First of all, congratulations on winning your first game at emperor level! I’m sure it will happen again …
Personally I don't try to win by conquest because I find that it lacks subtlety and you miss the essential aspects of the game (race for technology, trade, space race, ...).
I've been playing emperor level for over 10 years and winning about 3 out of 4 games.
My victories are mostly by the space race, I would say 9 times out of 10. The conquest game is only when I'm on a Pangee type map, or when the opposing civilizations are very close to each other.
I generally lose when I have 2 or 3 or 4 perfectionist civilizations as opponents who are close to each other: they are very efficient in technological research, and carry out a lot of exchanges between them and often at 1 AD we have to fight with knights against armor, sails against battleships! In this case, it’s over for me and I leave …
I can give you my “Emperor-level” strategy below.
First of all :
- I play version 475 v05 (or v03 or v04) which is a more complex version, precisely made to make victory by conquest more complicated
- I play on random standard maps, with a random civilization and 7 civs
- I NEVER cheat (build roads in 1 turn, save/reload after fights, huts, ...)
- I modified the game on 2 points:
* Chariots 4/1/2/40 ---> 3/1/2/30 to make the conquest strategy more difficult and risky. It also gives interest to have knights (4/2/2/40) and therefore to seek feudalism and chivalry, which otherwise are useless!
* Legions 3/1/1/20 ---> 3/2/1/30 to give more interest to this unit than we usually never do
MY EMPEROR STRATEGY
/!\ Spoiler alert !
To win, you must not be left behind in technology race and you must implement ALL the methods possible to obtain new techs:
- at the beginning, research rate at 100%, stay in despotism
- dedicate one or two cities that produce shields to the Colossus or better the Great Library, which generaly leads you to get 3 to 7 free techs, before the University is discovered
- quickly explore all continent to find and explore all nearby huts and discover neighboring civilizations
- send diplomats to make embassies and then to slaw down the development of all opposing civilizations and block the moves of their troops
- if a powerfull civ want to extort you a tech or money, if your army is not ready, give it to her, because you will destroy her in few turns !
- only build settlers for making roads and towns, diplomats for stealing and blocking, chariots (and then catapults) for quick conquest
- before each city conquest, steal 1 tech with a diplomat and chose another when entering the city
- when attacking the city, scroll through all attacking units to play veteran units first
- explore the coasts of your continent (triremes) to discover nearby territories and neighboring civilizations. Do not seek the systematic conquest of these civilizations if they are non-violent and if they favor the republic (Babylonian, Chinese, American, Roman, …)
- finish the conquest of your entire continent then produce mainly settlers to create cities all over the territory and start irrigating grassland tiles and mining hills before changing govt, a barracks in a city producing lot of shields in order to produce catapults/knights to secure the borders coasts, caravans for trade and rush the wonders
- if the palace is near the frontiers, rebuild it in the center of the territory to reduce corruption (sell the old one in the same turn as the new one ends to earn some money)
- make trade as soon as possible with the "civilized" neighbors which put themselves in Republic. No need to set up trade with aggressive civs, which spend their time fighting because their cities are underdeveloped and they produce few trade.
- as soon as you get religion, and even before, rush JSB Cathedral. As soon as you get it, change govt to the Republic.
- from there, develop granaries, temples and libraries
- continue the exploration of the world with sails and diplomats for the huts and the discovery of other civilizations
- place diplomats near each "friendly" city, so that if the civ declares war, you can steal a tech from each city
- continue science development to reach the Railroad and create lot of settlers to quickly put rails everywhere
- then discover Industrialization. Put taxes at 80/90% to buy a factory in each city. A tip is to make a Cathedral or University, buy it, and then switch to the factory, so as not to lose the last turn of production. -Replace all old ships (Triremes, Sails, Frigates) by Transports that do not produce sad faces. Also begin Women's Suffrage.
- if corruption becomes too important, move to Democracy. Raise the luxury rate a bit (basically convert saved corruption in Luxury to avoid government collapses)
- as soon as the Electronics is reached, rush the Hoover Dam. Often I switch Women's Suffrage production, which is well advanced, towards the Hoover Dam.
- often, at the end of the game, your old friends which have already discovered Automobile try to invade you, while you have only Musketeer/Knight/Catapults. This is where you want to give up (!), but YOU MUST NOT ! : Sell all the buildings of the cities that will fall, produce 2 diplomats. As soon as the city is conquered, steal a tech, try to reconquer it with a lot of knights and catapults, and if that doesn't work, conquer it by subversion with the second diplomat. It is often very expensive, in this case sell the expensive buildings of other cities (for example 200gold/Factory). As soon as the city is recaptured, CHOOSE an opponent's technology : Automobile or Conscription. Update the defense of all exposed (coastal) cities with these new model of units
- rebuild the sold buildings, and resume the technological race, and then the space race by putting the science rate to the maximum possible.
- at the end of the game it is difficult to create new trade routes with other civilizations because of the enemy ships which patrol. In this case, trade with our own largest cities. The ideal being that each city has its 3 trade routes
- of course, avoid producing the Manhattan Project!
- build Apollo Program as soon as you have discovered robotics and can build the Space Ship
- from there, set the taxes to 80, 90 or 100% and possibly sell the Libraries / Universities / Granaries / … to buy the components of the Space Ship, if other civilizations are ahead of their own Space Ship.
- the Space Ship has the maximum Components/Structure, and only 1 of each Module. So, it takes 7~8 years to reach Alpha Centauri! If a competing ship take off before yours, you have to do the calculation backwards to find out which year at the latest yours can leave to overtake it on the line!
- when your own Space Ship has left, you have seven years to try to increase the final score : clean up pollution, put science back to the max possible to get Future Techs, delete units that generate sad faces (bombers, nukes), increase Luxury rate, and disband settlers in cities under 10 or create new cities with them, to increase Population score
- build only SDI, to avoid nuclear attacks, and buildings to reduce pollution (mass transit / recycling centers).
Et voilà ! The final score is often less than a quick victory by conquest, but the games are so thrilling !!!
Finally, 2 remarks:
- this game is often reproached in forums/reviews, that your battleship was destroyed while fighting a phalanx. It is true that there is this small probability, but it works both ways. Several times I have seen an armor lose against a caravan or a battleship lose against a transport. This allows you to keep a little suspense for each fight, even those that are "won in advance"!
- by following the forums on this game, we regularly see brave fans who wish to "rewrite" the entire game, in a more modern language, to make better graphics, ... We see that the project is generally abandoned before to succeed (unsolvable bugs, translation problems, no time, … etc.).
I think this game is perfect with its imperfections and that there is no interest to redo everything, and in addition it is very complicated.
What would be very useful, on the other hand, would be to improve the AI a little (strategies with nukes on the capital and invasion to bring the Space Ship back, bypass strategy when a square is too well defended to be crossed (Fortress on a mountain), do not always attack the same coastal towns, choose the attack order of the different available units, ...).
This task seems to me more “reachable” for a motivated programmer
My wife tells me that when I retire, I'm going to be sedentary and bored.
I won't be bored until I eradicate these pretentious Frenchmen, these stupid Mongols, these hypocritical Indians, these effeminate Romans, and these sneaky Aztecs !
I’m sooo addict to this game !
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