A winning strategy

Thunderfall

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Everyone has the urge to compete with the AI in building cities. I spent lots resources building settlers in the GOTM game and my score was only so so. It's very difficult to build more cities than the AI.

A far better strategy is to concentrate on building military units and take over enemy cities. It's MUCH easier that way. I have only built 2 settlers in the first 3000 years in my second game and I am doing extremelty well. :)

This strategy works best when you are in close proximity with other Civs. If you found yourself alone on a continent. You'll need to build a few more settlers.
 
LOL..."you cant do that...The AI cheats!...it has unfair advantages in combat!!!"...lol...that is something I expect to hear in here soon...You're exactly right...its a good strategy...and best when they dump a darn city right where my settler was heading...grrrr....
 
The good thing about not building settlers is that your cities can be failry big very quickly. You can pump out tons of archers and other offensive units in no time, while the AI is busy building settlers. :)
 
On a smaller map against a lower level AI the startegy wil definetely work. Build two settlers so you have three cities, go for iron working and conquer the world. But deity level is another story. You need to have at least 20 cities relativly early. If you conquer them, or try to conquer them, the AI will strike back with no mercy! Because of their incredible expansion speed, they have lots of cities building units and because of their research speed the units they build will be at least equal quality to yours.
No, I like to go with the Pope-strategy as someone called it in another thread. Build as many cities as you can. Set science rate to zero, so that the cash will come in and use that cash to buy techs from the AI's. I think it's best not to switch to monarchy as soon as it is available. This way you can build your initial temples or whatever by forced labour, which goes much faster than rush buying them in monarchy.
In my current game as the Chinese on standard map, deity level, four AI's, I'm doing quite well compared to my previous attempts. It's 900 AD, I have 15 cities, sharing a continent with the Japanese. The continent is divided by a landbridge that I have control of. Except for a minor incident with the Russians I've been living in peace with everyone. The Russians founded a city on land that was rightfully mine. OK, that's that, but than they really got cocky and demanded my world map and 15 gold. I told them to take their threats elsewhere and had sent out a couple of swordsmen to take care of the situation. After I had taken the City of Astrakhan they kept bombarding my shores for a couple of turns, without doing any serious damage. Soon peace had been re-established and a trade route was negotiated. I still annoy them however. The French are also annoyed by me (I don't have a clue why). The Japanese and the Indians are polite towards me.
The French and the Japanese are exremely powerful, some way I have to get them involved in a war (any tips on this one?).
 
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