need advice on building large empires

[Jesus Cristo]

i always played on standard map size and decided to try build a giant empire. choose Large Map and builded 10 cities with liberty policy without any religion (building this much settlers takes a lot of effort) and troops only for defense purposes, i manage to build only pyramids and focused on cultural buildings except by barracks for faster expanding borders (russians). I got so far behind in technologies that i researched worldwar infantary by 2029 and was the worst civilization in the game (10 AIs 20 city states Prince). Now something strange is, my enemys managed to have almost the same numer of cities building lot's of wonders with strong religion and great armys, on top of that the AI managed to ban my resources. It was a complete disaster. I welcome good advice

[Orlykthxbai]

It really just has to do with happiness. The AI gets happiness for free as a handicap based on the difficulty. Really you probably can't get an empire as big as the AI because of this. If your happiness is in the red a couple of things will happen; your gold income is reduced and you will get a penalty on combat. If you have negative gold your research will end up slowing down or stopping which is probably why you end up behind.

Getting luxury resources is the easiest way to bring up happiness. Trade extra resources to the AI for luxuries and try to build your cities by different luxury resources.

Notre Dame world wonder is a free +10 happiness so you might want to pick it if you can.

Liberty isn't a very good tree. You almost always want traditionalism.

I believe if you are friends/allies with mercantile city states they will grant bonus happiness.

You should only expand when you have excessive happiness. Maybe 10-20 happiness before you build a new city. For every city you have you get -1 happiness. You also get -1 happiness from every citizen you have.

You should always aim for getting a religon. It can give alot of bonuses such a gold, happiness, culture or food.

Have a clear idea of what kind of victory you are going for and what world wonders you are aiming for. You can't get every wonder you want. You need to have a few that you really want and rush down the tech tree for them. Otherwise your tech tree just ends up all over the place and the other players will end up with all the good wonders.

Probably want to avoid wars as much as possible unless you are going for the world domination victory. Wars will just slow down your progress so avoid them if possible. Try to be friendly with all of the AI and accept their declaration of friendship .

I'm probably forgetting some stuff but these should help you. In all honesty it probably isn't a good idea to have a giant sprawling empire. I would rather have 3 good cities then 10 low population bad cities. It is also easier to defend a smaller empire.

[Jesus Cristo]

if the AI don't work by the rules then it's worthless ban their resources?! that don't make much sense, why would they put a congress if my decision there would no cause a heavy impact on the game?
i usually build around 4 cities with tradition and buy workers with gold for fast development of my nation, it seems does not work anymore

[mss73055]

Liberty is the tree to get started fast, like when you have rivers nearby. Honor is better for empires because you get 2 culture and 1 happiness per city in the end.

The trait in Patronage what gives you 6 happiness for luxuries is handy, because even if you already have the luxury yourself you get 2 more happiness if a city state also provides it.

You got to have the Commerce trait of 25% reduction on rushed production. Combine this with the Big Ben and maybe the 33% cut on purchasing military. That's making cheap tanks.

The powers of empires are trade and army size. If you play aggressive go with police state. On the defense pick the basic Rationalism trait and go with Order.

Greece is a good civ to roll an empire.

[Seth]

I always used Gandhi for big empries - with big cities it makes huge difference. But happiness is always an issue - especially when you know that AI doesn't need it.

[mss73055]

In addition to my previous post: you also need to change the focus of your cities depending on happiness. Your empire will be borderline happy most of the time. Whenever happiness gets below 0 switch your cities to production or trade.

[mss73055]

India makes the worst civ for an empire. Empires have many cities -its leader the King of Kings in old times-. India is exactly the other way around.

[Adenru]

First of all, 10 AIs is too little for large maps, so there should have been a lot of space for far more than 10 and how did you end up without religion when you get free great person at the complettino of the liberty brunch? Pop cities and buid monuments there, complete liberty branch and get Great Profit, wuala! You own religino without focusing on getting faith, don't forget to build markets or else you econy will crash.
Who suggest not getting into war? If you see AI having very god spot, kick his nuts, if city is big build courthouse, otherwise burn it and found your own, but I guess if you will expand as I suggest the AI will attack first.
You are empire and your power is in expansion, build cultural buildings first, science next, the population will very quickly remove the gap, place cities thinkking in advance about what will be in their borders and if it's very earlt game will it be easy to defend them.
That's it, expand, defend and kick in nuts.

[Adenru]

Originally posted by mss73055:

India makes the worst civ for an empire. Empires have many cities -its leader the King of Kings in old times-. India is exactly the other way around.

Wrong! India is one of the best because unhappiness from population always exceeds unhappiness from number of cities, playing India = free happiness and you now can build other stuff instead of happy buildings. Also great for war because unhappinnes in occupied cities in halved too.

[Danny]

I always go wide, and with wide its practically mandatory you conquer stuff. You building 10 cities and not going religion was a pretty big flop. You usually rush a settler after your first monument, then settle is on top of a luxury and then get that other free settler from liberty and then settle on top of a luxury if you need to on that one. There you should be ok with happiness assuming you have some luxuries around your cap. And can start getting the train towards conquering/science.

For religion i always go ceremonial burial and religious community

For culture, its tough since more cities means more time for each policy, but try using great artists for golden ages for culture booosts and great writers for a huge chunk of culture.

Also for city growing, dont try to build granaries and such in cities unless you reall need to, going wide means low pop but high proudction. so watermills are ok cuz plus 1 production is really nice early game.

For gold management, build buildings only when needed, dont build ALL the buildings because going wide can get expensive so try to manage your expenses. For practice i would say try out carthage because you dont need roads to connect cities due to a free harbor and that can really help out early game.

[Danny]

Many say dont go warlike if you are going other victories besides dominiation. That is dumb due to the fact that if you damage your enemy with war you can give yourself a significant lead. Dont play passive in civ ever, one of the key things about getting an advantage is having an advantage which leads to being able to get ahead in many different ways. Take opportunities to wreck your neighbors unless you really need them for trade routes and such, but usually taking just the capital is enough due to it being the main city where most ppl/ai build wonders

[Danny]

please add meh if you are in a group or wanna join one, im trying to get more people in civ groups so we can have lots of fun social civ games going and trade ideas like this much easier

[Eleazaros]

I tend to build for culture gains early:
Raging barbarians on - so I get a LOT of barbarians.
Open Honor first - this gets me culture for every barbarian killed. 4 per archer, 8 per axe guy, 10 for spearmen, etc. Literally, early on, 1 axe barbarian gets you more culture than you'll get in 2 or more turns. It can take 3 turns to kill them until you get tougher troops but that's still a healhty bonus.

Open Tradition next - 3 or 4 more culture from this. Maybe 1-2 into this (depending on how I'm building) (I like wonder and the free building here).

Open Liberty next - 1 more culture from opening it. After opening this, I tend to fill it - not always, again it depends on the situation but this one I tend to fill out.

All told, by around your 28-35th turn you can be gaining around 20-24 culture per turn (depending on how many barbarians you are stomping - this can radically effect your culture gains).

I easily flesh out the culture trees -getting the bonuses from tradition and liberty before clearing mid game.

For religion...

I get that +100 gold per city conversion option (helps early, not painful later on either) instantly with your first city, you get 100g from this and missionaries can be seen as "free gold" when you make them to convert other cities. There are other options to look at (iirc - there's a temples = happiness too).

I tend to get Pagoda's (frist) and Cathedrals (as upgrade option) being as I tend to focus on culuture but Pagodas are "most well rounded" - +2 to faith, culture and happiness. Handy to build them.

Just general info on how I approach it. The trees offer some happiness options and that helps a lot so I do focus a bit on culture vs expanding cities really fast.

[Jesus Cristo]

Originally posted by Adenru:

...and how did you end up without religion when you get free great person at the complettino of the liberty brunch?...

I always build an great engineer with the great person given and hurry a wonder available
will try what you're saying and see the results

[Jesus Cristo]

Originally posted by Eleazaros:

I tend to build for culture gains early:
Raging barbarians on - so I get a LOT of barbarians.
Open Honor first - this gets me culture for every barbarian killed. 4 per archer, 8 per axe guy, 10 for spearmen, etc. Literally, early on, 1 axe barbarian gets you more culture than you'll get in 2 or more turns. It can take 3 turns to kill them until you get tougher troops but that's still a healhty bonus...

i already gone for honor with raging barbarians, but i feel like cheating when i do that

[mss73055]

How do you deal with India's penalty early on? If your cities are smaller than size 8 India's 'bonus' is worse than useless. In early game rivers are required for India, unlike other civs where rivers are nice to have. And you have to rush Civil Service, where other civs can opt something else. On top of that India tends to start out with a chunk of desert.