Massive difference between King and Emperor?

[PapaRockett]

I've noticed that in King difficulty I can steamroll fairly easy in the early game. However I tried on Emperor and the difference is HUGE. AI gets a free worker at turn 0 and somehow they are 6 techs ahead of me in the ancient era. King is too easy for me but Emperor is too hard. Anyone else noticed?

 

[Takagi Hiro]

I can generally agree. I don't find Emperor "too hard," but rather "too cheaty." But dropping to King is a massive difference. Still, I'd rather play more fair than grind my teeth at everything the AI gets away with but I cannot, so King is my general difficulty.

 

[Bromar1]

I believe the difference is due to the free explorer unit that the AI gets starting on difficulty 6. Free explorer lets them find those goody huts much faster which a) lets them snowball much harder and b) denies the player a chance to profit from goody huts too. I always turn off the free scout. This makes for a good challenge without feeling like the AI cheats

 

[ElliotS]

Every difficulty level feels like that buddy. When I first moved to Immortal I found it insurmountable, then I decided to git gud and surmounted the crap out of it. xD

Then I faced the same feelings on Deity, and I'm starting to make Deity my used and abused plaything now too.

Making the difficulty easier only makes it harder to git gud tbh. I love getting my face kicked in by stronger opponents, because it enables me to learn 1,000,000 times better than fighting weaklings or even people on my level.

 

[lunker]

I too, feel like king->emperor is the biggest leap I've faced thus far. Kind of wish there was a nice in-between.

 

[PapaRockett]

Every difficulty level feels like that buddy. When I first moved to Immortal I found it insurmountable, then I decided to git gud and surmounted the crap out of it. xD

Then I faced the same feelings on Deity, and I'm starting to make Deity my used and abused plaything now too.

Making the difficulty easier only makes it harder to git gud tbh. I love getting my face kicked in by stronger opponents, because it enables me to learn 1,000,000 times better than fighting weaklings or even people on my level.

How do you even deal with them on Emperor, let alone higher difficulties? Do you do the classic thing of stealing their workers and rushing a big army?

 

[Owlbebach]

Same to me, but that's what makes this game so great! Haven't won deity yet, but made it couple of time om immortal. Emperor seems to be a peace of cake now, i am almost sure i can win on any map for any civ aside starting surrounded by ice.

Try to execute everything to the maximum, you'll be surprised with how much it scales. Every small decision is important: "Ah this building is cool, i can afford building it 5 turn before starting another one, cause it takes 15 turns" - this doesn't work anymore.

And also when you are 6 tech behind - you're good! Bad is when you are 16 tech behind

 

[bigcat88]

Maybe just try pick early rush civs? Celts,greece,persia,... and all other civs with good UU in start era.
And if u like to fight, then emperor with rush civs will be too easy for u. If u don't like to play aggressive, then Shoshone or Inca.

 

[Owlbebach]

And try to fight carefully. You can't afford lossing units anymore. Its normal for mee to loose 1 or 2 units out of 25 and capture 3 cities. Time to play some chess!

 

[ElliotS]

How do you even deal with them on Emperor, let alone higher difficulties? Do you do the classic thing of stealing their workers and rushing a big army?

While I've won dozens of peaceful games with no blood on my swords across many difficulties including immortal, I will say that my favored playstyle is closer to how I would imagine Genghis Khan would play civ.

There's no pre-defined way to win on any difficulty, even in Deity your choices remain open. Just look at your play critically and find places where you did something inefficient and cut out those mistakes. Making better farm clusters, prioritizing which things to improve, micro-managing your citizens to assure no city is producing nothing, projecting force and taking full advantage of the AI and all your resources. (sure I'll trade all my paper mid game for 100GPT, I don't really need city states now anyways.)

There's a million little tricks to improve your play, and the more of them you implement the more efficient you become.

This is assuming you've got your macro-game down. (Choosing good victory paths/policy trees/etc.)

Basically every trick to get 20% more out of your stuff or get 2 turns off of something adds up.

Also don't forget to demand tribute from city states if you're not at war. If your army is too small to do that you're probably understaffed which causes a lot more problems than just getting stabbed in the face. (The AI doesn't take your seriously diplomatically and will spy more on you for example.) Now with the awesome military score changes it's much more fair and you can keep up with the AI score-wise even on higher difficulties, leading to more even diplomacy and fair ability to demand tribute.

 

[bigcat88]

First of all in fighting is to understand the flanking bonus ability, and to know good situations where to fight.
Use hills for celts, forest/jungle for Hiawatha or a rivers for shongai, etc...
Use some worker to agr AI units on fight(they love even to use garnisoned unit to go to capture your worker.
The weakest side of AI is battlefield, so u need just to lvl up ur units to lvl4-5 and then kill all what u see.
Also good to cooperate with other AI to declare war together.
And AI cant fight properly when u get +1 movespeed for ur units or amphibious promotion for example and fight near rivers.
The easiest fights are at the sea. Cause they always take for melee naval units a raider promotion, so u just need 3-4 melee naval units to win the fight with flanking bonus.

 

[Maddiekins]

I find that "harassing" my immediate neighbors early on leads to a better start game on immortal. This includes stealing workers/settlers, pillage improvements (good source of gold too!) and killing stray military units. This will slow them down so that they don't declare war on me for being weaker than them! Doing this doesn't cause a problem for peaceful games either since the warmonger penalties will be erased fairly quickly.

Other than that, carefully optimizing science and culture elections is pretty important, and I find that founding a religion can make a huge difference, and generally speaking you can grow it faster than the AI will grow theirs.

I've yet to give diety a try though

 

[Gamewizard]

I find that "harassing" my immediate neighbors early on leads to a better start game on immortal. This includes stealing workers/settlers, pillage improvements (good source of gold too!) and killing stray military units. This will slow them down so that they don't declare war on me for being weaker than them! Doing this doesn't cause a problem for peaceful games either since the warmonger penalties will be erased fairly quickly.

This is especially important if you take the Authority social policy tree. Just being at war in a highly defensible position gets you science and unit experience. Use mounted units to flank and pillage behind enemy lines. This will also net you favorable peace deals, crucial to keeping your front lines fully upgraded to the latest tech.

 

[Lanstro]

I'm fairly new to the mod and I'm finding the gap pretty big too, especially if I try to play peacefully. In most games it seems very difficult to outpace the Emperor AI without war/harrassment, whereas it's not hard to do on King.

As others have said, the main weakness of the AI remains its tactical play. It's very possible to just never lose any important units to it, and then eventually end up with double-attack ranged units that further push your tactical advantage. Pretty grindy way to play, but it's a pretty key part of Emperor and above it seems.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Yeah, I've experienced the same thing. I just finished an Emperor game that was a lot closer and more competitive than any King game I've played, but that was because I got a lucky start and got a whole continent to myself, letting me expand unimpeded through the first two eras. Every other time I try Emperor, I'm strangled by the AI and can't keep up. I could possibly win if I tried, but the game doesn't feel fair.
I'll try some things to see if I can find a happy medium between King and Emperor. I'll start with Bromar1's suggestion and modify the AI's starting units. Any other modifications that people have tried to tweak the difficulty level?

 

[Owlbebach]

Yeah, I've experienced the same thing. I just finished an Emperor game that was a lot closer and more competitive than any King game I've played, but that was because I got a lucky start and got a whole continent to myself, letting me expand unimpeded through the first two eras. Every other time I try Emperor, I'm strangled by the AI and can't keep up. I could possibly win if I tried, but the game doesn't feel fair.
I'll try some things to see if I can find a happy medium between King and Emperor. I'll start with Bromar1's suggestion and modify the AI's starting units. Any other modifications that people have tried to tweak the difficulty level?

Seriously, just try to play more thoroughly. Immortal is very winable without wars / defense only style. Emperor is a peace of cake. Choose a victory that fits your civ well (don't try to win domination for Austria!), think about every building you build and every policy you take. If you play peacefully - my advice to focus on hammers first, culture second and science third. And don't be surprised when you find yourself 10 techs behind in renaissance. Thats just normal, it will get better eventually (at least if you're do not screw up totally).

Also try another map. For example to mee Archipelago seems to be easier cause AI is less agressive and its easier to defend. Pangea seems to be the hardest cause you are surrounded by neighbours

 

[Takagi Hiro]

Seriously, just try to play more thoroughly. Immortal is very winable without wars / defense only style. Emperor is a peace of cake. Choose a victory that fits your civ well (don't try to win domination for Austria!), think about every building you build and every policy you take. If you play peacefully - my advice to focus on hammers first, culture second and science third. And don't be surprised when you find yourself 10 techs behind in renaissance. Thats just normal, it will get better eventually (at least if you're do not screw up totally).

Also try another map. For example to mee Archipelago seems to be easier cause AI is less agressive and its easier to defend. Pangea seems to be the hardest cause you are surrounded by neighbours

Seriously, just try to let people enjoy the game how they feel is fun to them. Not everyone enjoys AI on cheat overdrive, nor does everyone enjoy micromanaging every miniscule detail in order to keep up with it.

 

[Owlbebach]

Seriously, just try to let people enjoy the game how they feel is fun to them. Not everyone enjoys AI on cheat overdrive, nor does everyone enjoy micromanaging every miniscule detail in order to keep up with it.

No problem with that ofcourse! Everyone is playing for fun! I just wanted to give an advice on how to play on higher difficulties.

 

[Workerspam]

There were three things that I had to change in the way I played before I became consistently successful when I made the move from King to Emperor:

1. Prioritize Army early. If you have an Ancient era UU, beeline it. If not, get Horsemen (preferred) or Spearmen. You only need a couple. In King you can usually get away with prioritizing infrastructure and build your units later. On Emperor you risk the AI attacking you early if you neglect your troops; even if your army doesn't deter the AI from going to war you will be capable of defending yourself. Also allows you to repel barbarians and complete CS quests. You can always catch up in science later but you need to be alive and well to do so.

2. Workers. You always need more workers. Every unimproved tile one of your cities works is a wasted opportunity. I normally don't steal them but don't be above taking a settler if the AI encroaches on lands you covet (yet another use for that early army of yours). Just because you don't have a city there yet doesn't mean it isn't your land, and time heals all wounds. On a related note discover the magnificence of internal trade routes if you haven't already done so. You will develop a whole new appreciation for Stoneworks.

3. Science. Once you've established your army and workforce you'll have to catch up in science; I'm almost always near the bottom unless I got a lucky start. This means councils everywhere, libraries and barracks where/when you can, and alternative sources (taking the science from connections policy in progress over the 20% building production policy, etc.)

It's fine to be near bottom across all categories in Ancient era; AI starts with a worker and scout, if they can't get ahead with that kind of advantage how challenging could they be? After that a lot depends on the game but not it's not unusual for me to lag behind in science until at least Renaissance while catching up in most other categories.

 

[Gazebo]

2. Workers. You always need more workers

(Looks at username). Hmm....

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