1: Does asking for a ceasefire lower the chance of ai accepting? Like they can tell you are scared and will not want to make peace?
2: Where does gold from captured cities come from? The treasury? Can you sell a tech for gold right before you go to war and still get the same amount of gold from capturing cities?
3: When stopping trade with someone, what determines how long before they speak to you again?
4: Building wealth vs building research, which is better and why? Is it ever worth building markets+grocers+banks/observatories+universities or just stay on wealth/research?
5: During rebuild mode after a war while new cities are building granary/library, what do existing cities build?
6: What are some key military and economy techs in renaissance era? I feel like I have a decent grasp on what tech I need and when in medieval and earlier but once it reaches renaissance I have no idea.
My goto is to get paper->printing press->beeline to steel for a cannon attack but I have no idea if that's good at all/
7: How to deal with runaway ai? I find 1 civ often out-techs, has most military, builds all wonders, and often with only a few cities. Even with double or triple cities I'm still behind and never feel ready to attack
8: Bribing ally to war. Is it worth doing? Is there any guarantee they'll attack?
1. No
2. It won't make much difference because the AI has a HUGE treasury on higher levels
3. It's different per AI, wimpy/peaceful AIs generally talk faster, and maybe if they would benefit from open borders with you they will talk faster
4. Research if you're beelining an important tech like civil service or currency or lib, get it as quickly as possible because it'll improve your economy afterwards, if you're doing more of a long term teching path then wealth to sustain 100% research.
5. Most people say wealth, but I say wonders for fail gold. After wiping someone out you most likely captured marble or stone, put it to use and milk the wonders for gold. Get Granaries/Lighthouses, spread your religion around, get forges and courthouses if you have a lot of cities (7 or less cities, never bother with courthouses, 10+ they are quite good)
6. Military Tradition with cuirassier rush is amazing if you're able to attack with good numbers (20-30) before the AI gets too close to rifling. If you're behind and struggling to catch up and they might have Rifling then go for Cannons. If you don't have iron for some reason then go for Cavalry, if you don't have horses then go for draft rifles+whip trebs.
7. Attack them before they get rifling with cuirs if they don't have many cities, you can capitulate them within 10 turns with a good cuirs rush before they can beeline rifling. (Peaceful, strong teching AI usually avoid it anyway). if they're big and have a lot of cities then go for a mass cannon attack with maces, promote city raider than ugprade them to grenadiers later on.
8. If you have a dangerous neighbour like monte or genghis, you can check on the trade menu if they're willing to DoW on someone behind them, further away from you. If yes, declare on that potential target yourself and then immediately bribe in the dangerous neighbour. Since you declared yourself despite not having an army or being near the target, he will suddenly be extremely willing to join in and not ask for much. For example in one of my games, I declared on Sury who was miles away and was able to bribe in my dangerous neighbour monte with just alphabet and horseback riding, and tada - 2 warmongers are now occupied and won't bother you.
Some more questions
1: How does gifting to ai work? I believe you can't continually gift small amounts of gold to get like +4 with them right? Is the diplo bonus you get based on how often you gift them or how many beakers you give them or something? I also noticed I gifted toku some gold and the +1 went away after a while, and gifting again would not bring it back. Do ai forget your gifts or is that just exclusive to toku? Additionally, is gifting cities the same "fair trade" diplo bonus or is it a different one entirely?
2: Is building wealth/research affected by libraries/markets?
3: If you get a warmonger that can plot at pleased to pleased with you, are they any less likely to plot against you?
4: When bombing a target that has SAM/fighters/whatever, can each sam/fighter have a chance of intercepting or is it just one unit per bomber? If an ai has like 5 fighters in a city is there any point in trying to use bombers?
5: How is collat damage calculated? Does the siege's hp affect how much collat it does? I was watching Lain's monty game and saw he was giving his trebs almost exclusively city raider, I guess the extra collat upgrade isn't very good?
1. Yes you can give small amounts like 50+50+50+50+50, they keep a running total of how much stuff you gave them and give you a diplo bonus which slowly decays over time.
2. No but I think forges and factories do affect it.
3. Yes, Pleased targets are far less likely to attack you than Cautious
4. Think it's per each, they don't add up together
5. Collateral is good if you have a near zero chance to win the fight even if you promote city raider. The idea is to deal as much damage as possible. It's a lot better for open field attacks imo when you need to throw like 5 catapults to wound a bunch of elephants before you wipe them out with your cuirs or maces or whatever. Same with cannons, promote a few to collat if you have a massive stack to wipe out in the open field. It does help weaken them faster and 5 collat cannons are the same as 6 normal ones. maybe 7 if double promoted. I don't think HP affects the collat damage.
More Q's
1: Why does having religion in a city sometimes give culture and sometimes not?
2: What determines when an ai will stop plotting without dowing? In my current game ai has plotted me 3 seperate times at cautious, I get them to pleased, and they stop plotting.
3: Are markets/banks/universities good to build if they are coming from mainly whips? If there are no good tiles left to work, I will work plains farms or lighthouse coast tiles so my cities keep growing, then whip out these buildings so that I only lose these bad tiles. This is fine as long as the bulk of my base production isn't going towards these buildings right?
3.1: Can you slowbuild markets in cities with very low base productions, where building wealth/research would result in a negligent amount of gold/beakers?
4: Does the map script generate a completely new map or are there seeds? I know aoe2 has seeds so it's possible to see the same map twice.
5: What time does ai usually get alphabet? I was playing immortal and I decided to tech alphabet since noone else had it by T90 or so, I felt like the ai should've gotten it by then
6: Do city garrison work with your units in ai cities? Like if your archer gets attacked while he happens to be in another ai's city, does he get the garrison bonus?
Similarly, do you get the city raider bonus by attacking units that are in a different ai's city?
Thanks for all the responses, I am learning quite a lot
1. If you are in no state religion, any religion will give culture. If you ARE in a state religion, only THAT religion will give culture.
2. I can't answer this myself but military power ratio and score will affect it, from experience nasty AIs like monte or sury will plot and continue to plot even if they come to love you, friendlier ones like hatshepsut or cyrus stopped plotting on me when they became pleased. Some will stop plotting if you beg gold while others may continue to plot on you even if they accept the beg and give 10 turn peace treaty. Honestly still a mystery for me
3. No, 2 or 3 beakers per turn is better than getting a market in 50 turns. Whipping markets with organized religion might be ideal right before a long lasting renaissence or industrial era war, so you can bank lots of money while your slider is down to keep teching afterward, and the happiness will obviously help in the war too.
4. Haven't ever seen the same map twice and I reroll a LOT sometimes.
5. It's really random, sometimes they bee line it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you have teching gods like mansa and sometimes you have warmongers. From experience it can go in deity any time from 2000BC to 1AD, Usually around 1000-1500BC they start to get it. On immortal it can go 2000BC to 500AD, usually around 1200-800BC they start to get it. Honestly the dates are pretty similar for those 2 difficulties imo.
6. Yes can confirm I just had a city garrison 2 longbow fortified in a friendly, flat land city that I had forgotten about and someone's grenadier with 2 stars tried to attack it and only had 27% odds. It would have been much higher odds if I didn't have those promotions for sure.