I am finding it impossible.
I can’t even get to AD without having my weak civilisation eradicated. I have scoured the net for tips but all have failed miserably. Why is it that after some 20-30 turns, enemy civ’s have already got 3 bases and 5/6 attacking units??
Is there any way of beating these guys ??
(I don’t play Earth, by the way.)
The only Civ II trick I know is to save every time you are about to enter one of those little native villages and keep entering and re-entering the village until you get either a new tribe that joins you and gives you a new city or you get a “wandering nomad” that becomes a settler. Don’t accept gold or a fighting unit; go back to your save point and re-enter the village. Even with this trick I find Civ II absolutely impossible to win at the higher levels of difficulty. The computer opponent has miraculous luck and, in fact, I think even cheats. I haven’t played for a while but I remember there were some incidents at a higher level where I knew the computer opponent couldn’t possibly have done what it did if it didn’t have some advantages not available to me. Once I sent a fleet off and captured a remote enemy coastal city and loaded two transports full of marines into the captured city. The enemy immediately threw about two dozen tanks at the city and captured it back. How on earth did the computer opponent know it needed such an unusually huge tank force outside that city? It didn’t even have railroads built!
I’ll be watching this thread with interest.
Yeah, Civ II is also hard. My question was actually directed at Civ 1, but while we’re at it, we may as well get tips for both versions.
As for the ‘save and try again’ thing, yeah, I am aware of some little ‘cheats’ like that, but I would really like to beat the game without doing it.
(But please, some help on civ 1 would be appreciated.)
Here’s some tactics I have used to win Civ on Emperor level (I normally play on just King level, and yes, even these many years from it’s creation I still fire it up on a flight every now and again)
Build the Great Wall as soon as possible.
Diplomat floods - crank out dozens of diplomats. You can send in 10 at a time to sabotage every single thing in an enemy city, and possibly send it into chaos. Or at least you can destroy the walls.
Once in a while, instead of trying to build as many cities as possible as quickly as possible at the start of the game, try sticking to one or two cities for the first
1000-1500-2000 years. Not until you have reasonably powerful cities do you send out an expedition, either a colonization expedition with two settlers plus a few phalanxes and legions, or an army of conquest, at least 4 chariots with more to come, plus a settler to build a military road.
This strategy is indicated when your first explorer finds that you are stuck in a lousy corner of what looks like it might be a large land mass, and there are no decent
city sites near you.
These last two bits were copied from the Civilization FAQ, which is chock-full of info, tips, strategies, etc. It is very hard to find nowdays; if you cannot find it I will e-mail it to you on request.
Una
PS - interesting how this simple-appearing little game has stood the test of time, and is still very playable after all these years, yes?
Hooray for my most favoritest game of all time.
And I prefer Civ 1, in fact. More pure. More idealistic. Fewer extraneous units.
Anyway. A comment or two, and then some tips:
The computer is handicapped. Yup, you heard it here. There’s a great strategy guide called ‘Civilization - or Rome in 640k a day’. Not only does it have recommended tactics and strategies, but it also has a numerical breakdown of pretty much every algorithm in the game. Prior to the ‘King’ difficulty level, the computer is penalized (or you’re handicapped, your point of view). Research is faster for you, cities are less likely to revolt, et cetera. At King, everything’s equal. On Emperor (and Deity in Civ2) the computer is given substantial advantages in production, research, and even advance knowledge of your units. Life’s a bitch, but those difficulty levels are there for the serious crack-addicted players.
Here are two of my almost-always-win-and-get-huge-Civ-rating tactics. Using the first, I ended up getting 187% on the Civ-rating Meter at the end of the game.
Emulate the Mongols. Play on Earth, and play as the Babylonians. Develop The Wheel ASAP, then turn off research and start cranking out chariots as fast as you can. As the Babylonians, you’re the most centered on the map. Remember, there are two possible civs per color, and only one will be on the map at any time. So if you don’t see Egypt next to you, then you know the Aztecs are tooling around America. Don’t build cities, just capture them and have them pump out chariots, too. Don’t research Mapmaking, just capture it and sail to the New World. You can probably conquer everything before the clock rolls over to AD if you’ve done well.
Isolationism. Play on Earth (you see a theme here – play on maps that you know. It gives you an advantage) as either the Americans or the Aztecs. Spread out like locusts. On the American continent(s), the only two possible starting Civs are the aforementioned two. First order of duty is to find and eliminate the other, if it’s present. If not, then you’ve got it all to yourself. (However, keep in mind that if a civ is eliminated (say, the Greeks) then it’s replacement may show up on your turf (the English in this case)). I usually switch to a Republic as soon as humanly possible, and then kick the research into high gear. Don’t explore.
Sooner or later, another Civ will drop off some units on your coast and either attack you or want to talk to you. If you talk, you’ll get peace, and then you can’t kick them off of your nice irrigated land without having a revolution first. Refuse to negotiate, attack everyone on sight, and have submarines patrolling your coast as soon as you can. Once you get to a reasonable level of tech (world war 2 era, basically - tanks, battleships, bombers) then it’s time for a conventional world war.
We leave conquering the world as an exercise for the reader.
I request! I REQUEST!!!.
And yes, it is amazing how long this game has lasted. I have never heard of a ‘diplomatic’ flood before. Isn’t there a rule where you can only do one sabotage every x number of turns?
Yeah, I am aware that if you play on earth you have the MASSIVE advantage of knowing where everything is. That’s why I don’t like playing it. I view it as cheating. When you play earth, text book tactics will see you to the line time and time again. That’s why I like to NOT play Earth, it makes the game A LOT more challenging.
At Deity in Civ II it’s absolutely essential you stay in the tech race. Research is so slow at that level, so building the Great Library and locating/conquering rivals quickly is essential. If you haven’t discovered most of your rivals by 0 AD, you’re behind. If someone gets, say, Gunpowder before you do, you’re toast.
Re: the Earth map - I like the Zulus for that map. It’s a slower strategy, and your industrial base is going to be far away from everyone, but I just get a kick out of seeing Africa conquer the world.
In both games (Civ I and II), you must expand like crazy in the beginning. Here’s my Civ II strategy; I don’t remember enough about Civ I to help.
Use your first settler unit to found a city; pick a good spot, not just the one they give you, but don’t move around too long.
Send off your second settler unit to found a town a little ways away. Don’t irrigate or build mines like the stupid computer does.
Build warrior (or militia in civ I) units in both cities. As soon as they are finished, send them off exploring.
Build second warrior units. They should be done just in time to prevent civil disorder when your cities expand to size two. Keep them in the cities.
Start building settler units in your two towns.
Use your exploring units to uncover every village.
As soon as your settlers are finished, send them off to make new towns. Repeat the building process for the first two towns.
Keep exploring as far as possible; the number of military units, new towns, and money that you discover in the villages far outweighs the barbarians.
Research monarchy ASAP to minimize the riot factor that you’ll have from all of the towns.
Once the riot factor gets out of hand, stop expanding and start improving upon your cities, with both structures and stronger defensive military units.
You’ll need to build temples, and most importantly the Hanging Gardens to keep the peace.
Research trade to get caravans (help build wonders) and masonry to get the Great Wall.
Once you have the Hanging Gardens and the Great Wall, you’re set. You’re immune to barbarians and other civs for a very long time. And you can just keep expanding everywhere without worrying about riots.
As you can see, you need to be much more expansionist than perfectionist. When in doubt, build another settler unit, and expand. You’ll of course need to get mapmaking to send off triremes to other islands.
If you uncover enough little huts, you can actually build an entire treasury and military out of them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Europe map, French, save before huts. Warrior, then settler. Road and irrigate the hell out of your cities. I’ve gotten ten shields and fifteen surplus out of my cities before 1000 AD doing this. Library, then marketplace, then temple.
Get the Great Library, Great Wall, and the Colossus (money up the wazoo). Get King Richard’s Crusade in the city with the highest production, and get someone making caravans close to it. Make a road between the two and you can crank out wonders in about ten turns.
I have a game going now in something that is not Chieftan mode where I have well over 100 million people in the 13th century. I’ve had 250+ million in the 19th century.
My Civ strategy:
Build, build, build. Set the tax rate to 0% or 10%, and get cracking on developing the technology to build knights - in my opinion the most cost-effective units around. In the meantime, place your first city anywhere half-decent. Build one militia unit to guard it, then start churning out more settlers. Build cities close to each other, even if they overlap. Leave one militia unit in each, then churn out more settlers. You may lose some to starvation, in which case work on granaries in those cities. Once you can build chariots, produce a couple for each city and take out your nearest rival(s). With them out of the way, keep on expanding into more and more cities.
I usually stick like this until I have around 30 cities and a couple of units of knights in each, with research aimed towards railroads and eventually riflemen. I don’t bother with keeping the population happy, changing governments or building wonders of the world. Just churn out cities and military units. I usually do this in cycles, with a cycle of connecting them all up by road and irrigating all around inbetween.
Once you have railroads, connect all of the cities up. The ones with better production rates can then be used to churn out riflemen and eventually tanks, without worrying about the time needed to transport them to your borders. I try to stick to an ocean border, with a few decent units around to fend off any seaborne attacks.
Once you’ve put together a tank army, it’s plain sailing. Take on your rivals one at a time, building railroads to each city you conquer.
I find the easiest way to play is as the Zulus on Earth. There’s so much room to expand without meeting any problems it’s easy; I aim to station a few units at the Suez Canal area, since that’s where most attacks come, then build cities throughout Africa, eventually irrigating the Sahara and expanding into Asia. At one stage I had around 100+ cities and reach the maximum limit for military units, before nuking America’s west coast and invading from China with enough tanks to overrun everyone else.
I was never very good at diplomacy.
Aim
I don’t know who you people are building the Hanging Gardens and the Great wall. Heck, I almost never even build city walls. I’ll admit, 5/6’s of the time my civ gets beat right away, mostly because of bad luck (you see what this is? This is sand. You know what grows in it? NOTHING!!)
Build first city. If you can move a square either way so as to maximize trade, do so. If you have two settlers, build a road in a square real quick for good measure and build you next city. Build a warrior in each city and send them exploring. Then build one for defense. Very rarely a phalanx might be in order from the get go. Research and switch to monarchy ASAP.
As soon as you can start building the Collosus in whatever city you have that has the best trade or the best future potential. This will be your science city.
3)Meanwhile, keep kicking out settlers and building new cities as fast as you can. You can’t do this as fast on Diety and Emperor, but early on expansion is very important. Don’t be afraid to crowd cities a little at the start since that will decrease corruption in your core, but also if you see a change to grab a big chunk of a continent by building a city on a neck somewhere that will generally allow you to expand behind it while keeping enemies at bay. I almost always get roads going between cities once the first 2 or 3 are built since that allows for better defense and trade. You may need to send a token unit along with a settler so you don’t get an instantly unhappy city, but try to keep everybody home-citified so your science city and other core cities don’t get drained supporting the boondocks.
Once you build the Collosus, you want to also build Newton’s College and Copernicus’s Observatory in the same city. If you get a break, a library and university is a must, and then a marketplace and bank etc. to keep the money rolling in here as well.
Your secondary city will be your production city. If you have more than one that is fine of course. Get some mines on the nearby hills. The remaining wonders you want are Leonardo’s workshop, Mich.'s Chapel, and Bach’s Cathedral. These are a must at deity the way I play. The first keeps me from worrying too much about obselete troops, the rest keep the people happy so I can keep expanding. Discover trade so you can send “food” caravans from the boondocks to help build the wonder – that is a must. You outlying cities must be exploited to support the core. Sending trade caravans to your science city and vice versa to the boondocks or even enemy cities is a really good idea on the higher levels.
War should be swift and calculated. You should almost never buy anything unless you need a wonder in a hurry or something for your core cities (biggest 3-5) to keep themn happy. Use diplomats to steal tech, but buy off enemy cities when you can. I don’t like to get into a war too early if I can help it because you might look around and find out you are still fighting with sticks and see a battleship sail by before you know it to check out the primatives.
So that is it, and not entirely my idea but that system works for me. One main Science/Trade city. One or two production cities. All others for exploitation and to provide defence against the enemy.
Once you get off to a good start if you are still having problems, I’ve got a few military stratgies which are probably fairly obvious too.
(and I never play on earth, and saving before huts is lame. I do like raging hordes on though as the barbarians annoy the enemy too)
These are great tips, just wondering if anyone plays MY favorite game of all time, colonization? I love this game, and the different ways you can play (indians are allies, indians are cash-cows, trader, pirate, war-monger, etc.)
Colonization! I LOVE that game!
I usually play as the English, because you get so many more emigrants at the docks, waiting to come over. But the French are fun too, because they are friendly with the natives. Personally, I think its better than Civilization, but I was always more into the economic stuff anyway.
I’ve seen colonization, and I was curious if I could find a copy of it out here on the net somewhere… but if not, it’s in the $15 bin at Software etc.
Me, I just reloaded my copy of Age of empires… man, why did I stop playing that game!!!
For colonization, I usually befriend the Indians as soon as possible. I play the Dutch just because trade is so much better. Bigger ship etc.
I send a missionary in right early and a few dozen years later I attack. Usually gets lots of converts.
As for AoE, I play AoEII more than I . . . my SOP is to explore as much as possible while building villagers and fishing ships. SOP is to have 30 units built before I go to the feudal age, then make trade ships and galleys, archery/blacksmith/towers, then market and become as efficient as possible at gathering resources. I research until I can’t, then I build up massive armies (40-75 units, multiple POA for same target) and just take out civilizations. I find cannon galleons to the the most effective for taking out buildings anywhere near the coast . . . so I send a few forward (along with ships to protect them) to take out anything that can shoot arrows.
Groovy… any advice for AoE I, as I just got my butt handed to me?
I seem to be half a step behind the other civ’s, I don’t know why… also, diplomatically, no one will befriend me. I send gold, no good. I can’t figure it out… any help?
Going back to the OP, I beat Civ II on Emperor once… I used a combo of the tactics mentioned here… played americans, wiped out the aztecs fast, sent boatloads of diplomats over to steal the tech that they had before me… I ended up making most of Asia into a nuclear wasteland… but they started it, as the Russians nuked me first… dang it. Funniest global war ever… the Americans, the Russians, and waaaaay down in australia, the germans stuck in late renaisance… hehehehe
In reference to the OP, go for the wheel and crank out chariots as soon as possible. If you get them first, you should be able to conquer a couple of neighboring civilizations before the balance of power swings back to the defense.
The key is to play with the max number of other civilizations. Build a couple of cities of your own to start with, but then all your other cities should come through military conquest.
CivI is quite beatable on emperor. My brother and I used to average ~200% on the civ ranking. I think my best was a 250% when I managed to beat emperor before AD.
CivII seems a little more difficult, but I haven’t really had a chance to play it. My brother picked up a copy, and I played it when I was staying with him for a bit, but I only got a couple of games in. I did manage to beat emperor with out too much trouble though. The major difference seems to lie in the fact that one unit can no longer kill 10 units that all occupy the same square.
-ellis
Keys to becoming a Civ II Deity (I know you asked for Emperor, but I can’t resist :p):
1: Starting position.
This is absolutely non-negotiable. You must be able to build your first city within 3 turns, and it has to be on a very good spot, three special resources minimum, and absolutely no deserts, mountains, or what not. Save your game if you have to so you can explore a little and reload, and don’t be afraid to restart as necessary.
2: Exploration and Expansion
Never stop exploring and expanding. Save before entering villages so you can get the villager unit and build a city nearby. Again, always look for special resources, but be careful how you space out your cities, and don’t build one that is too far for you to defend. You must take complete control of the continent you’re on, and at worst, face only a few enemies through narrow land bridges. Coastlines are infinitely easier to defend, and no one can bother you until they’ve built up sufficient land and naval forces. Destroy any attempt to settle your continent at all costs.
3: Wonders
Face the facts: you will not be able to get every wonder there is. Go for a wonder that brings benefits to all your cities, like the Hanging Gardens.
4: Fortification
Once you get control of a continent, you must fortify. Start building roads to facilitate the movement of your military. You will be outnumbered, so you have to be able to utilize a large proportion of your units than your opponents. Don’t bother with walls and what not because they are not cost efficient; stick with your units. Use terrain to your advantage; send villagers to modify the terrain at key choke points. Keep fortifying as time goes on. Modify the terrain, build roads in every square and irrigate everything within your sight.
5: Science
Always stay ahead of your opponents in technology. Sacrifice a bit of your military early on so you can at least keep up with the computer. Go for technologies that give you good defensive military units first. Don’t try to research all the technologies though, that’s what spies are for.
6: Trade
This is the single factor that distinguishes the masters from the amateurs. Trading is almost abusive in Civ II, so use it to your advantage. Start trading as soon as possible, and do it en mass. This is when the benefits of expansion and road building come into play. Devote as many cities as you can to caravan production. Remember the special ability of caravans; you can send them to help the construction of wonders in other cities. The only way you’re going to get any wonders in the mid-late stages of the game is through massive deployment of caravans.
7: Espionage
All your computer opponents cheat, so try to make them fight amongst themselves and nullify their advantage. Steal technologies, incite riots and wars, and sabotage if you have extra spies. Don’t worry about diplomacy; they’re all hostile anyway. Make sure there is always a war going on between your opponents (preferably involving the strongest one). Whenever they have time to develop in peace, you’ll lose.
8: Making War
War is tough on this level. If you have to, always attack the weakest opponent or gang up on the strongest one. You must be an opportunist. Attack an opponent while he’s under pressure, and make peace once you get what you want. If you ever have the luck of annihilating an opponent, make sure you keep one of their cities in place so you can rip them clean of all their technology, either though espionage, trade, or threats.
As always, don’t forget to save frequently. You’re going to make mistakes the first time through, so don’t be afraid to reload and learn…
Here I was, thinking I was one of the few people left on the planet that rotated between Civ, Civ2, Colonization and AOE2 (AOE was fun, but not as much as AOE2).
Civ I was never able to win on Emperor, I could only hold out until the end of the game. Once another civilization gets howitzers, I’m generally screwed. Sabotaging my own roads to keep them at bay.
Civ2, same thing. I could win up to King, but Emperor and Deity were just plain brutal. I got into creating my own units (apache helicopters, nuclear powered battleships, Navy Seals, etc). Games with my own units keep me pretty well entertained.
Colonization: I always play as the English, trading with the natives and pounding the fellow Europeans into submission. Generally, I’d set up two or three colonies cranking out cannons, with horses and muskets being built at all colonies. Get the cannons out to the other colonies (pushing the Europeans off of those land masses if need be), and let each colony reinforce themselves with Dragoons. After everyone is defended nicely, declare independance and hunker down for a long fight. Seems to work well.
AOE2: Very simple. I always play in the rivers maps, usually as the Britons or Teutons. Find the swampy river crossings, build a wall with quite a few towers covering it at each crossing, and let the other guy try to get me. Build up 3 armies of paladins, archers (Longbowmen if I’m the Britons), and champions (Teutonic knights if Teutons). Add in a small group of seige equipment and another of Monks, and its a force that can’t be beat. I can generally overwhelm the other guy with two groups while healing the third one with the monks. Keep rotating them through until the opponents are gone.
Just when I thought I had kicked those habits…