Early wars impossibble?

Now you get gold from trade routes so it's hard when you are at war right from the start. There should be some ancient era building for some +5 or so gold like the National Treasury was. At the beginning you have no trade routes so you have no income. If I play Huns and build HA and BR right from the start and go warmongering I am basically without money. Which is bad - maybe some Honor policy to field an army - cause now I just go bankrupt.

I played Assyria and went warmongering and got -23gpt and I could save my self only by pillaging about 150 gold when conquering a city.

I just think some change should be done to make early wars feasible.

There should be a change yes, but you don't necessarily go bankrupt when you pop a DoW on somebody early on.

Even on immortal (which I usually play on) you can field a lethal hunnic army of about ~5 horse archers and ~3 rams and have a cash flow of more or less -3 gpt. The start jolt from meeting city states should more than cover you for the duration of the war. In addition, if you don't declare war on every civ you meet, you can send routes to the other civ.

I was able to warmonger early with Carthage because of instant internal trade routes. For my entire game I never needed an external trade route to keep my economy going. I doubt that is the case with other civs though.

I would propose that ancient era buildings and units have no maintenance costs, that way you don't really start to see costs that need trade routes until the classical era where the player will have a choice to stay technologically relivant or continue to zerg.

I have done it once but it wasn't my plan. Had 2x cities with several gold producing tiles. Both on the coast. Conquered 3 cities each from Songhai and Babylon.

Some key factors were:

- Neither was building a military. Babylon was all in on science and Songhai was sending out missionaries all over the continent (which is why I had to kill him).

- I had coastal trade routes to city states due to my coastal capital needing early sea resources.

- Several spice resources and other gold generating tiles.

- We were the only 3 civs on the continent. No war mongering penalty.


At then end though I was still down -18 happy and losing about 20 gpt. Used the gold from sacking cities and a merchant from my first puppet to right the ship. Even had to bully some city states to get some gold.

i've found a good strategy that's new (to me at least) :

instead of Early Warring in the traditional sense by building an army of some size then sending it to the target, all you really need is 2-3 units to send to the target capital but do not attack or sit on its borders. instead you just wait for the civ to kick out a settler. usually the settler will have an escort but your units should be able to kill it before it retreats or founds a city. the key is to kill the escort fast in one turn.

once the initial settler is dead, i find that the target civ takes forever to produce anything or grow, and by this point you could have produced one or two more units which will be enough to go kill the enemy capital. this can be done as soon as you start the game. it is only a small bit situational, in that in the 2 games where it's worked beautifully for me i did have a scout that popped an advanced weapons hut. that archer-scout is just awesome.

I think its fine; I have successfully warred early in numerous BNW games. Early meaning Ancient&Classical eras / pre turn 100 (Standard speed Ancient era start).

And I've had AIs run at me with 15+ units also pre turn 100. Huns, France, Siam, England... lots of warmongering punks. On standard Emperor settings and it isn't by any means *common* but if I had to estimate games where the AI came at ME early, I'd say about a half dozen times out of roughly 30 games. Seeing as that doesn't count games I warred early or games where AI fought other AI early I would say I'm still seeing plenty of early war.

I find it extremely difficult. On ancient era wars you have the gold from CS you discover, and a trade route, I think you can skip some buildings, but granary, library can't be forgotten in competitive play. You need about 6-7 units at least to conquer another civ, I guess if you are lucky you can get some gold from CS without much delay, and pillage can help a little, but if you sit on a -12 you have a problem maintaining the army by itself. You will want to keep the money flowing slowly so you can buy a library or a settler to not fall behind too much.

On policies, liberty is the way to go in my experience, tradition could help with the money you get from capital and free buildings you wont maintain, and honor is just stupid for conquest as it is.

Next the we enter in the problem of the warmonger penalty you get if you take out 2 of 3 cities to say something from a civ, say bye-bye to your trades, warmonger. On classical you can get some money from markets, but not much at all, only to half-pay that army that will grow in maintenance costs, but you will want iron and construction, specially the latter due to how effective ranged is, markets are out of the research line.

On medieval, it can be done much easier, but all civs with ancient/classical UUs will have they early advantage wasted.

I've seen some players that say early conquest is fine, but I don't see it, I guess I have to practice more with ancient/classical aggressive plays, the few times I tried, even my conquest were successful, I was falling behing, and a 4 city tradition peaceful start would have granted me a much better position.

It's definitely hard, but not impossible. I've won many games with the Huns in BNW through early warfare alone. using the GL to get to iron working quickly, then building elite units in my capital with the heroic epic. Losing money is not that big a deal if you can use your troops to raze a few cities and take some capitals. I often get a science penalty as well, but it's easy to catch up once you've conquered a few capitals, and your own city has had some time to build up.

I think I've seen people suggest this before on here, but an easy fix might be to simply give players their first (few?) trade unit for free. This ensures that one can pay for buildings and basic defense early on.

If you have GL, chances you are playing on emperor or below. On immortal/deity there's a good chance if goes off before you can mathematically build it even if you go all in for it.

On lower difficulties there's more margin for everything, heck, you can even go full honor and be successful.

Aha! I've accidentallu evened the score (18-18). I think the early exonomy should be modified for the sake of interesting games (read: so I actually get attacked and not just stare blankly at juicy, unmolested borders)

I do not think the economy should be touched at all, there could however be a point made for improving the honour tree to make it more lucrative. Either by somehow reducing/removing gold cost of troops who've, say, killed a unit in the last x turns (stealing their supplies, less dependable on supply lines), improving the income from razing cities and/or destroying improvements (maybe even steal happiness bonus for some rounds if the destroyed improvement was on a luxury.

The economy is not really the problem, improve early economy and you might be able to wage war much earlier, but will just improve peaceful ways as much (if not more). The problem is a 'warfare' tree, that is subpar in its purpose.

Just bully city states. An endless stream of gold comes that way. And from pillaging too.

The problem isn't the economy; it's that the war tree, Honor, sucks, and that the diplo hit for war in ancient/classical eras is exponentially bigger than it is later in the game.

I find early wars to be feasible. You just have to keep the scale small.

I think rather than messing too much with the early economy this could be fixed by improving honor, getting free maintenence for some units early on could boost honor and make early warmongering much easier.

that is exactly what I would like to see -> Improved Honor

I don't find early warmongering too difficult. It's just not very profitable. I'm unable to play wide in BNW. This approach is simply out of reach because of clustered luxury resources and additional science cost for growing empire. If I do not play tall, I woefully lag with science and if I focus on warmongering, I cannot focus on pure growth at the same time. Therefore I find myself fighting wars only because someone took my plot of choice or enemy capital is located close enough to make a good addition for my empire.

Warmongering requires a decent synergy between liberty and honor and in BNW not only liberty is vastly inferior to tradition, but there are also at least two must-have alternatives for honor (either piety, or a little later one of the pair: patronage and commerce).

Eagle Pursuit said:

I find early wars to be feasible. You just have to keep the scale small.

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This ! The issue with early war is not to take a city or two, even a cap, but to stop after that.
I wish I had this wisdom more often but I usually don't since I enjoy beating down the AI so much that I can't stop once I started

Regarding the Honor tree, it is actually a pretty good tree as it is, and any upgrade would make it too good. But because you can open it right from the start doesn't mean it has to be your first tree (you can do it, but under specifics circumstances)
Also I would rather ask for a downgrade of tradition (way too op) than an upgrade of honor.

i have seen early wars in classical era between AI monty and Napoleon , because monty decided to pledge protect a CS and kept his promise. but i didn't go warmongering until medieval until now. honor tree --i still find it useless. I just send out my units to go out kill some berbs, that way I gain influence points from CS and experience.

I feel like one fix for this problem would be to make Honor boost your economy somehow besides the gold per kill finisher. There have been a lot of ideas floating around the forums to do this.