Ancient warmongering

[TLHeart]

With the latest patch, warmonger has taken some new twists, and chain denouncements.

step 1, pick a civ with early unique units.
Step 2, plan on being at war the entire game.
Step 3, do not scout past finding your first victim.
I will build a second city for strategic needed resources, or capture my neighbors for those need resource. Horses, iron.
this is important, as you do not want the other civs knowing what you are up to.
Build a quick and small army, and take that first civ you met out... destroy them, and ONLY keep the capital... I use a mix of liberty, and honor, but you will need the gold from the end of the honor tree.

Do not hesitate, search and destroy. Improve those resources, for when you meet a new civ for the first time, trade that embassy, and as many resource as you can for luxes and gold. You will get the benefit of that trade for 30 turns.

Destroying the civilization stops them from denouncing you. If they denounce you, then the newly met civs know about your warmongering.

Kill barbarians as you go, satisfying some city states, which does help with happiness. But since every capital has 2 luxes, happiness is NOT that big of an issue...
Raze every other city.

As time passes, you can build trade routes with city states... helps with gold and happiness.

Keep that army marching forward, upgrade those units.

Who cares if someone denounces you as the classic era progresses. They are just your next victim...

Destroy a civs army first, for the gold, then raze their cities, and capture their capital.

Heal your units, and move on.

As you approach the last two civs, your units will be weaker than the others, but they are well promoted, can attack from afar with double attacks, which equalizes the battle. Just keep pressing, and building that new army, and get them to the front lines as quickly as you can. Helps to annex a forward capital to build some muskets.

You should finish up before industrial.

I have had success with Atilla, and Alex/

 

[ravenmagus]

I played an interesting game earlier as the Zulus. Every time I met a civilization, I declared war right then and there on the introduction screen and never looked back.

For what it's worth, a civ can't denounce you if you're at war. Of course, once everyone sees you systematically annihilating everything in sight, they won't like you much either. Not that I really care about getting embargoed when I can't trade with anyone anyways.

 

[TLHeart]

I don't declare war right when I meet them, as I am at war with someone else. Besides that way I can get 30 turns of gold and lux out of them.

 

[NASAROG]

I stay peaceful until the denouncement start, then I declare war and annihilate them.

 

[Novalia]

go liberty and build pyramids for pillage/heals and quick roads to the front line.

 

[slowcar]

as you get the penalty for conquering cities you get the warmonger hate for everything that happes while you know other civs.

yes, if you annihilate one civ without meeting any others the warmonger hate stays put, but when does something like this happen?

 

[TLHeart]

Quite often if you start in the ancient era, and don't explore

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Tribute every CS you don't plan to ally with for gold and if needed workers which can be used to build roads to the next target.

Pillage the land for extra gold and use their own workers to clean is up later.

Don't be afraid by advanced units, I have beaten civs who had pikes with my War Chariots, and captured continents with them.

 

[Laurwin]

as you get the penalty for conquering cities you get the warmonger hate for everything that happes while you know other civs.

yes, if you annihilate one civ without meeting any others the warmonger hate stays put, but when does something like this happen?

it happens in terra, continents, earth, fractal, archipelago maps.

Not usually in pangea, as the scouting is too fast to reveal other civs. In continents you could just wipe our own continent clean of enemies and develop the resources without too much pressure.

 

[Shagrat44]

Was this with a pangea map or continents? I have done an early rush with Atilla, but that was with G&K.

 

[Fallen_Kings]

don't conquer too many cities.Make them surrender.

 

[TLHeart]

If they surrender, then the next turn they will denounce you, then the chain denouncements start, and then you are fight a 2 or 3 front war.

I have done this on Pangea, I don't explore beyond the first attack, and you will slowly meet the other civs, which gives you a trade partner, while at war.

 

[Paszczak]

Destroying the civilization stops them from denouncing you.

This is really important. I find even if I met others it's better to exterminate a civ I'm at war with and be done with it, instead of letting them live with one city and watch how they endlessly denounce me, become friends with everyone else on the map(!) and mess up in World Congress.

Works really well in the mid-late game when penalties for conquering cities aren't as severe as in earlier eras and the difference between taking say 5 cities and 6 cities + extermination isn't as big. By the time my warmongering makes me ultimately hated it's too late .

 

[Erelich]

The main problem I've had with early warmongering is the fact that gold is so tight at that point in the game. Building more than 2-3 units will put you in the red, and that's certainly not a big enough army to take cities.

I dunno, I find it's easier to just wait until dynamite. Your economy is more stable by that point. 4-5 Artillery + a few melee units is enough to steamroll the entire map, at least up to Emperor difficulty. I haven't tried Immortal or Deity yet.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The main problem I've had with early warmongering is the fact that gold is so tight at that point in the game. Building more than 2-3 units will put you in the red, and that's certainly not a big enough army to take cities.

I dunno, I find it's easier to just wait until dynamite. Your economy is more stable by that point. 4-5 Artillery + a few melee units is enough to steamroll the entire map, at least up to Emperor difficulty. I haven't tried Immortal or Deity yet.

Gold can be gained from selling resources and pillaging, units are cheap at early game too so gold is seldom a big problem.

You dont have to take cities to go to war, you can play like the barbarians but do alot more damage by capturing settlers and workers and pillage the land while you expand to gain the land.

You can build an economy in two ways this game:
First you can build up your economy.
Secondly you can destroy their economy.

 

[Erelich]

The issue with relying on pillaging to pay for your army is that if you attack too early, there's a good chance that the AI will have very few improved tiles which means you have nothing to pillage. As I said, I only play on emperor so perhaps the pillaging tactic works better on immortal/deity where the AI will get workers/caravans out faster. Selling resources can help, but that depends a lot on the start you roll. You might not have any spare ones to sell.

 

[TLHeart]

Gold is never a problem early on, I can have a 6 man army up and taking cities and still have gold coming in. And since early cities only have a defense in the teens, that is all that is needed to take them. Kill those barbarians camps, that gold pays for the army for 4 turns. (standard speed) And then every city you capture provides gold.

Every civs capital provides at least 2 unique resources, so happiness is not an issue.

You do not need to build an economy with all out war, the war is your economy.

 

[Laurwin]

I just LOVE how pillaging improvements actually heals your pillaging units!!!

-Move the carpet of doom into enemy city (after having destroyed bulk of enemys field army)

-occupy all the best food and hammer tiles

-survive with your units and pillage for health boost, and gold profits

-kill city defenses with siege and ranged in the meantime

-enemy city cannot really do anything when good tiles are occupied by enemy (cannot work those tiles at all)