The beginning

[Sukenis]

Right now I have read and use much of the starting strats given in these forums. My problem is that I tend to be a hit n' miss with living past the first age. Here is my problem.

If I build the workers/settlers I need to keep up the the a.i. expanding empires, I fall behind in military and everntually another Civ goes to war with me as I am an easy target.

If I build the military I need that allows me to no longer be an easy target, my expansion is not enough and I get behind in teritory. This leads to not building enough units and thus becoming an easy target for that larger civ who later sees me as an easy target once again.

Right now my hit n' miss is if I can keep my closest neighbors polite and happy with me so that the Civ who declares war can not reach me effictively and thus my small army can hold them back.

On every game (except one) that I have gotten to the second age without being smashed in a war, I win. The problem is getting to that point.

Here is how I am currently playing

Monarch difficulty
Huge map
Raging barbarians
Random world styles (normally not pangia)
Only use the autosave/reload cheat when not doing so will competely end my game (hit a barbarian hut 2 squares away form your only city and the first barb kills your warrior)
Various civs

pleae offer advise.

 

[Pillager]

..not much time...must be brief...

I:

aim for swords,
hook up iron,
attack nearest civs,
take a couple of cities,
sue for peace and gain a couple of techs.,
try to have one particular settler-producing city (e.g. on flood plain)
have another concentrating on buidling spears for defence in existing cities and to go with the newly-produced settlers.

Hope that makes sense...

 

[Sukenis]

Why swordmen and not Horsemen? I tend to find them much better due to the speed and retreat they get. Also Horses are much more common and you can normally count on getting them.

 

[WildFire]

Yeah but horsemen are a lot worse than swordsmen. I only make horsemen for their 2 movement points

 

[Allemand]

You don't really need horsemen in the first era, but I build about half a dozen of them anyhow. I like to send them after barbarians, maybe get them promoted to elite, then use them in a war. If you build more than 10-12 horsemen, your upgrade cost will be high (80 gold for each one unless you wait for Leonardo).

I try to keep a small military in the first era while building settlers and workers. Sometimes I barely have enough military to put one defender in each city. I designate one or two cities to build barracks and produce spearmen/horsemen. Meanwhile, my first military units are warriors. I'll have about 10 warriors that I can upgrade to swordsmen if needed. This works well against the AI.

 

[Hades]

My start up balacing strategy is to build settlers and barracks/units alternatively. But the time I have my eigth city, I will have enough archers/spearmen to take the on my immediate neighbour. The most important thing at this point is to keep my other neighbours occupied during my invasion. The method I use is declare war with a distance civ and pay them to have military alliance against that distance civ. I don't build temples until I have to (unhappy people hinder my production). I trade my initial techs and money to get bronze working and warrior code first. Iron working is nice but not crucial. AIs invested most of their resources building settlers, most of their cities are still guarded by warriors so swordsmen are nice to have but not necessary.

 

[slothman]

Do you try to get war in the ancient age? I play with a similar setup and never get war until the late medival. Just try to trade with your rivals and that should kep the peace until you are strong enough.

 

[Grey Knight]

Properly run, you can easily defend against an early war. The trick is to pull in allies before they do.

Cheers,
Shawn

 

[Sukenis]

In my current game I tried something new that seemed to work VERY well. When the First Civ declared war on me I established embasys in the 2 closest civs and paid both to join in the war. This slowed down the Russian advance on me while I grew my offensive units. By the time my first city was attack, I was able to counterattack and get Russia to bug for peace. After the 20 turn allaince ended I took everything Russia had for peace, rebuilt and the baited them to declare war on me again and killed them.

Not only did I survuve (and win) a war with a stronger civ, I am now on GREAT relations with Germany and England (my to closest neighbors).

I will have to try this from now on.

 

[Pillager]

My first war tends to be ASAP - I tend to have contact only with the civ. I'm fighting when I declare war.

In answer to your earlier question, I choose swords because horses don't have enough fp to take out spearmen in cities frequently enough, and if the other civ has swords and you have only horses it's a lot more tricky.

 

[Sukenis]

by the way, In the war I mentioned in my last post I never built any horsement. I went for Swordsmen only and did much better. After I got chivalry I disbanded all non-elite swordsmen to to hurry War Elephants (guess who I was playing) and that worked fine. I prefer upgrading the horsement, but...

 

[DB_Terror]

I usually try and keep a balance between settlers and units. I have some cities making settlers, and 2 or 3 making units (chariots, horsemen, swordsmen) and harrass my neighbors.

In my current game, I'm playing Japanese on Monarch so I got the wheel immediately. I also had horses in my capital's reach. Since Kyoto was growing too slowly to keep pumping out settlers, I threw in two chariots. I sent the chariots to my neighbors (India and China), traded all the techs I could get, and then captured their worker. I even managed to destroy a new city of each of them. They both started sending warriors but they couldn't get my chariots because they would retreat from battle all the time.
Losing a worker and a city so early crippled both India and China for the rest of the game, and it was an easy task to finish them off later on.

 

[Gothmog]

For me the key is having specialized cities. One that has lots of food and produces settlers, and others that produce vet war units. I almost always build a granary and barracks first thing. I find a place with flood plains or wheat and built a granary there. Preferably my first city. Of course if you don't have pottery then that changes things, but then you probably don't have lots of neighbors or you would have pottery! Prebuild whatever you do have until you get pottery. If there are no nearby places with food bonus then it is hard, you may need two cities with granaries to produce settlers.

Also trade trade trade, give other nearby civs gpt deals, trade them your only luxury! The only time I get into an Ancient war is if I have a good UU or someone attacks me. Of course I play Diety and so all the other civs have way more units, cities, and techs than I do.

 

[PersianImmortal]

what if u're in the worst terrain possible.. no rivers.. no food plains.. just desert, jungle/forest with some incense and iron.. not to mention your stupid AI neighbor declares war on you to hog the iron while u're building the Pyramids or Colossus..

I think the first priority should be a good military.. without good defensive units and some attacking ones all resources are useless cuz u won't get access to them and then u won't be able to build the units in the first place!

 

[Hades]

Originally posted by Sukenis
When the First Civ declared war on me I established embasys in the 2 closest civs and paid both to join in the war. This slowed down the Russian advance on me while I grew my offensive units.

The problem with this approach is that when a civ declare war on you, they probably have a stack coming your way. You still have the fight their strongest wave of offensive attack. Even worse is that after you defeat their first offensive attack, your "allies" should have attacked and captured many cities from another direction (without much resistance, since you are the one who is cracking the shell) and take most of the spoil of war before you gain the strengh capture the remaining cities. That's why I would prefer to keep them occupied by having them fighing someone else.