First serious try on Emperor - 1330 AD - Can I still win?

[OldDays]

Hi everyone...

...thanks to this great forum I recently beefed up the difficulty levels in my cIV BTS games.

So here is a save of my first serious try at Emperor with the allmighty Shaka. I basically tried to REX as much as possible, wage a lot of war, and somehow keep economy going.

It is now 1330 and i allready wiped out Gilgamesh in the beginning (2 Cities: Mutal,, Lakamha) and just have finished of Jao a few turns ago (5 cities: Lisbon, Coimbra, Guimares and Evora, one razed) who had build The Statue Of Zeus in between our two wars... so now its mine

This sounds quite good, but my economy is so terrible because of the wars that my teching was very slow. Alexander declared war 2 turns ago and took Evora, which I took back with my main stack nearby one turn later. I think I can fend him off. I hate him... he is one of the most anoying AIs

My economy is just bouncing back and i was starting catching up in techs... I STILL do not have Civil Service which is soooooo

On the other hand I am 1st in growth rate and 2nd in land (You can make that a draw because I am nearly even with the leading AI and from what I can see I think my land is way better)... my espionage sucks, so there is good and bad aspects of my empire. there is a nice place for a good fishing village left and one for another mediocre city. After those cities are build I will be even with Gengis who is the leader in points... Saladin is quite scary techwise

What shall I do now? Fend off Alex of course... but after that? I lost track now that Jao is eliminated, and having a plan is vital on emperor I guess. I think I can still win... but how is it done best?

 

[MrFelony]

post some screen shots. a lot of people, including myself, are too lazy to look at saves since it requires me to download a save i dont need, move the file to the necessary location, and THEN open civ up just to look at it. it sounds like you dont have many court houses. have you build shaka's UB in all your cities? with CH's and his UB thats -75% to city upkeep. that's insane! whip courthouses in all of your cities if need be. do you have several cities focusing on growing cottages? you should have designated at least one or two cities to growing cottages in the beginning. that's something I always do when i know i'm going to be expanding like crazy. post some screen shots and then maybe you can get some more advice

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Thats very late for civil service - but Shaka has a great UB as MrFelony points out. To catchup on techs, the most efficient approach is espionage. Put it all into the nearest tech leader to you (reduces distance costs). Build a ton of spies and set your science slider to zero and max out the espionage slider.

The key at this point is how far ahead are the AIs. I've caught up on a seven tech deficit using Espionage from about that point in the game. But I was a little more advanced than you sound to be. If they are 15 or so techs ahead you are probably toast.

 

[MrFelony]

another thing is trade routes, trade routes, trade routes. try and increase the number you have via currency or (it's too late now) the Great lighthouse. open boarders with people who will likely bring in good revenue. trade spare resources for other civs gold. not only does this help boost your economy, but depending on what you trade them, it will dampen theirs by depriving them of gold

 

[qwertz]

a lot of people, including myself, are too lazy to look at saves since it requires me to download a save i dont need, move the file to the necessary location, and THEN open civ up just to look at it.

you can just click the save and choose the "open" option. It will automatically download start civ and load the save.


I don't have a lot of experience with emperor either, but I don't think your situation is that bad. It is quite late for geting civil service, but as far as I could see from the save, the other AIs aren't that good either. Was liberalism discovered yet?
I also noticed that you are in quite good diplomatic position. You should spread buddhism to all of your citys and try to get appoctolic palace resident. Than you can try to pass the holly war vs. allex option. You can also use it to stop the war vs. genghis once he backstabes you.
You should also try to get some techs that the AIs doon't know jet and than trade it for something more usefull. (Paper would be a good option, as you can also get the worldmap, which could be quite usefull in ou situation)

 

[MrFelony]

my save files go to my desktop instead of my saves file, and i use steam so they come in as "steam" files so i'm not sure if that'd work...though i'll try it. that and when people ask for advice, they should make it as easy for the people giving it as possible. I simply don't want to expend the energy to open the save...

 

[OldDays]

Hi guys!

Thanks for the advice so far. There is some good hints in there

I am going to wait a little before playing on because I am still unsure about how to proceed exactly... tho a viable strategie is developing in my head

I built the Ikahanda and court houses in nearly every city I got and it is also the first builds in my last 2 taken cities from Jao, so in this section I did an exemplary (not to say fantastic ) job...

...despite the fact that the 1st war against Jao was a true nailbiter. I had to go into anarchy because my units were about to go on strike... one turn later I was quite lucky, because Jao tried to go for a weakly defended core city of mine right north of his bordercity that I was going to attack from the east. I managed to raze the city and made a successfull run for his foodoverloaded Capital ..then I made peace and swallowed his last three cities up some 20 turns later with War Elephants.

I have food in abundance in the two Capitals I captured from Gilgamesh and Jao and in my own, so I decided to cottage everything possible all over the place in ALL cities to match the emporer AIs research (especially because my Empire deserves the name Grassland Country )... which leaves me a little weak on the military side... nervertheless I am allready outgrowing everyone

Oh!!! I forgot to tell that a GP is about to arrive in 1 turn and I will get civil service in 5 turns (finally )... Liberalism was not yet discovered...

My next task should be to spread out buddhism in all my cities as qwertz pointed out to try and get that shabby AP under my control. Espionage also needs some improvement to gain some viable information at least if not stealing my way up the tech ladder...

The problem is that I need to do all of this while keeping Alex outside and probably some backstabbing bastardos like Isabella and Gengis... I dont know much about Saladins behaviour in this regard. Is he a backstabber?

I have a small defence stack on my border to Alex (just retook my city with it) but I need way more troops to be save because I have a loooong border. And there is at least one big stack wit lots of catapults wandering around in alex empire... maybe more (mine are currently used up from war )

To be continued...

 

[MrFelony]

also, you may want to look at the "rebuilding your economy" section in my earth 18 civ immortal domination tutorial. the effects of being organized, building courthouses, and maximizing traderoutes/commerce tiles is shown pretty well i think. try to run merchant specialists and build/work cottages on rivers.