Tips for emperor level?

[Jay Ray]

Yeouch. I'm outteched and outproduced by such a wide margin I can't see how to succeed at this level. Monarch games seem to give me no challenge I can't meet. But at this level I'm the red headed stepchild the entire game.

Any suggestions on how to get a leg up on Emperor level difficulty?

 

[xanaqui42]

Yeouch. I'm outteched and outproduced by such a wide margin I can't see how to succeed at this level. Monarch games seem to give me no challenge I can't meet. But at this level I'm the red headed stepchild the entire game.

Any suggestions on how to get a leg up on Emperor level difficulty?

If you can outline a sample strategy (and pre-conditions) that you've tried, I can attempt to give pointers.

Note that my Emperor game is far from perfect; I'm presently winning under half the time. I, too, am typically out-teched and out-produced. However, I find ways to minimize my opponent's advantages and maximize my own such that I still have a good chance at victory.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

There's a pretty big jump from Monarch to Emperor. In Monarch, I can easily double the beaker production of the second place leader by 300 turns into the game, but on Emperor it can be a struggle to keep a comfortable lead. Like xanaqui said, give us a sample strategy and we'll give some helpful pointers.

 

[EvilBohdran]

Disable tech trading when choosing options at the start. Prevents the AI from forming the science cabal it likes to do.

Play on water maps. You can usually do better if you fight on one contienent at a time. On maps that are one big landmass you have borders with so many others you can find everyone wants to invade you and use you as a doormat.

Don't play on Quick speed. The advantage for a human is that you can specialize in a tech and progress far down the tech tree. The AI seems to pursue techs in a more uniform fashion. In Quick games, and advantage you gain will be too short-lived (e.g. you gain superior units, but by the time you've marched them thru one civ's lands and captured his cities, everyone else has caught up).

Experiment with choosing your opponents when starting the game instead of having it random. You've really disadvantaged if you're a good civ facing six evil civs and a couple neutrals. Having a balance of good and evil might be more enjoyable than having the AI gang up and play kill the human.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Disable tech trading when choosing options at the start. Prevents the AI from forming the science cabal it likes to do.

I'd only advise this if you're playing an evil leader. Neutral and Good leaders can generally get enough trading partners that it becomes smart to rush for Trade and then trade your techs around to fill in what you've skipped.

 

[xanaqui42]

A really cheap way to win is to turn on Raging Barbarians, using a leader with the Barbarian trait (where no other leader has this), and a nice, open map (with lots of Ruins/Barrow spawning-terrain), so that everyone else gets swamped by barbarians, and the output of Ruins and/or Barrows. The only thing you have to do is not declare war on the Barbarians; pretty much anything else you do is irrelevant.

More seriously, I find that it's just a matter of seizing a number of advantages that you get at lower levels - abusing Slavery/Sacrifice the Weak for production, abusing Bloom/ Chop down Forest for production, using spellcasting units far better than your computer opponents, knowing the AI well enough that you know what they'll do next turn, and can make plans in response, only engaging in war with overwhelming forces (or at least enough to divert any potential counterattack to defense), using terrain well, better city development, better promotion strategy, aggressively using large numbers of expendable (summoned/Fireball/Meteor Swarm) units, better early city creation, grabbing multiple religions, excessively trading for technology, razing less important cities, while capturing more important ones, using terraforming properly, using water units better, etc.

The reality is that with the weaknesses of the AI, it should be fairly easy to shut out opponent after opponent even with a large disadvantage. Don't be afraid to turn all your opponent's terrain into Desert, and/or pillage every tile, if that's what it takes to defeat them. In any case, you're the only one going for a win, so at worst, make/buy peace with everyone, and go for a cultural victory.

Also, I should note that if you're really having difficulty, you can alter Monarch in CIV4handicapInfo.xml to be in between the present Monarch and Emperor levels, to give you a bit nicer of a gradient.

 

[Sarisin]

A really cheap way to win is to turn on Raging Barbarians, using a leader with the Barbarian trait (where no other leader has this), and a nice, open map (with lots of Ruins/Barrow spawning-terrain), so that everyone else gets swamped by barbarians, and the output of Ruins and/or Barrows. The only thing you have to do is not declare war on the Barbarians; pretty much anything else you do is irrelevant.

I find it very difficult at any level trying to manage the 50% rule when playing a civ at peace with the barbs. You never know when an AI civ will go down, lose pts., etc. and you will find yourself over the limit and here come the barbs. You will also likely be behind the power curve on techs due to the penalty you get. Expand at will and your pts. will likely get even higher creating more danger.

I just avoid the civs at peace with the barbs.

I am playing Emperor level now and I find that even though I fall behind in techs, no. of cities, etc. I can still build up a strong army. I have used the army to take out the sprawling civs as well as Jonas and Hyborem who were at peace with the barbs.

Maybe it is just this game, but I am not seeing much of a difference between Monarch and Emperor.

 

[Sureshot]

on deity with always war on, the AI's really know how to deal with the barbs and use them to their advantage to get highly promoted units, like because they are geared for war (normally i think its not that the AI can't deal with barbs, but that they don't know that they have to deal with them).

 

[daladinn]

some people argue some of the strats i have posted, but feel free to read them. i play mostly on diety although lately i have pretty much stopped playing. give us some specifics and its easier to help.

 

[xanaqui42]

some people argue some of the strats i have posted, but feel free to read them. i play mostly on diety although lately i have pretty much stopped playing. give us some specifics and its easier to help.

True, although I'll note that as one of the arguers against certain points:
1) They're still the best civ-specific strategies in the wiki.
2) If Daladinn plays on Diety and I play on Emperor, I know whose opinion I'd give more weight to
3) Daladinn's Kuriotates strategy helped my Kuriotates game immensely (I previously was loosing on Noble with them; I most recently won with them on Monarch).

 

[Nikis-Knight]

sorry, wrong thread.