I'm an Emperor player, I win most of the time but Immortal is still a bit too hard for me yet. Recently I've started to annoy myself by building too few units. Again and again and again I get declared on by the AI with my pants down.

So I come here, to get some tips on how to get rid of my skeleton army habit. Please help me! :p

Focus more on production rather than commerce. That way chances are you feel you will get your most wanted buildings out in addition to making enough units. Basically more irrigation and whipping and less cottages.

I would say that you still want the cottages, just whipping less oftne, which is probably good so you don't run out of smiley faces for your angry faces.

check the power rating

I'm no Immortal player, but from what I hear, you probably want half your cities building units at any given time.

I'm no Immortal player, but from what I hear, you probably want half your cities building units at any given time.

Not really. Paying for units when being in a safe environment diplomacy-wise is a bad call. You only want units when you need them and thus ideally (imho) produce them in bursts. Having a lot of units sitting around in peace-time is very expensive and unnecessary most of the time.

Make sure you settle a production-heavy city as one of your first three cities. By the time you'll be needing an army, you'll be wondering what to do with all the hammers coming from that city....

If you build too many units. you need to go to war.
so...build too many units and you have no choice but to go to war...
of course even this can backfire...
i had one 'memorable' situation when i was running 0% research and still had a -30 deficit...
i ended up laying waste to my entire continent then deleting my beloved axemen (those with more than 3 promotions could live, everyone else was sacrificed to pay the great accountant in the sky)

less cottages.
BLASPHEMY!!
Just check WHEOOHRN like maniac, every 3 to 5 turns on EVERYONE. If someone is on, check if you're a viable target(Personality charts, power, etc.) and if you are, units EVERYWHERE. reinforce your borders, possibly your ports.

It's much more efficient to determine who you'd be a viable target for, then check WHEOOHRN on just those guys.

You're already a high level player OP, so it's hard to give advice other than "build more units", which you already know. Maybe set yourself a benchmark of power rating vs the AIs that have a chance to DoW you and always stay above it? Maybe one like always be at # of units your cities can support for free? I don't know. I don't do it but if I were having trouble with troop counts I probably would (aka if I wasn't massing them to take something out, or fine-tuning diplo so that I could get a tech that lets me do it).

The latest bug mod (3.0) has a new military adviser screen that is awesome and tells who is WHEOOHRN really easily.

Build more units.

Build fewer units.

Bribe the AIs to immolate each other.

Sick the warmongers on the peace mongers and vice versa. Many times you need not even actually bribe for the DoW. It is enough to bribe (or spy) someone next to Izzy to swap their religions. You can also make much more effective use of defensive units like early xbows by gifting them to civs getting rolled by Shaka and the like. You don't pay upkeep and Shaka gets to cry as his hoards of classical melee get eaten alive.

I would be a far better immortal/deity player if I could better manage the diplomacy; building more units is just too risky of falling behind in tech and infrastructure.

Keep your units upgraded. A rifleman is worth far more than an axeman in the power rankings.

Keep your units upgraded. A rifleman is worth far more than an axeman in the power rankings.

But is it more cost effective to upgrade or just make new?

The AI is hard-coded to have x chance to declare at x diplomacy level with x power rating, given its personality -----> if you can somehow master these, you can use the minimal amount of military and avoid getting killed, until you want to go on the offensive, and then go into burst mode as Rusten suggests and own up. Actually, I'd bet he's quite good at that.

I have a pretty good feel for diplomacy and rarely get declared on when I don't want to be (it happens though - I should study the AI charts myself a bit), but my raw micro still leaves plenty to be desired, judging by Rusten's walk-throughs (although comparing one's output to deity players is a bit :lol: to begin with, I want to be there eventually so one way or another I'm going to have to learn it.......the patience of careful micro that is. I do have BUG now though ;)).

I didn't necessarily mean "buy upgrades," I meant "keep your units up-to-date." Deciding whether to buy upgrades or to build replacements will obviously change from game to game (and at different points in one game).

And where can I find these AI charts you speak of?

Thanks everyone. I think I just needed a good kick in the butt. Some good tips here.