First attempt at King difficulty.

[Chee]

I won a science victory in turn 324 in my first game after moving up from Prince. I was America (random) and played standard sized continents map, standard speed.

I am now not sure whether to continue playing King for a while or move straight up to Emperor?

 

[notadummy]

I would say to keep playing around at king for a little bit because the jump from king to emperor is quite a big one. (Unless you feel like you absolutely dominated your last game)

 

[NotSure]

I don't think there's a big difference. Emperor is my favorite level. The AI gets just enough bonuses at this level to make the game entertaining but, even under the worst of circumstances, you should never be in danger of losing. If you want to play a game that the AI might win you have to go all the way to the top two levels, but I think that may change soon. Anyway, might as well give it a shot.

 

[drubell]

That seems like a pretty good science victory time for King. I'm moving from King to Emperor and the last science victory I did on King was 331 so you're ahead of me at least.

King taught me that being aggressive is good (and while Dom wasn't my favorite victory when the game came out, 90% of my wins are Dom now), but in Emperor you need to know -when- to be aggressive.

You do notice patterns though. If your neighbor goes honor expect early war. If they covet your lands there's going to be a problem. But for some reason I'm having trouble keeping my tech rate up when making sure I have ample defenses built, which is odd because I had no problem keeping the top tech on King. Maybe it's because I don't go for Great Library on Emperor because I can expect at that level that I won't get it.

 

[zonik77]

I won my first science game a few days ago, also at king. But I will play some more games at that level, since I feel that I have not all under control. I won this science game, but it's hard for me calibrate science, or culture, with troops production. I won my last game because nobody dow me, working hard with diplo, and I had ridicolous production. I feel I had luck, that's all...

 

[Chee]

I was very surprised to win so convincingly on my first attempt, which is why I am considering jumping up another level immediately. I had half the score of Arabia for most of the game, they absolutely dominated China and Korea, taking them both out (I helped a bit with Korea by taking 3 of their cities that bordered mine). That was all the warfare I needed.

Arabia shared my border for most of the game after taking out China and Korea but I managed to remain on friendly terms with them (their military score was twice mine, despite me having more advanced units). I just sat loads of infantry on the border with artillery behind, seemed to deter them. I upgraded them to mech / rocket asap too.

I had about 5 great scientists saved, plus a great engineer so got rocketry and the other techs rapidly. I used my great engineer to build the spaceship factory and got the win. Also did lots of research agreements along the way.

I don't think I would have got the win first time, if it wasn't for all the excellent information I have read on this forum since I started playing CiV again about a week ago (after a 12 month break).

One thing I noticed at King level, the AI seemed far more agressive in general. The game finished with only 4 civs, and started with 8. I took out none of them! Never saw this at Prince level....

 

[blackcatatonic]

I would keep playing. My first King game was an utter disaster; my second I won comfortably without even getting DoWed by anyone who actually posed a threat (Nebuchadnezzar was right next to me but I squished him quite quickly). So I'd say experiment a bit more. One thing I like to do before moving up a level (though this is just me) is to try to win by every victory condition.

 

[Brichals]

Emperor isn't that much harder than King but it is a different playstyle.

The AI has much more money so you have to be good at using that. Be good on trades, sell open borders etc. The pace of the game is much faster due to this. But the Ai empire is generally stronger so it makes the game more fun. My enjoyment has skyrocketed since playing emperor.

You could also set up a map type and civ type you want and reroll a couple of starts until you get a nice one. That's worth a level of difficulty in itself.

 

[PhilBowles]

Emperor isn't that much harder than King but it is a different playstyle.

The AI has much more money so you have to be good at using that. Be good on trades, sell open borders etc. The pace of the game is much faster due to this. But the Ai empire is generally stronger so it makes the game more fun. My enjoyment has skyrocketed since playing emperor.

City-states and diplomacy are also much more dynamic - it's my favourite level as well. CSes will attack people for you, capture cities, attack their own rival CSes, move quite some way from their borders... AI civs make a lot of use of DoW and DoF, quite often with something resembling logic behind their choices.

 

[Chee]

Cool, Emperor sounds a lot of fun.

Might give it a go, what's the worst that could happen?

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

I just finished my first king game and won a diplomacy victory. Alright in truth I did have to restart the game from turn 1 thrice to get the win but still I did win it eventually. I was actually quite pleased with my self after starting off with a large science deficit by the end I hat three more tecks then the next biggest civ and way more than any one else.

I too was debating weather or not to move up another difficulty level but I think I will try a couple more victory type at king before I do. want to make sure It wasn't a fluke.