Handling Alex

Hi all,

I've noticed in many of my games (and the one just gone) that Alex is by far the most difficult AI civ to counter.

I recently played a huge archipelago map where he nearly won a DV (he needed about four more votes at the first World Leader Vote and I won a SV a few turns before the next vote where he was only about 1 vote short.

By the time I actually managed to find most of the CS he'd already allied about 7. Unfortunately, there were only 2 CS reachable over shallow ocean tiles - and even they weer major island hopping. By the time I got to deep water embarkation, the CS were mostly already won to his side.

Other than deliberately prioritising CS quests, is there much you can do? Deliberately war with him early to weaken him?

I did notice that a global war (Me, + 2 AI civs, + CS vs Alex + 1 AI Civ + CS) actually worked in my favour. Since it basically made it impossible for CS to change sides. A CS that's at war with you can't be effectively couped or bought... Locking the CS down like that bought me time to win SV.

The best way to counter Alex is plant defensive spies in a few key city states so you can just coup at 85% odds when he throws the bare minimum to become an ally with the city state.

Even leaving one spy in your capital, the other spies will be enough to deny Alex diplomatic victory if you build NIA for an extra spy.

Yes, don't seek Diplomatic victory yourself in Alex is in the game but pick one of the other victories.

He is one of my least favorites to play against,...I usually try to take him out early!!

If he is far away,...I know I am in for a long game,...OR A REROLL

There are two approaches with Alex - either take him out early or become best buddy with him and conquer him in the late game. If you are in danger losing to Diplo, while going for SV/CV - buy some CS and DOW him, so you deny him the votes. You need to be able to survive 5-10 turns tho If he is friendly with many green modifiers, do not denounce him before that DOW (that in case the game needs more time to be finished, not just the few turns of war before the vote).

Thanks all

I seemed to have fumbled my way to most of the right strategies.

I was hampered in trying to use defensive spies because the map prevented me from reaching most CS until very late - by which stage he was already well above 60 influence for most city states.

If he's just hopelessly far away, I will DOW him anyway and puppet his allied CSs. But first I will try to preemptively ally a CS or two right next to him, so he's fighting them and he can't ally if he's at war with them. Usually I can pull off a CS "island hopping" campaign where I can puppet/annex a city close enough to where I can stage an attack. I just need to be able to send a navy close enough to where I can upgrade them and heal them. Then cut him down to size. And if the opportunity presents itself, annihilate him; because that's what it takes to knock off all his CS influence on everybody.

Other thing is, if you can't ally with CS, you might as well build a military and demand tribute from them.

War is probably the best option as diplomatic runaways need to be eliminated, all other runaways can be left with one city. Early on is probably not best as you will incur warmonger hate as usually it's hard to gain allies early on. Wait until he's made a nuisance of himself then you should gain allies and someone to do the eliminating.

You can avoid warmonger penalty by knocking a city down to 0 and let any ally (even a CS) take it. I learned that when I was early-game farming for xp. Works better if the city is junky and no garrison. The trick is to not make Athens the last city you need to take--the last city incurs I think twice the warmonger penalty as the second-to-last.

tetley said:

the last city incurs I think twice the warmonger penalty as the second-to-last.

Click to expand...

Indeed, the penalty for taking a city is of the form (1 / N) * C , N being the number of cities they had right before it was taken and C being a constant.

He is very willing to take war bribes though. You can buy him to Dow other civs on the map and watch other civs take his city states.

You can eventually buy out all his influence, but it takes half the game to do it.