Help me with defences.

[wgabrie]

How do you manage city defences in your games? I'm playing on noble. I always build one or two defenders usualy archers and then put all production into science and money buildings.

Sometimes I start close to a hostle AI and they come at me with War elephants before I'm finished researching the basic terrain improvement techs. I usually loose one or two cities outright and with the plundered terrain I can no longer gain a lead to persue any type of victory.

I have recently noticed that the AI defends with 4-6 units per city. When I tried doing that I got behind in science and the AIs were peaceful the whole game beating me to Space. I want space.

[Dactyl]

When you have AI civs close by you need to build military units early. Archers are the best early defenders. If you build barracks, your archers will be +20% city defense. Also, build a wall. That helps a lot.