The Jump to Emporer (help)

[Woobi]

I would first like to say that this website is an amazing source of knowledge and I can't thank all of you enough who endlessly awnser everyones questions and do your best to help...

Now onto the problem...

A few weeks ago, I was stuck at Monarch, I posted here asknig for help, they helped me out, and then Monarch became a pretty easy win. Naturally, I moved on up to Emporer, except I am having great difficulties here.

I think my biggest problem is economy. I used to be a builder (big time), but now I have been going to war early in order to gain that slight advantage. It has worked out for thet most part, but in about half of the games play, I end up being bankrupt as soon as I have decimated one neighbering civilization.

This seems to be a recurring problem for me, and I know it is for a lot of people. I can gain pretty good territorial advantages, but I struggle with the knowledge of when to settle more cities and when to slow down.


I have posted a save of my most recent game, it is an Emporer game on a Small map. I am playing as Cyrus and used the Immortal to what I consider a good extent. I destroyed the Spanish civilization, but because I was running such a defecit, I could only afford to take their capital, which wasn't very good. Now I seem to be behind in techs, and slow in research.

So my question to all of you is: What do I do now???

Do I continue to go to war and try to take on Mao (who has copper)? Or do I try to settle the large poirtion of land I have sectored off?

Thanks everyone!!!

Also, heres a pic of the current situation:

 

[voek]

Well first of all, you run a surplus at 40%, so you can expand way more. Moreover, you have a frekin 700 gold in the bag?! You even could run a large defecit at 100% research! Don't be afraid to spend that money. It won't do you any good now.

When you realy are running defecit at 0% (happens to me most often) race towards CoL (but I bet you already have since you are researching philosophy) and chop/whip those courthoses. Also hire scientist when your research is fading during expansion. During the main time you can build up cottages and run a CE or preferable a hybrid economy.

The main point from early war is not only territory but also plunder money to finance your expansion and research. Running a surplus with 700 gold is almost a crime You should have kep the better Spanish city's.

Use GP's to lightbulb important techs which are tradable. Philosopy is actualy a good one. It's costly but can be bulbed by a GS. If you got it early you can backfill your tech tree when trading for it with the AI's. Tech trade is key at emperor. Make sure you have allies as well as enemy's. Diplomacy becomes much more important.

If I look at this screenie and see what you are building I can see you are not building a single unit!! Looks like you still haven't lost your (nasty ) habit a monarch...

 

[Jet]

I think I'd settle even though your land isn't great. I'd try to grab the barb city, deer/gold, and 5N1W of Persepolis (ouch, but with 3 farms, 3 mines, and 5 cottages it still has a food surplus of 1... it uses the iron and grassland, and fills the fog.) (minor spoiler):

Spoiler :

Mao is about to grab rice/marble and Fred is about to grab sheep/fish.

Management-wise, I agree that you need more troops. With random personalities who knows if they'll stab you or not. I also agree you should try to hybridize your economy. For example looking at Pasargadae... you've invested the GPPs and it's currently leading in GPPs, so let it pop a scientist in 35 turns, but then turn the scientists off. It's really not a high-food site, yet it has good tiles that should be worked. I wouldn't let it stagnate or build research -- are you thinking you need to race to Philosophy? I don't think you do... For now personally I'd switch wine to cows, farm the floods, grow to happy limit, build a theater and then loop building troops.

 

[Woobi]

I guess I just consider only being able to research at 40% not very good...

What I was planning on doing next was settling in, and trying to grow back my economy since the other civs have a tech lead on me. Would you say it is better to just keep building units from the get go and just continue to attack civs even though they have longbowmen and the like?

I mean I would prefer to win my games peacefully, but I understand that war is needed. So I geuss I just struggle with knowing when to stop going to war. I mean to me only being able to research at 40% is not a good thing, but apparently I am wrong. Should I have continued attacking even more?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I think the choice of when to stop attacking should be made based on where your victims are at, the diplomatic situation and what sort of victory you are aiming for. I wouldn't stop attacking just because my slider dropped to 40%. If I was losing money at 0%, then I might consider it.

But if I reached a point where the war was going nowhere, or I had won the war and the next victim looked too strong to take on without teching up and rebuilding, then I would stop. Other times to stop might be if you had just acquired a key infrastructure tech like COL and thought it would be a good idea to direct your hammers into a mass building of courthouses for example.

 

[anglosaxon]

I think it is heinous to run a research rate below 50%. You just can't keep up with AI tech at that rate. With a research rate at ideally 70% or maybe 60% you can still build enough units to go pillaging and destroying enemy rival civs' cities in order to hinder their progress a bit. Plus the gold with aid your research and enable to fund expansion or run research deficits at 100%. If you obsessivelt trade techs on top of this you can't lose.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I think it is heinous to run a research rate below 50%. You just can't keep up with AI tech at that rate. With a research rate at ideally 70% or maybe 60% you can still build enough units to go pillaging and destroying enemy rival civs' cities in order to hinder their progress a bit. Plus the gold with aid your research and enable to fund expansion or run research deficits at 100%. If you obsessivelt trade techs on top of this you can't lose.

If you are on a roll, winning a war and gaining cities and territory, why would you stop just because your research is suffering? Once you get those new cities on line, get the courthouses etc in, your research will accelerate to higher levels that it was before.

Its total research that counts - if I generate 100 beakers from 20 cities running at 20% research or I generate 100 beakers from 5 cities at 80% then its the same amount of research. But in another 100 turns, I will be generating much much more from my 20 cities than if I had stayed small.

Obviously you would fall behind if you stayed at 20% for the whole game - so there has to be a good reason to have the tech rate this low. But rapid expansion IS such a good reason. Later you should be able to pull the tech rate back up again.

Also in a conquest war you have an additional source of incoming from capturing cities and pillaging - even if you are losing money hand over fist you can probably keep your tech rate from falling through the floor (as long as you are winning the war - if you start to run out of units or getting into a war of attrition, it is time to stop).

 

[Drake007]

40%? thats a lot!

dont be afraid of it, you'll catch up eventually if you empire is big enough (i.e. 2-3 times the size of others). courthouses can be huge at that point.

early on, its all about claiming land, not necessarily cities. just raze em and pillage if you feel like capturing will cripple your economy too much. of course the ideal situation is keeping the city and growing it from there, but you just cant do that sometimes. by making them weak, you're halfway there: they'll be an easy prey later when you can afford it. so what if the resettled city wont be as cute in 2000AD as the original/razed one, at least it will be profitable the same turn you capture it. its kind of a unofficial vassal state deal: they dont know it, but they're working for you!

another thing... make sure you use whats left on your army on something else than costing 1 gold/turn. go cripple another civ, pillaging and razing can help your research a lot at that point. when your axemen are all dead, your economy will be a bit better, and then you can build for a little while, until your research rate is too high... (to me thats about 60-70%)

that means: you can afford some more ass kicking! just do the same thing as above: capture what you can afford and bring back max loot from the rest. do that until you have a empire so big that you can just build it and cruise to a space race victory... which on emperor is about 2x the size of others, immortal a bit more.

you builders make me go nuts with your research rates, its all about future potential.