basics everyone needs to know

[CRAZY]

Hey guys I have just started playing the game. I am actually playing a game on warlord and doing only okay. My question is what are basic things everyone needs to do no matter what strategy you like to play?

your help is greatly appreciated.

[graeme]

Hello,

maybe this isn't the most sophisticated advice, but from another beginers perspective here are my top 5 tips:

1) The AI only respects military strength. If you not strong they'll demand crazy stuff from you and attack. I always try to go to war on my terms.

2) Related to point 1), when in war do not leave cities badly defended! The AI majically knows this and will go to amazing lengths to exploit this knowledge. I often found that the AI would stick units in a galley, transport them for about fifty turns just to attack a porly defended city on the outskirts of my empire.
Whilst not a major problem its an annoyance and distracts from your main objectives. Plus the annoying sneek attacks!

3) Micro-manage as much as possible especially workers, this gives a noticeable advantage over the AI as it manages workers badly. I also started to notice that sometimes I would set a city to produce a settler, then it would be sat their waiting for pop to increase obviously inefficient!

4) Exploit your civs UU, this seems to be a fairly good way of crushing neighbouring AI civs early in the game (when playing as Aztecs, Romans, Persians etc).

5) Control resources. Of course this is not always possible, but denying other civs critical resources can give a big advantage (I often try to camp out the iron resource) .

Graeme

[Theseus]

There's a LOT of good stuff here in the strategy forum, you just have to find it.

On the forum page (not while you're reading a thread), go to the bottom of the screen and sort by number of replies, in descending order.

The threads that I have learned the most from are:

Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three (MUST READ)
On the Utility and Use of Armies
A real reason why tech race looks like me vs World
Culture-Flipping Exposed
Picking the right Civ!
Civ choice for early warmongering
The Care, Feeding, and Death of Neighboring Civs
Civ choice for the "builder"
Rating Special Units
Early war on higher levels

I think you'll find an evolution in thinking and strategy over time... more recent posts will give better guidance.

Don't spend too long on Warlord, as you'll learn some bad habits.

[Free_Mumia]

The AI knows your weaknesses and will try to exploit them. So if you have no weaknesses (i.e. all your cities are defended with the same units and same amount of units) then the AI just attacks at random.

When you build a settler it takes off 2 pop points of a city, so your city must be size 3 to build a settler. A common mistake beginners make is to build a settler in a city that will build the settler before reaching size 3, be careful not to do this.

Controlling resources and luxuries is very important. It means you have more of them and the AI has less. Makes you richer and more powerful. Also the techs that give you certain resources are important and the AI will pay big $$$ for them.

Once you get some more military power you can you extort the AI. When taking 2-3 cities and then asking for peace you can demand peace AND techs AND gold/turn and/or lump sum.

[CRAZY]

pop points? what are they? thanks for all the advice tho guys.

[Harovan]

Pop points are the size of a city. You can't call them "citizens" as some do, that would be ridiculous. So we call them pop points. Building a settler decreases the size of the city by 2. That means, a settler costs 2 pop points (and 30 shields).

[CRAZY]

why can't you call them citizens? what is so riduclas about that?

[KithrupFugitive]

Originally posted by CRAZY
why can't you call them citizens? what is so riduclas about that?

I believe Sir Ralph is referring to the fact that a size 1 town has a population of 10,000. So that first population point is actually 10,000 citizens.

[CRAZY]

I figered as much fair enough. Thanks guys.

[Hurricane]

And remember to trade. Check every so often with all other civs if you can trade anything with them. Also, remember to renegotiate trade deals after 20 turns.

In the early game, you will often trade for example horses for something like 4-5 gold/turn. After the 20 turns, some other AI (or the same) might be able to pay more than that for the horses. But that deal will go on forever, unless you renegotiate it. You can take as a rule of thumb that a deal the AI won´t try to renegotiate after 20 turns is seen as a good deal by the AI, and you can usually take a few more gold per turn from them if you instead renegotiate.

[Coracle]

Remember that the AI is like a retarded person.

You can easily find ways to fool and trick it, and it is very slow to learn.

So you can, for instance, lure it into such as killing zones in open plains by building several fortresses in hills. I've seen the AI make the same dumb move over and over, like trying to infiltrate four or five cavalry past a city to get to some resources (they always go after resources). I just leave the border wide open, and when they move in I attack out of the city and destroy them. I destroyed 15 cavalry in four turns on the same tile by doing that. The AI stopped when it ran out oif cavalry!

The AI is also foo0led by the quantity of units you have, not the quality. You can trick it into attacking, and then attack yourself, this way.

There are many other examples.