Advice for dealing with a runaway?

[Janus0]

The year is 545 AD. I am playing Budica and am on a continent with Churchill, Hamurabi, Gandhi, and Peter. We are all Hindu. Everyone is friendly, except for Peter and Gandhi who fought a war against eachother early on. We collectively are in the macemen-xbow-catapult era of technology.

I have a very minor tech lead on Peter and Churchill. I'm on par with Gandhi. Hamurabi has SEVEN techs I don't, and I have none he doesn't. Hamurabi has 5!! gems. He's also litterally the farthest civ from me on the continent. I would have to march through every other civ's teritory to reach his. He also controls the AP.

I'm still expanding into a strip of land I blocked off (room for 2 good cities and 2 marginal ones), and I just can't accept any more cities until my economy is in better shape.

Capturing his cities is not possible right now for economic, political, and logistical reasons. Razing them would just change the tech leader, since you can't destroy gems. He has no enemies, so throwing him into war with someone else isn't an option.

How do I deal with him?

 

[Tibur753]

How big is your power rating? If it is high enough, demand gold from everyone that has a lower rating to fuel a beeline to cemistry and steel. Research at just above your limit so that you are losing under 10 gold every turn. Once you get to cemistry, spam grenadiers while researching steel. Once you get steel, get about 10-15 cannons and take the nearest civ. Do it quickly so Hammurabi can't stop the war. When you take a good amount of his cities, capitulate him and give him all of his cities back but make sure he stays under 40% of you population/land. During the war you should run 0% research. Once you have him, then heal your army, train more units, and when thats done advance on the next nearest civ and do the same thing. after that is done, you should have a good amount of gold and you should do a beeline for Communism (which requires liberalism so go for scientific method as the free tech if you get it.) Immediately run state property. Rebuild your military and liberate cities to one your vassals to put him over the limit and demand a bunch of stuff from him. when he declares war, take as much as you can. State property will remove distance mantainence. If you can't beat him completely, don't take him as your vassal again. If your economy is OK at this point, do the same with your other vassal. This should give you a huge empire with all hindu cities and you will have a big say in what happens with the apostolic palace. Trade some techs with the AI for the ones that you beelined to get the ones you missed. Hopefully you won't be too far behind. Your empire should be big enough to get a tech lead later and take over Hammurabbi and the other civs. Good luck.

Also, could you attach a save file?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If the AP hasn't been built, build in in any religion but hindu, spread it to your friendly hindu buddies and 1 to each non-hindu, and grab a diplo win.

Otherwise, capture land, steal techs, and trade them. If non-hindus built the AP you can just take it and do the same thing.

 

[Tibur753]

Didn't you read his post? Everyone on the continent is Hindu and the AP has been built by Hammurabbi.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Didn't you read his post? Everyone on the continent is Hindu and the AP has been built by Hammurabbi.

I missed it because I was tired. Since the AP is out of the question, he has no choice but to capture as much land as possible without ruining diplo/risking getting killed (moreso the latter IMO). If he's still far behind, he needs to steal techs from hammy down a beeline that other AI's don't have (won't be hard even with standard BTS interface) and then trade it for more techs. Once he can research a unique tech he can switch back to normal research. Or, once he has composites/robotics he can just turn research off and try to push domination with a late, modern army.

Generally the best counter to a runaway AI is to prevent it of course, but if you can't you need to catch up. Usually an AI feels runaway to begin with because a person lacks land, so that's a top priority along with steal-brokering.

 

[Iranon]

First, don't worry. The AI is better at getting ahead than it is at winning.

The AP will make warfare costly and with one big happy family you risk isolating yourself diplomatically if you declare over and over.
I suggest Espionage; you can assign everything to Hammurabi. This might even slow down the rest of the AIs since they tend to respond to massive espionage in kind (but are useless at using it).

Also, if you can't accept new cities at that stage of a peaceful game, something probably went horribly wrong (not necessarily something under your control, but I'd like to know what). Are you playing on Deity or something? But then I think the other AIs would be farther in the 6th century AD... puzzled.

 

[NHJ BV]

Maybe get everyone to gang up on Hamurabbi?

 

[SharpMango]

How big is your power rating? If it is high enough, demand gold from everyone that has a lower rating to fuel a beeline to cemistry and steel. Research at just above your limit so that you are losing under 10 gold every turn. Once you get to cemistry, spam grenadiers while researching steel. Once you get steel, get about 10-15 cannons and take the nearest civ. Do it quickly so Hammurabi can't stop the war. When you take a good amount of his cities, capitulate him and give him all of his cities back but make sure he stays under 40% of you population/land. During the war you should run 0% research. Once you have him, then heal your army, train more units, and when thats done advance on the next nearest civ and do the same thing. after that is done, you should have a good amount of gold and you should do a beeline for Communism (which requires liberalism so go for scientific method as the free tech if you get it.) Immediately run state property. Rebuild your military and liberate cities to one your vassals to put him over the limit and demand a bunch of stuff from him. when he declares war, take as much as you can. State property will remove distance mantainence. If you can't beat him completely, don't take him as your vassal again. If your economy is OK at this point, do the same with your other vassal. This should give you a huge empire with all hindu cities and you will have a big say in what happens with the apostolic palace. Trade some techs with the AI for the ones that you beelined to get the ones you missed. Hopefully you won't be too far behind. Your empire should be big enough to get a tech lead later and take over Hammurabbi and the other civs. Good luck.

Also, could you attach a save file?

just thought i'd say i really like your answer, gives me thoughts for my games as well =)

 

[vicawoo]

Assimilate your weaker neighbors.