Always War Tips?

[Aegis Shield]

I couldn't really find a comprehensive guide on tips for an always war game, so I guess I'll just have to start another thread about it...

Ok, this is where I'm at:
China, Always war, huge pangea with eight other opponents. Fortunately, I've only met three opponents thus far. The portugese, the mayans, and the romans. Again, fortunately, all three of them are on my northern border.

Even though I'm the largest nation(By a very small margin) I'm falling behind in the tech pace because I can't trade. Also, I have neither iron nor horses.

I'm still in despotism, working on researching monarchy. I'm afraid the unit support will cripple my already floundering science rates. My kingdom is situated on a healthy mix of floodplains, plains, grasslands, and hills so I've got a good variety. I'm doing a rough CxxC plan for my cities, so that any one city in my territory can be immediately reinforced by 2-4 other cities. I've only got one luxury as well, incense. I think at this point my priority needs to be expansion and crippling my competitor's research rates.

I'll try to upload a save later, but what do you do for Always War games? I'm playing monarch.

 

[Tomoyo]

I think that the Great Library is very, very important in AW. If you can't build it, go and capture it. On Monarch, however, I'm not sure you need it. The most important thing in AW to me is getting a lot of cities (keep building them, lots of them, never stop expanding) for the unit support.

Getting an army to pillage with is also important. The AI won't attack most armies.

And oh. You have no iron or horses. That should be a high priority. Can you see any sources of iron or horses? I had a AWM Japan game once when I had no iron, but I managed to get it by capturing a city deep in enemy territory (on the coast) and the cities leading to my core, getting the iron through the sea...

 

[Aegis Shield]

No such luck I'm afriad. None of my three current opponents has sent any swordsmen or horses my way, so I guess I'm alright for the moment in that regard.

Also, I had a spear army but I lost it by attacking a city, which now I look back upon as a completely stupid thing to do. At least it was victorious before it died so I can get the heroic epic. My plan right now is to keep expanding until I either find iron/horses, find an enemy with iron/horses, or pray that I get saltpater with all the deserts/hills in my territory.

 

[Tomoyo]

If you're not already doing so, catapults/trebuchets are very useful, so should be used, especially on defense. With them, you'll suffer less casualties, which frees up your cities to build economic infrastructure to help you keep up in technology.

EDIT: Lookie what I dug up! I don't remember writing this, though...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=99404

 

[A_Turkish_Guy]

you are playing huge and pangea means your enemies will get you later.so at the beggining you have to choose the barbs sedentery.there will be huts.i think you cant develop fast enough so you cant get techs fast enough.
at the start of the game make no military(none ,never ).make two workers to explore the map.but only worker or settlers.if you dont have military and if you get the huts with worker you can get techs from them(you will never get angry barbs).and the first thing to research must monarhy.(a tip for you if you near a hut before entering the hut change the tech tree from monarch to another.if you cant get it from hut change it again.it is the same for all the other techs.always research the easiest tech after monarch.(one of my emperor game i reaserched the ancient times tech year 725 bc. )and the first thing you have to build is Pyramid.after your 3th city find a good place for the city for pyramid(need 2 mine )
and another tip if you are playing C3C look at the Svars emperor game 10 AD save for placing the cities for more efficient.

 

[Tomoyo]

Umm... your advice is good for a HoF milk run, but...

He's playing an AW game...

 

[A_Turkish_Guy]

Umm... your advice is good for a HoF milk run, but...

He's playing an AW game...

does it means AI attacks at the first turn or no need to researh the techs??
if he try with my way he can get techs faster.
i dont know his turn but he is still playing despotism.if you try that way you can see the differences between researh by your self and get it free.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

AW='Always War'=declare upon meeting.
That doesn't mean sending out Scouts if you're EXP is a bad idea, but it makes the 'no military' suggestion a bit questionable .

 

[Tomoyo]

And it's also kinda hard to have one city (most likely your second best) stuck on the Pyramids, somehow build the Great Library, and get enough troops to defend yourself when you only have about three cities.

 

[A_Turkish_Guy]

eheheh.guys you never meet an enemy tooo early.if you are EXP it is much more easy to get huts.if you have 3 scouts you can explore the whole area around you too early.(means you will get at least (if you try it you will understand) 10+ huts.if you are lucky you can get 5 ,maybe more tecs at the BEGİNNİNG of the game.
i m not talking about 100 turns for no military.it is for the beginning of the game.after you get enough huts you can build your military.and if you want to expand faster you need Pyramid.and if you are a normal player(i m not talking about HoF player) just normal player you will never fall behind the AI about techs(except sid maybe emperor).and great library is just for sid games not for monarch games.if you can not reseach faster than AI in monarch game you need to play easier levels to learn much and then try upper levels(not for you tomoyo )
guys just try a game, waste your 1 hour and see the differences.i will say no more

 

[Tomoyo]

You haven't tried AW yourself, have you? I've played countless Always War games (normally on Emperor and above) and I can tell you that contact very early is a bad thing.

Why don't you try it yourself and then tell me what it's like, because it is obvious from your posts that you have no idea what an Always War game is like. By the way, the odds of getting a technology from a hut on Sid is 0%, 5% on Deity, and I forgot the odds on Demigod/Emperor. It's increased by 5% for EXP civs.

 

[Aegis Shield]

Oh, hey. Thanks for the article Tomoyo. That did give me some ideas for modifying my own killzones(Though when I say my own killzones, I assure you they developed quite by chance and not by any strategic planning.)

And I hadn't gotten to building catapults, though that might be because I don't have mathematics yet, I can't remember.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

if you can not reseach faster than AI in monarch game you need to play easier levels to learn much and then try upper levels(not for you tomoyo )

Need to help Tomoyo out her...
Sorry, you obviously have no clue what you're talking about.
If you have Scouts (read: You play an EXP Civ), you can build military right away; doesn't matter for huts.
If you are not EXP - do you really suggest to move around with your starting Worker? He has much more crucial things to do...
The Great Library - of course you don't need it up to Deity with a good start. For a regular game.
But, even Monarch AW is ugly without.

The Pyramids? A complete waste. I'd use an ultra-early SGL for it, after long debatting with myself if I wouldn't prefer the Colossus.

 

[Shadzy19]

Sounds like a fun game having a dogpile of 7 before 1000 BC

 

[vmxa]

It seems the point about how AW is done has not been clear enough for the Turkish Guy. Not to pile on or anything, the key here is you must decalre war upon meeting any civ.

Some allow you to make a trade and then declare, but you MUST declare upon that contact. Some play that if you see a civ, you must make the contact. By this I mean those times that you see a unit in the distance, but are not next to them. It also means if you see in the F4 screen a new contact, you have to dial them up and declare.

It allso means you are not allowed to make peace, so none of that stuff of making a deal as they troops show up at your door.

In this type of a scenario, if you make a bunch of contacts with those scouts, you will be very busy in a short while.

Since you must built troops quite soon and lots of them, it will be hard to finance research at any meaningful pace, hence the value of the GL goes way up. Do you need it, no, you can win on demi without it in AW, but you better know what you are doing. You better not be without horses for long.

You can safely use troops to pop huts, if you are expansionist as you cannot get barbs, so no need for the worker ploy. It is not research you may wish to change before popping, but any settler built.

The reality is expansionist is not the best choice of traits for AW game as your scout is not going to be allowed to go very far.

 

[KingBruiser]

I did the kill zone the otherday.. carthage burned all 32 Ancient cav's into my 20 spearmen on a baracade.. was great.

 

[SJ Frank]

I did the kill zone the otherday.. carthage burned all 32 Ancient cav's into my 20 spearmen on a baracade.. was great.

That was not a killzone.

I’d like to refer you to scoutout’s Warmongering 101 - A Tactical Primer, in which yours truly wrote a few paragraphs on Kill Zones.


AW games:

My theory on “how can a human player win AW games” is that, when the AI is in AW mode, they ignore things like expansion and infrastructure. Mean while, because the human player is able to achieve much higher kill ratios, he is able to build infrastructure along with troops. That’s how the human keep up in techs and eventually (and slowly) over whelm the AI’s.

The AW play is all about balance. You need to find the AI’s early enough to put them in AW mode, which will make things much easier later in the game, but you don’t want to meet all of them too early, because they will overwhelm you with their starting units. You want to balance expansion and consolidation. There is always pressure to build more cities, but having a poorly defended city razed is precious resources going down the drain, and you can’t afford too many of those. You also need to balance troop and infrastructure. Building nothing but troops definitely helps the war effort, but eventually the GL will expire and your economy will need to stand on its own.

Speaking of the GL, it is possible to beat AW without the GL. The key to doing it is more focus on infrastructure and resource denial -- the old pillage-n-park strategy. Where you march a spear along high ground deep into enemy territory, pillage their iron/horse, then park on/near it, so that they can’t send workers to reconnect it. It doesn’t matter if you’re behind half-an-age in tech, as long as they don’t have iron and horse, their best unit is still the archer

 

[KingBruiser]

oh, ok. oopsy