What to do when a powerful civ decides to bum rush you and declare war very early?

I recently started trying some of the more difficult difficulties in the game, and to give myself a bit of leeway, I chose babylon as my civ. I usually find the most success using them. Unfortunately, my first attempt at a harder difficulty ended in disaster. What happened is that while I was minding my own business, trying to upgrade everything accordingly, a nearby civ declared war right away and quickly demolished my second settlement. I rebuilt that settlement and started diverting my production to troops instead of passive upgrades to supply the war effort. However, as I kept trying to keep up with the warring civ, they kept bringing more and more powerful troops, pushing me into this forced need to keep pumping troops out and losing them all to the other civ.

Ultimately, 200 moves in, and I currently have the lowest score out of all the civs in game, I have the least amount of research done, despite being babylon, and I am stuck with 2 choked out cities, both of which are relatively small in population.

What I just want to know is how to approach these situations because I clearly did not approach this instance very well.

What difficulty is this on? Emperor? Immortal? This will allow me to help a bit more, as on Immortal/Diety, it really depends on your neighbour. I've had full on peaceful games or I've been bum rushed (currently it's the Aztecs marching across half the map 2 games straight... - with a hill desert start as Arabia with multiple non desert salts in an expand....)

A general rule is try and get in a 'blocker' city or 2 with walls and keep an army of 4-6 Comp Bows, at least, that's what works for me.

I am playing on emperor. I can't imagine how much worse it would be on immortal/diety. The culprit here was Rome.

Regarding your rule, when you say blocker city, do you just mean a well fortified city and to camp with it? Or would I have a well equipped city literally blocking the path to some of my other cities? The latter is actually what happened in my situation. My secondary city was essentially warding off all the romans from my capital, but the production of that secondary city was so low that I had to use both cities to produce enough backup.

By blocker city, I'm referring to one that defines your borders against a potentially aggressive neighbour in a defensible location. One that you get walls up in and have a ranged unit or 2 with it for 'perma def'.

By defensible, I mean on a hill, preferably in a choke point.

On the other side of the coin (no offense intended here), it could be sloppy play on your behalf? If you see someone coming with an army, denounce them or pay them to war someone else.

If you have the original save or a replay or some sort (recording or some such) I'd be willing to go over it with you and try and help you out . I'm not amazing at the game though, sitting borderline Immortal/Diety.

Btw, if you want scary, try a duel map on Diety with Shaka as the other player. It's brutal .

EDIT: Babylon should have an easy time staving off early aggression, just due to their unique unit (a better archer) and building (an amazing wall ,less hammers and nearly double? the def boost).

Place scouting units to see attacks coming. Bribe potential angry people. Make enough units to defend. That's all there is to it really.

Higher level play requires that you scout early and continually. You need to find your neighbors, chose your friends and many times pay them to attack your enemies. Conversely you can pay a dangerous looking neighbor to attack anyone else. Keep them busy with each other so they will not focus on you while you set up that early CB army and get infrastructure going.

Sometimes this may mean giving away your only copy of a lux for 30 turns, so try to plan for how you will deal with that if it does happen.

Many times as you move into immortal and deity, maps are just not playable. Suck it up and reroll.

You need about 6 units to deter any attack or effectively defend. Of course archers defend better. They must also be placed in good locations, not scattered to the winds. If you don't get that first, then its your own fault.

Rome is one of the worst culprits, he gets his UU very early, when you've barely had time to put out more than a couple of units and buildings, his UU are stronger than Monty's , and less easily countered than Atilla's. He's no less aggressive, backstabby or avaricious as well.

Keep'em bussy - bribe them into wars directly or indirectly .. Few units are not exactly enough for defence (except for some rare cases with ultra defensible terrain ) but they do serve for intimidation purpose (you don't look qute as a free kill anymore) ... But bassically being on top of the diplomatic game is what keeps you alive ... In domination games is similar until the point you no longer fear the free DOW, you welcome it (less warmonger penalty worries)...

Preventing unwanted AI DOWs is often cheaper and easier to achieve than actually dealing with a carpet of doom deity DOW when you're fixing for a peaceful game ... Prevention beats dealing with ..

Acken said:

...Bribe potential angry people....

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That's easier said than done very early as you probably wont have a high enough gpt. On emperor you can get away with building zero military units as long as you don't anger anyone. 3 things that will anger anyone is forward settling them, building too many cities too quickly, normally this 4 cities early, and stealing a worker(DOWing the CS) from a CS they have pledged to protect.

The OP didn't mention the civ in question but I suspect it was Attila or Shaka and the above advice wont do much as they always DOW their neighbor. 3 things to look out for are a bright red "they covet your lands", a bright red "you are building cities too aggressively", and a seemingly OCC neighbor(they are building units instead of settlers). Actually there's a 4th thing to watch out for and that's a hostile civ suddenly becoming friendly.

Babylon is probably the only civ who can get to machinery before anyone else(even if they beeline it), once you have Xbows any aggressor will be dust. You want to make your first tech order Pottery->Writing for the free GS which you should plant on a 3 tile and work the entire game. Lastly watch Acken's Babylon Deity domination video in the "stories and LP" forum, not because you will be the aggressor but watch his tech order and for some combat tips.

corranhorn01 said:

If you see someone coming with an army, denounce them

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Is this really a smart thing to do? I thought denouncing an AI just makes them hate you even more and just adds to their score against you which they will DoW on?

thesuperguy said:

What happened is that while I was minding my own business, trying to upgrade everything accordingly, a nearby civ declared war right away and quickly demolished my second settlement. I rebuilt that settlement and started diverting my production to troops instead of passive upgrades to supply the war effort. However, as I kept trying to keep up with the warring civ, they kept bringing more and more powerful troops, pushing me into this forced need to keep pumping troops out and losing them all to the other civ.

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I see a couple of things here:

1. Minding your own business and trying to upgrade everything might be a bad idea. You need to anticipate enemy attacks, and prepare your army in advance. Rome is a mo-fo. If I see Augustus anywhere near me, I know I'm going to have a fight on my hands, and when. You can almost set your watch by it. Attila and Shaka were already mentioned; I almost always have a beef with Napoleon. Bouddica can be a piece of work, too. Know who your neighbors are.

Are you building early Wonders? With rare exceptions, I tend not to build early Wonders.

Use Barbarians to get promotions without having to build a Barracks. Don't kill Barb camps unless an AI is going to do it anyway, you need to clear the space for a trade route, or a City State gives you a quest. Sometimes I'll hold off until a 2nd CS gives me a quest to wipe the same Barb Camp.

Watch AI trade routes to your cities. If they start to reassign their caravans, it's a sign they're preparing for an attack.

2. The AI is really terrible at fighting wars. I get frustrated with myself if I lose any units. "Pumping troops out and losing them all" is a catastrophe.

I've just had a similar experience. Immortal, playing as Babylon. Alexander is my neighbour. He immediately starts coveting and settles two more cities in my direction. I sell both of my only copies of my luxuries to him for cheap, hoping to

a) cripple his economy
b) make him like me

I was hoping i'd get some iron too, but no luck. If i can sell him iron, then he might build too many melee units and be in strategic resource penalty if he declares war on me.

War came at turn 62. He has 5 cities. I have just one. I was about to buy a settler , and settle a mountain away from him, but used the gold to buy another bowman instead. I was going to build national college... but that won't be happening now.

With 3 composites, and walls of Babylon i manage to beat off his attack after 15 turns. I build two more spearmen, he starts to back up. What should i do now? Take white peace? The trouble is, i can only see him coming back for more later. I've also lost crucial ground in my science catch up because of this war, so i feel like i need to get something out of it as compensation.


I clicked Retire. Looking at the military strength graph, we had rough parity when i finally beat back his attack. But within 5 turns he'd doubled in strength again. He must be rush buying. Maybe he'll run out of gold?

if you see them dancing around the borders its better to just declare on em, if you cannot bribe. this ensures, that you will start the fight before they get full strength and also, the Ai is worse at coordinating the efforts, so their army sometimes split. its even better if you have a Cs ally nearby.

Of course you need archers to be ready too, that's why you need good scouting in the early game, so you know where is the potential danger. If you have warmonger civ nearby war is most of the time unavoidable, unless you keep up with their army score nd play nice with em.

Redaxe said:

Is this really a smart thing to do? I thought denouncing an AI just makes them hate you even more and just adds to their score against you which they will DoW on?

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Yes, denouncing them can help a lot!
The AI seems to want the element of surprise and this action seems to make them think twice. It probably has some relation with their personality as well, so It might not work on Shaka, because nothing does.

Before you do this, take a look at the global politics information.

1) Do you have a DoF with them? backstabbing is bad, so maybe dont do it.

2) Have one or two leaders already denounced them? Adding your voices together can often prevent the attack, or at least delay it. once the other leaders see your agreeable stance, maybe they will become more easily bribed into DoW-ing the aggressor, and then you can sit back and build units for a while, which should put the whole situation to rest.

EgonSpengler said:

I see a couple of things here:

1. Minding your own business and trying to upgrade everything might be a bad idea. You need to anticipate enemy attacks, and prepare your army in advance. Rome is a mo-fo. If I see Augustus anywhere near me, I know I'm going to have a fight on my hands, and when. You can almost set your watch by it. Attila and Shaka were already mentioned; I almost always have a beef with Napoleon. Bouddica can be a piece of work, too. Know who your neighbors are.

Are you building early Wonders? With rare exceptions, I tend not to build early Wonders.

Use Barbarians to get promotions without having to build a Barracks. Don't kill Barb camps unless an AI is going to do it anyway, you need to clear the space for a trade route, or a City State gives you a quest. Sometimes I'll hold off until a 2nd CS gives me a quest to wipe the same Barb Camp.

Watch AI trade routes to your cities. If they start to reassign their caravans, it's a sign they're preparing for an attack.

2. The AI is really terrible at fighting wars. I get frustrated with myself if I lose any units. "Pumping troops out and losing them all" is a catastrophe.

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I just played a very interesting game as Egypt on king. I didn't have very big army, I was mostly doing some wonderspam and teching. I was being peaceful and friendly with Sweden and Portugal, my neighbors in the continent. Earlier on, I actually allied with Portugal, to kill Greece from the game. Sweden was same religion as me also.

Then suddenly my friendly civs, Sweden and Portugal, who I've signed RAs with, suddenly DoW me all at the same time. Huns and Austria from another continent also attack be at the same time. Most CS were also at war with me, except the two closest ones.

Now, at this moment when the entire world declared war on me, I was 1 turn away from infantry. I had like 2 CS allies only, it was pretty hilarious, to fight non-stop vs the entire world from plastics onwards. I won domination in the end, at about turn 240-250. Nobody agreed to a peace deal even though I was essentially massacring all their armies in the mid-portion of the war.

-sweden had rifles and cannons and lancers

-austria had small outpost cities in my continent, austria had hussars, muskets, crossbows

-Portugal suicided caravels into my coastal city and spammed crossbows vs my gatling guns and great war infantry.

-attila the hun had knights and crossbows as his best technology. I took his empire down with an elite team of 4 infantry units + 2 battleships on the coast.

I didn't have dynamite yet, and I purposely delayed dynamite, to profit more from my infantry + great wall vs hussars, crossbow, musket and rifleman.

It took quite a while to produce credible offensive army with rocket artillery, bombers and battleships but essentially it was just a trudge-fest. Nobody agreed to peace, it was just pure war until the end. LOL

A lot of units were killed, in that game.... Let's just say that. The only regret about that game was that I didn't have full honor. I was just thinking about that I would have become very rich civ with that number of unit kills.

I lost only some obsolete knights and sadly one of my foreign legions died to swedish rifleman spam. I wish you could rebuild dead foreign legions as freedom.

Laurwin said:

I wish you could rebuild dead foreign legions as freedom.

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There are several units throughout the game that you can't resurrect, for whatever reason. I once lost a thrice-promoted Winged Hussar that a CS had given me (I wasn't playing Poland), that had become the centerpiece of my army. I had a few words for the general in charge.


Link to video.

b7fanatix said:

I've just had a similar experience. Immortal, playing as Babylon. Alexander is my neighbour. He immediately starts coveting and settles two more cities in my direction. I sell both of my only copies of my luxuries to him for cheap, hoping to

a) cripple his economy
b) make him like me

I was hoping i'd get some iron too, but no luck. If i can sell him iron, then he might build too many melee units and be in strategic resource penalty if he declares war on me.

War came at turn 62. He has 5 cities. I have just one. I was about to buy a settler , and settle a mountain away from him, but used the gold to buy another bowman instead. I was going to build national college... but that won't be happening now.

With 3 composites, and walls of Babylon i manage to beat off his attack after 15 turns. I build two more spearmen, he starts to back up. What should i do now? Take white peace? The trouble is, i can only see him coming back for more later. I've also lost crucial ground in my science catch up because of this war, so i feel like i need to get something out of it as compensation.


I clicked Retire. Looking at the military strength graph, we had rough parity when i finally beat back his attack. But within 5 turns he'd doubled in strength again. He must be rush buying. Maybe he'll run out of gold?

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I decided to pick up this save and run with it. I took white peace at T75, Alexander then attacks his neighbour on the other side of him - Russia. I press F1 for help, to find out at what point Russia gets Cossacks, a tiny germ of an idea forming in my mind. Meanwhile my empire basks in a whole 27 turns of peace, founds a second city on some godforsaken bit of tundra even Alexander the Douche doesn't want, and build a National College. Then he attacks again. Possibly a little easier to handle this time around, his UU are getting obsolete perhaps. He plunders a trade route and pillages two tiles, he's occupying my land for only 6 or 7 turns.

Is he actually suffering by suiciding his units in this way? Please say yes, it would make me feel better. He hasn't built any wonders and has only one city state ally, so does this represent lost production to him, having 10 units wiped out every 15 turns on a failed war, or am i just reducing the crippling army upkeep he must be paying?

Anway, turn 112 he wants white peace. The very next one, Catherine the great pops up and asks me if i want to declare war on Rome. She'll declare war on Alex for only 4GPT. I'm now thinking of save scumming the b****** , keeping the war going then bringing Catherine into the fray. Even if she becomes a runaway monster and later destroys me... it'll be so worth it.

Redaxe said:

Is this really a smart thing to do? I thought denouncing an AI just makes them hate you even more and just adds to their score against you which they will DoW on?

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I find it works. While it won't always stop the war, it can gets you friends with others the are also denouncing them and it will also generally make them wait a few turns to declare (so you can start Walls/more units before it comes).

I've had a few people just turn around and not come back for 20ish turns, which means I have Walls on most cities and another couple of Bow units at least, which makes the war easier.

dragonxxx said:

if you see them dancing around the borders its better to just declare on em, if you cannot bribe. this ensures, that you will start the fight before they get full strength and also, the Ai is worse at coordinating the efforts, so their army sometimes split. its even better if you have a Cs ally nearby.

Of course you need archers to be ready too, that's why you need good scouting in the early game, so you know where is the potential danger. If you have warmonger civ nearby war is most of the time unavoidable, unless you keep up with their army score nd play nice with em.

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Assuming you have a few units to defend, I've had a lot of good luck simply moving all my units into view of theirs (and start building a couple more). Once they realize you will put up a fight, they often turn around and attack elsewhere.