How To Stop AI Invasions...? :o

[Haphazard]

What was the specific situation Felch? Did you have lots of borders? In the middle of a large landmass? Strategic resources that you may/may not have known about? Seemed a bit unfair...

[Lord Maxwell]

Well, the AI diplomacy engine is like sharks in water. Once they smell blood they all gang up. I've repeatedly seen two civs going at each other, and then a big block of other civs joining one side. (They all join the same side usually, to divvy up the poor sap or something.)

Isolationist techniques tend to save me.

And for defending. You need bombardment as well. You want to keep them hurt all the time. So bombard them while they stand outside your gates. Counterattack only against stacks so you don't move out into the field.

And you might want to hold off building aqueducts if it looks chancy. City walls are a big help.

Yes, and bribe neighbours before going into anarchy. I managed to go into anarchy to get republic right after building aqueducts in most cities. I can tell you that you loose a lot of cities fast when they grow to size 7 just as the AI takes advantage of that combined with your anarchy.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Here are a few things which I found interesting

(1) The more culture or military that you have, the more they respect you. If you are stronger than the other civ either culturally or with millitary, they will give you good deals.

(2) Expansionist CSA seems like on of the best ones. You send out your scout far from home and contact other civs and make alliances with them, especially the ones in your culture group. Then, they won't all gang up. Sometimes, it helps to have an alliance with another civ who is weak. One game, I had the French near me. They were very weak. To prevent the enemy from taking advantage of them (i.e giving them some techs and then signing a right of passage so they could came and beat me up) I made an alliance with them, and gave them iron for dye. Francw was like my vassal.

(3) Diplomacy is now more important than ever (see 2)

(4) A lot of times, expanding in the direction of your ally is a good idea. Since your borders will be touching (and the AI seems to trade culture for expansion) you might be able to take over some of his cities culturally.

[Eli]

Short threadjack - How do I sign alliances? I never got this option on the diplomacy screens.

[dainbramaged13]

well, considering im kicking ass in my game and have already conquered two civs i can provide soem advice... Dont let them get resources... all the best units are made with resources
and
Be the chinese i think i got lucky picking them because the rider with three moves can beat any ancient age unit, sometimes musketmen, and then even if they win and take the spot, they can still move back into the city, or if youre atacking, back to the rest of the units

[Ballz1998]

Its all about respect. . .

If your a peaceloving country with a crappy military compared to the civs, they see one thing. A wimp resource they can exploit. Its perfectly fine to be peaceloving and I believe the way to maintain peace is to keep a strong military force at all times. It's so simple to support an army of STRONG up to date units now theres no reason why any of your Military advisor should say you are weaker than another civ. I find having 50 calvary and 20 cannons throughout my empire right now is a huge deterrent They all know what will happen if they cross me... and they saw that i will fight because of what happened to the poor little aztecs who decided it would be a good idea to demand tribute lol...

[Felch]

Originally posted by Haphazard
What was the specific situation Felch? Did you have lots of borders? In the middle of a large landmass? Strategic resources that you may/may not have known about? Seemed a bit unfair...

I wasn't any weaker than any of the others. My army was a bit smaller, but it was all advanced, I suffered practically no losses. It was mostly my hoplites, and knights (all veterans and elite because I had Sun Tzu by then) against warriors, swordsmen, spearmen, archers, and horsemen. The only thing they were able to do was run around and steal my workers, and tear up my roads.

Besides that, I only had a couple resources, two iron in the south, and a horse colony far to the north. I was in a penisula, bordered by the Germans and Indians. Everyone else just allied, and used those right of passage agreements to attack me. I even took out several Indian cities, including Delhi, but they still attacked me.

I played a new game as the Babylonians, and I'm doing really well. This time I just stuck with an archipelago, and I have a pretty good army, so nobody is messing with me.