Same thing keeps happening - help

[Carenza]

When playing on easy I can beat the game no problem, when I move up a level the same thing keeps happening.


Ususally get to the point when musket men are avaliable and one of the surrounding civs demands a technology or money and if I say no they attack.

Usually I end up loosing a city of two.

I have tried building losts of units but then I have less gold so advances are slow. I have tried doing mainly the suggested build and that does not help either.

Any tips.

[McMeadows]

read more on Apolyton... there's so much around...

[Dr. A. Cula]

Try this: get Chivalry before Gunpowder and have a couple of stacks of 10 or so Knights in or near your border towns.

[CerberusIV]

Try and keep your borders as short as possible so fight your early wars with some thought to what territory you are looking to control.

Make sure your border cities have enough culture to force the attackers to have to cross at least 2 tiles to get to your city. That gets you time to respond.

You only need 2 or 3 defenders per border city and a mobile reserve. When it is clear where they are attacking, move your reserves in, let them come up to the city walls and counterattack (catapults and cannon are useful at this point). Once they have lost enough units they will accept peace and go home again.

You need to check the military advisor (F3) regularly. If he says your military is weak compared to someone else the chances are they will start demanding things from you and go to war if they don't get them. Either run a stronger (either more units or more powerful units) military or be prepared to pay up for peace.

Civs you trade with regularly are less likely to be demanding.

[Zero]

-Giving into demand when necessary is an important lesson in Higher difficulties.
-Accepting few city losses also. You cant play a prefect game in higher difficulty.

[vmxa1]

Definitely pay attention to F3 saying you are weaker. Once land is all claimed, even that will not stop demands/attacks.

[Carenza]

I suppose I was suprised by how quickly the difficulty went up from just the easy to second level.

I am sure with Test of Time and SMAC I could play without much problems upto the middle level.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Carenza
I suppose I was suprised by how quickly the difficulty went up from just the easy to second level.

I am sure with Test of Time and SMAC I could play without much problems upto the middle level.

There is a good reason why the move from Chief to Warlord is harder than you may expect.

The cost factor. It is 20 for Chief and 12 for Warlord. A factor of 10 mean no advantage for either. So you see you get twice the boost at Chief as normal. When you move to Warlord, it goes to 12 and you lose a lot of your bonus.

Content citizens drop from 4 to 3, so you have to deal with that a bit sooner.

Another change is the barbs bonus. It goes from 800 at Chief to 400 for Warlord. At 800 you basically don't lose combat with barbs.

[TheArsenal]

Not sure if you’re doing it, but a frequent mistake I made early on was over defending my interior cities. There’s no need for stacks of units in the center of your empire. Push them out to the border towns.

[Caesar2760]

I know this is going to sound simplistic, but...

found more cities early!

Remember, the AI computes overall strength based on the size of your army, not the relationship of army size to territory. This means that, if you want to run a builder strategy (which it sounds like you are trying to do), it is essential to colonize as much and as early as possible. If you do that, you can have a much smaller army, relative to overall size, than would otherwise be adviseable. If you have trouble doing this, try an Expansionistic or Agricultural civ, or even better, both (Incas)! Once you get it down with these, you can wean yourself from these traits.

Admittedly, if the AI were to declare war on you, it could tear through your palty forces. But, they're less likely to do that since they consider you stronger. Try to maintain trade contacts and you're pretty unlikely to be attacked, especially on levels of Monarch and below (I've only tried Emperor once, I'll probably have to try again after I finish decimating the AI on Monarch. Go mother Russia!). If you are larger than they and maintain, say 2 or so defensive units per city with a small force ready to move if necessary, they probably won't get frisky early, which will give you the time you need to capitalize on your building, i.e., higher trade/prod.

[Brundlefly]

If your culture is higher than other civs, there is less chance of them demanding tribute from you. By the time musketman is available you should have at least a temple and library in every city.

[Carenza]

Played a few games on the second difficulty level and they have been very differnt


One game got a good starting place, the other civs on my continent weakend each other, I killed them off and I got a space race victory (just - by one part) within the 540 turns.

Last game I played I seemed to be very short of money, got left way behind in technology and lost to a space race before I was even on the last tech tree.


I dont quite have the balance yet of what city improvements to build and what ones not to but I do think I have the unit bulid rate sorted though.

[vmxa1]

Sounds like you are going in the right direction. Some of the game is about being familar with how the AI behaves and the pace of events.

[Plotinus]

I think a common mistake is not to make enough mines. For the early and middle game, most squares around most cities should be roads and mines. In Civ1 you couldn't actually mine plains and grasslands, so I had an inherited assumption that you should irrigate flat places and mine lumpy ones; but in fact mining everything is generally much more efficient. This can really boost your production and give you an edge. If you look at the AIs' lands, you'll see that this is one thing that they know.

If you're getting so low in money and technology, I think the two key things are -

(1) Make sure you're in the best government - most people seem to go for Republic or Democracy pretty much as soon as possible, unless they're planning on lots of warmongering. Alternatively, if you've got vast numbers of troops or are at constant war, Monarchy or Communism.

(2) Trade, trade, trade... if you discover a tech before other people, sell it to them for vast profit. It will help them catch up with you, but the boost to your income will also help you pull even further away. Make trade routes with your neighbours to sell resources and luxuries to them.