Making the jump to Emperor

[Quibblesome]

I think on my game tonight, I am going to try and found as many cities as I can (hopefully like 6 cities) blocking off my AI opponents, before attempting some sort of military action.

Perfect game plan. Along with some diplo to ensure no-one DoW's on you early. The ones you really have to watch out for are people like Shaka and Alexander, they usually DoW pretty early on. So if you're right next to them at the start you might want to build some units.

You want as many cities near food although its okay to build a crappy city to secure an important resource (horse, copper, stone, marble). The premise then is to select some cities that are "good" (production cities or gold cities) leave those relatively pristine but then whip the crap out of the rest to speed up your military push.

 

[CivMcNut]

Thanks to the advice on here, I actually got rolling again. The game I started most recently had copper in my capital's bfc, and I had researched bronze working fairly early. So like the advice on here, I just slapped down a barracks in my capital and started spitting out axemen one after the other without trying to build any other settlers or workers. I was playing as Hammy as my leader, and he's aggresive, so all my axemen were combat II.

In no time flat, I had conquered my two neighboring civs completely, and had enough land to make a good run at it. Even though I only kept 6 cities, they were so spread out that I went through a real scientific stalemate for a while when I had to run my slider all the way down to 0% and just research with science specialists.

I got caught back up in tech, I've been in that situation before, and once there I was able to make a middle ages war on the Chinese and made him capitulate despite him having his unique units and being protective. I'm trying to wipe out the Japanese now, and if I can get him without the other two remaining AIs declaring war on me, I'll be well on my way to winning a dominatoin victory, which would make me really happy.

It seems like once you have lots of land and a strong military, the difficulty level doesn't factor in there quite as much.

 

[sinimusta]

Sounds good but why pick combat 2 instead of city raider or cover when you axe rush?

 

[Quibblesome]

I'll be well on my way to winning a dominatoin victory, which would make me really happy.

I am stoked to hear that! Glad you're back to winning ways. Look forward to seeing you on the immortal difficulty level soon!

 

[CivMcNut]

Sounds good but why pick combat 2 instead of city raider or cover when you axe rush?

I do combat II for defensive purposes. If you go city raider and get counterattacked, your axeman, swordsman, whatever, is a sitting duck. If you go cover, you only get a bonus against archers, and if the AI has some metal units or chariots on defense then that promotion is useless. Combat II units are tough to kill and last a lot to get promoted even more.

 

[sinimusta]

Yeah some stack defnse is surely good but you said that you promoted them all to combat 2. If you want my advice you should do the same thing that you do with cities: specialize. Have one stack defender with combat 2 maybe, rest of them city attackers. When axe rushing I think you'll be facing mostly archers, so counterattacks shouldn't be an issue. And you can always use defensive ground like hills or forests if you're afraid of counterattacks.