Preventing an Inevitable War

[Retrospect]

here is my 2

As a preventative measure make sure you use espionage and recon to observe your neighbours/ main competitors military. I.e prioritize who you will spend espionage points on so you can always see their power graph on the deomographics.

Use spies,scouts,explorers and arial recon to look and see what units are where. If you spot a large stack somewhere then its likely they are prepping for war with someone. Invasion fleets are also a giveaway.

In my last game i knew full well that the portugese were coming for me around 30 turns before he did so. I spotted his troop build up and monitored his invasion fleet right up to the point that he was at my borders and declared war. His disposition was always cautious with me and so i made a special effort to observe him.

Im not saying you can watch everyone, or that you will never be caught unawares but it will give you a chance to prep for that huge force knocking on your door

 

[Bushface]

Keep an eye on the Power graph in the demogs. If an AI's graph is rising sharply, he's probably building an army: if yours isn't keeping pace, you could be the target. As said above, the AI's decision to declare war will have been made well before the declaration is made, and once made you have little chance of it changing its mind.
Spies could help you discover where Willem is parking his armies and what they contain, hence what threat they pose and thus what you need as defence.

 

[JerryvonKramer]

I agree more espionage would have helped, but is the massive scale of Willem's force normal by AI standards? I've played about 10 Epic games of BTS and not enountered this before.

 

[Leto]

eh, i make this naive 'goodwill towards all' mistake alllll the time. can't we all just be friends?!

but seriously, take it like a man, or you'll never learn how to prevent it. besides, you're ahead of him in tech, looks like, so just let him take a city or two and then you'll eventually repulse his attack, retake the cities, and beat him down in good time. i personally can't even understand the point of reloading. you just have to roll with the changes.

my current game is a good example. in the ancient age i expanded agressively, thereby leaving my forces spread relatively thin, with two arches each in my border cities. ragnar attacked with a big stack and took two of my cities. but by then he had to stop and lick his wounds, buying me time to whip/chop an army. i eventually took the cities back, along with most of his own, and now i'm very close to a domination victory after my tanks roll through a few german cities.

the point is, you can still win, despite the setback. think of it as an added challenge!

 

[Aristos]

Here's an idea. Grow a pair of balls and stop reloading, then you might learn how to play

indeed. I never ever reload. If I see clearly that I got caught by the AI in such a way, then I prefer to surrender than to reload. In fact, that attitude is what made my surrenders less and less frequent, and my diff level up and up.

"grow a pair of balls"...

 

[Aristos]

Oh god.

Going to have to put my hands up here and know when I am beaten. How can I battle with his madness? Willem must have had over 120 units ready for this war. Is this sort of thing normal for the AI to do?? I've never encountered such ridiculous levels of troops before.

another point: you really really have to learn how to permanently watch the other civs (power ratios). I recommend BUG mod, it lets you see that hugely important variable at all time as part of the scores table.

Keeping the power ratio balanced is the key to dictate terms and timings in war. "Initiative" they call it in military circles. Once the AI breaks the balance, you lost the initiative. And therefore, possibly the war, like in this case.

Isn't CIV the best experience ever? I wish I could be a teenager again...

anyways, good luck the next time. At what level are you playing? Do you use Aggressive AI? THAT is another story too..

c-ya

 

[Joe Harker]

The idea is to be the first in power, even if it isn't by much. Also when you open up to talks with the other civs, if they are at war and they say "we have enough on our hands right now" when you ask them to declare war on another civ then thats fine, however if they are not at war and they say "we have enough on our hands right now", my advice is to build your army up very quickly! (they can be detered from invading by a big increase in your miltary)

 

[Littiz]

I've had a similar problem recently.
I had the most advanced and massive army, yet unexpectedly an obsolete but ENORMOUS stack arrives and brings down a well defended city.
That was where I learnt the true power of collateral damage. I couldn't face that stack, until I tried with a couple of units with enhanced collateral damage capabilities.

Just for learning purposes mind you, and I lost the game anyway (surprise cultural victory...)

 

[Aristos]

Just for learning purposes mind you, and I lost the game anyway (surprise cultural victory...)

see, there is another "game killer"... there is no excuse for a "surprise cultural victory" because the data is right there,one click away. Again, I recommend BUG mod, which includes a "reminder maker", so you can send yourself an alarm (number of turns defined by you) to remind you to check something, like culture levels...

Get the point (I had too): at higher levels, you really have to MANAGE your civilization, to stand a chance. The AI became better at exactly that.

c-ya

 

[Lil_Yospeck]

Offense can be the best defense?

Another possible solution, that might hold off an inevitable attack from your opponant is to put them on the defensive and mount all your troops for an attack.

Not sure how they would respond, but I rarely see the enemy attacking en masse if you are attacking them, and will usually rally to defend. If they are weakly defended then get your stack as far away from where their stack lands, and try and conquer and raize. If they are still reasonably defended then just try to do as much damage to their land and resources. This might hold them off while you're still making more troops, and have a battle of attrition.

Its just an option

 

[zarakand]

can you upload a save version of your game? It sounds like a lot of fun to try playing.

 

[MarkM]

I realize you're emotionally invested in this game & that's why you can't just accept you made bad choices & will be set back by them, but I urge you if at all possible to look at it this way: if the AIs were total and complete morons and didn't exploit your mistakes, the SP game would be a mere exercise in mouse clicking.

Rejoice that the AIs are only half-morons & amazingly have some limited ability to make smart moves from time to time. What happened to you here playing the AIs, I predict would happen ten-fold (and probably a lot earlier) if you were playing human opponents in MP. Quite simply, you played in a way that you deserve to lose, and should lose, if your opponent has any brains & exploits your mistakes. Or even if you don't deserve to lose the game, you really need to let go of this idea that you can't have any setbacks at all (e.g. lose the city). It's gonna happen if you play at an appropriate difficulty level & the AI routines have any teeth at all, so if you're always going to go back in time whenever the AI does something you didn't predict ... you're not really even playing a game, and IMO reloading is a lot less exciting way to play this game than just taking the punches and see if you can figure out how to keep standing. By reloading what you're basically doing is just trying to remove the best parts of the AI from being factors in your games -- you are just trying to reduce the effectiveness of the AI. Like i said, rejoice they are not so lame that they can surprise you every once in a while!

 

[Draknith]

I still think there was a great chance you could have pulled through the war, and even dominated William.

Try pulling your troops out of Lakamha and amassing a counter force near Mutul and South of Lakamha. When William attacks he will most likely go for the path of least resistance. Once he has captured Lakamha he will be at a disadvantage. You could then rally your troops from the North and South and attack Middleburg and Mass (which should be weakend because they sent troops to Lakamha). Then combine your forces and take the Hauge. By the time William has a footing on what's going on. You should be able to have three of his cities, and preparing to retake Lakamha.

I would def change your civics though. It's war, and you're going to need all the help you can get from your populace.

Hope this helps.

 

[Joe Harker]

I am i right in thinking that once a AI goes to war, it will target the same city/cities until it captures them? If so it would make a good potential trap!

 

[Bushface]

Once it has made the attack decision, an AI civ will attack wherever it perceives a weakness. Any success at that point means that that point has become yet weaker, so further attacks occur. It is up to the defender to ensure that there are actually no weak points, to discover as best he may what potential (or actual) threats exist, and to prepare countermeasures accordingly.
Remember that fighting a purely defensive war never leads to military victory, though in Civ it may allow you to gain a Space or Cultural win if, a big if, you can keep the invader out of your core cities for long enough. Also, as some general once said, "To defend is impossible; to retreat, unthinkable. I attack !"

 

[09camaro]

What are my options here?

well... there is always the world builder option. though i highly don't recommend it.
btw, you say you have 22 civs on the map. what is the size of the map you have and where did you get it?

 

[LONGA]

One thing I learned playing with a large stack of enemy. Watch their promotions!
If you see a stack of siege weapon with city raiders 1+2.
Don't let them attack your city. Send some troop out and kill the unit guarding the siege weapons.

 

[theKurgen]

One thing I learned playing with a large stack of enemy. Watch their promotions!
If you see a stack of siege weapon with city raiders 1+2.
Don't let them attack your city. Send some troop out and kill the unit guarding the siege weapons.

Agreed. It's good to have some mounted units around that will inflict flanking damage on the siege units. The main thing holding back the war AI is it does not know how to do this effectively IMO.

 

[jeffreyac]

Remember that fighting a purely defensive war never leads to military victory, though in Civ it may allow you to gain a Space or Cultural win if, a big if, you can keep the invader out of your core cities for long enough. Also, as some general once said, "To defend is impossible; to retreat, unthinkable. I attack !"

I did in fact manage to gain a vassal by a defensive war - I was enveloping the borders of my smaller neighbor, who had built massive amounts of units in an effort to hang on to the border cities and prevent culture flip, so my units (though technologically superior in most cases) were vastly outnumbered. Still, I wanted to take him out, so I began to look closer... There was one city of mine that looked like a natural attack path for him if we went to war, positioned so that a fast unit (say cavalry) could attack it in one turn, but a slow unit (say, cannons) could not. So I moved a handful of bombers (I had just picked up flight) as well as my seige to within striking range of my city, and declared war (by airstriking one of his cities, just for fun... ) but did NOT actually invade his territory.

As expected, he came swarming out of his territory, moving massive numbers towards the city I'd predicted he'd try for. Some cavalry attacked, but I had positioned enough defenders to hold, and the rest stayed with his massive Stack of Doom. My bombers struck, followed by seige, followed by my offensive units, followed by city defenders coming out of the walls to mop up the leftovers - his entire offensive force wiped out in one round!

After this, he capitulated, without me ever actually having set foot inside his empire!