moving from Warlord to Regent...

[D-Tox]

Having handily won multiple times (fairly easily, I might add) on Warlord with different civs, I decided to step up to Regent. BIG change, at least for me.

I was getting extorted left and right, and getting ganged up on.
Any ideas as to what I might be doing wrong that I need to start doing in Regent? Why would Regent be that much harder than Warlord? I figured that if I was winning very easily on Warlord, then I still would win on Regent....not so!

 

[Tassadar]

I suggest to you dont expend too fast, you know like several city defended only by 1 spearman, so create 5-6 ( up to 8) very good city, with 2 spearman at least 1 archer and wall in frontier town, if you got horse early ( like in your capitol range) built a few of them to counter attack. built temple, library, marketplace, aqueduc if needed and coliseum and increase city size to 12 ( use military police or lux), later on conquier with knight preferably, or conquier horse and iron so you are able to produce knight, wash your continent from a.i. with knight and switch from monarchy to democraty once all your city got some infrastructure like temple ,marketplace,courthouse( happiness and corruption reducer). You will reach industrial era with an edge if you built or capure about 16-20 city ( standard map) with a well place forbiden palace ( rush buyilt with a leader from your elite knight)

Edit: i forgot to tell you, wait until you got about 12 knight before going war, keep them toghter or split them in 2 group, but never attack with only 2-4 knight, Keep elite units refresh, wait a few turn , stack them with constant supply and raze their city, capture only the one with wonder like pyramid. dont target to fast their capital ( use about 10 knight for that).

Edit: dont forget to built early worker ( about 12 for 6 city) so your road and thus income increase fast, early worker=road=$=support for soldier or reaserch. Irrigate cow and wheat, mine bonus grassland, road forest, mine and road hills.

 

[Yzman]

Actually my thoughts are quite different compared to his. Here is what I always do.

Place your first city. Increase science to 100% to max out. Start building warrior/spearman for exploring unless expantionist then for defense. Build units until you reach size 2 which then switch to settler. The key is to keep on producing settlers/units for a mass land grab. Use spearmen to guard cities. In the early years, one is fine. Make sure to improve your surrounding terrain to best benfit your land. Read crackers guide for more info on that. After producing about 2 more cities, stop producing settlers from your capital and build a temple for early culture. After taking up a good amount of territory, start to build units in more outlying cities while building temples/barracks/maybe a wonder in others. Make sure to road all strategic resources. Using this strategy I keep up with the AI and even out expand on monarch so it should be no trouble for you. Now on emporer like I'm playing now the strategy changes a bit...

 

[cgannon64]

Yzman has good comments, I'll just add a few more:

- Sneak in a worker between (give or take) each settler. You want to improve those new cities. Expand "outside-in", meaning you can wait to settle those nice nearby coast spots, do them after those semi-far away resource/luxury grabs.
- You really have two options for your first build order: either exploring units, two defending units, and settler; or exploring units, one defending unit, granary, then start building settlers. The early granary has an advantage (faster growth early) but has a disadvantage as well (you'll get your second city later). I really only do this depending on the situation.

CG

 

[nullspace]

D-Tox, you complain about being extorted, but is it really that bad? The AIs usually only demand a handful of gold, or a single tech. It seems to me that losing 50 gold is almost always worth it if you're not in the mood to fight. Even if you could fend off the attack rather easily, you'll still have to forgo whatever improvements your cities are building for military units, you'll have to be careful with your workers, and war-weariness may eventually set in. Even giving away a valuable tech is usually a small price to pay for avoiding a fight.

But somtimes you do have to fight. Once you're in the war, the AIs do like to get allies. So if you're really not ready to fight, buy some allies before your enemy does. Your friends will take some of the heat off of you, and you won't have to worry about them turning on you. Of course, you could build up a big army and just have it sitting around. Then when an AI threatens you, you can refuse and they'll probably back down. Peaceful civs like France and China in particular usually don't follow through on their threats unless you're very weak. Personally, I'd rather not build and support a large army, and just swallow my pride and give into a demand now and then.

You don't need to be a wimp, just don't feel the need to defend your honor when an AI makes a trivial demand. Go to war when you're ready, and don't fight anyone just because they're begging for the scraps from your table .

 

[Sgt.Hellfish]

Id just build my econonmy, build Granary and Barracks and got out a crusading but then thats me I lurrrv war

 

[Missing Persons]

Another tip: I have noticed that even on Regent, The AI sometimes settles undefended cities very early on. That's why I like to have a couple of spearmen or warriors scope out my surroundings. Declare war and take the city. Don't worry about an early retaliation from the AI since they have the same starting advantages as you on Regent. I tried this against the Iroquois recently; took Niagra Falls with a single Warrior, approached Salamanca with a single spearmen, sued for peace 5 or 6 turns later and got Grand River! Easy expansion.