Need advice on runaway civs

[The Pianist]

I've just played 2 continents games on king difficulty. I'll talk about the second one,where I play as washington, and try get some screenshots up. I start off by sorting out the 2 other civilizations on my continent, namely Songhai and China. I manage to take control of the continent and reach renaissance around 1000 AD. I'd been keeping an eye on the demographics screen and was only ahead in soldiers and tech which was a bit worrying. None of the civs on my continent had topped anything. I spend the next several turns trying to fill up the gaps left on my continent and sent a caravel over to explore. What I find is a mass of red. Darius has a huge sprawling empire and is in the process of finishing off napoleons last city. He had already taken the english out of the game a long time ago. What to do now?
In the first game I just outplayed and outeched the AI but in this game I'm struggling to keep up and this would be even more so on the higher difficulties *sigh*.

 

[bryanw1995]

cheesy solution: spam naval units and bombard the **** out of persia to support your landing. 7-8 frigates should do it. alternatively if you are ahead or at tech parity just build a bunch of riflemen and take him out.

 

[aimlessgun]

I'm seeing a lot of posts like this. People see a Big AI and they get worried.

Here's my advice. It's pretty depressing advice, but hey it's the truth: Don't worry about it. The computer is so incompetent that their huge technological, economic and military lead means nothing.

You should be glad for the runaway AI, at least might make that game a challenge

 

[Dess]

A naval attack is only cheesy because the AI is terrible at naval combat. Under rational circumstances, a concentrated naval assaut is critical to a troop landing and just simply good strategy.

All that said, I am in the don't worry camp. Start teching for a spaceship win, or buy out city states. Either way, AIs are almost incapable of conquering across water, and you are safe from invasion. I watched Washington pour over 30 units in three waves onto a small area held by Hiawatha (who I had just crushed his army). It was a meat grinder, nothing survived. I was frankly embarrassed for him. All of that could have been avoided with any remote naval skill.

Really, your only worry is he gets to alpha centauri. Be ready to punch a whole into his production center if he tries.

 

[The Pianist]

Thanks for your thought's. Has anyone had experience playing on larger scale maps and if so does this reduce the rate in which a single AI begins to dominate? I'm a bit tired of seeing this happen so much on continents and the endgame becoming much of the same.

 

[budweiser]

This is what happens to me on King. You cant really hope to get overseas much before 1000AD, so this can happen almost every game and there is nothing you can do about it. The question is, is this normal, or is there some bug that allows this to happen?

If it is a result of game design, what can you do about it?

I dont really want to play every continent game this way. I would rather deal with at least a few powers overseas.

 

[aimlessgun]

You could try archipelago with low sea levels to keep a decent amount of land/connection but still keep the AI's off each other. Played 2 archipelagos the both had most of the civs alive at the end. Of course that's just because of the naval AI issues, not sure if that really counts as 'solution'.

Could try Highlands/ridgelines/high density mountains to give everyone a pocket of land, the one game I played with it about half the AI's avoided getting eaten up by the warmongers. It also somewhat gives the effects of separate land areas/continents because of the blocking effects of the mountains.

 

[neilkaz]

A naval attack is only cheesy because the AI is terrible at naval combat. Under rational circumstances, a concentrated naval assaut is critical to a troop landing and just simply good strategy.

All that said, I am in the don't worry camp. Start teching for a spaceship win, or buy out city states. Either way, AIs are almost incapable of conquering across water, and you are safe from invasion. I watched Washington pour over 30 units in three waves onto a small area held by Hiawatha (who I had just crushed his army). It was a meat grinder, nothing survived. I was frankly embarrassed for him. All of that could have been avoided with any remote naval skill.

Really, your only worry is he gets to alpha centauri. Be ready to punch a whole into his production center if he tries.

Agreed completely. The AI is a joke when it comes to naval combat and totally incapable of launching any kind of invasion across an ocean on conti maps. I've stopped playing continental maps for this reason since that big AI over there cannot hurt you.

You can just develop your continent into a research paradise park and out tech the AI either for a spaceship or to invade with a big army of late game tech stuff and take his capitol.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[budweiser]

Agreed completely. The AI is a joke when it comes to naval combat and totally incapable of launching any kind of invasion across an ocean on conti maps. I've stopped playing continental maps for this reason since that big AI over there cannot hurt you.

I'm fine with this part, at least for now. It's OK if they never attack.

You can just develop your continent into a research paradise park and out tech the AI either for a spaceship or to invade with a big army of late game tech stuff and take his capitol.

.. neilkaz ..

What bothers me about this is that at some point you are going to run out of happiness if you only have one half of the world's supply and the run away is going to out tech you like crazy because of all the population and money he is going to amass over there all by himself.

One time I was beaten to the future era while I was still in industrial.

 

[automator]

Tech to Nukes. Then obliterate the Persians.

I did that for fun on a game this weekend. I'd locked in a diplomatic win. Then for kicks I built a couple land units and a ton of nukes, then destroyed the world for fun ... and because I like to see mushroom clouds!

But really, from what I can see, the AI is really, really bad at large empires. Had a recent game where I'd "allied" with Catherine for most of the game, primarly because she was helping to keep Japan and Rome at bay. While I relaxed, I didn't notice she'd built a gigantic empire.

That's when she got all uppity and started declaring on my poor city state friends. I declared back. What does she march in with? Some musketmen, a couple cannons. My defense? Infantry, fighter jets, artillery. After beating back her initial push, I used four artillery and six infantry to take her entire empire.

 

[edcrane]

I don't agree that runaway civ's are never a threat. I just finished playing a continents game on deity where Japan was the runaway civ. He discovered my continent around 800 AD and managed to found two cities in tiny, nearly unusable nooks. Before I had a chance to wipe him off the continent, he landed a significant force and revealed his "master plan." This was a pretty serious fight because of Japan's UA + AI unit spamming on deity. It was also really fun.

On the other hand, I've played quite a few continent games in which I've managed to close off all friendly access to the continent before the AI can embark units. In those games, runaway civs have never DOW'd me. This is boring.

So the AI knows how to embark units and knows that any foothold it can get on another continent is valuable. What it apparently doesn't understand is that in some cases it should attempt to take such footholds by force. When my civ is the least literate and has the fewest pointy sticks, the AI should sack up and invade.

 

[neilkaz]

Yeah, a few nukes will make a mess out of a few of his cities, harming his population, research etc.

Landing 3 or 4 GDR's with a bit of supporting troops will also make a mess out of him and all you need do is to take his capitol which hopefully you can find and perhaps it is coastal and you can find it with a ship.

But perhaps you're not willing to wait for nukes or GDR.

If you can ally a CS on the other continent it will give you an easy beachhead, but sometimes the war monger over there may have conquered them all and you have to make your own beachhead and it may be difficult to hold.

I haven't found that the uber-civ on the on the other continent is able to out tech me.

If happiness is an issue, just buy/build the proper buildings and follow happiness SP.

You can still conduct research if unhappy and don't neglect specialists.

If you need to build a small city or two to make use of a luxury or two you don't have, you can build a colosseum etc and try to not let that city grow too large so its net effect is to improve empire happiness.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[neilkaz]

I don't agree that runaway civ's are never a threat. I just finished playing a continents game on deity where Japan was the runaway civ. He discovered my continent around 800 AD and managed to found two cities in tiny, nearly unusable nooks. Before I had a chance to wipe him off the continent, he landed a significant force and revealed his "master plan." This was a pretty serious fight because of Japan's UA + AI unit spamming on deity. It was also really fun.

OK I stand corrected ! But how far away was the other continent and did Japan somehow manage access by coastal tiles the entire way or was this an invasion that crossed open oceans?

 

[edcrane]

OK I stand corrected ! But how far away was the other continent and did Japan somehow manage access by coastal tiles the entire way or was this an invasion that crossed open oceans?

No, there were a decent number of ocean tiles that separated the two continents. It seems like the AI is happy to settle cities on new continents, and once it does, it becomes willing to DOW you.

 

[gaiko]

I'm also with the don't worry crowd. The important thing is that you are ahead in tech. Hopefully that is because you've successfully filled out your continent (plastered it with ~10 pop cities on average) while staying out of unhappiness. If not, focus NOW on boosting your economy to gain a significant tech advantage. The key is "happiness neutral" cities to 4 pop: coliseum + Meritocracy (liberty) + Theocracy (piety) + 1-2 maritimeCS for food. That way you can plop down new cities without immediate worries of unhappiness hit. Monument+library+coliseum in every city.

Get to dynamite, put together a 5 infantry + 2 artillery + 2 cavalry + GG army, toss in some frigates, invade some defensible terrain, and sit there like the insulting French in Monty Python's Holy Grail while Darius comes at you like the Zulus at Rourke's Drift. Mow them down until he's gassed (enjoy the short but intense rounds of combat while you can) then advance, trailing in a few reinforcements as necessary if the front expands.

I deliberately refrain from totally wiping out the AI civs, preferring to bottle up even those on my own continent not sizable enough to p[ose a real threat early on, saving these to test out all my new late game WunderWaffen

If they ever manage to even partially fix the combat AL, plus fix the fact that the AI cannot respond economically to an aggressive player REX (it is simply unaware of this approach), all bets are off.

I've just played 2 continents games on king difficulty. I'll talk about the second one,where I play as washington, and try get some screenshots up. I start off by sorting out the 2 other civilizations on my continent, namely Songhai and China. I manage to take control of the continent and reach renaissance around 1000 AD. I'd been keeping an eye on the demographics screen and was only ahead in soldiers and tech which was a bit worrying. None of the civs on my continent had topped anything. I spend the next several turns trying to fill up the gaps left on my continent and sent a caravel over to explore. What I find is a mass of red. Darius has a huge sprawling empire and is in the process of finishing off napoleons last city. He had already taken the english out of the game a long time ago. What to do now?
In the first game I just outplayed and outeched the AI but in this game I'm struggling to keep up and this would be even more so on the higher difficulties *sigh*.

 

[Demartus]

I typically play huge Terra maps, and inevitably one AI or another goes a'conquering, becoming huge.

I find I have to often intervene and protect the other civs from the warmonger/steamroller one. It's easy on a pangea/terra map, as everyone's on one continent to start. I wouldn't, as others have mentioned, worry too much about someone on another continent. They won't have big cities, and their city placement's usually not that great. You should be able to out-macro them for a tech-edge.

 

[SimonSays]

But what do you do when you get stuck with the smaller continent? Say, one with 5 starting civs and yours with 3.