Need some mid game advice - Hannibal Monarch

I've just started playing Civ 4 BTS again after a longer break. I'm playing at monarch at the moment and tend to win about every second game.

At moment I'm playing a game as Hannibal.



I was able to block off my end of the continent and got a nice number of cities settled. I wanted to try my UU, but I think I delayed Horse Riding for too long. Suleiman declared on me in 205 AD. I bribed Germany into war with him and got my defenses up, but the time for my UU was over before I got the units out in a number to do enought damage.

I signed peace with Suleiman and started getting out of my war induced slump. By now I think I am at a position where I could do something again, but I don't really know how. Normally I don't war in the middle ages and start killing my neighbours when I get to rifling. But I don't think that is the best way to do it here.

Some advice, please?

Depends on how you play Civ i would say, for quickest victory most would just mass whip Cuirs (heavy horsemen) here and vassal everybody
You could easily do that, those AIs have no way of stopping big Cuir stacks (they also ignore Castles and walls..) and are far enuf from Rifles.
Basically that would mean stop all other units, Grocers and such buildings and well you know what.

Agree with Fippy. You have MT and Gunpowder, it's winning time. Stop everything else, whip cuirs like you've never whipped before and kill everybody. At this stage it is probably possible to win the game by building nothing but Cuirs until the very end.

For your next game, you will want to reconsider which buildings should be built in what kind of cities. Grocers and Markets are mostly not worth the hammers, on the other hand a strong cottage city like Sicca should have had that library built 2000 years ago.

Ok, I took your advice. Domination win in 1685. That is actually the first time I used Cuirs, worked like a charm.

But somehow that wasn't as satisfying as expected. Felt more like cheating.

Normally I would have build that library long ago, but I was distracted by that war with Suleiman and forgot all about it.

Yeah, the nature of the game changes quite a lot when you realize that winning is only about getting a military advantage and then pumping out units. Most of the other stuff to build is only there to distract you.

Now when you know the secret, if you want to keep yourself challenged, then you can crank up the difficulty, play larger maps or maps like continents, or just decide that you want to play for a space victory. Many of those might also include killing an AI or 2 with Cuirs, but you wouldn't be able to win the game that easily with only cuirs.