stealth units my a$$

[D4everman]

During one game as the spanish I had my disagreements with the nayve americans. They kept coming onto my territory and I didn't want them there. So I launched a campaign of crippling their empire with slavers and clerics. Almost every time...I mean almost every time...I moved around their land with one of those units they picked them out. Hell, one of their troops walked at least three squares right up to my cleric and killed him. Stealth? BAH! There was no REAL way the AI should have seen him or known where he was. Interestingly, that was the only time I can remember the AI actually "cheating" with stealth units like that. (Trust me, it happened to often and too easily for it not to be an AI cheat)

So I started another game. This time as the irish. I switched to Theocracy as soon as I could but I was smack in the middle of the chinese and the nicaraugans (sp? I'll just call them the nics) Well, I made an alliance with the nics and things were working out fine. Yeah, the chinese hated my guts, but they started it. (Sending slavers over every five minutes...it backfired. I enslaved every one of them I could) Well, with advance trading going on between me, the nics and the japanese it looked like it might be close. On the power graph the nics and I were almost matched, the hated zulus occasionally catching up, and the japanese making a few discoveries and passing it on to me. I built galileo's telescope and edison's lab, but soon the Nics were overtaking me with tech. I think I really pissed them off with Ed's lab 'cuz I they started building it before I even had the required advance. But I saved up my gold and when I got the tech I disbanded my ancient units in the required city and paid for it a few turns before they completed it. Naturally they went from loving me to war. I fought them and eventually they wanted peace. But the japanese by this time were WAY ahead in tech. How? I built universities, academies, publishing houses...anything I could to boost my science. I can understand that they might have great science as a democracy, but they were WAY WAY ahead of me. It was taking me 22 turns to discover mass media while they had computers, the internet, and a whole gaggle of advances. What was the hold up? I don't get it. Why was my science lagging so badly. What did I do wrong? I tried to switch to democracy but the unhappiness plunged me into the dark ages. I can accept losing, but the japnese went from the number four position to number one so fast I wonder what happened.

Just FYI, it waso on prince level. I haven't played this game for a long time. Any advice on how to handle science and governments. (keep in mind that the AI never leaves me to build peacefully. Wars are inevitable, but I hardly ever strike first.)

D4

[Flyercraft]

First of all, those stealth units. You say they came from 3 squares away to kill your slavers/clerics so I assume you were on a road so maybe the AI was just patrolling and bumped in your way so he knew that you were there by bumping into you, maybe. Maybe he had a stealth unit in his stack (don't think so) or maybe he was cheating. I can't say they didn't cheated cause I wasn't there to see what happenned but if you were always on roads when it happenned (I'm not saying you were on roads "each" time he did that, I just don't know)...

Anyway, stealth units put aside, let's talk about Science. In my games, I always enslave enemy units and citizens every time I can! or of course unless the civ i'm going to slave is my ally and he is willing to trade techs or stuffs like that, otherwise, I always slave them. I make 2 or 3 big well placed cities (close to each other) and once in a while, I build some new cities when I find a good location or when I find a new good to trade. Trading is key to science. Get your gold improvements up and in big cities start building science imp. but when you can build a production imp. (forge, mill), always build them in you main cities. If ever you see some enemies coming, slave them with your "security squad" or make new units (your main 2-3 cities should always have a strong production making it possible to create new units very fast). If you can trade techs from other civs, great but never forget the power of the slavers!
When you have a good military, capture the best enemy city (most polluting) and start slaving all the lonely settlers or warriors or whatever you can find near that city and you will see that town get bigger each minute
I've never had problems with that strategie but if I start in a island, I doomed .