how do you handle a non-neighbor civ

[clif9710]

I've advanced in difficulty up to the immortal level but now am stopped. Though I have no trouble with neighboring civs no matter who they are, I cannot win if there is a civ that is out of reach.

The problem is the remote civ becomes too powerful long before I can reach them to ****** their progress either through war or grabbing open land. The only way I have come even close to challenging one of these remote civs is if they are landlocked with no room to spam cities.

 

[phillipwyllie]

What is your fastest SV on any difficulty?

If it is consistently below t250 on standard then you can beat Deity, assuming you survive the early rushes. Winning the World's Fair should be a high priority, and should be proposed first on the higher difficulties. This should defend against any tourism runaways.

 

[clif9710]

You are way ahead of me, Phil. What is SV? Also, I'm still on Gods and Kings so don't have the World's Fair. I finally did win when playing a game where Napoleon was far away but limited on a small landmass. I've cut the number of civs down to 4 so that everyone will be pretty close by if not neighbors.

 

[sixty4half]

If the faraway civ has costal cities you can usually take them out with naval units which, if this doesn't completely ruin him, will at least hamstring him a bit. As he tries to retake those cities you just destroy his land units with your navy. This should soften his defenses for his inland cities if you need to further hamstring him.

Bribing other civs to go to war with him. Especially if they are on the other side of him, you can create a pincer move by attacking from the opposite side of his empire.

If you control more CSs (City States) then you can propose things in the WC (World Congress) that will hamper him. Trade Embargos, proposing the opposite GP production bonus than what he needs for his victory condition, banning Luxs that only he has access to, things like that.

Also - SV is Science Victory

 

[clif9710]

Thanks sixty. The trouble with the naval attack, I find, is that at the immortal level the AI has such an advantage the other civs will be at least at my naval level by the time I can send a fleet against them, or they have artillery waiting to blow me out of the water near their cities. My latest attempts bear out what you say about getting the others to war against each other...when they ask me to join them in a war I almost always do so after the ten turn delay. In these wars I volunteer to join, I find I am rarely attacked. I can go on with my own development and eventually will be asked for peace on good terms.

 

[poxpower]

It's all about snowballing early.
Here's the standard recipe for easy science wins.
1- steal multiple workers. You can war a CS once, not peace out and keep stealing workers as they come out. Also steal from closest AI if you can do it without losing your unit.
2-open tradition
3-plant 3-4 cities at most. Get granary then library and finish National College as early as you can in your capital
4-build caravans as early as you can and send them as food to your capital. Nothing else.
5-get some science. universities, public schools, rationalism, research labs etc.

These are the early game "exploits" that let you snowball basically any start and any civ into a science victory. The key to science is to have a huge population. The AI is very bad at managing their empire, but gets a lot of bonuses that make it seem like they do well. But when the late game rolls around they generally stall out massively as their bonuses are mostly good for the early game and wanes into the late game as they pile on bad play after bad play. The AI basically focuses their efforts on nothing in particular and try to do everything, so if you just pick one victory type and manage your game well, you can beat them at anything.