Moving From Monarch To Emperor In BTS

[Risiko]

I've been winning consistently in Monarch now. As long as I'm pay close attention and avoid any major screw-up, it's routine for me to be in first place and eventually win. Of course, my winning percentage isn't 100% or even 90%, but it's high enough that winning isn't much of an accomplishment anymore. I want more of a challenge.

I tried several Emperor level games, and I got my ass beaten. God forbid I get a mediocre or somewhat lackluster start -- I end up falling behind the AI and having no chance. Even really lucky starts I end up falling behind. The financial drain is tremendous and it really hurts my tech rate, leaving me behind most (or all) of my adversaries. If I seriously limit the size of my empire to compensate, I fall behind because all the AI's have more cities to produce with. Note: I don't reload the game, even if I make a mistake.

Any experts want to give some advice for people like me who want to move up to the next level?

 

[axident]

I've been winning consistently in Monarch now. As long as I'm pay close attention and avoid any major screw-up, it's routine for me to be in first place and eventually win. Of course, my winning percentage isn't 100% or even 90%, but it's high enough that winning isn't much of an accomplishment anymore. I want more of a challenge.

I tried several Emperor level games, and I got my ass beaten. God forbid I get a mediocre or somewhat lackluster start -- I end up falling behind the AI and having no chance. Even really lucky starts I end up falling behind. The financial drain is tremendous and it really hurts my tech rate, leaving me behind most (or all) of my adversaries. If I seriously limit the size of my empire to compensate, I fall behind because all the AI's have more cities to produce with. Note: I don't reload the game, even if I make a mistake.

Any experts want to give some advice for people like me who want to move up to the next level?

Early war and SE.

My current favorite is to Infiltrate using a Great Spy from the Great Wall wonder to steal a dozen techs or so from some neighbor that I have zero intention to fight but full intention to leech from (probably a Protective leader or against Native Americans or something). Go hard axes (then swords) and kill someone else and keep pressing and crippling your other neighbors until longbows show up. Whip courts and rest and recover while keeping up in the tech race by stealing, stealing, stealing some more. I won a lot of other Emperor games on BtS without infiltration utilizing both early and late war strats, but infiltration makes it easier to fight, capture lots of cities, and yet not fall behind in the early tech race--a feat that is hard to do even with an SE geared specifically to win liberalism and trade techs to backfill. I recommend having no more than 2 cities cranking melee attackers. Organized helps. Other trait can be whatever; I like Charismatic over Agg but almost anything works, including Creative so you spend less time building cultural crap and more time building melee attackers.

Why trade? Steal.

 

[carl corey]

I'd leave aside the Great Wall spy infiltration. It will most probably be corrected in the next patch.

 

[axident]

I'd leave aside the Great Wall spy infiltration. It will most probably be corrected in the next patch.

Yeah so enjoy it now while you still can. I've won in many other ways too, the principle is the same: REX and pay for it later via courthouses, beelining critical techs and bulbing if you must; or early rush followed by paying for it later via courthouses, beelining critical techs, and bulbing if you must. I find space/cultural boring... though if you grab enough land, that virtually ensures that you win the space race so it's not that different from strict Domination. Same with diplo vic; Domination-style play lends itself to victory via Conquest, Domination, Space Race, OR Diplo.

Someone else should say something about winning cultural victories on Deity.

 

[sveint]

I won my first victory on Emperor (after several tries) using a peaceful-first strategy (default settings except for Aggressive AI).

Basically what I did was:
-Grab wonders that help the economy (random civ gave me Ramsess of Egypt, which helped)
-Build cities that help the economy (nevermind copper/iron)
-Research techs that help the economy
-No wars until Trebuchets (Gunpowder if you lack iron, gunpowder happends to be on the "economic" tech line)

Basically I found that on Emperor my economy is simply not strong enough to support an early war. Proximity of the closest enemy could change this of course.

 

[FrancisMarion]

Only fight wars you can win quickly and efficiently.
Fight every war you can win quickly and efficiently.

 

[Ankh]

I'm struggling with Emperor as well, it feels I can't win unless I get really abusive. I play standard settings (Hemispheres/fractal/big and small, std size, no tech brookering and aggressive AI sometimes on epic speed).

I reroll my starts if i get marble/stone or gems/gold in my BFC since i want to win "fair".

My problem is that I really can't get enough land. Warmongering just takes to long and strains my economy to much so i'm really dont getting anywhere. Last game went pretty decent, killed persia and got myself a nice chunk of land but then Gengis Khan declared on me and invaded with a stack of 40+ knights that I really coudn't handle. My empire crumbled.

Iv'e had some wins without aggressive AI enabled but my emperor win % is way below 50%.

How do you really deal with an really aggressive AI like Khan on emperor with aggressive AI enabled?.

 

[sveint]

How do you really deal with an really aggressive AI like Khan on emperor with aggressive AI enabled?

The only thing you can do is to make him attack someone else. Warmongers make good friends, give in to his every demand, adopt his civic and religion, and make him work for you.

Remember, in BTS the AI sees the human as just another opponent. They have no inherent preference to attack you over someone else.

 

[Risiko]

Let's overview/summarize what we've got so far:

axident:

I've won in many other ways too, the principle is the same: REX and pay for it later via courthouses, beelining critical techs and bulbing if you must; or early rush followed by paying for it later via courthouses, beelining critical techs, and bulbing if you must.

What exactly is REX?

And by bulbing, you mean making research the number one priority? That'll probably help me, quite frankly. My early warmongering ways, which helped me in Monarch, no longer seem to be the big boost they once were. After taking a couple of enemy sities in an early war, cities take longer to get producing, don't grow as large, and end up placing a net strain on the tech rate (via maintenance costs), at least earlier on. That insight lead to
sveint's statement...

Basically I found that on Emperor my economy is simply not strong enough to support an early war. Proximity of the closest enemy could change this of course.

Seems consistent with my experience. Should've realized that stategies that worked on Monarch may actually work to my detriment in Emperor. My early war-mongering, which though afforded me a lot of conquered territory, were always fought with many more losses and over a larger economy-hampering timeframe than my early wars tended to be on Monarch. Makes sense. My Bush strategy to stimulate my economy by an early war (or 2) end up looking like Iraq has been for the U.S. -- economy draining and quite bloody.

Only fight wars you can win quickly and efficiently.
Fight every war you can win quickly and efficiently.

I've got a feeling FrancisMarion has this tattooed on his back. But that's good, because the advice appears to be wise. In any event, my strategy, warring even if the wars aren't particularly quick or efficient, doesn't work well.

Ankh says that he is unable to undergo successful wars very often because of the aggressiveness of the Emperor AI, particularly the most warmongering onces. sveint says to make use of them by becoming his/her virtual ally.

Worth a try next time the situation demands it.

 

[carl corey]

REX is rapid early expansion if I got it right. It means spawning a lot of cities early on regardless of the state of the economy to grab a good portion of land before the AI does.

Bulbing (lightbulbing) comes from the icon of the action of discovering a technology totally or partially using a great person. By lightbulbing a new tech you are likely to get its benefits way before the others, and then you have a good trading tech to be exchanged for the techs you skipped while racing toward whatever tech you're racing.

 

[futurehermit]

I won my first victory on Emperor (after several tries) using a peaceful-first strategy (default settings except for Aggressive AI).

Basically what I did was:
-Grab wonders that help the economy (random civ gave me Ramsess of Egypt, which helped)
-Build cities that help the economy (nevermind copper/iron)
-Research techs that help the economy
-No wars until Trebuchets (Gunpowder if you lack iron, gunpowder happends to be on the "economic" tech line)

Basically I found that on Emperor my economy is simply not strong enough to support an early war. Proximity of the closest enemy could change this of course.

100% agree with this. In BtS going economy is the way because you can outpace the AIs and then fight them with superior troops. Crippling your econ early on is not a good idea and early wars are not as necessary as they once were.

However, if you have say copper and a neighbour on your doorstep then axerushing is still the correct move, but you have to bring enough troops and attack efficiently or you will find your attack stalls since they whip/build many mixed units now. You don't want a failed axerush on your hands or your economy will be in shambles and you will have nothing to show for it, not to mention the lost hammers from dead axes.

 

[Risiko]

Just got my ass beaten with Emperor, with Yara Zaqob of Ethiopia (random). I was ableo to expand to five good cities fairly early, and adopted a religion (missionized from Asoka) that two others shared. Still, even though I had culivated fairly strong alliances with them, they were still quite the negotiator when trading techs. I stayed in the bottom-middle of the pack early on.

I needed to break out, so I made my plan around Ethiopia's UU: musketmen with extra first strike bonuses. I was going to attack Lincoln's America, a middling neighbor, who, while ahead of me in score, was somewhat below me in military tech. I beelined gunpowder to build up an army of them, with 10 cats, and a three nights for recon/pillaging. I attacked, and was on a roll, killing his macemen and longbowmen with ease. I kept on making military units from most of my cities at this point for the duration of the war.

I had taken three cities, when my units were starting to run low and war weariness creeping in. I also wanted to get those new cities online by building up their infrastructure. I decided to sue for peace. Then, the wierdest thing happened. Whenever I clicked on Lincoln's name to negotiate an agreement, his diplomatic screen (you know, the screen with the big face of you AI adversaries), it would not come up. Whereas, if I clicked on any other AI's name, the diplomatic screen would come up to negotiate a trade deal. What is with that? I'm used to the red declaration "We are not talking with you", but he didn't give me that message at all. It took me at least a dozen or 15 turns for Lincoln's face to finally pop up he could sue for peace.

During this process of trying to end the war with Lincoln, Mansa Musa, in second place, with a big tech lead, decided to attack. I move some of my units from the previous front line, to the border cities with Mansa Musa. I don't have that many units at this point to defend Mansa Musa's extremely large stack and secondary medium sized one. Mansa Musa proceeded to take the three cities I had just taken from America, and take two more of my interior cities. I played on for several dozen more turns, my score decreasing as the turns went by. When Mansa Musa had a score of 4000 to my 1000, I quite (it started to really balloon at the end).

I'm not discouraged at all. I plan to try Ethiopia again, do more of what seemed to work for this civ, and less of what didn't. Like:

-Focusing even more on 'bulbing', or maintaining a very high science priority (libraries in all cities, monastaries everywhere, trying for a great engineer and building a war academy with great person)

-Beelining to Gunpowder slightly sooner. This would give me those few extra turns to build up a larger military for my attack so I don't get stretched thin when the war is winding down.

-Focus on pleasing Mansa Musa more, my biggest and most potentially aggressive neighbor (he was of an opposing religion). Though, I'm not sure if this would necessarily help much.

-Focus more on wonder-building. The only world wonder I build the entire game was The Pyramids (I had stone), because virtually everyone was teching faster then me, therefore cutting me of from wonders. A focus more on tech would help.

-Focus on big expansion during the initial push before my borders are locked up. Instead of five cities during this time, I'll look for at least another one. Perhaps even more depending on the situation. I'll prioritize settlers even more, especially when grabbing those last free chunks of good land.

-Take advantage of an early opportunity for advantageous war if it presents itself.

-Remind myself to be as flexible as the situation asks for (I always do this, but those always room for improvement).

 

[Ruler]

Some thoughts. You lost because you had to fight on two fronts at the beginning most of the time it's fatal. When you are at war you want to make units in your every city once the war start to be clear because as you start a war and your units start to die you start dropping in powergrap and you may drop below the line as AI attack immediately as they see you so weak and did you do everything you could to keep MM happy by giving resources or even techs before and during the war.

 

[axident]

Some thoughts. You lost because you had to fight on two fronts at the beginning most of the time it's fatal. When you are at war you want to make units in your every city once the war start to be clear because as you start a war and your units start to die you start dropping in powergrap and you may drop below the line as AI attack immediately as they see you so weak and did you do everything you could to keep MM happy by giving resources or even techs before and during the war.

It's possibly even worse than described as the enemy probably discounts your power graph somewhat, as you are already involved in war--the dogpiling effect.

Also, multifront wars kinda suck yeah. I am in a game where I played the part of Germany in WWI... east/west fronts. My west front had enough troops to repel enemies but not enough to take enemy cities, and I focused on killing off the eastern front first. Finally subdued my eastern front by totally annhilating it, and now I'm rushing my victorious eastern front soldiers to sweep the western front.

 

[sveint]

-Focus on pleasing Mansa Musa more, my biggest and most potentially aggressive neighbor (he was of an opposing religion). Though, I'm not sure if this would necessarily help much.

Would the game have gone better if you and an ally had assaulted Mali? Was America friendly/pleased with you and sharing a religion?

I find that Emperor is impossible without good "friends".

 

[axident]

Would the game have gone better if you and an ally had assaulted Mali? Was America friendly/pleased with you and sharing a religion?

I find that Emperor is impossible without good "friends".

You don't need friends. AIs don't make good friends, anyway. You should halfheartedly try to have one or two non-enemies, though.

 

[futurehermit]

You can't ignore diplomacy monarch+ really. Dogpiling is deadly. Always easier to have the dogpiling going in the other direction.

 

[axident]

You can't ignore diplomacy monarch+ really. Dogpiling is deadly. Always easier to have the dogpiling going in the other direction.

Yeah but you don't need to be friends, just non-enemies. I'd rather be no. 2 or lower on everybody's hitlist than be no. 1 on some civs' hitlists and last place on some other civs' hitlists. Also, I've had most of the world against me in war on monarch and emperor sometimes, after I have built up a decently-sized army, and that's been fine. Better than fine. Just ask the 10 GG's that spawn from those wars (albeit with Great Wall help). Meanwhile Statue of Zeus can put the hurtin' on everyone warring with you, especially if you have Emancipation and they don't.

 

[sveint]

Just to demonstrate with a few screenshots from my current game. Ragnar (IMO the toughest opponent in BTS) has taken out Korea (completely) and the Ottomans (with my help). Once he vassalized Spain, I knew it was time: I switched my allegiance, trade and support to Rome and France.