Post-liberalism on emperor

[futurehermit]

Hey all,

Well, I've moved up to playing on emperor full time from monarch where I was winning comfortably.

I have the early game down pretty good in that I can usually conquer one neighbour and get liberalism by at least 800AD, sometimes sooner. I usually have a small tech lead (~3ish good techs) by early renaissance.

My victory goal is always domination (my fav).

The leaders I've been playing are: gandhi, hatshepsut, and monty. I use FE/SE.

My main problem is I end up doing 1 of 2 things:

1) I over expand and end up falling behind in tech.

2) I do great in tech but fall behind in # of cities and then have a hard time invading new lands because I can't crank out enough units fast enough (even with drafting I found out my last game )

Any advice for how to balance research and conquest after say 800 AD???

Thx in advance.

 

[Ruler]

First of all I don't play Emperor I'm on Monarch but reaching up Emperor quite fast.

I'm not much of a warwonger I haven't figured out these "knockout the couple neughbours" tactis I always fail in them. Domination is one the hardest goal I love it but good start is mandatory and not often an option. From my opinion you don't want to conquer AI too soon or it's going to cost. Keep them under your control and hope they fall behind science and you can finish them off with better military units later.

 

[Eggolas]

Although I really like Ghandi and either of the Egyptian leaders, I'd prefer to play either a financial or organized leader on Emperor when playing for a domination win. The costs of expansion really hit research capabilities.

Carthage, Korea, Mali and either Lizzie or Vickie are very good domination leaders, but Auggie is a real pleasure to play now that Creative has those nice traits.

Cranking out units: I'm not sure why you're having trouble cranking out enough units. With a couple of high production cities and judicious use of the whip, those siege units should be pouring out of your empire. Reading Acidsatyr's Immortal game was really helpful in that regard.

 

[shyuhe]

organized civs have a natural bonus in civ maintenance costs. I don't know the exact numbers but it can make some otherwise impossible empire sizes manageable. Other than that, I'd agree with eggolas' suggestion for whipping/drafting.

 

[lilnev]

I see that you've identified both sides of the balancing act. That suggests that improvement will come mostly from small increases is efficiency, from better diplomacy, or just from learning a better intuitive sense of which side of the balance you're on in a particular game. Of these, diplomacy (tech trades and orchestrating wars) might be the most rapid route to improvement, if you're not currently getting the most out of it.

Your thread title says post-Liberalism. If I win the Liberalism race, I'm generally doing fine. Typically I fall behind prior to Alphabet, trade my way back up, fall behind on the Feudalism/Machinery/Guilds/Banking path while I race for Liberalism, trade my way back up, launch a major post-Gunpowder war, and then cruise through the endgame on my land advantage. It's not fatal to fall behind in tech, as long as you have a reasonable plan to catch up again.

peace,
lilnev

 

[futurehermit]

Thanks guys. I'll try out some of these tips and let you know how it goes. I generally don't build cottages but I may try to start working some into my game. Obviously cottages are the improvement that gives you $$$ and not making them is a contributing factor to my $$$ problems later on

I may try some games with Liz going with a hybrid economy and see how that shapes up...

 

[Snaaty]

What also works quite good, is to delay the founding of cities. Expand with your first 3 -4 cities towards the AI´s, dont open borders, and only when you have researched codes of law, settle your back-lands (I´ve done this in the second deity challange. There may be even some screens where you can see the order and the founding dates of the cities. Overall, I founded 8 cities myself I think).

Another trick is to move your initial settler. I also do this quite often, when I draw a costal start (what happen quite often on standard sized continent maps). Move him away from the cost, so that you can found a city behind your capital. When you now found one city to the left, one to the right of your capital, you have altogether 3 more "reserved" spots behind this cities for later.

Most important for later is to get at least 6 cities, so that you can build the globe theatre for drafting

 

[futurehermit]

^^^

ok, thks! in my current game i had an amazing start (gold, stone, marble, copper, horses (in capital) ). playing as hatty emperor/continents/normal/standard. only alex and cyrus on my continent so couldn't eliminate one civ asap or no tech trading.

so i crippled cyrus and then teched to liberalism which I got 800-900AD. then i figured i'd be meeting the other ais soon so i finished cyrus and got ready for alex with a ton of cata + eles. all was going amazing and i was just about to take out his capital plus last significant city (leaving him with a bunch of little ones) when he JUST hit military tradition (must have beelined) and got 2 cavalry. that was enough to save his capital and force me to regroup, which led to him getting more cavalry SO CLOSE!!!

so i withdrew with a ceasefire and teched like mad to rifling. i ended playing today when i hit rifling. i had managed to go back in and take at least alex's capital although in retaliation he took out a marginal coastal city (snuck some cavalry with galleys grr....). i'm now at the point where alex has one significant city left (the christian holy city--only religion founded on my continent....i just missed out on taoism when i popped it with GS). my goal now is to draft/whip a ton of rifles (alex doesn't have chemistry) and try and make a final push to wipe alex out. that will give me control of my continent.

then it will be a matter of assaulting the other continent. there's cathy (only significant threat to me), shaka (friendly with cathy and probably future vassal both are buddhist), hannibal (confucian, pleased with shaka + cathy), and asoka (EVERYONE hates her).

i don't know if invading asoka would be enough to win, probably not. i will either try and keep shaka/cathy happy and invade asoka then hannibal or else try and keep asoka and hannibal happy (harder because they hate each other) and attack shaka/cathy. we shall see.

the reason i mention this game is because i felt like it happened to me again: i hit a post-liberalism stumbling block. i now think the answer is: i put everything i've got into the liberalism race and don't build many units during this time. thus when i try to start up the war machine again i don't have as many units as i should. although my units are cutting-edge, i don't have the numbers.

so, i think the answer really is i need to find a way to keep production of units high during this period so i have sufficient numbers of troops. it is hard because they are costly and a drain on my economy when i'm trying to push for liberalism...this is the main balancing problem i think i'm having...

the first useful drafting unit is rifles and i don't feel like i can wait for them to come online in most games. so i need to keep focus on producing units during the medieval era...

 

[Snaaty]

@ futurehermit:

I think that your main problem could be (don´t know if this is right after your short description), that you don´t specialise enough.

The actuall discussions and games going on higher levels have revealed (or at least I have the impression), that there seem to be 2 ways of playing from emperor on:

go ALWAYS war (for example the games of acidsatyr are a great help)

go NEVER war (see deity challange 2)


If you go always war, most important is to bring the enemy down with numbers. Draft what you have, 3 muskets also kill a cavalery. Dont build up your cities to much, just build granaries, baracks, courthouses, markets and forges (those buildings provide max. growth and happiness bonuses). Whip out mainly units. Specialise on food economy for growth and whipping (FE). Be aggressive. See acidsatyr actuall succession game

If you go never war (except one expansion war in mid game), you must be able to build at least 6 cities. Then specialise also on FE, but dont whip units, whip out buildings only. In addition to the buildings mentioned above, whip all science and commerce buildings (religous buildings you dont need). To prevent beeing attacked, go heavy politics. Only units you should build bevore going to you one war should be 6 catas (for use later) and some axes/swords (one for each city to defend). Be friendly. See deity challange 2 for warfare, troops and researchorder shortyl after liberalism (endgame research is still missing, but I´m working on it)

 

[futurehermit]

Hey guys, just wanted to give an update on my game. After getting rifling I drafted and whipped a holy ton of rifles. I took out Alex's last respectable city and a few marginal ones. I sued for peace since he had one last tech (corporation) that I needed when he only had 2 cities left. I will finish him off after it expires. I'm in good shape: Cathy is strongest overseas and my only real threat. I don't have the best relationship with her right now so I may have to invade her. I am friends with Hannibal and Asoka doesn't hate me even after I bribed Shaka to go to war with her twice and agreed to declare war on her once (I did it to try and raise relations with Shaka).

And I'm only at 1550-1600AD. So, basically my plan now is to finish beelining to industrialism and to invade the other continent with infantry, marines, and tanks. I will probably attack Cathy. Her four core cities are at the northernmost part of the continent. If I can take them in my first push and sue for peace I should be in position to win domination.

So, basically, I managed to correct some of my imbalances and should go on to win

It would be my first really convincing domination win on emperor

Thks for your advice. I will work on smoothing out some more details next game

 

[Welnic]

Asoka is a guy. You thinking that he is a female might be coloring your diplomatic relations.

 

[futurehermit]

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A guy! Damn, he's one feminine-looking guy...and he still likes me even though I am declaring war on him... :???:

 

[PugFugly]

Early on when you conquer one neighbor try to use that army to cripple another neighbor by stealing a couple of his workers and pillaging/razing some of his land.

That should slow him down a bit so that you can take him out once you have your economy cranking.

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, well in a critical battle of 1876 I ultimately lost this game

I was really disappointed because I thought I could win it.

However, diplomatic relations on the other continent wrecked the game for me

The key problem --> Asoka vassalized to Cathy. So:

-If I declared on Asoka, I declared on Cathy
-Shaka was best buds with Cathy so if I attacked Shaka I risked getting attacked by Cathy anyways...
-My only friend was Hannibal. I considered backstabbing him, but he didn't have enough land for me to win

So, basically I knew I had to attack Cathy and she had enough land for me to win.

I decided I would win or lose with tanks + marines + artillery

I send a ton of tanks to the bottom 1/2 of her empire and a ton of marines and artillery to the top.

Well two things went horribly wrong:

1) What I considered a TON of units, was not in fact sufficient Damn, you really need a LOT of units...

2) Right before I was ready to attack Cathy got modern armors

So, basically my whole army was wiped out in about 2-3 turns

Too bad, I was sooo close this game

I figured I couldn't eek out a diplo win because Shaka and Asoka would both vote for Cathy and me + hannibal wouldn't cut it

Alas...

 

[JimT]

Unfortunate end game. While diplomatic was out, could you have won with space race? Your tech, relations and empire size seem good enough (on instinct).

But my heart goes out to you, I'm still on Monarch and find myself in similar situations thinking 'what now?' once Liberalism has been hit and victory is not in my grasp.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^

Yes, looking back on the game I could've won space race if I had planned for that instead of invading the other continent. I had the largest empire by quite a bit, so if--once I had finished Alex--I had cottage spammed and teched I believe I could've won. I didn't have aluminum on my continent though and Cathy had some so it would've probably been close...

 

[harusame]

what map size do you play? domination is kinda hard in large map......

try cyrus at small pangaea and immortal rush everyone

 

[futurehermit]

^^^lol

Right now I *always* play: patched warlords / continents / standard / normal / emperor

In retrospect, I should've followed the rule of thumb: If you're on the larger continent go for domination, but if you're on the smaller continent go for space race. I was on the smaller continent...

It's just that I've yet to get a convincing domination victory on emperor so I keep trying for that...

 

[harusame]

domination is easier at smaller map, because you will have lower city maintenance/distance cost, and it doesnt take long to reach destination before enemy get new tech/units
because AI start with archers, i would play hatshepsut or cyrus, get a starting point with horse and build war chariot or immortal and rush my neighbours -_-


space race is kinda situational, i think best map for space race is standard size. Too many opponents = too hard, but too few opponents = no tech trading.....also bad
at large map, Cultural Victory is the easiest to obtain

 

[aelf]

FE/SE seems to really slow down after Liberalism. You better have enough land to run all those specialists needed to keep up or convert to a CE through Emancipation. Therefore, I think the best bet an SE player has is to leverage its advantage early and carve up a large chunk of territory. Since much of your research is coming from specialists and lightbulbing, you don't need to worry about 0% science rate. The Organised trait can help too (besides Philosophical, of course), since you pay less for expansion and can build courthouses faster, making Freddy an excellent candidate for an SE game. His cheap UB factories are also great for the extra engineers. More production for a domination push or SS construction.