Alex vs. Cathy

[Lord Kid]

Hullo all, long time lurker, first time poster. I had a recent experience that I need some input on. I just picked up Civ 4 no too long ago, and finally got around to playing on the Noble difficulty. 2 games in particular stick in my mind because of what happened. I was playing as Cathy in both, one was on continents, the other on terra, with standard ops except time victory was turned off. During the first game I concentrated on commerce and culture, and Alex came knocking demanding that I stop trading with Hyuana, whom I was on pleased standing with, so I told Alex where to shove it. a few turns later he has chariots at my front door and declares war. I quit that game as I wasn't prepared for the war and he started mowing my cities like his back 40.

The next game I had a very strategic starting location with only one way onto my little section of the landmass so I whipped out a settler and block off the entrance to my empire. I proceeded to fortify that city and do the standard commerce/culture things, ofunded another city which was surrounded by forests and hills to be my production powerhouse. A few turns later Alex finds me and we start out amicably enough, until a couple of turns later he demanded tribute from me in the form of ivory, so once again I told him to stick it where the sun don't shine. He then moves in troops and declares war. I learn from my mistakes and already have a sizeable defense force in a highly fortified location so all he proceeded to do was lose his troops and give mine xp. After a while of futile attempts he extends the peace offering and I agree. During the war I saw him sneaking a galley up behind me so I sent swords and archers to keep an eye on my flank, and I had an OB with Mansa, so he had axes up in the general vicinity of Alex' new colony. No 2 turns after the peace treaty, he declares war on Mansa, who sends his axes at the aforementioned colony, razing it to the ground. I guess he didn't get any better results against Mansa, because as soon as he was able he offered peace. A little while later, Kublai Khan asks for my assistance in destroying Alex, and since I already didn't like him and I had good relations with Kublai, I agreed and sent my troops in for some serious butt kickery.

After destroying Alex, I was busy tending the wounded and cleaning up the mess to by gate city when Kublai Khan, whom I had OB with, and who had sent troops behind my empire into the desert wastes that I chose not to colonize, declares war and decimates my capital with cats, before razing it, along with the Visha, and turning his attention to my other vulnerable belly cities. I ended the game in disgust.

I have 2 questions stemming from this:
1) Do the civ AI's have bad attitudes towards others from the get go, because Alex did his best to come after Cathy (me) ASAP.
2) Can I expect a great deal of back stabbery like I got from Kublai on noble and higher difficulties?

[Pantastic]

Alex is aggressive, he'll generally go after someone, usually the one with the lowest power score. Relations affect it some, but overall he's likely to find someone to fight and it might be you. Both of the kahns are also aggressive, they like to backstab given the chance. If you don't have all of your own borders behind a 'wall' city, be very careful about OB as you've discovered

Also, please break up your writing into paragraphs, a big wall of text like that is hard to read.

[Lord Kid]

Hmm.... So the leaders/civs don't have specific other civs they like to go after then? I guess I was just the low man on the totem pole.

[curtadams]

Watch the power graph and make sure you don't fall substantially behind your neighbors. If the computer has a substantial force advantage, they're almost guaranteed to sneak attack, even with good relations. Probably in the course of you squashing Alex you lost enough troops to fall far behind Kublai and so he jumped you. You have to admit it worked.

It's often a good idea to leave defeated enemies alive with crippled empires to distract the warmongers. If Alex had had a city or two Kublai would have been harassing him, not you.

[Pantastic]

None of them have specific opponents that they dislike, but sometimes there are pairings that will typically end up with bad relations. Isabella will generally not get along with anyone who likes founding their own religion, because she really hates anyone not her religion and AIs tend to stick with a religion they found.

[curtadams]

Another thing: the computer is fond of snatching ill-defended cities. If the computer sees one, it may attack you to grab it. If you have OB, you need at least one up-to-date city defender in every city.

[slowcar]

no clue what you are all about with OB, if the enemy cancels the deal all units are positioned outside of your borders.

to get rid of the warmongers its best to send them on somebody else. often there are nice opportunities to attack the same target or backstab the warmonger

[carl corey]

slowcar, OB allow the AI to scout your cities, and they can see if they are defended enough or not. I don't usually worry about this since I'm most of the time high on the power graph, but if you're low it's probably better to cancel OB with a potential attacker and mass some troops in your border cities to at least appear strong.

Lord Kid: there are some AIs out there that are very fond of attacking. Once they see you're in a war, or your power graph is low, or you show some weakly defended cities they will attack. The key is to constantly maintain a powerful army, or, if you are falling behind, to build units until you reach a "safe" level compared to the AI. This is the most important thing I've learned on Prince: don't fall behind thinking you'll upgrade/build units later. Otherwise you're just asking for it. Alex and Monty will attack you no matter how friendly you are with them. And chances are you'll have other enemies by that point too, and they'll be oh so happy to join in the fight!

[voek]

You don't build enough units.

[Pantastic]

Originally Posted by slowcar

no clue what you are all about with OB, if the enemy cancels the deal all units are positioned outside of your borders.

In this case, he had a city at a chokepoint to soak up any attacks and some junk desert land that wasn't in anyone's border. So his opponent used OB to walk past the chokepoint, then fought from the desert area straight to the capital and not through the choke point. Plus OB lets an enemy scout you and see your defenses (or lack thereof).

[Lord Kid]

In my current game I am (once again) playing as Cathy, but this time on large islands. My cap has turned in a GP farm as it had pretty much nothing but flood plains and grasslands around it, and it is on the coast. I only have 5 foest squares to use for production, so it builds stuff slow but the city itself builds like mad and I have to keep an eye on it so it doesn't get too big.

I guess I still need to learn a bit about city placement or something, because I chose a site for my production city that was surrounded by hills, on the coast with the addition of 2 plains (which I cottaged), and 2 grasslands by a river (which I farmed). It's taking very careful management to grow it, though it will pump out units like nobody's business.

My third city is sitting south on the island (I swear the computer doesn't like me because whenever I do islands, doesn't matter what climate I choose, I end up being put at one of the poles with lots of tundra, and this time ice), with the city square being ice cuz I figured it was the only way to get anything from it. I chose this site for the deer, crab and copper.

I guess what I want to know now is how do you all get so many cities by 1 AD? It's like 425 AD and I only have 3 cities, whereas when I read Sulla's walkthrough he had a thriving empire by then.

[carl corey]

Usually getting more than 3 cities means going to war. Otherwise your economy will probably be crippled since you won't be able to sustain the expansion rate. Attacking means you can get gold either out of pillaging (not useful if you plan on keeping the city) or out of taking the city itself. On the other hand, keeping all the cities you attack may also bring you down, so plan carefully, always with an eye on your research rate. If you see that you have to lower the science slider too much to keep you from having a huge deficit you might want to end your military campaign for the moment. Remember that relocating the troops back in your borders will also reduce their maintenance, so try to account for that too.

More about the current game: ouch, you're actually not using Cathy in the best way possible. She's financial, that means floodplain and river grassland cottages will have 3 commerce from the start. And since the flood plains give 3 food you can still use the surplus for some specialists. Remember, the Bureaucracy civic boosts the commerce in your capital. So farming it instead of cottaging it means pretty much losing that bonus.

[Lord Kid]

Originally Posted by carl corey

Usually getting more than 3 cities means going to war. Otherwise your economy will probably be crippled since you won't be able to sustain the expansion rate. Attacking means you can get gold either out of pillaging (not useful if you plan on keeping the city) or out of taking the city itself. On the other hand, keeping all the cities you attack may also bring you down, so plan carefully, always with an eye on your research rate. If you see that you have to lower the science slider too much to keep you from having a huge deficit you might want to end your military campaign for the moment. Remember that relocating the troops back in your borders will also reduce their maintenance, so try to account for that too.

More about the current game: ouch, you're actually not using Cathy in the best way possible. She's financial, that means floodplain and river grassland cottages will have 3 commerce from the start. And since the flood plains give 3 food you can still use the surplus for some specialists. Remember, the Bureaucracy civic boosts the commerce in your capital. So farming it instead of cottaging it means pretty much losing that bonus.

At the moment I really don't have any way of going to war, nor anyone to fight, so I guess I will just improve the cities I do have. I don't have any farms in my capital, which is the floodplain GP farm. I have cottages on all the floodplains and nets on the 2 clam squares.

[Pantastic]

Originally Posted by Lord Kid

I only have 5 foest squares to use for production, so it builds stuff slow but the city itself builds like mad and I have to keep an eye on it so it doesn't get too big.

This is not a 'real' issue for your city, you need to adopt slavery and learn to love the whip. Once you get used to whipping what you need, you'll never again think of a city with lots of food as one that 'builds stuff slow'. Just wait for it to hit unhappiness size and whip some building that you've spent at least a turn building.

[Wlauzon]

Alex is basically an all around jerk. If he is in the game, I just assume that he will attack someone soon.

If he is nearby, I just assume that he will attack me eventually.

[Lord Kid]

Originally Posted by Pantastic

This is not a 'real' issue for your city, you need to adopt slavery and learn to love the whip. Once you get used to whipping what you need, you'll never again think of a city with lots of food as one that 'builds stuff slow'. Just wait for it to hit unhappiness size and whip some building that you've spent at least a turn building.

Funny you should mention this because I was building the Parthenon in that city and it got to like 2-3 turns to go and I get the popup someone else built it already, so I reloaded and whipped the last couple of turns and got it.

[Lord Kid]

Forgive my n00bness for a second, but reading through other threads, I keep seeing mention of wonders that I don't seem to have access to, specifically the Great Wall (which I loved in Civ 2) in vanilla games, which I am taking to mean pre-warlords w/o mods, so how come I can't get that? Is it in a patch?

[carl corey]

The Great Wall is an exclusively Warlords wonder. The other two are the Temple of Artemis and the University of Sankore. Look here: warlords to see what else was added. Vanilla Civ is indeed the term used to describe the Regular Edition of the game. Maybe someone talked about the GW in a vanilla thread, but it certainly isn't included in it.

[Lord Kid]

I have a question on the game speed option. I understand you get differing amounts of resources per turn changing that, but does also change the amount of turns you get in the game, so that rather than 50 years going by a turn in the beginning, less years go by on epic?

[Welnic]

That is correct. Epic has 1.5 more turns than Normal in the same time period.