walking around, shift from settler to a military unit at once and buy the completion of it if necessary. You wouldn't want half your empire being wiped out, would you?

Don't bother with research at the start of the game. Use 100% taxes and buy the completion of settlers as fast as you can. You don't lose much research by doing so since you have so little trade with just one or two small cities. After you have founded 4 or 6 or so cities you have to decide what strategy you are going to use. One strategy is to conquer the world as soon as possible and the other main strategy is to go for high tech and then either conquer the world later or landing on alpha centauri or something else that you wish to do. High tech is more interesting but it is also easier to make mistakes and lose.

OK, so you want to conquer the world? Research the wheel, build chariots, build more chariots. Approach enemies with a group of four or five chariots. They will probably get scared and offer peace. Accept the peace treaty and use this to move your chariots into good attacking positions near one or two of their cities. Then when they're all in place, break the treaty and attack. Attack their cities, not their fortified phalanxes on the hills nearby. And never use only one or two units when you attack. Now you control all of your continent. Research navigation and build sails. Sail off to other continents and do the same. Make peace first and don't attack until you have all your chariots in place. Yes, you can conquer the world on emperor using nothing stronger than a chariot.

 

[cliff]

You have to handle your enemies correctly as well. If you share your island with other civilizations, take them out as fast as possible. Make peace first and then sneak attack. Other civs on other islands should not be handled this way. A common mistake is to sail away and attack to early. You can probably take one or two of their cities but that's not enough! You have to sail back home to grab more military units and that gives them the time to build new units and attack your newly captured cities. They will always do this and often you lose the cities again. If you have a good military technology they will steal it. That makes it eaven harder for you when you come back with your second wave. Don't attack on enemy territory until you are strong enough to destroy their whole civilization.

If you play high tech, then don't build many military units. Of course, if there are other players on your island, take them out to start with but don't go looking for other players. Eventually they will come to see you instead. And that is better.

What? Is that better? Yes, I think so. Since they have focused on building military units and locating you, they probably have fallen behind in technology. They will land chariots and phalanxes and legions close to you cities when you have cannons to kill them with. That means you will often win the battles. And they have to go back to their island for reinforcements which gives you time to reinforce the single or possibly two units you lost in the battle. Next time they will land knights and musketeers but then you have armor to kill them with. Or maybe you built a battleship and sank their frigates loaded with units.

Ask your military advisor to show the list of military losses. Are you losing more units than the enemy you are at war with? If so, you have to change your military tactics.

 

[TTG]

From my strategy guide:

When you start the game, set the taxes to tech 100%, but stop building tech once you've got phalanxes, legions, cavalry, chariots, catapults, and triremes. Save your money afterward, maybe to buy military wonders like the lighthouse or the Great Wall. Build the following in every new city: militia, settler, barracks, phalanx, phalanx; then send the militia off to war. When a new settler is made, build a short road about 3 or 4 squares long, then build a new city. Keeping your cities small and close together makes them way easier to defend. Don't let your cities grow to a point where they need temples. Build only to the following sizes: Emperor-4, King-5, Prince-6, Lord-7, Chief-8. With these sizes, the two phalanxes should be enough to keep the people content. Build about 10 of these cities. After a city has finished building its starting stuff, have it build exactly what the military advisor says, unless the domestic advisor says to build a diplomat, in which case you build a diplomat. The other exception is if you badly need a trireme. Don't build city walls, granaries, marketplaces, or anything else like that. Send your armies out in steady waves, using ferries where necessary. If you build a settler, send him along behind the troops to build forts, if need be, and use him to rebuild cities you destroy. Have your settlers leave a road in your path as your armies tour the world. When you meet a civ, make peace with them, if possible, and then immediately attack and kill everything they have. You will be unstoppable. If you have a choice of techs to steal, take military tech. If you run into a city with a wall, try to take it out with a diplomat. If that doesn't work after much trying, surround it with militia and start a seige. When you take a city, adjust its land usage so that it shrinks back to a good size, and sell off all of its improvements.

Also, during war these two are handy:

Ferries
If you need to get huge armies from one continent to another, the best way to do it is not with piles of sails or whatever, but with one trireme. Place the trireme at the edge of one continent at a place where the space between the two continents is less than three squares. Sentry the trireme. When units walk onto it, carry them across, unload, and return. ReSentry the trireme. This is important! When units step onto the resentried trireme, it will get all of its movement points back. You can move an infinite # of units across in one turn with this. In one game, I once moved 105 military units across a strait in one turn. This was a bit dangerous, becuase they could all have been wiped out with one attack, but the force I brought over was more soldiers than the civilian population of the civ I was attacking! I destroyed that civ within 8 turns of landing on that continent.

Seige:
Every city uses the squares around it for food, production, trade, etc. That city will lose the use of those squares, however, if an enemy unit occupies that square. The deal with the seige is just like in a real seige. You get a bunch of cheap units (militia are good. Or, later in the game, use your obsolete defense units for this instead of disbanding them), and you cover every one of those squares. As the city slowly runs out of food, it will stay the same size for a long time, then it will begin to shrink quite quickly. To ensure your success, try to cover the squares that have resources (shields) on them first, so that your opponent's city loses the ability to build many units. Although computer players will not lay seige to your cities, they will attempt to cover your shields on occasion. To defend against such an attack, make sure that your city is built on a square that has at least one shield on it. Or, you can just use a military rotation system, so that each city is defended by units from another ciy, but that does not work with a Republic or Democracy. Lastly, some cities can get a lot of food from the sea, especially if there are fish nearby. Use triremes (if possible, because they're cheap) to cover those sea squares as well. A seige is the best attack against huge cities with city walls.






If you follow these to the letter, you can't lose. I've won on Emperor+2 with this strategy, although it was a lot harder

 

[cliff]

TTG, that sounds like a good strategy. On some versions of civ1 that is. Actually some later versions (I use winciv, I'm not sure about the dos versions) have new rules to prevent this strategy from being so successful. People are more sour now if you build many cities. On emperor, you get 2 content people in every city up til a total of 13 citizens. That's the new thing, there is a limit of 13 content citizens. If you have six cities of size 2 and you just built a seventh, then if you have no military units there yet, it will go into civil disorder when it reaches size 2. And later on, your first citizen is unhappy in a new city. Also, barracks cost 2 gold to maintain.

Still, this strategy is good and you will win most of the time I think. I don't understand that science 100% though. I think it's better to found new cities as fast as possible.

 

[cliff]

And, hrm, moving 100 military units with one trireme on one turn sounds like - cheating. Or if the other continent is more than 3 squares away then you can also cheat by moving the trireme 2 squares, sentry, move another two squares and so on. You could, if you are patient, move 100 units to the other side of the world with one trireme in one turn. You may also move chariots one square, then sentry, then one more square and so one. That means you can conquer the world in just two turns! But, as I said, I think that is cheating.

 

[cmotdibbler]

TTG and Cliff,
Thanks for your comprehensive summary for winning at Emperor level. It looks like I will need to drastically revise my MO (build medium number of full-service cities, with all trimmings). Obiviously this is not the route to victory. I am playing a cheat-enabled game at Emp lev (and winning) but it is kind of like bragging about a great sex life when all you do is masturbate.

Thanks again!

 

[cliff]

Not necessarily! (-:

In fact, when I play high tech I usually build five or six cities with many city improvements and make them grow as fast as possible. You still have to remove the opposition on your continent first though. And you have to be republic or, preferrably, democracy. And you have to do things in the right order. First build some chariots and kill the enemies. Then, if it didn't take overly long to do so, found your cities as fast as you can, buying the completion of new settlers. Set science to 100% and research the republic. Don't let your cities grow larger than two or you will get civil disorder. You can make your size two cities use two ocean squares. Then you will get 5 trade from each city in despotism. If you have 6 cities that gives you a total of 30 trade per turn.

How long will it take to research the republic? You need alphabet, writing, code of laws, literacy and the republic so that is five. You have previously researched the wheel for chariots and nothing more. On emperor, the first tech takes 14 lightbulbs, then each tech requires an additional 14 so you need 28 for the second and 42 for the third an so on. You will therefor need 14*2 + 14*3 + 14*4 + 14*5 + 14*6 which equals 280 lightbulbs for the republic. with 30 lightbulbs per turn that should take 10 turns. After that, form republic. Now you have 3 more trade per city which gives you a total of 48 trade. Research ceremonial burial and mysticism and build temples and let your cities grow to size four. Now you're on your way.

 

[cmotdibbler]

I'll try your suggestions about smallish cities and researching republic. Usually I go for pyramid wonder but hate to switch to democracy too soon due to the penalty for military units out of cities. My problems were getting caught with the civil disorder early on and then going through the cathedral and colluseum route to quell the unrest.

I finished the cheat level and it *was* fun dealing out the destruction, however it hardly counts as a "real" win. Speaking of which, do you consider restarting from a saved position if you loose a critical battle "cheating"? How a militia unit withstands a battleship does not make sense though. I've come across several illogical scenarios but others have as well. Maybe those are fixed in Civ2.

 

[cliff]

If you switch to republic or democracy, don't have military units outside your cities. You would like a period of 1000 or maybe 2000 years of peace or almost peace so that you can make your cities large and research a lot of good techs including militrary techs such as automobile. Build a few military units with high attacking power and keep them in your cities. If the enemy lands some units on the shore close to your cities, kill them! Don't chase the enemy. In an emergency you can use a diplomat to bribe enemy units.

Cathedrals, as you mentioned, are good if you cities reach size 7-10. Before that it's a good idea to build a marketplace and spend some money on luxurires. Also, don't let your cities grow if you don't have the necessary improvements. Shift from grassland to ocean for example or build a settler. However, you should build those cathedrals as soon as possible so you can increase your population. Turn up the luxuries and celebrate we love the presidents day for a few turns rather then building a granary and letting the cities grow naturally. If you keep you cities at the same size and with the same city improvements you don't need granaries at all. And colloseums are expensive to maintain so don't build them.

If you want to go to war later on, form republic and build women's suffrage. Then you can have as many military units outside your cities as you want without causing any unhappiness.

 

[cliff]

If you find out that you have chosen the wrong strategy, then in my opinion it's acceptable to pick up an old save file and try the new strategy unless you have played very long and know for example what the entire map looks like. If you say something like "I'll save the game now, and then I will attack that walled city with my last and very important to keep battleship and if it loses, I'll go back and repeat until it wins" then I say that is cheating.

If the outcome of your game depends on one or two battles, then I say you have done something wrong earlier on. Probably you have a to small army for whatever military operation you are about to undertake. Build more units and then continue with your attack. If one of your battleships lose to a militia, kill it with one of your other three.

 

[TTG]

Theoretically, it is better to go with cities of various sizes, complicated infrastructure, and a more complicated government for better world domination, but in practice it just presents too many complications that get out of control and just cause problems. Also, with that way your cities are too valuable, you lose one and it's a big deal. As far as using anything more advanced than chariots, triremes in battle, ha... who's even around long enough to research knights these days? I can't remember the last game where I built a tank, let alone actually used one. These days, I have usually conquered the world before anyone discovers democracy.

 

[cmotdibbler]

Well I did speak to soon. Right now I have eliminated all but one civ and have them isolated on an island with only two cities. While this requires a bit of initial luck it is still not totally satisfying since I only use a small number of the total "pieces" available in Civ.

What I really want is a nice high tech battle with subs, nukes, tanks, planes! So my plan is to kind of leave this remaining island alone, build up my advances and go at it. But I get the feeling to achieve a high tech war (where the AI civs have all the toys as well) I might have to play at king or prince level since on emperor you must quickly win or be defeated. Any thoughts you might have to go for the high tech war are appreciated. I know that may not be the purist way to winning and will not yield the maximum score but it seems like it might be more fun.

 

[dundas]

I find this strategy for Emperor level works often, and it's fun! The key is to build Womens Suffrage and also preferably Bachs Cathedral.

Phase 1: Growth. Start normally and try to conquer your island. Build lots of towns. Set tax rate at 20 or 30 percent.

Phase 2: Defence. Once you have Republic, Bachs Cathedral, Railroad and Metallurgy, change to Repblic and build railroads around the whole of your island so you only need 6 or so cannons to defend the whole lot. Kill anything that lands on your island.

Phase 3: Attack! Once you have Womens Suffrage, Riflemen and Bombers, put tax rate at 100%, sell all universities and libraries, build up remaining cities to maximum potential. Then build and buy fleets of Bombers, a few Aircraft Carriers to carry them, a few Transports with riflemen, diplomats etc. Waltz over to your opponent and pound their capital with bombers and then walk in with your Riflemen. Then use your huge cash balance to buy other cities and Bombers to pound defences again. Bombers also useful for defence by slowing counter-attacks by sitting on strategic roads.

Cheers,
PeterJ, UK

 

[TTG]

The future wars are a lot more fun. But I think you will need a better enemy than just one little island... heh. Start again and let them be a little stronger than that.

If you are going to use nukes, two helpful tips:
1. Use them to attack ships. You can wipe out whole fleets at once and there is no pollution.
2. The best defense against nukes is not SDI defense, but a continent wall. Grab all of your old defense units and line them up along the edge of your continent, starting on the side where your enemy attacks from and perhaps eventually surrounding the whole continent. They can't land ships, and they can't launch nukes. The best part is when those transports realize they can't land, they will often just attack your units with the transport! HAHA

 

[Father Beast]

Civ1 also doesn't have the city placement requirements that you have in civ2. when building humungous amounts of cities, you should build a city on EVERY plains and grassland/shield square. Not on the grassland/no shields, those never build anything. This tactic allows you more cities with more production, and less roads neccessary. the downside is that in civ1, the roads in the city square never become railroads. but if you conquer the world first....