Agressive Intercontinental Defense (?AID?)

[David Weldon]

Ok, so here's a little something I find fun. Not necessarily perfectly efficient, but fun:

If you have a continent to yourself and any kind of tech or production lead, you can probably prevent from ever having to defend your own cities. The general idea is to destroy all AI port cities, and never let them build any useful navy. It works because:

1)The AI prefers perfect city spacing to perfect city location, this means that a lot of the coast will be occupied with non-port cities, and only a few will actually be on the ocean front. This leaves you with only a few cities per nation to destroy.

2)After razing one or two cities, the AI will normally accept peace (at least in my experience).

3)A rebuilt city will take a long time before it can produce a carrier or BB.

4)The expense of maintaining 4 or 5 strike forces is less than defending against a possible large-scale assault.

5)Whipping the AI using hit-and-run tactics is more fun than building up artillery and waiting for them to invade.


The major downfall is that you can't trade during peacetime for things that require an AI port to connect to it's capital. Shucks.

Naturally this will be less easy or useful on the larger maps, but on standard or smaller I have enjoyed it .

[Larz Smith]

Re: Agressive Intercontinental Defense (?AID?)

Originally posted by David Weldon
Ok, so here's a little something I find fun. Not necessarily perfectly efficient, but fun:

If you have a continent to yourself and any kind of tech or production lead, you can probably prevent from ever having to defend your own cities. The general idea is to destroy all AI port cities, and never let them build any useful navy. It works because:

1)The AI prefers perfect city spacing to perfect city location, this means that a lot of the coast will be occupied with non-port cities, and only a few will actually be on the ocean front. This leaves you with only a few cities per nation to destroy.

2)After razing one or two cities, the AI will normally accept peace (at least in my experience).

3)A rebuilt city will take a long time before it can produce a carrier or BB.

4)The expense of maintaining 4 or 5 strike forces is less than defending against a possible large-scale assault.

5)Whipping the AI using hit-and-run tactics is more fun than building up artillery and waiting for them to invade.


The major downfall is that you can't trade during peacetime for things that require an AI port to connect to it's capital. Shucks.

Naturally this will be less easy or useful on the larger maps, but on standard or smaller I have enjoyed it .

why not take a few port cities as your own? then you can trade and take over other port cities when they build em.

[Kc7mxo]

why not take a few port cities as your own? then you can trade and take over other port cities when they build em.

um. because then your corruption magically causes all your cities to burn down their most beloved buildings. i know if i'm pissed at my government, i'm goign to burn down our library.

[David Weldon]

I'm not so worried about the corruption, I always have that under control through wonders and city improvements. The reason I don't take the cities is that I'm not interested in defending them. Plus, If I keep razing the AI cities every century or so, then I can keep negotiating peace for everything they have.

If there's a really nice city with great luxuries or resources, sometimes I'll go ahead and take it and rush a harbor to connect it. Then I starve it down to 1 citizen and bring over a settler so that my citizens outnumber theirs, and I've not had a single city revolt back to the original government...