How can I win on Emperor? URGENT - I must win, finally!

[veteran-noob]

So, Emperor mode is completely impossible for me. I have mastered every other level below Emperor but still feel useless. What I need is direction from better players.

Could anyone spare the time to give me a step by step programme for success? Starting with which is the best civilisation, then what I should build first, how I should focus my efforts on resources etc.

I know it's shameful but I need babysitting. I feel close to the edge.

Thanks.

[elthrasher]

Build 10 cities by 0 AD. Now sit back and win.

It's tough to advise you further than that without knowing what's going wrong for you.

[sn1p3rk1ll3]

Build 10 cities by 0 AD. Now sit back and win.

It's tough to advise you further than that without knowing what's going wrong for you.

1 archer army per endangered city, and for the rest just a lot of counters (offensive units to kill attackers)
just try to grab as much land as possible and secure it

[Zefelius]

Zulu are super easy. Form army immediately and you'll run over villages. You might even grab a free AI cap that's empty. If not, your vet WA will win 4.5-2.5 (or less). Then follow Thrasher's instructions: expand to 10. This will require CoL as soon as you have 20 tech to get there in 3 turns. Once at 10, you could probably tech to knights and take another cap. If there's one or two caps left, get to about 15 cities and tech to steam for cruisers. When you combine your cruisers with knights you'll win easy battles against the AI. There's a naval bonus when you attack with land + naval units. And remember that at least one of those cities should be set to production so you can save hammers for those attacks. In MP you'll need more prod though.

[veteran-noob]

Thanks guys.

I think my main problem is that I'm not building enough cities.

I almost won a technology vitory with Japan earlier. Well, I say win, but I think my chances of victory were an illusion. I only had four cities and I was leading for a long time. Then it seemed like the French were going to win a cultural victory, which they do a lot. Then the bloody Indians ended up beating me on Tech!

So, now that I know I need more cities, someone needs to explain to me how I go about building cities without slowing my production down by sapping the population building settlers. How - is it something to do with focussing on food?

Any other, general or specialised, tips would be really useful too so would appreciate it if you could keep throwing them my way.

Thanks!

(sorry if you find my crapness annoying)

[Zefelius]

hey....

If you produce a HA immediately, as per Grayson's guide on horserushing, you won't have to worry about sacrificing production (if Zulu then a couple of WAs instead). Here's why: you'll make a perimeter. That means your first HA gets out usually before 2500, sometimes in the 3000s if you're good or have China/Aztecs (also USA, but too complicated to explain here). Now, since you have a HA out, that means whatever the AI throws your way, you're going to crush it. They won't have a HA out so early. Usually wandering warriors and then later legion armies.

SO crush them. And what happens when you crush them and take at least one cap? You now know what's out there. In other words, with a couple of scouts (well placed warriors that were first sent out at 3700 and 3500---assuming you put your cap on two trees at 4000 BC) and your patrolling HA, you don't have to put an archer in every city which would be costly. You can leave them open! This is good. Whatever comes your way, send your HA after it.

SO after you have the HA out and a couple of warriors placed at chokepoints or high traffic areas, you can expand at will!!! This is excellent. Just expand by getting to three pop, and after 3 pop put two pop on grass for two turns which gives you 4 apples per turn, which means that after those two turns you can make a settler and the next turn your decreased city will be at 2 pop instead of 1. This is famously known as Morte's Expansion Method.

Do this until you have 20 tech, tech up to CoL, go into Republic, and now double your cities to 10. You can often do this before 0AD. On SP, often much sooner, sometimes by 1000 BC. But focus on 0 AD for now.

Good luck!!!!!!!!

ZEF

[elthrasher]

How is he supposed to know what a HA is?

vet-noob, HA is a dumb acronym that lazy people use for horsemen army. WA is a dumb acronym that lazy people use for warrior army.

One of the ways we have killer starts with a bazillion cities is by rushing the nearby AI. If you get there at around 3000 BC, it will be a 3 pop city that can immediately produce a settler. You will be getting your own free settler for having 100 gold so having four cities settled by 2500 BC (15 turns) is easy enough. Now you have 25 turns to produce 6 more settlers to have 10 cities by 0 AD. That should be simple for any player.

However, rushing may be tough for a player who hasn't beaten emperor yet. You can get to 10 cities with any civ (depending on your start). The main things to remember are to always manually assign your citizens, do more with less, buildings are kind of useless and smaller cities recover population faster than larger cities.

So start by producing two warriors as fast as you can which means you must manually move your citizens to work on trees. Use these guys to explore and get gold. The AI is slow so you should be able to suck most of the gold off the map and reach 100 soon for a free settler. Settle that guy in a balanced spot not far from your capital. By balanced, I mean 2 trees, 2 sea tiles and 1-2 grasslands or fish. In the mean time, you can produce more warriors if necessary (rarely, if ever would you need more than 4 and 2 is often sufficient) or rush them with gold. Try to find logical chokepoints to keep the AI at bay. The AI won't go to war to get past your warrior until about 0 AD or even later sometimes so just that one little guy can often keep you safe for a long time. This is much better than building lots of archers. You want to try to expand without archers as much as possible.

You need to grow your capital up to 3 population when you're done with warriors. Put both your citizens on grasslands and it takes 5 turns. Worst-case scenario is you have a total of 5 population in two cities down by 2500 BC, but try to get it done faster than that because that's behind schedule due to having had to hammer out 4 warriors. 5 pop = 10 science if all your citizens go on sea tiles, which means you could get Alphabet in 2 turns, Writing in 4 turns and Code of Laws in 6 more turns. Alternatively, you can expand more using the 2 trees, 1 grass method that Zef mentioned. Once you earn Code of Laws (note that the Romans start with this tech so if you hate this part, play them), switch to the Republic government and put your citizens on trees to start spitting out settlers. 2 trees = 5 turn settler. Put your cities close together and make them mostly coastal. Also use gold to rush settlers if you can afford it.

There are a lot of tricks that can speed things up, but that's the basic idea. You want to spend the BCs making settlers only, if possible. You may have to make some extra warriors or archers (or even a galley if you see a good artifact). If you reach 10 by 0, you will be so far ahead of the AI, you can basically do whatever you want and you will win. A good way to go is to do another round of settlers, then you can start on a war machine, or libraries (if you want - they aren't really necessary) or whatever else you want to do. You will have 20 cities and the AI will probably have around 10-12 combined.

[veteran-noob]

SUCCESS!!! Thanks to everyone for the brilliant advice.

Earlier on, I played as Rome, expanded as quickly as possible, and eventually won an Economic victory. There were times when it looked as though I might be defeated but I managed to struggle through in the end; as I was focussing on Gold, I neglected Science and was nearly dashed by an Egyptian Tech victory, not to mention the constant AI demands for half my bank, but I bought just enough peace to boost my Science long enough to research tanks etc, went back to Gold, and 'hey presto' I won with one turn to spare!

It wasn't pretty but at least I now have one victory on Emperor mode!

Thanks again to everyone, very extensive advice Mr Elthrasher -I will put all of the suggested strategies to use and, no doubt, my nex victory will be less stressful.

What a game, eh?!

[sn1p3rk1ll3]

SUCCESS!!! Thanks to everyone for the brilliant advice.

Earlier on, I played as Rome, expanded as quickly as possible, and eventually won an Economic victory. There were times when it looked as though I might be defeated but I managed to struggle through in the end; as I was focussing on Gold, I neglected Science and was nearly dashed by an Egyptian Tech victory, not to mention the constant AI demands for half my bank, but I bought just enough peace to boost my Science long enough to research tanks etc, went back to Gold, and 'hey presto' I won with one turn to spare!

It wasn't pretty but at least I now have one victory on Emperor mode!

Thanks again to everyone, very extensive advice Mr Elthrasher -I will put all of the suggested strategies to use and, no doubt, my nex victory will be less stressful.

What a game, eh?!

good job!

And you know whats even better?
->First attempt with the strategies, so there's a lot of room for improvements!

You'll be racking up the emperor and deity wins in no-time :)

[Zefelius]

How is he supposed to know what a HA is?

vet-noob, HA is a dumb acronym that lazy people use for horsemen army. WA is a dumb acronym that lazy people use for warrior army.



Ouch!!! :D Okay, I deserved that. Sorry Vet Noob!!

[Zefelius]

SUCCESS!!! Thanks to everyone for the brilliant advice.

Earlier on, I played as Rome, expanded as quickly as possible, and eventually won an Economic victory. There were times when it looked as though I might be defeated but I managed to struggle through in the end; as I was focussing on Gold, I neglected Science and was nearly dashed by an Egyptian Tech victory, not to mention the constant AI demands for half my bank, but I bought just enough peace to boost my Science long enough to research tanks etc, went back to Gold, and 'hey presto' I won with one turn to spare!

It wasn't pretty but at least I now have one victory on Emperor mode!

Thanks again to everyone, very extensive advice Mr Elthrasher -I will put all of the suggested strategies to use and, no doubt, my nex victory will be less stressful.

What a game, eh?!

Sounds like an awesome game! Glad you did it.... You'll beat deity in no time. But whatever you do, when you ask for help on deity, if you do, at least don't spell it as "diety" in the title thread! :)