a easy way to stall your neighbour? war!

[akinkhoo]

while playing regent.
i found it amusing to start a war very very early in the game.
with the closer AI have about 3-4 cities,
with some distance between the 2 empire.

not that I want to conquer them but
the AI are handicap in empire building during war!
they discover tech very slowly
and spend their time building archers/horsemen
that can't kill a couple of spearmen i have guarding my borders.
as long as the ground is not open land,
the horsemen can't retreat from attack!
and they die!

while doing this, i had expanded my empire to 2x their.
before i begin to build up a force to destroy them.
and it provide me a early chance to get eilte defenders
and maybe an early leader.



this may not work well if the AI have a start advantage like in deity where they have additional units to kill you!

 

[Ivana]

Even better... in regent level you can destroy your closest enemy if the first thing you do is build a few warriors.

My mighty bunch of four hippie warriors wiped out Persians completely by conquering Persepolis - their only city - at the very beginning of the game. That really slowed down their tech development

PROS:
- You gain a city, couple of workers and probably a spearman for free
- Empty land
- You will need those extra warriors to guard your future cities

CONS:
- Cannot extort them to give their tech for peace because the war is short
- If you loose they'll probably beat the crap out of ya!
- Too easy, feels like a cheat

 

[john heidle]

Originally posted by Ivana
Even better... in regent level you can destroy your closest enemy if the first thing you do is build a few warriors.

My mighty bunch of four hippie warriors wiped out Persians completely by conquering Persepolis - their only city - at the very beginning of the game. That really slowed down their tech development

PROS:
- You gain a city, couple of workers and probably a spearman for free
- Empty land
- You will need those extra warriors to guard your future cities

CONS:
- Cannot extort them to give their tech for peace because the war is short
- If you loose they'll probably beat the crap out of ya!
- Too easy, feels like a cheat

At regent level in my last game, I walked a warrior up to an empty city. Next turn still no unit there so I declared war and took it. It was Athens and the Greeks were dead (I set the game to no restart).

 

[Erik Mesoy]

Play as the Aztecs. I managed to run a jaguar warrior into an undefended enemy capital on turn 7. No kidding. Oh, and it was auto-razed cos it had less than 10 culture. Buildt another couple of jags with the GA production, i conquered the Iroquois about 25 turns later or so. Got about 4 cities at the end of GA, built 2 jags in each. With the jag retreat, my 6 jags took out a hoplite with NO losses.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Ivana
Even better... in regent level you can destroy your closest enemy if the first thing you do is build a few warriors.

My mighty bunch of four hippie warriors wiped out Persians completely by conquering Persepolis - their only city - at the very beginning of the game. That really slowed down their tech development

PROS:
- You gain a city, couple of workers and probably a spearman for free
- Empty land
- You will need those extra warriors to guard your future cities

CONS:
- Cannot extort them to give their tech for peace because the war is short
- If you loose they'll probably beat the crap out of ya!
- Too easy, feels like a cheat

I does work wonders if you want to relocate a capital after a bad start, like in one of my games.

I had a city one a 1x4 strip of land (to the north and north-east where 2 mountains, and to the east of that, a good 9x9 or so sized desert!!). I built 2 warriors for exploration, got a "skilled" warrior from a hut, and found the Japanese on a nice piece of land. It was probably a good 50-60 turn delay, but I wound up winning the game (with some help from a pro).