How do you beat Isabella???

[Void_nul]

Well, started a new game. Didn't get nearly as good of a start as the last game (I spawned near the arctic). Still, I did do more city overlapping, and got 6 cities despite my lack of land. I looked into attacking Frederick, but he's highly pleased with me right now. Decided to go after Saladin instead, since he hates me and is also far weaker, so he's probably an easier target. Exploring his territory with a spy though, I'm baffled. His empire seems to be divided between two islands, and I have no idea how he could've done that. If I were to declare war on him, I may not be able to eliminate him if he has cities on that other island, and I have no way to move my troops there. How on earth could he have done this? What, is there some land bridge hidden out of view? I'm starting to suspect that I spawned on an archipelago map. Not sure yet, since I'm nowhere near map trading. For now, I'm going to keep massing troops until I figure out my next move. At least he can't possible attack me, unless he has transports somehow.

And yes, thinking I may have should've chosen a different name for my save. Oh well, too late.

 

[Gumbolt]

Arabians have 2-3 cities. Not much of a threat. Germans are on 9 cities. Much bigger threat.

You should be whipping your army. I imagine that stack has taken years to build. You can whip a unit with a few hammers in it and get up to 30OF.

I normally promote catapults to city attack.

Right idea to attack but maybe 50/50 split with catapults. With construction and HBR elephants are by far the best unit to build.

 

[Void_nul]

Most of my cities are churning them out every 2 or 3 turn thanks to all the hills I have. I haven't felt much inclined to whip anything, and my buildings were crafting so fast I found it hard to justify wasting trees. I actually made the Hanging Gardens just to give myself a justification to hack down some forests. My army hasn't taken any time at all to make actually. 4 cities pumping out units every 2 or 3 turns adds up fast, and I even upgraded a few of the warriors I made earlier.

That said, how did you find out how many cities the civs have? I can't seem to find that information anywhere. I only know about the ones my spies have found (Frederick found the first one, though for some reason I didn't take a relationship hit).

 

[Gumbolt]

Fair enough. You do have a few good production cities. I would of whipped the others and chopped. At Noble level that probably does not matter and at present you are just trying to beat Noble.

I have bug and bull mods installed. So bottom right it shows Arabia has 3 cities and Germans 8. Arabia will have an island city which causes issues if left alive. Can you see list of AI in bottom corner?

Do build elephants it's your best unit!

Bombard before you attack the city wall cities on hills. Catapults attack first after this. Keep spamming catapults and 2-3 phants between.

 

[Void_nul]

Yeah, realized I could find their city number through the trade window. Frederick has 7 for trade, Saladin 2 (one of which is a city I can't see). So Frederick has 8 cities, Saladin 3. None of them seem to have much for good cities either, though I suspect that Frederick founded Buddhism. The holy city would give me some nice revenue for my research.

And yeah, I'll probably build elephants. I made those chariots expecting a larger territory. Oh well. Need to make some galleys so I can transport my troops to that island anyway. Fortunately, playing the Dutch I felt inclined to put a lot of my cities on the coast, and spawning on an island chain that was honestly sorta hard to avoid anyway. Now I'm a bit worried about what may be happening on other islands. I'll probably take on Frederick too after a while, just for more power. I may have to move my capitol if I take all his cites though. Worsening things, my unique unit is a freaking boat! Thankfully being German he won't get his unique unit until ultra late in the game. Not sure when I should attack him, given he is quite content with me and has given me quite a few techs. Either way, he is a rival, and I can't have THAT. Besides, who knows what I'll have to face once different island chains start making contact? And I'm going to guess that conquering cities on distant islands isn't such a wise idea, at least until I get that one civic that removes maintenance costs based on distance from the capitol.

 

[Gumbolt]

You need more land. I would take out both. You will have a massive army. Just use one stack. Don't send back up units unless in stacks.

 

[Void_nul]

Come to think of it, since I spawned so close to the arctic, could I possibly circumnavigate the world before getting the tech to go out into the open ocean? I've lost that race several times in a row (last time I was neck and neck with someone, and they got it before me simply because the bottom of the continent was wider than the top, fml). If I am on an archipelago map, I'm going to guess I need to invest more into a navy than I normally would.

 

[Gumbolt]

I doubt it as it's ice. On Noble and even on Immortal you should be beating AI to that. One caravel east and one west.

 

[Void_nul]

Okay, didn't think of sending out TWO boats. I've just been trying to do it with one, now I feel dumb. Oh well. Now I know I guess. Also, why would ice matter? As long as my boat is near the coast I should be able to move to it, right?

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay, didn't think of sending out TWO boats. I've just been trying to do it with one, now I feel dumb. Oh well. Now I know I guess. Also, why would ice matter? As long as my boat is near the coast I should be able to move to it, right?

Galleys won't be able to enter ocean till you have Astronomy. Caravels can. Yeah using 2 is kind of important.

 

[Gumbolt]

All done 1270ad. Should of taken out more Viking cities instead of waiting for Roman borders to pop. Didn't touch HRE.

If I had just focus on science and not expanded so much maybe it would of happened sooner.

 

[Void_nul]

I was going for a space race victory (and still am in my current game)....

That said, I was thinking before that if I was to attack the other continent, I would've gone for HRE (took me a while to figure out what the crap that meant btw), just because they're isolated on their own island.

That said, I was wondering if it would be possible to use ships to block off a continent? No one can launch a war if they can't get troops to your island, and transport ships would probably be easier to take out than the troops they contain. Of course, seriously making sure that no ships pass would require A LOT of ships, as in enough to stretch from one arctic to the to the other, or completely encircle a continent. Wish there was a way I could've just stopped people from landing in the first place....

As for my current game, I took out the entire arabian empire. I also got a spy to survey the entirity of the German empire. They plopped down another city or two. His land is extensive, though most of it is desert. Funny enough, I got a random event that could've let me get +3 relationship with him. I wondered if that might be enough to convince him to just hand me a city. Didn't go for it though because it would make me feel worse about attacking him. Be nice if I could just take his cities through culture, but I'm not going for a cultural victory and the cities I have near his don't have a lot of tiles to work. They're still producing units quite quickly though, and they'll be re-supplying my troops as I launch my attack on him. I'm starting to think this game essentially requires you to be a psychopath. I'm literally plotting to backstab my best friend in the world just so I can 'win', even though he's happily been giving me tech (though I've seem to have gotten ahead of him, probably due to half his cities being built in the middle of a desert).

 

[AcaMetis]

You can, on very low difficult levels, really mess up the AI by blockading coastal cities with pairs of Privateers (the AI, for some reason, largely refuses to attack a stack of multiple Privateers until they've got Frigates, but will happily build an army of 20+ Caravels without actually sending them into the meatgrinder in the meantime). That said on higher difficulties - and in general, really - if you want to prevent AIs from DoWing you it's best to do so via diplomacy. Charly, for instance, cannot plot war at Pleased or be bribed against someone at Pleased, so getting him to Pleased means he cannot start plotting war on you and will not be bribed to declare on you. Civ Illustrated #1 (Know Your Enemy) is a very good reference for AI's various thresholds and personal preferences/quirks.

 

[Gumbolt]

You don't need a lot of ships. The AI fleet is normally based in a single city. Could of done space but too much effort with such a big tech lead. With 20 cities it would not of been hard.

Perhaps I should of razed and settled more cities too to speed up end game. Added settler too late really. Waiting for border pops is very time consuming.

I agree on diplomacy. Of course these are things you pick up when you play the game

 

[Void_nul]

You can, on very low difficult levels, really mess up the AI by blockading coastal cities with pairs of Privateers (the AI, for some reason, largely refuses to attack a stack of multiple Privateers until they've got Frigates, but will happily build an army of 20+ Caravels without actually sending them into the meatgrinder in the meantime). That said on higher difficulties - and in general, really - if you want to prevent AIs from DoWing you it's best to do so via diplomacy. Charly, for instance, cannot plot war at Pleased or be bribed against someone at Pleased, so getting him to Pleased means he cannot start plotting war on you and will not be bribed to declare on you. Civ Illustrated #1 (Know Your Enemy) is a very good reference for AI's various thresholds and personal preferences/quirks.

Well, keeping everyone happy seems to be futile. People get mad at you if you trade with someone they don't like, they get mad at you if you refuse to participate in their war, they're annoyed by your border, if you're the wrong religion, the list goes on. Even in that one cultural victory I got I couldn't keep EVERYONE pleased, I just somehow got on good relations with my neighbors, and the ones who wanted to declare war on me apparently couldn't get open borders. Here's that save if you want to look at it:

 

[Gumbolt]

Well, keeping everyone happy seems to be futile. People get mad at you if you trade with someone they don't like, they get mad at you if you refuse to participate in their war, they're annoyed by your border, if you're the wrong religion, the list goes on. Even in that one cultural victory I got I couldn't keep EVERYONE pleased, I just somehow got on good relations with my neighbors, and the ones who wanted to declare war on me apparently couldn't get open borders. Here's that save if you want to look at it:

Have you tried the below?

Try shared favourite civics. +3-4 (10 turns a point)
Gifting resources +2 diplo over time.
Gifting techs can give you +4.
Avoid trading with worst enemies.
Open borders eventually gives +2
Voting for them in AP +2.
Shared religion can be +3-4.
Shared wars +2-3. (Each 10 turns 1 point)

For pleased you generally need +4-5 overall. Not impossible. Friendly at +10-11 is not impossible.

Religions will be bad if they own the shrine and have a different religion to you.

 

[AcaMetis]

It's true that keeping everyone happy is often impossible, but so long as you're not everyone's public enemy number 1 you can at least load the dice the AIs use to determine who they want to attack. Bribing AIs into wars derails their plans and sours relationships between them, bribing AIs into or out of religions/civics can make a difference, and combining Spiritual and spies can allow you to sow chaos on the board that would simply not be possible otherwise.

 

[Void_nul]

To be honest, I'm having a hard time justifying attacking Frederick. We're on completely good terms, despite him getting the occasional negative modifier that for some reason keeps disappearing. He wouldn't attack me, and even if he did seeing his army I would probably win (he's not making too many units for some reason, in all honesty I probably have far more units than he does, and some of mine now got promotions, of course I naively chose to give melee bonuses to my elephants so they would fair better against spearmen but he's now building longbows, fml).

I happen to have the confucian holy city now, and I even got the shrine. It would take me quite a few turns to transfer confucianism to all my cities though, and besides that I think Frederick has the Buddhist holy city, so staying buddhist would probably benefit me more (though I'll still transfer confusianism around just for the extra income, I've learned in the past that having 2 shrines is op).

Then again, I've seen ais attack on friendly, and I know some will even attack on pleased. Still, its hard to justify attacking someone who clearly poses no threat to me, just so I can have more resources. Besides, let's be real, the tech he's giving me could be more beneficial than me just teching myself. And either way, half his cities aren't very good, so conquering him entirely honestly probably wouldn't offer much benefit (unless one of those desert cities is the buddhist holy city). I did see a prophet running around his territory, so he probably has the shrine.

Oh, and right now he's teching engineering (I built a bunch of courthouses to try and get maintenance costs down, that and I had nothing better to do). Clearly I can't wait to launch a war, because once he has that tech he's going to be able to build pikemen, which will surely wipe the floor with my elephants even with their upgrades (8*1.25=10 str vs 6*2=12 str). On a side note, apparently arabia also had the holy city for daoism, so yeah I'm going to be swimming in cash. Still doesn't solve the problem with frederick. I can't upgrade my elephants it seems (apparently I need gunpowder and military tradition to do so), so I either attack him now or never.

I kinda feel like an ai civ who's getting a negative bonus with another civ due to them being weaker than them.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Would you post a few screen shots when making your points? It would be a bit faster than starting CIV IV and loading up a game each time you post a game file and searching around the map for some of the things you're asking.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Then again, I've seen ais attack on friendly, and I know some will even attack on pleased. Still, its hard to justify attacking someone who clearly poses no threat to me, just so I can have more resources. Besides, let's be real, the tech he's giving me could be more beneficial than me just teching myself. And either way, half his cities aren't very good, so conquering him entirely honestly probably wouldn't offer much benefit (unless one of those desert cities is the buddhist holy city). I did see a prophet running around his territory, so he probably has the shrine.

AI never attacks at friendly. Never. It's in the game code. Some will attack at pleased.

You also need to pick how you're going to win at some point in the game. Eventually it becomes inefficient to retool your entire victory economy and city setup. If you've been heading to culture but lose out on the major wonders and get poor religious spread, for example, but don't make a switch soon enough.