Setting:
I am currently working on a game as Chieftain,on Pangaea, with aggressive AI, and am playing as the Arabs. My territory has many lakes, but is completely land-locked. I have extensive empty forests to the south, the Egyptians to the East, Germans to the west, Spanish to the North west, and Incans to the North East. It is around the 1840's.

Int. Nat'l Affairs:
Even though it is set to aggressive AI, there has only been a couple wars the entire game, and none to me. Unfortunetly, I expected the first person to encounter me to quickly declare war, as I had never played the setting before. Because of this, I refused open borders for fear of them mapping out my lands. Just recently have I started to allow them to have access to my lands.

Domestic Issues:
My empire is going strong, But it is only second place in most issues. I have only recently been able to build up a modern army, as I faced massive waves of barbarians coming from the forest to my south. I am in the renaissance with around 1200 points.

Problem:
The Incans have been outpacing me the entire game. they are first in most things, and have apparently very good relations with everyone, so I can't bribe anyone to attack him. I planned on invading them, as in several games before I have knocked my biggest rival out of the top 5 with a powerful Blitz. However, in this time his army is much larger and much more advanced than mine, as far as I can tell. He has discovered rifling, so I fear any invasion will be destroyed quickly because I rely on Cavalry alot. I am worried that if I attack and am beaten back, his counter attack will destroy the eastern half of my empire. What I need is some case sensitive advice on how to either outstrip him technologically, score-wise, or destroy his infrastructure. I could resort to cheating and use World Builder, but I would rather get some advice and maybe learn something.


Edit: Ignore all the signs I put up
Here is the Save game:

I played some turns with this save. Some things I noted:

1) With regards to attacking the Incas, your stack near the border is just fine to take out that first city. Calvery and Riflemen are pretty evenly matched, so the key to waging the war against the Incas would be to simply build a ton of Calvery.

2) Your trade network seems somewhat lacking. Build roads between all cities, or put the idle workers on automated trade network building.

3) Your diplomacy is pretty non-existant. Tech trading early on and giving gift techs/resources to Civs that don't immediately border your own lands is usually a good idea. That way when the time to wage war comes, you'll have a couple Civs willing to join in with you.

What to do:

First, trade for whatever techs you can. Monty was willing to give up Printing Press for a couple of techs in the save I played. Set research to head towards Rifling first, eventually shooting for Assembly Line (Infantry), which should give you a slight edge over the rest of the world.

I'd suggest changing civics to Police State, Vassalage, and Theocracy and changing the state religion to Islam to pick up the extra experience from Theocracy. Spread Islam to all cities with missionaries. Note that this will make some of the other Civs become annoyed with you, but it's a small price to pay.

Build Calvery in all the cities you currently have building wealth and lower your research to ~70% to compensate. You should still be pulling down 70-80 GPT at that point.

As for all Calvery built in the cities, promote most to Strength 1 and Pinch (+25% vs. gunpowder units). Promote some to Str1/Shock (+25% vs. Melee) as well to take care of the other obsolete units that will be hanging around the Incan cities deeper in their territory.

At the Muster Hill sign, upgrade all the mounted units to Calvery as well. At that point, you should have a decent war machine starting up. Keep pumping out Calvery and the occasional Catapult. In about 5-10 turns, go ahead and invade that first Incan city. Your stack should have no problem with the small garrison there. From there march on and raze any important improvements, such as Iron mines and Horse pastures. When you reach a more populated Incan city, be sure to use your Catapults to reduce the city defenses. You may lose some units, but not any faster than you can make them, so just keep moving forward and let wounded units rest in the conqured cities.

You're actually in a pretty good position to fight the Incas as there's only one way into their lands. The eastern border is completely cut off by mountains. So any counter attack will have to come through that area you'll start your attack at, which should make it pretty easy to see/stop -if- it happens.

Good luck! :D

Do yourself a big favour and stay out of World Builder.

Overall, the good news: you've done quite well in some respects: several wonders, two religions founded, and you're alive (which is quite an accomplishment in some games) and in 2nd place. The bad news: that's mainly because you're playing on one of the easiest difficulty levels. Even up one level to Warlord, I suspect you'd be having trouble. But hey, it looks to me like you're just starting to learn the game, so I'll try to be gentle. ;)

So let me break my critique into three parts: the past, the present, and the future.

The Past:

Settings: I'm not sure why you'd want to combine the quick game speed with a huge map; you apparently haven't had time to explore much of it, even though it's 1840 AD. If you want a quick game, wouldn't a small map size be more appropriate?

Accomplishments: As I said, you've built several wonders and founded Christianity and Islam. However, I do not discern an overall strategy behind this; it looks like you went after whatever tech or wonder tickled your fancy at the time. (And though they're completely irrelevant, I liked your signs and names for things: "The Withered Lands"--sounds like something out of Tolkien.)

Technology: First off, you researched Pottery. Not a bad choice. But then you didn't build many cottages, which along with Granaries are the main benefit of Pottery.

Cities: There's a lot of unclaimed land. At higher levels, the AI would have hemmed you in completely. You do know your Workers can chop forests to clear land and for a one-time production bonus, right? You could probably have double the number of cities you do just from expansion alone.
Your city builds and tile improvements tell me that you are not familiar with the concept of city specialization. That's par for the course for a beginner. Look around the forum for some articles on it.

Religion: You founded two religions but you don't have a state religion? Nor have you spread your religion to any of your neighbours. You built the Spiral Minaret, but that wonder does you no good whatsoever without a State Religion.

Diplomacy: I hate to break it to you, but nobody likes you, even without any religious differences. Some more trading of techs and resources would have helped, along with spreading your religion, as I noted.

I could go into a lot more, but I don't want to overwhelm you. Much.

The Present:

You're building wealth? For pity's sake, why? You have enough banked to upgrade several units, if that's what you're concerned about. But you should be building military units if you're planning an invasion. What are you going to do, throw money at Huayna? If you were in a deficit without this, see my note above regarding cottages.

And I see a lot of unimproved tiles; Medina is starving, which could be easily remedied by farming those two plains tiles. And Basra needs to be connected to your other cities by road. Yet you have very few Workers, and several of them are "sleeping"! Put those lazy bums to work!

The Future:

So you want to attack Huayna. Frankly, you should have done that 2500 years earlier, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Military: According to the power graph, Huayna is ahead of you, but not by too much to negate the viability of attacking him. If you start building miltary units (fortunately almost all your cities have barracks), you should be a match for him. Your best units are Cavalry and Grenadiers. Start mass-producing them. You have Universal Suffrage and a large treasury, so rush-buy several of them rather than spending the money on upgrades to existing units.

Diplomacy: This is a bigger concern. No one likes you, as I said, but Ceasar, Alexander, and Montezuma all like Huayna. Monty and Julius are roughly equal to you in power. So guess what could happen if you attack Huayna? Dogpile on the human!

Technology: Education? Hmmm, okay, but I hope you're not planning on racing to Liberalism for its free tech, because I think Huayna has or will beat you to it. I'd change tech paths to military ones: Steel for Cannons first, then go back to the Printing Press -> Replaceable Parts -> Rifling path for Riflemen.

Back to military: Bring along lots of Cannons in your attacking stack to bombard away each city's cultural defense bonus, then to attack and weaken the city defenders through collateral damage. Several Cannons will die as a result of the latter tactic--a necessary evil. So don't stop building them.

Civics: If you're going on campaign, a civics change is in order, especially since you're running Pacifism! Leave everything else the same and switch to Vassalage and Theocracy for the free unit support costs, faster unit production, and additional experience points (XPs). I disagree with Aceshigh on switching to Police State. Keep US for rush-buying units. Switch to PS only if war weariness makes it necessary.

Back to military again: Regarding promotions from those XPs. Unfortunately, you are approaching an era where none of your new units can get City Raider promotions. Since you did not fight an earlier war, you have no units with those promotions that can be upgraded. I'd first build several Macemen and give them City Raider I and II, then upgrade them to Grenadiers until the money runs out. Then just build Grenadiers and Cavalry (and, later, Riflemen) and give them Combat I and Pinch, since Huayna has Riflemen.

Or so I'm guessing. You may want to give a couple of Cavalry Flanking I and Sentry, declare war, and send them into Incan territory as scouts, since you don't know much about Huayna's cities and forces and he's not willing to give you Open Borders.

I hope that's not too much to absorb and is helpful. As I said, there's a lot more I could comment on to help you improve your game, but this is probably overwhelming as it is. Just to blow my own horn a little, you may want to check the links in my sig below for my strategy guide and then the ALC games.

Yeah, do what Sisiutil said. Good advice there.

Ok, since yesterday, I have changed my civics to the recommended ones, (but I did not notice that one note about US instead of PS until just now) mass produced alot of military units, I have rifling, but I took a path through printing press ->Replacable parts as that was alot quicker, but I do not have cannons yet. I switched to Islam, and isabella has already started threatening me, so I moved my muster hill garrison up to najran. My workers are on automated trade routes, and have upgraded many of my units. I plan to attack Huayna in 1908 (next turn). I will leave a couple grenadiers near Nasca just in case of a counter attack or I need reinforcements.

Ok, since yesterday, I have changed my civics to the recommended ones, (but I did not notice that one note about US instead of PS until just now) mass produced alot of military units, I have rifling, but I took a path through printing press ->Replacable parts as that was alot quicker, but I do not have cannons yet. I switched to Islam, and isabella has already started threatening me, so I moved my muster hill garrison up to najran. My workers are on automated trade routes, and have upgraded many of my units. I plan to attack Huayna in 1908 (next turn). I will leave a couple grenadiers near Nasca just in case of a counter attack or I need reinforcements.
Well it sounds like it's working out for you now. Sisiutils' strat to stay on US instead of PS is probably the way you should have gone in that area though...

Personally, I prefer PS during wartime simply for the speedier unit production in addition to the war weariness benefit. But US is even faster for unit rushing. However, since I noticed you didn't have much in the way of infrastructure, I figured PS might be a better way to go. But again, I haven't written any beginner's guides to the game, so I'll defer to someone who has much more experience than I. :D

I'd suggest perhaps trying from the first save again and using the strategy Sisiutil suggested to see which works better for you. Would create a good opportunity for comparison and learning anyway. :goodjob:

I attacked, destroyed Nasca, then two SoD came out of nowhere and killed every last member of my army, while ANOTHER came out of a mountain pass I had not seen and attack Damascus. It appears he was expecting me. I sued for peace just before Damascus fell, but then Alexander declared war on both me, as well as hatty for no apparent reason. Isabella attacked Najran with a stack, and it is only a matter of time before I lose that city. This entire game was a waste and was rapidly degenerating, so I started another one on a size small map. :(

I attacked, destroyed Nasca, then two SoD came out of nowhere and killed every last member of my army, while ANOTHER came out of a mountain pass I had not seen and attack Damascus. It appears he was expecting me. I sued for peace just before Damascus fell, but then Alexander declared war on both me, as well as hatty for no apparent reason. Isabella attacked Najran with a stack, and it is only a matter of time before I lose that city. This entire game was a waste and was rapidly degenerating, so I started another one on a size small map. :(
Bummer. :sad:

Don't call the game a waste, however. Even if you lose, it's an opportunity to learn and do better next time.

These results in particular point to some things you need to improve: diplomacy, for one. You got dog-piled because you had no friends (and Hatty probably attacked because, after losing your stack, you were weak). Also, with no Open Borders and no spreading of your state religion, you had no intelligence on opposing forces.

Tactically, I'm guessing, but perhaps your stack was on a vulnerable tile (no defensive bonus) when it was attacked? I try to move my stack through forests, jungles, hills, and, best of all, forested or jungled hills to gain the maximum defensive bonus. I have a "1 turn tolerance" for any delay this might produce; that is, I'll willing to lose one turn to keep moving on good defensive tiles if I'm facing heavy opposition, but no more than that. I'll risk moving through open terrain (though NEVER immediately next to a city) to save time and advantage.

When attacking a city, try to attack from one of these defensive tiles. Attacking units will be wounded and will be vulnerable to a counter-attack, even if you take the city, since they can't move onto the same tile as your healthy units until after the AI's next turn.

For overall strategy, in your new game, try an early war. Hook up copper, build a few Axemen, and go rush somebody. Wipe out a neighbour, and maybe capture a holy city in the process. This eliminates a rival, gives you a strong army with several promotions you can upgrade, raises your power rating, and allows you to keep expanding your empire. And it's fun! :goodjob: