Hi all!
I have discovered a new way of successfully handling aggressive neighbors without spending valueable time and money and resources on an early war and still being able to expand in any direction I want. Or I'd rather not say 'new' because you old veterans in here have probably played like this a thousand times before but it was new to me!
The situation is as follows: You have built two or three cities when you meet a couple of horsemen from the aggressive XXX:s. They demand tribute for not crushing you. Also, their one or two cities are close to yours. What to do?
I tried this approach, in some ways inspired from some occ playing of mine: Give them all your techs and ally with them! When you disover new techs, give it to them also. This has two advantages early on: You can move your settlers and other units where you want to, especially through "their" land so that you can found cities all around them, that's part of the strategy, and second, they will not be able to research anything the next 50 or so turns. The strategy is to build many settlers and to surround the opponent so that he has no room to expand. You don't need to worry much about building a lot of military units now since you have an ally, hopefully with several horsemen and other baits around for barbarians and other civs to attack. Also, build roads and, if available, railroads to their cities. You need these later.
OK, later on you eventually get involved in a war with one or a couple other civs. Fine, switch to fundamentalism or communism and build an army. Talk to your neighbors and refuse to give them anything. They will get sour and cancel the alliance. A few turns later, talk to them again and demand tribute. If they declare war on you, fine, go and kill them. It should be easy now since they only have two or three cities and ancient military units.
With this strategy it can even be an advantage to have an aggressive neighbor. You can establish trade routes to their cities and they will take care of some of the barbarians. Maybe thay will pay you for declaring war on a mutual enemy. And if you kill them, you get a couple of medium sized cities with city improvements for free. You only need a handful of military units and a handful of diplomats to get all of this.
I have discovered a new way of successfully handling aggressive neighbors without spending valueable time and money and resources on an early war and still being able to expand in any direction I want. Or I'd rather not say 'new' because you old veterans in here have probably played like this a thousand times before but it was new to me!
The situation is as follows: You have built two or three cities when you meet a couple of horsemen from the aggressive XXX:s. They demand tribute for not crushing you. Also, their one or two cities are close to yours. What to do?
I tried this approach, in some ways inspired from some occ playing of mine: Give them all your techs and ally with them! When you disover new techs, give it to them also. This has two advantages early on: You can move your settlers and other units where you want to, especially through "their" land so that you can found cities all around them, that's part of the strategy, and second, they will not be able to research anything the next 50 or so turns. The strategy is to build many settlers and to surround the opponent so that he has no room to expand. You don't need to worry much about building a lot of military units now since you have an ally, hopefully with several horsemen and other baits around for barbarians and other civs to attack. Also, build roads and, if available, railroads to their cities. You need these later.
OK, later on you eventually get involved in a war with one or a couple other civs. Fine, switch to fundamentalism or communism and build an army. Talk to your neighbors and refuse to give them anything. They will get sour and cancel the alliance. A few turns later, talk to them again and demand tribute. If they declare war on you, fine, go and kill them. It should be easy now since they only have two or three cities and ancient military units.
With this strategy it can even be an advantage to have an aggressive neighbor. You can establish trade routes to their cities and they will take care of some of the barbarians. Maybe thay will pay you for declaring war on a mutual enemy. And if you kill them, you get a couple of medium sized cities with city improvements for free. You only need a handful of military units and a handful of diplomats to get all of this.
with the AI since they just plain don't know how to fight.
Why treat them as a 'pet civ'?
