Always prepare for war?

[CIVPhilzilla]

Be a good trading partner with the AI's. If your a good source of money and techs for them, they would be less inclined to declare war on you. I usually do this up until the industrial era, then I mass tanks and infantry and destroy them one by one.

 

[ongwin]

In one of my Monarch games, I had just finished researching steam engine and I churned out about 30 extra workers to build railroads everywhere. By about 15+ turns or so, all my land had railroads, but now I had an acess or workers.

So what I did was that I used the workers and build a fortress and barricade on EVERY SQUARE at the border of my territory. Since fortresses do no destroy the improvements below it, meaning to say that you can build a fortress ontop of a mine.

Then I filled each fortress barricade with one infantry (Industrial Age already) and nobody every threatened me again. Furthermore, I found that AI didn't get sour so fast and deals were easier to negotiate. Military might?

 

[Phoenix]

Well my stratergy is to have a small defence force as my army (just enough so that I can move enough of them to a flash point to secure it for a short while if war breaks out) and a huge production and economy. This when I prompt the AI to attack me (to make the game interesting) and I can play defencive untill my armies are ready to take the fight to them. This means that I have a great economic advantage (low military cost) but can easily catch up with the power of the AI's armies if need be.

Currently I'm playing as Englnad on an earth map: I am using this tactic but also I have evoled it so that I have about (10 - 20) offencive units on standby - this came as an accident as I was just finishing a build up to attack the Netherland when France attacked me. Same happened later on; I'd defeated the French and the Netherlands and was about to attack Germany when Italy declared war.

Also if you keep your reputation clean (which shouldn't be too difficult since it will be the AI attacking you not the other way around) you can bring in countless other civs to help you out (almost none of them wanted anything from me because of the fact that the AI took the rep hit for starting the war (also the AI had units in my territory).

This is a dangerous strategy to use though and so you should only use it if you feel you can control it well.

 

[dmanakho]

Regent level is easy to play even if you don't have strong military,
by using trades and exchanges human player usually outperforms economically and technologically al AI civilizations as soon as early middle ages.
When i mastered regent level i never tried to build any AA wonders (i know, i know there are some good ones i sure miss), but instead was building up economy and actively trading technologies and when middle ages come I have all the wonders to myself up untill the end of the game.
Situation changes at the monarch level and above (i never got above emperor myself though). I don't know how the rest but for me priority No1 is to be most technologically advanced civilization, i don't worry much about culture points and i am not a hardcore warmonger. But, if you want to be advanced on hard levels the only way to do is is series of short but successfull wars as soon as you get iron. By the time you get iron all civilizations around usually are way ahead technologically, so I just try to build pack of swordsmen (10+)with support of spears (4+), latter mostly to guard captured cities and then i attack neigbor. Make sure to check your military advisor to say that you have strong military. What you need to do next is to quickly capture at least 3 cities. Usually AI is willing negotiate peace after 2 of his cities are captured, but i found it's not enough. After 2 cities AI will make peace but won't give away much technoliges, so make it 3 and AI will give you everything he has.
Next step - you need to expand, and do it at the expense of AI. I rarely build more than 5-6 cities before i start. So after you made peace with first AI and peace treaty will last for 20 turns which AI usually will never break at AA (it's just nobody around has enough money to buy MA against you at that time) it's time to attack your second neigbor and since you sucked all the techs you don't really going after those, now we go after cities... Same tactics, capture 3 cities or 4 if you are strong enough (you were keep building those swordsmen, weren't you?) and then make peace and demand more cities, trust me AI will give you almost everything he has and this civilization will never be a major threat again. Now it's end of AA and you probably have big and powerful civilization, now it's time to switch to republic if you wan't to do some buildup or to monarchy if we want to turn back (those 20 turns of first peace treaty just expired, didn't they?) on the first AI neighbor and since he probably still has'nt fully recovered he will be an easy prey for total annihilation.
End of story, You will rule middle ages.