[G&K] King too easy, Emperor too hard. Tips?

[Danei]

SSIA, basically.

King games aren't very challenging for me anymore. I can basically win with any VC I want, because I end up with an early tech/culture/military/gold lead in every game.

On Emperor, I keep getting my butt kicked. I do occasionally win, but it seems like mostly luck when it happens. Usually, when I lose it's because somebody keeps throwing units at me so I have to defend myself, and then another AI off on another continent runs away with science or culture and I'm too tied up fending off ceaseless attacks

I seem to have the most luck with domination victories, unsurprisingly, but since I prefer science and culture victories, I was wondering if there were any general tips for this difficulty level that anyone could give me (and yes, I know that culture victories are often considered to be harder to achieve than the others).

I ignore ancient/classical wonders for the most part, unless my civ/terrain/marble situation is particularly suited to nabbing one. As I understand that keeping up with tech is imperative, I usually I go for some sort of national college rush with my first city before expanding. Is that a good idea? Or should I expand sooner and build more libraries before NC?

Related to the above, when should I build my first settler?

I'm not really sure how many units I should be building to ward off early AI aggression, and when I should build them, either.

What about some generalized build order ideas for new cities after my capital? In trying to keep my science up, I usually try to settle cities with big growth potential and improve the land with farms early on, as well as one high-production city for pumping out barracks/armory units.

So really, I'm just looking for whatever advice people happen to have, for emperor difficulty. Thanks!

 

[Magil]

On AI Aggression, it should be easy enough to get out 6-8 archers and upgrade them to composite bowmen (and later crossbowmen if you feat longswordmen may attack), and that should last you well into the medieval era in terms of holding back potential assaults.

However, to do this, you need more cities. Even a tradition opening shouldn't hold at 1 city until NC, try to get at least four. However, this may depend on what policy push you're going for, as obviously liberty will want to expand more, though since you say you stay at 1 city for a long time before expansion I'm assuming you're more of a tradition person.

Even tradition should rush out to 3-4 cities as quickly as you can, claiming luxuries and selling any excess (stay happy, but you don't need to be far into positive happiness) to the AI.

As for building settlers, I prefer to buy most of my settlers and maybe build 1 or 2 throughout the course of the game if playing tradition. You should be able to do this by selling luxuries to the AI. This is actually easier at higher difficulty levels because the AI will have more gold. Producing settlers stunts your growth too much.

 

[Danei]

However, to do this, you need more cities. Even a tradition opening shouldn't hold at 1 city until NC, try to get at least four. However, this may depend on what policy push you're going for, as obviously liberty will want to expand more, though since you say you stay at 1 city for a long time before expansion I'm assuming you're more of a tradition person.

I usually decide on tradition/liberty based on my civ and how much land I have. If I don't think I'll be able to get more than 4 cities without warring or making other leaders mad, I usually go tradition, and otherwise liberty.

Even with liberty I do the NC rush, though sometimes I have a 2nd city by that point, in which case I sell luxuries to buy the library, if possible.

And sometimes I do honor, but only for variety or if I'm using a civ that benefits more from it (I don't have one particular civ I like to play; I usually just play whatever strikes my fancy, or random it).

I'm particularly interested in how to balance science buildings vs. culture buildings when pursuing a cultural victory. As in, which are more important to build first?

But anyway, I'm going to give expanding before NC a try. What's the best way to keep my science up? Should I build libraries first in every city and try to grow them ASAP, or is that not worth it?

As for building settlers, I prefer to buy most of my settlers and maybe build 1 or 2 throughout the course of the game if playing tradition. You should be able to do this by selling luxuries to the AI. This is actually easier at higher difficulty levels because the AI will have more gold. Producing settlers stunts your growth too much.

That's a good idea that I haven't thought of. I usually buy settlers instead of building them if I can, but so far I haven't been selling luxuries specifically to buy them.

 

[Scarpa]

I play my emperor games as semi-domination unless going pure culture. That means I pick fights with the strongest AIs in order to slow them down and prevent the run away. I do this mainly because I am too impatient for 'optimal' play and thus am slow to victory (usually around T390-415). If cultural I do the three city turtle and use CS allies and AI friendships to blunt attacks.

 

[MarSch]

I’m in a similar boat with my current situation. Playing my first Emperor game with Aztecs. I’m trying for a cultural victory (perhaps a poor choice!).

Used Tradition 4 cities opening (but only managed to get 3 cities). Got a few early wonders. Used Legalism abuse to pop Opera Houses and then built Hermitage asap. My culture is going great, but my growth and science are both terrible.

Carthage refuses to negotiate peace unless I give up one of my cities in the negotiation, which I’m not prepared to do. Fortunately they can only get at me via a narrow path after bypassing another neighbour who they are also constantly at war with, so I’m pretty well protected for now.

The other neighbour is very friendly to me, but it is huge and far more tech advanced than me, and to make it worse…it is Arabia!

Fortunately I have been able to hold off my seemingly inevitable death for a while because all of my neighbours are at war with each other, and seem to love me (except Carthage).

But when they are rolling across my land with rocket artillery and using bombers on each other, and I am rocking a small handful of musketmen and crossbows, the future does not look bright!

To get my tech up I think I will need to grow my population (my 3 cities are barely over 10 pop). Just got fertilizer which is helping, but may have to move city focus off of production or culture to food. This will mean it will take around 10 turns more to build units or buildings, but I am so far behind in tech that I cannot continue with such a low population and expect to survive.

Have not been strong enough to puppet anyone yet, which was my initial pre-game goal before the harsh realities of Emperor hit me in the face.

So, unless anyone else has some bright ideas for me, I will focus on growth, then when I am tech-advanced enough to get some decent defensive units, will revert to culture focus, load up all my specialist slots and hunker down and start praying (oh yeah – my faith is pretty good too).

So sorry OP – don’t have any advice for you (except – use the Tradition 4-cities opening and buy settlers, don’t build). Just wanted to let you know I sympathise. Emperor is a huge step up in difficulty from King, especially for culture VC.

 

[Tachii]

^ Aztecs and culture victory is a really great and somewhat challenging game. Here's my recount of what happened in my last game with them if anyone care to read long walls of texts:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11736366&postcount=180


On the usual Immortal set up, 4 archers are usually enough coupled with 1-2 melee units to defend yourself. So at Emperor probably 3 archers would do the job.

As for when to settle, you usually want 3-4 cities in the first 50-80 turns or so no matter if you're going tall or wide. On higher difficulties you can often "cheat" by selling your luxuries very early on to buy the first settler. On lower difficulties the AI doesn't make as much gold, so if you're producing the settler, it depends on a couple of things.

First, if your capital isn't really growing beyond 4 population, start the settler (usually around turn 30 or so). If it is growing, but has low production, I'd wait until your worker get a productive tile in there, then start.

I often seem to build the NC after my 3rd city. If I have enough gold I'd settle my fourth and buy the library there to build the NC.

As for military production, it really depend. If you have a warmonger AI near you, you better produce 2-3 archers with your capital, and create the third with the second city ASAP (but usually after you build the library in your capital). Actually, archer for the first production of the second city is usually a good choice (if you are going tall you don't need to build the monument first). If you are going wide then I'd still build the archer first, just use a productive tile and/or settle on a hill to get your archer below 20 turns.

If you aren't close to a warmonger civ, just have 2-3 archers so your military size isn't embarrassing low and can do some CS quests and protect your borders from barbs.

 

[superfeds]

If your cities are only at 10 pop there is a problem. Going tall usually means 3-4 high pop cities. Approaching 30 pop.

 

[MarSch]

Yes, that is the ultimate goal, but whether there is a problem or not depends on what stage of the game you are at. You don't start out with a 30pop.

Having said that, i am clearly too low on pop. At this stage I think I should be around 14 or 15, hence the imminent shift to food focus.

 

[smallfish]

On the usual Immortal set up, 4 archers are usually enough coupled with 1-2 melee units to defend yourself. So at Emperor probably 3 archers would do the job.

4 archers for Emperor, 5-6 CBs for Immortal.

 

[Tachii]

I'm mostly talking about Ancient/Classical periods though. CBs can defend against Pikemen so it's kind of overkill, depend what you think "early" is.

 

[smallfish]

CBs to take their cities in the first 100 turns. If you want to play peaceful, you can just sell it back after peace/capture.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

In general emperor games shouldn't be much harder than king, but due to more starting units for the AI, they can go wildly different.

One the one hand I had games where the AI didn't DOW me once until the very late game. On the other hand, I have also played games where I got denounced by Elizabeth at turn 6(!) and fought a 3-front war around turn 50.

Since early game warfare, esp. against multiple enemies, will set you back quite a bit, you might consider yourself unlucky. Sometimes there is really nothing you can do to prevent a DOW...

 

[jango76]

Yes, that is the ultimate goal, but whether there is a problem or not depends on what stage of the game you are at. You don't start out with a 30pop.

Having said that, i am clearly too low on pop. At this stage I think I should be around 14 or 15, hence the imminent shift to food focus.

Leaving your main cities on production focus for extended periods of time in the early to mid game is definitely not good. It's fine in short bursts to rush a wonder or crank out units in the heat of battle, but if you don't grow steadily then it's going to kill you in the long term.

 

[smallfish]

Leaving your main cities on production focus for extended periods of time in the early to mid game is definitely not good. It's fine in short bursts to rush a wonder or crank out units in the heat of battle, but if you don't grow steadily then it's going to kill you in the long term.

I find it okay for Emperor; just get those granaries, water mills and free Tradition aqueducts and you are good to go production-intensive.

 

[jango76]

In my experience, you'll still be growing sluggishly at best even with a full set of the early food-enhancing buildings. You might get away with it with a wonder like ToA (very hard to get, as the AI seems to prioritize it hard) or a food-enhancing religious belief, and doing things like building farms on riverside hills (which kind of defeats the objective).

In Vanilla, HG was the key to pulling this off: that would let you stay on production focus for a long time before growth slowed down. Probably good for balance that it got nerfed...

 

[superfeds]

I started watching Madjinns LPs and learned a lot about how to manage your starting game.

Paying attention the diplomatic side of things, and being aware of how your expansion affects their attitudes goes along way to avoiding early wars, or at least controlling who is going to DoW so you can be prepared.

You need to balance expansion with defense. Never expand more then you can defend. Rushing to Philosophy is pretty standard for the NC, but Id say going to construction first is more important. Walls and Comp Bowman will allow you to defend the cities you put up.

 

[Dtekkar]

Try experimenting with new civs/maps/strats on King, it'll deepen your understanding enough to go up a level after a few more games. If you want a fast track, watch let's plays (there is a sticked thread here with let's plays, some of those guys are VERY good).

The cliffs notes version is: War is inevitable, so science is everything. Get and sell luxuries, then get a national college or rapidly expand (taking construction to defend outposts). Get bows, fill borders (to -9), get to education. Use money to ally city-states. Grow cities, universities, sign RAs whenever you can. Science specialists. Done right you can pursue any victory type on any difficulty from this early game.

 

[gozpel]

King to Emperor isn't the BIG step, going Immortal is.

Build/buy 3-4 cities, make an army of a handful of archers and a couple of melee.

Your cities doesn't have to be in the best spot, but if you can grab a couple of luxes, you're set. The idea for you is to get a few good spots. The AI will come knocking on your door very soon and if you set up your defense with those archers and stuff, you'll rebuff them easily.

Stay happy as a civ, sell extras to buy more units or in friendly games libraries.

The faster you get to high power units, the safer you will be for the rest of the game. And always upgrade what you have.

I try to build 1-2 units in cities and add a granary in there now and again. Sometimes I just ignore shrines and monuments, but they should be on the priority list. It all depends what's going on around you, but build them first if you can and then go the army way.

 

[Danei]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. On reflection, I think I have trouble with trying to build too many buildings in my cities, so I'm going to work on that, and make more military units instead.

I also have trouble determining whether I should be assigning specialists or not in a particular city that isn't "done" growing. Is there some particular "desired rate of growth per city population" heuristic I can aim to have in each city, or is it so situational as to render such a thing counterproductive?

 

[EDaddy]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. On reflection, I think I have trouble with trying to build too many buildings in my cities, so I'm going to work on that, and make more military units instead.

I also have trouble determining whether I should be assigning specialists or not in a particular city that isn't "done" growing. Is there some particular "desired rate of growth per city population" heuristic I can aim to have in each city, or is it so situational as to render such a thing counterproductive?

It all depends on your type of victory. If you're playing culturally, hire artists as soon as a cultural building is built. The same is true for scientists for a science victory. Engineers on the other hand are good all-around specialists. They speed up production and give you a chance at a Great Engineer as well!

I finished my first Emperor game yesterday. It was a culture victory and I was amazed that I was able to win on my very first attempt at that skill level! Anyways, it is even more important to focus on military in Emperor. Your opponents are more aggressive in Emperor than in King and at the start of the game, your opponents will be more advanced than you. In about 10-20 turns depending on the civ, they will already have Writing while your still working on Pottery! Tabarnak's 4-city tradition is a good launchpad for starting an Emperor game.

In my game, I was Byzantine and I was next to Attila. That meant, I followed Tabarnak's guide to a tea since I knew he was coming for me. Attila attacked Liz first, but came after me and I easily repelled him. Liz was the game leader for this game so later on, I spied on her (and forgot the fact that she gets 2 spies instead of one) and she killed my lv3 spy! This resulted in an instant denouncement followed by a war (with Gustus) which didn't end until the game was almost over. Eventually, Mongolia and later Rome joined the war against England. Oddly enough, it worked out as I was able to take one of Liz's cities and since Liz was focused on the war, that meant she didn't focus on the space race!

I got lucky though. I was able to build key wonders I normally wouldn't get (i.e. Oracle/Alhambra) and be the first to get/enhance a religion cause I befriended a religious CS early on. I had the Tithe belief which paired with Big Ben and Mercantilism allowed me to buy up units to repel Liz's forces (which were mainly naval units.) There were alot of other things that went my way which included a whole bunch of Landsknecht offerings from an allied CS!

So the moral of the story? Build up your military early on and don't spy on Liz in the early game!