When do you decide to attack?

[Heathcliff]

Hi,

I've noticed in my games that my biggest weakness is that sometimes i build too many buildings and the years just fly past without my civ improving on the leaderboard.

I've also noted that my best games are those where I go to war early and often.
Those I usually win (imm difficulty).

I think it's because the AI handles expansion and peaceful years good.
But war really bad - it's often just to throw some siege at their stack and then attack it and after it's dead you can pickoff the cities.

So my questions to you are:

1. Do you decide of a gameplan before the game, like i want to attack with a certain type of unit?

2. Do you attack when you have built all the buidlings you can or need and then you have to produce units?

3. Do you look for weak AI's and pick on them?

4. Can you win culture or space without going to war a single time?
(I mean a normal pangea map on nr 4, with some warmongers around you)

5. Do you feel you have to wage wars to win the game?

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

After I have 6 Catapults, 2 stack defenders, and 4 city takers.

 

[coanda]

1. Definitely not; you cannot decide who/when to attack before you know how much space you have available, who your neighbors are, and what the religious blocks are.

2. No. You pick a key military tech, and try to attack as quickly after getting that tech as possible. That means when you finish getting that tech, you shouldn't be building infra or wonders in any cities. For example, you might decide to hit with catapults. So you build some granaries, maybe a couple barracks and a library, get 3-4 cities, and tech to Construction. Then you get a bunch of axes and a couple spears while researching Construction, and whip some catapults as soon as Construction finishes.

3. It depends. If another AI is starting to get threateningly powerful, you may have to arrange a dogpile against them. If someone has some juicy wonders / shrines, it may be worth hitting them even if they are a bit stronger than an alternative (similarly with good resouces / tiles).

4. Absolutely. A bit of searching of these forums will probably find a couple dozen examples.

5. Depends on difficulty level and your skill. Generally, a couple well-timed all-in attacks are a big boost, so they make it easier. But almost any frequent commenter on this forum could probably win fairly regularly without any wars on Monarch or below.