Emperor Level Strategy

Dactyl · July 16, 2003, 23:39

I've got Civ 3 with PTW expansion. For the longest time, I've played on the Monarch level and I win the overwhelming majority of the times. Recently I've started playing on the Emperor level, but I've been getting my rear kicked. My usual strategy is to expand quickly early on, going to war to seize cities and then to settle into a builder strategy. I was usually dominant around the Industrial Age and didn't go to war much after that since I could generally win a Space victory without doing so. Well, this doesn't work on the Emperor level because I can't keep up with the AI civs in tech. I've changed strategies, employing a radical archer rush that becomes a swordsman rush as I get iron and slightly larger cities. This works well early on, but unfortunately in the mid-Middle Ages, when I'm the second or third largest civ, one of the civs that is larger than me goes to war with me, and they just inundate me with units. The handwriting is on the wall then, so I've quit since I don't know how to proceed. Does anyone have any suggestions for a strategy?

vmxa1 · July 17, 2003, 00:29

I take it that you have looked at some of the thread that are in the forum here that cover the main strats.
I don't think there is a generic tip that would be all that useful. I would think you may benefit from takign this thread and creating some reports of the action as you go along, we call them DAR's here. During action report or AAR (after AR).
In this you could give the game settings and some highloghts of the first turns up 2150 BC.
A save at teh start and a save at the report time.
Maybe a few screens.This would allow others to see what was going on and maybe add an insight.
Look at some of the AU threads for spoilers and you can see what players you doing for their reports.

vmxa1 · July 17, 2003, 00:40

What this will do is force you to see what your process is and then evaluate the feed back.
The main difference to me of Emp vs Mon is that you have less room for errors and bad starting locations.
The boost the AI gets lets them do better with the same tactics (it is the same AI).
You will have to get the most from you workers and your tiles. You have to use luxs and the slider better than at Monarch.
It is good to find a tech to get that is likely to not be researched by the AI, so you can get max trade vaules to stay up with them, until you have the production to hold your own.
It is much harder to get by without using diplomacy.
You need to be able to use a good city placement such a Zenning.
If the 2150BC break is good, try the next one at 1000BC. Keep going until you find a place where the game has gotten off the track (if any).
All of this presumes that the game you had was winnable and that we have some people that have the time to particate and the skills to help.

trev · July 17, 2003, 06:00

I have several suggestions that may help, but to some extent I guessing about aspects of your play where you may be making errors.

First point is that it is impossible generally to maintain a tech lead or tech parity, you will begin to drop behind inthe late first age and stay behind until about the beginning of the third age. Set your science to zero, use a scientist to learn techs unwanted by the AI's and generally buy techs by running a tax rate of 90% with 10% luxuries (republic or democratic gov't). If you develop your cities with marketplaces, banks and roads, your earnings will gradually increase until you can buy techs as quickly as they learn them.

Second point follows on from the first - To be able to trade money for techs, you MUST have a good reputation, do not break or cancel deals b4 20 turns, do not sneak attack anyone ( go to diplomatic screen and declare war, making sure all existing deals with civ are cancelled first)

Third point is slow the AI's learning curve by encouraging them to fight, you do this through selectively joining military alliances usually siding with a neighbour against a civ further away, this means that you can generally avoid getting in the battle leaving you to develop your civ while they do the fighting and waste resources

I have sometimes been attacked without warning, I always immediately sign military alliances or mutual protection pacts with all of my neighbours not involved in the war along with right of passage agreements, this will usually stabilise the situation. These agreements will almost always involve payments of gold/turn, which will be difficult to achieve if your reputation has not been maintained previously, so always protect your reputation

If a neighbour begins to collapse and lose cities quickly, join in on the action if there is no deal that will be broken, claiming cities for yourself, also building new cities in the gaps between the culture boundaries of captured cities now belonging to your allies and rush a library and temple. As they always delay building culture buildings until some time after capture this strategy can allow you to culturally claim most of the land of the destroyed civ even if you have captured almost no cities yourself.

Hopefully this ideas will assist you, I currently play with PTW at emperor level and can win about half of my games, if my situation is reasonable at about 1000bc, I am almost guaranteed a win

Dactyl · July 17, 2003, 11:42

Thanks for the suggestions. I have read a lot of the postings and such about strategy. I'm guessing my problem is with diplomacy and reputation. At the Monarch level, I pretty much ignored them because I figured that, sooner or later, the other civs are going to come after me anyway. I've been making the same assumption on Emperor level. That's apparently a mistake.

Dominae · July 17, 2003, 12:02

You've identified your problem, Dactyl.

On Monarch with a good start, you can pull ahead and out-research the AIs all by yourself during the Ancient age. This happens very infrequently on Emperor. Tech trading is an integral part of success on Emperor. In other words, a "no trading" Emperor game is quite difficult.

Making deals for techs (or anything else) with the AIs will make them like you more, by the way. If you just ignore them they have no reason to like you or dislike you, and the more aggresive civs will tend toward the latter, resulting in the inevitable SOD marching into your lands.

Dominae

vmxa1 · July 17, 2003, 12:13

I think AU208 or whatever the total war map was shows this very well. No trade or deals at all after first contact really increases the difficulty.

Theseus · July 18, 2003, 19:43

I think it was Catt that actually first got me on to the power of diplomacy and trade (which eventually showed up in my Seven Pillars thoughts).

I play mostly Emperor, and I actually sorta pride myself on my style in that regard... in AU 402: Gargantua, for instance, maintaining just about all of the AI civs at Polite, or at worst Cautious, made a huge difference in how I was able to play the game.

Dactyl · July 18, 2003, 20:51

How do you keep them Polite or Cautious. I've given them money and that will raise them to Polite or Cautious but a couple of turns later they'll be Annoyed again.

vmxa1 · July 18, 2003, 21:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Dactyl
How do you keep them Polite or Cautious. I've given them money and that will raise them to Polite or Cautious but a couple of turns later they'll be Annoyed again.

Don't over look the empires power vs a given civ. If you are very strong and trade/gift with them, you have a better chance to stay polite. If you are weaker than they are it seems to lead to difficulties.

Dactyl · July 19, 2003, 16:11

I've attached a copy of my latest game in a .sav file. It's 430 A.D. and I'm playing the Japanese on a standard map at Emperor level. (I got the Japanese because I'm playing everything set to random.) I'm on a continent with the Indians to the north of me, the Chinese north of them and the Koreans to the west of me. I feel I'm in pretty good shape but this is the point at which my Emperor-level games usually go awry. I have been bribing the Indians to keep them Polite or Cautious most of the time while I've gone to war against the Koreans, taking cities and technologies. A turn ago the Chinese showed up trying to pull a sneak attack on me. It looks like I'll be able to handle that threat, especially since I've bribed the Indians into declaring war on the Chinese. I would welcome any suggestions on the best way to proceed from this point.

vmxa1 · July 19, 2003, 19:27

As Henry Lee said in the OJ trial "something wrong here".
The save seems to be 1788AD or there abouts on MOnarch as Cleo. The game is a bit different than the one mentioned.

Dactyl · July 19, 2003, 20:29

My apologies! I uploaded the previous .sav file from the Civ3 directory instead of the Civ3 PTW directory. This time I have the correct one.

David Murray · July 19, 2003, 20:34

I've been trying to play on Emperor recently. I am confused as to how one is expected to keep civs polite *and* to buy tech off them, at the same time being expected to hit neighbours with military sorties to expand territory ... at the same time being expected to build workers, marketplaces and cathedrals to keep the economy ticking over (to buy techs of course) and keeping the people happy ... nightmare, absolute nightmare.

vmxa1 · July 19, 2003, 22:30

Quote:

Originally posted by Dactyl
My apologies! I uploaded the previous .sav file from the Civ3 directory instead of the Civ3 PTW directory. This time I have the correct one.

Well that's cool, I was afraid I had lost my mind.

vmxa1 · July 19, 2003, 22:42

Quote:

Originally posted by David Murray
I've been trying to play on Emperor recently. I am confused as to how one is expected to keep civs polite *and* to buy tech off them, at the same time being expected to hit neighbours with military sorties to expand territory ... at the same time being expected to build workers, marketplaces and cathedrals to keep the economy ticking over (to buy techs of course) and keeping the people happy ... nightmare, absolute nightmare.

No doubt that is a challenge. The two biggest things to me are
1- micromanage workers and to a lesser degree citizens
2- a good start location, great would be better.
Without those two I am not able to do it.
Well I do not try to keep the AI polite. I mean I will try to, but I will not cut my throat doing it. In the the haul I will not be able to do it. I can postpone the time it unravels.
Buying tech is best done with ohter tech or lux. Something they need more than money. Get a tech that the AI will likely not have researched and peddle it around. The tech you get may not be known to all, sell it to the others.
Nightmare, may be a bit strong, but it is not a cakewalk that is for sure. It can be done at deity, so it can be done at Emperor.
You must maximize your tiles and citizens. Making workers and units in early game is easy at EMP/Deity, because you have no other way of preventing unhappiness. At least not until you get a few luxs. Using the slider or jokers is painful before then, so keep cranking out units.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 00:33

Let me see if I can remember what I saw. Number one problem is you are in Despotism in the year 430AD. You must get out of it ASAP. As a non religious civ I will head for Republic and never switch again. If you want to be a flat out warmonger, you could go to Monarchy and not switch until very late or never. If religious you can switch from one to another. Say get to either Mon or Rep and switch to Demo later.

The next thing is you have very few workers and of course hardly any mines. As an industrious civ, I would want at least 1 worker for each city. If non Ind, then you need more. At emperor, it often is easy to have cities after the first 5-6 make a worker first thing. This is because it will take 10 turns and that is how many turns it takes to grow in most of those cities. If you have a worker pump, then you could send workers from the pumps. Core cities often can make workers early as they will have unhappy workers very soon, especially if you do not have an MP or two.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 00:41

Now to continue. Capitol has only 5 shields and is not growing. This is is leathal. You can not hope to get any wonders in these cities without a leader. In fact the start looks ok, but to me it is not good. You have no rivers in sight. It is very key to have your capitol and a few core cities on a river, so they can get to size 12 with no aquaducts.
I have an emp game going now where my capitol has only one irrigated tile and 11 mined ones. This puppy can make some shields and toss a wonder up faster than any AI city.
You in fact have two mined tiles in the capitol and one of them is not being worked.
Ok you get my point here, production is way to low for this point in a EMP game. The ai boost will let it out produce you unless you have solid cities.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 00:48

This is maybe a debatable point, but here is my view point. I do not want to see so many cities with barracks considering the size of your cities and their production.
I would maybe put one up near each flank and one in the unit producing cities. I would not be making so many units as you can not afford them. I would not be making any archers at this point in the game either. I do not like them, unless I am going to do an early archer rush. They can not be upgraded for a long time and when they can they are too late. It will be longbows verse knights, not my cup of tea. Spears and Swords at this point or Horsemen. I make a few archers very vry early, but none after horsemen and swordsmen.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 00:58

Now I see that Leo's and Sun Tzu are under construction in several civs. This means you are behind some key techs and have only a slim chance to get either of those wonders.
Put an embassy in on one of the civs that has it and steal the tech. You will not be able to trade for it, you have nothing to offer.
I would not have headed down the Monotheism path and ignore Pike and Invention. Now here I am mabe out of line with others, but I rarely ever get the Sistine Chapel. Yes it would be nice, but I want some of the other things more, namely Pikemen and Muskets.
Now in my current game I only got the GL out of that age, so I was able to go down the Chapel path as I was strong enough to fight off the AI without pikes and I knew the GL would give me that tech soon.

Not sure if I covered all teh questions and f course everything I said maybe wrong, but now you have it.

Dominae · July 20, 2003, 01:46

Dactyl, hope you do not mind, but I'm posting a screenshot of your game (many people like to comment but do not want to spend the time opening up the save).

vmxa1's advice is sound, as usual. There's just some things I want to underline myself:

1. You're way behind in tile improvements. I'm not at all surprised that you run into this "stumbling block" at this period in all your Emperor-level games. Your economy is simply not good enough to compete. I suspect you've survived this long by building a lot of military units, which has kept the AI off your back. Unfortunately, it's a losing battle, as you'll eventually be outmatched technologically and outnumbered when the AI goes for you.

Back to tile improvements. This is the key to Civ3. Building Workers and making sure your Laborers are working nice, productive tiles is just as important as expansion. By 430AD, every tile within your borders should have a Road on it, and either a Mine or Irrigation. Forget that it looks bad, we're talking strategy here. By putting Mines on every tile Osaka is working, you could be producing an Archer there every 3 turns instead of every 7 turns. Mostly you want Mines because your cities cannot grow beyond size 12 for quite a while. Roads should be everywhere, not just as connectors between cities. Think of every Road as +1gpt, and you'll see what I mean (it's not that simple, of course).

2. You're still in Despotism. This is the worst government other than Anarchy, and you've no reason to be in it when Monarchy and Republic are available. If you're going to war, Monarchy is simply better than Despotism in every way. If you're not, Republic is again far better than Despotism as a economy builder.

3. You're letting your Governor regulate the moods of your Citizens. Do not do this! Learn what makes them Happy, what makes them Unhappy, etc., and figure out ways to deal with this problem yourself. I guarantee you'll be more efficient than the Governor is.

4. You're using a lot of Regular Warriors as Military Police (you've got 31 Warriors!). That's not a very good use of your resources. True, you're not paying for their upkeep since you're in Despotism and have enough cities, but there are other problems. Unless you plan on upgrading all those guys, you're wasting a lot of Shields on something that could be accomplished more easily another way, such as with improvements, Luxuries, the Lux slider, or a combination of all three. If ever you switch to Republic, that's going to be 31gpt down the drain, unless you disband all the Warriors, which will have been a waste of Shields. 31 Warriors is 310 Shields which is in the Wonder range in terms of Production.

5. City improvements are good. You've been focusing on Barracks and Temples exclusively. Although this is sometimes the right thing to do, I suggest you try and be the "Builder" before the "Psychotic Warmonger".

6. You're earning 73 Commerce per turn. That's really, really low. This is due to your lack of Roads, your government, and the size of your cities. No matter what your goal, what you'll need to achieve it is many productive cities. Currently you have many cities, but they are not productive. You need much more Commerce in order to kee up in research and upgrade your units, among other things.

7. If you continue playing this game, here is my plan for you: 1) get every city to build about 2-3 Workers and make these build Roads everywhere, 2) switch to Republic, 3) set Science to 0%, 4) get Feudalism from some other civ (or research it yourself), 5) hoard up a lot of Gold to upgrade your Warriors to Medieval Infantry, and finally 6) take down the Indians, then the Chinese. Your Medieval Infantry should still be useful by the time you get enough Gold to upgrade a nice bunch of them. Meanwhile build some Horsemen to upgrade to Samurai for use against the next opponent when you reach Chivalry.

Sorry for being hard on you, but you simply must understand that Workers and tile improvements are at the core of success in Civ3.

Good luck, and have fun!

Dominae

David Murray · July 20, 2003, 07:47

Thanks for the words of wisdom, vmxa1. I've been in dominating positions in couple of Emperor games and yet the one thing that stopped me from winning was the fact that I was midway through the Middle Ages while the AI was entering industrial at 1030 AD. Knights are no use against riflemen and infantry. But I never even considered the posibility of stealing techs .....

Dactyl · July 20, 2003, 13:30

vmxa1 & Dominae,

Thanks for the blunt appraisal. I appreciate it. It's interesting. By temperament, I'm not a psychotic warmonger type of player. When I originally started playing on the Monarch level, I played a builder strategy, which suits me better, and with success. However, in an effort to attain higher scores, I changed to a strategy where I played as a warmonger until the middle of the Middle Ages, then switched over to a builder strategy. That way I got higher scores and I was generally able to catch up with the AI economically and technologically. I figured that on Emperor level I would have to be even more aggressive early on just to keep from being overwhelmed. Obviously I was wrong. That said, are there any documents I can download that contain your strategies for approaching an Emperor-level game?

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 15:50

Quote:

Originally posted by David Murray
Thanks for the words of wisdom, vmxa1. I've been in dominating positions in couple of Emperor games and yet the one thing that stopped me from winning was the fact that I was midway through the Middle Ages while the AI was entering industrial at 1030 AD. Knights are no use against riflemen and infantry. But I never even considered the posibility of stealing techs .....

The best thing is not arrive at this point with a large empire. It hopefully will be starting to become productive. Check the screen to see where you are in the production race. It can be hard to catch up in culture for a long time as they will have most of the early wonders, but you can start to get ahead in tech. This may take as long as the ToE, but should be done sooner.
You will need to have libs/universities in all solid cities.
You will need to trade well and get some tech. You may even beat some out of the AI, but this is usually harder to do at the point you are talking about.
It is easier to do it to weak civ before this time. The AI will have lots of troops by now, so you will have to pick your spots. I can often get one to attack me and get others to help me and then do very little to get a pay off.
It depends on the civ and where they are. If they are very large and near you it is harder.
I let them toss lots of units against my defense and then strike out. This gives the AI time to feel better about peace. It does not want to talk about peace after just a short time. So if say 9-10 turns as gone by and I have smacked some of their invasion forces and then grab a city or two, I can get a deal.
Calv can take down rifles. Just aviod the size 12 and the bonus defenses. I will have maybe two armies to use on cities as they can bust the defenses.
In the main I will do only a little work on cities at this point. Pick the right spots and you can hurt them.
I want tanks after rifles. Just use your defense to hang close. Grab all the opportunities that come your way.
Ai vs AI, I look to join in at the best time to snag a twon or two. Building my troops and improving my production.
You should be able to start out researching, if you production is where it should be.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 16:03

Dactyl

Somewhere here we have topped thread for strats. I am sure that some exist there.
To me the war or not war is not even part of the issue.
I mean it is sort of true that you can have some sucess with war monger tactics, but it is not required.
I would just work on getting more workers and making mines in the core cities. Then you will be stronger and choose to war or not.
Play with sedentary barbs for awhile to allow you to ignore them while you manage those workers.
I like to check the citizen when I create a city. See where it was placed. Normally it will be on the best tile. If so then I will send my worker over to mine it. Sometimes I will irrigate a tile for a worker or settler pump or if that city can not grow any other way.
The key is improve it with mine or irrgation before roading. Next plan where the worker will go next. Sometimes you will need to move a citizen from one tile to another to save worker moves. I see this often when a bunch of tiles are the same. I have worker on one and the gov drops a new citizen on a tile that is not adjacent to that worker. Why move my worker twice or more to get to that tile when they are the same?
Anyway look at Crackers thread on CFC for this whole topic. It is called something like improving opening moves. It will teach players how to evaluate tiles and conserve workers to get the most out of them. This is critical after Monarch.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 16:10

If you want to see a well layed out empire look at AU208 post by Nbarclay. You will see tile after tile all mined. I am sure there are many others, but that si the last one I remember seeing.
Of course I never automate workers until I have may RR up, even then I usually will not automate them, but you could. I is ok if you have your own land mass, but if you have neighbors, the workers will get into trouble.

vmxa1 · July 20, 2003, 18:55

I forgot to mention something that could be useful in Emp/Deity games. That is to understand the requirements and timing of a city having a citizen to become unhappy.
If you look at a start for Emp you can see the next pop bump coming. If you have sent your warrior out and the city is empty, you must be ready to take action on the pop to prevent unhappiness and the loss of production.
These will add up in the first 40 turns. I suspect a lot of player will see the disorder after the fact. Now you lost a turn of production.

Theseus · July 20, 2003, 20:02

Dactyl, I was about to open the save myself, but vxma1 and Dominae are spot on, and seeing the screen shot spoke for itself.

Run, do not walk, RUN to these two threads:

Winning Early: What do YOU do?

Improving your opening play skills

Forget about grand strategy and things military for the moment... you will be blown away by how much tile improvement alone can improve your game. Once that's together, the other pillars follow.

David Murray · July 21, 2003, 08:00

In my current Emperor game, I think I've hit the spot where I know I'm going to win. Biggest piece of advice I think you can give anyone intent on winning Emperor is to play on a small map. Or maybe a standard map. And build lots and lots of units like vmxa1 says ... you want to capture as much as you can, e.g. capturing the great library gives you an amazing boost if your research has stagnated. Capturing an enemy city with a wonder in it takes a lot less time than building an attacking force. Of course, generating a great leader 490BC also helps ....