Finally won on Emperor level

[Petrus Octavian]

I used to play Civ 1 on my Amiga back in the days, but the only time I managed to win (on King level) was when I stole the tech that allows building of nukes, and then in one fell swoop nuked and conquered all the opposing civs cities in one turn. With no serious opposition I won the space race.

Recently I used the 475.05 MS-DOS version, played as the Romans on a large map, and using the Chariot Blitzkrieg strategy it was surprisingly/disappointingly easy to win, compared to playing the peaceful civ trying to win the space race.

Except for the English, all civs were located on one big continent and I comquered the continent 660 BC.
I had two Chariots outside the gates of London, but seeing the City Walls I decided to move on. Much later (1635) I bombed the defenders of London and captured it with one Armor. It turned out that the English had never expanded from London despite being on a large island, and London was landloacked.
I got a score of 1446 and a civ rating of 144%. But would I have gotten better or worse score if I either defeated the English ASAP (I would have built Diplomats to try and sabotage the walls) or if I won by being first on Alpha Centauri?
In other words, does the game reward war, treachery and nuclear war more than a peaceful and enlighthened rule?

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

Congratulations on your victory.
These days I only play at King level and I really don't care about the score.
However, as far as I can remember from reading about it on «Sid Meier's Civilization or Rome in 640k a Day» (by Johnny L. Wilson and Alan Emrich), the score for conquering the world is always higher than the score for winning by space race. So, to answer your last question, it seems that the game indeed rewards war.
But please note that nuclear war causes pollution and you get penalized in terms of score points if there is pollution. So, to maximize your score I believe you should conquer the world, the sooner the better, without using nuclear weapons.

 

[RedKi-rr]

Now you can try to play with only one city with Space Race) On Emperor it is a very interesting game, and even on King. When you start it seems impossible...then you start explore the game and it is found out to be very deep and interesting...)

 

[Ronito60]

Sid's mistake was rewarding the conquer the world game with more points than the spaceship game. The spaceship game is the only way to play under Emperor level and the best score is 2,169 points to date. All ye conquer the world players can't hang!

 

[mezalou]

I play CIV for 20 years now, and i had never won one game in emperor mode ... (Without cheats of course). You make me dream...

 

[serega071079]

Never thought of myself as a master of civ - my best game was on prince level.
But you are master)

 

[InnateGamer]

Watch my latest uploaded video on youtube, I finally researched Robotics and lots of other technology before 1AD on emperor+2, two steps above emperor! I had a lucky start finding an advanced tribe on my first turn, and some other auspicious things happened, but still, that's Robotics before 1AD.

 

[loopinaloop]

on emperor+2, two steps above emperor!

Excuse me? Is there a way to higher the difficulty level? I love this oldschool graphics and I would be more then happy to make Civ1 challanging again. Feeling nostalgic? Keep in touch!

 

[Dack]

Excuse me? Is there a way to higher the difficulty level?

The CIV Difficulty level is stored in a 16 bit word at offset 000A hex in the SVE file (assuming the base address of the SVE file is 0000). The normal values are 0-Cheftan 1-warlord 2-Prince 3-King 4-Emperor
The low order byte is what you want to alter (000A).
Get A hex editor, open up a SVE file, alter the byte at 000A, save the file, run CIV.

There is a excellent hex file editor, and for free I might add at Freeware Hex Editor XVI32

 

[loopinaloop]

The CIV Difficulty level is stored in a 16 bit word at offset 000A hex in the SVE file (assuming the base address of the SVE file is 0000). The normal values are 0-Cheftan 1-warlord 2-Prince 3-King 4-Emperor
The low order byte is what you want to alter (000A).
Get A hex editor, open up a SVE file, alter the byte at 000A, save the file, run CIV.

There is a excellent hex file editor, and for free I might add at Freeware Hex Editor XVI32

Why I've never came across this!? Do you know any other "spices"?

Btw., is it possible to permanently alter game files so that all difficulty levels would be +2? What is the maximum level implementable?

I was thinking about making a new, upgraded world map that would be agreed by whole Civ community. This map shipped with is awefully wrong.

Any fan patches?

 

[Dack]

Originally Posted by loopinaloop
... difficulty levels ... What is the maximum level implementable?
Is it a byte or word? Signed or unsigned? 127 or 255 for a byte, 32767 far a word. I would imagine it gets unplayable at very low numbers

I was thinking about making a new, upgraded world map that would be agreed by whole Civ community.
Look at the following threads, also do a search I have a vague memory of other Earth maps.

Modding Civilization I - Earth Map
A third Earth map
Custom maps for CIV1

 

[loopinaloop]

The CIV Difficulty level is stored in a 16 bit word at offset 000A hex in the SVE file (assuming the base address of the SVE file is 0000). The normal values are 0-Cheftan 1-warlord 2-Prince 3-King 4-Emperor
The low order byte is what you want to alter (000A).

I cannot find the "000A" but I've searched on it on Google. Is it the 11th binary code/number in the first row? Just between "Ot" and "Attila" on the sidebar with code translation.

 

[Vanadis]

A win by war reports much depending of its speed, while the space race seems to be longer but safer. To maximize the score, it must in fact play a form of self time trial. Here the game gets interesting

 

[wujinlong]

I play CIV for 10 years now, and i had never won one game in emperor mode ... (Without cheats of course). You make me dream... but. I won. in king mode

 

[Dancika]

I don't understand, how you were unable to win in emperor mode. it's not so hard, without cheats too. you should kill all enemies in the early ages, befor AD, when they haven't got enough power to defeat you. Practice, practice, practice CIV 1 can't be fed up

 

[Whelkman]

Practice, Practice, Practice or Chariots, Chariots, Chariots.

 

[JMKosaty]

I play CIV for 10 years now, and i had never won one game in emperor mode ... (Without cheats of course). You make me dream... but. I won. in king mode

I play only on emperor level and I played it for years and won many times.

From my experience the level of difficulty on emperor level depends on civilisation you start with and the location.
For exaple It is easy to win on emperor level plaing on earth when you start with russians and very difficult to win starting with english.

 

[C1v1l1z@t10n]

I play only on emperor level and I played it for years and won many times.

From my experience the level of difficulty on emperor level depends on civilisation you start with and the location.
For exaple It is easy to win on emperor level plaing on earth when you start with russians and very difficult to win starting with english.

I played Civ1 now for 20 years and I win close to everytime on Emperor without cheats. If I can not develope alone on an island I let the other raise in technology and then take Steel/Railroad and from there no one can stop me... yes I fall into the dark side and sometimes need to use a nuke to calm a civilization that is too close to send up a spaceship

 

[jetnightshade]

I've never won on Emperor and I've played it for 20 years now.

 

[humbe]

Everyone may draw different lines for what they consider cheating.. On the extreme end, some people alter the save files with binary hex editors. On the bit less extreme side, some people take advantage of game changing bugs, such as settlers finishing anything in a turn. Then you can take advantage of features that was likely not intended, like buying something to be built, and change what is built afterwards. There's load/save, which can be used to pre-scout map, retry instances of bad luck etc. And then some people might consider doing something cheating, just because the AI is unable to take advantage of the same.

If you want to compare results with others, it is crucial that the others have a fairly similar view of what is cheating..

Personally, I load/save to get away from having to restart games too often, maybe check out what happened if I did something else at some point in time.

Winning early is pretty easy on emperor.
- Everyone starts out equal on emperor too..
- AI don't know what is smartest to research first.
- AI doesn't seem to trade techs between one another.
- AI doesn't know how to make coordinated combat effects, or take advantage of their units.

If you stay inside your shell and try to build up your civilization peacefully, then there's the question whether you do that optimal enough to outspeed the AI. If the AI ends up outspeeding you, then the game might get tougher and tougher the longer you wait..

However, if you develop well and smart you can easily outspeed AI, making the game easier and easier to win the more time goes. If you play smart, you can launch your spaceship long before christ is born, making the AI not even remotely challenging even on emperor.