Going back to Emperor level

[Fippy]

Civics & production / units go hand in hand, there are 2 efficient ways:
* whip everything down, knowing that the size & unhappy of your cities afterwards will not matter if you defeat AIs and take their stuff
* Workshops + Caste + guilds & chemistry + ideally Communism for SP which can take some time

You should pick one of those, combined with which units you will use for attacking.
Tanks i.e. would never be done via whipping, cos at this point your cities will be big and full of nice hammer tiles.
Cannons (Steel) comes before Communism usually, so whipping can be the stronger option still.

Your save lacks such a plan, you are not mass building workshops (cities would be big enuf),
and also not whipping.
Lumbermills are maybe the best example of not yet being aware of snowball playing

Those improvements are like something between slavery & workshops,
not many hammers..no commerce early (cottage blocked by forest)..no chop hammers earlier for a boost..
they reflect the state of your game, playing slow (which can be fun),
but good leaders are greedy and want things done now ~~

 

[Gumbolt]

Looked at 1040ad save.
Your capital is size 15 and has 4-5+ unimproved tiles. Including 3 forest covering grassland rivers. All of which should of been cottaged by 1ad or so. By 1040ad most of your city tiles should of been improved and roaded.
Chop! Why are you keeping all this forest? All those juicy grassland river tiles hidden away!
Whip! Whipping units really save 4-8+ turns on most unit builds.
Trade as has already been mentioned.

Overall your game play is below what I would expect for emperor. Albeit you have managed to take a vassal in your second save. I would of rushed SB with HA much sooner.

 

[lymond]

(AIs bonuses do progress as the game progresses)

Yep, just based on what I've seen so far, @noontide, while I appreciate your braving out the higher levels, you seem to be missing some very important basic concepts with this game. Of course, you can learn all that here. Keep playing Emperor though, as you wish, but the focus needs to be on the early game basics not really discussions right now about late game stuff. My's comment about "snowballing" is a big aspect of the game.