What am I doing wrong?

[AusSpyder]

Two games in a row ive been playing as Bismark trying to win a domination victory. Both games I have tried focusing on one border, while maintaining lots of defense on the other border.

Additionally, I have been doing EVERYTHING to make the person on my peaceful border love me, but both times they end up invading me despite me having much greater military might and us being the best of friends.

I take on his religion, I give him help and go to war when he asks, I got a couple special events that gave positive relations, then out of the blue "Now you will pay for the many insults to japan"

First time it was sitting bull, second time it was Tokugawa.

just had a 14 hour game ruined because he rampaged through my cities while i was at war (with someone he told me to go to war with no less) and couldn't fend off both armies at once.

Wouldn't mind so much but it happens every game.

Oh, and how do you take out archers/longbow men early on, i can't seem to find a counter unit for them, and if i run into a city on a hill with a couple longbow men they can literally lay waste to my entire army

[ybrevo]

When it comes to taking the archers out early, try playing the Incans. I tried it once, and their UU (Quechua) was very effective against the archers.
What you do against Longbowmen, I don´t know yet - but I am sure others on this site will have a suggestion

Good luck!

ybrevo

[oyzar]

Don't try to make friends with toku and sitting bull in the first place... Also you can check for wheoohrn to get some advance warning...

[joncnunn]

Obviously the reason he declared war on you was the cities along his border were under defended.

Qs are specalists at taking out Archers, but even they have a higher loss ratio against them on the hills. But against mere AI that just means you need more Qs for your Q rush than otherwise.

Swords with CR promotions are the best unit everyone else has against Archers fortified on City Hills. (Horse Archers are good against Archers in the field but because of the -10% attacking cities penalty not so much there; some civs though have a UU without the dity attack penalty.)

Against Longbows, the main unit is Maces with CR against those dug in the city and Knights for those in the field.

Also to reduce your losses against tough opponents siege weapons can remove the defense entirely and then some suicide ones can soften the entire stack.

[Ming]

Originally posted by oyzar
Don't try to make friends with toku and sitting bull in the first place...

Ain't that the truth. There are some Civs that will usually stay friends with you, but Tok isn't one of them

As far as taking out archers, Swordsman promoted with city raider usually eat them alive. However, on a hill and with multiple city defense promotions, you made need to bring in some cats to take down the city defense first.

When it comes to longbow man, it's usually time to bring on the tribs. Take down the city defense, and then start "nicking" the longbows... Either maceman or swordsman (with city raider promotions) can then finsih the job. Expect to lose a few tribs. If you only have cats, expect to lose a lot of them

Good luck.

Ohhh... and I see I had a nice cross post with joncnunn...

[rah]

Yes, Sitting Bull provided me with my lesson of it don't matter how friendly they are if you leave a weak border.
I to was fighting a war with him at his insistance, just a few turns prior. Even at +17, he declared when I moved a few units out of my cap, (that was on the border with him) to support his attack against another civ. Granted this is something a human player would do in a second. But it was still annoying and a reminder never to rely on how happy they are with you.

Now I don't feel quite as bad when I turn on my game long friend to finish off the game

[Blaupanzer]

Shaka is also unreliable as a "friend." Monty is the worst as anyone can bribe him into going to war with anyone else, at least until he falls behind. The other first-order treacherous neighbor is Genghis Khan, who also will turn on you if you share a border. Toku, Monty, and Genghis will attack you even if you are not weaker than they are, if you have forces out of the country somewhere else. Of course, any of the AIs will attack if they are strong on the power graph and you are several rungs below them.

I go ahead and plan on burning cats to take out hill cities once the opponent has longbowmen. Start building the replacements before the fight. Trebs may survive such encounters by retreating, but cats seldom do. Cannons solve hilled city defenses up to riflemen.

Note: Is there an easy way to tell relation numbers in BTS? I can run my mouse over them and count the greens versus the reds, but we used to have a screen for this.

[Krill]

post the 4000 BC save, and then describe the choices that you made throughout the game (preferably with pics) showing the size of your army, the land and your cities, also, how many workers you had for however many cities.

[pedrojedi]

Odd thing happened in my last game. I was kicking at starters, getting lots of wonders and being powerful and stuff, always managing to keep pumping units; lame Ragnar tried to invade me, but he couldn't even destroy some land, and I just pushed him back.

Then Tokugawa came, saying something like "I love you so much, you're so big and great, I wanna be your b****" and I got a Vassal without trashing him. Nice.

On the other hand, he's kinda useless, since on my last Great War I just got some help late, when Ragnar was well trashed.

[Blaupanzer]

Another reason to turn off vassals -- "no vassals" button on the custon screen. Once you have them, they are really not very useful.

[Hauptman]

It's all about experience. The main thing that makes this game so great is the actual personalities of the AIs. After a few hundred games you will learn who you can trust and who you cant. Plus who the guys that are best kept as friends, or even as pets (vassals).

Remeber the AIs want to win too. The whole point of the game is to not let them. If you are stuck in a long war you have to expect that the AIs are going to see that you are particularly vulnerable at that moment. So if you share borders with anyone, just be prepared to have to defend it. Never commit everything you have to one front if a second front is possible.

[pedrojedi]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Another reason to turn off vassals -- "no vassals" button on the custon screen. Once you have them, they are really not very useful.

No emphasis is good enough on that, considering the usual number of votes Vassals get on UN versus the rest (trashed vassals at least).

By the time I win a diplo, the most common situation is that I elected myself king of the world.

I'm trying to beef up voting comrades by giving Sushi's to ev'ryone!

[Traianvs]

Hey, vassalage is way cool, and it should never be turned off! It's blasphemy!

[snafuc4]

Odd thing with Ragnar; he /volunteered/ to be my vassal in my latest game, & then provided 'some' help (ie his SODs were attacking the cities I was attacking, & would jump in to take them if I let them). I'm a bit puzzled by that - isn't Ragnar meant to be an untrustworthy type?

[ybrevo]

I only have the Vanilla version, and I never turn vassalage off

ybrevo