Going Tall - attracts warmongers?

I tend to prefer tall cities, but i've just realised the drawback to this - garrison units pay no maintenance, but you can only garrison one unit per city, and i can only afford the maintenance on a limited number of non-garrison units before my gold income goes negative.

So, let's say I have 1 population 20 city, with 1 garrison and 3 extras. The AI sees i've only got 4 units in my army and thinks i'm an easy victim. If i had 5 cities at size 4, i could have 5 garrisons plus my 3 extra units, and the AI will see an 8 unit army (twice as big).

In reality, those garrisons have to stay where they are and if any city comes under attack, i've only got the same number of defenders, and 4 units is plenty to defend one city with, especially when it's big , high HP one.

But I keep getting nuisance DoWs, usually right about the time I'm finishing my National college or whatever, have grown my main city to 15 or so and am working all the riverside/special tiles within 3 hexes, and was just about to start a second one.

Suddenly my neighbour DoWs and though they end up getting their clocks cleaned, i loose production/growth from having tiles occupied / pillaged /workers in hiding and civs that didn't join this little war get ahead. Worse, the fact that you're already at war lowers your "estimated strength" in the eyes of the AI, so you get more and more nations joining in the dogpile...

This is one of the things that often gets overlooked when people complain about being punished for going wide; all of those limitations are there to balance the huge advantage you get from having another city, and they rarely if ever neutralize it.

I never really figured that out.

Tall = Few, high pop cities
Wide = Many, low pop cities

Going tall means having a few cities and giving them lots of buildings, high population etc while going wide means having lots of cities with OK/small populations and very few buildings etc.

I hate to break it to the OP, but pretty much everything attracts warmongers.

Going tall? Attracts warmongers looking to be top dog.

Going short and narrow? Attracts warmongers looking for easy pickings.

Being diplomatic at all costs? Attracts warmongers looking for suckers.

Being a warmonger? Attracts the attention of warmongers masquerading as peaceful civilizations.

In my opinion, it's impossible to avoid the attention of warmongers, and it is better to build a military capable of at least driving off invaders, rather than passively trying to avoid conflict altogether.

If you're going tall, try to alternate between a building then military unit then building then military unit so that your military will be passable.

Did this, while going tall as germany.. had size 20+ capital plus 2nd city at size 20 as well with third over 14. In classical-medieval era. Noone dow'd me. I still don't have city walls built cuz i think my classical era metropolises look prettier without walls.

In fact, I was the one doing the dowing. Although i did this just to have a bunch of skirmishes for funz and collecting gold and pillaging.

Pay for the local warmonger to go somewhere else . Usually solves the problem and disrupts other builders !

newarkinvaders said:

Pay for the local warmonger to go somewhere else . Usually solves the problem and disrupts other builders !

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This does work often if you have the resources to prod them in the other direction while you build strength. The downside, of course, is that it is quite possible for the warmonger to eat the other guy successfully and become biiiig. Then they'll be wanting to eat you.

When they do DoW me, I have a "no forgiveness" policy. They cost me progress in at turn 130-160, they must pay, besides, if i accept a white peace, they'll only be at it again in another 20 turns.

Atilla the Hun attacked me just after i formed my second city. He had two cities plus Orleans which he'd taken off his neigbour Napoleon.

I captured and annexed Rostock, captured Atilla's Court and sold it to Napoleon, finally making peace with him only in posession of Orleans.

I can't wait to see how them two get along, since he now has only one city, captured from the French, with 4 other French cities to his east and French occupied Atilla's Court on the western border.

Check the demographics screen. If you are the 1st in soldiers, the AI will hardly DoW you, no matter how tall or how wide your empire is, or how close you expand to their borders or even when you build citadels and steal their land.

mintcandy said:

Being a warmonger? Attracts the attention of warmongers masquerading as peaceful civilizations.

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Also, attracts warmongers as a part of a "peaceful" coalition seeking to get rid of you. I've seen this a lot in BNW - sometimes it's Attila and Maria Theresa who try to dispose of me, sometimes William and Ramkhamhaeng pick Genghis as hired muscle. It's really cool to see the "good guys" use warmongers as guns for hire.

Do the AI Civs bribe each other then?

In my current game, standard size european map, I had Dido, Japan, The Celts, Atilla, Monty for neighbours. Yep, some start. Dido started it all off, I beat off her attack pretty easily and start to go into her territory, then Atilla attacks me from the other direction. I loose a city and am forced to reload from a save. I let Dido be, and deal with Atilla, when he takes peace, march back into Dido's territory, when Japan, who has just wiped out the Celts, attacks. I keep the pressure up on Dido and Japan offers white peace, then 10 turns later , attacks again. Then Rome DoWs me too, fortunately he's a bit far away to be much of a threat. Oh yes and Bismark announces friendship with Dido and denounces me. I finally managed to get Dido down to a single city (in a frozen wasteland) so offer her peace, then capture the Japanese capital before making peace with them too. I wonder if Dido had been bribing all the others to DoW me?

The thing is, i see AI civs with bigger strength differentials coexisting all the time. Atilla has one size 5 city, which was captured from the French, and is surrounded by 5 of Napoleon's much larger cities, and Napoleon is on the edge of the map and can only really expand by destroying Atilla.

How come nobody has decided to finish Dido yet? She's only got a size 3 city and is stuck in classical times when everyone else is going industrial?

All this fighting has seen me slip to second place for science, which is pretty shameful on Prince. Rome has become a runaway, and we're still at war, guess i'll have to take them out. The one bright side, Monty, Spain and Napoleon seem to like us. Bismark remains unfought, but hates me and thinks i'm a warmongering threat to the world.

Is this G&Ks or BnW? I want your recepie for getting dowed early if its BnW plz.

GnK. It is really tough to support more than 3 military units on one city , till the advent of markets at least. Building them is not so much the problem, as feeding them. If you have neighbours from hell...