Anyone else find that wars in the late game seem way easier than the early game wars? I am playing Epic speed, Monarch, and large maps.

I thought the AI was supposed to be more competent in late game wars? The AI spams transports and destroyers, but doesn't seem to understand that there is absolutely no reason to have more transports than to have land units. An abundance of naval units will not help the AI defend its cities. But the problem is not just with the AI.

The problem is also due to siege weapons. Catapults are much less effective than they were in Warlords, which I think is necessary, but the cost of catapults needs to be lowered to match the nerf. Furthermore, it is so difficult to lower the city's defenses if they have walls and especially castles that it takes several turns to reduce the defenses to 0, unless you use a spy to support city revolt. Once you reach cannons and artillery, however, it is so easy to reduce the city's defenses to 0 that you only need a few siege weapons.

In the early wars, I usually conquer a Civ or two over the course of thousands of years. In the later years, I can conquer several civilizations in maybe 20 years.

Thoughts?

Actually, those Transports almost certainly do have units in them, it's just that in BTS they removed your ability to see in them. Trust me, from personal experience, the AI is absurdly good at naval invasions now...

No, they're keeping extra transports in their cities. I know the AI is good at naval invasions, but when they have 20 transports in their cities and only 5 or 6 land units, it doesn't do them much good, does it? I can tell the transports are empty because after I destroy the 5 or 6 land units, I conquer the city, and the empty transports disappear.

Here is a screen shot of the abundance of transports left in the cities:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/92967/Civ4ScreenShot0406.JPG

Here is one of those naval invasions that some of you brag about, the Khmer took this city from the Arabs, then subsequently left its massive stack of units in this crappy city, while its major cities were unprotected:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/92967/Civ4ScreenShot0397.JPG

Oh, right, okay I see now. Yeah, the problem is that the AI puts a new emphasis on units--which is good--but that it doesn't realize it can also disband units. So instead of disbanding those 20 Transports after the invasion and freeing up resources for another 20 units, it keeps them around and doesn't actually do anything.

I suspect those transports started out as galleons. In my most recent game Wang has more galleons than ground units plus caravels and frigates. Far too many considering I am his main threat and I am on the main land mass with him. We are at war and I've taken 3 of his cities. I have enough EPs to see what he's building in some cities. Instead of building up to date ground units he desperately needs he's still building random junk like more galleons and a temple.

I think the AI build strategy needs to take account of the likely size of its invasion fleets. It seems to build at least 3 times too many galleons and transports and would be much more formidable if they were frigates or destroyers and especially more riflemen or artillery. Hopefully the anticipated patch will address this.

I'm sure it's not true, but the old units seem to have more effective counters than the more modern ones.

I like medieval battles, they last longer. Quite often, a captured city will have popped its borders by the time I have amassed troops at the next enemy city for bombardment and capture. Where as, last night, I had a late war game and at the end of the brief ethiopian war I was left with a total of 9 cities all waiting for them to culture pop!

Its all about the speed of your army I suspect.

I guess it reflects life 'tho? How long did they lay seige to Troy before they resorted to the old horse scam? 20 years? Longer?

In the modern age, city walls and castles and defensive lines (sorry, France ;) ) are ineffectual. Cities fall in days and are liberated as quickly.

Yes, that was the point I was trying to make. I think it is realistic, however I personally preffer to have two early wars.

I suspect those transports started out as galleons. In my most recent game Wang has more galleons than ground units plus caravels and frigates.

Close to what actually occurs, but 9 times out of ten those transports started as galleys which floated around in circles for litteraly thousands of years, doing nothing, and maybe moved a settler or two.

Yes, but spamming galleys is no better than spamming galleons or transports. The problem remains. :)

I wonder if he was ever threatened by Privateers. When the AI is harassed by a stack of Privateers, the AI will spam the naval unit with the highest attack rating but won't actually attack the stack until it has way too many of that type. If in this case he was spamming Galleons, when he upgraded, they all became Transports.

I think the problem is just that the AI doesn't know when it has enough naval units or not and so it continually builds them in coastal cities, at the expense of other and more useful things. I've noticed through spying on opponents that they'll continue building battleships/destroyers/transports in the late game without concern for how many they already have.

I do not think they know the difference between land units and naval units. As a result, sometimes they'll build naval units to increase their power rating even though they already have a powerful navy, but not as powerful of a land based army.

I think that might be the reason. The AI wants to increase its power rating so it builds more ships and then when they get out of date it saves gold and upgrades them to boost its power rating again. The part of the AI that controls what it builds needs to have a concept of a national fleet a bit like it has a central reserve army. Somehow it needs to balance the amount of building effort it puts into the fleet against the army.

There is plainly little purpose in the AI building 20 galleons when its entire land forces are less than 60 and most of those are garrisons. A human player might build 8 galleons if he had an invasion force of 24 land units but the AI doesn't seem to assemble an invasion force. Although I suspect that the large number of galleons might be something to do with a fear of privateers as someone has mentioned in this thread. In my game however, there has been no privateer activity by me or the AI and still the huge fleet of galleons was built. It would be better for it to build excess caravels to combat the privateers which can at least be upgraded to frigates at a later time.