Ok I've always been bad at Civ only being able to beat the game on Cheiftain level. I've ALMOST beat it on Warlord but not quite.

The problem I keep having is that I will be going along, building my infrastructure and things and then suddenly 3 or 4 other civs will suddenly all at once declare war on me at once.

Now my military is probably powerful enough to beat one civ but not all 3 or 4 at the same time.

I'm trying to win without using the conquest victory but I'm not sure what I should do? Spend all the money and time on a superpower level military to scare everyone off and then have little left over for anything else? Do a pre-emptive strike quickly on one or two civs to double my size and scare off potential enemies? Appease them by paying tribute? (Not a fan of that)

For example in a previous game at Warlord level, I had Persia (I belive) declare war. Then Japan declares war, and finally Greece (who I had previously defeated taken 3 cities from and forced favorable peace terms with in a war) declares war. Several turns later even India is declaring war on me. This time unlike most other times I was able to hold them off for a while and get favorable peace terms with one, destroy Greece, and neutral peace terms with Japan. It just feels like a civ see's I'm in the middle of a war and decides to fight me and then everyone else just feels like ganging up on me cause its fun. (And as far as I know none of them signed an alliance against me and it was before mutual protection pacts are invented.)

On top of that these wars have a tendency to hurt my infrastructure as sometimes rather then fight the enemy just wonders around pillaging everything.

Half the time I don't understand why they attack because we are the same religion and have 3 or 4 trade deals going on at once.

Any tips as to how to either prevent them from ganging up on me or preventing the wars from costing me so much time and money. (IE I can't build improvements to cities during a war either.)

I'd really like to be able to play and win at least at Noble level

I think browsing though the guides on this board would be extremely helpful in improving your game overall and would be more useful than advice I can give, since I don't know your specific problems. But as usual I'll blab anyway.

The AI rarely declares war on me because I am prepared for their attacks, and am not weak militarily or technologically. The AI is opportunistic, and some leaders are worse than others. Trust nobody, but try to anticipate who is most likely to be a problem. In my experience, I like to kill Montezuma, Alexander, and Isabella if they even look at me the wrong way. The AI will often ask others to join in the fight against you. If you look like a wounded gazelle, the lions will all jump on you without a second thought.

My interior cities may be defended by single archers, but my border cities will have something like 4 units (e.g. axeman, war elephant/spearman, longbowman, longbowman or another axeman) with my main offensive force nearby. This way you can pick off pillagers with your war elephant without risking the loss of the border city, and then quickly launch a counterinvasion.

So with research you'll want bronze working pretty early, but not before you've researched a few techs to give your workers something to do (obviously very situation-dependent), and alphabet sometime soon after bronze that so that you can trade for techs.

As far as appeasement, it kind of depends. If Isabella is on your border, slightly inferior to you technologically, and demands machinery, you should probably decline and already have started to prepare to beat her down. But if Catherine is on the other side of the world and asks for a technology, I'll usually give it to her (unless it's for a wonder I'm building, etc.) so that I can have an ally that I won't need to attack soon. It's more annoying to me when they ask for gold, since I actually lose something in that case, but it all depends. The best case scenario is when they ask for one of your 8 cow resources. Why the hell not give it to them for +1 diplomacy? It may even turn into an additional +2 for providing them with resources for thousands of years if you forget about the deal. :lol:

Greece (who I had previously defeated taken 3 cities from and forced favorable peace terms with in a war) declares war.

Definitely wouldn't leave my enemies strong enough to ever wage war with me again, if alive at all. Plan for a war so that you can capture their main cities quickly and then capture and/or raze their remaining small cities.

Definitely wouldn't leave my enemies strong enough to ever wage war with me again, if alive at all. Plan for a war so that you can capture their main cities quickly and then capture and/or raze their remaining small cities.

Yeah, at the very least you have to eliminate a couple of key cities and raze as much infrastructure as possible. But for someone like Alexander (or Monty or Ceasar or Isabella), if you go to war, try to wipe them off the continent if not eliminate them completely.

in order to keep a cascade effect from happening, you got to get the civs that might delcare war on you, delcare war on the other guy first!

so... if japano's attack you, get the mongol hordes, to attack japan, before the japs contact the mongol hordes and have them declare war on you.

that sort of thing

in order to keep a cascade effect from happening, you got to get the civs that might delcare war on you, delcare war on the other guy first!

so... if japano's attack you, get the mongol hordes, to attack japan, before the japs contact the mongol hordes and have them declare war on you.

that sort of thing


So I can't play this out like the swiss??

BTW the greeks attacks where pretty feeble. I didn't leave them with much of an army the only problem was that when I was off fighting the other civs they probably figured they could help out by just pillaging infrastructure. I went on to finish them off and got good peace terms with two of the others.

I took a look at a strat guide and I found a couple problems with my game plan.

1. I didn't specialize cities, I just built them all to multitask.

2. I tried to please everyone all of the time. Instead of just having a few friends and not caring about the rest, I would trade non-military techs to everyone. This brought up the "you traded with our worst enemies" issue.

3. I didn't play enough intimidation. I had the units to beat these guys 1 on 1 the problem was that I only placed invasion forces outside of the borders of civs that where angry with me. So civs that wheren't angry with me wouldn't see any units and would regard that as an invitation to attack. When I pulled these other invasion forces to fight my former friends I the lack of units on the border and their bad mood towards me left them an invitation to also attack.

I'm also thinking I should pre-emptive strike aggressive leaders.

Anyways those are three main problems with my strategy that I've found thus far.

I'm also thinking I should pre-emptive strike aggressive leaders.

Absolutely. Monty in particular is never around long if he starts next to me.

What i keep doing is plan to have 3-6 guys in each of your cities... In the level you are on. This should be enough to increase your power just so the Ai's will leave you alone... ANd if you wanted to show them anyways.. 3-6 say in 8 cities.. thats 48 unites. Say you take 2 units out of each city. and then you have an army of 16 unites. while still keeping 32 unites to protect your homeland!!

Some quick math for ya!.. Oh and it woudl be best to try to keep these units up to date!

It's my understanding that the other civs will base their decision to attack on (1) your diplomatic score with them (2) your power rating compared to theirs and (3) the visible defenders in the cities closest to them.

So you want to do what you can to keep them Pleased or Friendly (though this is certainly no guarantee), ensure your power rating is reasonably high, and keep a lot of defenders in border cities. You can usually leave cities in the centre of your empire very lightly defended.

The leader's programmed personality also comes into play, of course. So it's best to put on a strong show of force if the more aggressive civs are your neighbours. If you have Montezuma on one border and Gandhi on another, guess where you should put the bulk of your forces?

The leader's programmed personality also comes into play, of course. So it's best to put on a strong show of force if the more aggressive civs are your neighbours. If you have Montezuma on one border and Gandhi on another, guess where you should put the bulk of your forces?

Against Montezuma of course.

BTW I played with some of the tips in the strat guide and I'm doing well on Warlord right now with Russia. But the problem is I'm afraid its a lot of luck. I was fortunute in this game to have started on a nice Pennesula with lots of resources. So I basically blocked off the mouth with a city and went around picking up the resources by producing cities and culture.

Spain was my neighbor but never attacked me as I kept her pretty intimidated. When I got my Cossack units I went on the attack and took two cities from her. (I did this mainly to increase my civ score cause I was in 3rd/4th for a while but after I invaded I went up to first.)

Got a peace treaty with a world map (no one else would give the world map to me so my map was kinda small).

The peace treaty should give me time to get culture established in my new cities and repair my infastructure. (Fortunutly because I was on a pennsula I didn't take much damage) Then I can go on the attack again if I feel the need.

The other thing is that I definatly out researched and out produced the spainish. Seemed like such a waste when the enemy is defending her cities with 1 longbowman, about 6 archers, a war elephant, and 2 bloody chariots.

Especially after my cannon pulverized their defenses.

On higher levels do the other civs do a better job of keeping their units up to date?

On higher levels do the other civs do a better job of keeping their units up to date?

Well, they do pretty good. On the higher levels you will have to do a good job to keep up to date. It is not too much a problem on Noble, where I am playing now, but I have read it is really bad on the highest levels.

BTW I played with some of the tips in the strat guide and I'm doing well on Warlord right now with Russia. But the problem is I'm afraid its a lot of luck.

Glad to here that. Luck is always a factor, but as with poker, you make the most of the cards you're dealt. If you check my last two All Leaders Challenge games (As Mao and Qin), I managed to win despite relatively poor surrounding terrain.

On higher levels do the other civs do a better job of keeping their units up to date?
I'd say so, yes. The AI gets both a tech research bonus and cheaper upgrade prices. The former increases as you go up in difficulty level, and I think the latter does as well.

Some advice:

1 - Open up the Diplomacy screen (F4) and mouse over each leader. It will tell you what the pluses and minuses are in the way they view you. If the minuses start to accumulate, prepare for war. Religion can be a huge factor here in both directions - if you have one religion and your neighbors all have different religions, then it's only a matter of time before they declare a holy war on you, especially if they are aggressive or highly religious (Isabella is the most notoriously religious, but she is not the only one).

2 - Spy on your opponents! If you have signed open borders agreements with your neighbors, they are surely scouting you out for weaknesses. Return the favor and plant units in your neighbors' border cities, so you can see if they build up an attack force on your border. You don't need the spy unit to do this, although they are the superior choice when available.

3 - If you have seized/razed an AI's cities, don't ever count on peaceful relations. Count on having to wipe them out entirely. Dead opponents can't rebuild to attack you.

4 - The more neighbors you have, the more neighbors will be tempted to add your cities to their own collections. Strive to have as few neighbors as possible, by not building cities in between two opponents, or by wiping out an AI so that you get the coast on your back, which should protect you until Astronomy.

5 - Try to maintain a retributive force, something that can be used to punish an enemy who attacks you. Deterrence works in CIV - it is fully possible to have everyone hate your guts but never attack because you have the capability to squash them like bugs.

1 - Open up the Diplomacy screen (F4) and mouse over each leader. It will tell you what the pluses and minuses are in the way they view you.

Actually, you can see that by hovering over a leader's name in the list of names on the right side of the main game screen.

I give loads of good deals to the others and use diplomacy to avoid these situations.

Some advice:

1 - Open up the Diplomacy screen (F4) and mouse over each leader. It will tell you what the pluses and minuses are in the way they view you. If the minuses start to accumulate, prepare for war. Religion can be a huge factor here in both directions - if you have one religion and your neighbors all have different religions, then it's only a matter of time before they declare a holy war on you, especially if they are aggressive or highly religious (Isabella is the most notoriously religious, but she is not the only one).

This much I know

2 - Spy on your opponents! If you have signed open borders agreements with your neighbors, they are surely scouting you out for weaknesses. Return the favor and plant units in your neighbors' border cities, so you can see if they build up an attack force on your border. You don't need the spy unit to do this, although they are the superior choice when available.

I don't like Open boarders agreements if I can avoid them. Only time I ever do that is if I'm between two nations who are at war and then I sell it to them both at a huge profit.

3 - If you have seized/razed an AI's cities, don't ever count on peaceful relations. Count on having to wipe them out entirely. Dead opponents can't rebuild to attack you.

I may leave people around but I don't leave them powerful enough to attack me even if they do rebuild. Spain for example is down to one city on a very small island that I just havn't gotten around to taking yet. I own the entire continent now and there are more pressing problems to prepare for off of the continent. Alexander for example is on another continent is becomming extremely powerful and a lot of the AI leaders hate his guts. (He's had wars with at least half of them) He's not too fond of me either. So as the power/score leader I'm preparing my forces with transports and a navy for the eventuallity that we may have to fight a world war against Alexander and any allies he may garner to his side.

4 - The more neighbors you have, the more neighbors will be tempted to add your cities to their own collections. Strive to have as few neighbors as possible, by not building cities in between two opponents, or by wiping out an AI so that you get the coast on your back, which should protect you until Astronomy.

This I also know

5 - Try to maintain a retributive force, something that can be used to punish an enemy who attacks you. Deterrence works in CIV - it is fully possible to have everyone hate your guts but never attack because you have the capability to squash them like bugs.

Yeah I know that, right now in my other game I'm building up a huge army of tanks and a navy in order to take down Alexander. Isabella is so powerless she isn't even worth mentioning. I may swing by and finish her off with some of my outdated units but it wouldnt' be a big deal if I didn't.

I don't like Open boarders agreements if I can avoid them. Only time I ever do that is if I'm between two nations who are at war and then I sell it to them both at a huge profit.

Well, Open Borders (OB) is a two-way street. As you know, there's no diplomatic penalty for refusing the offer, but that doesn't mean you should refuse it. Sign open borders with both potential friends and enemies once you have a recon unit ready to check out their land. You'll want to know the nature of their empire if you ever engage in war with them, and I wouldn't count on getting maps from "cautious" rivals. Also keep in mind that open borders will make your trade routes more lucrative, which will be a boost to your economy. If you keep an open borders agreement for many years, you'll see a diplomatic boost.

It seems like you are messing up your wars.

My guess:

1. YOu aren't warring early enough.
2. You quit your wars when theres no need to.
-You just said you had Cossacks and Cannons vs longbows. So conquer the world? Make EVERY city build cossacks, before you know it youll have a couple stacks of 10-12. Conquer, raze etc. Don't stop. Keep going. Only time you stop is to heal the wounded, or have the wounded protect a city.


The main problem with beginning players is they don't war early enough, often enough, or they stop too soon.

Open borders is a very good thing, as long as you use it to it's fullest. If the borders are open, they cannot attack you, but they will scout you out and see your units. Do the same to them! Send some units around and take a look at their cities, roads, and units. If the Open Borders gets cancelled, you know an attack is coming and you can foil up their intelligence by beefing up your military with the whip/draft and shifting inland defenders to the border cities.

I would actually recommend you to pick an Aggressive leader you feel somewhat comfortable with, for instance Genghis or that Incan guy. Turn the difficulty DOWN a notch, turn ON always war and raging barbarians.

It will force you to play completely differently and actually focus on military and tactics. If you find it fun, it is an excellent way to learn both about the tactics and benifits of war.

Try not to keep all your units inside the cities. Fortify a few Axes with Guerrilla/Woodsman promotions somewhere at the borders with your closest enemies.

You don't really need too many units in all your cities, an Axe+Archer combo would be usually enough. Instead, build a decent stack of 4-5 or more units, like Axes/Swords with City Raider, and station them in the capital city.

Try not to keep all your units inside the cities. Fortify a few Axes with Guerrilla/Woodsman promotions somewhere at the borders with your closest enemies.

You don't really need too many units in all your cities, an Axe+Archer combo would be usually enough. Instead, build a decent stack of 4-5 or more units, like Axes/Swords with City Raider, and station them in the capital city.
Sorry, but I have to vehemently disagree.

The AI will usually waltz right by units fortified outside a city in your own territory, in my experience. Barbs won't, but that's barbs. The only time I've seen the AI attack fortified units is if they're in the AI's territory.

You don't need too many units in your core cities at the heart of your empire, one of which is usually (and should be) the capital. Where you need the bulk of your units is in your border cities, not sitting safely in the middle where they can't do any good--which includes not only defense and counter-attack, but also intimidation of potential attackers.

You might think that by locating units centrally, you can dispatch them where they're needed. But until you have railroads, if you have more than a half-dozen closely-grouped cities, they won't be able to get to the point of attack fast enough to make a difference.

Well, my experience, especially with a few HOV games, shows consistently a little different thing. I am talking about low difficulty levels, Warlord and Noble.

As long as you keep a few fortified Axes at the borders, nobody attacks, even if you keep a single warrior in your cities. As long as you don't, you may have a dozen units in the cities, you'll get attacked almost for sure.

I had such experience over about 20 games or so, mostly on Great Plains map.

One thing I've noticed was that the first thing they did in the war was attack the stack I had ready to return the favour if I was attacked. They had enough Artillery to wipe it out...

I don't like Open boarders agreements if I can avoid them. Only time I ever do that is if I'm between two nations who are at war and then I sell it to them both at a huge profit.

Well that's not very friendly, though it is lucrative. Not to say you shouldn't sell the OB, but AIs, like players, tend to be wary of closed borders.

I may leave people around but I don't leave them powerful enough to attack me even if they do rebuild.

Another preference here. It's generally a good idea to kill someone off. Leaving them around leaves them to not only work their way back into a position to do you some direct harm (though you acknowledge preventing that by leaving them with, for example, a single tundra-bound city), it also leaves them around to slander your good name to other AIs. I mean, I'd certainly be willing to part with much of my wealth and some technological secrets if it meant that a stronger AI would attack my enemy.

It sounds like you had one or two really pissed off AIs bribe one or two others into attacking you, while one or two others decided that attacking you while you were already entangled in a multi-nation war was a good idea. Basically, you got dogpiled.

Given your preference for keeping closed borders, I assume you generally turn down most trade options. Keeping good realtions with some of your neighbors is key, as it's really the only way to devote more resources to another front. I'll routinely see an AI I'm friendly with keep very light, outdated garrisons in a border city (talking like two Archers in a city when we're fighting with Maces/Cats). You can do the same if you make some attempt to keep them happy (adopt the same religion, or spread yours to them, trade with them, pay them tribute if necessary, etc).

I would actually recommend you to pick an Aggressive leader you feel somewhat comfortable with, for instance Genghis or that Incan guy. Turn the difficulty DOWN a notch, turn ON always war and raging barbarians.

It will force you to play completely differently and actually focus on military and tactics. If you find it fun, it is an excellent way to learn both about the tactics and benifits of war.

Ok here is the thing guys that I was trying to explain earlier. I've played the other civ games before. 1, III, and now IV. . .

I've beaten it easy on cheiftan, I've come close to beating it on warlord and I want to finish a game on warlord WITHOUT CONQUERING THE WORLD. I'm just so damn tired of the whole take over the world thing. I did it I don't know how many times on Civ 3 and I'm tired of doing that. There are other ways to win this game. I'm not afraid of a war of opprotunity, I did declare war on spain and I pretty much conquered the contient. I still havn't finished their little island base off but they can't do much with it anyways and I'll get around to finishing them off with some older units.

My whole thing was I just want to keep people off me so i can get a research victory or a cultural domination victory. Yeah sure I could go to war, smash everything and conquer the world but that kind of victory is getting pretty lame right now.

Edit: And Yes I trade often, I trade pretty much everything I have extra of, even if I don't get much for it.

Maybe you should just pick a different map setting? I'd suggest Custom Continents one per team, 5 AI opponents on small/standard map size.

You'll typically see no one but barbs until Optics. This map is not very reach on resources, but it is good for cottage spaming, playing with economy rather than warmongering.

I had certain success beating the AI to the Space Ship on Emperor (sometimes without a single war), and even a couple of times on Immortal, though it was in the 1.52 patch.

If you have Montezuma on one border and Gandhi on another, guess where you should put the bulk of your forces?
that's why i use random personalities. sorry, off topic, it doesn't help your defense, buy it might help your deja vu.
i think even if you don't want to conquer the world, you still have to look like you could, if you wanted. once you've got a developed empire (a big one, hopefully) it's pretty easy to dominate the power graph. get enough of a power advantage and you'll be able to demand tribute from everyone, while you focus on your culture or space victory, or whatever victory you choose.

Maybe you should just pick a different map setting? I'd suggest Custom Continents one per team, 5 AI opponents on small/standard map size.

You'll typically see no one but barbs until Optics. This map is not very reach on resources, but it is good for cottage spaming, playing with economy rather than warmongering.

I had certain success beating the AI to the Space Ship on Emperor (sometimes without a single war), and even a couple of times on Immortal, though it was in the 1.52 patch.

What does the patch do? I heard there was a patch comming out but I never heard that it actually had came out. . .

Should I take the time to download it, considering that Civ 4 already runs pretty stabily on my computer.

What does the patch do?
It changes many of the game rules. There is a significant difference between 1.52 and 1.61.

Most of the discussions here refer to the latest patch, so you'd better download and install it.

You don't really need too many units in all your cities, an Axe+Archer combo would be usually enough. Instead, build a decent stack of 4-5 or more units, like Axes/Swords with City Raider, and station them in the capital city.

...and station them in the capital city of your neighbor! :D

One of the things I had to unlearn coming from earlier civs is that there is a benefit to having a big military. In CIV 2 I would run very light on military, going for technology until I had a big edge, then rushing troops, winning a war and going light again. With CIV 4 having one of the largest armies means that you don't get attacked. And it means you are in a position to pick your victims, often roping in allies and winning wars with small losses. Even if you don't want to conquer the world, you don't want to be defenseless either.

One of the best approaches to keep your military going is to build a good production city, put heroic epic in it and just keep it pumping out units even during peacetime.

Also you want to try and manage what wars take place. Make sure you have some allies (open boarders, good trades, give in on requests, same religion etc) and if you are on good relations with an aggressive civ, bribe them to fight enemies you are worried about but don't want to tackle head on yet.

Generally on the higher levels it pays to have an early war to get more cities quickly and control a larger area, even if you aren't planning on a domination win. With more cities and population you are going to progress more quickly to the other goals.

It sounds like what you're looking at is deterrence. In my limited experience (playing on noble and prince) the key to deterrence is power (as measured by the power graph), you don't need to be top but you need to be near the top. Obviously you get power from military units, you also get power from military techs, military buildings and population. A key aspect of military units and power is that it's calculated on the unit's basic strength regardless of promotions; more modern units have more basic strength and thus add more to your power.
Another aspect of deterrence is diplomacy (religion being a major complicating factor). You can't please all the people all the time so its better to please some of the people all of the time.