How many pointy sticks?

[MaximusK]

So, I'm moving up beyond King and the DoWs are exploding. I usually go the GL-NC-HS route and only buy an archer or two once a DoW occurs, the problem is this isn't enough when your fighting off three opponents.

 

[FeiLing]

If your stick isn't pointy enough, get a more pointy one.

 

[Poomermon]

You have to have an army before everyone dogpiles you. If you neglect your military AIs will see you an easy target and DoW you far more easily. If you start building units after a dow it is just damage control. Getting greedy while wonder-whoring or rapid expanding will lose you the game every now and then. You have to find the right balance between building military units and other stuff.

 

[pwoz]

A few archers should be enough to handle most early wars. The AI is pretty dumb and you can use rough terrain and river crossings to your advantage.

 

[Tabarnak]

An easy way to overcome this problem is to expand rapidly in the beginning. After expansion, keep capital at building wonders while other cities can build units.

 

[Syailendra]

Check the demographics from time to time and always stay over the median. Or if one civ goes overly large above the others, stay at minimum half his troops, that won't avoid DoW, but at least enough to make a stand.

 

[joncnunn]

So, I'm moving up beyond King and the DoWs are exploding. I usually go the GL-NC-HS route and only buy an archer or two once a DoW occurs, the problem is this isn't enough when your fighting off three opponents.

A lot depends upon what type of map you are playing and where your location is.

Because the most reliable predictor for early to mid game war prediction from the AI is:

If they have a common border with you (or are your closest neighbor) they will declare war at some point no matter what.

 

[Tiber4321]

In my limited experience, it seems your the for your second city location is really important. If you choose THE nice, juicy spot which is in your strategic interests to settle, and has extra luxes, you will probably spend half the game defending it.

 

[joshua43214]

A gold stack is your friend.
Sell open borders to everyone who will give you 50 gold. Sell off all you extra resources, even the strategic ones if you won't use them. Keeping atleast 500 gold arround seems to be about as good as having an army. You are less likely to be attacked by trading partners who like you.
I usually wont trade with my closest neighbor - I want them to DoW me so I can expand without burning my free DoW. An archer or two is all you need to hold them off early, while you build up. Resist the temptation to spam out an army when DoW'ed, just keep to the plan, don't give peace, take their empire when your ready.

 

[DirkDiggler36]

I just one a cultural victory as Siam on King. The I had Gandhi to the south, Persia to the southwest, Korea to the west, Genghis Khan to the northwest and north was a city state east was all ocean. So since I was going for a cultural victory units were not my major concern nor was millitary science. But I did get archers asap so that I could defend, a few stratigically stationed units can defend twice the number of AI units on King Difficulty I have seen. Anytime I try to go for a non domination victory on king on lower I feel like If i just defend well I will be fine. After Countless DOW and Peace Treaty from Genghis Khan I eventually out matched them because their units kept dying while mine kept gaining levels. So I think if AI DOW and they dont succeed other wont DOW as much like the whole game I never went to war with anyoneelse but those 2. I won a fairly easy cutural victory.

 

[pollock]

Lots of pointy sticks

 

[smallfish]

Ten military units is the bare minimum. Anything less, and you're just asking for it.

 

[grzybek]

10 units? Depends on the difficulty, map type, empire size, neibours that you have.

I usually tend to have 1 Archer in each city (plus Tradition it's free then) plus 1 Warrior for each city to defend. I keep Warriors in the middle so they can relocate easily.

First Archer (for capitol) I build before GL, rest after expansion, for each city Warrior and Archer. This keeps me safe at least until the midgame when AIs is unit spamming, but I play Immortal/Diety mostly so for lower levels, most probably, you can get away with smaller army.

 

[PhilBowles]

A few archers should be enough to handle most early wars. The AI is pretty dumb and you can use rough terrain and river crossings to your advantage.

I just got an unpleasant shock in my latest game. Egypt declares war - fine, I was gunning for them anyway. Placed a couple of units outside their borders, but inside Greek borders in recently-captured Alexandria. Alex didn't like that - fair enough. Unlike the Egyptians he has iron, but I'm level teching and his Hoplites are already obsolete (which naturally doesn't stop him producing them).

Wars proceed as per usual - Egypt launches dumb attacks with nothing but chariots against cities, and splits those up to attack several cities while I more or less ignore them and deal with Greece. One Greek city burned, whole load of dead Hoplites.

Then I go for Alexandria. I'm happily bombarding the city; Greek reinforcements start to appear on the horizon, so I reposition to repel them. And then Companion Cavalry comes out of nowhere and wipes one of my archer units with a rear attack, before vanishing back into fog of war. Next turn it's back, placing itself in front of my swordsmen to give the Greek pikes their supporting unit bonus - swordsmen are gone too, despite being in a forest. I manage to get rid of those, but a few turns later yet more come out to hunt my own damaged horsemen. By that point I'm in control of Alexandria, but I've been pretty battered and don't have many units near the city - needless to say, when I eventually did lose Alexandria it was to another Companion Cav unit after catapults, archers and chariots had taken down the defences.

Considering how little credit many people give cavalry units generally, the AI might almost have been playing war better than some humans - has anyone else encountered anything like that? This was an AI that was successfully exploiting not just cavalry's advantage, but also the fact that Greece had the fastest land unit in the game and the line of sight of my own units - the cavalry always retreated behind pikes or swords so that I couldn't get any units in sight range of them.

EDIT: This was Emperor and I was exploiting Songhai's early gold advantage to rush-buy a bunch of archers and a couple of horsemen early on, with a barracks in my capital and Honor (hence a GG). All in all I had a far larger army than I usually would at that point in an Emperor game, despite having expanded to my fourth city by about turn 100 without going Liberty, and don't normally encounter that much early aggression. Does anyone know if there's a diplomatic effect of having too large an early army - that you'll be seen as a threat and others will attack you more quickly than they otherwise might? When the pointy sticks league came up, I was almost (but not quite) at the bottom, but I'd lost a few units by then.

 

[gladoscc]

A few archers should do. Warrior's wont help, you're not going to kill their "zerg of doom", you can only hold off as long as possible until they run out of reinforcements.