How to wage early war w/o falling behind?

[Galumphus]

Anyone have any thoughts on how to wage an early war (before Gunpowder) without falling behind? I just finished a game on Prince (my first - I usually play on Noble) where I took over a smaller neighbor early on. The resource benefits it afforded me were great - he was sitting on horses, marble, dye, etc - but even with the 4 cities I took I kept falling further behind the other AIs.

Any ideas on how to wage an early war without getting chewed up by the other AIs who just tech up in peace?

 

[duezeone]

i do the same thing, won my first game on prince last night with this exact strategy. It was me (Elizabeth of England, phil/fin) and tokugawa together on an isolated continent, I basically tweaked my strat from before and had my main cities early on make things like libraries and markets and had my front cities (2 of them) make catapults, swordsman and horse archers. It worked ok i guess but when I came into contact with other civs during the middle of the war i found that i was completely behind in techs. I managed to destroy tokugawa which was around 6-7 cities and from then on I pretty much had to who-re science upgrades and markets for the rest of the game, but i ended up winning with space race victory because i managed to get most late techs done in 2-3 turns and had a late lucky golden age that was pretty crazy. So far ive played 2 prince games and have fallen behind in techs very early because of the early wars and my other one i lost because i wasnt able to keep up militarily with all the science/commerce buildings i was putting out.
I should also post that i usually build tons of cottages early on and try to put cities on coast with lighthouses, i also do watermills by rivers and mines on hills, but keep most forests early on and make lumber mills. I think im going to try a ind/fin civ next because i seem to find that I dont get as many GL's as other civs do, maybe the wonders will help a bit, or try a pangea map and go with aggr/fin =o
You have a good question and I would like to hear a more experienced civers response =D

 

[Dairuka]

Best way to win an early war without falling behind in technology, is to have offensive units doing routes around your cities to make sure the enemy does not pillage your improvement tiles. Always keep a couple of units laying around with +% against Catapults, and +% against Mounted Units so they can make quick work of those highly annoying Catapult/Longbowmen, and Horse Archer pillage units that the AI likes to throw your way.

There are other factors that will limit your technological growth however.

- Making more units than your gold surplus, forcing your technology slider to decrease to compensate.

- Taking too many cities, forcing high maintenance costs, forcing your technology slider to decrease to compensate

- Losing possible trade income from the allies of your enemy.

- Letting enemy ships reach the coastlines of your coastal cities; there by forcing starvation on your city as you can no longer work the sea tiles.

The trick to successful warring is not to force yourself into a prolonged conflict to the death with your enemy. Instead try taking a city or two, pillage his capital improvement tiles, then call peace on him within 10-20 turns. The damage you've done to his economy is insurmountable. You can also bully this nation for the rest of the game, or until you're in the Industrial ages and ready to dominate/conquer the world.

I personally like to form early-game alliance blocs by forcing my religion onto other nations; or by adopting the most favored religion out there {Usually Buddhism on Pangea maps.} This makes you the good guy. Then declare war on a "Heathen" religion, and start calling the people of your religion into war against this person. This gives you, +1-+4 "The struggle against our mutual enemy brings us together", which will last just long enough for you to sneak in some good tech trade deals if you already have the Alphabet. AI's are more willing to give up techs if they trust you. Just remember not to finish this particular nation off even if you're ready to strike a final blow on their capital city. Instead keep them around so they can remain the common-enemy for your Alliance Bloc.

 

[AER]

Just remember not to finish this particular nation off even if you're ready to strike a final blow on their capital city. Instead keep them around so they can remain the common-enemy for your Alliance Bloc.

Or, even better, take their capital, eliminating it's culture and any possible wonders, and leave a worthless side-city as the new capital

I usually try to take the capital first if at all possible, due mostly to the culture. Even if you can't maintain the war, the capital is almost always a valuable keepsake, and it leaves the nation devided, cultureless and broken. Of course, I only play on prince.