Help with Emperor

[lances]

After defeating Monarch a few times, I decided I was ready for Emperor... and I've been getting schooled ever since.

Observations: 1.) Religion is pretty important. You can't really rely on the AI's, and if you wait for them to infect you, you could be waiting a long time. Also holy city income is very nice, and provides a lot of money for a long time. HOWEVER, if there's a way to get religion without starting with mysticism, I don't know how. Anybody know how to do this?

2.) War is much harder. In Civ III, I used to build a bunch of fast troops and stomp all over my enemies. I'd take all their techs, and double the size of my empire in the process. In IV, they seem to have made the defense much stronger. I don't know how to take out a neighbor, which is a problem, because the AI's cut me off so fast. In my last game, I was only able to build 5 cities, before running out of room.

3.) Resources are crucial. I find myself constantly struggling against unhappiness/unhealthiness, or else running out of money, if I do get a chance to expand. Any ideas about what to do about this? It looks like you need at least 6 cities, if only to build certain wonders (Oxford, for example). How many is too many?

In my last game, as Isabella, I founded Hinduism, converted about half the world, and ran at 100% science. I had ocean on the right, and Russians on the left, and wasn't able to expand as much as I would like. I built almost no military, and fought only one inconsequential war. I still couldn't keep up, and finished 5th after an AI spaceship in the 1800's.

So, what are the secrets to beating Emperor? Is it just me, or is it a pretty big jump from Monarch?

 

[Willburn]

I found it helped to really chop everything you can early for hammers. Go straight for bronze working. Also understand the power of the financial trait and cottages. I usually chop for offence if someone is close, or i chop for expansion if im alone or have quite a lot of room.

Other small things is that you need to prioritze what techs to get, you will not allways be in the lead - maybe in a few rare occations but most game not. Religion isnt as important because you can get the cities by millitary force later.

If someone is getting ahead you need to stomp em down..try and be a good diplomat - look for signs of someone getting strong and work towards getting friends with other computers (get same religion.trade etc.) and get them in a war towards the one who is getting stronger than you.

Oh and learn to really use great people to maximum effect..THINK about goldenage..will it make more effect than to say use a great engineer to rush project and a scientist to rush science.. in most cases actually no.. but if you have a large empire (say 20 cities) with average 10 population each it might be worth it (20x10 x7 turns hammers and commerce = 1400 commerce and hammers) but if you only have 10 cities 2000 science and 600-800 hammers for project is much better..

Oh and specialice cities.. dont build banks and universities etc in every city..focus .. if a city has lots of commerce great- make universities and banks if you have a big production city pump out units!

Oh and get the kremlin wonder..its insain. with financial trait and kremlin wonder you can actually in some games produce a tank or bomber in every city every turn..30-40 tanks / bombers each turn is deeeeadly

And for early games i find pyramids can be very powerfull if you got food rich land (go for specialists..) especially if you have philosophical trait.

Anyways just think about every option. Try and maximise everything. Its a bit math - a bit reading the game - and just a bit luck. Oh and allways try and figure out new things. How can i do this more effient ?

Good luck and have fun

 

[remconius]

I am yet to beat monarch, but I can answer some questions I think.

1) Religion without mysticism will be tough with AI's advantages. You could take over a Holy city nearby...

3) Watch growth and stop growing whenever getting near a limit, especially happiness. Get civics for this, culture slide really helps, nationhood, etc.

2) Taking over city takes mixed arms, to counter any unit you meet. Spears for mounted, axemen for spearmen, mounted for axemen and archers.

And a steady supply of siege units. You need these to bombard city defenses and weaken units with collateral damage. If you have a tech advantage you dont need them, but if you have equal or slightly weaker units send in siege unitsfirst.

Yesterday I sent 3-4 catapults (str5) up against 3 riflemen (str14) and 2 longbows, each one took about 1 strength off making them managable for my grenadiers (str12). Then I sent 4 grenadiers, losing 1 in the process due to bad luck and took the city.

Barrage promotions on siege units are the key to easy city capture.

I also have the feeling you really need to be somewhat firm with your neighbours, dont befriend them all because you'll need their land aweful soon. I made the mistake to convert my neighbours to my founded buddhism became big friends, but had no one near to take over. They were buffering my enemy egypt from me and fought the war for me, but left me with no land to grab.

 

[Gufnork]

1. Christianity isn't hard to get. I like getting Stonehenge if I'm not Creative, so I will get a Great Prophet sooner or later. If I don't have a religion to build a shrine for I use him to speed research Theocracy, granting me christianity.

2. Fast units suck. They are way, way, waaaay too vulnerable to spearmen, pikemen, elephants, riflemen and whatnot. They're not useful until they're armored. They can't even get City Raider to make up for their weakness. The only exception is early UU's, those Immortals kick butt. Swordsmen and catapults, that's where the magic is.

3. There's no such thing as too many cities. There is a thing called unproductive cites and you don't want many of those at once. All cities are unproductive before a worker gets his mitts on it, some even after (tundra, desert). No coastal city will stay unproductive for long, though. But be careful in the beginning, if you expand too quickly without getting an infrastructure your treasure chest will be hurting.

You had ocean on the left and russians to the right? That's all wrong, it's supposed to be ocean to the left and ocean to the right. There should be no russians, they should be a mere memory. If you only have one border, eliminate your neighbour ASAP. Then all that precious land will be yours for the taking.

 

[Gufnork]

Mixed arms is very wrong for an attacker. All that means is that all of your units will face it's weakness instead of just a few, the defender picks who they will defend with. Your stacks should be comprised of one unit type, one or two counters to your units weakness for defense (give them Medic I) and a bunch of siege engines. If you have low odds of winning a battle, sacrifice a few rookie siege units (or Chu-Ko-Nus) until the odds are in your favor. Never sacrifice an experienced soldier, unless you have to.

 

[remconius]

Only problem with too many cities is the exponential maintenance costs.

Each city has distance to the capital maintenance, closeby is cheaper.
Every city pays maintenance for number of cities. There is a thread about the exact numbers.

But as an example building city number 12 increases maintenance in all your 11 prior cities by a small amount. So that city costs say 5 for distance from capital and 1 in each city. Total 16, the next city might cost 6+12=18, then 7+13=20 and so on. Building 3 cities could set you back 54 gold per turn.

You need to have some Commercial powerhouses to fund this before they earn you what they cost.

 

[Willburn]

great light house on maps with coasts is good for a strong expansion. Cottages with financial trait also helps. Harbours in cities with good open border trades can also be very powerfull.

Always think when expanding. When im talking about getting lots of cities im not talking mad expansion like civ3 but more carefull expansion. Also remember that plunder and taking cities can help you have cities while going in the red.

 

[walkerjks]

The creative trait can be a big help with resources. 5 turns after city placement, you have access to everything at a distance of 2 tiles from the city. 50 turns after placement, you have access to everything within 3 tiles. Sure, you can't work the 3 tile resources, but you still get the critical health and happiness bonuses.

I tend to worker chop to stake my claim to 3 good city spots in addition to my capitol. Gaps between my city are actually good at this point, because my borders will expand (so more land is grabbed) and I can place cities between my main cities even after the AI seals off the free land.

Occasionally the AI will fill a gap between my cities, but this inevitably leads to that city's borders being squeezed down to nothing and an eventual flip (though sometimes this doesn't happen until very late).

 

[Belisar]

A lot of good advice was give already.
I would say the most important thing on high difficult levels are priorities.
You cann't do anything, you have to stick to the most efficient moves.

This starts with spezialising the cities (some for production, some for commerce)
and leads to strategy-priorities (Do I have enough room and go for infrastructure or do I go all military and take over my neighbour to reach "critical mass")

A good starting location is important, diff-level in Civ depends a lot on the
staring location.
Opening play is crucial, waste no worker moves, build the second city early.
Alphabet (for tech trade) is a very important tech to keep up in the science raze)

Last but not least I think there are 2 ways for getting better (like chess): Playing a lot and "learning by doing" (and doing wrong sometimes) or learning from good players, have a look at the succession game forum.

 

[mzprox]

I've never played civ4 below emperor difficulty My only problem is the AI has so big army that it can kill you if it want.. (usualy it already has 15-20 units next to my city when it declares war... So I try not to get too much enemy or I just strike first .

 

[blueinf]

I've never played civ4 below emperor difficulty My only problem is the AI has so big army that it can kill you if it want.. (usualy it already has 15-20 units next to my city when it declares war... So I try not to get too much enemy or I just strike first .

if you take a look at which units he has and you have the counter, sometimes i think it is worth declaring war so he will spend many units on you. You will earn alot of experience and more important, next time you are at war with him, you won't face a such enormous stack of units.

 

[parachute4u]

Only problem with too many cities is the exponential maintenance costs.

Each city has distance to the capital maintenance, closeby is cheaper.
Every city pays maintenance for number of cities. There is a thread about the exact numbers.

But as an example building city number 12 increases maintenance in all your 11 prior cities by a small amount. So that city costs say 5 for distance from capital and 1 in each city. Total 16, the next city might cost 6+12=18, then 7+13=20 and so on. Building 3 cities could set you back 54 gold per turn.

You need to have some Commercial powerhouses to fund this before they earn you what they cost.

As I understand, this means, the only thing, that additional cities will contribute is additional shields.

What to do with those shields?

A one-hundred shield project built in a core city loses 50*1.75(city set to produce reseach , has lib+uni)=36 science beakers. (Why have production in a city with libs and universities (and observatories) anyway??)

Because of the time it takes to develop infrastructure (200 shields university, 90(?) shields library, 150 shields marketplace) it may be better, to build only industry in those money-losing new cities. The cities, that have infrastructure already can do all of the research/commerce. New cities can contribute by building military units exclusively. The new cities can have farms and mines and build military to pillage enemy cottages/pillage towns and slow them down. The additional cost of these cities can then be outweighed by reorganizing the improvements around the developed cities (change mines to windmills, farms to cottages, plains to workshops, that are only used, when shields are really needed)

Because the AI is 200% efficient in research and you get penalized for too many cities, you end up needing 3 times the number of cities, if you want to stay peaceful all the time and still keep up with tech. This may be possible, but waging war is the more obvious solution.

(I checked my last save. I had a total science output of around 800 research late game (industrial era) 500 came from TWO cities (I had >15 well developed cities that time)) I might end up having only 4 cities that do anything else than crank out troops in my next game. 2 for science, 2 for money. Everything else will be wonders and troops.

 

[blueinf]

parachute4u, care to post some screenies of the city view and from the map view so we can see the improvements built in city, and on the tiles and their results ?

 

[parachute4u]

Sorry, I don't have screens right now (I didn't save ) but I will try this strategy now, moving from monarch to emperor level.

 

[Amenhotep IV]

After defeating Monarch a few times, I decided I was ready for Emperor... and I've been getting schooled ever since.

Observations: 1.) Religion is pretty important. You can't really rely on the AI's, and if you wait for them to infect you, you could be waiting a long time. Also holy city income is very nice, and provides a lot of money for a long time. HOWEVER, if there's a way to get religion without starting with mysticism, I don't know how. Anybody know how to do this?

2.) War is much harder. In Civ III, I used to build a bunch of fast troops and stomp all over my enemies. I'd take all their techs, and double the size of my empire in the process. In IV, they seem to have made the defense much stronger. I don't know how to take out a neighbor, which is a problem, because the AI's cut me off so fast. In my last game, I was only able to build 5 cities, before running out of room.

3.) Resources are crucial. I find myself constantly struggling against unhappiness/unhealthiness, or else running out of money, if I do get a chance to expand. Any ideas about what to do about this? It looks like you need at least 6 cities, if only to build certain wonders (Oxford, for example). How many is too many?

In my last game, as Isabella, I founded Hinduism, converted about half the world, and ran at 100% science. I had ocean on the right, and Russians on the left, and wasn't able to expand as much as I would like. I built almost no military, and fought only one inconsequential war. I still couldn't keep up, and finished 5th after an AI spaceship in the 1800's.

So, what are the secrets to beating Emperor? Is it just me, or is it a pretty big jump from Monarch?

Well, I've just finished my first Emperor peaceful standard map Space Race win with 12K points. And I now believe:

1) Own religion is not that important. I did try to get one, but I failed - I missed Taoism by one turn. Fortunately. Then the AIs infected me with buddism and both my neighbors (2 of 3 on my island) were buddists too, what had a big impact on our relations throught the game. Roosvelt was even Friendly all the time. And I certainly would have had more problems if I had converted to my religion...

2) War... I led no wars Only Alexander declared one at me, but the conflict lasted 5 turns. I did however capture 4 foreign cities, with culture.

3) Indeed. On Emperor you won't go far without varied resources. So the starting location counts...

 

[Bezhukov]

The most important things (two emperor wins):

Early game: Food bonus tiles are of utmost importance. Build a worker first and make sure he has the tech to get the food bonuses going, even if this means forgoing religions. Found new cities in places where they can work a developed food bonus (send the worker/workboat in with the settler) right away (not needing a culture expansion).

Continue working the food bonuses, supplemented by farms for maximum growth. Once cities hit happiness limits, have other tiles prepped with cottages and switch citizens from farms to cottages. When more happiness is available, switch back temporarily to grow quickly, with the default being the cottages.

Mid-game: Foment wars between AI's. This requires having some defense yourself, and also cultivating good relations with at least some of the AI. You must do this to distract them from their own development and to impede them teaming up on you. While a neighboring AI is distracted with a foreign war, this is a good time to poach a couple cities. Prioritize based on resources.

Late-game: Hoard techs and make maximum use of the liberal civics.

Depending on the civ you are playing, make use of your traits/UU in your strategy.

As an aggressive civ, you'll not always be conquering due to WW/maintenance concerns, but you can continue to skirmish on your own territory to buff up your units and distract the AI without causing WW. Fighting in your territory allows you to use the roads, which can be a huge advantage.

As a spiritual civ, you can spam temples to grow your cities larger, while using cathedrals to steal key resources culturally and goad AI's into attacking you, which also reduces war-weariness. You can also easily switch in to the mil civics for troop training and back out for infra.

Organized means the mid-game tech crunch won't hit you so badly, so pushing to currency is not so crucial. Perhaps you could found one of the later religions instead. It also means pushing your advantage in war will not be so detrimental to the finances of your empire. Take four cities before peace instead of two.

The chief benefit of industrial is cheap forges, so chopping the Oracle for Metal Casting might be the way to go, especially if you have gold, gems, or silver to boost happiness too.

Likewise, the withdrawal ability of Immortals makes cats less of a must, skirmishers are great for pillaging, Samurai dominate weaker units, etc, etc...

Good luck on emperor and beyond!