newbie question on tech trading amongst other things

[turb0nerd]

Deity difficulty, Caesar. Just finished war with Napoleon ~ 500BC.
He very conveniently declared me a war the turn I was ready to invade
him with my pretorians and as result he lost 7 cities. Nice. No permanent negative modifiers.
He has 2 cities left now and I'm about to discover alphabet.
Should I crush him now or should I try to bully him to give me some techs.
Can AI be bullied for techs in Civ 4?
And what should I do next. I've missed the pyramids, the oracle and it seems that I'll miss great library too. My teritory
is about as large as the largest civ in the game and the
aggressive leaders are beaten heavily.
Can I try cultural victory or space race ?

 

[Irish82]

Newbie question on deity?!?

You kidding right? Seriously though the only way I could think of winning on Deity with Rome is to use those Praetarians to the max, and frequently a crippled AI will still refuse to give you much for peace. One expensive tech or a couple cheap ones at the most, and in exchange for 10 turns where they may get restocked with troops I don't think thats a good idea. Kill them now and hope to god your neighbors don't already have longbowman or crossbows.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Get some techs from him for 10 turns of peace. On Deity it is necessary to keep every AI in check, especially the financial ones. I had won a Deity game on Small/Pangaea/Normal speed/Warlord 2.08 with Augustus, I had to fight 3 out of 4 AIs early to slow them down with limited wars. The financial civs can easily out-tech your 8 cities with just 2-3 cities.

In order to win on these settings, Rome with Iron in capital + good 2nd production city is almost required.

Go hard with Praets+cats, inflict as much damage on as many AIs early, pillage hard, they can take out longbow defended cities with good number ratios. I would stop only when i start to see maces and crossbows from AIs.

If you dont kill an AI completely, you get Unhappy penalty "We yearn to join out mother land" which is annoying, so if that civ does not have any milking values, always good to wipe it out.

 

[turb0nerd]

Yeah, I'm playing from 3 weeks now, but I've read all strategy guides on the forums first. It seems that peacemonging is doomed now and the only working strategies seem to be roman praetorian rush and incan quechua rush, but that's enough only to survive until AI makes it to space and if you are lucky too...
:-(
P.S. I use save and restore from time to time and now I'm experimenting CE vs SE...

 

[cabert]

Deity difficulty, Caesar. Just finished war with Napoleon ~ 500BC.
He very conveniently declared me a war the turn I was ready to invade
him with my pretorians and as result he lost 7 cities. Nice. No permanent negative modifiers.
He has 2 cities left now and I'm about to discover alphabet.
Should I crush him now or should I try to bully him to give me some techs.
Can AI be bullied for techs in Civ 4?
And what should I do next. I've missed the pyramids, the oracle and it seems that I'll miss great library too. My teritory
is about as large as the largest civ in the game and the
aggressive leaders are beaten heavily.
Can I try cultural victory or space race ?

go full scale praetorians for domination, forget space or cultural.
If you have (or if he has) alphabet, you can sue for peace and get some techs from him.
If you only get some low value techs, just kill him.