Managing Tech during a war?

[iamdanthemansta]

How do you keep up with tech during a war. I always seem to fall pretty far behind, and then can't fight any later wars.

[Shillen]

By specializing your cities. You can't just build military in all your cities like was the case in civ3. You need to have some cities with very high commerce and thus low production. These cities should be building structures most of the game to make them generate more science/commerce. Then you have your other cities with lots of forests and hills that are your military production cities. They should be able to dish out military units very quickly.

edit: You can also extort techs out of the AI's when you sign peace treaties. And capturing cities generates a lot of commerce so you can keep the science slider at max and run a defecit.

[iamdanthemansta]

Do you think its a good idea to build a large standing army even when you have no dirrect plans for a war, even though by the time you actually are in a fight some of them may be outdated?

[Shillen]

If I'm playing a peaceful game I'll usually build as many units as I can without having to pay support costs. This usually means I can get 2-3 units per city. Of course if I'm not planning to go to war they're mostly defensive units with a few offensive for counterattacking purposes. The AI will be more likely to sneak attack you if you have a weak military.

You can upgrade your units fairly easily. For instance in a game I was playing today I was on my own continent going for a space race victory. Well as I was getting close to victory I guess the other civs sensed it. So they declared war and dropped off a stack of troops in my territory. I had gold on hand to upgrade a couple defenders and turned my science down to 0. I then upgraded a few more the next turn. I managed to fight all the AI's units off even though he landed artillery/infantries and my units were only musketmen/crossbowmen before he showed up. I upgraded them to mech infantries hehe.