[BTS] War Tips

[Darth Tribble]

So, Civ 4 was my first mainline Civ game. I fell out of it when 5 came out and now I wanna get back into it.

I'm a bit rusty when it comes to warfare because I'm so used to the UPT system the later iterations had.

I find my games always turning out the same: I found some cities and research tech and eventually a Civ DoW's me with stacks of doom and I just quit.

I know I need to build more military units, but I never feel like I have enough. I prefer focusing on wonders and researching techs, but I will occasionally attack another Civ or two if I think I can nab an easy city from them.

I actually had one game as Greece that went pretty well. I was experimenting with the specialist economy and went the whole game without being involved in a single war, unless you count capturing a barb city or two. It helped that I was playing on Tiny Islands and had a pretty strong ally who agreed to a Permanant Alliance.

Any tips for becoming better prepared for surprise DoWs?

 

[Tecumseh1]

Focus on diplomacy with your nearby neighbors. Also you have to decide and go for the breakout war (like construction, eng, cuirs or whatever is suitable for situation). Are you going for long term space or culture victory? Generally you want to prepare and dictate when wars start when you have the advantage. How early are you getting declared on?

 

[antimony]

BUG mod (also included in BAT or BUFFY) makes the diplomacy a bit more transparent and you can see who is plotting war with the red fist next to their score.

Unless you play on the highest difficulties the best tip is to get ahead on research, get alphabet early and do tech trades in their favor, you get a large diplo bonus. Otherwise open borders and common religion help (but the latter risks alienating other civs).

Military units are expensive to maintain so you want to focus on diplo and keep few units until you actually go to war. Expand as much as possible and if space is tight you want to go to war earlier i.e. with classical units rather than gunpowder.

 

[Darth Tribble]

Focus on diplomacy with your nearby neighbors. Also you have to decide and go for the breakout war (like construction, eng, cuirs or whatever is suitable for situation). Are you going for long term space or culture victory? Generally you want to prepare and dictate when wars start when you have the advantage. How early are you getting declared on?

It varies. In the last game, I got DoW'd in the Medieval era. Though, I did border the enemy Civ and cut off their expansion.

 

[Tecumseh1]

Yeah if you share many border tiles then tension will increase. Sometimes it's better to give dangerous neighbors more space and settle away from them. Religion and trades are other reliable ways to improve relations. You get a good bonus if you do lopsided trade right when you meet a new neighbor (think you have a few turns or it's the first trade that this happens).

 

[Tecumseh1]

While diplomacy is important, what I learned from losing like you are was that you have to build units and attack first or at least keep a high enough military power ratio so the AI doesn't pick on you. When the ratio is less than 0.5 you are a bigger target. Be selective with which buildings to build. And many wonders don't make sense to build except for fail gold. Build units.

 

[dankok8]

Other than settling away from aggressive neighbours, sometimes on higher levels it's also worthwhile to found a city (bad one if possible) on their borders and gift it to them. It gives you a big diplomatic bonus.

 

[Morningcalm]

I also struggle with this on Noble and higher difficulties. Aside from diplomacy, how many cities are typically needed to thwart enemy stacks of doom? Are there tips anyone wants to share on how to defeat them?

 

[Fippy]

Throw some catapults at them, then send in your actual hitters against their weakened ones.
Or use mounted before their siege can hit you (and flank them away).
Or move on strong defensive terrain and let them attack at bad odds.

I really don't like the term stack of doom, makes it sound like 1upt removes something unfair in later Civ games..
they are basically an army, look at it's weakness and counter which i find historically realistic.
You can even scout their terrain before and monitor which type of unit they are mainly gathering.
Or if an actual stack gathers in a border city, should never come as total surprise with enuf effort.

 

[Tecumseh1]

I also struggle with this on Noble and higher difficulties. Aside from diplomacy, how many cities are typically needed to thwart enemy stacks of doom? Are there tips anyone wants to share on how to defeat them?

I don't think there is a direct connection between attack risk and empire size. In fact as you get too big then you get penalized with "large empire/vassal" penalties. Having a strong military is a deterrent. But really it's mostly about diplo. Use religion, become trading partners, adopt civics they like etc.

 

[Morningcalm]

Throw some catapults at them, then send in your actual hitters against their weakened ones.
Or use mounted before their siege can hit you (and flank them away).
Or move on strong defensive terrain and let them attack at bad odds.

I really don't like the term stack of doom, makes it sound like 1upt removes something unfair in later Civ games..
they are basically an army, look at it's weakness and counter which i find historically realistic.
You can even scout their terrain before and monitor which type of unit they are mainly gathering.
Or if an actual stack gathers in a border city, should never come as total surprise with enuf effort.

Ok, sounds good. I'm also finding supply issues become a problem: I can make units in my (low production) border cities that get to the war front fast enough, but getting the soldiers from other cities faster is what I need to defeat the enemies in a siege. I will try using more catapults for collateral damage.

I don't think there is a direct connection between attack risk and empire size. In fact as you get too big then you get penalized with "large empire/vassal" penalties. Having a strong military is a deterrent. But really it's mostly about diplo. Use religion, become trading partners, adopt civics they like etc.

How do those large empire/vassal penalties work? I had a hard time navigating the Civilopedia. Is a peaceful victory workable? Doesn't being very peaceful inherently limit the expansion needed for say spaceship victories? I guess a diplo victory *could* work, but on higher difficulties, surely the AI don't vote for the player as often?

 

[civac]

A fully peaceful space victory is possible if you can expand to say 10 cities (depending on map size of course) and have elite economic management. The lower the difficulty the more feasible it is. Downside is that trying this you lose agency to influence the game. Some AI may snowball by eliminating rivals. They will then likely outpace you. While it is possible with a sufficiently strong start it's imo a weak, inconsistent way of playing.

 

[Gumbolt]

A save would be useful. I rarely find being 100% peaceful work as on higher levels (such as immortal) you get boxed in with only 5-6 cities. On Prince and other levels you can normally expand rapidly to 10 cities by 1ad.

As Fippy suggests. Scouting out the Ai. Usually AI position near the AI/player they intend to attack next.

Diplomacy wise some refusals to gift techs or gold can lead to DOW pending on the AI. Spain will fight religious wars if you refuse to yield to her demands.

Of course if you have a big enough military these threats from nearby AI matter not.

 

[Morningcalm]

How do we attach saves? For now I'm targeting a peaceful culture win as Hatty but having Cathy on my borders means that isn't going well (was DOWed just recently after expanding to my sixth city). *Sigh* Time to restart. Sometimes I feel like I need a Civ "doctor" to fix my games being irretrievably bad on Noble difficulty.

 

[Gumbolt]

Attach file option below where you type.

6 cities for culture seems low. Diplomacy does not always work.

 

[Tecumseh1]

From in-game just choose save from menu and save it somewhere on your computer.

 

[Morningcalm]

Attach file option below where you type.

6 cities for culture seems low. Diplomacy does not always work.

6 cities comes from the Deity Peaceful Culture strategy guide posted here: https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/st...e-to-totally-peaceful-deity-cultural-victory/

 

[Tecumseh1]

This is a good article on culture. 9-10 cities recommended so you can build cathedrals for multiple religions. This article is about the commerce based strategy for culture. I have heard it's possible with sushi corp and maybe espionage as well.

Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels

This is a compendium of all I know about cultural victories. It is general enough to be valid for all Vanilla, Warlords and BTS. Most of it is probably valid for intermediate and low levels of difficulty too. I hope you enjoy. I would appreciate any comments or disagreements. IMO the cultural...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[antimony]

6 cities work, in that case your 3rd legendary is a great people farm that is mostly running specialists and getting culture bomb, not building cathedrals.

That said, the jesusin guide posted by @Tecumseh1 is better than the older 'deity peaceful culture' one, even if you go for 6 cities. In particular, Catherine is not especially a peaceful AI.

Are you able to always be technologically ahead of the AI on, say, emperor and below? For example, being the first to Alphabet, allowing you to give/sell old techs to the AI for positive relations? Can you usually get 5 cities by turn 80 or so at the same level? If not, then the issue is getting a better economy in the first 50-100 turns, rather than any specific strategy towards a victory condition. I suggest looking at @Fippy's guide pinned to this forum, as well as various old shadow game and nobles club games for early game advice, and of course posting your own games.

 

[sampsa]

I'm also not sure if trying to win culture is the best thing you can learn. If you learn how to set up the empire you can later choose any victory condition you want, and domination/conquest is the easiest one.