Emperor to Immortal?

[Drakken]

Ok, so I regularly win on emperor. I move up to immortal and it is absolutely impossible to win with my settings. It seems the AI gets bonuses to everything even culture in their cities?

Does anyone know what the bonuses are that I am up against? Please enlighten me so I can analyze what is going on? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

 

[Thalatta]

The Emperor/Immortal jump on BtS is like the Prince/Monarch one was earlier, because the AI gets a starting worker. Good luck popping cities...and maintaining them.

 

[Underdawg]

The Emperor/Immortal jump on BtS is like the Prince/Monarch one was earlier, because the AI gets a starting worker. Good luck popping cities...and maintaining them.

Yep. And much like the old Monarch/Emperor Jump back in Civ 3. The starting worker is a significant boon (and the AI gets lower city maintenance and 15% cheaper everything I think).

 

[thomson_2001]

you have to war very clevelrly here. i find if you can capture few cities fairly early (as in when u have about 4) then it brings the ballance back to you, escpec if u can capture a wonder city. not easy to win with peace.

 

[Flamer123]

Each time I stepped up on the 3 stages - emperor, immortal, and deity, I needed to start being more and more agressive. Up until monarch, I could have won a game without having to war once. on these levels, u have to.

The simple reason is that the ai landgrabs way faster cause of its early bonuses, and because of later bonuses, his cities outproduce/outtech u.

U have to have around 1.5 times cities than the strongest ai to cancel out ai's bonuses. For example, i'm now on a deity game in which i have an equal number of cities as the strongest ai, all ai's way too friendly/vassals to each other, and i know that if i won't gain a few more cities i'm doomed.


I always choose early conquest - once with axeman/swordsman against one and once with maceman against another. no building wonders/religions/unnecessary bulildings, and make sure not to expand too fast prior to COL/currency. the axeman/swordsman gain me the $$ to be the first to alphabet even on deity.

I have seen early landgrabbing technics implemented by other players - initial settler goes as far as possible and colonizes right at the edge of the closest ai territory.

by the way, in which settings r u playing? if ur not on agg ai, i'd suggest trying agg ai emperor before immortal.

 

[thomson_2001]

that and master the art of precise whipping and chopping....it caneasily up the level you play at if used correctly. as said several times before on this site, slavery is largely redundant at lower levels. but the conversion of food to hammers is great and with the growth restrictions on higher difficulties makes it usefu. i reckon its hard to do well on higher settings without these. also you should considder your tech choices v closely. often beelining things is best way (say for religion, then oricle, then free tech with aim of hititng the techs with free greap persons/more free techs etc)

 

[colony]

Lightbulbing key techs becomes a lot more important on Immortal too, it's a relatively easy way to keep up in the tech race, or for Liberalism, wheras on Emperor I find that I don't really need to bulb as much. City maintenance really hurts early on, so running scientists as early as possible becomes more useful. I'm finding that both of these push you more towards a mix of cottages and specialists as opposed to nearly all cottages with a couple of GP farms, especially early on when cottages still aren't producing a lot of commerce.

I've only actually won one game on a non Pangaea map myself though, and I'm still trying to get used to the change, so this might not be the best advice.

 

[Drakken]

Thanks for the advice. I play with aggressive AI some of the time. I actually believe it hampers the AI opponenents as they fight amongst themselves often. I play on very crowded maps as I don't like having to manage 30-40 cities later in the game. I also play with raging Barbarians as a crowded map lends to less barb pops anyway. the real hangup may be that I play with no tech trading which I believe makes the game even more difficult because you can't take advantage of beelining down one research field.