Frustration on Emperor in Conquerors

[ctweedy001]

If an answer to this topic has already been posted, feel free to quick link it because I looked through the forum and couldn't find anything like it.

OK, it took me forever to get Conquerors, but I did. Here's my frustration . . . on a regular map with 8 civs the same thing always happens:

1) I'm even with the other civs as we hit the second age,

2) I start falling hopelessly behind in tech during the start of this second age.

3) If I attempt the military route, I destroy almost the an entire neighbouring civ and in exchange they offer me MAYBE one tech for peace . . . but that's useless as I'm now 5-6 techs behind the others.

4) At the point that I start falling behind in tech, I start going zero tech, all gold in an attempt to buy techs off the others civs . . . yet they won't sell them to me. Well maybe some dumb a$$ offer like 324 Gold + (34) gold per turn.

So how do you beat the comp on Emperor in Conquerors? I can't out-race them in tech, I can't force tech out of my neighbours because even when almost dead they don't exchange it for peace, and I can't buy it. So how the hell do you even stay in the same ballpark as the other civs technologically? Thanks

 

[Megabyte]

Hi!

My general strat in the 1. age is to tech my way to republic , while conquering my two nearest neighbours and sending 2 to 4 galleys along the coast in search for unknown civs. That should give oneself a nice empire plus your the one who knows all other civs while they usually first meet in late medieval age.When reaching republic I usually set science to 0% and start being the tech trader.Just buy / steal all techs you can get and sell them to the others. Of course oneself should have a good army because when stealing tech fails,war is likely to occur.
Now comes my peaceful building phase until i have reached communism ( i usually ignore democracy) . I build at least a temple,marketplace and a factory in each city. When reaching the middle of the industrial age after trying to build the Hoover Damm project i have begun building a army and (later) a navy and airforce to reach my final goal : The conquests of the World !!
Hope this could help a bit.

Have fun !

 

[El Loco]

You can either build the Great Library, or better yet alow an ai to build the great lib. send research to minium and then conquer the city with great library and you will get every know tech and become the tech leader. Hope it helps

 

[bingen]

4)324+34gpt does not seem unreasonable to me. Methinks you should practice your trading. Learn how the AI values tech. The main trick is not to buy one tech at a time but to buy techs when you have the oppurtunity to trade that new tech for further techs and perhaps even make your money back as well.

With Republic+Libraries I think it is possible to outtech the AIs in the MA even on Emperor. Emperor is the cutoff point though.

 

[rbis4rbb]

The War Academy has some great articles on strats. Welcome to Civ Fanatics!

 

[Tomoyo]

The most important thing to remember for higher levels is that you can, will, and even probably should, fall behind. (Well maybe not should) The human usually can pull even/ahead in the Industrial Ages by getting the ToE and actually building factories, unlike the AI. In the Medieval Ages, tech gets more expensive, especially Feudalism in C3C. Learn to tell which techs the AIs ignore, and also, if there are two continents, and your suicide galleys made it, make sure you don't sell the contacts, because you can get more value from using the leverage to trade techs (if the AIs don't know each other, the pay more for techs, but if you know everyone, you pay less).

 

[Samson]

To do good "pointy stick reaserch" (go to war and get techs for peace) you have to be quite carefull. I am not sure of the details of how it works, but it is something like 20 gold for each point of war weariness difference between the 2 civs (it does not matter if you are not in a war weariness government, it still counts the points). To do this effectivly you need to understand how war wearines works (reading http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_war_weariness.shtml should do it) and have a good kill ratio. Artillery can really help.