I lost because of being cheap!

[PrinceBimz]

My last game I had to quit after about 10 min. All because I was too cheap to build an extra warrior to defend my capital. So I had one warrior defending my capital, a gamble I know. Well, here come the barbs, attack my capital and take it for crying out loud! So I get my warriors from my other cities, bring them to attack and lose every one of them. Ok, time to resign. I hate wasting production on military sometimes. I like to hold out and build more usefull things like Libraries, settlers, or workers. I want my science cranked at 100% through the entire game.

So alot of times, I just keep one unit garrison per city because I am cheap like that. Another thing, I hate building untrained units. If I don't have a barracks in a city, I don't want to build a unit there. I will try and wait to build it in a city that has one, then send the unit out trained when it is finished. I can't afford all of that stuff building a barracks first, then military units. I can't afford it! I am one of those people who dispand my military down to almost nothing if I am not at war or threatened. If a unit is not fighting, I am dispanding it, cutting that military budget.

I want Libraries and temples, buildings that can build my nation and do something, not an untrained warrior. Thing is, as the above example shows, being cheap with the military, costs me that game. I can tell you though, that if I get away with being cheap, I usually do pretty good because of it. I end up having a more much more advanced and stable nation in the end. Its just, if I get attacked while I am being cheap with the military, I can end up in a world of trouble.

Listen to this... I remember one time, I was being so cheap with my military that I dispanded nearly 70% of it. I kid you not. I done this not long after signing a peace treaty too. It was a large military (at least for me) 50+ units that I simple could no longer afford. I hated the fact that I had to build that many in the first place, ended up being a waste of resources. I could have had 25 new buildings in my cities instead of that. Even if I don't have any buildings to build in a city, I would rather put the production to economy, science or culture instead of military.

You know what? I think I will try a game and limit myself to as many military units as I have cities. So if I build 8 cities the whole game, never will I have more then 8 military units and they will all be garrisons.

At last... did I mention that I am CHEAP?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I used to be that way, until I discovered how much easier the game is to win when you have a big army. You can intimidate people into being your friends, and crush your enemies.

Also, why build libraries, temples, and especially workers when you can have the AI build them and then just reallocate them to yourself?

[Jaybe]

I have a problem with having a large army: No one declares war on me!
Yet I always seem to have the largest one in town once I decide on taking out (or vassallizing) my first neighbor. I'm sure the game would be much more interesting if there was greater risk of a civ attacking me.
Huge/marathon/fractal, Noble diff, aggressive AI, but I'm Rome!

Early barracks are a distraction! Better to train early military on lions, panthers, bears, ... and early barbarians (warriors & archers at least). Instead of a barracks, build units & libraries.

EDIT: Post# 3000. I've just been promoted to emperor!

[johnmcd]

Well, culture producing buildings are never captured, they're always destroyed, so you do need to make them.

Also, the game is so weighted in favour of war for the human that denying yourself that luxury is quite a nice way of creating challenge.

[Addled Platypus]

go for 2-3 religons, spread them

build the special buildings for each one ( using a GP)

I have yet to go broke

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by johnmcd
Well, culture producing buildings are never captured, they're always destroyed, so you do need to make them.

Just remembered that, as you mentioned it.

Still... Settlers are expensive, and cities take time to develop. Capturing someone else's size 4 city seems so much more efficient than building a city and waiting for it to grow.

[Mr Justice]

PrinceBimz- get over the block you have on building raw recruits. they are just as good tbh. 1 good defence and they level up.
also i read from your story that you possibly expanded a bit too much and left too much space between cities?
your warriors from the other cities should have been moved closer to your capital as the barbs approched not afterwards.
this gives the AI multiple targets along their attack path and may give you a couple of turns to build more.

also i would recomend mousing over your unit cost in the civ costs screnn. this will tell you how many uints you get for free. from memory a decent capital allows 7 warriors free of cost.

dont consider them wasted sheilds. becuase if you upgrade them as upgrades become available you wont have to build more replacements. so your saving sheilds, (well replacing sheilds with gold)

i had a similiar problem tho, i used always avoid archary cause i felt it was wasted once i got bronze working. but changing over to raging barbs cured me of that problem (as i suspect it might do to your problem too, if u wanted to try it) (unless im HC and have quecha).

but once barbs are gone then its viable to do what you do, but you pay price in AI declaring war on you more often than would have been the case otherwise IMO

[DirtyMartini]

I used to be pretty stingy with military as well -- usually minimal warrior garrisons until axemen were available. I'd almost never build archers. Often this was as I attempted a CS slingshot.

Lately I've changed to a non-slingshot strategy. This requires a more balance approach and usually means researching archery much earlier. Archers make great garrisons and pickets for cost than axemen and they have a long shelf life. Early in the game, two or three archers are usually a better investment in a young city than a temple or monastary or even a library.

I still rarely build very many warriors, but I do try to get one early medic to stick in my invasion stack.

I guess what I'm trying to say is -- Skimping on early military may lead to a nice lead in a minority of games, but also leads to a lot more early exits. Seems simple, but it took me forever to really buy into this. Until recently, if I wasn't blasting along with a 5-6 tech lead on the AI I was upset. Now I realize that I'm still winning the the game if I have a two-three tech lag as long as I have decent military.

[couerdelion]

I think the first important hurdle to get over in this game is how to deal with barbarians. If you play on raging barbs then the one unit per city is not going to be enough to even found a second city – unless you are very lucky and those barbarians will often arrive in a stream rather than conveniently spread over several turns to allow your units to promote and heal.

I’d say the thing to do is to learn first the basic tricks of dealing with barbs. Don’t forget that units are also used for scouting so if you can use the first ones for scouting and get them back safely then you will find that you are ready for the first barbarian attacks.

Otherwise, get horse or copper linked up and if these are not readily at hand, you’ll need archers for some basic protection.

As a basic minimum I’d think you want 1 unit per city + enough units to ensure that at least one more unit can arrive in any city before any barbarian attack. That’s a real minimum and you may still find your improvements getting pillaged. More ideally, you want well trained units posted at key defensive points to clear fog and to stop barbarians at the border.

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man


Just remembered that, as you mentioned it.

Still... Settlers are expensive, and cities take time to develop. Capturing someone else's size 4 city seems so much more efficient than building a city and waiting for it to grow.

The problem with capturing enemy cities early on is twofold: one: the AI puts them in suboptimal places sometimes; and early in the game foreign cities are generally farther away from your capital than a city you would place yourself would be, increasing maintenance costs.

If the AI builds a city in the same tile where you were planning to build one right next to your border, then by all means take it!

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by MasterDave


The problem with capturing enemy cities early on is twofold: one: the AI puts them in suboptimal places sometimes; and early in the game foreign cities are generally farther away from your capital than a city you would place yourself would be, increasing maintenance costs.

If the AI builds a city in the same tile where you were planning to build one right next to your border, then by all means take it!

Yup, yup. My first Noble game, I learned not to capture cities far from my borders. But if you have a close neighbour... someone like Caesar, for example... you can pick and choose from a few nearby cities. Burn the suboptimal ones - the cash can be used to pay maintenance until the cities you keep are producing.