Raped by the computer

[mileafly]

I am fairly good at computer games in generall, but this is my first time playing a civilization game. I first played a quick campaign on settler difficulty to get to know the game a bit better. It was very easy of course, i flew through the game with no problems and no AI declared war on me.

Then i tried on the "normal" difficulty. It was fun at first, and in point i was about in 3:rd place all the time so i thought that maybe i could win. I dont like war (especially because i dont know how the war system works in this game, and i prefer to not go to war in strategy games when i can, its the building that i like).

Because of this i did not have more combat units then one in every city defending, and also the most of them was the warriors that you get first .
Then at around 1500 all hell broke loose and two factions declared war on me. In the next turns they came with around 20+ units of war elefhants and catapults and stuff and just destroyed me. I tried to produce some muskeeters in every city but i realised i was doomed.

So my "question" is really this; is it possible to play a natural game of building and expanding by culture or do you allways have to build and have an army prepared if someone declares war on you? If so, is it enough to defend the citys that are at the boarders of other civs or do you need to defend every city?

Also, is it possible to trade with the AI without having a open border contract? It cant be fun if they declare war when they have their units in my regions..

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So my "question" is really this; is it possible to play a natural game of building and expanding by culture or do you allways have to build and have an army prepared if someone declares war on you?

It's possible. You need to have a lot more games under your belt, and a much better understanding of how the AI Diplomacy engine works. Even then, I don't think it's possible under all circumstances.

Also, is it possible to trade with the AI without having a open border contract? It cant be fun if they declare war when they have their units in my regions..

When war is declared, hostile units get teleported to neutral territory.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

"whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war."

Or alternatively keep alot of money in the bank for upgrading and be ready to slave.

 

[DaveMcW]

Check F9 Demographics often.
Stay near the top in soldiers.

 

[Metal Bunny]

Having experience helps you; sometimes you can get a feel for where the PC is going to attack. Usually it is the closest city to his or her borders, if that person is annoyed with you, then I suggest putting up walls and defensive units.

Besides that, early exploration helps a lot too. If you meet an aggressive leader close to you, consider rushing him quickly to eliminate even the possibilities of future wars.
Early exploration also helps in the sense that if there is an aggressive leader who is a bit farther away, that you can perhaps build a city, on a hill, on a nice chokepoint. Hills, with archers, or preferably, axes and walls, tend to be able to kill everything until a large stack of catapults arrive.
But at that point you should be able to field better units.

You don't even have to be top in military power, if you can predict where the enemy arrives, then you have an enormous advantage and you can win wars against armies easily 5 times your size, sometimes even ten if you yourself have enough units.

But, trying to predict can be hard, and this tactic has a big flaw, namely that the pc will still think you are weak and attack nontheless.

 

[flashog]

Military might means that the AI players will fear you and thus more unlikely to declare war. If you only got a couple of stick-wielding neanderthals by 1500AD they WILL declare on you unless they like you too much for some reason (religion, civics, trade etc). Wouldn't you do the same? I know I would.

 

[lymond]

Also, note that there is an "Always Peace" setting if you run a custom game. IMO this is not really CIV and I enjoy the military aspects as much as the other things.

As many have said, you need to ensure that you are keeping up with military units and keeping them up to date tech wise. One way to do this is to ensure that you have set up a least one high hammer city early to continuously pump out units which you can then feed out to you border cities for protection and create an army stack for quick operations - offense or defense. Keep track of your Power Rating as compared to other civs on the F9 screen.

When you have the new tech or resource that allows better units, e.g., BW/copper for Axemen, start building them and then delete your outdated warriors. This will save on military upkeep.

 

[Sisiutil]

It's possible. You need to have a lot more games under your belt, and a much better understanding of how the AI Diplomacy engine works. Even then, I don't think it's possible under all circumstances.

Along these lines, check out the following game write-up, if only for the entertainment value:

http://www.compoundeye.net/civ/nonviolent/

 

[m4gill4]

Some enemy leaders are very likely to declare war on anyone they perceive as "weak", even if you have good relations. If your military is significantly weaker than these "warmonger" enemies, you are always at risk.

Here is a reasonably simple idea to mitigate this problem while still allowing you to pursue a builder strategy:

#1 Choose one city out of your whole empire to devote to military production. A good choice would be a city with good production potential. A city with good production potential is one with lots of hills nearby that also has enough food to work all those mines.

#2 Never build anything in this city that isn't either a military unit or a building that lets you build military units faster or better (e.g. barracks, forge)

#3 Whenever you research "Literature" be sure to build the "Heroic Epic" in your military city, it will increase military production by +50%!

Devoting a city to military production like this is a good example of "city specialization" which is something you'll have recommended a lot by folks around here. It does lots of good things for you. It frees up your other cities for specialization in other areas (like commerce or culture or great people), since they no longer have to build their own military units. It also allows you to maximize your efficiency because you can put lots of hammer multipliers in one city and use them all at once! Finally it keeps your military growing on par with your enemies which will deter them, while keeping the rest of your cities free for focusing on buildings, glorious buildings!

Good luck and have fun

 

[gfm]

#3 Whenever you research "Literature" be sure to build the "Heroic Epic" in your military city, it will increase military production by +50%!

I'm pretty sure it is +100% . So yeah, you really want to build it as soon as you can. Send Swordsmen/Axemen to capture barbarian cities and be sure to get at least one to level 3 (8Xp if Charismatic, 10Xp otherwise) to unlock this beauty !

 

[Duke Leto1994]

My strategy is build barracks whenever you can. Then you build up a sizeable army of about 15 units spread out amongst two cities. Then I build up the economy and city size.

 

[happyturtle]

@ Sisiutul: That link was amazing

 

[lasombra1984]

Good idea is to use at least 4 units per city. 3 as garrison & 1 as militia.
IMO whiping units with Slavery or drafting with Nationhood is good for military weak civilizations.
Also you can weaken rival by stealing workers, pillaging tiles, using spies to destroy Iron/Copper/Horse/Ivory etc.
At last you can bribe someone military strong, diplomacy rules the world.

If you are playing Culture games - you need very strong army because rivals will try to raze your legendary cties

 

[jaycuhbbb]

Good idea is to use at least 4 units per city. 3 as garrison & 1 as militia.
IMO whiping units with Slavery or drafting with Nationhood is good for military weak civilizations.
Also you can weaken rival by stealing workers, pillaging tiles, using spies to destroy Iron/Copper/Horse/Ivory etc.
At last you can bribe someone military strong, diplomacy rules the world.

This isn't necessary, just protect the cities that are at risk to be attacked. When an AI attacks, they usually target their stack of units against one city. I would suggest downloading the BUG interface mod (search modification forum), it places a fist next to leaders on the score board that lets you know that the leader is preparing for war. You can find this out without the mod by checking each leader to see if they are willing to declare war on another civ. If they are plotting war, you will be unable to bribe them to war with the message "We have enough on our hands right now (WHEOOHRN)". If a leader is preparing for war, check the diplo situation and try to scout where their stack is to see who is the likely target. If you are the likely target, find out where their stack is and use slavery/nationhood to field an army/walls/castles quickly to defend the city closest to their stack... The AIs are pretty poor at using siege weapons so defense is king, you can usually successfully defend against a superior military force.

Besides that, buddy up to those civs that pose a threat to you - adopt their religion, give in to their demands, basically kiss their ass... their time will come. Often if you play a good enough diplo game you can survive with just warriors for a good part of the game. IIRC, civs are NOT more likely to declare war on you if you are weak militarily, the only variable your power plays is if you are so strong that civs are afraid to attack you, not the other way around. More important is your relations with that civ and whether or not you share a border with them. Sometimes though, you have a crazy civ like Montezuma who will attack you no matter what you do, and in that case just prepare for the worst - build a border city on a hill, fortify with walls/castles, fortify a few archers/axes/spears, and prepare to whip more if he goes WHEOOHRN.

For example, in my last emperor game I had a very weak garrison around 800AD as Qin/China... just archers/axes really. I got DoW'd by Mongolia with a decent stack. But like clockwork he marched his stack to the obvious city so what I did was... 1.) trade for feudalism 2.) bribe others to DoW on Mongolia to distract him and 3.) began whipping/upgrading to Longbows. By the time he had reached my city gates and bombarded my defense to zero (tip: if an enemy stack has a siege unit, they will waste forever bombarding your defenses giving you ample time to whip more defenders) I had 8 Longbows waiting which was more than enough to destroy his stack. Had I had more time to prepare during the WHEOOHRN phase (I thought he was going after my neighbor) it wouldn't have even been a threat.

Overall I would say wars in this game are the domain of the human, the AI is easily exploited in this respect once you get more experienced with the game, as long as you are not horribly behind in tech. At almost all points of the game defenders are much stronger than offensive units and fairly easy to mass quickly. It is just not necessary and imo counter-productive to invest in a garrison army that you never intend to use to fight that just drags your economy.

 

[mileafly]

What about the Ai lanunching an attack by sea? What if i defend the boarder city and then when he declares war he has a boat with units that he attacks with on my undefended cities? Or does the ai not use those strategies?

 

[hirsh39]

What about the Ai lanunching an attack by sea? What if i defend the boarder city and then when he declares war he has a boat with units that he attacks with on my undefended cities? Or does the ai not use those strategies?

AI will definitely attack from the sea, often landing a big stack next to whatever city they want. The best way to counter this is to have some boats of your own which can defend against an attack.
However, it is rare for an opponent to bring a stack of fully galleys to attack you, as if they can attack you by galley they can probably just go over land. Be more careful when your opponent has galleons or transports, although these can easily be taken out with frigates/destroyers.

If you don't want to make war, it's really not that difficult to defend your cities. A few archers, then a few longbowman, then a few machine guns can easily do it. Be aware of diplomacy and see how people think of you, but you always need some defense.

 

[Alvin Tostig]

Along these lines, check out the following game write-up, if only for the entertainment value:

http://www.compoundeye.net/civ/nonviolent/

thanks for posting! that was a great read. i've heard about this game, but was unable to find it.

 

[jaycuhbbb]

What about the Ai lanunching an attack by sea? What if i defend the boarder city and then when he declares war he has a boat with units that he attacks with on my undefended cities? Or does the ai not use those strategies?

You should only really worry about a naval attack from intercontinental civs. In that case just be aware of civs that are WHEOOHRN and monitor if their navy is close to any of your cities. They will behave the same way by targeting a single city for their stack. Once you destroy their stack, it should be even easier than a land war because civs don't fare so well at coordinating naval strikes past their SoD (stack of doom).

Civs on your continent will almost always attack by land. Be careful though, sometimes Civs will send small groups of units past your borders to pillage and harass you. If they find a weakly garrisoned city they may try to take it. A single strong defender is usually enough to deter such attacks. You are always alerted to units within your borders, just make sure none of your cities are in danger.

 

[roguepro92]

naval attacks are ussually the easiest to defend agianst because you can just whip/buy/build your own naval to destroy their ships/trans before they land which costs them ton of hammers.

on land try hit up great wall if you lose it, free gold for future upgrade, if you get it free spies and more generals
the spies should be used on your closest naighbor or whoever has most land t ouch with you, that way you can monitor enemies movements from your spy infiltrated civ's city grids.
the more general points can be amazing as if you settle only 3-5generals in your main production city who will in future hold all the wonders for soldiers then you can simply churn out experienced soldiers in desperate times with the whip or money or simply production

you wanna make good amount of archers soon as you can or wait till fued and make longbows then jsut declare war on a FAR FAR civ and sit and wait it out. they'll come eventually. pick on a guy thats hated by everynoe or is at war with your close naighbor that way it plays to your diplo as well.

speaking of diplo, if your far enough, civs will ussually accept a worthless tech for peace. just sacrafice and let time move on but realize you only bought yourself time to build army, the enemy you paid for peace will always be back for more, especially if you keep yourself weak.

and more specialized note, if you find yourself with a nice choke point to hold off other civs, go block it with your 2nd city, doens't matter how far or how much it'll cost you to keep, having only one place to defend is well worth running your beaker at 80% till you hit currency.

 

[redmosquito]

consider damaging the stack by siege units. this way you might have few more turns to whip/build. (if you are the attacker you can also wait for the enemy SOD rather than marching into the enemy territory. it might be a good strategy depending on the circumstances) consider switching to nationalism in case of such an unanticipated DOW. (even if there is no emergency it is still a very strong civic)