(This post is a reworking of a post I made in a discussion which was going nowhere, so I think the arguments I make should be read on their own merits.)

Like other versions of Civ IV, BtS is much too easy to win by jumping a neighbour early on and exterminating him, taking over his core cities and razing the rest. There is fairly general agreement that an early axe rush (sword rush, horseman rush, catapult rush, whatever) is the most powerful strategy in most games. It helps you lay the groundwork for culture wins, diplomacy wins, whatever.

Many of us feel that this strategy is boring and avoid it, but I have read repeated statements by gamers that on harder difficulty levels, you simply can't get ahead without it, except on quite rare occasions. Sure, choose Archipelago on Immortal, and the early rush doesn't work - but that is hardly the standard way to play the game. In a typical game, it is the default option (even on easy difficulty levels unless you choose to ignore it), and I think it is a major weakness in the game. It makes for a predictable strategy choice on your part - "Heigh ho, and now for attacking Gandhi" - and that is rather a bore.

There should be ways to make this a less obvious option. I think the recent addition of angry militias arising from the ruins of a razed city shows the way. Suppose conquered lands would not automatically lose their native population even if you raze every single city? Instead of automatically becoming assimilated by your culture in a few turns, the defeated tribe would keep turning up, à la barbarians, but turn up in your cities (built on their land, and presumably drawing much of its workforce from among their number), destroying buildings, or slap in the middle of your land, destroying improvements and killing your workers. They might even become so dominant in cities you have founded on their land that they rebel, troops and all, so you'll have to fight a new war of conquest. That would be pretty accurate historically too. The Romans never conquered all of Britain because it would have been cost-prohibitive (the land in the north wasn't that valuable) and because the tribesemen kept rebelling. The Assyrians were brought down by a combination of neighbouring countries and the peoples they had conquered. The English never managed to assimilate the Irish. The Chinese conquered Vietnam on one occasion but were thrown out after a couple of generations. The Turks conquered most of the Balkans but were then gradually scaled back, one country after another regaining its independence. And so on.

Consider the fact that until you have exterminated a civilization, the inhabitants of cities with lots of culture keep pining for their mother country and may flip back to it. But if you kill off a civilization completely, they are assimilated by you in a few turns. That is neither realistic nor conducive to a truly challenging game.

So I think that, particularly early in the game, a mass rush on a neighbouring civilization should entail a very real possibility of serious and destructive consequences which would make you think twice before deciding that it was the only option you had. Where you might, in some cases, reluctantly decide that you had no choice but to attack, but where you at least as often would decide that leaving your neighbour alone (or only fighting limited wars for limited gains) would be better.

Would the change I suggest keep Montezuma or Genghis Khan from jumping you early on? I think not. They are programmed to attack you. So I doubt that the game would become "too peaceful" if this was implemented.

Hmm. Well big wars of conquest did occur around 500 BC - 1 AD (a common axe rush window). Alexander the Great, Rome etc. all these civilizations became great through conquest.

I think if you dislike rushing, play on a larger map. Sometimes you can have enough land to be able to ignore the early rush.


Consider the fact that until you have exterminated a civilization, the inhabitants of cities with lots of culture keep longing to belogn to the mother country and may flip back to it. But if you kill off a civilization completely, they are assimilated by you in a few turns. That is neither realistic nor good for a truly challenging game.

This is actually a good point, though.

Hmm. Well big wars of conquest did occur around 500 BC - 1 AD (a common axe rush window). Alexander the Great, Rome etc. all these civilizations became great through conquest.

I think if you dislike rushing, play on a larger map. Sometimes you can have enough land to be able to ignore the early rush.

I know that people who enjoy winning by conquering the world like the possibility to rush a neighbour early, but wouldn't it be a good thing if this was actually harder to accomplish?

I know that people who enjoy winning by conquering the world like the possibility to rush a neighbour early, but wouldn't it be a good thing if this was actually harder to accomplish?

Have you tried Aggressive AI? I'm certainly going to play my next game under that setting as rushing would appear to be a lot harder under that option from what I've heard.

I am finding early warfare significantly more difficult in BtS than in Warlords. What difficulty are you playing? I'm playing on Monarch and the AI builds a pile more troops with mixed defenders than I ever saw in Warlords.

I am finding early warfare significantly more difficult in BtS than in Warlords. What difficulty are you playing? I'm playing on Monarch and the AI builds a pile more troops with mixed defenders than I ever saw in Warlords.

I played Noble before BtS. Now it is my turn to ask you something. Does the higher difficulty level keep you from choosing the early rush option? Does it disable the early rush as the default way to victory?

Like other versions of Civ IV, BtS is much too easy to win by jumping a neighbour early on and exterminating him, taking over his core cities and razing the rest. There is fairly general agreement that an early axe rush (sword rush, horseman rush, catapult rush, whatever) is the most powerful strategy in most games. It helps you lay the groundwork for culture wins, diplomacy wins, whatever. Many of us feel that this strategy is boring and avoid it, but I have read repeated statements by gamers that on harder difficulty levels, you simply can't get ahead without it, except on quite rare occasions. Sure, choose Archipelago on Immortal, and the early rush doesn't work - but that is hardly the standard way to play the game. In a typical game, it is the default option (even on easy difficulty levels unless you choose to ignore it), and I think it is a major weakness in the game.

I agree with everything in the above quote. In another thread, I was almost lynched for making the very same complaint! :lol:

So I think that, particularly early in the game, a mass rush on a neighbouring civilization should entail a very real possibility of serious and destructive consequences which would make you think twice before deciding that it was the only option you had. Where you might, in some cases, reluctantly decide that you had no choice but to attack, but where you at least as often would decide that leaving your neighbour alone (or only fighting limited wars for limited gains) would be better.

This idea sounds promising but too vague. Could you please elaborate?

Hmm. Well big wars of conquest did occur around 500 BC - 1 AD (a common axe rush window). Alexander the Great, Rome etc. all these civilizations became great through conquest.

Bad example. Alexander’s empire did not last long. Unless you screw your economy up (a mistake you can easily avoid with a judicious uses of razing), the lead you gain with a successful axe rush is solid and long-lasting (unlike Alexander’s, which was short-lived).

Anyway the issue is not one of historical accuracy, it’s a game play issue.

I think if you dislike rushing, play on a larger map.

This has already been discussed before. Even in larger maps, rushing is nearly always the most effective strategy (the only exception being isolated starts).

Sometimes you can have enough land to be able to ignore the early rush.

Not true. Rushing your neighbor is generally more profitable than settling empty land. In the early game, hammers are best spent on axes, not settlers.

I gotta say, playing huge maps all the time axe-rushing has it's limits. Taking out 11 civc even on a Pangea map is impossible without killing your economy. Alexander never did make it to China.

This idea sounds promising but too vague. Could you please elaborate?


What I wrote was: "So I think that, particularly early in the game, a mass rush on a neighbouring civilization should entail a very real possibility of serious and destructive consequences which would make you think twice before deciding that it was the only option you had. Where you might, in some cases, reluctantly decide that you had no choice but to attack, but where you at least as often would decide that leaving your neighbour alone (or only fighting limited wars for limited gains) would be better. "

I meant that truly stamping out your enemy would not stop when you have captured the last of his cities, whether you raze it or not. That is to say, the opponent's tribe would still be around, constantly rebelling, for a long time, even being able to return by rebelling and taking over cities in their homeland, even cities founded by you instead of the razed ones. And even able to found new cities, rather the way barbarians do, as long as there is free land around. There are historical precedents for that.

This would make the "jump your neighbour" strategy less inviting. It would also make games of conquest more challening, which can't be a bad thing, can it?

I gotta say, playing huge maps all the time axe-rushing has it's limits. Taking out 11 civc even on a Pangea map is impossible without killing your economy. Alexander never did make it to China.

I think you are confusing rushing with pursuing conquest victory. You don't need to rush all the opponents: rushing 2-4 out of 10 (depending on the difficulty level) will often put you in the lead, or close to the lead. That alone would easily gain you a space race or a time victory.

You can't axe-rush more than two or three opponents because axemen will have become obsolete by then. Or are you guys playing on epic or marathon speed?

First I would like to state that this a game it can never be 100% realistic, that said I think you should play on higher diffeculties if you find it too easy to win by rushing opponents. I find it much harder now because the AI is much better in wars and they have more troops. It's alot harder now to just axe rush an opponent on the other hand i am the one that gets rushed in BTS.
When playing BTS i am allways prepared for an invasion because the opponents are more likely attacking when your pants are down and the other civs will benefit more from neighbors that fights. I often get attacked from a different civ when I am at war with one civ. Acctually it have happend in all my games so far.

Try and have at least 2 aggrassive civs(standard map) in you games.

Hmm. Well big wars of conquest did occur around 500 BC - 1 AD (a common axe rush window). Alexander the Great, Rome etc. all these civilizations became great through conquest.
I agree. You should be able to become great by rushing. However, you should have to fight hard to remain great if you do. It shouldn't automaticly be that the longer you occupy a territory the more benefitial it is. (Where's the great Rome today?)

I've thought about this aswell and came up with a solution similar to what Öjevind Lång suggest, with one addition. Imo the resistance should start out low and then increase over time, until it peak and start to slowly decline. This would mean you get some initial benefit but it will become increasingly difficult to keep the territory. After some time the resistance start to decrease as they're finally getting assimilated (and if it just kept increasing forever then there'd be no point in fighting wars). How much resistance you get would depend on culture. Certain techs/civics/buildings could reduce it aswell, so you don't end up with huge rebellions everytime you take some cities in modern times.

Another alternative, if you don't want to fight the rebels, would be to release them as vassals. I think the "you liberated us" bonus should depend on your culture compared to that of others. Never negative, but sometimes zero. It should also be possible to release vassals on your main continent. Give up some control for stability.

If you kill two or three civs and gain an advantage, the best solution to that problem would be that another (remote) AI does the same and kills some of its neighbors, thus gaining enough territory to compete with you. This happens sometimes, and more frequently in BtS, I think.

Btw, someone playing on Noble should really not complain about the game (or some aspects of it) being too easy. Everything is easy on Noble.

All well and good, but if you're stuck between a rock and a hard place (3 aggressive civs with no space for expansion) the early axe rush is the only way you can possibly avoid being wiped out later on.

It would be a real pain if, once you'd killed off one of your neighbours, you were suddenly given frustrating penelties for taking the only sensible action available to you (unless you were aiming to be swamped around 500AD that is).

Maybe if the unrest pens were applied after attacking, say, two civs at the early stage within a certain turn period?

They tested a maintenance-based nerf in Vanilla testing, but that was a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut (and would penalize peaceful expansion), and ended up being 'no fun'.

According to Blake, Aggressive AI should not be (so easy) to rush. How about we go off and try this out? Or have people already done so?

As to a 'fix' for the rush, there could be happiness penalties for razing ('slaughter of the innocent'), and time-limited increased maintenance costs for keeping cities. That way it would be a valid tactic, but one you'd have to consider carefully before attempting, and the payback wouldn't be so large and so immediate.

I think you are confusing rushing with pursuing conquest victory. You don't need to rush all the opponents: rushing 2-4 out of 10 (depending on the difficulty level) will often put you in the lead, or close to the lead. That alone would easily gain you a space race or a time victory.

I see the point but on large maps (marathon speed for me) I can sometimes settle 6-8 cities at a confortable speed before getting close to an AI, so sending an army off for no gain is unwise. On the other hand if I am cramped with 3 cities it's pretty obvious I need to build some axes/swords.

On large maps I think the geopraphy limits how much you can do.

I see nothing wrong with slaughtering two AIs and cruising to space.

Hey hey its Mr Axerush is only way to play, restart game till you get copper bastillebaston :lol:

As said in your thread, if you have large amounts of land, building your own cities in spots you want is best, not taking over where the AI decides to place a city.

Building up cities gives you greater industry to fuel an army and more bonuses, a rush is pointless if it means your overstretched, have a weak industry and economy and have only destroyed 1 enemy.

Build up at least 6 good cities, then pump out a serious army, dont skimp on wonders. Then slowly march into your enemies lands, send maybe chariots deeper to disrupt workers, destroy iron/copper mines.

All that is better than spitting out axe men with 1-2 cities :deadhorse:

You can't axe-rush more than two or three opponents because axemen will have become obsolete by then. Or are you guys playing on epic or marathon speed?

At standard speed, you can axe-rush two opponents and cripple a third before longbowmen (assuming you have three close neighbors). On monarch, standard map size, this should be enough to put you in the lead. If you want to rush more than 2-3 opponents, you'll just have to wait for catapults and/or elephants.

Epic and marathon speed make rushing ridiculously easy: slowing the game speed down it's like dropping a difficulty level.

Btw, someone playing on Noble should really not complain about the game (or some aspects of it) being too easy. Everything is easy on Noble.

I expected that one. I knew someone would turn up and tell me that I am not entitled to have an opinion because I play at too low a difficulty level. But you (like some others) completely miss my point, which is that THE RUSH STRATEGY BECOMES MORE NECESSARY ON HIGHER DIFFICULTY LEVELS, NOT LESS. I have seen repeated posts to this effect. "On Monarch and above, you can't win by just being peaceful - you have to attack and take out at least one neighbouring civilization."

Of course I am not suggesting that one should go free from the risk of being attacked. I am opposed to rushing your neighbour being the default option for winning, especially on higher difficulty levels.

I've thought about this aswell and came up with a solution similar to what Öjevind Lång suggest, with one addition. Imo the resistance should start out low and then increase over time, until it peak and start to slowly decline. This would mean you get some initial benefit but it will become increasingly difficult to keep the territory. After some time the resistance start to decrease as they're finally getting assimilated (and if it just kept increasing forever then there'd be no point in fighting wars). How much resistance you get would depend on culture. Certain techs/civics/buildings could reduce it aswell, so you don't end up with huge rebellions everytime you take some cities in modern times.

I think this sounds like a good idea. I also think that later in the game, the penalties should actually be a little less harsh. It is the early rush strategy that is broken.

I expected that one. I knew someone would turn up and tell me that I am not entitled to have an opinion because I play at too low a difficulty level. But you (like some others) completely miss my point, which is that THE RUSH STRATEGY BECOMES MORE NECESSARY ON HIGHER DIFFICULTY LEVELS, NOT LESS. I have seen repeated posts to this effect. "On Monarch and above, you can't win by just being peaceful - you have to attack and take out at least one neighbouring civilization."


And what is so bad about that? It is a logical result of the AI cheating at higher levels. They can develop their cities faster than you, so of course a city taken from them is more valuable than one you could have built yourself.

It comes down to this: On higher levels you rush one or two opponents just to be able to compete. Even if you think this is repetitive and boring... it's only a small part of the game, after that, you have to play 'normally' to win. If you can get a lead through rushing that enables you to sail smoothly to victory for the rest of the game, then you are playing at too low a difficulty, period.

Sure there are ways to make conquest harder, like the ideas in this thread. I don't think it would be fun, however, and I think most people think so, too.

That said, it would be nice if the AIs reacted to the way you play. I mean, if you have copper and start whipping axes, they would notice (provided they have enough espionage) and your close neighbors would react by pursuing a counter-rush strategy (building lots of axes themselves). I cannot yet say whether they do in BtS.

The AI doesn't cheat at higher levels, it just gets more bonuses. It cheats at all levels (e.g. no grey fog).

The argument against the rush is that it does allow you to get a lead that you can maintain for the entire game. Like ICS in Civ3, its very efficiency is its problem: for a seemingly layered, multi-faceted game to have a one best strategy approach is a bit disappointing.

My feeling is that (BtS Aggressive AI excepted) this won't be addressed 'officially' until Civ5.

One of the things that makes early rushing so viable is the fact once you destroy a Civ their culture is 100% gone, which is both absurd and a balance issue.

I also think a large part of the issue is that peaceful solutions are much more difficult if not impossible the higher up you go. I play on Monarch and the AI can simply settle and develop cities much faster than me thanks to bonuses.

And playing on a larger map with more space only makes it worse because the AI has more room to settle and gains an even larger advantage.

Even if I don't want to go to war, I feel I must to maintain parity. I haven't played enough BTS to truly know if this is still the case, but it's certainly something I'd like addressed.

And what is so bad about that? It is a logical result of the AI cheating at higher levels. They can develop their cities faster than you, so of course a city taken from them is more valuable than one you could have built yourself.

It comes down to this: On higher levels you rush one or two opponents just to be able to compete. Even if you think this is repetitive and boring... it's only a small part of the game, after that, you have to play 'normally' to win. If you can get a lead through rushing that enables you to sail smoothly to victory for the rest of the game, then you are playing at too low a difficulty, period.

You still don't get what I am saying. I am not saying that "jump your neighbour" is too easy, I am saying that it is the obvious way to go on the easier levels and something you simply have to do on higher difficulty levels, and that is repetitive and dreary.

I don't attack a neighbour unless I see no other alternative, so there is no question of me "sailing smoothly to victory". You seem unable to assimilate that this is what I am trying to say - that I don't want one single early strategy to be so powerful on lower difficulty levels and the only possible one on the higher ones. I have made some suggestions about how to make the early rush option less of a no-brainer.

Unlike you, some other people who have posted in this thread do seem to feel that always having to rush a neighbour in order to stand a chance to win on the higher difficulty levels is a major flaw in the game.

And what is so bad about that? It is a logical result of the AI cheating at higher levels. They can develop their cities faster than you, so of course a city taken from them is more valuable than one you could have built yourself.

It comes down to this: On higher levels you rush one or two opponents just to be able to compete. Even if you think this is repetitive and boring... it's only a small part of the game, after that, you have to play 'normally' to win. If you can get a lead through rushing that enables you to sail smoothly to victory for the rest of the game, then you are playing at too low a difficulty, period.

Sure there are ways to make conquest harder, like the ideas in this thread. I don't think it would be fun, however, and I think most people think so, too.

That said, it would be nice if the AIs reacted to the way you play. I mean, if you have copper and start whipping axes, they would notice (provided they have enough espionage) and your close neighbors would react by pursuing a counter-rush strategy (building lots of axes themselves). I cannot yet say whether they do in BtS.

To be quite frank, any difficulty level which gives yourself handicaps is just silly, you should play human opponents instead. Handicaps is not a difficulty level, it's just cheating for the opponents. I always play on Noble because 'its the most balanced difficulty level' everything below says it's easy and everything above says it's harder.

Personally I prefer to play on LAN with a couple of friends + AI, clearly the best way to play the game.

To be quite frank, any difficulty level which gives yourself handicaps is just silly, you should play human opponents instead. Handicaps is not a difficulty level, it's just cheating for the opponents. I always play on Noble because 'its the most balanced difficulty level' everything below says it's easy and everything above says it's harder.


My feeling exactly, though I'll play on Warlord for a while to familiarize myself with the game. I'm already fed up with all the spies. But I love the new ethnic units - Chinese workers who look Chinese! Greek Scouts whoo look Greek! And I have read evil comments about the corporations, but I am sure the problems with them will be addressed in a patch. I only wish the early rush as the obvious choice would be too.

My feeling exactly, though I'll play on Warlord for a while to familiarize myself with the game. I'm already fed up with all the spies. But I love the new ethnic units - Chinese workers who look Chinese! Greek Scouts whoo look Greek! And I have read evil comments about the corporations, but I am sure the problems with them will be addressed in a patch. I only wish the early rush as the obvious choice would be too.

The ethnic looks is the best addition in the entire pack if you ask me, I love it. Everytime I see the chinese workers it makes me think of Vietnam+Guy in chopper+Large gun xD

I'm refusing to go to a lower diff level atm, and it's my third game I play vs AI now, got another one going with friends aswel, my first still. I'm having huge difficulties surviving to the gunpowder age, when at swordsmen/horse archers, just before knights is usually when a civ or two get's annoyed and whoops your ass... I managed to fend off the japanese samurais for quite a while in my last game, when they suddenly came with an armada of Trebuchets, not much to do...

What I'm experiencing is that it's alot harder for you to make other civs like you, especially if you don't have the same religion! Having diff religions usually means war nowadays it seems, and I really prefer having my own religion :/

Practise makes perfect no? :)

Ojevind is right. Although I do disagree with him that war is necessary to win on higher difficulties, generally an early war is the best option. Its layed out in the game, as a war gives you two of the best things in a crowded map

1. More land.
2. More population.

The higher population from conquering an AI's land allows you to work more cottages/farm/production tiles to either get your tech back up or to keep on waging war.

Its not that an axe/catapult/sword rush is easy, but that its advantages are too overpowering compared to its dissadvantages.

For higher difficulty, I think that you might be able to compete better in expansion and relie less on war (I don't have BtS yet). From the description, Ai's bonuses have been reduced some (although they might get higher production by using slavery as Mutineer said in another thread) and the happy cap for your own cities are the same Monarch+, getting you more population.

Snarko has a good suggestion, and his idea helps address one problem I have with the game. IMO, The way the whole "We want to join the motherland" operates is very absurd.

Imo the resistance should start out low and then increase over time, until it peak and start to slowly decline

Resistance should be high at first, but then lower down compared to how the situation is and start rising slowly again. If you conquer a city, the people will hate the new leader and of course will hate you, but as they see their old civilization crumble they don't want to necessarily go back. They will calm down for a bit, but eventually will get unhappy with the new system and start to rise up again. This is just an idea and would be hard to implement, but the idea of wiping out a culture entirely the second you get their last city is silly.

One of the things that makes early rushing so viable is the fact once you destroy a Civ their culture is 100% gone, which is both absurd and a balance issue.

Early war will never be eliminated- I find it fun and should be one of the top ways to win. But their needs to be a better system to balance it other than making the AI build more units, because that will make it too hard on higher difficulties.

Assuming you're playing single player and don't want to bother with axe rushes... then don't axe rush. You see a strategy that you don't like and don't want to follow. What's the problem?

If you dislike the early rush as dominant strategy, play on a more realistic map. You can't axe rush across continents. Play a larger map, by the time you've hopped across it people will have counterunits out in large numbers.

If you don't like early war as *a* strategy (even on a continents map taking over a neighbor can give you an edge) don't use it. Warfare was a part of the ancient world and lots of real civilizations became great by conquering neighbors. If you conquer too much without going all the way and finishing the job, you'll quickly find yourself facing enormous financial difficulties due to increased gold costs.

I'd also point out that if you crank the difficulty a bit you won't be able to pull off your axe rush. In a similar thread (though more irritatingly presented) yesterday someone complained about the axe rush being too easy but wasn't willing to turn up the difficulty to where they would have to do something else... if you don't want to turn up the difficulty, don't complain that the game is too easy.

I really enjoy early war- I don't think that should fixed. Its the general post-war.

The second you take a civilizations last city, 100% of their land and population are transferred to you. That is ridiculous. This applies to wars in all ages. Their needs to be some resistance or something that makes it more difficult to make the shift from their empire to your empire. That way, it takes a little more effort than just military might to be able to destroy a civilization.

I am finding early warfare significantly more difficult in BtS than in Warlords. What difficulty are you playing? I'm playing on Monarch and the AI builds a pile more troops with mixed defenders than I ever saw in Warlords.

I agree. The AI does a MUCH better job of having variety in their stacks. When building in city defence, they build appropriate defenders. pikes for knights, crossbows for maces, etc...
My wars have been llong, bloody and crippling...and not just for my opponent.

Problem is that in real you can be small country and remain relatively strong.
In Civ land is power. Civ does not care about automatic science spread. If you invent sth you cannot keep it in secret for a very long time especialy nowadays. how long you could? 20, 30 years? maybe 50 in special cases. Even if you axe-rush your rivals it should not give you decisive advantage to others. In civ when you have 3-4 big cities more than your rivals in the begining it gives you up 50-90% chance of final victory because of sicence output.

****Science output should not be corelated so much with the number of the cities ****

****There should be more tools to balance number of cities with science output****


I tottaly agree that Civ does not takes into account the population factor in several crucial areas:
- total country population (including population outside the cities) - as it was mentioned in Civ we have one genocide after another with City razing. City razing should mean raze of the facilities and city infrastructure not the population itself
- national minorities
- army units
- employment

I dont know about all of you but I have heard that, due to the AI's ability to conduct proper military operations in BTS in combination with the reduced tech rate (due to reduced bonuses and espionage), the need to rush at higher levels has been decreased.

You make a valid point about the culture thing. Its kind of absurd that you can obliterate a civ without major penalties and or repercussions. But just because something is easier doesn't mean you have to do it. And complaining that its too easy and still doing it while there are plenty of other options makes your complaints kind of silly.

Sure, the axe rush is an effective strategy. But is it the only strategy? No. Is it 100% necessary? I would argue no, but I haven't played beyond monarch.
Will complaining about it make our ability to develop fully competent AI much easier? I doubt it...

Its easy for us to sit and whine about a small problem that can be avoided with a little self restraint. Why don't you try developing an actual solution? I'm sure you'll find that making that solution balanced and subject to no complaint is much harder than you think

Like other versions of Civ IV, BtS is much too easy to win by jumping a neighbour early on and exterminating him, taking over his core cities and razing the rest. There is fairly general agreement that an early axe rush (sword rush, horseman rush, catapult rush, whatever) is the most powerful strategy in most games. It helps you lay the groundwork for culture wins, diplomacy wins, whatever.

As was the case in real life.

Many of us feel that this strategy is boring and avoid it, but I have read repeated statements by gamers that on harder difficulty levels, you simply can't get ahead without it, except on quite rare occasions. Sure, choose Archipelago on Immortal, and the early rush doesn't work - but that is hardly the standard way to play the game. In a typical game, it is the default option (even on easy difficulty levels unless you choose to ignore it), and I think it is a major weakness in the game. It makes for a predictable strategy choice on your part - "Heigh ho, and now for attacking Gandhi" - and that is rather a bore.

The higher levels of the game mean that the AI has such a massive advantage over you that there is only one way to stop it. I think this is somewhat unavoidable.

There should be ways to make this a less obvious option. I think the recent addition of angry militias arising from the ruins of a razed city shows the way. Suppose conquered lands would not automatically lose their native population even if you raze every single city? Instead of automatically becoming assimilated by your culture in a few turns, the defeated tribe would keep turning up, à la barbarians, but turn up in your cities (built on their land, and presumably drawing much of its workforce from among their number), destroying buildings, or slap in the middle of your land, destroying improvements and killing your workers. They might even become so dominant in cities you have founded on their land that they rebel, troops and all, so you'll have to fight a new war of conquest. That would be pretty accurate historically too. The Romans never conquered all of Britain because it would have been cost-prohibitive (the land in the north wasn't that valuable) and because the tribesemen kept rebelling. The Assyrians were brought down by a combination of neighbouring countries and the peoples they had conquered. The English never managed to assimilate the Irish. The Chinese conquered Vietnam on one occasion but were thrown out after a couple of generations. The Turks conquered most of the Balkans but were then gradually scaled back, one country after another regaining its independence. And so on.

What should probably be done is that cities over a certain size cannot be razed. Regarding the Chinese vs Vietnam example Civ has that covered with culture flipping.

Consider the fact that until you have exterminated a civilization, the inhabitants of cities with lots of culture keep pining for their mother country and may flip back to it. But if you kill off a civilization completely, they are assimilated by you in a few turns. That is neither realistic nor conducive to a truly challenging game.

Actually it is realistic, especially in the early stages of the game where each turn represents X amount of years. Wiping out a three citied civilisation in 4 or 5 turns may seem unrealistic but then work out how many years it took to conquer them and it goes the other way.

So I think that, particularly early in the game, a mass rush on a neighbouring civilization should entail a very real possibility of serious and destructive consequences which would make you think twice before deciding that it was the only option you had. Where you might, in some cases, reluctantly decide that you had no choice but to attack, but where you at least as often would decide that leaving your neighbour alone (or only fighting limited wars for limited gains) would be better.

I think until your own culture is strong cities should flip back easier. The history of mankind is littered with battles and bloodshed though and many civilisations were wiped out of all existance. We probably don't even know the names of most of them.

Would the change I suggest keep Montezuma or Genghis Khan from jumping you early on? I think not. They are programmed to attack you. So I doubt that the game would become "too peaceful" if this was implemented

But that is beauty of the game. You have players who want to play peacefully, some who play more like the aggressive AI. I think the balance for both styles of play is OK. Sure there are more realistic elements I would like to see added to the game BUT if it gets too realistic it won't appeal to such a mass audience. CivIV is not a hardcore strategy game, and I don't think it's meant to be.

I dont know about all of you but I have heard that, due to the AI's ability to conduct proper military operations in BTS in combination with the reduced tech rate (due to reduced bonuses and espionage), the need to rush at higher levels has been decreased.

You make a valid point about the culture thing. Its kind of absurd that you can obliterate a civ without major penalties and or repercussions. But just because something is easier doesn't mean you have to do it. And complaining that its too easy and still doing it while there are plenty of other options makes your complaints kind of silly.

Sure, the axe rush is an effective strategy. But is it the only strategy? No. Is it 100% necessary? I would argue no, but I haven't played beyond monarch.
Will complaining about it make our ability to develop fully competent AI much easier? I doubt it...
Its easy for us to sit and whine about a small problem that can be avoided with a little self restraint. Why don't you try developing an actual solution? I'm sure you'll find that making that solution balanced and subject to no complaint is much harder than you think

I don't think it's absurd. We have a modern day mindset on life, but 4000 years ago the attitude was very different. You could have two civilisations living side by side that barely knew each other. Sure on the border they did, but the "average" populace didn't have a clue and if they heard that some disaster had befallen or that one country and annexed another I doubt they'd have cared much.

If there is one part of the game I would like to see tweaked it is diplomacy. I think too many countries have diplomatic relations with each other early in the game. I think events in early history have too much bearing on those relations later in history.

CivIV is meant to be a game though, and not a simulator of history. In the game you can get an early headstart and you can stay there the entire game. This is unrealistic in real terms as no major civilisation has ever managed to maintain their dominance. But if random factors were implemented into the game that had such massive consequences that if you had a big lead it could be wiped in a matter of 100 turns and you civ go the way of Rome (for example) then people would . .. .. .. .. . like hell saying it wasn't worth playing.

For me the solution is simple. If you find the level you are on too easy. You play the next level.

Problem is that in real you can be small country and remain relatively strong.
In Civ land is power. Civ does not care about automatic science spread. If you invent sth you cannot keep it in secret for a very long time especialy nowadays. how long you could? 20, 30 years? maybe 50 in special cases. Even if you axe-rush your rivals it should not give you decisive advantage to others. In civ when you have 3-4 big cities more than your rivals in the begining it gives you up 50-90% chance of final victory because of sicence output.

****Science output should not be corelated so much with the number of the cities ****

****There should be more tools to balance number of cities with science output****


I tottaly agree that Civ does not takes into account the population factor in several crucial areas:
- total country population (including population outside the cities) - as it was mentioned in Civ we have one genocide after another with City razing. City razing should mean raze of the facilities and city infrastructure not the population itself
- national minorities
- army units
- employment

I think people get obsessed with cities being cities. I personally view them as regions. When a city is destroyed I think of it as a region of a couple of hundred square miles completely pillaged. If you wanted to take it down the route you are suggesting the city sizes should be smaller and when towns, villages etc are pillaged production and population should be reduced.

Why don't you try developing an actual solution? I'm sure you'll find that making that solution balanced and subject to no complaint is much harder than you think
You can't develop an actual solution unless you have one. This thread discuss what would be a solution.
As for complaints, if this was ever implemented it would (imo) have to be an option. Also noone's saying it would be perfect right away, just that it would make more sense than the current system.

One of the things that makes early rushing so viable is the fact once you destroy a Civ their culture is 100% gone, which is both absurd and a balance issue.

I also think a large part of the issue is that peaceful solutions are much more difficult if not impossible the higher up you go. I play on Monarch and the AI can simply settle and develop cities much faster than me thanks to bonuses.

And playing on a larger map with more space only makes it worse because the AI has more room to settle and gains an even larger advantage.

Even if I don't want to go to war, I feel I must to maintain parity. I haven't played enough BTS to truly know if this is still the case, but it's certainly something I'd like addressed.


Actually it's not silly. What tended to happen in the days where civilisations were wiped out was that their culture was assimilated into the conquerers culture. But then the whole game mechanic of culture is not realistic, nor is it meant to be.

As for higher levels? AI isn't good enough in ANY specifically created PC game to match humans on a level playing field. So therefore hamstringing the human and "cheating" the AI is the only way to achieve balance.

Civilizations being totally wiped out is a necessary game-ism to keep victory by conquest on the table. In real life if you conquered a region odds were its inhabitants kept most of their old ways and in a few hundred years if your descendants retained control at all, it was of a population that remained significantly distinct (even the Basques in Spain still have some unhappiness over being part of Spain at all). In the game, that would just make the chore of conquering your neighbors really hard to manage down the line, and frankly since conquering your neighbors is to be encouraged in civ doing away with the game-ism really wouldn't make it more fun.

If you're looking for a hardcore history simulator, you're in the wrong place.

You still don't get what I am saying. I am not saying that "jump your neighbour" is too easy, I am saying that it is the obvious way to go on the easier levels and something you simply have to do on higher difficulty levels, and that is repetitive and dreary.

I don't attack a neighbour unless I see no other alternative, so there is no question of me "sailing smoothly to victory". You seem unable to assimilate that this is what I am trying to say - that I don't want one single early strategy to be so powerful on lower difficulty levels and the only possible one on the higher ones. I have made some suggestions about how to make the early rush option less of a no-brainer.

Unlike you, some other people who have posted in this thread do seem to feel that always having to rush a neighbour in order to stand a chance to win on the higher difficulty levels is a major flaw in the game.

What did the Romans do? In essence they rushed their way around Europe. The UK was "rushed" several times before England was fully established as a powerhouse.

Almost all major civilisations that have existed have been created when one civilisation has conquered, destroyed or swallowed up smaller civs.

If there is a game balance that needs to be addressed it's maintaining an empire. Carving an Empire out early through conquest is entirely believable and even historically accurate, but what history has taught us is that conquering the empire is the easy part. It's keeping hold of it that's proved impossible.

Civilizations being totally wiped out is a necessary game-ism to keep victory by conquest on the table. In real life if you conquered a region odds were its inhabitants kept most of their old ways and in a few hundred years if your descendants retained control at all, it was of a population that remained significantly distinct (even the Basques in Spain still have some unhappiness over being part of Spain at all). In the game, that would just make the chore of conquering your neighbors really hard to manage down the line, and frankly since conquering your neighbors is to be encouraged in civ doing away with the game-ism really wouldn't make it more fun.

If you're looking for a hardcore history simulator, you're in the wrong place.

I totally agree.

I'd also point out that if you crank the difficulty a bit you won't be able to pull off your axe rush. In a similar thread (though more irritatingly presented) yesterday someone complained about the axe rush being too easy but wasn't willing to turn up the difficulty to where they would have to do something else... if you don't want to turn up the difficulty, don't complain that the game is too easy.

For the zillionth time, I DON'T LIKE TO DO AN AXE RUSH. What I've repeatedly said is that it is next to impossible to win on higher difficulty levels without an early rush or two. I think that is unbalanced - a major flaw.

OMG not this again :)

Anyway.

What about Futurehermit's question/comment? He says that he's found that the AI builds more units to defend in BTS and is more resistant to an Early Rush.

What we need is for one of the two of you (you know who you are :)) to post a game (Fractal/Large/Epic/Noble or Prince) from BTS and show us the Axe Rush in all its glory and so we can actually see what you're talking about, and see whether Futurehermit is right or not.

Just saying Early Rush is the dominant (or only) strategy is one thing. Actually showing it in a game is another thing.

Cheers.

OMG not this again :)

Anyway.

What about Futurehermit's question/comment? He says that he's found that the AI builds more units to defend in BTS and is more resistant to an Early Rush.

What we need is for one of the two of you (you know who you are :)) to post a game (Fractal/Large/Epic/Noble or Prince) from BTS and show us the Axe Rush in all its glory and so we can actually see what you're talking about, and see whether Futurehermit is right or not.

Just saying Early Rush is the dominant (or only) strategy is one thing. Actually showing it in a game is another thing.

Cheers.

The huge advantages of axe/horseman/catapult/prateorian rushing, especially on higher difficulty levels, has been affirmed over and over again by better players than I. I'm not going to play a game of the kind I don't enjoy just to make you happy.

Yes, I think it remains to be seen if the Axe-rush is still so good in BTS. On Prince, I had a two stacks of a total of 12 praetorians, 4 axemen and 4 spearmen at the gate of an AI satellite city once, around 50BC, only to find an almost equally large mixed stack of Axemen, Swordsmen behind Walls, garded by two CG2 Archers. My impression so far, though I may be wrong, is that the AI really scouts your land the moment you agree open borders, or that is rushes a SPy to explore and build up an amry depending on your army.

It's not the walk in the park it used to be.

Jaca

I can somewhat see some people's arguments about the destruction of the civ and culture and whatnot. But it's a videogame, not real life. A certain suspension of disbelief must take place.

Secondly, it's not entirely unheard of that conquered people assimilate into the conquerors society. How many Gaul uprisings occurred 100 years later against the Romans with people chanting "we yearn to join our motherland"? By and large the history of humanity has been one of civilizations conquering and expanding and people assimilating. I don't find the current mechanics to be wholly unrealistic and am fine with them governing my Civ "universe".

Well the only thing that has been put in the game to prevent to much early rushing is the city maintenance model.

This could be changed to weaken the early rush strategy even more. The distance to capital maintenance could be given a boost.

It's also possible that cities not connected to your capital (through roads/rivers/coast) would basically be useless. These unconnected cities could easily be in perpetual revolt (and possibly breaking into another civ) if they remain unconnected to your capital. This would force rushers to only take cities on the coast or along already established trade routes. Even stopping an expansion to build infrastructor.

I don't know how game friendly that idea would be, but it's something to think about.

THE RUSH STRATEGY BECOMES MORE NECESSARY ON HIGHER DIFFICULTY LEVELS, NOT LESS. I have seen repeated posts to this effect. "On Monarch and above, you can't win by just being peaceful - you have to attack and take out at least one neighbouring civilization."

If YOU can't win or have trouble on higher levels without a rush than maybe you should refine a few non-rush strats on Noble. I do not find this is the case at all. Some of my highest scores on Monarch and Emperor have come in games where i went for the GW-Pyrimids gambit or check out the one city wonder strategy that obsolete is pushing VERY FUN to have a city like that) or my highest ever when i was england I MC slingshot beelined guilds and banking and set up a GME like in the mongol(?) ALC

With the AI bonus' in BTS I would think that is more true.

The axe rush is definatly reliable (you will always find a use for military) but my HOF (mon and emp) shows that my earliest wins and highest scores frequently came from a different opening strat.



practice

Ojevind- I think you might be overestimating the axe rush. Its not always the best option nor necessary. The war system in Warlords is very good IMO, although the AI could be weak. BtS improved the AI stratedgically, making the axe rush less effective. Also, by raising the happy cap of the human past monarch and giving the AI less bonuses, maybe axe rushes won't be need by allowing the human to expand and compete better. Personally, I'd like to see the immediate post-war improved, but that little nuance is fine.

It's simple really, if you think it's too easy, then don't do it. If you think it's the only way to progress, then do it.

It seems some folk are forgetting that conquest (which is a victory condition option) requires early axe rushes. I find it hard to believe that conquest above monarch is doable without this being an option on larger maps.

Lets all appease the builders at the expense of the warmongers.

For the zillionth time, I DON'T LIKE TO DO AN AXE RUSH. What I've repeatedly said is that it is next to impossible to win on higher difficulty levels without an early rush or two. I think that is unbalanced - a major flaw.
Try playing on a big map with a low sea level, and remove one or two civs from the default number. Now civs will start so far apart that an early rush is difficult and unprofitable. There, now you don't have to axe rush because it's a weak strategy on these settings. Or play on archipelago. Or try a specialist economy, which can be powerful without many cities and build the pyramids instead of axes.

The huge advantages of axe/horseman/catapult/prateorian rushing, especially on higher difficulty levels, has been affirmed over and over again by better players than I. I'm not going to play a game of the kind I don't enjoy just to make you happy.

Well, it's hard to believe you then.

Here's a post from someone else about their experiences with BTS:

********

I have started, edned about 20 games now (I am really trying to get a feel for the game before starting on a marathon huge map, and also figure out how to mod out the water poison for 24 turn problem) before I start on one of my true epics.

I have discovered the following

1) Horses are aplenty!!!! Definitely easy to get 1 or even two horse resources with your first 2-3 cities.
2) Copper is scarcer than ever, more often than not I cannot see any after discovering BW.
3) When copper does show up it is in a general area. Example I am on a continent with three AIs, random map generator and it looks to be arid with long rivers and lots of flood plains. Copper is present in only one area of the continent, and there are THREE minable resources of it there. You could get all three within two fat crosses of adjacent cities.
4) Iron is more available than copepr but not that much more.

I am guesssing this has to do with future corporations and those required resources, but shooting for mining/BW right off the bat could be very disappointing and earlier archery may be the way to go, just for sufvival.

********

So, it seems that Copper is hard to come by, and Iron is not much more plentiful.

Let's see it in action!

Cheers.

"The second you take a civilizations last city, 100% of their land and population are transferred to you. That is ridiculous. This applies to wars in all ages. Their needs to be some resistance or something that makes it more difficult to make the shift from their empire to your empire."

This is the best point I saw in the thread. What has made early war such a desirable strategy in the civ franchise is that, not only do you destroy your neighbor, but your power relative to the remaining civs is reliably increased as a result of the early war. So the thing to fix is not to prevent people from killing a close neighbor, but to take steps to prevent that strategy from reliably increasing your power relative to the other civs.

I have to say that CIV4 is much better than earlier versions on this point. Neighbor civs put up enough of a fight, and the extra city costs go up enough, that at least sometimes you risk ending the war weaker relative to those who weren't involved.

I think the most simple mechanic to address what you guys are talking about is to add a new city maintenance factor that only penalizes captured cities and not founded cities. So for example, an empire of six cities that were all founded using settlers would cost more to maintain than an empire of six cities of which three were captured by war. Kind of like the overseas maintenance factor except a "conqueror's maintenance factor." Right now its often cheaper to build a military than settlers, and given the historical costs of war, that is probably wrong.

I really don't see that theres anything more to discuss here.

We've got people here complaining about a tactic that they have claimed they don't even use. If you're complaining because the lack of this tactic makes it hard for you to win on higher difficulty levels, realize that its not the game thats broken, its your playing ability.

Why would you want to go and remove an option that so many people like to use just because you don't like it?

The axe rush or any rush is not a strategy that is mandatory. But its an option and this is a game about options. I swear if I see any more of these threads that tries to fix an optional feature, I'm going to go insane.

I agree with you that early rushes are too powerful. One best choice = only one real choice = no options = a puzzle, not a strategy game. If you're playing against powerful opponents (high difficulty levels), then the early rush is NOT an option. You can't win without it.

But adding a huge penalty will fail for two reasons.

(1) The huge penalty, whatever it is, will just make the early CHOKE into the dominant strategy. Rather than taking or razing those cities, you pillage the countryside, and harass their workers into paralysis (or outright steal them). Several turns later, when your economy is doing much better than theirs, you can finally afford to eat the penalty for conquering them.

(2) It won't be fun. It will be bizarre. Imagine that someone built a 2x-size empire with an early rush, yet their economy is functioning as at the level of a regular size empire due to penalties and militia uprisings and so on. You have to ask yourself why you'd even bother with war in the ancient era if you penalized it that much. And yet, if you didn't penalize it that much, then the early rush would still be dominant. I agree that conquest is too powerful, and often it's the key to a cultural victory or diplomatic victory more than actual culture or diplomacy! But it's also a key victory condition. You can only break the game by punishing conquest any further.

I think this is Civ 5 territory. A solution requires us not to introduce new penalties, but re-write the existing rewards. The victory conditions need to be wiped clean and rewritten from scratch, and the features of the game need to be designed to get you to those separate victory conditions in interesting ways. Most of all, the relationship between war and diplomacy needs to be made more interesting, without it feeling like a constraint on the player.

Easier said than done. But I remain optimistic.

No criticism Öjevind Lång - the level you choose to play on is your own decision and for your own level of fun.... but please dont base your knowledge on second hand accounts. There are plenty of what you described as "better" players who abuse every single game mechanic they can to achieve their victories.

This includes:

Selecting your land mass appropriate to the victory you are aiming for.
Selecting your opponents for the victory you are aiming for.
Selecting your victory conditions to not lose out on a victory you arent aiming for.
Rerolling maps repeatedly to have stone/gold in fat cross, with flood plains/grasslands and rivers in sight.
Blatantly modifying the map with the WB.

The list goes on.... and you just have to accept that this happens and stop believing everything you hear..... base it on your own accounts and nothing more. That's not to say that doing any of these makes the victories invalid.... but skewing the game in favour of specific conditions, then playing to achieve those conditions does not make them overpowered. Consider the possibility of specifically selecting Raging Barbs then b-lining to and building the GW - ok, it's a tactic.... but one is obviously abusing a game mechanic in ones favour and when the ai gets shat on, one cant complain that the ai is incapable of dealing with raging barbs.... it's simply absurd.

Personally, I have far more respect for people who play on lower levels and leave all the settings to random, who play random leaders and win on the strength of adapting their game to the situation they encounter. This invariably has nothing to do with axe rushing, which is predominantly a tactic you decide on prior to starting the game.

Is axe rushing successful? Yes - no one denies that ramming a load of axes into your neighbours face is going to win you a nice city spot.

Is it going to win you the game? Absolutely, categorically not. Once you have that city spot, you still have to use it appropriately. I am tired of hearing this idea about then marching off and conquering another civ.... in every game I have ever played (aside from the ones I specifically set up for this purpose) this would not be feasible. The next Civ would be a considerable distance away and by the time I got there would have achieved something worthy of countering my axes.

Even if I were to capture this far away 3rd capital, the costs would stunt technological growth and rebalance the gains I had achieved.

I'm sorry, but my take on this is (not aimed at you whatsoever) that people who claim this is so overpowered are completely falsifying their facts, tilting the game in favour of this outcome, then bragging of their success. The objective is not to improve the game, but to swell their egos.

This is an SP game we are discussing (MP players who rely on 1 trick ponies get their polished egos handed to them) and as such, there are myriads of options to you personally if you personally find this trick to be so overpowered.

1) Play with settings that are not conducive to the axe rush.
2) Dont use it - learn to play without a crutch.
3) Accept that rushing loads of troops at an enemy position is part of the game, it would be boring if you couldnt mass troops and attack enemy positions. You and everyone else would also complain if rushing greater numbers of troops against another civ DIDNT work and you always lost.
4) Aim to extend the life of your game by using positive thinking, rather than reducing everything down the lowest denominator and throttling the variety this game has to offer.


Do me a favour.... if you want to reply to me, reply to my points rather than ignoring them all like the guy from the other thread.

Cheers

the rush method does require you to beeline towards bronze working and to have the resource available which is not guaranteed, so if you manage these why not take advantage? That is what this game is about, taking advantage of your situation.

I tried the rush method with some civ specialised archer units and on declaring war the AI pumped out hundreds of warrier units, this was on the the difficulty level below prince. I managed to take his capital but that was all but in the middle ages I was pretty much on level with that civ on the bottom of the table lol

Lets give a round of applause to Spearthrower for laying it out better than I ever could...

You know.... I played Deity once... only once ever..... and I won!!!

I am nowhere near that level.

I set the game up specifically for it, as Rome, played until I found whether I had iron in the city (ended up resetting about 8 times) then b-lined to iron.... pumped endless Praetorians.... abused the civic swap mechanic to make sure I was repeatedly in anarchy when I couldnt afford the troop costs, and utterly destroyed all the AI.

It was, by far and away, the most boring game of civ I have ever played.... I nearly quit half way through because it was utterly pointless to so intently abuse the game mechanics in order to thoroughly stitch the AI up.

Did I win? Yes - and I probably could again, more than 50% of the time at least (and I am definitely not claiming to be a "good player").... does this therefore make it overpowered? Well, no (said with a very condescending tone!) - it just makes playing the game pointless if you are going to abuse mechanics and not follow the spirit of the game.

If you (not the OP, but a general YOU who do this kind of stupid thing) wish to reduce the game down to a pointless exercise in futility, then knock yourself out (for the 5 mins that it remains interesting).... but please dont try and demand the game be changed to compensate for that abuse.... what about all the countless players who enjoy it as is, who have no need to abuse the mechanics to pump their egos.... what would happen to them?

This just reminds me of using the low kick repeatedly in Tekken to win! :D

Yes, I think it remains to be seen if the Axe-rush is still so good in BTS. On Prince, I had a two stacks of a total of 12 praetorians, 4 axemen and 4 spearmen at the gate of an AI satellite city once, around 50BC, only to find an almost equally large mixed stack of Axemen, Swordsmen behind Walls, garded by two CG2 Archers. My impression so far, though I may be wrong, is that the AI really scouts your land the moment you agree open borders, or that is rushes a SPy to explore and build up an amry depending on your army.

It's not the walk in the park it used to be.

Jaca

Excellent! Of course, I am not saying that it should be impossible to wage aggressive war early in the game, only that it shouldn't be so easy. I know I am not the only one, though apparently some warmongers (clearly not all; probably not even a majority) don't want to see their favourite exploit nerfed. So they are in for a surprise with BtS? I'm very happy to hear it.

I also think that, as some of us have discussed further back in the thread, there should be some difficulties assimilating another tribe even if you have conquered all of it. Someone suggested that there should first be heavy resistance, then resignation, then a new outbreak of resentment before the conquered tribe is finally assimilated. I think that sounds excellent. Mind you, this resistance should exist even if you raze all the cities of the other civilization; there would still be people living in the surrounding areas. (And otherwise, some players would simply raze all the captured cities to kill off the resistance.)

I am currently playing a game where the nearest copper deposit is quite a way off. I am hoping there are horses a bit nearer; anyway, I'm going to research Iron Working soon, because one of the two cities I have at this stage has a lot of jungle in its fat cross. (I chose to settle there to secure a jewels and a fish tile, and also in order to block off Willem of Oranje from my hinterland. Frederick is somewhere beyond it in that direction, but thankfully, I have no close neighbours. Large maps are *nice*.

...but skewing the game in favour of specific conditions...

yes that is why i always randomise as much as possible, never choose a civ or opponents. It means that each game, even if you plough through with one strategy you`ll usually find that you hav eto tweak it in some way

Well, it's hard to believe you then.

Here's a post from someone else about their experiences with BTS:

********

I have started, edned about 20 games now (I am really trying to get a feel for the game before starting on a marathon huge map, and also figure out how to mod out the water poison for 24 turn problem) before I start on one of my true epics.

I have discovered the following

1) Horses are aplenty!!!! Definitely easy to get 1 or even two horse resources with your first 2-3 cities.
2) Copper is scarcer than ever, more often than not I cannot see any after discovering BW.
3) When copper does show up it is in a general area. Example I am on a continent with three AIs, random map generator and it looks to be arid with long rivers and lots of flood plains. Copper is present in only one area of the continent, and there are THREE minable resources of it there. You could get all three within two fat crosses of adjacent cities.
4) Iron is more available than copepr but not that much more.

I am guesssing this has to do with future corporations and those required resources, but shooting for mining/BW right off the bat could be very disappointing and earlier archery may be the way to go, just for sufvival.

********

So, it seems that Copper is hard to come by, and Iron is not much more plentiful.

Let's see it in action!

Cheers.

Your information is very interesting, and I appreciate it. However, if you read the post that started this thread, you will see that I was not only talking about axeman rushes but about all kinds of early military rushes. Horsemen, pretorians, whatever. Fortunately, it seems this exploit has been nerfed in BtS. That should make warmongers happy because it means a more challenging game. And it makes me happy because I want to be able to play hoenstly, without deliberately ignoring the generaly most advantageous strategy in the early game. Yes, I know all about choosing Archipelagoes and so on; but having to custom-tailor the game to escape the early rush does not exactly turn em on.

One of the arguments being put forth here is: at increasingly high levels, an early rush is increasingly necessary.

I'd like to offer a different perspective: at increasingly high levels, you are more required to play the hand you're dealt.

Here's a metaphor -- think of a game of civ like crossing a field. If you get to the other side quickly enough, you win. At low levels, it's like a football field. You can wander pretty much wherever you like. Build some cottages, hire some specialists, build some buildings, maybe fight a war, collect Wonders -- the ground is all easy enough that you don't have to be efficient, you'll still get there. There are some routes that are more efficient, of course, and in many games there will be a route labelled "axe-rush" that is both broad and well-travelled.

Let's jump up to an intermediate level. Now the field has large patches of tall weeds, areas of swampy ground, and a number of good trails. The good trails are the synergistic paths you can take, so there's probably one labelled "SE, lightbulbing to Liberalism", and one labelled "CE, with HR and big cities" and one labelled "emphasize production, multiple wars". But the land in between is not so good -- if you try to run half SE and half CE, you'll end up with something not as good as either. You've blundered into a weed patch, and if you spend too much of the game there without getting back on a better trail, you're likely to lose. Again, there will frequently be an "axe rush" path, and when it's there, it's likely to be a good one. Even if it's not the best path (say it's a little swampy at first, whereas the "expand until catapults, then attack" path stays on drier ground), it's likely to be a good-enough path, so that if you know what you're doing you can push through to the good ground beyond, and then a win.

Higher levels now. Obviously there are fewer paths, and they're narrower, and the weeds in between are more like thickets of thornbushes. You'd better choose a good path, and you'd better follow it accurately. The question is, do the few remaining paths lie in the same spots game after game after game?

I would argue that they don't. Some games you'll have Stone, and the Pyramids is the best (maybe only) path. Some games you'll have enough space to settle several cottage cities and tech peacefully. Some games you'll have Ivory, and a Construction beeline is your best chance. Some games you'll have Copper and a close neighbor with a poorly defended capital.

You know the best way to lose on Immortal? Axe rush a neighbor who's too far away. Axe rush a neighbor who's too well defended. Axe rush, then get dogpiled by another neighbor. Axe rush, then be unable to get your economy back online in time.

I will say that almost every successful Immortal game I've played has involved an offensive war at some point. That might be worker-stealing with Quechuas, chariot-rushing with a UU, locking the opponent down with pillagers until much later, a limited axe-rush aimed at just one key city or resource, a full-scale axe-rush aiming to eliminate, peaceful expansion to catapults, peaceful expansion to maces/trebs, peaceful expansion all the way through Liberalism followed by a cavalry rush, a limited naval invasion of a poorly defended island, a pillaging/razing spree with no intent of holding the land, a dogpile war against an AI that's already losing, or a defensive war to bleed the strength of an AI that's too strong to invade. Lumping all those together is just wrong; they play very differently, and if you choose the wrong one, you're on a dead-end path (or at least a path more difficult than need be). And, just about every successful Immortal game I've played has involved periods of peaceful building. Sometimes I build first, fight later, sometimes the other way around, sometimes simultaneously. It depends on the hand that I'm dealt each game.

Quantitatively? I haven't kept the numbers, but I'd guess that I attack a neighbor pre-catapults in 20-25% of my games. I'd guess my first attack is with cats but not trebs 30-35%, trebs but pre-gunpowder 25-30% and post-gunpowder the rest. So, no, I don't think that axe-rushing, properly defined, becomes the only (or even the dominant) strategy at high levels. I think you have to walk the best path that's available in each particular game.

peace,
lilnev

I expected that one. I knew someone would turn up and tell me that I am not entitled to have an opinion because I play at too low a difficulty level. But you (like some others) completely miss my point, which is that THE RUSH STRATEGY BECOMES MORE NECESSARY ON HIGHER DIFFICULTY LEVELS, NOT LESS. I have seen repeated posts to this effect. "On Monarch and above, you can't win by just being peaceful - you have to attack and take out at least one neighbouring civilization."

Of course I am not suggesting that one should go free from the risk of being attacked. I am opposed to rushing your neighbour being the default option for winning, especially on higher difficulty levels.

I've actually found that the BtS AI will often rush me while I'm busy trying to rush another AI and my "rear" cities are under-protected. Try playing aggressive AI Pangea where you have 2-4 "neighboring" civs and see if there's a difference. Of course, if a player ends up being "blocked in" by one neighbor, either he or that neighboring civ is going to be toast...

I know that people who enjoy winning by conquering the world like the possibility to rush a neighbour early, but wouldn't it be a good thing if this was actually harder to accomplish?

I'd simply say that for every time it's easily accomplished, what about the times when it fails? What if no iron/bronze is in your area? What if there is, and even with a 3 to 1 attack force, with some bad rolls, you fail to capture the city and are left weak as a newborn?

Do these people play out these scenarios til 2050? Or restart to get iron/bronze, or reload to attack differently?

I still see this strat as too risky to be worth it in many cases if folks consider restarts/reloads as losses, or actually play out the game when it fails.

It is decisive, but I don't find it dominant, as I'd like to see wins/losses of folks who've gone this route.

When it works, it's a massive leap ahead of rivals. When it fails, it can ruin a game...which is why most replay it, forgetting their loss, since it's so early on in the game and just remember the next time when it works.

Ummm... Okay why not just make it impossible to declare war until the twentieth century while they're at it? War is a fact of history

Also, play larger maps and your early rushes won't guarantee any victories...

No criticism Öjevind Lång - the level you choose to play on is your own decision and for your own level of fun.... but please dont base your knowledge on second hand accounts. There are plenty of what you described as "better" players who abuse every single game mechanic they can to achieve their victories.

This includes:

Selecting your land mass appropriate to the victory you are aiming for.
Selecting your opponents for the victory you are aiming for.
Selecting your victory conditions to not lose out on a victory you arent aiming for.
Rerolling maps repeatedly to have stone/gold in fat cross, with flood plains/grasslands and rivers in sight.
Blatantly modifying the map with the WB.

The list goes on.... and you just have to accept that this happens and stop believing everything you hear..... base it on your own accounts and nothing more. That's not to say that doing any of these makes the victories invalid.... but skewing the game in favour of specific conditions, then playing to achieve those conditions does not make them overpowered. Consider the possibility of specifically selecting Raging Barbs then b-lining to and building the GW - ok, it's a tactic.... but one is obviously abusing a game mechanic in ones favour and when the ai gets shat on, one cant complain that the ai is incapable of dealing with raging barbs.... it's simply absurd.

Personally, I have far more respect for people who play on lower levels and leave all the settings to random, who play random leaders and win on the strength of adapting their game to the situation they encounter. This invariably has nothing to do with axe rushing, which is predominantly a tactic you decide on prior to starting the game.

Is axe rushing successful? Yes - no one denies that ramming a load of axes into your neighbours face is going to win you a nice city spot.

Is it going to win you the game? Absolutely, categorically not. Once you have that city spot, you still have to use it appropriately. I am tired of hearing this idea about then marching off and conquering another civ.... in every game I have ever played (aside from the ones I specifically set up for this purpose) this would not be feasible. The next Civ would be a considerable distance away and by the time I got there would have achieved something worthy of countering my axes.

Even if I were to capture this far away 3rd capital, the costs would stunt technological growth and rebalance the gains I had achieved.

I'm sorry, but my take on this is (not aimed at you whatsoever) that people who claim this is so overpowered are completely falsifying their facts, tilting the game in favour of this outcome, then bragging of their success. The objective is not to improve the game, but to swell their egos.

This is an SP game we are discussing (MP players who rely on 1 trick ponies get their polished egos handed to them) and as such, there are myriads of options to you personally if you personally find this trick to be so overpowered.

1) Play with settings that are not conducive to the axe rush.
2) Dont use it - learn to play without a crutch.
3) Accept that rushing loads of troops at an enemy position is part of the game, it would be boring if you couldnt mass troops and attack enemy positions. You and everyone else would also complain if rushing greater numbers of troops against another civ DIDNT work and you always lost.
4) Aim to extend the life of your game by using positive thinking, rather than reducing everything down the lowest denominator and throttling the variety this game has to offer.

Do me a favour.... if you want to reply to me, reply to my points rather than ignoring them all like the guy from the other thread.

Cheers

I want to thank you for a fair and polite post with good information. I still think the early rush is too easy a strategy, but we have been through that already. And though I don't play completely random maps (I used to prefer Fractal on Warlords), I don't reroll all the time to get a map I like. Though if I discover that my first city is up near the polar circle, or that the surrounding area mostly consists of sand, then I do start up a new game. (I remember one game where almost all the land within reach was jungle - clinging on until I had researched IW was a bit of a challenge. The sea was a long way off!)

Using the WB simply isn't fun; the game becomes tainted, somehow.

I don't choose which leaders to play against, because I like the surprise element. However, I do choose which leader to play myself; I don't enjoy playing as Montezuma or Genghis Khan, and I speak from experience. I might enjoy playing as Isabella; I must try it some time. (I just hate her so much; that's why I haven't played as her yet.) Basically, I play for fun.

I don't think these discussions are all that useful, unless you're ready to create a mod. The core game isn't going to change. An expansion has just been released and we are "stuck" with it. (Not that I mind. It's a great expansion.)

As I said in the other thread, civ has always focused too much on war for my liking. But each version focuses on war a little less. I think we should just be glad there are actually viable alternatives to the rush, even if they are less effective.

As for your suggestions, Ojevind, I think they may result in the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. If they were implemented, conquering a neighbor would turn into a HUGE headache, to the degree that I think many players would eschew war, and civ would turn into a building game. Then you would have posts all over the forum about how building is boring and war is too hard.

The simpler solution, in my view, is to improve the AI's warring capability. It's entirely too predictable. You know, in every game, that if you attack with a stack of Axes as soon as you can, you'll be facing a couple Archers and possibly a couple melee units. The AI has gotten better in this regard, but it's still not quite enough.

Since Civ 4 is mostly a single-player game, let those players that love to axe-rush, warmonger and conquer the planet do that, and let peaceful builders play their style. I never care about scores or "winning the game", and usually don´t attack other civs, but I don´t really care if other players like to play aggressively. It´s their choice...

And as I mainly play multiplayer and it is not broken there (only against unexperienced players), I think Civ is totally fine.

It's difficult to fix this issue without making war itself a much less viable option.

One thing I've often thought should be fixed though, is that under certain terrain I think units should lose HP instead of gaining them each turn. For example, Napolean's attack on Russia wouldn't have be thwarted if it were a tropical climate.

The simpler solution, in my view, is to improve the AI's warring capability. It's entirely too predictable. You know, in every game, that if you attack with a stack of Axes as soon as you can, you'll be facing a couple Archers and possibly a couple melee units. The AI has gotten better in this regard, but it's still not quite enough.

Do you think there is any hope of that happening soon?

I think the most simple mechanic to address what you guys are talking about is to add a new city maintenance factor that only penalizes captured cities and not founded cities. So for example, an empire of six cities that were all founded using settlers would cost more to maintain than an empire of six cities of which three were captured by war. Kind of like the overseas maintenance factor except a "conqueror's maintenance factor." Right now its often cheaper to build a military than settlers, and given the historical costs of war, that is probably wrong.

As long as the "conqueror's maintenance factor" doesn't kick in until the conquered city is out of resistance, and the factor declines over time (for example, based on the ratio of the old/original culture to your new culture), I think something like this might be worth considering.

The simpler solution, in my view, is to improve the AI's warring capability. It's entirely too predictable. You know, in every game, that if you attack with a stack of Axes as soon as you can, you'll be facing a couple Archers and possibly a couple melee units. The AI has gotten better in this regard, but it's still not quite enough.

While I agree with most of what you said, I think you've missed the mark here. Basically, all that would do is force the player to adopt a military position. Which in my mind is counter-productive. Because if the player decided to "pull an AI", and build cities instead of military, all of the new AI players would just use their military to steamroll the player.

Personally, my "fix" would likely be to really bump up the military support costs, either just within enemy territory, or even neutral territory. Enemy territory would be better, except that a rush usually means your stack only spends 1-2 turns inside enemy territory, which wouldn't be much of a penalty. If you had to cross a lot of neutral territory (which is more likely), that stack could completely kill your initial economy, bringing you into early ruin. It still could be worth it for a very close neighbour, but not really in other circumstances.

The only alternate to that I'd try would probably be having the "angry citizens" continue to exist for a while even after a Civ has been destroyed. If you could take a city, but couldn't really work it for awhile afterwards, it wouldn't be as useful to you as building your own would be.

In either case, the strategy would still work, but it just wouldn't be as advantageous to you. Which would encourage using alternatives.

Bh

Seriously, play Immortal or Emperor and stop whining how easy the game is.

The defense from a Key City(Chocke e.t.c.) can be absolutal brutal !

Really, im lurking here very often and i think, most people play like that:

Low Difficulty
They chose a map type/map size they like - TRY RANDOM !
Using the Auto Save !! Or generaly reloading because of "too much jungle".

What a Bull... The next game u Play, play 1 difficulty above ur standard, take a random map and roll a dice for standard/large/big map size. Then play without 1 Time reloading. If u have No metal or Horses, BUILD ARCHERS !
Or Try Ragnar(he´s so freaking aggressive in BtS) and another Aggressive Leader near you.

Dont get me Wrong, everbody should play for fun. So yeah, play on Noble. But then dont whine about the AI!

Why is everybody worrying about a "fix" to this situation? If you don't like axe rushing, don't axe rush.

I personally find cultural victories boring, but I'm not going to say that the Sistine Chapel is overpowered and building it just guarantees a cultural victory. I just don't build it and move on with my army.

It's one strategy of literally hundreds, if not thousands. An axe rush won't guarantee you the game anymore than building the Pyramids, Great Wall or Spiral Minaret will. If it doesn't fit your play style, move along. Don't try to make the game more narrowly focused based on how an individual wants to play. You've got options. Use them.

I have read many comments about how it is "necessary" to rush at the higher levels. I have found that to be the opposite. I play on Huge maps, Emperor level and I would say that the majority of the time I do NOT need to go to early war. Unless the starting situation is really poor, I can usually get around 6-7 cities (wouldn't want any more anyway) that are spaced 3-4 spaces apart consistently.

I think the problem is that many people do not know how to expand quickly enough thus the AIs end up getting most of the land and the human player feels boxed in and is forced to rush to break out and get more cities/land.

The key is first get archery ASAP (since you're focused on rapid expansion, no time for workers and mining and roads to hook up bronze, these might not be easily accessible anyway). Forified archers promoted with easy wins against animals and barbs with City Garrison promotions can withstand anything until swordsmen start coming. Then beeline to bronze ASAP (for whipping out settlers and archers as needed, rotating cities so as you whip a settler you switch it to archer to allow it to grow back in size while the other archer city is now grown and can be building a settler and whipped in turn, etc!

The other key is to make sure you build the first city and all subsequent cities in such a way as to "block" the AI's expansion. Build cities in such a way to enclose and "fence off" territory, that way that land is as good as yours. Oftentimes, this means settling cities NOT in the order of best location but the most strategic location. If a location is poorer but can block off AIs, I'll settle there first and settle at the better location later!

With these methods, it is rare that I cannot build and claim 6-7 cities at Emperor.

I think the problem is that many people do not know how to expand quickly enough thus the AIs end up getting most of the land and the human player feels boxed in and is forced to rush to break out and get more cities/land.

That assumption is pretty ridiculous. REX is not rocket science. You settle near floodplains, whip and chop a lot of settlers and Bob's your uncle. The problem is that any player who does this on gets hammered down with maintenance fees, which are traditionally much lower for the AIs.

That assumption is pretty ridiculous. REX is not rocket science. You settle near floodplains, whip and chop a lot of settlers and Bob's your uncle. The problem is that any player who does this on gets hammered down with maintenance fees, which are traditionally much lower for the AIs.

According to some people, rushing is the only way to get enough land and cities so while there are people that know how to expand rapidly, apparently some people do not. And from my experience, settling in flood plains is not necessary or even desirable. Whipping requires population but you can only whip when you have built up about half the settler yourself so you want a balance of population growth and production.

And in higher difficulty levels where the AIs expand very rapidly due to bonuses, getting 6-7 cities on huge maps consistently isn't actually THAT easy. Whipping is of course key but fencing off territory is also key as that is worth at least a extra 1-2 cities you can found. I don't chop at all for settlers myself. Until I get all the cities I want (or can fenced off the territory to get said cities) I build nothing but archers and settlers (I may build the occasional scout in the very beginning)

I also often build a settler with archer escort and sometimes wait to build the city, especially if it is fenced in and just monitor the AIs to see if a rival has a settler ready to claim that same land, then found the city at the last minute thus saving on maintainence costs. But as for maintainence, how is building your own settlers and your own cities have any difference in city maintaince then conquering said cities thru Axe-rush??? 6-7 cities have the same maintainence whether you built those yourself and conquered them, I'm sure.

I don't think these discussions are all that useful, unless you're ready to create a mod. The core game isn't going to change. An expansion has just been released and we are "stuck" with it. (Not that I mind. It's a great expansion.)

As I said in the other thread, civ has always focused too much on war for my liking. But each version focuses on war a little less. I think we should just be glad there are actually viable alternatives to the rush, even if they are less effective.

As for your suggestions, Ojevind, I think they may result in the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. If they were implemented, conquering a neighbor would turn into a HUGE headache, to the degree that I think many players would eschew war, and civ would turn into a building game. Then you would have posts all over the forum about how building is boring and war is too hard.

The simpler solution, in my view, is to improve the AI's warring capability. It's entirely too predictable. You know, in every game, that if you attack with a stack of Axes as soon as you can, you'll be facing a couple Archers and possibly a couple melee units. The AI has gotten better in this regard, but it's still not quite enough.

I do think that it would be nice if the AI was better at defending cities.

I think the early "rush to get the edge" tactic is very vexing, and I think there should be some kind of cost for it that is a bit bigger than the captured cities going into revolt for a number of turns. I also have a larger quarrel with this, something I should probably have clarified, but I was a bit tired when posting yesterday. The truth of the matter is that I find the almost 100 %inevitability of early (very early, in many cases) jockeying for land, fights over land, annoying and frustrating, and also something that did not use to be part of the Civ experience.

This issue arose specifically with Civ IV, as a result of the game designers trying to deal with a previous issue, namely how to avoid empty spaces. In Civ II, which I still retain fond memories of, parts of the map almost always remained unclaimed, which meant that they generated hordes of barbarians throughout the game. (However, the barbarians were a minor problem, very easy to deal with once you had discovered better weapon technologies.) In Civ III, they tried to solve that by encouraging city spamming; in Civ IV, they found a way for the land to fill up reasonably fast (with normal settings), but the result was that the "jump a neigbour early to get ahead" exploit came into existence. It also meant that as a rule there are inevitable border wars at an early date. We may be stuck with this until Civ V appears, but that does not mean that it is wrong to discuss it, or to suggest ways to make the exploit less advantageous. Because the exploit does exist. Neither is it wrong to suggest that it is all right that one has to face the very real risk of an early war, or early wars, if one lives near Montezuma (or Napoleon, Genghis Khan, so on), but that it shouldn't be something that is practically bound to happen unless one lives next door to Gandhi - whom most human gamers attack because the rewards are so great. OK - if you neglect your army, you will get invaded - that is realistic, that makes sense. But "Your neighbour will hate you unless he is Gandhi or shares your religion"? No.

Some other comments, not directed at you personally, but more as a feedback in general to posts here:

1. Several posters have suggested that I play with an "agggressive AI" setting. But that means fighting wars all the time, and I don't particularly enjoy fighting wars. Some wars are inevitable and part of the game, but I don't want to fight wars all the time, in every game. I find that extremely tedious.

2. I know that it is very advantageous to attack a neighbour early. As a rule, I don't do it, though if Mansa Musa lives next door, I might decide to take him out because he's a real pain as a neighbour. And of course, if Montezuma is your next door neighbour, it is either you or him. However, more generally speaking, I know there are innocuous neighbours which it would be rewarding for me to attack, and I have to ignore that when I am playing because I don't like to attack a civ that has done me no harm. That is to say, I have to ignore the strategy that as a rule makes most sense, and I do find that annoying. It shouldn't be beyond anyone's capacities to understand that.

3. In Civ I and II, close neighbours were sometimes pals who joined forces against outsiders from further off. That didn't always happen, but that it did happen at times was not "unrealistic". To name but one example, when eastern Europe was invaded by the Mongols, the rest of Europe did not respond by dogpiling on Poland and Bohemia. Instead, volunteers from other parts of Europe went east to participate in the fight. In Civ IV, however, neighbouring civilizations almost always detest each other, though that can be ameliorated by trying to ensure that one shares religion and civics with them.

4. The problem is that the competition for land starts almost immediately, and that many civilizations, on discovering you, respond by sending out a settler team to found a city as close to your borders as possible to hem you in. That is not realistic, and it does make for early wars. Some people obviously like this; I do not. I'm comfortable with getting border tensions arising in some games, but I don't want it to be a constant issue, especially not in the early game.

5. One solution to the empty lands problem instead of the "settle the land and fight for it early" variety is to introduce minor civs which arise after some passage of time - in the Middle Ages, for example. Vast areas of barbarian-infested land until then is not at all "unhistorical". The minor civs could be possible to conquer (at a cost) until the early modern age; after that, they would be unassimilable. They would not be standard civs; they would be more like the connected cities built by "the barbarian king". In fact, I suggest that at some point those barb cities turn into minor civs, consisting of, say, no more than three cities, and impossible to assimilate when the game has progressed past a certain point. You could vassalize them, at the usual cost, but have a choice as to whether to go to war over them if another real civ invades them. No doubt one can pick big holes in this suggestion, but it is just a first suggestion, and I do think something of the kind is needed to get rid of the mandatory early fight for land between civs without returning to the huge wilderness areas of Civ II. Aggressive civs is one thing - I accept that Montezuma and Napoleon always want to fight, and that Isabella will hate you if you don't share the same religion with her. What I don't like is that basically, all civs start to fight each other over land and resources back in antiquity, or at best have a negative attitude to each other because "our borders create tensions". That isn't inevitable in real life, certainly not when one has progressed to the Modern Age. The close borders don't create tensions between France and Germany, or the United States and Canada, or, I suppose, between Argentina and Uruguay. There may be minor arguments over fishing rights and the like, but so far, Britain and Iceland have not gone to war over cod catch quotas.

6. This final point is in no way directed at you. It is not directed at anyone who has posted civilly and helpfully. But I do think there has been to much eye-rolling of the "Jesus, this guy doesn't get it" variety, and too many comments on the lines of "You just whine because you suck as a gamer, unlike me, who habitually play on Immortal and start out by giving each opponent two panzers through WB to make the game interesting". The reason I generally don't play on higher levels (I have done it, more than once) is that I don't like the way the game cheats by helping the AI. I don't particularly enjoy levels lower than Noble either, because then the game cheats by helping *me*. The elitist attitude that only people who "like a real challenge and have honed their skills" have a right to post here is guaranteed to drive away people. In fact, yesterday I considered stopping to post here because of the eye-rolling, the brow-slapping and the chest-thumping some posters indulged in.

Regards

1. Several posters have suggested that I play with an "agggressive AI" setting. But that means fighting wars all the time, and I don't particularly enjoy fighting wars. Some wars are inevitable and part of the game, but I don't want to fight wars all the time, in every game. I find that extremely tedious.
This shouldn't be true: the AI will be aggressive in the sense of building lots of units, if I understand Blake correctly. To avoid war, you'll need to build more units than before and work diplomacy actively (possibly using 'sub-optimal' civics/religion to befriend AIs).

Actually, having played extensively at Noble myself, at Continents and Fractal, with most of the leaders, I would have to say that the military option prior to 1 AD is very likely to get you killed unless you had something that makes it great.

Of course, starting as Tokugawa, you HAVE to wage war because that's about the only way you can use your traits. That's a no-brainer.

Many Aggressive Civs are of like disposition. Montezuma is uniquely equipped to engage in Classical era warfare because of his Spiritual/Aggressive tandem, his Sacrificial Altar, and his Jags.

As Rameses, as Peter, as Mansa, as Cyrus and as any number of nonAggressive civs with late game or situational early UUs, I often didn't wage early war simply because the risks were way too great. The RNG have killed enough of my games for me to know that sending 5 axes to kill a nearby capital is a do-or-die venture, and sometimes, it dies!

Especially as Mansa, teching and expansion at Noble is a much more effective strategy, using your culture to box in and flip enemy cities. I won a game with Cultural like that without waging war the entire game!

And yes, it was the most effective. If I had waged early war, I would have alienated the only civ on my continent that was the same religion as me, and as it turns out, I needed him later on for tech trading.

While I would have liked his capital, I already had a lot of cities under my hood, and I was set to flip two more of his. Getting the Capital through war would have slowed my building and teching to a crawl.

I even had early Copper in that game. Yes, I reloaded and tried the Axe Rush. It was hideously bad.

This shouldn't be true: the AI will be aggressive in the sense of building lots of units, if I understand Blake correctly. To avoid war, you'll need to build more units than before and work diplomacy actively (possibly using 'sub-optimal' civics/religion to befriend AIs).

I have played with "Aggressive civs" a couple of times, and in my games they all started out "annoyed" when I met them. Though I daresay you are right that if one builds enough units, most of them won't go to war with you.

Öjevind

I have played with "Aggressive civs" a couple of times, and in my games they all started out "annoyed" when I met them. Though I daresay you are right that if one builds enough units, most of them won't go to war with you.



Did you play those games with BtS? Aggressive AI has been changed and the AIs shouldn't get any more hidden negative attitude modifiers toward the human player.

Did you play those games with BtS? Aggressive AI has been changed and the AIs shouldn't get any more hidden negative attitude modifiers toward the human player.

Yes, and the only possible explanation I can think of, if "aggressive" doesn't mean "more hostile", is that by a sheer fluke I had managed to become militarily strong by the time I encountered them on that continent, and that that made them upset.

Interesting thread relating to a similar topic. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=234263

It would appear that the aggressiveness of the AI has been dumbed down due to players requests but that the option is still there in a custom screen.

I still maintain that the game is comfortably winnable without rushing, at least upto Monarchy level but it all depends on the circumstances. I get the feeling those who rely on rushing can only win if they rush and probably start over if they don't get an ideal starting location. Personally I like to play on regardless, and I don't have a set strategy for the entire game other than trying to work out what cities I can SE.

I also feel players probably give up too easily. In the past if you were miles behind it was pretty much a lost cause. But now with the no tech brokering option and espionage you can be a long way behind and with some clever tactical decisions to come back.

Finally, as I've said elsewhere, any aggressive action will almost always pay some short term dividends. It's happened throughout the history of the human race. Just look at Germany in WWII.

But the beauty of Civ is that you can make it YOUR game by playing anyway YOU choose and no way is right, or wrong. If you play on Marathon and Huge, like I do, then rushing isn't as powerful as a standard map and normal speed.

But then those who rely on rushing will probably say that Marathon and Huge are too boring. They want to have it both ways. They want a game where they can win comfortably, under their ideal conditions, without it being too easy. As the article above says though, the level you should be playing isn't one where you can win EVERY time. If I win one out of every three games I start I know I am at the level I should be playing. If I start to win two out of every three games then I know it's borderline for me to step up a level. If I win almost everytime I play then I know it's time to step up a level.

If you're going to rush, have the courtesy of letting the AI know by turning on Aggressive AI. Be a wolf amongst the lambs if you want, but it's fairer to be a wolf amongst wolves.This is from the link Moonlit Knight posted. I think it's an excellent point. I know you've stated you'd prefer not to try this as an option because it would involve fighting too many wars. I've not tried it yet myself though so I can't comment on how it plays (It sounds like we have a similar play style. I prefer a peaceful noble game; I don't play for any specific challenge, only for fun; I generally only go to war for revenge).

Whilst I also know you didn't appreciate comments made by others about the difficulty you play on, in some ways they are right. If you're playing at a level that is too easy for you (as I am) why are you surprised that the AI cannot cope with a rush tactic? It seems to me you want the AI to be something it's not, which is not to say it doesn't need improving, just that you may need to make sacrifices in your play style rather than expecting the game to play how you want it to.

I have to agree with Moonlit Knight. If you're giving up on games you can't win militarily, and then complain that the game is too war-oriented, then you don't have a leg to stand on, since you're junking those games which explicitly are the ones which cannot be "rushed."

I've won some pretty crappy starts, but it wasn't easy, and it wasn't overnight, and obviously, you can't rush those.

I always thought city conquest should only be available after researching iron working. Until then its wars of harrasment. Now some people say early wars for land happened. But given how low in the world tech tree I am not sure the idea of national absorption was a fully developed human concept when you just figured out mining and road building. The "greek empire" that extended to india and egypt wasnt "greek" it was alexander. And when alexander died the idea that it was greek didnt hold much water. It fell to his henchmen and they fell to the culture of their sorrounding neighborhoods. But greek didnt stick.

I think nonrazing conquest of cities should begin with researching swordsman ship. And before that if you take a city it gets destroyed.

You could one up it by saying conquering a city with swordsman researched is really a weak form of vassalization in the early world and a still later tech introduces the idea that your nation has spread to other lands by military might.

There are far more overpowered things than an axe rush. What counters a CR3 Grenadier, in a stack with defensive units. No collateral needed Cg 3 redcoats no problem. If you dont want to rush don't.

Some Ai will occasionally rush, even in warlords it happened, rarely but it still happened.

An early rush can be really costly sometimes. It's usually an easy way to double your power, but sometimes it can backfire.

I think they really need to fix the early choking strategy, not