Advice on Turtling?

[therottweiler]

I upped my game to King and I am having some difficulty. I usually like to Turtle to a Cultural or Space victory. It seems now I can hold off the first invasion but mid game one or more more civs declare war and I get whipped. Any suggestions? Do I have to go offensive to win?

 

[Civ4Pengbo]

I have found it helps. I have great trouble with early war. Once I get to medieval it gets easier for me and as soon as I get artillery the game is over.

4 city Tradition opener works well then once you have your universities set up start puppetting. If I don't do that I end up with gold or happiness problems.

Having said that I had great success turtling with Ghandi once. 4 cities on a jungle start. I kept the third ring of each city as jungle and plonked trading posts on them. Just about everything got stopped on those jungles and I just sat there nuking them with ranged units.

The main thing I have found is you have to get the tech lead either way. To do that you have to get focused on getting to universities and staffing them with specialists while getting NC and Oxford along the way. You do that and by turn 150 you should have 200+bpt and then you accelerate from there. Your biggest problem then is the AI city spammer/conqueror as more cities will eventually allow them to start catching you. However you get far enough ahead they don't get close enough. Turtled with a big military they can DoW all they want you can usually beat them as the AI is brain dead when attacking after the initial rush.

 

[anthropophage]

Build/buy three or four archers sometime between turn 40 and turn 60, research construction and upgrade them to composites.

 

[marekb]

Without screens/saves we cannot say much more than Civ4Pengbo. Focus on growth at the beginning, build NC before turn 100, get Universities as soon as possible, run science specialists. You should outhech any AI in medievals and later repealing with advanced units an invasion should be very easy.

 

[therottweiler]

I usually play Standard Map Marathon speed if that makes any difference. The tradition opener is better then liberty. I do so love the free settler and free worker and a great person (usually engineer to hammer a wonder).

 

[Vintage Port]

Without screens/saves we cannot say much more than Civ4Pengbo. Focus on growth at the beginning, build NC before turn 100, get Universities as soon as possible, run science specialists. You should outhech any AI in medievals and later repealing with advanced units an invasion should be very easy.

Pretty much what has been said here. But to keep it simple, as you go up you will/should war more often or at least be ready for it.

The AI will start producing more and more units as you move up in difficulty. As a result they will think you are weak (military wise) and attack you if you don't keep up at a reasonable pace.

Generally you want to have enough army that you can push back and puppet a few cities or maybe even an AI captial or not (can annex later).

For any type of Victory you need $ and science/tech. The more puppets you have with trading posts the more gold you will have. It allows you to rush buy science buildings, upgrade units, purchase units, ally with CS, pay other AIs to fight etc.

Also, by taking a few cities from an AI, eventually they will offer you peace. You can get some lucrative peace deals ($$$) after you take some cities.

You don't have to be at war the whole game but if you can push back and steal a few AIs cities and get peace deals it will go along way to helping you out.

In my current game I kept beating up on Ethiopia and he would offer me cities in return for peace as he was broke. I would then flip the city to another AI who had a lot of gold. Got 1700g for one city. The city was total trash in a terrible location but the AI seemed to love it

I find I still play way too peaceful and don't take enough initiative to start wars.

Winning wars = gold + cities which can lead to more science and better finish times.

Also taking cities from AIs weakens them and can stop a runnaway.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Turtling does not mean no army. If you get wiped mid game on King, it probably means you don't have enough troops to defend. With few, big cities, even a multiple front war shouldn't pose any trouble on King as long as you still have some troops to defend. This means more then just the Oligarchy free archer in your cities.

AI isn't that strong on King, but it's not as powerless as in Prince either. The issue is that on King, you can still beat the AI to every wonder, so the temptation to wonder spam is high. However, wonder spamming means you hardly have any defense.

Also, don't forget military techs. You can defend with out-teched units, but you can't defend with plain old archers against knights-trebuchets-crossbows attacks. Out-teched ranged also die very quickly if cought in the open ground, so they are better kept in your cities while you use stronger melee and cavalry to kill the ennemy ranged/siege units. Pikemen are great in the Middle Age as they come with a tech you need for Education anyway, so don't overlook them.

We can give better advices if you tell us when "mid game" is and why you are being beaten (does the AI have better units, or simply too much for you).
If several civs DoW you at once, almost certainly you look like an easy prey cause you have too few units.

And to answer your last question, no, you don't need to go offensive, but if you want a good peace treaty (where you gain gold/luxes rather than have to pay), you need to become threatening at least temporarily. This means move troops in his territory, start bombarding a city ... just killing his attackers won't help. If a warmonger is attacking you and he has captured other civs cities or city states, you can also go and free them. You won't be regarded as a warmonger for doing this, and this will help your relations with that civ/city state. Of course, we are back to point 1 : even when turtling, you need some army.

EDIT : beaten by several other member so it's possible i have repeated what they said

 

[therottweiler]

Excellent advice thank you all. Will try it and If I get killed again will post some savegames.

 

[Vintage Port]

Turtling does not mean no army. If you get wiped mid game on King, it probably means you don't have enough troops to defend. With few, big cities, even a multiple front war shouldn't pose any trouble on King as long as you still have some troops to defend. This means more then just the Oligarchy free archer in your cities.

AI isn't that strong on King, but it's not as powerless as in Prince either. The issue is that on King, you can still beat the AI to every wonder, so the temptation to wonder spam is high. However, wonder spamming means you hardly have any defense.

Also, don't forget military techs. You can defend with out-teched units, but you can't defend with plain old archers against knights-trebuchets-crossbows attacks. Out-teched ranged also die very quickly if cought in the open ground, so they are better kept in your cities while you use stronger melee and cavalry to kill the ennemy ranged/siege units. Pikemen are great in the Middle Age as they come with a tech you need for Education anyway, so don't overlook them.

We can give better advices if you tell us when "mid game" is and why you are being beaten (does the AI have better units, or simply too much for you).
If several civs DoW you at once, almost certainly you look like an easy prey cause you have too few units.

And to answer your last question, no, you don't need to go offensive, but if you want a good peace treaty (where you gain gold/luxes rather than have to pay), you need to become threatening at least temporarily. This means move troops in his territory, start bombarding a city ... just killing his attackers won't help. If a warmonger is attacking you and he has captured other civs cities or city states, you can also go and free them. You won't be regarded as a warmonger for doing this, and this will help your relations with that civ/city state. Of course, we are back to point 1 : even when turtling, you need some army.

EDIT : beaten by several other member so it's possible i have repeated what they said

This is good advice. Obviously ranged units like CB and then XB are the way to go for the first 150 or so turns. If you stay up to speed on those techs (Construction and Machinery) and keep your units alive you will have nicely promoted units. But the key here is you also need some meatshields and quick/hard hitting horse units mixed in.

Like mentioned above Pikeman are great units and you only need a couple to help out on the battlefield and/or to take a city. With cover they are very nice early units that can take a pounding. Mix in a knight or 2 to pick off the wounded or to cap cities from a far is recommended.

You don't need a lot of units as long as you keep them alive. Rotate in your ranged units, pulling injured ones back to heal/fortify.

Being aware of the terrain (for unit set-up) and if the city has walls or is built on a hill will determine what you need to be successful for taking a city.

 

[Vintage Port]

Oh, one other thing about Pikeman and Civil Service that Bob touched on: As civil service is on the way to Education you don't have to bother with the bottom of the tech tree getting swordsman/longswordsman.

Depending on your playstyle/victory/map conditions you may want to go Education right after Construction and then just pick up pikeman on the way and don't bother building any warriors. One or two horseman and 1 or two pikeman can handle pretty much everything you will need at that stage.

 

[marekb]

And to answer your last question, no, you don't need to go offensive, but if you want a good peace treaty (where you gain gold/luxes rather than have to pay), you need to become threatening at least temporarily. This means move troops in his territory, start bombarding a city ... just killing his attackers won't help.

If I remember well, on King, you can get a good peace deal without attacking AI territory. Wiping his/her army (and having a descent army) should be enough. But this could depend on your opponent.

Playing aggressively and puppeting is an efficient technique, but to capture AI cities you usually need more units than for defence and this slows your growth and science. On lower level it is probably more efficient, but on higher you can also get a lot from RAs and selling lux, so being aggressive is not always better (look at the results of TSG56 when the fastest victory was a peaceful victory).

 

[Civ4Pengbo]

If I remember well, on King, you can get a good peace deal without attacking AI territory. Wiping his/her army (and having a descent army) should be enough. But this could depend on your opponent.

I can confirm what marekb says here. I have taken to agreeing to wars with civs far away from me on the map that I stand no chance of getting to at the request of good trading partners. Napoleon in particular is good for this as he loves you for it and will remain loyal damn near the whole game because of it and since he is usually one of the stronger civs in most of my King games, it keeps him off my back for a very long time.

The interesting part is that eventually the civ declared on comes to you with a peace offer. Sometimes it's straight peace with nothing extra to sweeten it. I refuse these, hey we are miles away and they can very rarely do much about it anyway. I just keep refusing until they offer something juicy. Did it to Ghandi on my last game and he eventually got desperate enough to offer 2 cities and I knew I had him. Cities are useless to me that far away so I just removed them and asked for all his gold and a huge gpt deal and he gave me it. Set me up for ages, I think it was worth something like 1 or 2K gold in the end.

I have also done Vantage Points trick of accepting the cities and selling them on before today but I haven't tried that lately. Must remember that trick next time.

Obviously be careful who you do this too. It would not be wise to do it with any of the leaders. Usually the ones at the bottom of the heap who will get dog piled anyway sooner or later so get in there and get your gold before it all goes.

 

[Novalia]

If you don't fight the AI it just gets progressively stronger than you.. They will fight wars... Gain experience for its units.. More cities.. More science.. More gold. You need to think in terms of crippling your opponent. Stunt their growth. If you take some cities... Preferably a capital you've effectively taken them out of the equation.

You can do that early and still turtle... But now at least you'll have some outlying cities to act as a buffer between them and your capital.

If you don't want to fight much at all you'll need to use clever diplomacy. You need a steady bankroll for that. Keep bribing the most likely candidate to attack you into fighting someone else. Or vice versa. Build some extra scouts and keep them mid map to track your opponenents army movement. When you see them moving in your direction then act with your bribe.