Tame the Beast or Smack the Superpower?

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Who to target first?

This is one of the most important questions the Civilization player can ask him or herself. Even the most peaceful types have to go to war sometime, if only for defensive purposes. Warmongers, which many Civ players are, naturally ask this question quite a bit, and those playing on large/huge maps with the max. amount of neighbors can't stress this question enough.

The answer's pretty straight forward at the beginning of the game, depending on a number of factors: who has land you want? Who do you fear most? Who is the weakest? Who has a resource you want? Is the war "do-able"?

But by the middle of the game, if you're not in an overwhelmingly dominant position, if your neighbors are near tech/power parity, this question becomes harder to answer.

Attached is a saved game that demonstrates fairly well a basic conundrum that a typical player might find him/herself in. I am playing as the Aztecs, and am without question the most powerful civ in the game. However, I have several troubling neighbors that threaten my supremacy:

- The Iroquois to the south are the world's second-largest empire, with plenty of iron, horsies and saltpeter. I am not sure if they've triggered their GA or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't; they've expanded peacefully. They are annoyed with me.

- The Carthaginians to the West are mid-sized, near in tech, and have tons of knights, medival infantry, and those accursed NMs. Much worse, their empire borders my "homeland" as well as Antium, the site of my Forbidden City. They are annoyed with me.

- I have several smaller neighbors, friendlier to me and not much of a threat.

My forces are in place to take on Carthage in a long drawn-out war, but it's not too late to reposition and take on the Iroquois instead.

If I take on Carthage now, I will probably win the war, but the Iroquois will have lots of time to develop musketmen, and eventually cavalry... they will become quite difficult to invade, which is my ultimate goal. If I take on the Iroquois now, Carthage will keep up in tech and will remain a threat to my empire.

In a few turns I will have enough cash to upgrade my knights to cavalry. The question now is: smash Carthage and then move against the Iroquois, vice versa, or take out my puny neighbors before Carthage or Salamanca?

I'm playing Regent level, so whatever I do, I'm almost assured victory. Still, I think this saved game demonstrates well a typical conundrum and I'd like everyone's advice, as well as other saved games posing similar questions.

Thanks.

[mimi]

Well... I'm at work so I can't look at the save but I'd probably enlist the Carth to wage war with me against the Iroq. That way the biggest is gone and, hopefully, Carth will lose some of its troops and will divert gold from research - all to your advantage 'cause after the Iroq are whittled to size, you can then turn on Carth.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Hmm, an interesting approach. I'd be worried about the Carthaginians being too successful and gaining a foothold in Iroquois-land, though, and then turning on me when my forces are spread... but it's worth considering.

[vmxa1]

The server is too slow to DL it right now. Either way, you may want to get the other one on side to prevent a two front war.

[mimi]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Either way, you may want to get the other one on side to prevent a two front war.

Oh yeah... 'cause if you don't side with one of them, you know they'll side together and THEN you'll be in the kettle!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by mimi
Oh yeah... 'cause if you don't side with one of them, you know they'll side together and THEN you'll be in the kettle!

But Carthage and the Iroquois are quite far from each other, separated by Japan and an largely empty plateau, both of which I occupy. It would be good to keep them from warring against me, but I wouldn't want them building up their forces are NOT losing them... the Iroquois still have land to build on, whereas the Carthaginians are boxed in. If I declare war on Carthage, there's less chance that the Iroquois'll war with me, as compared to vice versa.

[Dominae]

My thoughts:

Once again, you're clearly dominating this game. Therefore, the "big decision" of which civ to attack is really inconsequential. Declare war on both the Iroquois and Carthage and you're guaranteed to be victorious on both fronts.

By the way, thumbs up on building more attackers than defenders this game: 97 Knights, 11 Musketmen and 12 Pikemen is a good Warmonger standing army.

A big tip on making the war easier for you: leave almost every city in your empire undefended. Only the cities you've recently conquered or bordering your next target should be garrisoned (I suppose you could also use a couple of troops near Greece and Egypt, but it's not really that important). You have a Strong military compared to everyone other civ, even the Iroquois. If you use all your Knights in your offensive, you'll simply decimate the AI, meaning you will not face a counter-attack. Garrisons are therefore useless. Again, you have way too much Happiness, and therefore Military Police is a useless.

In other words, your Knights want to kill stuff, not hang around in your cities. Every single Knight feels the same way (and every Cavalry too), so get out there and bonk some heads!

Trust me, the AI will not conquer your undefended cities. Knowing how the AI behaves in different situations is a key aspect of beating the higher difficulty levels.

Ok, let's assume you're not overly powerful, and that the decision to attack either Carthage or the Iroquois is meaningful. Who should you attack? My vote would be for the Iroquois: you've got a momentary advantage with your Cavalry, and therefore can do some serious damage before the Iroquois get too annoying. For the first 20 or so turns of the war you'll be fighting Cavalry versus Knigths, which is really easy against the AI. Carthage does not post a threat, as they're small and close to your core. You can get rid of them anytime but doing so provides no real advantage. So it's better to attack the civ that could rival your power, here the Iroquois. If Carthage had, say, a Luxury or a Wonder you wanted, I would definitely suggest you take care of them first, however.

Hope this helps.


Dominae

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Thank you, your advice does help quite a bit.

Just want to make sure: you don't find the Carthaginian armed forces threatening? I don't like seeing so many knights cruising around.

Then again, their culture certainly poses no threat to me whatsoever.

Thanks for checking out the game, Dom - I followed most of your advice - mined rather than irrigated, eased off on defense - I'm still married to some of my old habits but this is definitely leading to a more behind-whuppin' game, so, soon I'll be takin' it to the Iroquois!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

One other question: would you encourage I follow vmxa1's advice, and call Carthage to attack the Iroquois? I certainly wouldn't want to give the little bastards a tech for it... would you fear a sneak attack in the middle of the campaign by the Carths, or do you think this is just paranoia?

I'll definitely invite my Greek and Egyptian friends along on the campaign, just because I them so much.

[Rhothaerill]

Yahweh, have you considered moving up to monarch level yet? In all your recent posts you seem to be dominating your games on regent level.

Monarch is a little more difficult, mainly at the start, and you have to have better micromanagement practices, but it's still a level you can make mistakes and try out new techniques without it completely hampering your game.

Sorry, I haven't looked at your savegame so I have no advice on that part of the post.

[Dominae]

Yahweh, vmxa1's advice re: Carthage is sound: you get Carthage to declare war on the Iroquois, and then you get to see exactly how many Knights Carthage can really muster. It's not going to be a lot. Then you can just move in on Carthage with Cavalry recently built in your core cities. Of course, you would take a rep hit, which is annoying, but you're so powerful that it should not matter.

You really must consider your power relative to another civ's, Yahweh: just becaues Carthage has a few Knights prancing around does not mean they threaten you in any way. Learning what the AI is capable of given a certain land mass and tech level is a very important skill to develop.


Dominae

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by Dominae
You really must consider your power relative to another civ's, Yahweh: just becaues Carthage has a few Knights prancing around does not mean they threaten you in any way. Learning what the AI is capable of given a certain land mass and tech level is a very important skill to develop.

Well, I'm still working on developing that skill of course... and Carthage in particular gives me the chills. I'd say that in 3/4 of the games I play where Carthage is another civ, they end up a major power, and in 1/2 of those games, they become the major power, other than my civ, of course.

Don't ask me why... I thought Carthage specialized in trade and naval units. But they also wind up swallowing whole civs, beating me to key techs at times, being agressive and threatening. Not too hard to conquer, but harder than others.

Still, you guys are the pros, so I probably will take on the Iroquois and try to backstab Carthage. If I'm slick enough, I can do so before I meet any other civs.

[cumi]

As I mostly play regent with industrios civ, in this phase of game I am building! I am building Universities, Banks, Stocks etc. Then I am building Factories etc.

As you see, I am not a warmonger one. I am always giving to my scientist all my gold. My goal is always to be the most advanced! If I am the most advanced, I have the most advanced units...OK enough of this bla-bla-bla....

My strategy in this stage is - especially, if I see, that I am not alone dominating the game - NOT making a war, but a WORLD WAR. If I attack a civ and all the others have peace - the others will benefit from this. Be sure, that if you are in war, nobody else is enjoying the peace.

My experience is: if I make a world war once, I can finish it whenever I want or just simply ignore it. BUT, the all the other civs will fight for the next 1000 years. Maybe, the only thing to take care, that non of the civs should dominate the WW...

Just start the WW and leave them fight until end of the world....

[Mountain Sage]

YS,

You know my answer: smack them, but culturally, diplomatically and technologically. You are already in a dominant position, therefore, instead of spending your gold on maintaining a big army, crank up the tech slider and go for a tech/4 turns. Then, once you have a clear tech lead, trade luxuries and gpt with your 'older' techs. My 1 GP advice: reduce your army to 40 knights (soon to become cavalry). With the rest, disband them and rush libraries, harbors, marketplaces, whatever. Kill them all, but with brains and gold.

P.S. Dominae: you might want to look at the 'acronyms thread' and I still owe you my comments about AU208 (I just started!)

[Cruddy]

I'm no war monger - with me the key question on declaring war is what I get out of it.

If I get some productive cities or a useful wonder, then it's worth it.

If all I get is a lot of worthless cities tying up my troops as garrison until they starve, I usually won't bother... unless I want to tie all the AIs into a military alliance for a reputation boost.

So what will you gain from the war? That, for me, is the critical answer.