How do you manage a large empire?

[Col Mustard]

In most of my games I end up with a massive empire and I love creating it either by exploration or force. However, once I get to a certain point taking care of all my cities and units while making sure that everything gets done the way I want gets really really tedious and I lose interest in the game. My current solution is to play on tiny or duel maps but I'd really rather play on a standard or larger map. So whats the best way to manage a large empire while not making it tedious?

 

[rollo1066]

I generally don't do this & most posts from experienced players recomend against it but you could use city governors for all but the 10 most important citys. After all large nations/empires such as ancient Rome or modern America have large civil services to run most of the nations business. The Emperior/President doesn't have to decide whether to build a library in Brundesium or Topeka or whether city X needs more taxmen etc.

 

[Bezurn]

I make really long build queues in cities I don't care much about. New cities have 6-10 buildings they build, then after they are done with that I will load the second tier of buildings they need (markets, research buildings, espionage buildings). Then after those two build queues have been completed I'll throw on any other buildings that suite the city. At the end of all those queues is wealth. Having more money to drive a higher research slider is very nice.

Or if its a very good military city, or a war breaks out then I just have them build units over and over and over. Might throw in a building if it needs to raise a happy or healthy cap. Set a waypoint for the units to go to and just fortify them when they get there.

 

[mariogreymist]

I use the queues a lot. In a best case scenario, I try to set all the building queues out to a point in the future (40 turns or so on marathon is what I try to do when kingdoms get big). Then, once every 40 turns, I go through each city and alter the queues as necessary. This increases the fluidity of the gameplay experience by keeping civic planning isolated to one turn and being able to move units and hit "Enter" on the other 39. Of course, I also go through and rework the queues when key infrastructure techs are discovered (Banking, education etc). But I do it once for each city, so the game keeps on trucking as one building is finished and another begins (or resumes).

 

[iggymnrr]

Queues. Though in some of my more conquest oriented games I usually worry more about destroying large empires, burning cities, etc. Rax, stable, courthouses, units etc. On emperor epic there is alway an AI capitol with enough trees to chop a quick FP, maintain a 20% economy and still tech round 200bpt, might even sneak in a forge here and there. Keep AI capitols and maybe 2-3 others, raze the rest. War early, war often.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

With lots of stack movement, queuing, some automation, and broken hotkeys.

I have a guide in my signature, though it's a little out of date since I've maybe gotten 1-2 new tricks. Standard map games are typically < 3 hours for me (some VC's are less than 1 hour).

 

[Col Mustard]

Thanks everyone for all the tips. I'll try them out and see if they help me.