I often come up against this "problem"......any advice?

Usally I try to fight some sort of early war , recover through currency and COL then work towards construction.....I hate fighting without seige

Ok so I get to construction , start building heaps of seige and plan my attack

But then just around the corner is machinery and feudalism....so i try to build longbows while I move my axes , swords etc to the front (I like to suicide large numbers of ancient units while loading my borders with new stuff)

But I`m going to need horse archers to deal with enemy seige so up go stables and I start to build them if I can swap for the tech

But now guilds and engineering are not too far away.... better wait and build a few knights, trebs and pikes

And just to make it worse , as I start to empty my border cities of old stuff and build the long bows I start to approach the happy caps..........better get to drama before I start my attack.

Next thing I know Ive been building troops for ages and some of the "new stuff" is already looking old (HA`s , cats , etc)

I often think its better to start fighting earlier with what you have (as long as you have cats) and just re-inforce with the new stuff.

Any advice? in particular skipping some of the above military techs and maybe a whole new tech path i could consider?

My current game is emporer , large pangea , low sea level , normal speed , Cyrus , agressive AI..........So peace is not much of an option

Units obsoleting before you had time to build those is a common problem... Plan ahead, when and aganst who you go to war, to give (make) you a window of oportunity long enought to get some use of your units. The key point here is not if the units are obsolete for you - as long as they beat your opponents stuff they are fine...
Stick to your plan. If you prepared, and have some units that can compete with the planed target, make your move, even if you could build new ones.
Try to beeline units with long lifespan (Maces and Jumbos hold a while... Later Rifles) - if you plan to make war with those.

You might also want to try epic speed. Helps a tiiiny bit.

Maybe try a few marathon or epic speed games. Otherwise, for your particular scenario, ignoring dropping in longbows if you are going to go offensive. Another possibility is to raise money to upgrade your older units and in doing so slow down your research. If it is going to take longer to get the next military tech you may decide to just go with what you have.

Thanks heaps for that.....I like what you say about units being obsolete,as you say , its not obsolete if it beats THEM up

So ignore building the Long bows , slow the tech so I discover the new one just as Im finishing building my current new unit , and upgrade more often so I can speed through the process?

Kinda, although I'm really just throwing out thoughts since I play marathon and thus don't really run into this too often (since military era changes occur over the course of a day, not a half-hour).

Well... currency + CoL before construction is half the issue. Get constuction first and build/whip your army while you tech currenct and CoL so you can support the citied you're about to take.

Beeline the military tech, then get the economic techs while you're warring.

I`m sure if I avoid those techs Im gonna go flat broke.........but I dont have a problem with going broke if I can raze and pillage......In this game after my first war I was in the negative for gold at zero science and only my savings and some specialists kept me going

any advice on other methods of keeping my head above water if I avoid these techs?

thanks everyone for the good advice too

Try creating and nurturing a proper military force, that's small but highly promoted. Use your capital city to generate them, and settle all Great Generals in it to ensure higher and higher promotions. The capital will produce the elite city attack units you use in your early axe rush, so use your other cities to produce attacking cannon fodder to soften up targets and defence units until you discover cats. Once you have cats your secondary cities should just produce cats and defence units, (no attackers).

You can win a war against an AI who have better military tech, PROVIDING you have looked after your military units, given them experience, not wasted them in battle and upgraded them as you go along. I just took out Genghis playing immortal / marathon, using elite Rifle, against his Infantry. I was able to do this, because the rifle I used had city attack promotions gained when they were axe / sword / mace, and I had looked after them like gold dust.

Suiciding a mob of obsolete units = bad. A small force of elite units costs far less than a huge mob of military, and it's fun trying to keep them alive, as you will learn a lot about civ combat in the process. You can't avoid losing elite units in combat, but you can minimise the chances by learning to only use them at the right place and the right time.

Regards - Mr P

You fight wars with the units you have, not with the units you wished you had.

Scout out the enemy and only tech and build the units you need. Your army doesn't need to be invincible to every other unit. It just needs to win the battles it will actually fight.