Diplomacy is extremely important, and I lost a game as Spain in a recent game that reminded me of that yet again. I tried to found a religion early on to spread it to somebody and make them my game-long ally. Unfortunately, Bismarck was that ally but then founded Confucianism and went off on his own. Eventually he issued a DoW on me and another AI joined in to hammer me on two fronts with superior numbers and tech. So I just quit out of frustration.
The next game, I randomly drew Julius Caesar and figured that I should simply not have a religion and slice someone with my Praets ASAP. I was basically at the six o'clock position on the map (inland sea; I was trying out new stuff). I quickly beat up the guy in the southeastern corner, Frederick, and left my neighbor Hannibal alone in the southwestern corner; 2 barb cities had sprung up between us and I hoped that they would hold him off my future territory for a while. I left Frederick crippled with one lame city in the southeastern corner and tried to build up my infrastructure, but not before Shaka in the northeast/east started spamming settlers to take over what should have been Frederick's land. I would not let Shaka double his empire size so easily, so I warred with him and razed a couple of cities before I was forced to sue for peace. I just didn't have the infrastructure to keep his cities, and I didn't want to fall even further behind in the tech race. (I did in fact lose the race to liberalism, Physics, Corporation, etc., though I did get the free GG from fascism and got so many GGs that I got a city pumping out 27-xp units with the help of barracks, west point, Pentagon, military acad, heroic epic, and nine military instructors. Drill IV + Combat I tanks to start off with isn't shabby when you can crank them out almost every turn.)
Now, the west part of the map was Mongolia, northwest was Spain, north was China, and north/northeast was the Incans. Southwest was Hannibal, I was south, Frederick was in the southeast before I took over.
After I was through with Shaka, I took the barb cities between Hannibal and me, but Hannibal founded 2 cities right up in my face, like literally right on the borders of Rome. So I decided to kill him, even though he was friendly/pleased with every single freaking other civ. I'm doing a pretty good job of it and razed those 2 cities and captured a third, but then:
TURNING POINT: Shaka is still mad at me for denying him the eastern part of the map, and he abruptly DoW on me and floods me with knights. I lose an expansion city to him (it just turned pop 2, my newest city, sniff sniff) and am barely hanging on. I know that I'm sunk if I get caught in a dogpile again like last game, so I trade my best techs to Genghis in exchange for Engineering (for pikemen) and to have him DoW on Carthage to make sure Carthage is preoccupied and doesn't even THINK about invading me. Big turning point! I needed Engineering really badly; I win my war of attrition against Shaka mainly because of that trade and because I was putting every great general I got into my future Heroic Epic city and my pikemen were rather buff.
Without Hannibal to help him, Shaka can't win in a war of attrition. Adding trebs to my cat-based army, I manage to raze a couple of Zulu cities and get Shaka to declare peace, albeit for only a little bit of gold. But I don't want to press my advantage, because I want to get a piece of Carthage before it's all gone. You see, Genghis actually does too good of a job against Hannibal, capturing two of Hannibal's cities fairly early on, and slowly winning a war of attrition after that before they call for peace at about the same time that Shaka and I call for peace.
Immediately after Shaka and I agree to a peace treaty, I pop rush some settlers and clog up as much of the land between Shaka and me as possible--including re-founding Ravenna, the city that he razed. I also planned my cities so that the two frontline ones were: (a) a city on a hill with ocean on on side, and a small cluster of peaks on the other = if Shaka wants to attack, it'll be an uphill battle--literally; and (b) a city just south of a long river, so with any luck Shaka will be impatient and have to cross the river to attack with his siege engines. If he tries to cross the river or take the gap to get to me BEFORE attacking me, I will have siege engines ready to hammer any large stacks that pass by. I also plan to clog up the gap with fortified machine gunners when I get the chance to.
After clogging up the eastern part of the map, I decide to destroy Carthage once and for all (how appropriate, as I'm playing as Rome). Hannibal's weakened forces are no match for my catapults and Praets, and I leave him with one city to try to extort techs out of him, but he is stingy.
Meanwhile, the diplomatic situation is looking bad: Mongolia is exhausted from war and won't be of much use as an ally against anyone else for a while. Shaka and Hannibal were pretty popular, so I'm collecting a bunch of demerits for warring with them. Izzy hates me because Capac asks me to switch to Confucianism, and I agreed, because Capac is strong and, well, I've never had a game where Izzy actually liked me, so I figure that it's no big loss to make her my enemy yet again. Of course I switch to No State Religion as soon as I am able to, to avoid Izzy's wrath a little longer. But later on, Genghis DoW on Spain, so I'm doubly happy that I shafted Izzy and got brownie points with Capac. Much later after Genghis did all the hard work against Spain, Mao dogpiles (Mongolia got like one city and China took the rest of Spain). However:
ANOTHER TURNING POINT: While Genghis and Mao are pummeling Spain, I am building infrastructure when Shaka abruptly DoW on me and floods me with cavalry at a time when I have JUST gotten to grenadiers and am desperately finishing Biology so I can switch to researching Rifling. Worse, Capac and I are now on pretty bad terms because he keeps demanding my best tech and I keep saying no. Capac has the biggest army and says I'm his worst enemy, AND says he has enough on his hands even though he's not at war with anyone. We all know what THAT means. So in order to avoid fighting 2 civs on 1, I bribe Genghis with Democracy to attack Capac. Genghis must be freaking crazy, because Capac's army is easily twice the size of his and many times the size of mine, but Genghis is dying from emancipation demands from his citizenry. Unfortunately the resulting "you brought a war ally against us" demerit was the last straw, and Capac declares war on me the following turn. Well, at least now it's 2v2 and not 1v2.
I get Railroad early in the war and machine guns let me live long enough to eventually get artillery, which finally lets me have a unit other than riflemen that can attack cavalry in the open field to stop pillaging; I want to keep my city garrison-promoted riflemen in their cities where they belong. Still, Shaka and Capac are throwing SO many calvary, cannons, and riflemen (and later marines and tanks) at me that I am barely hanging on. My hilltop city and city with the protective river probably would have fallen quickly if I hadn't built them with those natural defenses in mind.
SUB-TURNING POINT: Genghis meanwhile is also suffering from the Incan wrath. Capac had a city in the southwestern corner (the guy had cities all over the map in weird places; what a squatter!) which was isolated from Capac's main army so Genghis managed to capture it, but then lose it again after a couple of turns. I think what happened was the Mongol invading stack barely won, so the Incan military units around that city guarding its resources went over and reclaimed the city immediately... So then I went in and captured it for myself, facing only a single marine guarding that city after all that happened. Then Capac took out 2 Mongol cities. At that point I intervened and just flat-out GAVE Genghis Railroad technology for machine gun units. It sort of works, but not for long. Genghis sues for peace. Nevertheless, that bought me just enough time to get Shaka to sue for peace too. And it's interesting how sometimes a friendly or pleased AI will throw you a bone and give you a free tech if you are lagging really far behind everyone.. I wonder if it's to simulate a situation like my throwing my war ally Gengthis a free tech so that he can better block my western flank for me? I also gifted a grenadier to Genghis and would have gifted more if I didn't desperately need those units for my eastern flank.
Anyway, I get assembly line and infantry and eventually marines and Police State. However, Capac gets infantry right after I do and beats me to tanks since he already had combustion, but I have enough artillery that I can sacrifice 2 artillery to allow a third to finish off a tank. I even start giving my best artillery the Ambush promotion to kill Capac's armor. I sacrifice a lot of artillery to raze one Zulu city and to capture another and force Shaka to drop out of the war shortly after Genghis dropped out. But Capac just keeps coming at me until one particularly bloody battle where I had a dozen artillery fire on his stack of tanks and marines, losing most of my artillery but killing his entire stack (my first batch of tanks were there to mop up). Then he finally accepts peace.
Since my army suddenly had nothing to do, I DoW on Shaka soon afterwards, capturing most of the eastern side of the map. During the war, I briefly can't build anything requiring oil, because someone sabotaged ALL of my oil wells, and it sure isn't Shaka since he's too backward and poor. Grr, stupid Capac. So I start garrisoning my wells and build Scotland Yard to counter-spy and to cut Capac's oil well when the time is right, and I also build an offshore platform and park some battleships on it for good measure.
By the time I am through with Shaka, I have all of his territory (east/northeast), which borders on Capac's land (north/northeast). And then, even though some of my units are still healing from the Zulu war, I DoW on Capac because if I don't, my newly-conquered cities will get culture-washed anyway. My spies sabotage the only source of Incan oil, and my surprise attack with artillery knocks out one of his biggest cities near his capital, but his counterattack almost takes back his city. He captures an ex-Zulu city that had a weak garrison, and the very next turn I recapture it, but he takes it right back and founds a city south of it, too, and I'm all out of artillery by that point since my cities were taking a breather to build necessary infrastructure and not reinforcements. Nevertheless, Capac's lack of oil (and soon the lack of coal as well) eventually lets me take out all of the Incan empire in that area, leaving them with only some outpost cities near the former Spain/China border.
I turn next to kill China, but then think that it'll be quicker if I kill Mongolia first, so I bribe China to DoW with Genghis and mop up and take cities after a few turns of waiting for Mongolia to waste its army defending against the Chinese invasion. Result: right before my newly-captured cities border-popped to give me a domination victory, the first UN election comes up. I am literally 1 vote shy of being able to simply VOTE myself a diplomatic victory, so I DoW on the remaining Incan cities and take them, giving me a dip victory in 1892 rather than a domination victory.
Morals of the story:
Never fight 1v2, or even 1v1 if you can help it. Bribe people to help you out, and it may sometimes be better to not adopt a religion than to have one.
Border towns should usually be production sites if the neighbor is hostile-looking, as you can be sure that they will get pillaged to death at some point. It doesn't take long to rebuild farms, watermills, mines, etc., but it takes far longer to get your villages and towns back.
Forests next to a riverside (for 3GD, and if right latitude, Space Elevator) ironworks is good for counteracting the health.. that was the tiebreaker between Berlin and Numidian, my two big riverside cities, one with hills and flatland and food resources, the other with a food resource, forests, a bit of flatland.
Bottleneck areas like the clogs on hilltops and across rivers can be a big difference-maker in a closely-contested war. Over the course of the war I probably saved dozens of units, as my initial units got more experienced instead of dying, and the experienced units later had to face stronger opponents that green troops would not have survived.
The next game, I randomly drew Julius Caesar and figured that I should simply not have a religion and slice someone with my Praets ASAP. I was basically at the six o'clock position on the map (inland sea; I was trying out new stuff). I quickly beat up the guy in the southeastern corner, Frederick, and left my neighbor Hannibal alone in the southwestern corner; 2 barb cities had sprung up between us and I hoped that they would hold him off my future territory for a while. I left Frederick crippled with one lame city in the southeastern corner and tried to build up my infrastructure, but not before Shaka in the northeast/east started spamming settlers to take over what should have been Frederick's land. I would not let Shaka double his empire size so easily, so I warred with him and razed a couple of cities before I was forced to sue for peace. I just didn't have the infrastructure to keep his cities, and I didn't want to fall even further behind in the tech race. (I did in fact lose the race to liberalism, Physics, Corporation, etc., though I did get the free GG from fascism and got so many GGs that I got a city pumping out 27-xp units with the help of barracks, west point, Pentagon, military acad, heroic epic, and nine military instructors. Drill IV + Combat I tanks to start off with isn't shabby when you can crank them out almost every turn.)
Now, the west part of the map was Mongolia, northwest was Spain, north was China, and north/northeast was the Incans. Southwest was Hannibal, I was south, Frederick was in the southeast before I took over.
After I was through with Shaka, I took the barb cities between Hannibal and me, but Hannibal founded 2 cities right up in my face, like literally right on the borders of Rome. So I decided to kill him, even though he was friendly/pleased with every single freaking other civ. I'm doing a pretty good job of it and razed those 2 cities and captured a third, but then:
TURNING POINT: Shaka is still mad at me for denying him the eastern part of the map, and he abruptly DoW on me and floods me with knights. I lose an expansion city to him (it just turned pop 2, my newest city, sniff sniff) and am barely hanging on. I know that I'm sunk if I get caught in a dogpile again like last game, so I trade my best techs to Genghis in exchange for Engineering (for pikemen) and to have him DoW on Carthage to make sure Carthage is preoccupied and doesn't even THINK about invading me. Big turning point! I needed Engineering really badly; I win my war of attrition against Shaka mainly because of that trade and because I was putting every great general I got into my future Heroic Epic city and my pikemen were rather buff.
Without Hannibal to help him, Shaka can't win in a war of attrition. Adding trebs to my cat-based army, I manage to raze a couple of Zulu cities and get Shaka to declare peace, albeit for only a little bit of gold. But I don't want to press my advantage, because I want to get a piece of Carthage before it's all gone. You see, Genghis actually does too good of a job against Hannibal, capturing two of Hannibal's cities fairly early on, and slowly winning a war of attrition after that before they call for peace at about the same time that Shaka and I call for peace.
Immediately after Shaka and I agree to a peace treaty, I pop rush some settlers and clog up as much of the land between Shaka and me as possible--including re-founding Ravenna, the city that he razed. I also planned my cities so that the two frontline ones were: (a) a city on a hill with ocean on on side, and a small cluster of peaks on the other = if Shaka wants to attack, it'll be an uphill battle--literally; and (b) a city just south of a long river, so with any luck Shaka will be impatient and have to cross the river to attack with his siege engines. If he tries to cross the river or take the gap to get to me BEFORE attacking me, I will have siege engines ready to hammer any large stacks that pass by. I also plan to clog up the gap with fortified machine gunners when I get the chance to.
After clogging up the eastern part of the map, I decide to destroy Carthage once and for all (how appropriate, as I'm playing as Rome). Hannibal's weakened forces are no match for my catapults and Praets, and I leave him with one city to try to extort techs out of him, but he is stingy.
Meanwhile, the diplomatic situation is looking bad: Mongolia is exhausted from war and won't be of much use as an ally against anyone else for a while. Shaka and Hannibal were pretty popular, so I'm collecting a bunch of demerits for warring with them. Izzy hates me because Capac asks me to switch to Confucianism, and I agreed, because Capac is strong and, well, I've never had a game where Izzy actually liked me, so I figure that it's no big loss to make her my enemy yet again. Of course I switch to No State Religion as soon as I am able to, to avoid Izzy's wrath a little longer. But later on, Genghis DoW on Spain, so I'm doubly happy that I shafted Izzy and got brownie points with Capac. Much later after Genghis did all the hard work against Spain, Mao dogpiles (Mongolia got like one city and China took the rest of Spain). However:
ANOTHER TURNING POINT: While Genghis and Mao are pummeling Spain, I am building infrastructure when Shaka abruptly DoW on me and floods me with cavalry at a time when I have JUST gotten to grenadiers and am desperately finishing Biology so I can switch to researching Rifling. Worse, Capac and I are now on pretty bad terms because he keeps demanding my best tech and I keep saying no. Capac has the biggest army and says I'm his worst enemy, AND says he has enough on his hands even though he's not at war with anyone. We all know what THAT means. So in order to avoid fighting 2 civs on 1, I bribe Genghis with Democracy to attack Capac. Genghis must be freaking crazy, because Capac's army is easily twice the size of his and many times the size of mine, but Genghis is dying from emancipation demands from his citizenry. Unfortunately the resulting "you brought a war ally against us" demerit was the last straw, and Capac declares war on me the following turn. Well, at least now it's 2v2 and not 1v2.
I get Railroad early in the war and machine guns let me live long enough to eventually get artillery, which finally lets me have a unit other than riflemen that can attack cavalry in the open field to stop pillaging; I want to keep my city garrison-promoted riflemen in their cities where they belong. Still, Shaka and Capac are throwing SO many calvary, cannons, and riflemen (and later marines and tanks) at me that I am barely hanging on. My hilltop city and city with the protective river probably would have fallen quickly if I hadn't built them with those natural defenses in mind.
SUB-TURNING POINT: Genghis meanwhile is also suffering from the Incan wrath. Capac had a city in the southwestern corner (the guy had cities all over the map in weird places; what a squatter!) which was isolated from Capac's main army so Genghis managed to capture it, but then lose it again after a couple of turns. I think what happened was the Mongol invading stack barely won, so the Incan military units around that city guarding its resources went over and reclaimed the city immediately... So then I went in and captured it for myself, facing only a single marine guarding that city after all that happened. Then Capac took out 2 Mongol cities. At that point I intervened and just flat-out GAVE Genghis Railroad technology for machine gun units. It sort of works, but not for long. Genghis sues for peace. Nevertheless, that bought me just enough time to get Shaka to sue for peace too. And it's interesting how sometimes a friendly or pleased AI will throw you a bone and give you a free tech if you are lagging really far behind everyone.. I wonder if it's to simulate a situation like my throwing my war ally Gengthis a free tech so that he can better block my western flank for me? I also gifted a grenadier to Genghis and would have gifted more if I didn't desperately need those units for my eastern flank.
Anyway, I get assembly line and infantry and eventually marines and Police State. However, Capac gets infantry right after I do and beats me to tanks since he already had combustion, but I have enough artillery that I can sacrifice 2 artillery to allow a third to finish off a tank. I even start giving my best artillery the Ambush promotion to kill Capac's armor. I sacrifice a lot of artillery to raze one Zulu city and to capture another and force Shaka to drop out of the war shortly after Genghis dropped out. But Capac just keeps coming at me until one particularly bloody battle where I had a dozen artillery fire on his stack of tanks and marines, losing most of my artillery but killing his entire stack (my first batch of tanks were there to mop up). Then he finally accepts peace.
Since my army suddenly had nothing to do, I DoW on Shaka soon afterwards, capturing most of the eastern side of the map. During the war, I briefly can't build anything requiring oil, because someone sabotaged ALL of my oil wells, and it sure isn't Shaka since he's too backward and poor. Grr, stupid Capac. So I start garrisoning my wells and build Scotland Yard to counter-spy and to cut Capac's oil well when the time is right, and I also build an offshore platform and park some battleships on it for good measure.
By the time I am through with Shaka, I have all of his territory (east/northeast), which borders on Capac's land (north/northeast). And then, even though some of my units are still healing from the Zulu war, I DoW on Capac because if I don't, my newly-conquered cities will get culture-washed anyway. My spies sabotage the only source of Incan oil, and my surprise attack with artillery knocks out one of his biggest cities near his capital, but his counterattack almost takes back his city. He captures an ex-Zulu city that had a weak garrison, and the very next turn I recapture it, but he takes it right back and founds a city south of it, too, and I'm all out of artillery by that point since my cities were taking a breather to build necessary infrastructure and not reinforcements. Nevertheless, Capac's lack of oil (and soon the lack of coal as well) eventually lets me take out all of the Incan empire in that area, leaving them with only some outpost cities near the former Spain/China border.
I turn next to kill China, but then think that it'll be quicker if I kill Mongolia first, so I bribe China to DoW with Genghis and mop up and take cities after a few turns of waiting for Mongolia to waste its army defending against the Chinese invasion. Result: right before my newly-captured cities border-popped to give me a domination victory, the first UN election comes up. I am literally 1 vote shy of being able to simply VOTE myself a diplomatic victory, so I DoW on the remaining Incan cities and take them, giving me a dip victory in 1892 rather than a domination victory.
Morals of the story:
Never fight 1v2, or even 1v1 if you can help it. Bribe people to help you out, and it may sometimes be better to not adopt a religion than to have one.
Border towns should usually be production sites if the neighbor is hostile-looking, as you can be sure that they will get pillaged to death at some point. It doesn't take long to rebuild farms, watermills, mines, etc., but it takes far longer to get your villages and towns back.
Forests next to a riverside (for 3GD, and if right latitude, Space Elevator) ironworks is good for counteracting the health.. that was the tiebreaker between Berlin and Numidian, my two big riverside cities, one with hills and flatland and food resources, the other with a food resource, forests, a bit of flatland.
Bottleneck areas like the clogs on hilltops and across rivers can be a big difference-maker in a closely-contested war. Over the course of the war I probably saved dozens of units, as my initial units got more experienced instead of dying, and the experienced units later had to face stronger opponents that green troops would not have survived.
