For the past two games, continents have proven to be very disadvantageous for the human player. If I am doing fine on continent, there's always an AI that is owning on the other, which will eventually become a threat I cannot overcome.

I am playing on Emperor, Epic spic standard map, by the way. On my current game I was on a roll with Alex. I crushed Saladin and Genghis under my sandals and was not left behind in the tech race, with only Louis slightly more advanced than me. By the time I reached superpower status, however, Louis had been sitting on it for a long time. He was left unchecked throughout all history and grew into a monster when he backstabbed his idiot friend Bismark and took over the German empire. Isabella remained friendly with that traitor.

On my continent I was doing very well indeed as time passed. I got myself the Kremlin and my GNP was clearly the highest wtih no competition from the others yet. I was so very happy, when suddenly Loius attacked me. Fine. I'll crush whatever landing parties he had with rush bought troops if need be. I guess I hadn't been keeping him happy because I didn't want to betray my long-time friend Bismark. Fair enough.

After a few turns of war, it was all going well. However, Monty, who had been my ally against Genghis for all time and who was undoubtedly pleased with me, declared war. He was still fighting intermitten wars with Genghis, whose lands still provided me a buffer zone. I guess he must have been bribed by Louis. All treacherous dogs. And nobody wanted to help me.

Then I thought to myself: Louis could drop an SOD to wear my finances thin for a long time rush buying units while Monty lands his. Result? No space-victory for me. Just when I thought I had virtually won. This is the second time this has happened. In the last game, Caesar filled the role of Louis.

What am I to do? Build countless units to match the AIs' insane power ratings? Or simply don't play continents, since the AIs seem to let one of them grow at the expense of the rest just to frustrate your game? I'm very angry at this nonsense.

I hear ya. I always lose Space Race to "the super power on the other continent" on Emperor.

But, no space race and no continents just doesn't seem like a "proper" game of civ, so I just say, "Thank you, may I have another?" and do it again.

The only advice I have is to use spies and sabotage their space related production as much as possible.

Kick off the world war on your timetable and bribe others into taking some heat off of you.

Or simply cush eveyone on the continent and be friendly with the non continentals.

I tried to be friendly with the overseas people, but they fought with each other so I had to take sides. It's not like Louis is very honourable, so I sided with Bismark and was banking on him holding his ground but that idiot couldn't. I even gave him Chemistry for free to help him.

I tried to bribe somebody, but Isabella wouldn't budge. Bismark is down to two cities, Genghis is my enemy and my ally Montezuma was at war with me. Anyway, I decided to give it a try and duked it out. I survived quite well. But by now I was a little behind in tech and I am not positive I can withstand the onslaught again in the future. And space victory is still light years away...

Next time I'm going to play good ol' pangea.

Pangea always feels like cheating to me. You meet all civs at the start, allowing for more tech trades and more political options from the get-go.

The problem I've had with Continents lately is ending up by myself. Seems to happen way too often, making me wonder if the latest patch weighted the player towards isolated start.

Forget the space race and go for mutual anihilation, you're best bet will be to ramp up (a potentially crude) war force and sacrifice it to cripple the AI's by razing their capitals and some of the core cities before the stack bites it (unles you can turn it into a conquest then by all means do so).

I understand your point of view. For me, continent is my favorite type of maps. Best tips i can give you is .. make sure you have alot of frigate as soon as possible and 4-5 galeon full of your best unit always ready to go. If your ready to go at war, the AI will notice it and you can be sure he is gonna try to negociate instead of declaring war.
If he declar war, send all your troop on the continent, don't give a damn about the City and destroy all ressources and roads (keep all your units stack together)... with no ressources he is not going to keep his friends for long and 5-6 turn later you should be able to make peace with him and take the lead the time he is rebuilding.

My opinion tho... ;)

Last time I visited a website listing all Civ4 map types and some little words by one of the game designers (?). Continent maps were commented to be the "multiplayer-killer" map because it offers the highest degree of randomness -- or possible unfairness. :)

If you are playing a space race and are neck and neck against an AI on a different continent, then it's always helpful to drop a couple of spies off in his land so you can peek in his cities on occassion to see what he is building. A couple of well-timed sabotages can easily swing the space race construction in your favor. Sabotage is expensive though!! :king:

One thing I didn't hear suggested, that you can try, is to gift units to the AI who's on the losing end of a war.

As you say, the last thing you want is for one AI to own all or most of a big continent. You want to keep the kettle stirred, but balanced. Any of them get the upper hand, that's not what you want. Hard to juggle that balance, of course.

Some of the juggling can be done with diplomacy... e.g., bribe Napoleon to cease war with Bismark. That doesn't work, try giving Bismark some top-of-the-line units. Not just one or two, either, but a half dozen or more. Offensive units, preferably (Cavalry, Tanks).

Wodan

Good idea about having the stack of units to send off. But I must say it would be an expensive solution. And I don't know how many enemy units they must brave behind enemy lines. It would be good to raze that one isolated city cut off by German territory, though, but it's across the world's latitude.

I was conceiving the idea of a destroyer pack, each of which contains a 4 destroyers and two battleships. Four sets of those should be able to take care of enemy naval incursions and landing parties. I've never seen the enemy send more than a 4-destroyer stack, and one stack in quite a long time. The battleships' collateral should take care of those. I wonder if I could catch them all the time, though, and those many single ships running around to pillage. Would scuicide subs help against enemy battleships?

Anyway, would gifting units really help turn the tide? I don't think 8 cavalry would help Bismark much even if I can spare them. He seems to be very good at sitting around getting owned.

As it is, I think it would be a naval business all the way now, considering Monty is blocked off by Genghis (maybe I should consider helping him instead now to keep Monty at bay) on my continent and Louis can't get through my early destroyer packs (no battleships yet) up to now.

I shall do the spy thing. So far I've only won by space as plan-B for failed diplomacy and when I am quite clearly running away. Must I get Space Elevator? Big gamble to skip the UN. Don't know if I should bee-line to Robotics. Hopefully being very rich helps enough.

Thanks for all the advice so far.

subs don't suicide!
give them flanking I and II and they almost always survive!
my land buster "stack" (well subs are not always stacked with the rest) is 2 battleships, 2 subs, 1 carrier + 3 fighters

I'd agree with Crighton's suggestion, not that it'll help you much anymore in this game necessarily. In the future though, in a similar situation, I would consider bribing a couple mediocre AI's with techs as soon as is reasonable to go to war with the big leader on yonder continent. Note that you don't even have to personally go to war with Louis to accomplish this, and furthermore, it'll only result in a miniscule -1 relations modifier per "war ally" you bring in against him. Even if he wastes on the civs warring with him, a multiple front war should be costly enough in terms of military focus and losses to allow you to catch up and/or surpass him in terms of research and/or infrastructure. And there's nothing more amusing than watching a large-scale war for 10-20 turns and then landing your own invasion force at the rear front to ransack cities virtually unopposed (the AI are often poor at distributing rear guard offensive troops, in my experience).

I agree that pangaea seems kind of cheap in that you've got universal tech trading from the go, and can ignore all naval research past tier two. I'm still sticking with continents, personally - even if it does add this unique challenge, it still just feels more realistic, IMHO. Good luck on pulling off some victories!

My experience of continents game when it gets to this stage is the same as yours - there's usually two (maybe 3) superpowers that dominate the game (hopefully you're one of them) on different continents, and they almost always end up at war towards the industrial age.

Having recognised this I try and make sure I'm the one doing the attacking. A couple of previous posters have already pointed out some good strategies that I have used in this situation (in my order of preference):
- bribe bribe bribe
- later on use spies (a lot) to stop SS production and pillage
- send a suicide mission to capture/raze important cities / capital, pillage everything in sight, don't worry about taking cities so much, just take them out of the game, and ensure effective naval cover around your coasts

Well, I played the game to its conclusion and ended with a space ship win in 1985, which got me the title of Nelson Mandela. I just continued from where I left off, having survived the war against both Louis and Monty. Finished it in one sitting and, even though I was inconfident, without cheating.

I guess I lost heart too quickly earlier. But I was trembling throughout the last phase of the game. After Bismark was impaled on a stake and his family massacred (fool that he was), things started warming up with Louis. He never attacked me again. Next to get smacked was Isabella, who lost 4 cities, 2 of which were her biggest. She deserved it. She refused to help the Germans and let Louis have his way.

But this development made me fear greatly that Louis would win. At first I feared domination, but there's still my continent. Then I realised he could very well win diplomatic. I shook really hard when I saw Monty vote him Sec-Gen. Luckily that brutish savage didn't vote him to win.

All these while I had been rush buying wonders. I built Pentagon, Eiffel, Hollywood, Three Gorges Dam and Space Elevator almost purely that way. I really had lots of money. When I was busy building my ss, Louis attacked Genghis and trussed that famed conqueror into oblivion. I got even more worried. All Louis needed was a few percent of population to vote himself to victory.

At the last several turns of the game, I was building my final ss part while Louis was building his. In fact, it was the same part. He had a few turns' headstart, but now that I knew where he was building it, I put 3 spies in that city, waiting for the chance to strike. My first attempt at sabotage failed. I had about 8 turns left to set things right. I decided to optimise Athens' production to help me gain 1 or 2 crucial turns. I put 3 Great Engineers as super specialists in the city (I had one from Fusion and two that appeared in different cities) and had the city starve to increase hammers. Before my 2nd sabotage attempt, I noted that both Louis and me had 5 turns left. I wonder who'd win if I left it as it was. Well, I didn't want to take any risks so my spy gave it another shot. She succeeded.

In retrospect, yes, I should have stirred some conflict on that other (bigger) continent. I guess I was fooled by the relative size of Germany, which was almost as large as France. Didn't know the Iron Chancellor was such a weakling. However, they were all very pleased towards each other, which also made me assume it would be a peaceful continent. And I think this might have made it impossible for me to stir any conflict even if I was raring to.

I must say playing continents is somewhat more fun than pangea, but also a lot more uncertain and therefore stressful. Maybe I'd give it another try in my next game and see if I've improved enough to balance out the luck factor.

Anyway, sorry for being misleading... By scuicide I didn't mean I'd send them to certain death. The chance is there, of course, but what I meant was use it to attack something with much higher strength than it had. Yes, I realised that with Pentagon and drydock I could instantly give them Flanking II :)

And by the way, my destroyer pack seems to be a good idea for defending the coast. In the end I had 5 stacks of 5 destroyers (one with Medic I), 2 battleships and 1 sub with 4 more battleships and 6 more destroyers waiting to replace losses. I couldn't see anything Louis or anyone had that could get through that kind of screen.

I had a similar game. Thought about quitting since I was 3rd in the space race and no way I could take over the world. Yet that was my seemingly only way to win. Lo and behold, someone built the UN, went to vote, I won via a diplomatic victory. Go figure.