Man I got my butt kicked last night.

[Crossfire]

I had copper and Axemen pretty early and was in the middle of the power chart when I started getting spammed badly by barbarian warriors and axemen. Then Shaka attacked but was easily beaten off, then a stack of death showed up from Hannibal and between the 3 attackers I was killed pretty quickly. I think it is the earliest I have lost a game in a long time. I was unfortunate in that I was the only one on the top half of a continent and there was too much dark space to cover and the barbs were ferocious. Then I was the only 'heathen' without the same religion as the other 3 civs in the south and I didn't stand a chance.

How often does everyone gang up on you and kill you in games?

[couerdelion]

Well quite often if you choose to be a religious island. Having your own religion is a luxury and there is nothing in the laws of civ to say that you have to adopt it as a state religion. If your neighbours share a religion then you either need to convert their cities to your religion, switch to their religion or stay without a religion and find other ways of getting along with them.

Sure it is possible to go it alone if you need +1 happiness and the religious civic bonus but the cost of this might be high in terms of trade (you can probably get more happiness by resource trading and will lose commerce if you cannot keep open borders with neighbours) and the risk of them launching a crusade. When you have 50% on the power graph, it is probably not time to “go it alone” in these circumstances

[Crossfire]

Problem is that their religion hadn't spread to me yet. We were not even connected for trade yet. I think it was about 800bc when I died. I have played many games and understand the choices religion offers but in this case I got slammed and died. It was pretty fun!

[Virdrago]

You are the first person I have ever known to mention that being killed that quickly was "pretty fun". I salute you, 'cause I'd be grumbling all the way through the next three games.

[Targonis]

Originally posted by Virdrago
You are the first person I have ever known to mention that being killed that quickly was "pretty fun". I salute you, 'cause I'd be grumbling all the way through the next three games.

You probably don't talk to many people that have this happen to them, but sometimes, it's FUN to lose so badly and quickly that it makes your head spin. Talk about some serious bad luck.

Now, if you play with rampaging barbarians turned on on a huge map, it can be really really harsh how bad the rush can be. I've had times where I had 10 barbarian units going after one city, and after I kill off four of them, more spawn and join in the attack. You KNOW that when you have that many barbarians going after you they probably don't go after the AI as badly, so you will fall behind.

Another fun one, go with rampaging barbarians with 17 AI civs. You find that you can't expand as much, and it makes for a really interesting game. Full settings are huge world, continents(normal, not custom), low sea level, rampaging barbarians, require complete kills, and cities can flip back to their original owners. I don't know if I am the only one who plays with these particular settings, but it's a bit tougher I think than the normal game settings.

[Robert]

Some civs attack you no matter what.
Shaka is defenitely one of them. you may share their religion for 100% and be +100 friendly with them, they'll still attack.

Shaka is a bad neighbour, I found out 8)
The dark space barbarians suck as well, though they're good for getting your units promoted for the Shaka invasion.

A double-team attack sucks twice at hard btw.
If another civ invades you while you're just defending yourself against the first stack of doom. Oh well, there's always Tetris for the softies.

[Crossfire]

I assume that if Shaka or Monty are my neighbor I am going to get attacked, and attacked early. Although in my previous game Monty was actually Friendly with me the whole game. Like in this game that I lost, if I see that one of them is near I make sure and have lots of axemen built fairly early so I can defend myself. But when you are getting blasted by more barbarians than Shaka forces and then another civ piles on, well doom is usually inevitable. This game was without raging barbs on, they just happened to spawn 3 cities near me. Some games go really well, and some just don't. If I won every game I probably wouldn't play anymore!

[Virdrago]

Believe me, I don't win every game. I may win 20% of the games I make it to the industrial age on. Usually if I get dogpiled on that early by the AI, I know I'm doomed, and that ends that game. BTW, Targonis I generally play Epic games, huge maps, continents, raging barbs, cities can flip back, and 17 AIs, so I'm used to not winning...

I still grumble about it, though.

Tetris

[Wiglaf]

I thought I was in the OTF when I opened this thread. The first sentence, "I had copper and Axemen pretty early and was in the middle of the power chart when I started getting spammed badly by barbarian warriors and axemen" really toyed with my expectations of a vicious nightclub brawl.

[Targonis]

Originally posted by Virdrago
Believe me, I don't win every game. I may win 20% of the games I make it to the industrial age on. Usually if I get dogpiled on that early by the AI, I know I'm doomed, and that ends that game. BTW, Targonis I generally play Epic games, huge maps, continents, raging barbs, cities can flip back, and 17 AIs, so I'm used to not winning...

I still grumble about it, though.

Tetris

Try Marathon then, it really does take forever What difficulty do you play on.

[Virdrago]

Epic games. They're longer, too, but not as long as Marathon

[Crossfire]

Haha, stayed home sick yesterday and played Civ all afternoon. Tried hard as I could to gain the same religion as the other 3 civs but ended up at war with all 3. My berserkers held out for a long time against Monty, Alexander and Shaka before I gave up and started over. I kicked some serious Korean butt in the next game with my cavalry and berserkers though! I think I will actually win this game. I am far enough ahead I may just have to quit and start over.