On a losing streak...

[TheArsenal]

Inca911 - Although your answer to my question on the number of workers was an oracle like "You will know when you know" I found it to be very informative. Thanks. I've been holding off starting a new game for a couple of days to soak up strats first. I think I'll launch one tonight.

[Mountain Sage]

Re: 3. The tech race (you can deduct who's going to research what).

Originally posted by tibbits
How do you do that?
Thanks

Who's supposed to do what?

[Mountain Sage]

Oh sorry, missed the title.

JPGray is right. You can anticipate (to a certain extent, of course) and choose the appropriate tech to research and/or be the first one to buy it and re-sell it.
This is also very important for the exact timing for pre-building Wonders.

[inca911]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
Inca911 - Although your answer to my question on the number of workers was an oracle like "You will know when you know" I found it to be very informative.

Oracle? Well, I did go see the 10pm showing of the Matrix Reloaded! Thanks for the compliment.

I think that getting full value from your workers is important in the early game, so your question was of particular interest to me. Learning how to play better is often a matter of just figuring out the right problems to solve and the right questions to ask. I will always control my early game workers, but once my cities are well prepared for the future (and excess land is basically gone), I often just Shift-A automate them and let the AI work them for me until it's time to build Railroads. I take control again and work the Rails to maximum effect both for production and military planning. Then it's back to Shift-A for them. Good luck in your latest game! Before long, I'm sure you'll get to where Emperor is casual and fun (and Deity is still a royal pain!).

[Quasar1011]

Originally posted by PrinceBimz
Uhhh...fellas... I just lost again I played all the way until my very last city was destroyed. I had 5 civs all declare war on me. It all started because I demanded persia get their units out of my territory.

You have to know which territorial incursions to tolerate, and which to ignore. Obviously, a rival civ moving an archer-settler combo through my territory is not a military threat, though perhaps a cultural one. Many times the AI civs will send military units through your territory, because they are involved in a war with a civ on the opposite site of your territory. They do this without a RoP agreement. At other times, they may have built an isolated city somewhere, and are moving military units though your lands to reach such a city.
If you choose to ignore these incursions, you must weigh the risks of the offending civ suddenly declaring war on you when it has plenty of forces within your borders.

Did Persia appear to be massing for an attack against you? If so, go get some allies before making the demand that they leave. That way, if they do attack, you will not be alone, and perhaps those other 5 civs will declare war on Persia instead of you.

[PrinceBimz]

Originally posted by Quasar1011


You have to know which territorial incursions to tolerate, and which to ignore. Obviously, a rival civ moving an archer-settler combo through my territory is not a military threat, though perhaps a cultural one. Many times the AI civs will send military units through your territory, because they are involved in a war with a civ on the opposite site of your territory. They do this without a RoP agreement. At other times, they may have built an isolated city somewhere, and are moving military units though your lands to reach such a city.
If you choose to ignore these incursions, you must weigh the risks of the offending civ suddenly declaring war on you when it has plenty of forces within your borders.

Did Persia appear to be massing for an attack against you? If so, go get some allies before making the demand that they leave. That way, if they do attack, you will not be alone, and perhaps those other 5 civs will declare war on Persia instead of you.

Persia did not appear to be massing an attack, but they doid have a strong military. I also find that an AI civ will move through your territory if they disrespect you. In other words, they have a stronger more advanced military so they can do what they want. Then if you dare tell them to leave they will declare war sometimes and own you. Its like they don't want to hear it, they want you to keep your mouth shut On the other hand, if my military is strong and respectful they will listen to my demands and what I have to say more often.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Quasar1011
You have to know which territorial incursions to tolerate, and which to ignore. Obviously, a rival civ moving an archer-settler combo through my territory is not a military threat, though perhaps a cultural one. Many times the AI civs will send military units through your territory, because they are involved in a war with a civ on the opposite site of your territory. They do this without a RoP agreement. At other times, they may have built an isolated city somewhere, and are moving military units though your lands to reach such a city.

And often they will move large numbers of units through your territory prior to declaring war on a civ on your opposite border. Once you've seen it a few times, it becomes fairly easy to see the difference between this and their moving in to attack you. For example, they move fast moving units into your territory, but don't snatch unprotected workers at your mutual border - something the AI never passes up when its being aggressive towards you.

It seems when the AI is determined to fight a war on that opposite border it will continue its incursions (and withdraw if you're stronger) as many times as it takes for you to get tired of it and declare war or just let it happen.


edited for clarity

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
Oh sorry, missed the title.

JPGray is right. You can anticipate (to a certain extent, of course) and choose the appropriate tech to research and/or be the first one to buy it and re-sell it.
This is also very important for the exact timing for pre-building Wonders.

Hmm, I'm not sold on the idea that you can anticpate which is the next tech for you to go for in this way. You need to actually have the tech, so you can offer it to a few different civs and see who's closest to getting it, or offer it to the same civ over a few turns running and track the changes in how much they will pay. This CAN give you an indicator on whether they are researching it, and approximately how long until they get it, but other things can change a tech's price too, like how many others have it, and particularly what that civ is feeling towards you.

BUT, if you don't have a tech already, you can't find out that the AI is researching it, because SOMEONE needs to make an offer if you are to determine this. Where neither you nor the AI have a tech, you can't check to see how much less it may cost to an AI.

For researching (I know this isn't about war so much, PrinceBimz, which is what you are worried about), you need to find the techs the AI rarely researches, and get them first. I was behind the tech race for my latest game by 4-5 techs when I found the leaders. I researched Printing Press and swapped it for two techs and a whole heap of cash. The AIs don't seem to prioritise certain techs (Printing Press, Free Artistry especially), yet they still want them. So if you get to them yourself first, all the others will be willing to trade you nice things like Gunpowder and Astronomy for them (if you've been nice to them!)

Do that and any tech disadvantage you have can soon turn into parity, or even an advantage.

To continue this minor threadjack (although this thread DOES seem to be about random strategies ), can anyone think of any more techs that are good for catching up with in this manner?

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt

To continue this minor threadjack (although this thread DOES seem to be about random strategies ), can anyone think of any more techs that are good for catching up with in this manner?

Try to go for all the 'second-handed' techs like Music Theory, Free Artistry, Printing Press and Military Tradition. You should be able to trade those on a 1-1 basis with about half of the civs, and on a gpt basis with the other half.

Democracy is also very important: you should be able to trade that one on a 2-1 basis.

Again, if a civ is not interested or offers you almost nothing in exchange, you can assume that it is researching it.

[Gen.Dragolen]

This is all assuming that you can make a decent start of things.

I've been trying some of the GoTM from CivFanatics and the AU games. I'm finding that I am getting my ass handed to me trying to play as I remembered how, and have had to relearn alot of basics again.

The biggest problem is how to overcome the AI's advantage at the start. I have found that you have to persue what you want to do first in the tech department. If you don't have Pottery, that has to be the first thing you go after. With out a granary, you will never be able to produce enough settlers to keep up with the AI. Next, you will need at least two workers, so a build order of Warrior-Worker-Warrior is essential. Once you have Pottery, you start a granary, and lumberjack what ever is available with both workers. Next, you pop rush to finish the granary and then finish improving the terrain to suit your plans for Rapid EXpansion.

It is more than a little annoying to have the AI build in the choice spots, but once you have 6-8 cities, that should have been enough time to build a decent force of archers and spearmen and adopt any and all cities/towns/villages you want. You will need practice at timing everything for best effect with the pop rushing since I think one pop is worth 20 shields and a forest is worth 10.

Hope that helps since it's done wonders for me in the last couple of games. Nothing like out REXing the AI and getting ahead before taking a single AI vil... Like everything else in life, the foundation matters the most.


D.

[cumi]

What do you think about this?

PrinceBimz,

you wrote, in your very first post in this thread, that you almost captured the Zulu capital. I think this can be deadly....

I always wait with the attack on a city, until all my units (which were planed) are on the attacking possitions. If you can not capture in first (or maximum in second) turn a city (especially a capital) you will never do so, becaus:

- your units will be "sicker" and "sicker"
- enemy units will be healed before every turn
- enemy units will be more and more experienced
- in worst case you can even make GL for you enemy doing so

A WW1 war style (Germany-France) on enemy territory is bad. You have to do WW2 (American against Japan) style. Don't divide your military, don't attack all the cities at once.

Concentrate your whole military and go for cities one-by-one. If you send let's say 3 archers on 5 cities, can happen that you lost them all in the first turn even if the enemy has only 1 spearman defender. But, if you attack 1 city with 15 archers, the enemy has no chance. Then go for the next city with your 10 archer. Then for third with 5 and after this go to destruct anything possible with the 2-3 archers left.

Yes, concentrating the attacking force is the key for my aggressions.

cumi