haha my friend showed me how to beat AI

[Son of David]

It's impossible to be a continual warmonger on Monarch level or above.

For some reason it just cripples your treasury and puts you so far behind on technology that you don't have any hope of winning.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Son of David
It's impossible to be a continual warmonger on Monarch level or above.

For some reason it just cripples your treasury and puts you so far behind on technology that you don't have any hope of winning.

War weariness sets in, as it does in real life. It's better to make war in cycles to avoid extended periods of WW, where you do fall behind in tech and everything else. I believe they refer to this as oscillating war here. But also it seems like there are discreet opportunities to make war, such as linking up with copper or iron before the AI does, discovering guilds or cavalry first, etc.. So usually it's best to make a large military force, while having shorter, more intense wars. Then again, if I'm at the gates of my enemy's capital, I'm probably not going to make peace, even if my WW is getting pretty bad. Just one more turn, maybe two.

[Enigma_Nova]

Wait! Just ... one ... more ... turn ...

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Cordelayne
LOL. This thread is hilarious. Two comments.

First, I'm reminded of my wife. She always loses because she is just plain "too nice." We've played each other in multiplayer strategy games such as Merchant Prince, and I always just charge over and conquer. I haven't been able to inspire her the way your friend seems to be inspiring you, mimi.

Second, MasterDave says you need to burn many cities to win a conquest victory. That is false. One certainly CAN win a conquest victory that way, but it's brutish and ugly. I prefer to win a conquest victory by assimilating vast hordes of foreigners into my superior society. (MasterDave's technique is faster, because you don't need to hold troops back to suppress resistance and form a garrison for defense. But my technique leads to a much higher score, and to an easier time conquering subsequent victims.)

There is a difference between domination and conquest. You have to burn at least some cities on most maps in order to win the conquest victory, the exception being the Terra Map, where I guess you could win by conquering the old world without the AI colonizing the new world. Otherwise it is VERY difficult to avoid the domination win of controlling the majority of the world's land area(60%? something like that) and population.

In my "Moonscape" game mentioned above I did take over and assimilate cities until I was within 10% of the domination land area cap. From then on it was BURN BABY BURN, and strip the lands of all improvements for cashola! I wound up with a score of 22,000 in that game (prince level- medium pangea) and got to see the cool conquest movie with the chess pieces and the nukes!