French Borders are Spreading into my Cities, Need Advice

[MosheLevi]

I am playing CIV 4 BtS for the first time on Noble difficulty.
This time I am playing Earth 1000 AD scenario.

I need some advice how to deal with one advance faction (with the highest score - Peter) who already has 5 vassals under him.

One of them (the French) is starting to spread its border into my largest two cities.

I am ranked third but I could not survive a war against the French who is one of the vassals under peter.

The only thing I can do now is crank up my Culture to 30% or more and build many culture producing buildings around my cities.

I currently have 30% culture (1500 culture points), 40% Science, and 10% Espionage, with 26 cities, in the year 1930.

Peter has 2300 score.
I (the Romans) have 2100 score.
The French has 1600 score.

I would like to know what else I can do in order to push back the French borders.

Should I use spies to lower health and happiness in the French cities?
Will that help me to push the borders back?

What else can I do other than increasing the culture and using spies?

I am assuming conquest is not an option because then peter and all his vassals are going to go to war against me.

I would also like to know how to deal with Peter (the most advance faction).

 

[DaveMcW]

Change civics to Nationhood.
Draft like crazy.
Declare war on France and raze the border cities.
Sue for peace as soon as Peter will talk to you.

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

First thing, unless you are planning some kind of spy economy or something drop the 10% espionage and use it either for more culture or to help pay for using the 30% you already have it at.

Best thing that can help culture is culture building and artists. If you can spread as many religions as you can that are under culture siege and build temples and cathedrals and such. And unless you planning on a culture win building like Hermitage and Globe theater can also help.

Just start builing the culture buildings and running artists after you get thears and eventually you should AT LEAST keep most of their BFC's--and who knows if you start pushing it hard enough soon it could be THEIR cities under siege not yours .

The civic Free speech also dbl culture output, the wonder sistine chapel is HUGE culture boost. it dbls culture of your state religion buildings (or it might be ALL religion buildings not sure bout that)

In Fact any of the big wonders at all in the cities under siege might help but that just counting on chance like say an egineer pops so you can quickly rush a wonder there,r if not it probably take too long to be worth it. Free religion can also help a lil bit. If you are running a state religion a city gets a small culture boost IF it has the state religion, any non state religion wont add to culture directly (but the xtra religious building still do tho) but with free religion you get boost for EVERY religion running in that city.

ANother option is coorps Sid Sushi, Creative Construction and Civ Jewelers all give culture boosts and they dont interfere with each other so you can run all three in the same city. However they do come kinda late so it best to be working on the other things NOW rather than waiting for them later.

Those are pretty much all your options outside of wars. Using spies to just to ineffienct. The "influence culture" mission is supposed to be broken and doesnt do near what it says it sdoes to be helpful and diminishing returns on multiple missions is god awful and just doing one or two wont be near enough. Sabotaging their culture buildings migh be helpful though but something like that should be done in ADDITION to building culture buildings and running artists and stuff not instead of.

And afterwards once they cant build anymore culture buildings and running all the artists they can you could just have emm build culture if you get REALLY desperate.

Meanwhile to keep the cities from flipping but a TON of troops in them --the more the better. Big garrisons can keep cities from going into revolt and from flipping.

Those are all the opitons I can think of. SHort of just going to war which you say is not an option. Although building up a big enough military to handle petey and his vassals and while doing that sending them to garrions the towns under siege to keep them from going into revolt then when you DO have a big enough arnmy DoWing on them WOULD kill two birds with one stone hehe

Anyways hope this helps a lil bit and good luck

Kaytie

 

[Feyaria]

I bet, France got the Sistine Chappel. With that, usually half of europe get culture-fliped on the 1000AD-map by France.

As 1000AD is a historical scenario, maybe try a historical strategy:

With 26 cities you should be able to build enough troops to conquered France, its only 3 cities. (But the French cities will be under culture pressure form England and Spain, so conquer these two countries too!) Stay defensive in the east and defend with your protective infantry against Russia. After the west is under control, either get peace with Russia or conquer them too.

Thats the Schlieffen-Plan, after Generalfeldmarschall Alfred von Schlieffen, how Germany wanted to win World War I.

 

[KaytieKat]

snip..Thats the Schlieffen-Plan, after Generalfeldmarschall Alfred von Schlieffen, how Germany wanted to win World War I.

Uh but look how well THAT worked out for em. Hehe j/k

Kaytie

 

[MosheLevi]

I bet, France got the Sistine Chapel. With that, usually half of Europe get culture-flipped on the 1000AD-map by France.

I think you may very well be right about this.
France is pushing Spain’s, and England’s borders too.
Is there a way to confirm that?

So France has only 3 cities in 1000 AD?
I didn’t even bother to check, lol?
I thought they might have more cities at remote locations.

So you don’t think that Spies can help a lot here (in combination with a lot of culture)?

I can produce tons of units fast and take all 3 French cities fast.
I just don’t want to get into war with Peter and the other 4 vassals.

Do you think I can avoid such war after I conquer France?
If so, how?

 

[DaveMcW]

You can't avoid the war, but you can defend yourself until Peter talks to you.

 

[Derp]

In addition to your passive defenders on the eastern borders, put a couple of seige units in each stack. When I'm facing unrelenting military preassure, I'm usually able to fight it off with some seige units to weaken the stack and some mounted units to do the same. After a couple units worth of collateral damage, and maybe a few mounted suicide (hoping to withdraw) runs, the AI usually throws it's Stack of Doom at my cities anyway. Then they waste all of their units and I have more powerful veteran units to defend the cities next time, while extorting the AI for lots of gold or a tech for their failed run.

 

[MosheLevi]

Are you saying that Peter will not accept my piece offer once I conquer the French cities?
I can probably conquer all 3 cities within a few turns.

If not, then for how long do I need to defend my cities before Peter talks to me?

Yes, I have lots of cannons and cavalry.
I also have air ships.

 

[CornPlanter]

Is there a way to confirm that?

You can see all wanders & their owners in Top 5 cities/Wonders screen (the ico displaying a graph on the upper right hand side).

Are you saying that Peter will not accept my piece offer once I conquer the French cities?

Once you declare war, AIs involved will not talk with you at all for a short period. I don't know how long is it exactly, depends on game speed I believe. And it could be tweaked in your scenario too (never played it).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Change civics to Nationhood.
Draft like crazy.
Declare war on France and raze the border cities.
Sue for peace as soon as Peter will talk to you.

If there's too much tile culture accumulated already, it might not be enough...new cities will take the tiles back with border pops, although it depends just how far we're talking about whether that will happen soon or not...after the 2nd border pop it's often slow.

Still, the best bet if you can manage is to completely obliterate france. No more culture in any tile belonging to them then.

Of course, the next civ might be culture pressing too, but there's a similar solution to that....

 

[MosheLevi]

I can take France’s 3 big cities (the ones next to mine) but they will still have a few more cities left (the ones they captured from Saladin).

What I am worried about is that I won’t be able to defend myself against Peter and his 4 vassals for too long.
Peter has tanks already and I didn’t get to that level yet.

So the question is: how long before Peter offers me a piece treaty.

 

[royal62184]

There is a refuse to talk (RTT) factor for each leader. I think that is what determines how long before they talk again. I need to find a thread about it as well. Keep in mind even if he does talk to you say after 10 turns but has double your power you are going to have to offer him something nice for piece like a tech/city.

EDIT:
This is a quote from Dan about the refuse to talk factor after canceling deals and after a DOW.

It's random -- each turn the AI rolls a random number between 0..29 (MEMORY_STOPPED_TRADING_RECENT = 30 from CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml) and in case of 0 it forgets and will be willing to talk again. This 3.33% chance is equal for all leaders and independent of game speed and their attitude towards you. So this differs from the unwillingness to talk after a DoW which isn't subject to randomness but a function of war success, the leader's personality as well as the side that started the war.

 

[Cashew]

On Noble the solution to everything is to build more units and kill your enemies. You usually don't even need to be very strategic about it since you can easily get both a tech and unit count lead with ease. Trying to use things like a culture slider is a complete waste of your GNP and is only going to dig you further into a hole.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There is a refuse to talk (RTT) factor for each leader. I think that is what determines how long before they talk again. I need to find a thread about it as well. Keep in mind even if he does talk to you say after 10 turns but has double your power you are going to have to offer him something nice for piece like a tech/city.

EDIT:
This is a quote from Dan about the refuse to talk factor after canceling deals and after a DOW.

Don't forget that it doesn't work for AI to AI.