Advice Needed

[CivBrit]

Hey everyone,

I'm still pretty much a newbie to FfH II (although I love it so far).

Anyway, I need advice from some of you experts on how to handle a situation in one of my games. I'm playing as the Hippus (Tsunke) on a tilted axis map against the AI. I spent most of the early game at war with Charadon, and after taking two of his cities we made a peace treaty in exchange for some of his techs.

The problem I have is twofold. Firstly, I'm struggling to keep the two cities I took because they keep revolting due to lack of culture. I'm building culture there as fast as possible (and I even moved the perfect lyre into one of them) but I'm not sure it's going to be enough.

The other problem is that i'm coming in third, and desperately need to expand my empire, but the three civs who border me (Charadon, Cassiel and Beeri) are now all in a defensive pact together. My army is certainly big enough to crush Charadon, but the other two have almost as many units as I do, so I doubt I could win a war against all three of them.

So how do I expand and push up my score? If I declare war with any of my neighbours, they'll all gang up on me. I tried bribing one of the other civs to get involved in a war, but none of them are interested.

To make matters worse, the Bannor started on a continent all to themselves, and so have established a sizeable empire and are clearly in the lead.

What would you do in this situation? Any advice would be appreciated! (Unfortunately I'm not able to post a save atm).

Thanks!

 

[Emptiness]

Tier 1 disciple units can sacrifice themselves for a small increase of culture in a city. If you can build those in your core cities then you can send them over to the two contested cities to help bolster their culture.

Be sure to station lots of military units in those two cities, to reduce the chance of revolt. Ideally you want to have enough units in each city to reduce the revolt chance to zero. You can see the chance of revolt by mousing-over the "City Nationality" bar, which is in the lower-left area of the city screen. The % chance of revolt will be listed at the bottom of the popup that appears, unless the revolt chance is 0%. If a revolt does occur then you can quell the unrest immediately by sacrificing a disciple unit as mentioned above. If you are using a civic that allows production to be rushed with gold or population, and you can afford it, then rush as many + buildings as you can.

Once you have those two cities out of danger of revolt, then I suggest trying to goad one of your three neighbors into attacking you. If they declare war on you then their defensive pact will be broken and the others won't join in the war (at least not immediately). Pick the one that you have the worst relations with and start making demands. Each demand will drop your relations with them, which should encourage them to declare war. You can also try moving the defenders out of some of your cities that are in the center of your empire. Station them in a neighboring tile, so that they can move back immediately. The AI will consider you vulnerable because your cities are undefended, and so be more likely to declare war. Of course, it will increase the chance the other AIs declare war as well, so it is more risky than just making demands.

If that works then you should immediately attempt to get one or both of your other two neighbors to declare war on your attacker. If you don't then they will probably get their help after a few turns, so the best way to avoid that is to get them on your side first. If you can manage to make it 2v2 or 3v1 you'll be in a much better situation than 1v3.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

Hippus? Tasunke? Use the poseter above me's advice and do what you do best: PILLAGE! Ruin an economy, then the next... use the pillagng gold to try anfd get a lead. if you have GotN, perfect. mounted mercenaries can do a nice job with the pillaging, especailyl on suicide missions.
EDIT: YOu should post a save.

 

[CivBrit]

Great advice, thanks for taking the time to reply. I'll start making some demands on one of my neighbours and hopefully provoke a war to break the defensive pact as you suggested.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

dont forget the raiding and pillaging!