What has changed in G&K?

I have not played Civ V for around 9 months and used to get a points win
on Prince Level and always won by focusing on my military. Then thinking about moving up to king. Now when I play G&K I cannot even win on Prince. Invariably someone comes along around year 1000AD with a massive army and I get stomped.

There must be something I am not picking up properly, something other than religion/spies. For one thing money runs out too easily and prevents me building large army, by the time I get to guilds I have no money. Played 3 times and eventually quit.

It's probably the same thing people missed in vanilla that led to this sort of thing: diplomacy. Which is now much easier to manage than it was in vanilla, with most people offering DoFs early (so even if, as usual, you have an early enemy, you'll also have early friends, and all the AIs also have early friends so you earn brownie points by being friends with theirs). I've had Immortal Pangea games in which no early rush ever came.

Scouting is also important - sometimes simply spotting an enemy army heading your way will persuade it to head home before war is declared; if not, then you still know it's coming and can persuade the civ not to attack - denounce its enemies, or make friends with its friends (or just with its neighbours, so that you may be able to call on help). I did this in a game in which Ramesses sent an army my way right at the start, and a few turns after it turned and headed home he offered a Declaration of Friendship that lasted the rest of the game.

King is winnable for me but I need to rush the capitals before air power gets built up. I could probably win an air war but to me it's very boring comapared to naval battles.

In G&K, it's arguably easier to win a defensive war. The key is to take-out their artillery and catapult units bc of their 200% bonus vs. cities. Hold back some mounted units as they attack your city and then swoop-in for the kill. Also invest heavily in walls... they are significantly more powerful than vanilla bc of the HP boost they give.

I've gotten rushed by huge armies too... the key is to take advantage of how tactially inept the AI is and destroy key elements of their attack force, at which point they can no longer take your city. Also, invest heavily in composite bowmen and other ranged units... makes killing enemy attackers faaar easier.

Tony.Uk said:

Invariably someone comes along around year 1000AD with a massive army and I get stomped.

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Don't wait until 1000 AD to find out who the strong horse is. As soon as you meet your neighbors, you should be identifying which one is too aggressive. The neighbor that founds cities in the direction of you or another civ, or successfully takes cities from another civ, is the one that you need to collect puppets from.

The only question becomes timing and whether you DOW them or the aggressive neighbor does you the favor of DOWing you. Often you just want to DOW and nip it in the bud. Get your puppets and get a generous appeasement package.

What you accomplish is:
-the runaway is no longer a runaway
-puppet cities, which are basically the key to good economy and science lead without exploiting diplo
-negative warmonger modifier, but worth the cost, and will fade faster than it would if you waited longer to have a 200 turn war with the same civ.

Especially look out for certain Civs: Greece, Austria, Persia, Siam after elephants, etc.

In Prince, King and Emperor the timing is usually the same: a runaway will be in effect by 1000-1400 and he will be a Deity-level foe. Stop them before that happens and the game stays at the level you wanted to play.

(Maori already have a UA. The Polynesian embarkment UA.)

GhostSalsa said:

(Maori already have a UA. The Polynesian embarkment UA.)

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Is this the wrong topic?

What? No! Of course not. Y-- Yes.

One thing is that you don't get trading posts until Guilds, so gold is harder to get in the early game, and you have to wait until Currency to build a Market. This is why Monarchy policy is sooo good, as a 10 pop capital will give you 5 gpt, not counting the happiness.