Yet another "Help me w/Emperor!" thread...

[bovinespy]

Hello all. I've had C3C for a year and a half now, and I'm comfortable enough with winning on Monarch, to the point where it got boring. Eventually I realized, if it's too easy, go up to Emperor (duh). I prepared myself by reading Ision's excellent article on "The Great Leap", along with other advice from the Forum, and thought I could handle it. Sort of .
I was able to get a Cultural win on my 2nd or 3rd try with the Iroqouis. And I also narrowly lost a Space Race as the Celts (my score was well over 5000). Since then, however, I keep failing miserably. I thought I had a good game going with the Chinese, but my bloated military became obsolete and I couldn't keep up enough in tech, so that the AI had Musketeers by the time I got Riders.
Other times, such as with the English or Sumerians, I apparently over-expanded and got ambushed. Still other times, with Babylon and Egypt, I got frustrated and gave up as my Golden Age was triggered while still in Despotism.

So, with that in mind:

1. How do you guys keep up in tech? I know about trading with the AI, but I can never seem to get a tech before they do, and I never have anything they want. Other times I've tried buying techs, but it's so expensive (e.g. 220 gold for Ceremonial Burial) that I still far way behind. Particularly frustrating is when I beeline for Philosophy, only to NOT get the free tech

2. In a related vein, do you beeline for Republic or Monarchy, even at the cost of being able to build offensive units or marketplaces? I can't take another Despotic GA!

3. I know about settler factories, and try to set them up ASAP when possible, but is it worth a tech detour to research Pottery early, even at the cost of falling behind in the Philosophy race?

4. Similarly, I now know NOT to build hordes of spearmen, and try to build as many offensive units ASAP, but is it worth a tech detour for Warrior Code (or a HUGE detour for Iron Working)? Should I just build hordes of Warriors and count on quantity over quality when playing a builder game? (Obviously, when I take a Militaristic Civ, I build swarms of Archers right off the bat)

5. How soon do you build workers? I often find myself not building any until I've got 3 or 4 cities going, preferring to spend the population points on settlers instead.

6. Is it worth it to do heavy pop rushing for Temples, Libraries, Barracks? I've been doing a lot more pop rushing than I used to do on Monarch, and thought I was doing a good job getting my infrastructure up quickly, only to have serious financial shortfalls (especially when having to spend 10% or 20% on lthe luxury slider).

7. Is the Despotic GA really to be feared and despised as much as I do now, or I should I just get over it and kick some tail with my War Chariots or Bowmen?

If you've read this far, you have my gratitude. Now please help!
I don't want to go back to Monarch!!!

 

[SJ Frank]

1. How do you guys keep up in tech? I know about trading with the AI, but I can never seem to get a tech before they do, and I never have anything they want. Other times I've tried buying techs, but it's so expensive (e.g. 220 gold for Ceremonial Burial) that I still far way behind. Particularly frustrating is when I beeline for Philosophy, only to NOT get the free tech

220 gold for CB! That is really expensive. Were you buying it at monopoly price? Now, if you hold off, wait 30 turns, and buy CB at last-civ-price, then it shouldn't cost more than 100g (on a standard map, that is). Part of the art of tech brokering is also knowing when NOT to buy, and instead wait for a better deal.

Also, you may not be exploring enough. How many exploring warriors do you make? Two? Three? Four? Your goal is to have all the contacts before the AI's do.

2. In a related vein, do you beeline for Republic or Monarchy, even at the cost of being able to build offensive units or marketplaces? I can't take another Despotic GA!

In general, I beeline for Republic first. However, situation does affect the choice here. If I have a really tough starting location, or if the AI is so close that I have no room to expand, then I do what ever it takes to win an early war first, then worry about the rest.

3. I know about settler factories, and try to set them up ASAP when possible, but is it worth a tech detour to research Pottery early, even at the cost of falling behind in the Philosophy race?

If you don't research it early, then you're betting on your AI neighbors to research it for you. It will depend on a few factors: 1) you having to be doing a min run on Writing, otherwise you don't have enough gold to trade with. 2) you have at least two AI neighbors close by, otherwise you'll have to pay monopoly price on Pottery. I've been burned by that before.

I don't think there is one right answer that will cover all the situations. Especially since you have to make the choice on turn 1, when you know nothing about the surroundings. I usually pick the Pottery option, because missing the Philosophy free tech is easier to recover from than missing a few cities.

There are a few things that would influence my decision in the other direction. Some of them have to do with my likelyhood of trading for Pottery, like playing a smaller map, being expansionist on a pangea or seafaring on a archi, taking a sneak peek at F10 . Another instance is if my planned starting sequence is like: warrior->warrior->settler->granary, and I have a big prebuild available for granary. In this case, I don't need pottery until 30-40 turns into the game, so I could afford to wait.

4. Similarly, I now know NOT to build hordes of spearmen, and try to build as many offensive units ASAP, but is it worth a tech detour for Warrior Code (or a HUGE detour for Iron Working)? Should I just build hordes of Warriors and count on quantity over quality when playing a builder game? (Obviously, when I take a Militaristic Civ, I build swarms of Archers right off the bat)

You shouldn't build a swarm of anything until you first build a swarm of settlers, then a swarm of workers . While you're in the settler/worker phase, regular warriors are good enough for scouting, barb defense and MP. If you forsee war in the near future, then use one or two high shield cities as unit factories. But still, settle all the land you can first.

As far as military techs go, the human player should never have to "make a detour" for them here at the Emperor level. The AI's will happily research them for you. Just be prepared to trade for them.

5. How soon do you build workers? I often find myself not building any until I've got 3 or 4 cities going, preferring to spend the population points on settlers instead.

A lot of times, building workers first can help building settler faster. It will depend on map size and how close the AI's are. It's a similar idea to building granaries. Your first few settlers are late because you build a worker first, but your 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. settlers are faster.

6. Is it worth it to do heavy pop rushing for Temples, Libraries, Barracks? I've been doing a lot more pop rushing than I used to do on Monarch, and thought I was doing a good job getting my infrastructure up quickly, only to have serious financial shortfalls (especially when having to spend 10% or 20% on lthe luxury slider).

Not in the core cities, and not for barracks. In core cities, those buildings naturally complete faster, and each citizen that you kill is also more valuable (brings in more shields/gold). If you want to whip, do it at the fringe of the empire.

Whipping barrack also doesn't make much sense. What's the purpose of building a barrack? To build troops. But killing citizens slows down your troop building speed. So what if killing the citizen doesn't slow down troop building because the citizen killed is corrupt? Well then, you shouldn't build the barrack in the first place. Use corrupt town to build catapults instead.

If you really want to build temples/libraries/barracks faster, the key is not pop rushing, it's more workers. When every tile is improved, those things go up really fast

Also, consider not building temples and libraries. If you build them too early, they'll hurt you more than they help.

7. Is the Despotic GA really to be feared and despised as much as I do now, or I should I just get over it and kick some tail with my War Chariots or Bowmen?

It doesn't matter at all! Early turns are more important than later turns. If you take advantage of an early GA, then the advantage that you gained will snowball into huge benefits later in the game.

If you've read this far, you have my gratitude. Now please help!
I don't want to go back to Monarch!!!

Don't worry. The next time you fire up a Monarchy game, it will be for an AW or OCC variant

 

[island007]

I just cut off my post by accident. Anyway "Good Luck'

 

[bovinespy]

Thanks for the replies, guys (especially SJ Frank's point-by-point response)!

I think I'm gonna try out England on a water map and see how that goes....

 

[Ansar]

1) you having to be doing a min run on Writing, otherwise you don't have enough gold to trade with.

About how much gold will I end up with?

 

[wxwindmill]

Thanks for the replies, guys (especially SJ Frank's point-by-point response)!

I think I'm gonna try out England on a water map and see how that goes....

This Conquest of the Month is England on a water map on Emporer level.
You could check how others are doing with this kind of a setup.

 

[bovinespy]

This Conquest of the Month is England on a water map on Emporer level.
You could check how others are doing with this kind of a setup.

Actually, I've been trying for about 2 hours to get an "archetypal" English start (ie. my OWN freakin' island!!!) with no luck, even after reducing the number of civs. Why does the game do this? I think IRL English history (and hence the tradition modeled in this game) would've been a tad different if you could walk from Dover to Calais....

Ah, screw it. I'll just pick somebody else (who starts with Alphabet, of course )

 

[Invisible Rhino]

I'm just wondering, what do you advise for a cultural victory on those levels? For me cultural victory is by far the hardest to get, and I am playing a game as the Babylonians for crying out loud! I can get conquest really easy, diplo easily enough, spaceship and domination with some effort, but cultural is just killing me.

 

[Xerol]

For 100k, on a higher level, the general rule is conquer first, then get culture. 200 cities with temple + library = 1000 CPT, while 20 cities with temple, library, colosseum, university, and cathedral = 280 CPT. Expand as much as you can without hitting the domination limit(stay quite a few tiles under just in case), cram in cities in your outlying regions, and rush culture while your core cities rake in the cash with markets, banks, and stock exchanges(if you get that far). If you're in the modern ages, The Internet helps. If you conquer most of the land in the ancient/early middle ages, keep the Temple of Artemis around and don't get to Education. (I'm doing a ToA 100k in a current game, Monarch as Greece.)

As far as 20k goes, try a OCC or 5CC a level below your comfortable level, and if you're playing in Vanilla/PTW, leader farm to grab every wonder. In conquests you'll have to rely on prebuilds (in a >1CC build the FP in your 20k city and the palace somewhere else, and you can use that to grab a lot of wonders), beating the AI to tech, and not wasting any time getting those improvements rushed. 5CC 20k isn't all that hard - 4 cities build workers to join into the 20k city until it's maxed out, then infrastructure to support huge piles of gold for cash rushing the improvements (this is especially important if you're non-rel, non-sci, since those get expensive), and then units to defend or conquer - a few wars to cripple some AIs can keep you ahead in tech.