Advice Please: How To Deal with a Runaway Civ (BNW)

So what do you do when another civ is 2 eras ahead, leading in tech, has a way more advanced military and is in the lead for culture and tourism?

In my previous game, I quit--clearly I didn't play the game well enough to keep up.

In my current game, I attacked a nearby civ who was starting to lead (still early on though, in the Medieval era) and have almost wiped them out. This war started before I made contact with the other continent and I find the diplo hit is not that bad.
(Question: now that I have made contact, does each city I raze/puppet/take over increase the diplo hit even more?)

Now the Maya (I'm England) is starting to pull ahead in culture, science. Is my best bet to go attack them too? They're very far away and I can't cross the ocean yet, so of course I'd wait until I could do that.

Or is the answer simply to play better and try to keep up?

How do you deal with a runaway civ?

What difficulty level is this.

I can only speak from my Emperor experience so far, but I won a game (on points) having 3 Civs better than me in every aspect: China, Egypt and Venice. Venice actually had over 15% lead over me in tech in late game. But I've never been two eras behind anyone at least I wasn't aware of that.

Anyway, what I did was become friends with Egypt (all green diplomacy and DoF throughout the game) in order to make them fight China on that continent and expand my empire in mid game by conquering a relatively weak neihgbor civ. Then I could build up a better army and attack Venice across the ocean, who has assimilated 5 extra cities, 3 of which grew to almost 40 population. I was not able to use carriers and bombers because they had anti-air units fortified everywhere and my destroyers were duying to their submarines. But I parked battleships and later missile cruisers, pushed rocket artilleries to the other side of the world and later managed to build a squad of XCOM. Eventually their 200+ defense cities fell.. So when you have civ who beat you in everything all you can do is summon an army that will put them back into the stone age. (Don't forget to ban nukes in world congress)

Other players on here criticized me for lack of infrasturcture, policies and diplomatic relationships with some other civs, so I would think about that also. But I'd definitely suggest having a strong military and maybe a defensive alliance with another strong civ

I'm playing on king.

Thanks for the input!

If you use the InfoAddict mod you will see how many techs you are behind. Generally the rule is if they are 2 eras ahead then that is probably an insurmountable lead.

War(with allies) is the most effective tool against a runaway. For diplomatic runaways the civ needs to be eliminated(not by you but an ally). for all other types of runaway you can leave them with one poor city.

robin1234 said:

So what do you do when another civ is 2 eras ahead, leading in tech, has a way more advanced military and is in the lead for culture and tourism?

In my previous game, I quit--clearly I didn't play the game well enough to keep up.

In my current game, I attacked a nearby civ who was starting to lead (still early on though, in the Medieval era) and have almost wiped them out. This war started before I made contact with the other continent and I find the diplo hit is not that bad.
(Question: now that I have made contact, does each city I raze/puppet/take over increase the diplo hit even more?)

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It depends partially on what era we're talking about. If they are in Medieval and you're still in Ancient, don't sweat it. If they are in Information and you're still Industrial, it may be time to give it up.

A lot also depends on your particular situation. You described one in which you'd just done a lot of warring. It may be that after 10-20 turns, your double-sized empire is going to be enough to catch up (especially on King, where the AI isn't going to win before turn 400).

England is a very good civ for this situation. England has extra spy which is great for stealing techs to catch up in science and once you get navigation you can just roll over every coastal cities with you UU.
Another thing you could do is to pay the leader to go to war with his neighbors or pay his neighbors to go to war with the leader. As war hurts regardless win or lose, he'll need to put production on military instead if working science and economy. And if he takes too much cities his science and culture will slow down as well, as having more cities increase the cost of each tech and policy (which is why you don't want to take too much cities when you go to war, plus happiness is always an issue)

You did the right thing when you quit. There's no other way to come back on someone who's superiorly in technology. You can try stealing a few technologies if you want but that won't get you to catch up with the 2 decade ahead technology leading ai.

Use carriers with nukes in a sneak attack to cap every coastal city he has in a single turn. Doesn't matter if he has a tech lead, you'll do an enormous amount of damage to his economy even if he takes the cities back next turn. Enough nukes can solve any problem, really.

Also, work toward improving your early game play, as no AI should run away from a human player on king. Maybe if 22 of them were all on a team together... That actually sounds like a fun experiment.

Hey don't sweat it. In real life the Mayans were a runaway civ and sent off to Alpha Centuri around 1400 AD or turn 215 or so (on standard). Your best bet is to colonialize India and inhabit the other continents, also, keep your eye on Washington, I hear he might rebel from you.

Magma_Dragoon said:

Use carriers with nukes in a sneak attack to cap every coastal city he has in a single turn.

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AI doesn't like nukes and by the time he catches up to the tech needed for that, AI will definitely have those unless nukes have been banned, which is only possible when you have enough votes in world congress (so you can propose it and pass it yourself for 100% effectiveness)

Two eras ahead??? Start a new game and in your new one focus more on science.

... you can still win diplo victory... no need to quit... if they're two eras ahead chances are the WC will start having world leader votes soon enough.

Focus on gold, forget science, finish commerce if your faith is high and buy merchants. Also get freedom's +4 influence per trade route. Then wait for the runaway to enter info era.
Go to war and liberate dead civs if there are any, ally up CS and Dow everyone to prevent them from being taken over just before the vote...

on King I don't think AIs are that competitive for CS, nor will they have any significant amount of gpt either.

Arrange for other Civs to keep a runaway in a constant state of war with other people. Buy up every city state on his border and DoW him with the Allied Forces and watch his Great Works be stolen as he is slowly erased from the map.

fallout3dc said:

Hey don't sweat it. In real life the Mayans were a runaway civ and sent off to Alpha Centuri around 1400 AD or turn 215 or so (on standard). Your best bet is to colonialize India and inhabit the other continents, also, keep your eye on Washington, I hear he might rebel from you.

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why is nobody commenting on my brilliant comment here??

fallout3dc said:

why is nobody commenting on my brilliant comment here??

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I will! It's pretty good haha

fallout3dc said:

why is nobody commenting on my brilliant comment here??

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I laughed with you and then I meant to post, but I got DoW'ed by Monty and IT WAS ON!

After just a few games and previous experience with civ 4 it is not that hard to defeat King difficulty - that's what I'm doing right now. Pangea map is best suitable for a nice game, I think. Unless you're surrounded by too many neighbors