Who plays most games on Emperor and up?

[Jeckel]

Hey all, I was just wondering how many people play on the highest difficulty levels, Emperor, Immortal, and Deity. Naturally enough you hear alot of people talking about the lower diff levels cause this is the place to come when your learning the game, but I want to hear the elite players sound off.

Do you play Emperor, Immortal, or Deity difficulty?
Whats size map do you play?
How many people do you put on the map?
What is your fav trait combination?
What era do you start in?
What victory conditions do you play?

To start it off:
I tend to play on Emperor or Immortal.
I like tiny and small maps.
I tend to double the default amount of civs on a map size.
My favorite traits are philisofical and financial.
I start most games in moder or future era.
And I use domination, diplomatic, and conquest vicorties.

 

[lordqarlyn]

I am a very terrible player, I can only play on the lower levels. (go ahead laugh at me )

 

[Supr49er]

...

Do you play Emperor, Immortal, or Deity difficulty?
Whats size map do you play?
How many people do you put on the map?
What is your fav trait combination?
What era do you start in?
What victory conditions do you play?

...

I've worked my way up to Emporer - I've yet to win in 4 games.
Standard or large
Default # civs
I play as random leader
Ancient
No domination/culture

 

[Bushface]

Emperor: I win about half my games, the others being abandoned when it's clear that I cannot possibly win, usually quite early.
Large, pangaea or continents (Huge takes me far too long)
Default number of civs (random opponents)
Usually as Roosevelt, renamed Bert of the Bertish Empire
Ancient start, always
No domination; culture very rarely, just for a change. Most wins by conquest.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

i started playing emperor recently. Standard maps. Usually pangaea. Usually with 8 or 9 people. 7 is too few. Always ancient era. My favorite leader is Ragnar. Wang Kon is another favorite. Mostly space race and diplo victories so far. On monarch i could win domination victories, no problem, but i'm having trouble winning military victories on emperor.

 

[slightlymarxist]

I win fairly consistently on Emperor, and play mostly on Immortal. My favourite traits are Aggressive, Organised, Creative and to a lesser extent, Expansive. I play standard games (7 civs, ancient era, all victories enabled) on Standard size Fractal or Hemispheres maps, Epic speed. I almost always go for a Domination/Conquest victory.

 

[warhead66]

See this is exactly why i rarely go on emperor.

i hate not playing on huge maps and i cant stand anything non continential.

if i play in emperor (never gone higher) i always play world map and pick an asian country, either china korea, india or khmer, but honestly i don't find it that entertaining. the last time i played khmer was good because there was a fair balance, but i still get nagged at the fact that the computer has an advantage, i want it to be 100% fair for both sides, playing with handicap for the other players makes me feel like i'm playing a babies game or just wasting my time.

 

[Bleys]

I was playing Emperor and Immortal some when all I had was Vanilla, now I am back down to Monarch with BTS. Once I get the hang of all the new features in this expansion, I plan to push back up.

Some maps are easier than others, and some leaders are more powerful than others, so those choices can highly influence the "true" difficulty of some maps. Also, some players own personal style can be stronger or weaker depending on map, leader, etc.

 

[morchuflex]

I have started playing Emperor for a month. So far, I can only win if I have a decent starting location.

I mostly play huge, archipelago maps, on Epic speed.
I leave everything on default, except for: Raging barbs, aggr AI, no tech brokering, no vassals.
I play a peaceful builder's game.
Favorite traits: creative, industrious.
Favorite leader: Louis.

Home rule: I abstain from all the "tricks" that some people recommend on higher levels: queue swapping, pre-chopping, oracle gambits, tech beelining with tech brokering intent, early rushes, worker stealing etc.
That's probably why I'm still struggling...

 

[Bleys]

Home rule: I abstain from all the "tricks" that some people recommend on higher levels: queue swapping, pre-chopping, oracle gambits, tech beelining with tech brokering intent, early rushes, worker stealing etc.
That's probably why I'm still struggling...

I guess I dont understand why you are calling these things "tricks". Most of them are pure micromanagement game skills. Mastering your build queue and your chopping/whipping go a LONG way to being fast enough to keep up with the AIs. Those who struggle at higher levels have less of an idea of how to maximize these techniques.

This game is ABOUT micromanagement. Doing it better = more game skill = higher difficulty beatable. Nothing has increased my ability to beat the "next" level more than a more insightful understanding of the micromanagement techniques you disdain. Why WOULDNT you beeline a high level tech with the intent to trade it away? Why WOULDNT you want to master chopping and whipping to maximize your benefits from these features?

Some of the stuff you mention might be sketchy, but honestly, you seem to refer to game strategies as "almost cheating". I am willing to debate the issue further, as I am sure others would be, but please be a bit more definitive about whats "acceptable strategy" and what defines a "trick".

EDIT: As I re-read that, I notice its a very abrasive post. My apologies for that tone, morch, it wasnt my intention to come off as "hostile". Its just what you call "tricks" I call "skills".

 

[CHEESE!]

I only win Emperor, Immortal, and Diety if i Quecha rush.

 

[morchuflex]

Lots of stuff

Well, this has been debated ad nauseam, but since you are willing to talk about it, let's go. And your post isn't that abrasive, considering my post was at least somewhat provocative.

I like my games to have flavor, and for me flavor comes from doing what seems fit from a naive point of view, not what seems most appropriate in order to exploit the weak points of the AI. For instance, researching the techs my empire needs to grow has flavor. Researching the techs I know I can trade for maximum profit because previous games have shown that the AI makes them a low priority feels lame. I don't blame people who do it, and I can understand that you call it skill, but to me such skills are precisely what diminish the experience.
To take a comparison, if Civ was tennis, I'd rather play a beautiful game (with big shots and classic volleys) and lose, than winning by constantly slicing to my opponent's known-to-be-weak backhand.
I guess it's just a matter of personality.

 

[lordqarlyn]

Not me! I am a really, really bad player. I get my butt kicked on prince level !

 

[theKurgen]

Nearly all of my games are on Emperor, with the occasional on Immortal. Always Large or Huge and my favourite maps are medium/small and Fractal. I usually add an extra 1 or 2 civs to the default and always play AggAI. I never ever 'reload' for any reason, and would rather die. All of my games are either Epic or Marathon.

About 2 months ago I would have said I often win but usually lose on Emperor, but now it would be the other way around. Have only won twice on Immortal. Favourite leaders are Darius and Ghandi, rarely go anyone else, maybe the Incans occasionally. Never done anything but an ancient start, anything else isn't really civ, more like retardation. I prefer to win by domination, but often powerful enemies will convince me I should use my tech lead to go for space rather than war. I absolutely love this game!

 

[Tlalynet]

Ive only done a handfull of emperor games and only won one. I only like high levels so you can run an effective spy economy, and often come out with high culture rather than large amounts of land. The win was cultural. I also feel that playing where either side gets % bonuses is playing a bit of a babies game, but the AI is bad so noble (thats the balanced default?) can get easy after a while. I win almost always on prince, and about half the time on monarch. Even in larger monarch games it seems inevitable to face stacks of over 100, and siting around building troops to prepare for that is tedious to me, so I switch up the difficulty level a lot between monarch and prince.

 

[mboettcher]

I play mostly on emperor or immortal. Almost always on huge maps because I like long games but I must confess Im very good but only with a very small spectrum of civs. I can obviously win with the Romans but for me they are not as easy as Germany.

I actually find that they are little too strong at high levels cause I can sit around and tank until the industrial era being in the bottom half and then just panzer rush my way to the top. Its really fun but a little easy.

 

[Big Roy]

Up until about 3 months ago I could only play monach and would only win 1 out of every 3 or 4 starts. The win was highly dependant on starting position and just plain fluke i guess. I then read Snaaty's guide to emperor and above and it helped me no end. I played a game after reading it and smashed monach. I then played two back to back games on Emporer and won them both. I then progress to Immortal and was back to winning 1 in 3 or 4 starts.

All of this on Standard everything, continents ETC.

Many of the strategies on here I am still learning, queue swapping for example I have no idea about. Snaaty's strategy does beeline rifling, but other than that it seems ok - I have found that it does fall over quite a bit depending on conditions on Immortal and Emperor.

One comment i will make - there have been a number of articles on here about the AI cheating - seeing as my rise up the difficulty levels was rather rapid I did come across one thing that was quite noticable. The percenages of combat success as you go up the diffculty levels is just pain wrong. Checking the combat logs the AI will win MOST of the combats where odds are less than 50%, they win a significant number of combats where the odd are only 10%-20%, YOU WILL LOOSE A GREAT NUMBER OF COMBATS BETWEEN 50-90%. I know this comment will invite a multitude of comemtns from people who have tested combat in the world builder to death. They will also say that it is just my mind remembering the unlikely defeats - it's not. The higher up the more likely the odds will fall against you. I started taking notes - just obvious.
I wnet back down to Monach for some fun and it blew me away how many combats I expected to loose on that level that I was now winning.

Anyway my two cents worth........

 

[Sueff]

Emporer in single player and monarch in mp (just that noone is screwed too early due to a bad starting position or something).
I/we win some and lose some (OK, usually not lose like worst player or defeated but you know), so I'm not THE most experienced player.
Usually I/we play on large terra world with 12 or 13 civs and always everyone on random. MP always on standard speed, SP on epic or marathon.
Right now I'm trying the 40 civs mod in single player on emporer with the greece.

Note: I don't mean the MP games I play with just humans (just to not sound like a liar if someone actually played me ). Of course these games are usually smaller maps and quick game speed on noble.

 

[NuWorld]

Emperor (rarely) & Immortal (mostly) + occasional Deity game
Standard size
Pangaea
Ancient era
Marathon speed
18 civs
Random leaders
All victory conditions

Like hack'n'slash games.

 

[davy_hall]

I'm playing my games on Emperor now.
Large Maps
3-4 extra civs
Random Civs/Random Leaders/Random Map/Climate/Sea Level (I like trying to make the best of whatever hand I'm dealt)
Epic Speed (I enjoy it, plus I probably need the crutch of a little extra time still at this level)
Ancient Era
All victory conditions - although I tend to be a bit of a peacemonger so usually aim for Space, Culture, or Diplo - will go for Conquest or Domination if the map and settings dicate.