This terrible dilema always stumps me. Any good strategy to handle this?

[Artifex]

First I play Emperor. I hear people say attack a civ and take techs and use as a vassal. There is a problem I encounter. I don't want my reputation to be ruined. But to get techs you have to make peace..then you still want more techs..but 20 turn periods between wars is too long a time to wait. 20 turns in crucial ancient era as romans having your legions sit doing nothing is devastating. This adds up to many 20 turn periods..of doing nothing..war..wait 20 turns..massive army sits doing nothing..war a few turns..peace..get techs..20 turns of massive legion army doing nothing.. war 3-4 turns..rinse repeat..devastating. Kills chance of leader etc...but you need techs? so have to make peace. What a dillema!! I can't stress how bad this is for a militaristic civ like rome that counts on war, not building..I forgoe improvements and culture and everything and build massive legion army...so to have them sit thru many 20 turn periods twiddling thier thumbs is a game killer..but the alternative is to just have a ****ty reputation...that kinda stinks now doesn't it? Is thier a solution?

I play militaristic civs like Rome, constant ancient war is the strategy. I build tons of legions..want to get a great leader..making peace to get some techs..then having to wait 20 turns while I got 30 legions sitting around doing nothing really sucks..It also kills my strategy and chance of getting a great leader..really bad bad situation. I turn science way down to almost zero and count on taking techs thru war. But if I have to wait like this it throws a wrench in my strategy.

The alternative is to break the 20 turn treaty and then go back to war..I tried that..every damn time I do it..some civ with a galley from another continent discovers the civ I am fighting..and the whole world hates me.

My current game vs Egypt on emperor. We occupy a medium sized contnent..Just us two. First war I started...took 3 cities.made peace. Got some techs. Waited 20 turns. Attack again got some more techs. Then I was desperate to try to keep battling since I wasn't having enough battles to get a great leader. All these legiosn doing nothing. I decide well we are on this continent, hopefully the guys form the other continent won;t find us and I can kill egypt before it matters.. I break 20 turn treaty immedietly to keep fighting and trying to get a GL. Then like clockwork..lo and behold the freaking arabs found a city at the edge of the continent. My heart sinks..So all the other civs from the other continent all know me now and hate me. This happens every damn time. Makes me so mad.

What do I do? Waiting 20 turn periods and wasting that sort of time in ancient era is killer especially with ROMANS...then again getting my rep ruined is killer.

Any solutions? How do you all play this? A militaristic civ like rome in ancient times? I know if your on a large continent with a ton of civs you mght be able to oscillate...but many times you might have one civ on your continent..or maybe 2.

[DaveMcW]

Tech extortion works best on a large continent/pangea where you can beat on several civs in a row.

If I am stuck with one other civ I wipe them out in 1 or 2 wars. Then I crank income to 100% and expand as fast as I can so I can buy tech parity when I get contact.

Building the Great Library would be an excellent idea.

[vmxa1]

I do not use Oscillating wars. I would not make peace with my neighbor with the intent to get another war in 20 turns for tech. I may sign a treaty and get a war going soon either by stealth or loss of rep. This war will be the last one for them (like Dave).
Stealthly is to force them into declaring the war and take the hit. Many threads on this. You could go to war with another party and drag the first party into it.
I do not like to share my land mass, so the others must go as soon as I can arrange it. If I can beat them out of techs in the process, that is great.
At EMP, if I get behind (and I often will), I do not mind that much as I just grow bigger and bigger and soon will catch up and they will fall behind.
I may buy/trade for techs. Often a lux will get the deal and it is for only 20 turns, if it last the full duration.

[Master Zen]

Put tech at a minimum (but enough to get one even at 40 turns), usually at 10%. Experience will tell you there are certain techs the AI usually doesn't go for at first (the wheel, mathematics, currency) and reasearch those. Pile up that gold and buy/trade techs with your neighbours. Those tech you do get by yourself you'll be able to sell them for over 400 sometimes.

The trick is to CONTACT EACH CIV EVERY TURN. You can miss a major tech trade just by forgetting contact once!

[minke19104]

Just take all their cities but the last one. That's what I usually do. Extort peace with tech and cities. Continue on with other civs in your continent. By just leaving them 1 city, you can go on and wipe them out in one turn if you feel like it. If you managed to kill the other civs before any contacts with the outside world, nobody would care about your dirty peace treaty abandonement and other stuff

Make a GL and wait for contact. Somebody mentioned it somewhere in the threads you can get crazy amount of techs if you get discovered by other civs.

[joncnunn]

The contacting civs every turn for tech deals is for when you are NOT planning on declaring war with them in the near future because it spreads out when the time frame.

If you are planning a war with them when the 20 turns is up, then the same turn you make the peace deal, recheck to see if they were beyond them at the time, and sign all the deals that same turn. Repeat.

Then, simply don't sign any deals involving luxaries or GPT at all until the 20 turns is up even if they discover new techs.

Then start the war again.

[Arrian]

Just take all their cities but the last one. That's what I usually do. Extort peace with tech and cities. Continue on with other civs in your continent. By just leaving them 1 city, you can go on and wipe them out in one turn if you feel like it. If you managed to kill the other civs before any contacts with the outside world, nobody would care about your dirty peace treaty abandonement and other stuff

Bingo. Hit one civ, make peace, hit another civ, make peace. Etc. If there is only one, it's more difficult to not break 20-turn peace deals. Then again, you can probably wipe them out before making contact with the rest of the world. Admittedly, on Emperor, it's easier said than done.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Another thing you can do is, just prior to making peace with victim #1, you can call up a different civ and purchase the lowest layer of techs you don't have (lets say writing) which will then open up the higher-layer techs (code of laws, literature, philosophy, math, construction, etc) so you can extort them for peace from victim #1.

-Arrian