Help!

[Yeepeep]

wassup everybody, im kinda new here and ive been reading through the forums for the last week or so.

i have a MAJOR problem - i just can't beat the game on emperor. and ista kinda embarrasing, since im playing civ for years and years - since the 1st one.

anyways, so i always always rely on peaceful method and maybe thats my mistake - i never ever go to war with anybody, just tryin to build up as fast as i can and as much as i can. so this way leads to several things - usually from 8 civs, im 4th or 5th, and always a couple techs behind the "big bad wolves". so far my major goal is to keep at least my pop near the first 2-3-4, but still this doesnt help at all.

so, so far my top score is about 2700 on emperor at the time when the first guy has just built the 1st three components of the spaceship, so its a failure, and im just discovering the space flight. also i have to spend enormous amount of money purchasing everything from iron to aluminum. so i felt offensed by the game and decided to quit for a while.

so what r u guys doing in the beginning? usually im playin with commercial/religious/industrious/scientific civs and after building the first settler in the "mother" city, build a temple and immediately the pyramids, so all the settler production relies on the subsequent cities. meanwhile there is only one warrior loitering around, and its not of much help. so im building settlers like mad, and still i cant get as many cities as everybody else. then if im lucky enough i can build the hanging gardens and thats pretty much all - after that i dont have the techs to build anything, so my next "cultural jump" is probably around j.s.bach cathedral or the sistine chapel (at MOST!!). if im even luckier i can get the hoover dam, but at that time i have at most half of the number of cities of the leading 3 or 4 guys. and the game is so f**cken slow its pain in the a** to wait for even one turn.

so i guess all this strategy is totally WRONG (although it worked perfectly fine in civ2..), so ill be more than happy if i can get any help to get through the damn game!

 

[superslug]

First things first, welcome to CFC!

Okay, now to the response:
If you're looking for good tips on how to play better, I highly recommend the following links:
The Succession Games where players are advised on a step by step basis by experts on improving their play. You can also read a lot of good knowledge and material in the Strategy & Tips section where help like this is typically sought. One link I can't possibly emphasize enough is the War Academy. Read every article there...twice! Even the ones that might not apply to your preferences and playstyle will improve your knowledge.

Now, having said that, if you're not just looking to beat the game, but also beat the living snot crap tar and daylight out of it, then you're in the right place. However, a high score virtually impossible without tremendous amounts of bloodshed, which sounds counter to your playstyle.

The two types of games here in the HOF are milked ones and fastest finish. Milked games require eliminating all the AI except one town and then manipulating the map for maximum territory and population over maximum turns on a huge map. Fastest finish games require killing all the on a tiny map and scoring big time off the early win bonus. In both cases, death of the AI is absolutely requisite.

Hope this helps...

 

[zerksees]

I want to echo what Superslug said. The war academy and strategy and tips forum have been HUGE in helping me improve gameplay.

The answers you need to win at emperor are in there. It may be more of a challenge to do it peacefully, since was was necessary in the strategy I chose for emperor (to me it was the easiest way, and I had a lot of fun with the wars).

I have 11 months experience with this game and have beaten it on deity level in my first attempt. (I played it once at chieftain through monarch (won them all), then played a few at emperor (only lost my first attempt), and just once so far at deity. There were a dozen or so HOF attempts at chieftain level in the last couple months, but those came after mastery of emperor.)

So I would probably be stuck at warlord level without all of the information I picked up on this website.

 

[Yeepeep]

well, i must admit i DID it!!! thanx guys to all of u, at last i dominate on emperor! it was the best feeling ever hehehe.

so what i did - again with the french (its just waaay to cool to get rid of the major part of the corruption) on wet, warm, 5million, large continent, vs 7. got the iron working kinda fast and immediately found a mine near the capital. the bad thing was that the aztecs were right next to me, together with the russians and the english. and of course at the time i had 6 cities, they had more than 10. not only that but the aztecs were pushing me very hard and already got 2 of my border cities. usually at that point i start cursing like an idiot and restart the game. but after the insiration i got here, the only way was to be stubborn to death heheh. so instead of building settlers, started production of swordmen everywhere except in the capital, building the pyramids. so after rushing the cities twice, there were bout 10-12 swordmen (regular of course) and with that initiated the attack. and that was the end of the aztecs - they had only horsemen, archers and their stupid warriors.

the bad thing is that im still not that confident, so the attack went on waves - capturing several cities, then peace treaty with a couple of techs from the aztecs, then again attack and so on. till they got only 3 cities left, and my dumbasses were in republic and creating enormous havoc.

then there was second war against the germans (with the help of the russians and the english) this time for coal, cuz there was no coal anywhere on my territory, and it was faster - they were crushed in 20 turns maybe. at that time i had one army, the heroic epic, rushed twice wonders with 2 other leaders and somehow, miraculously i was 1st on tech (well, except the communism and espionage), and the next step was to face the english, this time with tanks, bombers and 1 battleship.
so at that point im second in the ranking, but leader in tech, pop and production, so i kinda lost interest.

the bottom line is that this was really unbelievable - a peaceful moron like me is waging a modern war not for survival, but for domination. i just feel like a better person from today on hehe

keep up the good work guys!!

 

[superslug]

Congrats on the improvement! Glad we could help...

 

[zerksees]

I had a HUGE adrenaline rush in my first wars on emperor. The Arabs were on my continent and trapped in a small section north of me. As soon as I had iron working and iron, I built some swordsman and cut them down a couple notches. They were gone in the BC era.

Keep reading through that war academy. Each time you play you will get better.