I recently moved up to Emperor difficulty, and from what I have seen the AI cheats way to much to make up for it's stupidity. I tried doing a science victory, and on turn 25, all the other AI have upwards of 30 science, while I am finishing my first campus with around 8 science. And to make matter worse, none of the AI had ANY campuses. What strategy can I use to get high science output?
Help for higher difficulties
- Thread starter ObberGobb
- Start date
danhynes
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2016
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- 68
On higher difficulties you will be significantly at a disadvantage early to mid game. One way to lessen this is to take over nearby city states or AI, or steal their settlers. You pretty much cannot compete early on science without going to war. In the mid game you can compete if you have a fair amount of cities. On deity I pretty much won't catch up to science until very late game and that is after conquering a few ais completely.
Send routes to scientific CS and use the +1spt/cpt policy... I've done cultural games where I did not build a single campus until size 14... (holy sites are better for getting tourism anyway) focus on culture and once you hit the +10%spt per suzerain policy you will melt your way through the rest of the tech tree.
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2011
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- 11,901
Trust me, emperor is not so bad, try deity, they run away very fast.
On deity you really have little choice but to conquer.
On Emperor you can do it peacefully with a few thing you must keep in mind.
1. You need to push lots of settler early. An absolute minimum cities would be 6.
2. You need to get most eurekas... look forward in the science tree for what you need
3. Get at least 2 campuses down early. For every tech you discover the cost of building a district goes up by about 8 production. The cost is worked out when you place them, not when you finish them
4 look toward you adjacency and double science district cards.
The most important thing as already mentioned is do not panic, it's natural to be behind unless you really push science hard, it's not the end of the world. Just make sure you have a fair sized Military.
On deity you really have little choice but to conquer.
On Emperor you can do it peacefully with a few thing you must keep in mind.
1. You need to push lots of settler early. An absolute minimum cities would be 6.
2. You need to get most eurekas... look forward in the science tree for what you need
3. Get at least 2 campuses down early. For every tech you discover the cost of building a district goes up by about 8 production. The cost is worked out when you place them, not when you finish them
4 look toward you adjacency and double science district cards.
The most important thing as already mentioned is do not panic, it's natural to be behind unless you really push science hard, it's not the end of the world. Just make sure you have a fair sized Military.
Eliminator_Sr
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2016
- Messages
- 566
Alternatively you can build fewer settlers and instead focus on early units (works especially well with Aztecs, Macedon, Scythia, and Sumeria) and is a good strategy with God of the Forge. It's often a good idea to just let the AI build districts for you and then take them (they will build them quickly with the production bonus). You can also steal more settlers on higher difficulty so it becomes less necessary to build them. For settled cities - just make ample use of worker chopping (and resource harvesting) to rush districts and buildings to offset the production gap. Try to place them as soon as the population limit allows and ideally have some worker charges at the ready in advance. You won't start to eclipse the AI in tech until you accumulate more cities than them as others mentioned. Early use of the raid card can also help boost science and culture when you don't have much infrastructure in place.
Getting a sub T250 science victory is kinda easy, therefore Emperor is kinda easy too. You just need to set up a decent turtle, try to have at least 8 cities before t100, and then focus on efficiently making your way through the tech tree and beeline the right things.
A standard comm/science district in every city is enough. Key things to getting science is beelinig enlightenment, getting decent adjacency early means a lot sub t100 but falls off kinda fast. Getting strong commerce from trading lux's and getting internal trade routes ASAP allowing you to buy science buildings also snowballs your science early.
A standard comm/science district in every city is enough. Key things to getting science is beelinig enlightenment, getting decent adjacency early means a lot sub t100 but falls off kinda fast. Getting strong commerce from trading lux's and getting internal trade routes ASAP allowing you to buy science buildings also snowballs your science early.
In addition to Victoria's points, there is a way to win by focusing on culture even if you stay behind in science. Getting diplomatic alliances with your neighbors limits your need to keep up military, and early investment in spies (which as the culture leader you get first) is the best defense against an AI science victory. (Unless they're Aztec, in which case they will build spaceports everywhere.)
Lily_Lancer
Deity
If you can achieve SV before T180(Standard Speed) at every game at lower difficulty, that applies to Diety as well. I'm sure this pace is easy to achieve without much wars and can be done at any difficulty.
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