Pacifist route to success

[nealcg]

I'm new and this is my first post. I couldn't help but notice complaints about consistent success on level 4 and 5 (Emperor). The system I use is what I call the pacifist system.

Typically the more agressive you are militarily, the more successful you will be. However this is often not practical on the more difficult levels, especially with multiple opponents. I will give you a brief play by play of my strategy.

1) quickly build militas to recon your continent. Establish your militas to block the progress of your infant opponent cities.

2)Proceed to begin rapid expansion of your cities. Wipe out all other civilizations on your continent before 2000BC when your are powerful enough.

3) Once in control of your continent send out ships to make contact with ALL the other civilizations. Make peace at ANY cost from that point.

4) Now the tricky part. Demilitarize, completely...even your cities. leave only settlers to complete land development and a couple of offensive units to ward off barbarians. Speed is esential to developing your road network.

5) Soon other civilizations will start to make landings upon your shore. Do nothing..no contact with any units..ever. Because of treaty requirements most of these invading units will have very limited movement on your continent and should not hinder city development too much.

6) the reason you do this is that your opponents usually progress much faster than you and become extremely aggressive..usually crushing you by @ 1000AD.

7) You must never have one of your units come into contact with an opponents. You are this way exploiting a flaw in the game. an opponent can only attack after contact with one of your units. It cannot take an undefended city without first either declaring war or making a surprise attack on one of your units. By not having any units you will avoid war. of course you will have settlers to develop your cities but make sure they never come into contact with enemy units.

8) If you can succeed in this strategy you will find yourself with a few enemy units occupying the perimeter of your civilization with its interior relatively undisturbed.

9) once you have maxed out your advances begin building a large force of offensive units (Armor, artillery, Bombers)in cities well away from the occupying units. once you have enough to destroy all the occupying enemy units in ONE move start the campaign.
then just crank it up and spread the destruction.

One thing to note: You can't "win" using this method. by the time of your offensive an opponent will have long ago settled another planet. I could care less, I enjoy the build up to attacking large advanced civilizations and destroying them.

 

[The Dark Lord]

I have to try that sometime... Anyway, I always go for the Space Race victory and usually end up being attacked by everybody if I beat them to it (I play on King and sometimes on Emperor). But I had a pretty interesting game a couple of days ago. I was playing Greeks and the Romans wereon an islandonly two-three squares from mine. Anyway, being so close they are a potential threat and they are the most dangerous civilization if you ask me, no matter what those report say. Mongols might have heaps of units but I doubt that they'll ever build a spaceship or develop technology for Armour and stuff... So instead of trying to eliminate them (exactly I could've just tried but I wouldn't have succeeded) I started a peaceful approach, we exchanged a lot of technology and I made a heap of Caravans which I shipped two by two with a Trireme. By that time (around 1500 B.C.) we were both republican and pretty civilized... The additional HEAPS of trade I made with Ceasar (we both had well developed cities) gave me the advantage of lowering my tax rate and making advances once in two turns. So peaceful solutions are indeed comparable with the conquest...

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The Dark Lord has spoken

 

[TTG]

When I want to win, I always play militaristically, even on the hardest difficulties (emperor and beyond) without any trouble whatsoever.

Here is a summary of the strategy I use, pasted from my strategy guide:
"War Machine
When you start the game, set the taxes to tech 100%, but stop building tech once you've got phalanxes, legions, cavalry, chariots, catapults, and triremes. Save your money afterward, maybe to buy military wonders like the lighthouse or the Great Wall. Build the following in every new city: militia, settler, barracks, phalanx, phalanx; then send the militia off to war. When a new settler is made, build a short road about 3 or 4 squares long, then build a new city. Keeping your cities small and close together makes them way easier to defend. Don't let your cities grow to a point where they need temples. Build only to the following sizes: Emperor-4, King-5, Prince-6, Lord-7, Chief-8. With these sizes, the two phalanxes should be enough to keep the people content. Build about 10 of these cities. After a city has finished building its starting stuff, have it build exactly what the military advisor says, unless the domestic advisor says to build a diplomat, in which case you build a diplomat. The other exception is if you badly need a trireme. Don't build city walls, granaries, marketplaces, or anything else like that. Send your armies out in steady waves, using ferries where necessary. If you build a settler, send him along behind the troops to build forts, if need be, and use him to rebuild cities you destroy. Have your settlers leave a road in your path as your armies tour the world. When you meet a civ, make peace with them, if possible, and then immediately attack and kill everything they have. You will be unstoppable. If you have a choice of techs to steal, take military tech. If you run into a city with a wall, try to take it out with a diplomat. If that doesn't work after much trying, surround it with militia and start a seige. When you take a city, adjust its land usage so that it shrinks back to a good size, and sell off all of its improvements."

Other important military strategies:
"Seige
Every city uses the squares around it for food, production, trade, etc. That city will lose the use of those squares, however, if an enemy unit occupies that square. The deal with the seige is just like in a real seige. You get a bunch of cheap units (militia are good. Or, later in the game, use your obsolete defense units for this instead of disbanding them), and you cover every one of those squares. As the city slowly runs out of food, it will stay the same size for a long time, then it will begin to shrink quite quickly. To ensure your success, try to cover the squares that have resources (shields) on them first, so that your opponent's city loses the ability to build many units. Although computer players will not lay seige to your cities, they will attempt to cover your shields on occasion. To defend against such an attack, make sure that your city is built on a square that has at least one shield on it. Or, you can just use a military rotation system, so that each city is defended by units from another ciy, but that does not work with a Republic or Democracy. Lastly, some cities can get a lot of food from the sea, especially if there are fish nearby. Use triremes (if possible, because they're cheap) to cover those sea squares as well. A seige is the best attack against huge cities with city walls."

"Ferries
If you need to get huge armies from one continent to another, the best way to do it is not with piles of sails or whatever, but with one trireme. Place the trireme at the edge of one continent at a place where the space between the two continents is less than three squares. Sentry the trireme. When units walk onto it, carry them across, unload, and return. ReSentry the trireme. This is important! When units step onto the resentried trireme, it will get all of its movement points back. You can move an infinite # of units across in one turn with this. In one game, I once moved 105 military units across a strait in one turn. This was a bit dangerous, becuase they could all have been wiped out with one attack, but the force I brought over was more soldiers than the population of the civ I was attacking! I destroyed that civ within 8 turns of landing on that continent."

"Backstabber
For this you need one of the two following sets of things: 1. Great Wall, 1-3 catapults, dipmlomat 2. United Nations, 1-3 artillery, diplomat. Get the units listed together, and send them off towrds the civ you want to defeat. Send the diplomat first, to make peace. Then position your units around one city, keeping the diplomat nearby. Attack with all of your units. The, send in the diplomat to make peace. They will have to make peace, becuase of the Wall/UN. Next turn, repeat it. Then, go to the next city. You could theoretically conquer the world with 1 catapult and 1 diplomat! (maybe a trireme as well)"

These are just some of my favourite strategies. If you want more, you can email me for a copy of the complete strategy guide.

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Civilization I Master of masters and webmaster of Civilization III Arsenal
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[The Dark Lord]

If I go for a military victory I usually go for a hi-tech republican (democratic, if I'm really short on cash) conquest... I try to keep peace with everybody and trade, trade, TRADE with the best and biggest cities to get more cash and quicker advances until I get the basics needed:

1. Industrialization: Women's Sufferage, Factory (very important later in the game when you get the Hoover Dam)

2. Automobile, Flight Adv. Flight. If I don't have these I'm not completely sure I can do anything, plus - I use Bombers extensively even when I have Robotics for artillery...

3. Mass Production - I really make use of them Subs

4. Steel of course

The best way to take down a laaaaarge enemy civ is to look at it's weaknesses. Look at those Indians for instance, what are Berlin, Leipzig and all those other German cities doing within Indian borders? And why the heck isn't Germany on the map? Capture the Indian capitol and (most probably) you've deprived the Indians of some good quality cities, a lot of money and research and most of all production. You've also made (possibly) a new ally and most of all a new enemy of your enemy

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The Dark Lord has spoken

 

[TTG]

I like the republican war as well. Mostly because it's so much fun. You get to use all of the cool units like tanks, bombers, nukes, and submarines. But as far as effectiveness, it is nowhere as good as the ancient tech war because you have to wait till so late in the game, so you won't get as high a score that way.

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Civilization I Master of masters and webmaster of Civilization III Arsenal
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