Avoiding war at the beginning

[muddex]

I'm playing at level 4. I like to play Egypt and set up a bunch of wonders, get a religion, and lay down some policies before going to war. With BNW it's hard to generate enough money to support infrastructure and troops early on. Unfortunately for my idea of fun, many other Civs are equipped to build troops quickly and wipe me out early.

I could choose a different style of play and build defenses early, or play a different Civ, or pick the Civs I play against so I don't have to deal with aggressive ones. Before I do that, I'd like to explore if there is anything I'm overlooking to avoid getting overwhelmed early in the game.

I have picked up that it's smart to build walls and choose policies/religion that give defensive bonuses. Still, I sometimes find myself getting clobbered before I can get that far.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

 

[Browd]

From your description, I think there's a few simple things you can do: To make your cities more defensible, settle on hills and behind rivers. Building walls should be a last resort -- too many hammers in inflexible form. Each set of walls is, essentially, 2 archers, which can be shuttled from crisis to crisis as needed, and in the meantime can build XP by satisfying CS barb camp quests. So, build archers, not walls (and upgrade them to composite bows when you research construction -- the gold cost of an archer (200 gold) + upgrade (80 gold) is less than the gold cost of a composite bow (320 gold)).

Also I find the defensive religious beliefs to be less compelling than beliefs that provide gold, happiness, culture or hammers.

 

[muddex]

These are all good suggestions, and ones that I've tried at various points. I find that I'm unable to build enough archers to deter early attackers because the archers are so expensive to build and maintain.

I realize that I can build archers instead of libraries (for instance), but doing so weakens my main strategy.

Are some games always going to be hopeless if you don't build up a standing army before you build wonders, get culture and religion and the rest of the infrastructure? I've considered, for instance, not doing anything to kick-start religion early on and use the resources for an army instead, but I find myself frustrated with the reduced choices that getting religion late restricts you do.

Oh, and I also find that unlocking Honor (for the barbarian bonus) and Warrior code (for the great general) to be advantageous. Again, though, I don't always survive long enough to take these options if I want to take other culture options first that benefit my play style.

I know I can't have everything I want, but I can't figure out which parts are more important.

 

[muddex]

Oh, and as for city placement, I do place them defensively if the option presents. But sometimes you can only do this if you are willing to give up resource bonuses, resulting in cities that don't grow and can't make much. Clearly a trade-off needs to be made, but I haven't found an obvious direction to go in.

 

[Browd]

One thing you might consider is participating in the Game of the Month series (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=411), where you can compare your game to others, and learn from their write-ups about why and when they did things.

A recently completed game (TSG 69 - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=509621) was a Warlord game (Portugal with Science as the designated victory condition). Play that game as well as you can and then review the Opening Actions and After Actions write-ups to see what others did.

I can think of few better ways to learn - do your best on your own, and then see what others did in the same situation. LPs can be instructive, but they are more limited, since you typically can't try things out for yourself on the same map.

 

[muddex]

That sounds like an excellent idea. Thank you.

 

[muddex]

I'd like to ask this question a slightly different way.

Is there anything you can do diplomatically to discourage people from attacking you at the beginning of the game? It seems to me that the answer is no, though you have more options in that direction if you make it until later in the game.

 

[Arachnofiend]

I'd like to ask this question a slightly different way.

Is there anything you can do diplomatically to discourage people from attacking you at the beginning of the game? It seems to me that the answer is no, though you have more options in that direction if you make it until later in the game.

Trade routes. The AI factors in how much of its gold income is coming from a potential target and is less likely to attack you if it benefits from your existence in this manner. It's not 100% guaranteed obviously but it does help.

 

[joshua43214]

In my experience, preventing DoW's is all about city placement. Sure there are Ai's that will simply walk an army across an entire Pangaea just to take a shot at you, but they are not the norm.

if you are suffering from early DoW's, you are either settling very poorly, or are settling too many cities early. Planting 4 cities by T60 on a standard Pangaea can result in multiple DoW's, this is 3 cities on a small map, dunno about lrager maps.

Settling in the face of the AI will also result in DoW's. Do not be greedy, there are only a few civs you can push around safely. I recently played a game and dropped 2 cities right on Maria's doorstep and bought tiles out to my three ring to grab luxuries and food that she had settled her cities for. When she started to send missionaries out, I repeatedly Prophet bombed her capitol so she would have to recall all of them. She just whined at me a lot, but never DoW'd. If I tried this with Gajah, he would have had an army around my cap before I could blink, and I would have been in real trouble.

Even settling 1 tile toward Shaka, Attila, or Assyria will result in a carpet of death.

Learn who the territorial civs are, and never settle toward them, always make sure you use the terrain defensively. If there is no safe place to settle, just don't settle. I play with just 2 cities some games.

 

[Goldstar]

I'd like to ask this question a slightly different way.

Is there anything you can do diplomatically to discourage people from attacking you at the beginning of the game? It seems to me that the answer is no, though you have more options in that direction if you make it until later in the game.

Bribe them to fight someone else! or bribe someone to fight them for you!

 

[muddex]

What does DOW mean in this context?

 

[joshua43214]

What does DOW mean in this context?

DoW = Declaration of War
DoF = Declaration of Frendship

here is a list of acronyms
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/acronyms.php

 

[slowcar]

I second the notion regarding the caravans. Quite often a hostile civ became friendly when i sent a caravan.

 

[MKDELTA3]

These are all good suggestions, and ones that I've tried at various points. I find that I'm unable to build enough archers to deter early attackers because the archers are so expensive to build and maintain.

What do you generaly build at the start?

 

[kb27787]

If Egypt, forget about archers/CB and just use war chariots... cheaper, faster, and hits just as hard as CB.

 

[Gehennas]

Try to ally with a military CS early.

 

[Lord Alexander]

Started a game on Prince with Rome, map Thawed version of Antartica standard with 12 civs and 10 city states. I had the plan of being a warmonger since Shaka is near me and Germany is really going in WW2 style by burning down every city they see around them. I decided not to get involved right away since it seems I'm not a target the stupid AI are settling right next to the big war civs and the war civs are quickly dealing with them. Instead I made a great infrastructure with many wonders right of the start (GL, Oracle, Temple of Atremis, Terochta army,Pyramids, Great Wall and a few more early ones) I built city's more in a circle around the capital as defence but they also have many luxurys. I think it will be pretty easy to win after all it's Prince but a lot of people are starting to hate me since I accidentley made a DOF with the Germans so it seems I'm joining the Axis here... Basically as Egypt I think you should just make wonders off the start and get a fantastic infrastructure going then get ready for attack. I went liberty and then Tradition.

 

[RedRover57]

Your question in the original post is too difficult to answer because it is so map dependent. If you don't have a super aggressive neighbor then you can easily avoid war just by not forward settling too close to the AI. If you can back-settle decent cities then that would be ideal. I'm playing a game on Deity as Assyria and was able to do a 4-city Tradition start and play completely peacefully without even building a significant military (only enough to control barbs). This is counter-intuitive for Assyria, but allowed me to out-tech the AI before Industrial era and then switch to a domination strategy using superior technology. But that strategy was map-specific. I was in a position where early conquest (seemingly the preferred strategy for Assyria) would have been suicidal.

There are lots of other tricks to staying peaceful. Bribe any war-like neighbors to fight other civs. Absorb your neighbor's religion. Set up trade routes and trade luxes. Denounce enemies of your neighbor. Propose things to the World Congress that everyone loves, e.g., World's Fair. Etc.

 

[anrke]

My story on recently surviving an early, aggressive war.

Long time Prince level player. After reading quite a bit here, recently decided to get out of my cruising comfort mode and step it up a level. Played a couple of King games (easy Diplomacy victory with Arabia, easy Science victory Poland), so launched into my first Emporer game the other night, playing as France.

Continents, standard settings.. started on the north east end of a large continent - India to my west, someone South West, and Rome directly South. Rome started on desert, with a long river running south west loaded in floodplains. They're obviously going Liberty , and had 5 cities before all their neighbours had 2. Started trading with me, seemed friendly enough; they settled one city north towards me, while I settled West and North away from Rome.

None the less, just after I had build NC and settled my third city (the North city), they DoW'ed me (their first war ) and marched a ridiculous army (for how early in the game it was!) my direction. I had 2 archers, a warrior and 2 scouts. He sent somewhere in the vicinity of 3 ballista, 3 pikemen, 3 archers, 4 warriors and at the tail at a couple of legionaires. No idea what his upkeep looked like. He mostly focused on Paris, but did send a couple of units alone the way of Tours which was to his detriment.

With the Tradition +50% ranged combat strength for my cities, I had quickly built city walls in the 2 front-line cities, and rushed a couple of extra archers which were upgraded to CB once construction was complete. While his attack strategy was quite poor (reguarly embarked a unit to try and get behind Paris which made it easy pickings), I used my 2 city-walled cities and the river/forest terrain to my advantage. I wiped out 75% of his army and my only loss, other than time, was the warrior and scouts (they became fodder to preserve the archers), and a couple of pillaged squares. I focus fired his ballista attacking Paris first, picked off any injured melee which attacked the city, and finished on his archers. His legionaires were sent one at a time, and I quickly focus fired these down witha city + 2 CB.

He no longer has an army that I can see, however still thinks a suitable deal for peace would be me giving him Lyons . I've just completed Machinary and will upgrade the CB to XB when I can afford to, and have switched all production back to city growth buildings, and sent my workers to clear all forest south of my cities.

It will remain to be seen whether he persists with the war and sends a new (legionaire heavy) army my way, but if I have time to ugprade all 4 CB to XB before then I think I will have no issues repelling him a second time, particularly with less forest around. I am tempted to get a horseman out to try and pillage his luxury resources before any peace treaty, as I am sure his 5 city empire on a lot of floodplains must be close to unhappy. If I can't get to his luxuries, at least harras the flanks of his empire, pillaging tiles or trade routes.

I have a screenshot of his army at the start of the war - as I nearly fell off my chair, it was nothing like I had encountered in prince/king difficulty. I'll try to remember to upload that one tonight.

Long story, but I guess it serves to give some tips on how to survive an early war, if you cannot manage to avoid it. Use your superior battle strategy to your advantage; get your ranged defences (archers, CB, XB etc) up as soon as possible, and then use terrain to your advantage to keep them alive. Clear any terrain that attackers can use to hide in, and as soon as is safe to do so, switch production back to what you would be building if the war had never occured.

Oh, and both prior to his DoW (because I could see his fast expansion) and during the war I tried to bribe the other 3 civs around his empire to war him, to no avail.

 

[marekb]

I feel you can have weaker military in BNW than in G&K, at least early on. On Prince or King I was never attacked early. If I don't remember any DoW before t100, even if my all military was a warrior and a few scouts till t50-70 (or so). But I prefer a tall empire and usually settle 2-4 cities.

I'm playing at level 4. I like to play Egypt and set up a bunch of wonders, get a religion, and lay down some policies before going to war. With BNW it's hard to generate enough money to support infrastructure and troops early on. Unfortunately for my idea of fun, many other Civs are equipped to build troops quickly and wipe me out early.

I suspect you concentrate on early wonders to much. Never prioritize them over some solid defence unless you know what you are doing.