How do you defeat runaway civs on other continents?

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Mar 31, 2012
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Like some general advice on this. No matter which civ I try one problem I always encounter is I'm unable to contain the runaway civ on the other landmass(es) and that gives them a tech lead which despite my best I'm just playing catch up. I want to make them cry on their own land but I just can't! I'm pretty sure there's something I'm not doing right - I just don't know what. And I'm still on Emperor! :cry:

If you like to read the long text:
Spoiler :
I'm training on one civ at a time to get used to its tech flow, battle strat. Currently playing Korea, I almost always tech Pottery -> Writing to get OB asap unless there's a lot of mining luxs in which case I'd tech Mining first. Then Philosophy.

Building wise, I'd rush for GL right after Writing as I understand that Korea gets a RA like boost for building it, free tech aside. By this point I'd probably be getting the free settler and worker from Liberty and popping the second city. Then depending on what neighbors I have - if I have India or Washington who are generally peacable, from Philosophy then I continue onto Education plopping the free GS/GE from the Liberty finisher, HS, ND/PT etc.

Spoiler :
A nice thing about Korea is if you want to get the Liberty finisher asap and for that you run temple specialists (snarzberry's advice), you also get a bit of beakers too which is nifty. Not to mention another RA-like boost the moment you finish NC :)

But one thing that really bothers me when playing Korea is you will almost never get a peaceful neighbor - you'll get the likes of Napoleon, Oda, Genghis, Monty who always want to DOW you just because they have 8 warriors. That forces me to beeline to Physics right after Philosophy which results in getting it rather late, around T120 something. If I have excess cash I can just buy them if not I'd unfortunately have to hard build. But it's still early enough on Emperor I guess, to 1-hit those swordsmen and around this time I'd be able to dominate my continent with 4-5 of those hwachas.

Then it starts to spiral downwards when I beeline to Astronomy and send scouts to find the other civs, turtle ships not being able to enter ocean hexes. *sigh* I'd most definitely find one civ that is starting to get runaway and at this point I can't do anything much about it. I have those guarded, hostile civs waiting to DOW me the moment I draw hwachas away and if I continue building hwachas to DOW the other landmass I can't get my Oxford university, workshops, etc. So it's like if I want to fight an endless war I can't develop, but if I don't get those universities my hwachas will not last long enough before everyone else starts churning out riflemen, and the other landmass will soon be run over by a dominant boss. :cry:
 
The best way? Get Atomic Theory and Nuclear Fusion, get uranium and nukes (plus Manhattan Project) ASAP, make sure you can get carriers out running with atomics.

What is your goal though? Stopping that runaway from pushing through Part 2 of Apollo? If that's the case, then just keep atomizing his capital and neighboring production cities. It'll be better if you can get Nuclear Missiles because a trio of them landing on a city or two tiles apart will vaporize it forever. Make sure you have follow up land forces (supported by upgraded Bombers or preferably, Stealth) to nab his capital if its along the coastline



As for being Top Dog (Dark Lord) of your own little continent, try this strategies:

Research Animal Husbandry. Beeline Ironworking.

Meanwhile, your capital build order should be Scout, Monument, Warrior, Settler, Settler (if you think you can manage the unhappiness ASAP), Granary/Worker or if Writing is researched, Library... try adding in some more warriors if you still only have two.

Take Liberty. Take free settler and settle near capital but aimed at direction of the first civ you want to annihilate. Save your third settler a little until after Ironworking reveals to you Iron sources, preferably those 6 iron tiles. Then settle on or near them, get worker to mine. You should have produced some warriors by now, minimum 4, and a nice cash stack to upgrade them to Swords.

Rush your first target civ, take him out until his last crappy city or if you are feeling evil, take him out completely. If he settled more than four cities, then take two, peace, tech to Pikes OR Longswords, then go back in and finish him off. If there's two or more civs, play each other out. Hell, since this is Emperor, go after all their capitals in sequential order of preference (or proximity). Once you've lobotomized them and their dreams of world conquest and get all those roads and trade posts running, and gotten the world's first caravel to go meet everyone else, you should have a pretty large base to go after the other continent post-Atomic Theory.

Don't forget the happiness issues tho. Play around with avoid growth in production cities when see fit.

With any luck and Brother Atom, you should have a starship bound for Alpha Centauri... by 1955AD the latest.:)
 
Easy/easiest if somewhat cheesy way is to sell crappy puppets on your own continent & drain the runaway's money and use that money to ally his CS neighbours. Aesthetics of Patronage helps this a lot if you can spare a couple of policies - usually it pays off nicely.
With some luck you piss him/her off enough to avoid DoW'ing him/her but watching he'll eventually DoW you & by starting a war with half a dozen CSs won't be a good start for eternal frienship with other civs.

Less cheesier ways include the 'ally a neighbouring CS' part in some variations but you'll need cash for sure.

G
 
When this happens in my games (I usually play Emperor as well), I tend to just ignore the runaway civ after conquering my whole continent, then focus on tech and squeeze out a science victory way ahead of the AI. On emperor, even the biggest AI:s usually can't keep up with a tech-focused human player.

If that is not an option, I do what most others have suggested. Beeline a-bombs, get a couple of carriers and nuke the crap out of the enemy AI. A naval invasion pre-atomic bombs is usually annoying, but not really difficult to pull off. The easiest way to do it, in my opinion, is to send over your troops once you've taken out everyone on your continent. Send them to a City State on the other continent, surround it completely and then DoW it and take it out in a single turn. This will allow you to have a base of operations where you can upgrade units, and if you choose to annex it you can also rush buy units if needed.
 
This is usually what happens with continents maps. AI's overseas are beating each other and one ends up to be stronger. You have no control over what's going on there. The big question is whether you need this control. You can land on its continent with massive army and fight the runaway on par to the stalemate in the better case scenario. Another and more effective option is to use its strength to your own benefit. To maintain friendly relationship as long as you can, use it as trading and Research Agreement partner (on emperor it's always nice to have AI with cash), beeline nukes/stealth bombers and then crush it completely in single turns. Still cheesy, but sort of enforced by game design.
 
yeah, there is no problem in civ 5 that a dozen logistics stealth bombers cannot solve.

QFT

and my avatar isn't chosen randomly.

G
 
yeah, there is no problem in civ 5 that a dozen logistics stealth bombers cannot solve.

True.dat

For earlier war, Frigates are also very powerful if you have the production (or ideally money to upgrade triremes).

I like to beeline toward them on maps with a lot of coastal cities, as you can take out their coastal cities (even better if it's the capital) with just a ton of Frigates + scouts to cap the city.

You might not be able to hold the city, but just getting it and razing it still cripples them heavily if you cannot send enough land units over to keep it.
 
Other folks covered the obvious solutions. I look forward to the expansion when we have melee ships like destroyers who can take cities. Makes these situations a bit simpler.
 
Other folks covered the obvious solutions. I look forward to the expansion when we have melee ships like destroyers who can take cities. Makes these situations a bit simpler.

Or difficult now that the AI can easily come over and take yours out too.
 
Get one of his cities, annex it and buy every single defensive upgrade there is. Then keep buying one unit every turn. (Mostly trebuchet and tried to get artillery asap.)

That's how I beat the runaway civ Korea in my latest match.
I got riflemen tech maybe 5 turns ago, landed and scouted his land. He had artillery and infantry. (Not to forget he was 17 techs in lead.)
He luckily had one coastal city that I managed to take (despite it's 40 deference against 2 riflemen and 1 trebuchet). From there on out it was easy as I had a huge income of 700 every turn, if you can't beat in power you beat in numbers.
Citadels also help a lot. Try to save up great generals for that.
 
I usually ignore him until I establish total dominance over my continent. Then I tech up, start building a decent navy to protect my units as they embark through the ocean, and then fun starts.

Took me like 30-40 turns just set up one such scenario, it was just crazy long (Epic speed)
 
nah, decent navy isn't really a requirement, unless by decent you mean 3 nuke subs, 3 destroyers, 2 BBs and 2 missile cruisers, all with 2 or 3 promotions.

snarzberry said:
yeah, there is no problem in civ 5 that a dozen logistics stealth bombers cannot solve.


^^What one really needs is a dozen or more Logistics Stealth Bombers, backing as few land units as possible (with a steady stream of replacements to keep up with the losses).
 
Having the same issue.

King, Continents, Large, Epic. 8 total players with 16 CS.

Tried with Songhai, Mongolia, England and now Babylon and it's like a broken record. By about 1650-1700 a civ on the other continent has virutally wiped out 2-3 others and has a 300+ point lead (with my Babylon game it was over 500; it was the Inca I think).

I tried staying friends but that just leads to him overrunning me in the modern era as he will have a 10 tech lead and get nukes 50 turns before I do.

I have tried buying off his allies but that just costs me übercash and since he's getting 400 gpt he just buys them back.

I tried attacking him with a fleet of 6 frigates and landing cannon and musketmen to try to take a coastal city but he just annihilated me with artillery and infantry.

I'm tempted to change the map type to see if I get a different result. :mad: :confused:
 
Having the same issue.

King, Continents, Large, Epic. 8 total players with 16 CS.

I'm tempted to change the map type to see if I get a different result. :mad: :confused:

Nah, continents is a good map to learn especially if its on King. I played most of my games on Continents before I tried the Pangaea madhouse.

What you need to do is to beeline your own nukes and go about it in three ways -

1) Find out where his capital city is. Might be quite close to the coast, which will make things easier.

2) Rack up a goldstack that's at least over 11,000g.

3) Grab as many units as you have and position them on his coastal borders. Aggressively escort them with your naval units.

3a) Carriers - you should have at least 4 carriers, all filled with a mixed of promoted Bombers and Fighters/Jet Fighters. If half of them is filled with nothing but atomic bombs, go ahead too but make sure you can rushbuy those atomics cheaply and rebase them asap whenever your carrier has run dry of them.

b) Nuclear Missiles. These are the big boys that you want. They are hellishly expensive to purchase and take a long time to hard build unless your best production cities are 20 pop and above. But just having three of them stacked in a missile cruiser would allow you to eliminate three cities literally (as in, make them disappear permanently). Make sure the target cities are three tiles close to each other so they can be caught in overlapping blast radius. Cities with 4 pop or less require 1 nuclear missile to eliminate, above 4 pop requires 2 or 3 ICBMs.

c) Buy off the CSes that still remain on runaway's continent right before you launch your surprise attack. That way he or she will be forced into fighting a many front war and allow you more slack when spearheading for the target capital.
 
I have just won a military victory with France on King. My adversary was a runaway Iroqious whose score was almost doubling me. I had rationality policy and many great scientists to lightbulb techs so I was only a few techs behind. Their capital was not on shore but not far away. I amassed an invasion force of 2 BBs, 2 DDs, 2 CVs with 5 FatBoys and 2 modern armor, 4 mech inf, 3 katyushas and 3 great generals. I nuked their coastal city nearest to capital and captured without losses. Then I nuked capital 2 times, bombarded with katyushas and moved in with mech inf. Bamm! Their capital is mine. Last civ to hold its capital was Egypt. I repeated the process. I had a military victory.
 
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