Strategy advice

[Skallagrimson]

Last night I tried a "no religion, no archers, very few wonders" game, and I think the result is that you definitely have to be flexible to what strengths you have and the pariticular situation. I randomly got to play Saladin, and I'm smirking as I'm opting not to build any archers with the free CR1 and first-strikes upgrades. It wasn't a big problem with the minor exception that one city got taken by a barbarian archer, because although I had access to 2 irons, 1 copper, and 2 horses in my first 4 cities, they were each 2 squares away from the blue-circle "ideal spots" suggested by the game and I figured I'd have time to build monuments and culture out to them while the workers chopped, irrigated, etc. <----which was mostly true with that one exception. I had 2 chariots there one turn later though, and retook the city, only end effect was that it had to restart a Madrassa build which was almost finished by that time (rational was to try to get a scientist flipped and get culture going out sooner rather than later. And the population hit.

It was an ugly feeling looking at a LOT of empty land of moderate worth (sugars, a few spices, not much in the way of production or food, lots of jungle), that not even the AIs or barbs saw fit to REX into early. There was one pretty good location the barbs built on nearby, and at the other end, Cyrus planted a city 3 squares away from my future Ironworks megaproduction city, and I wasn't having that. Got the military going with a vengeance once the culture allowed mining and pasturing the iron, copper and horses, started out taking the barb city, got some promotions for the swordsmen, and had a very quick-and-easy time taking the first two of Cyrus' cities (which he was only defending with one archer and one spearman!) When I got to the third city, which was more respectably-defended, it was pretty much a decision point that I decided to end the night's play on: 1) keep on with the war and take an economic hit; 2) make peace and expand into the uninhabited "so-so" land for building commerce cities (to the poster who asked if I specialize cities, YES, I do, to as great of an extent as terrain allows!) or, 3) make peace and just rebuild the economy within existing owned land.

I think in hindsight since I had Saladin (spiritual, protective), it should have been an exception to the no-archers, no-religions rule, as a good viral religion spread would have gotten culture going out faster (thus allowing access to military resources without a lot of turns wasted on monuments or waiting for madrassas to get going.) And where archers come in handy is when the game distracts me and I forget there's "YET ANOTHER" barb invasion in another city's zone when I'm focusing on wiping out a barb incursion elsewhere. And I can't build axemen yet and warriors can only really kill animals and other warriors. The cost was only one city, but it would probably have been a lot more in the higher levels of play. That doesn't mean rely on ONLY archers, but I like having one good CG unit strong enough to deflect any surprise barb attack, and to give a decent supplement to other defenders if an AI attacks.

With non-protective leaders I'd (mostly) agree with the no-archers rule; and with non-spiritual (and/or non-mysticism-starting) leaders, I'd agree with no-religions.

On founding cities RIGHT NEXT to resources next time, which I'm sure will be the next wave of critiques here, hehe, well, city planning has to take overlap, food, hammers, and other things into consideration for long-term strength, doesn't it? I mean, having four cities each three squares away from each other or with zero food resources, you may get axemen early but I can see a huge downside later on. The way I'd spaced my experimental Saladin cities, once the culture did fat-cross out, they absolutely rocked. It was "bling bling, swordsmen ain't a thing!" 2 turns for the swords and axes, 1 turn for a chariot, etc... and that's WITH 2 scientists flipped! With big overlap and bad food planning, sure they'd have copper, and they'd be stuck at population 2, taking 10 turns or more per axeman because all they can work is an irrigated plains square...

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Play Creative leaders.

 

[Weird Piggy]

I seem to be stagnating at the Noble level of play, and I'm sure that my strategy choices are to blame, although in reading advice on this tip or that, information is often contradictory and "it depends". I thought what I would do is post "what I do", what my strategy currently is, and see if you veterans and experts who win effortlessly on Emperor and such, can locate the fundamental flaws and let me know:

1) First city, my sequence is "worker, archer, archer, settler". Rationale is that the archer is stronger than warrior, more likely to survive animal and barbarian attacks, and it'll be longer into the game before I have to replace them.

Those Archers are un-needed, go Worker - Worker - Settler - Warrior or Worker - Warrior - Worker -Settler. Another warrior can be thrown in before the settler. Dont worry about being attacked early in the game, there is no need to sacrafice early production to build archers you won't use. Archers should come later to fogbust and Axeman can always be whipped in emergencies.

2) Initial tech path: archery (see above), unless I start with Mysticism and the recommendation screen is "offering up" Meditation or Polytheism (suggesting to me that I have a good chance of discovering Buddhism or Hinduism right off the bat). If the worker gets built before I have Archery, I switch to Settler for a while and swap back to archers when I get Archery.

Bag archery, grab Agriculture and AH if there are Pigs / Sheeps / Cows. Then beeline BW and start chopping with your first worker to grab the next worker / settler. Try don't to chop warriors and archers as that time should be used to optimize growth. From there I always beeline Priesthood and research writing while building The Oracle. I grab CoL and research Alphabet. It seems to me that you don't tech trade like you should. All the basic techs you skipped can be traded for with writing / Alpha. From there the tech Path opens up. I don't think I have ever missed Oracle on Prince if I'm trying to get it.

3) Warrior or scout explore in a spiral, progressively exposing land in concentric circles out from my capitol. Once all land within a reasonable radius is exposed (all land that would make sense to colonize in the near-term), I set them to auto-explore, and when they get killed (inevitable), no big deal.

Don't auto explore, becaues you tend to miss things, especially huts in weird places. Also, the computer might move your scouts onto flatland instead of forests when in attack range.

4) Early era techs: I try to get all the "basics" first before bee-lining, that is, Bronze and Iron working, Masonry, Writing, etc. My first bee-line is Code of Laws, where 9 times out of 10 I pop Confucianism in one of my expansion cities (which helps later on, to have a holy city outside the capitol, because it allows me to build Wall Street there while the capitol usually burns its two wonders on Oxford and National Epic). After Code of Laws I try to get the math-driven techs like Currency, Construction, and usually Calendar as well, allowing some decent infrastructure and synergy, not to mention CATAPULTS, which allows the taking of cities without wasting 3/4 of my army each time (by bombarding the city defenses first).

If you grab CoL early via Oracle, Currency and Consruction come early if needed and allow a bigger army with cats. I normally skip calender and trader for it later unless the happiness is needed. You you have gold / silver / gems / ivory / fur Calender is skippable and just cottage the resorces. With a FIn civs and Free Speech and PP you can get 10 commerce for a reiver calender resource.

5) Last two techs I research (or trade for) before racing to Liberalism, are Civil Service (to allow the Nationalism slingshot) and Machinery (to allow macemen--keep the army viable on the field while neglecting other medieval military techs like Engineering and Feudalism).

Beelining CS after CoL and Currency is never a bad thing, with Buer and Irrigation spread the tech is already worth it. Machinery for Maces is useful, but as long as you have enough power computers won't bother to attack you and if they do they get massacred because of their sorry tatics. Remember that CS and CoL are great trading chips as I normally see the computer forget about CS for long periods of times. Make sure that you hold off on getting Lib and leave it one turn away to get the most beakers from your free tech. As soon as an oppenent grabs education, take Lib and take whatever tech is needed. Instead of Lib you can take Constitution, MT or even Demo. Make sure you trade for the Optics / Guilds / Banking tree.

6) City placement strategy: first I try to go for the max combination of food and hammers, regardless of resources, and I try extremely hard to make this be on a RIVER. This city is my first "Ironworks candidate", and also for that reason I try to leave forests intact as much as possible there. Then I build at least two cities that are "resource grabbers", maximizing whatever resources they can work in their fat cross. If I have the Organized trait or some other that allows larger than usual (or faster than usual) expansion, I'll go into "REX mode" and blast out as many cities as I can, no matter how low the slider dips (minimum 0%). Otherwise the slider's normally at 60% or 50% after 5 cities, and I stop there. (Meanwhile, and this angers me to no end, the AIs are blasting out dozens of cities EVERYWHERE, at no apparent cost to their economy!!!) Shortly after this time I try to get at least one city on a coast, preferably one on each coast if the map allows it. (Helps later when it's time to circumnavigate.)

Try to specialize cities, but remember that 3-4 good solid cities will get you Lib far far faster that 6-7 bad, unimproved cities. Some people expand like crazy and may be good in the long run, but having good core cities and then taking over backward civs works just as well to me.

7) During the Liberalism race, my capitol is building as many wonders as possible, with preference to those that give Engineer points, as the Engineers allow rush-builds of yet more wonders; and Prophets so that I can build shrines in any holy cities I have. Pyramids I normally can't get to, but I get Great Wall about 50% of the time, Oracle about 40% of the time, Hanging Gardens about 75% of the time, and Chichen Itza about 90% of the time. Worst games ever I still usually get HG and Chich, and... lots of gold, LOL. Meanwhile the other cities are all building improvement buildings, except for one designated unit-builder which is keeping the cities reasonably defensible, units up to date, aggressive neighbors deterred, etc. This doesn't always work, and sometimes a neighbor declares war, in which case I switch cities to unit production (except the capitol which keeps on wonder-building).

It seems as if you overvalue wonders. Chichen is completly useless, those hammers would do better in units. HG is is rarley useful. If you really want a Specialist economy Pyramids are a must and you may have to skip Oracle. To get Pyramids go Agi / AH -> BW then Masonry. Don't be afriad to whip / Conquest during the Lib race. Dont be afriad to build up a pile of gold and a stack of units to upgrade. If you really want a wonder and beeline it you will always get it on Noble.

8) If I am defending in a medieval war, it usually sends me way far behind other civs tech-wise, because my cities switched to military roles, however, I tend to recoup this deficit by prevailing in the war, taking a lot of enemy cities, and greatly expanding my empire. The slider goes low, of course, but 30% of a huge number of cities still brings in the beakers (and in the early era my economy is "specialist based"--farms and specialists), and I start to catch up tech-wise.

Try to keep good diplomatic relation with someone whose worst enemy is your biggest threat. I never seem to get in any wars in the Medieval era and if I do, I started team. Fight from forest and cities and upgrade units if need be. The computer loves to attack with terrible odds. As long as you have CG 1 Longbows in border cities you should have no problem fending off and helpfully getting a free tech out of it.

9) If I'm lucky (about half the time), I didn't get attacked while on the Liberalism-race, and get to pop Nationalism, and build Taj Mahal. During the Golden Age, I play catch-up to some of the basic techs I left behind, like Monarchy, Feudalism, Engineering, try to trade for some smaller ones like Monotheism, Alphabet, etc., and then I go for every tech I'll need to build Cavalry: horseback riding, gunpowder, and then Military Tradition. At that point it's pretty much "game over" for all the neighbors I have on my continent: I build stacks of macemen escorted for force-protection by Cavs, supplemented by Trebuchets, and... the AIs can never really defend well enough to avoid total conquest. Sometimes they can delay it, but they can never survive it. Here again the slider goes painfully low as the expansion gets pretty rapid, but it creeps back up eventually in the post-war rebuilding era.

If you running a specialist economy, Golden Ages are even more useless than they normally are. After the Lib race and your new Cav Attack, don't wait for grens and cannons, cats and cavs will do. Attak before anyone else gets Muskets and especially Rifles.

10) During my conquest phase I try to go for Chemistry, Rifling, and Steel, and usually I'm finishing up the conquest with just 4 unit types in-queue: Cavs, Grens, Riflemen, and Cannons. Usually the AIs are defending with Knights, Longbows, Pikes, and Musketmen, and... they lose. (Sometimes the victory is pyrhhic though!)

Look above.

11) After my conquest phase starts winding down, I go for the coal and Railroad techs, then race to Plastics. This is a risk because the AIs are on a different race, to Rocketry (so they can get an early start on Apollo, and of course, ARTILLERY, which eats my lunch if they get that when I'm still trying to field Industrial era units!) But the payoff if I get there first is that it allows me to build Three Gorges Dam, and now my huge empire all has electrical power without nasty coal plants or dangerous nuke plants (everywhere I couldn't build on a river that is). Along the way, since I also often get to Assembly Line first, this also allows me to build the Pentagon about 3/4 of the time.

If you are going space race a beeline to those techs isn't bad, if you are looking domination beeline Industrialism for Tanks and run everyone over. If you are teching at a good rate Tanks can come right around the time they have rifles.

12) Military strategy in the post-conquest era has all cities but one going to an economic focus, and my West Point city building modernization units (Infantry, and after Industrialization, Marines and Tanks, etc.) for each of my city garrisons and regional "reaction stacks" (counteroffensive stacks to confront invading stacks--heavy on cannons [still no artillery yet!] but also Marines to kill invading Artillery and Tanks to kill... everything!).

Constantly check the tech screen and if you notice any civs are extemely backwards bribe competitors into war with them. Theis work well with Monty and his 12312 unit stacks of obsolete units.

13) After I hit Plastics, for cleanup I usually grab Democracy (get that Emancipation civic I normally lag on), Biology (to allow better land use), and then johnny-come-lately I go for Artillery and Rocketry. Any wonder along the way that can be builts, I usually try to get it via the Ironworks city (otherwise it's a lost cause--e.g., Broadway, only way to get it is at the Ironworks city!)

Biology should be proritized more especially in a SE. It boosts you economy so much and allows TONS of extra specialist. Try for SoL also if your running a SE.

14) After Rocketry I bee-line to Robotics, then to Satellites, to allow Space Elevator. This usually lets me catch up to the overseas AIs in building the space ship. Then I mainly go for all the other space ship techs, typically Fusion first (to pop the Engineer), then Genetics (for health), and then last, Ecology. I organize space ship production pretty efficiently across my production cities, and usually win Space Race.

I don't have much experience with Space Race, but don't wait for the Space Elevator to start building. Use your lower production cities to make the casing while you Ironworks cities and other cities pump out the Engine and other large parts. Don't be afraid to switch to State Property and Lay down workshops everywhere if youy gotten all the techs.

The above strategy gets me a win on Noble about 90% of the time, however, I seem to be stagnating or even drifting downward on points. I don't like being compared to Neville Chamberlain or Herbert Hoover, and thinking I can go from there to the next higher level in Civ. I want to get a strategy that's surefire, not just to win, but to win BIG, at that level, just to know it's viable at the higher levels.

Comments?

Don't be afriad to move up a level and see where you get beat. It's much easier to improve when losing at a high level than winning at a lower one.

sadasdasdasda

 

[Skallagrimson]

WP, what I normally do is start out SE until it becomes practical to switch civics to Free Speech (relatively late-game), and I hit Biology: then I cottage over most of my farms in commerce cities, and watermill to the max in production cities, dropping in workshops where needed to cool down food production to just enough to hit max growth.

Have you found in the higher levels that it's best to stick with SE all the way through? (With the obvious exception of financial civs, where CE might be the way to go even at the beginning.)

 

[futurehermit]

I would say archers are fine if you want to go that way. I know Snaaty, a top deity player, likes to go with archers early.

My concern is more with the heavy reliance on cranking out many wonders.

Land, not wonders, is power. Your efforts should be constantly geared toward expanding your empire--peacefully, or not. Wonders tie up production that should be used toward expanding your empire. That's not to say never build them, but you should be selective. Your capital is your best city and to have it constantly tied up with wonder-production seems like a bad idea to me.

Read my horizontal and vertical expansion thread. Also, I've posted a lot on leveraging the three "rushes" of bronze-working (chop/pop/axe). If you put those two things together you should be able to win on prince no problem. Your instinct to go for col and currency early is a good one as well.

If you find yourself at any point in the game not expanding your empire, ask yourself why. If it's: "Because my army needs to heal up" or "I need to stack up my scattered reinforcements" or "I need a temporary break from crippling war weariness" or "I want to tech to the next level of military tech to better deal with those longbows/rifles" then that is ok. But if it's because "I don't have enough military units because I was building wonders" or because "I didn't expand enough early on to have enough production to get a large enough army to compete with my neighbour" then that is not ok.

 

[Silence101]

With non-protective leaders I'd (mostly) agree with the no-archers rule; and with non-spiritual (and/or non-mysticism-starting) leaders, I'd agree with no-religions.

Playing your strengths is good - honestly, I don't like the protective trait much either. However, I could justify going the archer route if you have the protective trait mainly because you can hold a city with fewer units leaving more units available to protect the land. Again, I wouldn't consider it an ideal way to do things, but you're right - it's important to play your strengths.

 

[Silence101]

My concern is more with the heavy reliance on cranking out many wonders.

Land, not wonders, is power. Your efforts should be constantly geared toward expanding your empire--peacefully, or not. Wonders tie up production that should be used toward expanding your empire. That's not to say never build them, but you should be selective. Your capital is your best city and to have it constantly tied up with wonder-production seems like a bad idea to me.

That's gotta be one of the biggest mistakes that players make is building too many wonders. It's not that building a wonder is bad - but if you're just happy-go-lucky building whatever wonder is available without any real purpose, it just ties up production when you could be doing other, probably more effective things. Building a wonder should be able to fit into your overall strategy for victory - you've gotta be able to justify the expense of not only the wonder, but the opportunity cost of what you're giving up in the meantime to build the wonder.

I've read a lot of Futurehermit's threads in the past and I think he's very much right on - there's different strategies of course, but generally it's hard to go wrong if you run an expansionist philosophy (without *over* expanding) and have some concept of effectively specializing your cities.

 

[tempuraki]

Most of the points are pretty sound. A few comments:

1) First city, my sequence is "worker, archer, archer, settler". Rationale is that the archer is stronger than warrior, more likely to survive animal and barbarian attacks, and it'll be longer into the game before I have to replace them.

if you are building the great wall, then you don't need archer for barbs.

2) Initial tech path: archery (see above), unless I start with Mysticism and the recommendation screen is "offering up" Meditation or Polytheism (suggesting to me that I have a good chance of discovering Buddhism or Hinduism right off the bat). If the worker gets built before I have Archery, I switch to Settler for a while and swap back to archers when I get Archery.

if you skip archery and do mine->bronze working, then you can chop earlier, and have better chance of getting GW, which means you don't need archers.

EDIT: I am not actually saying you should always build the GW, but just saying that if you are going to build GW anyway, why research and build archers?

7) During the Liberalism race, my capitol is building as many wonders as possible, with preference to those that give Engineer points, as the Engineers allow rush-builds of yet more wonders; and Prophets so that I can build shrines in any holy cities I have. Pyramids I normally can't get to, but I get Great Wall about 50% of the time, Oracle about 40% of the time, Hanging Gardens about 75% of the time, and Chichen Itza about 90% of the time. Worst games ever I still usually get HG and Chich, and... lots of gold, LOL. Meanwhile the other cities are all building improvement buildings, except for one designated unit-builder which is keeping the cities reasonably defensible, units up to date, aggressive neighbors deterred, etc. This doesn't always work, and sometimes a neighbor declares war, in which case I switch cities to unit production (except the capitol which keeps on wonder-building).

you didn't mention stonehedge, is it that you always get it, or always skip it? I personally always try for it, even if i don't start with mysticism. it's not that hard to get if you can chop, and actually saves you a lot of time and hammer you would have spent building monuments for your new cities. and in BTS it doesn't expire until astronomy! If you chopped for this in your saladin game then you would be able to get to your irons and coppers in time.

8) If I am defending in a medieval war, it usually sends me way far behind other civs tech-wise, because my cities switched to military roles, however, I tend to recoup this deficit by prevailing in the war, taking a lot of enemy cities, and greatly expanding my empire. The slider goes low, of course, but 30% of a huge number of cities still brings in the beakers (and in the early era my economy is "specialist based"--farms and specialists), and I start to catch up tech-wise.

I suggest that you switch to slavery if you switched out. this way all of your cities can whip up the units and get back to their regular roles very fast because of the farms you have.

11) After my conquest phase starts winding down, I go for the coal and Railroad techs, then race to Plastics. This is a risk because the AIs are on a different race, to Rocketry (so they can get an early start on Apollo, and of course, ARTILLERY, which eats my lunch if they get that when I'm still trying to field Industrial era units!) But the payoff if I get there first is that it allows me to build Three Gorges Dam, and now my huge empire all has electrical power without nasty coal plants or dangerous nuke plants (everywhere I couldn't build on a river that is). Along the way, since I also often get to Assembly Line first, this also allows me to build the Pentagon about 3/4 of the time.

you will have infantries before them, so not too much to worry about. but i agree with others that beeline to plastic is not very good, there are other important things. I normally get democracy, communism, and biology, before going after plastic, and in my experience, AI don't usually go for plastic so it's not really a race.

 

[AnaNg]

I have a question about the archer, or maybe no-archer, strat:

Everyone's always talking about hammers and getting stuff out cheaply and quickly. It's true that I do well without taking archery early (latley I only take it early if protective and snag it later when I get long or crossbows. I loves me some crossbows).

In the early game I can crank out archers in 1/2 to 2/3 the time it takes me to crank out an axeman. If promoted they make incredibly fast, cheap mine and city defenders and helps me out when the RNG decides it wants to mess with me (my max-fortified axeman lost to an acher sort of thing) so i can put two on the resource for the same cost as one axeman or thereabouts.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that you need to wait for archery to crank out settlers or for exploration but I'm wondering, if you're pursuing a REX strat not an early war strat, if archers are cheaper overall. Augment them with a roving response force of a couple of axes, of course, but they just come out so quick.

 

[Silence101]

I have a question about the archer, or maybe no-archer, strat:

Everyone's always talking about hammers and getting stuff out cheaply and quickly. It's true that I do well without taking archery early (latley I only take it early if protective and snag it later when I get long or crossbows. I loves me some crossbows).

In the early game I can crank out archers in 1/2 to 2/3 the time it takes me to crank out an axeman. If promoted they make incredibly fast, cheap mine and city defenders and helps me out when the RNG decides it wants to mess with me (my max-fortified axeman lost to an acher sort of thing) so i can put two on the resource for the same cost as one axeman or thereabouts.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that you need to wait for archery to crank out settlers or for exploration but I'm wondering, if you're pursuing a REX strat not an early war strat, if archers are cheaper overall. Augment them with a roving response force of a couple of axes, of course, but they just come out so quick.

I think my main issue with archers is their lack of offensive capabilities - most of the stuff you mentioned, you could do with a warrior too - granted a warrior has a bit less strength, but that early in the game if you just produce a few extra warriors, I think you'll be fine.

An archer does cost less to produce than an axemen, but axemen are built for offense - If I was defending my land improvements with archers, I'd also expect to lose quite a few archers in combat. With axemen, granted a may lose a couple, but I think I'd come out ahead in terms of having to allocate less overall production to building fewer, more powerful units that will also eventually be upgraded with promotions from experience. The promotions for axemen and chariots (and spearmen) are tailored more for this type of role - archer promotions are tailored more for city protection.

While axemen, spearmen, and chariots are not as adept at city protection as archers, they are by far more versatile units, which means you basically get more bang for your buck. It means you don't spend as much time rebuilding untis that were killed. Keep in mind that outside of your city, archers are generally at a disadvantage against these other units.

I'm not advocating that you never build an archer - I'm just saying that you shouldn't prioritize it. I might supplement my city defense with a few archers after I've discovered alphabet and backfilled my missing techs, but I almost never spend time researching archery.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Have you found in the higher levels that it's best to stick with SE all the way through? (With the obvious exception of financial civs, where CE might be the way to go even at the beginning.)

Sometimes, but it's complex. SE is experienced players thing really. For you, I recommend hybrid economy, cottage capital, couple of GP farms, cottage the rest.

 

[AnaNg]

I see what you're saying - though in hills (for mines and stuff) and forests, archers are surprisingly durable as defense, but you're right about offense. that said:

I'm not advocating that you never build an archer - I'm just saying that you shouldn't prioritize it. I might supplement my city defense with a few archers after I've discovered alphabet and backfilled my missing techs, but I almost never spend time researching archery.

That's pretty much how I do it. Unless I have the protective trait (and don't have something else I'm shooting for urgently) I'll wait on archers until about you do.

 

[Silence101]

I see what you're saying - though in hills (for mines and stuff) and forests, archers are surprisingly durable as defense, but you're right about offense.

While archers can effectively fortify their position on a hill or forest, the minute you have to move them to cope with another issue somewhere else, you've lost that advantage.

I don't have the stats in front of me (I'm at work), but as I recall, an axemen with combat I and Cover (level 2-3 depending on traits) is statistically superior to a fortified archer w/ a terrain bonus.

 

[Morgrad]

Best advice I ever got: read the ALC games. All of 'em.

 

[dankok8]

Every time when I've taken a "go ugly early" strategy, it's typically a huge huge HUGE downer on the economy. How do you keep from utter stagnation of tech, even with scientists flipped? Or worse yet, gold, when you get the "strikes" and they disband on their own?

When you go on a conquest early, capture the valuable cities but raze the worse ones. 6 cities is around the upper limit for the number of cities you should have before Code of Laws. When you get Code of Laws, whip/chop courthouses in your cities and you'll be amazed at how quickly your economy recovers. Finally, don't capture very far away cities or even the courthouse won't help much with the maintenance.

I like to also replace with Grenadiers rather than Riflemen for CGs, because then they can upgrade to Machine Gunners, and MGs with CG2 are pretty strong, pre-tanks or pre-Artillery.

Yea, MG's are pretty underrated IMO. They are actually immune to collateral damage and they rip anything infantry and lower apart including artillery. However, they are purely defensive so I don't build many (like archers).

 

[popejubal]

In the early game I can crank out archers in 1/2 to 2/3 the time it takes me to crank out an axeman. If promoted they make incredibly fast, cheap mine and city defenders

...and right there is your problem. The AI will usually pillage your lands if you are sitting in your city, defending. You need to venture forth from your cities to take the fight to the enemy.

Archers make very good city defenders for the hammers spent, especially if your city is on a hill. If you're defending your city directly, you are already in a very bad position. Insteead, build a Warrior to keep the city happy and build an Axeman and either a Spearman or a Charriot (depending on what kind of lands your neighbors have and how far along the game is). An Axe and a Spear together will do an outstanding job of defending your cities if you need them and they can move out of the city to attack the invading army when needed.

It's an active defense that you need rather than a passive one. Archers can still be valuable for defending a key resource or two (copper/iron on a hill at the edge of your empire, etc), but you'll get the best results from properly promoted melee units and horse units.

Finally, don't be so unhappy about the Barbarians. If Barbarians are destroying your empire, you are not building enough of the right kind of units. I like the Barbarians because they are a good early source of XP that come without any diplomatic penalties from neighboring AI civs.

 

[AnaNg]

I think you're mixing my comments and the OPs.

I usually do a mix of active and passive (too many times when I first started, did I have the enemy (or barbs) end run me and take my lightly defended city). I like archers because they're so quick to get out in a pinch. I'll keep a pair in a city and a pair on a hill resource and then spend the rest of the time cranking out my shiny yellow men.

And I certainly don't hate barbs, I'm playing a game right now where they're serving as an auxiliary barracks. I keep rotating my fogbusters (now with 5 promotions!) to the front lines and replacing them with green recruits with a measly 3 promos (crossbow rush FTW or loss... we'll see)