Keep...on...losing!

[Oski]

Okay, to start off with, I think of myself as pretty smart, if I do say so myself. AND that smart-ness is concentrated in pretty darn good strategic thinking skills. Which in turn displays itself in most turn-based strategy or other slow-paced strategy games. I've beaten most games that Paradox makes, on most difficulty levels. Ditto for Total War, Galactic Civilizations 2, etc, etc, the list goes on.

But Civ 4 is definitely NOT on that list. When I first started playing Civ 4, I usually played on Monarch. I never beat the game. I think I may have quit while winning like once in 15 games, so maybe that would have been a win...maybe.

So I figured I'd best get better at the game, so I swallowed my pride and dropped the difficulty to "Prince." I still lose...every...single...game.

My other settings are usually Huge World, Continents map, Marathon pace, max # of AI's--like 18 or whatever--sometimes barbarians on, sometimes off. I used to play a lot as De Gaul, but switched lately to Huayna Capac. The Incans do well in the early game with their unique unit, so barbarians aren't a problem, and I like Huayna Capac's traits.

I'm sure that my problem is that I don't focus on my military enough. But my question's going to be how much is enough?

I start off fairly expansionist, building first a worker while researching mining then bronze-working. My starting unit explores, sticking to forests and hills for safety. After my worker I build a settler who then founds a city, typically near the closest copper. Starting city works on Stonehenge with worker chopping away, new city works on a worker. My unit patrols between the two.

Research-wise after bronze working, I go for Roads then Pottery. If Judaism hasn't been founded I might go for Priesthood then Masonry then Monotheism next, otherwise Writing, consider making a move for Theology or Code of Laws, Alphabet, and the other early techs as needed (i.e., fishing if I've got clams and fish just waiting for me). Once I have a religion and Alphabet I'll start getting the requisites for Maceman, and then move right on towards Musketmen.

Back to how I do my cities. Ater each of the starting two cities has a worker, and the capital's built Stonehenge, they'll each build a Quechua. One will then build another settler while the other builds another Quechua. By that time I should have copper connected to the cities so I'll start building axemen. Ideally, one of my now-three cities will start building the Great Wall (more chopping to quicken the pace) while another builds an axeman and a third builds a third worker. I do some limited chopping to hasten the pace of the military/worker settler buildup. With three workers and about 6 military units, I'll have my cities building 2 axemen (or maybe a spearman if I've gotten the tech) and a settler. Found a fourth city. I'll generally get to work on either one more wonder--Pyramids, Temple of Artimis, or Parthenon--or some culture-building buildings like libraries, as well as more military. I'll build a fourth worker and then another settler. I'll have gotten a great prophet from Stonehenge and I'll use him to found my religion's building, thus making my money-life easier.

All this time, my workers have been predominantly building cottages and nabbing resources. With the limited chopping that I do, most cities have around 4 forest squares for health, some more, some less. The capital is usually kinda bare due to the two early wonders that I built.

5 cities is generally about as far as I can comfortably expand before being nudged up with the AI's. I start diplomacy by only forging agreements with folks of my religion, and being extra-nice to them. I'll trade tech with everyone, generally trying to focus on who's at the bottom of the power chart.

At this point, with three wonders, possibly starting on a fifth, about 3 military units in each city, lots of tech, 90% research due to all the wealth from my civ trait, the cottages, and my religion, I'm high up on the power chart. First, second, or third.

I continue to build up a defensive military. I use money to keep all the units current-tech, and my research as I wrote has been focused towards getting new military units. I continue building military units in at least 2-3 of my cities. 1-2 cities will start building another available wonder. Any remaining city will build defensive or culture-boosting buildings. I don't build too many money-boosting buildings because I've got my research turned up so high the most of my money is coming from my religion or other effects.

So with that established, somewhere from that point forward I go from being on top to getting slaughtered. Now I'm not conquest minded, but I'm not a wimp either. I am constantly building a defensive military. It just never proves to be enough. I'm the cultural dominant on the board from all the wonders, which I also continue to build, and I'm a tech-heavy as well, which will often allow me to be more advanced than the civilizations that cream me, which adds a further degree of humiliation.

In my last game, for instance, I had musketmen and was researching replaceable parts. Ragnar declares war with me. The tech-backwards bone-head doesn't even have gunpowder yet, so he's using his frothing-at-the-mouth berserkers against my musketeers' boomsticks. No competition, right?

I had a city with 6-8 units. I believe it was 2 musketeers, 2-3 macemen, a pikeman and a longbowman. Ragnar moved in with a stack of about 5 berserkers, 5 or so trebuchets, 2-3 knights, 2-3 elephants, and I think that's it. I moved another knight into the city with the intention of attacking.

Here was the first big problem. Because I had allowed forests to remain in my civilization, Ragnar parked his forces in a forest right next to my city. Any attack on him would have a 20-something chance of success.

So he starts using the trebuchets against my city, which has walls and a castle.

Query: How does a trebuchet parked in a forest...work? In all the displays/videos/etc. of a trebuchet firing, it's gotta be out in the open. There's no room to set one up and get it firing from in a forest. Assuming that they're moving it out of the woods, to the sides of my walls or whatever to do the firing, why do they retain forest defense advantage? That all seems 100% unfair.

And...what exactly am I to do? At that very moment, I am 100% doomed as far as I can tell. Despite having a strong, tech-advanced defensive force fortified in a city, I cannot win. If I defend, the trebuchets wear down my walls to 0-10% within about 4 turns. At most I can squeeze another 2 musketmen into the city in that time. Who cares though? Once the walls are down, all the trebuchets attack, with their gazillion-hits collateral damage. By the time they start attacking with berserkers/knights, each of their units has 3 guys while each of mine has 1.

So I mulled on it to use it as a lesson learned. Just build more military. I was building too many wonders. Probably true, but how MUCH more military do I need. The battle in that case wasn't even close. So I'm going to need well over double the defense force to protect the city. So maybe 20 units...per city? Is that what's considered a normal defense force? Should I just eradicate forests because they're good for nothing but the enemy?

I hope someone can set me straight about what I "need" to do to survive in the game, because I'm not seeing any easy fix, and I don't really think I want to play any more at this point. It's a bit un-fun to just play and play and lose and play and play and lose ad infinitum. Those 4 hours or so up til Ragnar are fun, but don't seem so fun right after that spectacular, unfair crush.

 

[Cheeris]

Yeah, I hear you, it's not easy to defend against a massive SOD at a single point, especially against mentalist civs like Ragnar. I experienced something similar in my current game.

Not sure whether your overall strategy is sound in this game, but it sounds like you have yor economy doing pretty well . I have to say though, that's not a great defensive force. Numbers, in most circumstances, still count for A LOT in attack. Also, Musketmen are surprisingly rubbish (or at least not as strong as you think they would be when you first get them), and need to be bolstered by other pre-gunpowder units.

What I would do is this. Firstly, make sure you have experience and promotions in your units, through early wars and controlling barbarians. Musketmen are OK for defending, but should have CG promotions. Also, pikemen are very underrated in defence and at your point in history are still great for dealing with Knights and Elephants, so make sure you have couple in your defending city. Macemen will deal with attacking melee units, but against massive SODs you need a few sacrificial siege units to weaken the enemy before they attack. Mounted units (with Flanking, no point otherwise) would also help to further wear down the enemy, especially as they can target siege units.

Equally in defence as well as attack, numbers can count, although you don't necessarily need huge amounts of units. As long as you are prepared, when your are outnumbered I find it's best to defend rather than counterattack. A good mix of experienced defenders dug in can make mincemeat of an apparently powerful invader .

 

[helemaalnicks]

Well, first advice would be:

Start @ noble, and learn the game. What is needed to win on monarch is a basic strategy, some guidelines you can easily stick with. On prince this is not necessary, but some things, like building the right improvements and knowing how to war are.

You shouldn't defend your cities imo. I'm a pro poker player, and in that game aggresion factor is very important to win, and the same thing applies to this game I think. If you don't want to get f-ed by ragnar, then fold, or in civ4-terms, suck up to him. Dont get an early religion, as it will destroy your diplomatic affairs, just make sure everyone loves you.

If you want to defend against an attack, it's important to have different unit types. You need attackers as well as defenders, and you certainly don't need walls and castles, since they kinda suck...

A forest on a grassland should either be a cottage or a farm, and should certainly be used for chopping for the hammers.

Look at it this way, what do you prefer:
1. forests around your city
2. 1 free wonder by chopping

Seems like a nobrainer to me. Especially if you know that you can improve the land with better stuff.

Now, since you like Huana (i can understand why, financial and ind are fine traits), then spam cottages like there is no end! The financial trait boosts their revenue greatly and this will make you rich (and it looks nice too, because your cities will look like they've expanded to the tiles with towns on them). Some cities should be build for finance (cottages), and some for production. With banks, markets, grocers, libraries, uni's, etc. in the financial cities, your economy will skyrocket.

About the wonders: build those that give you benefit. You are financial. That means pyramids for early representation isn't that good, monarchy will be good enough. Oracle for free tech is much better, and GW is better, stonehenge is better, for easy early settler madness and free culture for new cities, etc. Temple of Artemis is kinda universal, since it's good for trade route economy, which can go with either specialist economy or cottage economy (the latter is my recomendation for Huana).

Hope I helped.

 

[SJN]

I have a couple suggestions.

1. You need siege weapons in your cities for defense. You'll need a number of them, because they're all going to die. The idea is, when your enemy comes and parks in the forest, you'll have to hit him with your catapults. Don't use Treb's, they're only powerful for attacking cities. If you have forests around your cities, you must have units defending those forests. I recommend forts along the frontier

2. Use diplomacy. You've got to make nice with everybody. Give them techs. It won't hurt, trust me. If you're making nice with everybody, when someone turns to stab you in the back, you need to wield your diplomatic sword to get an ally to attack him. For this to work well enough to save your butt, your ally has to share a border with the back-stabber

3. You need to have a powerful counter-attack force prepared and ready to move at a moment's notice. It should have multiple units of every type and considerable seige weapons. To have an army like this prepared, you really need a powerful military production facility that's sole job is to produce units.

4. I was attacked by Rangar myself the other day, and the only thing that saved me is that I saw his naval ships off my coast before he declared war and put two and two together. I recommend keeping spies in your enemy's territory to watch troop movements. Give yourself some time to see him coming

 

[MrCynical]

Query: How does a trebuchet parked in a forest...work? In all the displays/videos/etc. of a trebuchet firing, it's gotta be out in the open. There's no room to set one up and get it firing from in a forest. Assuming that they're moving it out of the woods, to the sides of my walls or whatever to do the firing, why do they retain forest defense advantage? That all seems 100% unfair.

Trebs, and indeed all artillery units, do not get defensive bonuses from terrain (whether forest or hills). It can hardly be called unfair when the situation is exactly the same for the AI anyway.

In my last game, for instance, I had musketmen and was researching replaceable parts. Ragnar declares war with me. The tech-backwards bone-head doesn't even have gunpowder yet, so he's using his frothing-at-the-mouth berserkers against my musketeers' boomsticks. No competition, right?

I had a city with 6-8 units. I believe it was 2 musketeers, 2-3 macemen, a pikeman and a longbowman. Ragnar moved in with a stack of about 5 berserkers, 5 or so trebuchets, 2-3 knights, 2-3 elephants, and I think that's it. I moved another knight into the city with the intention of attacking.

Muskets are a rather dubious unit - generally only good if lacking iron. The appropriate medieval counter unit will generally do better against any given enemy than the all round musket.

In that particular situation you're not likely to win - simply not enough defenders.In any case it is generally better to take an active approach to defense by attacking the enemy stack, rather than just sitting in the city. Of all those units only the berserkers actually get the defensive bonus from the forest. Hit em with a couple of catapults, and then send in the muskets (though crossbows and pikes would probably be adequate), and you'd do fine.

If you had say 3 catapults, half a dozen muskets and a few pikes and crossbows, you should be able to deal with this stack. An alternative approach would be to hit the stack with knights to damage their siege engine by flank attack (the elephants might be a problem there). If you have to hole up in a city, go for longbows, crossbows and pikes, not muskets. They're a rather weak unit, and it's rifles, not muskets that obsolete the medieval units.

Finally, if they take the city, can they hold it? The siege engines will be all but destroyed, and the other units are still going to be damaged when they take the city. A counterattack would find them easy to beat.

So maybe 20 units...per city? Is that what's considered a normal defense force?

20 units in that city would not be unreasonable, and would have little difficulty holding off that stack. 20 units in every city is completely unnecessary - in your own territory you can use roads, essentially allowing you to move three times as fast as the enemy. It's easy enough to be able to get one or two large stacks of defenders to wherever they're needed in time. How many border cities are you going to have anyway? No real need to defend the others. Walls and castles will buy you additional time as well.

 

[helemaalnicks]

two more things:

you say you tech towards macemen/gunpowder:

don't, theyre not the best units in the game, and won't improve your defense that much. Try to tech for financial benefits mainly, and set goals.

2. On a map with 18 civs, you only have limited space (less then firaxis advices you to have), and other empires will attack to gain more land, and so should you, to be one of the top players in:

Gold per turn, i.e. research
Production!
Land/Population, to maintain the lead on production and gold/turn.

Then make sure your powerrating is ok (avg.) so AI's will know you have some army to deal with, and they will be less likely to attack you.

I'd say, either get 6 cities, or get 8. 5 seems not enough, and could either make your research too slow (no oxford, no wall street, not enough cottages in your empire), or your production (no production cities, only financial cities, to keep up the pace on research).

so he's using his frothing-at-the-mouth berserkers against my musketeers' boomsticks. No competition, right?

about muskets: Round bullets, manual reload (yes, with gunpowder), and only shortranged weapons. The misconception about gunpowder is, that it was very strong. However, shooting in the air would already make the chinese capitulate. The weaponry used for taking america from the natives, was closer to riflemen/redcoats/cavalry, all extremely useful when used against obsoleted melee/archery weapons.

 

[Oski]

Thank you for the replies.

Re. diplomacy, a lot of replies said to just try to keep everyone happy. In the past that's what I've tried to do, even giving techs. I read an article here advising that more focus/thought/direction be invested into diplomacy:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/triangle_diplomacy.php

That's what I was trying to do, and the civilizations that shared my religion were quite happy with me. I even declared war when they wanted me to. Ragnar and 2 other civs were at war with me and my Jewish affiliates. So I was being attacked by more than just Ragnar, but he was the only one who I simply could not deal with.

I didn't really see any benefit to the strong relations that I did build, so yeah I guess next time I'll just be nice all around and only refuse the aggressive requests (stop trading with so-and-so, go to war with so-and-so).

But what about religion? If I don't declare a state religion, I'll miss out on huge economic opportunities. So many wonders improve the performance of state religion buildings, civics are based off it, etc. If I'm going to select a religion though, well, isn't it a perk to try to found it as well, and thus profit from its spread? And I figured that by choosing one of the early-game religions for that there'd be a greater likelihood that I'll share religion with several of the civs. And that was true. There were like 6 of us with the same religion.

 

[helemaalnicks]

But what about religion? If I don't declare a state religion, I'll miss out on huge economic opportunities. So many wonders improve the performance of state religion buildings, civics are based off it, etc. If I'm going to select a religion though, well, isn't it a perk to try to found it as well, and thus profit from its spread? And I figured that by choosing one of the early-game religions for that there'd be a greater likelihood that I'll share religion with several of the civs. And that was true. There were like 6 of us with the same religion.

choose wisely, dont just pick the first one. Pick the one (or wait for the one) that the scoreleaders are happy with. Small opponents are good targets, big ones are good allies. The state religion buildings can still be build without the state religion, and naturally, if you want to pursue the (great) religious wonder combo: spiral minaret/univ. of sankore/apostolic palace, then of course a religion is nice. But that doesn't need to be the one you found. If you want to found a religion, then kick someone who doesn't have it, but maybe another one, and make sure your production power is biiiiig.The shrines are nice, but overrated imho. Thereby, if you want a shrine, just go out and capture a holy city, you'll often get the shrine with it.

 

[SJN]

about muskets: Round bullets, manual reload (yes, with gunpowder), and only shortranged weapons. The misconception about gunpowder is, that it was very strong. However, shooting in the air would already make the chinese capitulate. The weaponry used for taking america from the natives, was closer to riflemen/redcoats/cavalry, all extremely useful when used against obsoleted melee/archery weapons.

This just isn't true. The rifleman was not introduced as an effective military component until the American revolutionary war. Even then the rifleman was only used as a sharpshooter supplement.

The reason why the early rifle was considered to be ineffective was because of how long it took to reload. A trained person could shoot a musket 4 times a minute. That's incredible when you consider what the loading process entailed. A rifle, on the other hand, could only be shot 2-3 times a minute, even though the range was 3-4 times longer and far more accurate.

 

[Yeshua]

Good point on Muskets, I always made the mistake of thinking they are better than they really are.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Military tactics are important. I'd have to question how Ragnar ever got that far into your territory, unless he made a naval landfall drop or had border pressure on you.

Muskets might as well be tech parity with middy stuff though. Look at their strength...barely better than maces, with no particular bonuses. Yes, you can counter promote your muskets, but they're still subpar compared to...knights, which come earlier (except on defense). In fact, a knight will beat a musket on the field. A pinch promoted knight will eat muskets alive.

Anyway, no way should an enemy be able to enter your territory and made it outside one of your cities without setting foot on flatlands, and that's when they die. The AI is pretty predictable in terms of where it hits from (the lone exception being limited naval strikes). It will always use its roads if it has them, and will tend to avoid taking massive turns crossing bad terrain. I usually have a road leading right into ai territory on purpose. While I occasionally use it for defensive predictions, it's usually offensive, but w/e.

AI attack patterns are predictable. An AI will say it has too much on its hands if you try to war bribe it, if it intends to declare on someone soon (that someone is often you). AI's love to hit players with low power ratings. With some planning, you should be able to easily handle all but the worst dogpile situations. The AI sucks at war, other than the massing of troops.

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums oski.

1) Specialize your cities
Make a military city that does nothing but build units
(and military buildings/wonders)
Make a Specialist City

2) Keep an attack force on your borders, and fight the wars in your enemies territory. It should be rare that you are defending your inner core cities.

3) Read (or reread the war academy articles and threads)

 

[Grawss]

I'm sure that my problem is that I don't focus on my military enough. But my question's going to be how much is enough?

You can never have enough. Not until every last civilization is dead and gone, or would dare trying to touch you. If you do get too much and the costs and rising, attack your neighbor and use his cities to fund a larger army.

Research-wise after bronze working, I go for Roads then Pottery. If Judaism hasn't been founded I might go for Priesthood then Masonry then Monotheism next, otherwise Writing, consider making a move for Theology or Code of Laws, Alphabet, and the other early techs as needed (i.e., fishing if I've got clams and fish just waiting for me). Once I have a religion and Alphabet I'll start getting the requisites for Maceman, and then move right on towards Musketmen.

Religions are nice, but as has been said, you can always take one from your neighbor. Avoiding a religious tech sometimes mean getting a military or financial tech faster, increasing your tech rate to gain a larger lead. You can always trade for the older techs later or research them in a couple turns. A couple games ago I won a space race victory without researching animal husbandry, archery, horseback riding, and several other extremely early techs. Granted, it was OOC and I didn't have any use for them, but some techs can be put off to allow you to reach a more important goal faster.

Ideally, one of my now-three cities will start building the Great Wall (more chopping to quicken the pace) while another builds an axeman and a third builds a third worker.

Rather than the great wall (unless you have raging barbarians on), you could chop quite a few units instead and wipe out your nearest neighbor. Having the largest civilization early on is extremely powerful.

I do some limited chopping to hasten the pace of the military/worker settler buildup. With three workers and about 6 military units, I'll have my cities building 2 axemen (or maybe a spearman if I've gotten the tech) and a settler. Found a fourth city. I'll generally get to work on either one more wonder--Pyramids, Temple of Artimis, or Parthenon--or some culture-building buildings like libraries, as well as more military. I'll build a fourth worker and then another settler. I'll have gotten a great prophet from Stonehenge and I'll use him to found my religion's building, thus making my money-life easier.

If the temple of artemas is the trade route one, it's rather lame. Too many turns for so little profit. The partheon is better, but still pretty lame considering the ways great people are created (each great person adds a certain number (I think 100) of points to the next great person, so unless a second city can create a great person within the time your main GP farm can create one, it never will. This means the partheon will effect only one city unless you're fairly knowledgeable about creating GPP. That's something you can read up on to get better). Pyramids are awesome, but expensive. Sometimes it's better to take them from your neighbor. >

5 cities is generally about as far as I can comfortably expand before being nudged up with the AI's. I start diplomacy by only forging agreements with folks of my religion, and being extra-nice to them. I'll trade tech with everyone, generally trying to focus on who's at the bottom of the power chart.

Teching with the AI is great, but it doesn't have to be the one at the bottom of the power chart. Most of the time that same one you're trading with will go around trading your techs to the ones on the top of the power chart anyway. If you do trade with the ones higher on the chart (honestly, the power chart doesn't matter much until later in the game. Don't pay attention to it), you can hit the weaker civilizations and get more land. When you see the AI's borders encroaching on your own, they're beginning to focus on military to take out their neighbors. You should too.

I had a city with 6-8 units. I believe it was 2 musketeers, 2-3 macemen, a pikeman and a longbowman. Ragnar moved in with a stack of about 5 berserkers, 5 or so trebuchets, 2-3 knights, 2-3 elephants, and I think that's it. I moved another knight into the city with the intention of attacking.

Here was the first big problem. Because I had allowed forests to remain in my civilization, Ragnar parked his forces in a forest right next to my city. Any attack on him would have a 20-something chance of success.

You should have moved a defender onto the forest. The path the AI takes is the highest defense path, using hills and forests to prevent their guys from getting picked off. Knowing this, you can cut them off and pick them off as they're stuck on flat land. Either that or they attack into your forest defender and lose half their force as well as a turn or two, allowing you time to make more defense.

So he starts using the trebuchets against my city, which has walls and a castle.

Walls are something I tend to avoid building. After a while you'll have a "strike-force" in effect in all games, either for barbarians and their free experience or for taking out the enemy stack of doom. If you have horses early, horse archers are amazing for city defense; city defense being killing them before they actually get to the city. I hated them at first, but they're cheap and even though you'll lose a lot on suicide attacks, you'll break through fairly fast and destroy all their siege in the process.

Query: How does a trebuchet parked in a forest...work? In all the displays/videos/etc. of a trebuchet firing, it's gotta be out in the open. There's no room to set one up and get it firing from in a forest. Assuming that they're moving it out of the woods, to the sides of my walls or whatever to do the firing, why do they retain forest defense advantage? That all seems 100% unfair.

Well you have to understand that a single square in civilization represents quite a bit of land. So attacking with a trebuchet may mean leaving the forest to get in range of the actual city, then retreating to it when an attack is in progress. Each turn only takes a small amount of defense from the city, meaning they only get so long before a counterattack comes at them. I know it's not perfect, but with each turn being 1+ years, anything can happen. Right?

So I mulled on it to use it as a lesson learned. Just build more military. I was building too many wonders. Probably true, but how MUCH more military do I need. The battle in that case wasn't even close. So I'm going to need well over double the defense force to protect the city. So maybe 20 units...per city? Is that what's considered a normal defense force? Should I just eradicate forests because they're good for nothing but the enemy?

My turning point in city defense was on a one city challenge game. I had over 200 infantry all with city garrison 3 and drill 1+. The city was on a hill and several of those infantry had guerrilla 1-2. My enemy was Cyrus, who had vassaled two other civilizations. Due to statue of zeus in a 1,000 year war to cripple their civilization with war weariness, they were all backward and only had knights as their strongest unit. Despite this, they came in with hundreds of them, with enough trebs to back it. Honestly, you'd think a highly trained city defender on a hill with such high cultural defense would be able to defend against a guy on a horse with a lance, right? Wrong! My attack force and air ships (~30 air ships. Mostly on forts) couldn't deal enough damage to them fast enough outside the city, so once they got to the city it took about two turns before I had lost.

(that was also the turning point to switching to instant combat. The Siege of Moscow took about an hour. )

I hope someone can set me straight about what I "need" to do to survive in the game, because I'm not seeing any easy fix, and I don't really think I want to play any more at this point. It's a bit un-fun to just play and play and lose and play and play and lose ad infinitum. Those 4 hours or so up til Ragnar are fun, but don't seem so fun right after that spectacular, unfair crush.

Yeah, you don't need to drop a difficulty level. It looks like you're fairly close to surviving, and I have no doubt you're fairly close to conquering as well. Your main problem is defending cities with city defense rather than offense in the field. The other points I made are just personal preference.

edit: Also, the "Refuses to talk!" thing goes away or stays longer depending on certain happenings in battle. As far as I can tell, it never goes away because of war weariness. If I destroy half his attack force while losing almost no units, it nearly always goes away the next turn. If I take a horrid city, it stays, while if I nab a good city from him it'll go away. So killing as many as you can as soon as possible can get you out of a war faster. Rarely is this worth it (I normally want him to waste a bunch of gold with having his units out of his territory), but having the option to instantly finish a war when, say, they make an unpredictable move and aim for a city I wasn't expecting them to aim for is a good thing to have.

 

[Oski]

You can never have enough. Not until every last civilization is dead and gone, or would dare trying to touch you. If you do get too much and the costs and rising, attack your neighbor and use his cities to fund a larger army.



Religions are nice, but as has been said, you can always take one from your neighbor. Avoiding a religious tech sometimes mean getting a military or financial tech faster, increasing your tech rate to gain a larger lead. You can always trade for the older techs later or research them in a couple turns. A couple games ago I won a space race victory without researching animal husbandry, archery, horseback riding, and several other extremely early techs. Granted, it was OOC and I didn't have any use for them, but some techs can be put off to allow you to reach a more important goal faster.




Rather than the great wall (unless you have raging barbarians on), you could chop quite a few units instead and wipe out your nearest neighbor. Having the largest civilization early on is extremely powerful.



If the temple of artemas is the trade route one, it's rather lame. Too many turns for so little profit. The partheon is better, but still pretty lame considering the ways great people are created (each great person adds a certain number (I think 100) of points to the next great person, so unless a second city can create a great person within the time your main GP farm can create one, it never will. This means the partheon will effect only one city unless you're fairly knowledgeable about creating GPP. That's something you can read up on to get better). Pyramids are awesome, but expensive. Sometimes it's better to take them from your neighbor. >




Teching with the AI is great, but it doesn't have to be the one at the bottom of the power chart. Most of the time that same one you're trading with will go around trading your techs to the ones on the top of the power chart anyway. If you do trade with the ones higher on the chart (honestly, the power chart doesn't matter much until later in the game. Don't pay attention to it), you can hit the weaker civilizations and get more land. When you see the AI's borders encroaching on your own, they're beginning to focus on military to take out their neighbors. You should too.



You should have moved a defender onto the forest. The path the AI takes is the highest defense path, using hills and forests to prevent their guys from getting picked off. Knowing this, you can cut them off and pick them off as they're stuck on flat land. Either that or they attack into your forest defender and lose half their force as well as a turn or two, allowing you time to make more defense.



Walls are something I tend to avoid building. After a while you'll have a "strike-force" in effect in all games, either for barbarians and their free experience or for taking out the enemy stack of doom. If you have horses early, horse archers are amazing for city defense; city defense being killing them before they actually get to the city. I hated them at first, but they're cheap and even though you'll lose a lot on suicide attacks, you'll break through fairly fast and destroy all their siege in the process.



Well you have to understand that a single square in civilization represents quite a bit of land. So attacking with a trebuchet may mean leaving the forest to get in range of the actual city, then retreating to it when an attack is in progress. Each turn only takes a small amount of defense from the city, meaning they only get so long before a counterattack comes at them. I know it's not perfect, but with each turn being 1+ years, anything can happen. Right?



My turning point in city defense was on a one city challenge game. I had over 200 infantry all with city garrison 3 and drill 1+. The city was on a hill and several of those infantry had guerrilla 1-2. My enemy was Cyrus, who had vassaled two other civilizations. Due to statue of zeus in a 1,000 year war to cripple their civilization with war weariness, they were all backward and only had knights as their strongest unit. Despite this, they came in with hundreds of them, with enough trebs to back it. Honestly, you'd think a highly trained city defender on a hill with such high cultural defense would be able to defend against a guy on a horse with a lance, right? Wrong! My attack force and air ships (~30 air ships. Mostly on forts) couldn't deal enough damage to them fast enough outside the city, so once they got to the city it took about two turns before I had lost.

(that was also the turning point to switching to instant combat. The Siege of Moscow took about an hour. )



Yeah, you don't need to drop a difficulty level. It looks like you're fairly close to surviving, and I have no doubt you're fairly close to conquering as well. Your main problem is defending cities with city defense rather than offense in the field. The other points I made are just personal preference.

edit: Also, the "Refuses to talk!" thing goes away or stays longer depending on certain happenings in battle. As far as I can tell, it never goes away because of war weariness. If I destroy half his attack force while losing almost no units, it nearly always goes away the next turn. If I take a horrid city, it stays, while if I nab a good city from him it'll go away. So killing as many as you can as soon as possible can get you out of a war faster. Rarely is this worth it (I normally want him to waste a bunch of gold with having his units out of his territory), but having the option to instantly finish a war when, say, they make an unpredictable move and aim for a city I wasn't expecting them to aim for is a good thing to have.

Thank you much. That was extremely detailed, and I read it carefully. I'll put that to use in my next game, which will hopefully go a bit better...

 

[Bob-san]

As you've been advised, keep a few defensive catapults near your frontiers. That, and demolish every forest directly next to your cities--+50% defense is no good for you.

 

[Winth]

The problem with your game probably is, you are not thinking the Big Picture. I don't negate your supposedly quite strong thinking skills, but Civ4 is just a much different game.

Wonders are not that useful now, and must be built for your goals. Building Pyramids might be good - but after you build them, you can meet yourself:
(1) With several little cities, because you didn't expand your land, and you let the enemy become a powerhouse.
(2) Hit with an overwhelming army.

A hint: If the guy who is your neighbour, and he is remembered for being a great general (check in Civilopedia ), then you can be sure that he will try to thwapp you.

In general - use your wonders to synergy your moves with them. We know that you:
(1) Like to play Huayna Capac;
(2) Like to build wonders
(3) Seek a significant advantage that will help you with the game.

The answer for this one might be: Oracle. It uses the first Huayna's trait, Industrious, and knocks out much of beakers from a tech of your choice. This choice will be Metal Casting. It will speed up your forges, it will give you a significant tech advantage, it will synergize with Alphabet early so you could trade this tech for some other juicy things or pay warmongers to kill each other. It also gives an access to Colossus - very cheap (especially with copper) wonder, that you have a headstart on - and it lets you reap more commerce (Financial) from all water tiles.

But the text above is just an example.

Conclusion - don't play all the time the same leader. Check how it is to play the others. It can maybe be better for learning purposes, and it will give more fun (I don't like to play the same leader all the time, I like flavor).
The defense of your empire:
(1) Build some defensive Catapults. Wait for your walls to fall, so turn before his inevitable attack you will sacrifice the catapults to drop down the strength of his units. A common tactic. It needs some timing, because if you do it too early, he will just heal on the field, if too late - catapults will be almost useless with their 5 strength (well, unless it's still era of Axemen and Swordsmen...).
(2) Concentrate your forces on your borders. If someone is Friendly, leave a "halt" on your borders with him - i.e. just a little force - unless he's Catherine, he will never backstab you.
(3) Count sometimes on your friendly neighbors. If somebody attacked you, beg someone for help. Civs like Mao or Caesar are quite likely to turn on anyone for a good payment.
(4) Neglecting city walls is not that good at all. They slow the catapults and trebuchets - a city siege of a city with walls and castle can take quite a while even with a significant siege force. Walls are cheap, so they take maybe one, two turns. And they give you defense even if your culture is lousy.
(5) Have a city that will just build troops. A granary, barracks and a forge will only matter there. Add in Heroic Epic and don't stop building troops until you need a Theatre (especially - the theatre of war!) or Factory (for more troops!).

Pay close attention to what others AI are doing, and hamper them if they do too well. It may be right in some causes to, for example, cause every other civilization in the game to go at some scaringly growing force, so you can eventually appear stronger (everyone is weaker, unless they, of course, send some actual units into your enemy...). Look at their borders. If they emphasize some scary force, respond to it. Move your units to fragile border cities, emphasize some certain unit in retaliation against his (a stack of Knights won't do him anything good if they happen to encounter Pikes!).

Jump to Monarch, to Prince even, is a bit of challenge even for a master strategist. It helps to familiarize yourself a bit on some earlier stages...

The game changes with every approach. Saying: "Great Wall/Temple of Artemis is bad for your health everytime" is not often right. Maybe you seek for a peaceful development. Maybe you can synergize your move with Great Lighthouse. Maybe you can use the Great Wall to inflict some harm with a Great Spy. And so on. Look at your resources.

 

[oranges]

Starting to play the game at monarch level is quite a feat. The AI has some significant advantages over you, meaning that you need excellent understanding of the game mechanics and have developed some strategies that work well for your play style. You will probably come to the point that you win on monarch, but it is far less frustrating (and probably faster) to start on some lower level and go up from there.

Noble is the balanced level, with no advantages to either you or the AI. At Prince, the AI will research faster, which is a significant advantage in many respects (it's harder to get those free tech/free GP techs, the AI has an easier time to research techs needed for a certain wonder, you'll be hard-pressed to have a military tech advantage, to name just a few). Things like diplomacy are also affected by difficulty level, both as regards the AI aggressiveness and willingness to trade techs.

All in all, there is no shame in starting on noble or even lower The game should be fun, not frustrating. Most people move up a level when they feel the current difficulty level is no longer challenging enough to be fun. Basically, moving from lower levels to noble is easy as soon as you understand all the game mechanics and have familiarized yourself with the tech tree etc. Moving every step up from noble is far more challenging, but if you win comfortably on noble, you'll adjust to prince after a while without genuine frustration. I still find monarch more frustrating than fun, and I've won quite a few prince games Perhaps I'll try one of the warmonger leaders one of these days to see if that changes, perhaps not.

 

[CivMcNut]

I'll see if I can't add something that hasn't already been said.

Having a force that can go out and take the offensive is key. Hit the enemy before he can siege away at your city. If you have the tech lead like you said you were able to, you wouldn't need a whole lot of troops to get the job done.

I like promoting troops that will be more defensive in nature with straight combat promotions. I save the city garrison promotions for just the archers and longbowmen, who get that 50% city bonus to begin with. If you give City Garrison promotions to your muskets, they are stuck there waiting for the enemy to attack. Combat promotions help if you decide to attack or stay put. If they are in a forest, that's a lot like hitting them if they were in a city. Not what you would like, but superior numbers and tech can still whittle that down. Get knights/horse archers out to try and do some damage to the siege weapons with their flanking attacks, those are the things that will kill you if you let them.

If you are able to take the tech lead on Monarch, you are definately doing something right. I would think Noble would be to easy for you and Prince would be about right. Just remember that the more troops you make, the easier diplomacy can become. If you are near tops in power, there won't be many demands. Once you get some big wins on prince, then it's time to step back up to Monarch.

 

[Hilliar]

Starting to play the game at monarch level is quite a feat. The AI has some significant advantages over you, meaning that you need excellent understanding of the game mechanics and have developed some strategies that work well for your play style. You will probably come to the point that you win on monarch, but it is far less frustrating (and probably faster) to start on some lower level and go up from there.

Noble is the balanced level, with no advantages to either you or the AI. At Prince, the AI will research faster, which is a significant advantage in many respects (it's harder to get those free tech/free GP techs, the AI has an easier time to research techs needed for a certain wonder, you'll be hard-pressed to have a military tech advantage, to name just a few). Things like diplomacy are also affected by difficulty level, both as regards the AI aggressiveness and willingness to trade techs.

All in all, there is no shame in starting on noble or even lower The game should be fun, not frustrating. Most people move up a level when they feel the current difficulty level is no longer challenging enough to be fun. Basically, moving from lower levels to noble is easy as soon as you understand all the game mechanics and have familiarized yourself with the tech tree etc. Moving every step up from noble is far more challenging, but if you win comfortably on noble, you'll adjust to prince after a while without genuine frustration. I still find monarch more frustrating than fun, and I've won quite a few prince games Perhaps I'll try one of the warmonger leaders one of these days to see if that changes, perhaps not.

Personally, after easily thumping the AI on chieftain and warlord, I moved up to Noble... about to grab a victory as the Arabians (I HOPE). After this I'll probably move up to Prince... if I even manage to survive a whole game I'll be damn happy. I almost thought I was going to lose this game until the early cottage spamming paid off with my research and economy building massive momentum towards the industrial age.

Is Noble to Prince a massive hurdle?

 

[helemaalnicks]

Is Noble to Prince a massive hurdle?

in my opinion: no. The biggest gap is between the "monarch" and "emperor" skill level. This is the first time I totally get my ass kicked BC pretty much every time.