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  • strongest or weakest first

    If you have a choice, do you prefer to conquer your enemies from strongest to weakest or from weakest to strongest?

  • #2
    If they are close to me then the strongest go first every time, but basically just who ever is next to me dies
    A proud member of the "Apolyton Story Writers Guild".There are many great stories at the Civ 3 stories forum, do yourself a favour and visit the forum. Lose yourself in one of many epic tales and be inspired to write yourself, as I was.

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    • #3
      whoever has a resource i need
      meet the new boss, same as the old boss

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      • #4
        Re: strongest or weakest first

        Originally posted by shmily_dana
        If you have a choice, do you prefer to conquer your enemies from strongest to weakest or from weakest to strongest?
        I generally only war for resources or for liebensraum.

        And I go for inability to retaliate effectively. If a weak civ is sitting on top of needed strategic resources, they're probably toast.

        If a strong civ (particularly one embroiled in a lot of wars) has a few cities near me, I'll take the local cities out figuring the strong Civ can't afford to send much my way. Particularly if there's water between us.

        For plain old-fashioned warmongering, I'll pick the civ closest to me that has pissed me off the most, strong or weak. The Germans, very often.

        [ok]
        [ok]

        "I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes. "

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        • #5
          Close one first in most cases. If it is a very peaceful game from my perspecive and it is past the mid point, then the strongest.

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          • #6
            Re: strongest or weakest first

            from shmily_dana:
            do you prefer to conquer your enemies from strongest to weakest or from weakest to strongest?
            I'd say that opponent strength is a huge factor in determining a winning strategy, but is only indirectly related to the order in which to attack opposing Civs.

            I think that most players would assert that the best approach depends on the specifics of the game.

            My philosophy is to go after whichever opponent will provide me with a stronger position once the battle has ended.
            This usually means that many of the following are true:
            * I can conquer or weaken them effectively without my Civ becoming vulnerable
            * I can resolve the conflict quickly
            * Through the conflict I gain resources, productivity (towns, GA, etc.) and/or strategic position
            * I end up in a better position with respect to my main opposition. This often means weakening or eliminating the stronger opponents. It can also mean building a position of strength by systematically overrunning weaker Civs until you are stronger than the strong opponents.
            * I hit whomever appears ill-prepared to repel my attack.
            * I hit in a manner that allows my Civ to weather the diplomatic fallout.

            If at least a few of these hold true, the conflict should be worthwhile, for any size of opponent Civ.

            Clearly ambiguous - bvc

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            • #7
              With a few armies, it doesn't matter

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              • #8
                In civ2 I would often go after the strongest civ I could possible beat, I would even postpone my attack so I could take on THE strongest civ. The idea was that once I beat him, I would be the top dog. Civ#2,3 etc would of course grow stronger in the meantime but not enough to rival me, once I beat #1. If I went after #2 or 3, then #1 would be so much stronger afterwards that beating him would be close to impossible.

                Now, my tactics are pretty close to what bvoncranium described in his post.
                Don't eat the yellow snow.

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                • #9
                  Almost always its the closest CIV. My aim is to take my continent, one CIV at a time. If there are equally close CIV's then I go for the one in which I can reduce the size of my borders the most, thus leading to fewer cities to defend (and fewer units left idle while my conquering is on going) The one exception is if I need to capture a strategic resource, then the nearest civ with that resource has a huge bullseye painted on them.
                  * A true libertarian is an anarchist in denial.
                  * If brute force isn't working you are not using enough.
                  * The difference between Genius and stupidity is that Genius has a limit.
                  * There are Lies, Damned Lies, and The Republican Party.

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                  • #10
                    I pick the closest neighbor depending on what resources and land it is sitting on. If all things are equal (they rarely are) the weakest goes first. If I have close neighbors who have an effective middle game UU (Chinese, Japan, Ottomans, etc.) I try to prune them back a great deal before they get to use it. But whatever order it goes, the goal is to clear my continent.
                    "Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription is ... more cow bell!"

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                    • #11
                      Another reason for war is to deny an opponent a key strategic resource. Even if I already have Iron, I want to deny the Romans, Persians or Celts of it for as long as I can. Sometimes their only source is a border town. Bend all effort on taking that town and then sue for peace asap.

                      Other times, you attack because you have the Germans, Mongols or Dutch as neighbors. You already know trouble will be coming early and often. You may as well pick the time. A good time is when they are already picking on someone else.

                      Contrary to that mentality is the "dog pile" or "vultures circling " mentality. If a strong civ is beating up on a weak civ, you are better off joining the campaign against the weakling, rather than sit back and watch the strong civ get all the spoils of war. Take a few cities for yourself. Get in an alliance and you should be able to buy a tech or two from the strong civ.

                      A new and somewhat unique reason for war cropped up in my last game. The Greeks, who were on another continent, built the Lighthouse and therefore were the only civ capable of sending galleys across the 2 squares of ocean separating the continents. They landed 2 Settlers and 2 Hoplights in crap tundra no-man's land. I had my Swordsmen and Horsemen waiting. Attack. Lose one Swordsman, get 4 free workers, watch the galleys slowly return to Greece. 6 turns later, see the galleys coming back. Sink one with my galley. Sue for peace. Get it plus a tech too! Ancient era war across continents is so cumbersome for the attacker that you can pretty much laugh off the effects. By the time real intercontinental war was possible, the Greeks had pretty much forgiven me.

                      Other than that, it's usually my weakest neighbor that goes first.

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                      • #12
                        I protect the weak civs, because it tends to even out their power, giving me even more of a lead.

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                        • #13
                          The first thing to do is to secure a large, productive empire. This means beating up on my neighbors. Which one to hit first depends... sometimes they pick a fight with me. Sometimes there is an obvious target, like a large civ with goodies (pyramids, luxuries, etc) that lacks key strategic resources.

                          All things being equal, I'll take the easy fight over the tough one... at least until I'm really strong. Once I hit a certain level of power, it doesn't really matter anymore.

                          After I've carved out a large enough empire, with access to all luxury types present on my continent, it's time to start picking on overseas civs. There's nothing I like more than a weak AI civ with a couple of luxuries.

                          -Arrian
                          grog want tank...Grog Want Tank... GROG WANT TANK!

                          The trick isn't to break some eggs to make an omelette, it's convincing the eggs to break themselves in order to aspire to omelettehood.

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                          • #14
                            varies.

                            usually I'll attack a smaller neighbor that I can easily overrun. or perhaps a larger one that has a lux or strat resource close to the border.

                            I will hit a large civ if I find they don't have a resource. Love to take out pikes with cavalry. The only problem is soon after cavs come rifles. Got bit in the ass by this the other day, the otts were in this position (no sp=no sipahi ) however a few turns after I got cavs, they got nationalism with their free tech and I was hosed.

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by gunkulator
                              Other times, you attack because you have the Germans, Mongols or Dutch as neighbors. You already know trouble will be coming early and often.
                              The Dutch? Admittedly, I've only played a few games of C3C so far, but I haven't noticed any difficulties from the Dutch. Intuitively, it doesn't seem like they should be an overly-aggressive civ.

                              Contrary to that mentality is the "dog pile" or "vultures circling " mentality. If a strong civ is beating up on a weak civ, you are better off joining the campaign against the weakling, rather than sit back and watch the strong civ get all the spoils of war. Take a few cities for yourself. Get in an alliance and you should be able to buy a tech or two from the strong civ.
                              I often turn this around on my main competition. A couple games ago, I (French) and the Romans had a fair tech lead (late stone age) on the rest of the known world; the Aztecs occupied the land in between us, and the Romans also had the Zulu to the north and the Indians to the south. The Romans demanded a tech; I declined, and they declared war. I bribed the three other civs with low level techs into a military alliance; within 10 minutes, the Romans were toast.

                              Of course, the flipside of this was that it was the other three civs who benefited, as I took only one Roman city. But I managed to continue to play them off of each other until only the Indians remained, and we had had nothing but sterling relations and mutual trade for millenia. The upshot--I was never in any danger, and never had to mount a major war effort.

                              ------------------

                              On the other hand, this strategy can backfire. A faced a similar situation is my most recent game (Americans), where the Zulu took the place of the Romans. Again, we were separated by a couple civs (Germany, Dutch, Hittites), who weren't too far behind. I got them to attack the Zulu for me (the Mongols and French, virtual vassal-states, went along for the ride as well), but the Zulu wiped out the Dutch and the Hittites and seriously crippled the Germans, leaving only a small buffer zone between us. I managed to accelerate my tech lead during that time, so I still managed to win without a serious effort on the war front, but my strategy damn near gave birth to a killer AI equal to my power and hell-bent on my destruction.



                              When warmongering (which I hate to do in general), I usually go for the easy kill, someone I have boxed in through my early settler blitz. I will occasionally go to war for strategic resources... I once had an enormous empire, but nary an iron resource in sight. It was a long hard slog, but managed to subdue the Egyptians and their iron with my horsemen and archers...
                              "My nation is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine
                              "The subject of onanism is inexhaustable." --Sigmund Freud

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