Which Leader/civ is your Archnemesis?

[gfm]

Who else than Shaka ? Like everybody said, the guy doesn't care about religion, has a late favorite civic, builds a ton of units, and has a seriously negative attitude. I also hate Willem, who will basically tech like a whore and backstab you when he has the chance. Zara and Bismarck can get on my nerves too, given they are pretty competent opponents.

As many people pointed out in other threads, there are three good reasons to pick the Zulus :

• Cheap granaries
• Excellent unique building and pretty decent unique unit
• You don't have to face Shaka !

 

[Sportyatuncw06]

Cathy and Izzy are royal b!tches. They are so demanding and annoying, but anyone with the creative trait sucks being neighbors with. The early culture pops makes ancient era rushes much more time consuming. Conversely Ghandi and Mana are great neighbors, up to the point the get squashed.

 

[Le Singe]

Question are there any modifiers controlling what type of units the unit spammers build. I'd say on of the weakness of the AIs military is they rearly seem to make enough siege units. But every once and a while I'll get one one that rolls up to my cities with 10+ siege weapons in their stack this is way harder to deal with and when im at a troop disadvantage my position becomes untenable.

Alex is my most hated, it seems like in my game he tends to built more siege than say montey (who will attack your 60%+walls city with one or two cats.). This may just my bad luck or a RNG thing but man I hate alex. I also really hate shak.

 

[NihilZero]

Getting Joao as my neighbor means I don't have to build any settlers myself.

He very commonly outsettles his defensive capability.

Absolutely. Last time had Joao as my closest neighbour I DoWed him early and followed him around the map picking up all the nice cities he settled for me. He builds more settlers and workers than he does units...

I imagine he could be a pain on another continent, however.

I haven't tried this in forever, but I believe you can get him to friendly with shared religion, open borders, trade, and 2 liberated cities.

Got him to friendly today, for the first time ever. It wasn't too hard. When I decided I was going culture and swallowed the pill of gifting him expensive techs. Normally you would rather die than give him anything since you know he'll use it against you later. He even served as my protector later on (defensive pact).



He helped me get a not bad 1720 culture win for 54k points, which is okay as I haven't played culture since my Monarch days.

I guess even the most trucluent AI can be tamed with a bit of love and understanding. Oh, and a collective gang-raping of some other unfortunate to get the all important shared war bonding...

 

[mirthadir]

I can't begin to count the number of times I've started next to a war monger and said "easy mode". Gifting a crappy city in the tundra where they have culture brings you up, instantly to pleased (+4 trade and liberation); if you do it before they acquire their first war target; virtually all of the time they will go pound someone else.

If you can get Shaka to declare on someone else and are willing to tank relations with the victim, he isn't that hard to get to friendly and he techs so horridly. Late game he masses units, making him excellent bait for either the MGs of doom in the city on a hill (GII, CGIII MGs upgraded from Xbows, Grenadiers, etc.) or nukes (oh sorry did I kill 250 guys in one turn, sorry).

Predictable AIs are easier in my book. He's annoying as all get out, but he can be easy to massage with diplomacy.

Shaka's diplomation can be worrying, enough to raze the UN, but that can be managed (like by letting his strongest vassal build the UN).

 

[iggymnrr]

Don't think civ 4 really lends itself to the archnemesis idea. So, I'd say that any civ that will build pond fish is an archnemesis. (In my last game Shaka did, but that's besides the point.)

 

[Earthling]

Cyrus. The Fungus.

Hatty is Cyrus' concubine; Gandhi often a strong ally of them both. Mansa is annoying but on his own he's not much - he makes any of the above combinations worse though.

The Warmongers are of course naturally next but few particularly stand out, and they're all just annoying for warmongering/early game evilness. Monty is one of the worst though; Toku is most annoying but always a pathetic backwards civ. Izzy is the only particularly annoying religious leader to me.

 

[GreenShift84]

Justinian often finds a way of being very problematic...He expands well with Imp, techs decently, has a strong UU considering AI love of mounted units, and also tends to develop allies w/religion. I've seen him be dominate in many games and pull some dirty tricks I never would have thought the AI capable of...

Two examples:
1. I was prepping for a canon/draft war and had just finished the Globe with the help of some chops and slavery (the city had no hammer tiles whatsoever). With the globe built and nationhood adopted (also switched to caste as it seemed preferable over slavery once the globe had finished), I'm ready to go into draftathon mode to get units for my canons... Then, on the EXACT turn I want to start drafting, I get a notification that Justinian spy-sabotaged the granary in my draft city! Just incredible. I was really kicking myself for leaving slavery...
2. He manages to foul up yet another canon war. I had just taken Steel from Liberalism and used a GM to upgrade my catas/trebs. I'm ahead of the pack in terms of research, with a monopoly on gunpowder still intact, and already moving the troops in place to backstab Justinian. The situation looks very good; his big SOD is in a close border city, conveniently on the way to his capitol, and only two tiles deep in his culture. Around four turns before DOW Justinian manages to research Military Tradition. Eh no big deal. However he must have realized something was up, because only two turns later he proceeded to steal gunpowder from me! In the few turns it took to move the stack to the SOD-containing border city, he upgraded at least 12+ cataphracts to cuirs and immediately flanked the absolute sh!t out of my canons. Then he bribes his buddy Hannibal into the war and continues to spam cuirs...He pretty much pulled the only possible move that could have saved him.

I definitely spend much more time scrutinizing war situations as a result of my encounters with him.

Gotta vote for Ragnar as well, I've seen him use galleys to unload an army in my back territory even when we're on the same continent+sharing borders. Nasty.

 

[Seventh Child]

Justinian often finds a way of being very problematic...He expands well with Imp, techs decently, has a strong UU considering AI love of mounted units, and also tends to develop allies w/religion. I've seen him be dominate in many games and pull some dirty tricks I never would have thought the AI capable of...

Two examples:
1. I was prepping for a canon/draft war and had just finished the Globe with the help of some chops and slavery (the city had no hammer tiles whatsoever). With the globe built and nationhood adopted (also switched to caste as it seemed preferable over slavery once the globe had finished), I'm ready to go into draftathon mode to get units for my canons... Then, on the EXACT turn I want to start drafting, I get a notification that Justinian spy-sabotaged the granary in my draft city! Just incredible. I was really kicking myself for leaving slavery...
2. He manages to foul up yet another canon war. I had just taken Steel from Liberalism and used a GM to upgrade my catas/trebs. I'm ahead of the pack in terms of research, with a monopoly on gunpowder still intact, and already moving the troops in place to backstab Justinian. The situation looks very good; his big SOD is in a close border city, conveniently on the way to his capitol, and only two tiles deep in his culture. Around four turns before DOW Justinian manages to research Military Tradition. Eh no big deal. However he must have realized something was up, because only two turns later he proceeded to steal gunpowder from me! In the few turns it took to move the stack to the SOD-containing border city, he upgraded at least 12+ cataphracts to cuirs and immediately flanked the absolute sh!t out of my canons. Then he bribes his buddy Hannibal into the war and continues to spam cuirs...He pretty much pulled the only possible move that could have saved him.

I definitely spend much more time scrutinizing war situations as a result of my encounters with him.

Gotta vote for Ragnar as well, I've seen him use galleys to unload an army in my back territory even when we're on the same continent+sharing borders. Nasty.

If it makes you feel any better, in a recent game I started right next to him and blocked him off. He ended up with 3 cities. I adopted his religion and started buttering him up. He voted for me in the Apostolic Palace elections. Then I initiated the draft and started rolling cannons and rifles onto his borders. DoWed him and started laying waste to his empire. He only had three cities on the continent and the rest spread out on island chains. Halfway through my huge betrayal and captuing his three most powerful cities, the Apostolic Elections came up again and he still voted for me, we had just been that friendly before.

After knocking him off the mainland I vassalized him and moved on to conquer the rest of the continent. Was very satisfying.

 

[Absolute Zero]

Several people have said they dislike Joao for his fast expansion. Cathy seems to play that role in my games. She expands fast (and is also Creative) and is overall quite similar to Joao.

Also, the leaders that build a lot of units but aren't so quick to declare war: Julius Caesar, Mehmed, maybe Napoleon. They seem to have so many units in each of their cities - even when it's completely unnecessary. Simply knowing I will have to outdo that if I ever want to take their land is pretty discouraging. But instead of throwing their stacks against random enemies every few centuries, they simply wait and train more and more units, until they finally do declare war and often end up more successful than the less rational warmongers like Monty or Genghis.

 

[lymond]

Justinian often finds a way of being very problematic...He expands well with Imp, techs decently, has a strong UU considering AI love of mounted units, and also tends to develop allies w/religion. I've seen him be dominate in many games and pull some dirty tricks I never would have thought the AI capable of...

Two examples:
1. I was prepping for a canon/draft war and had just finished the Globe with the help of some chops and slavery (the city had no hammer tiles whatsoever). With the globe built and nationhood adopted (also switched to caste as it seemed preferable over slavery once the globe had finished), I'm ready to go into draftathon mode to get units for my canons... Then, on the EXACT turn I want to start drafting, I get a notification that Justinian spy-sabotaged the granary in my draft city! Just incredible. I was really kicking myself for leaving slavery...
2. He manages to foul up yet another canon war. I had just taken Steel from Liberalism and used a GM to upgrade my catas/trebs. I'm ahead of the pack in terms of research, with a monopoly on gunpowder still intact, and already moving the troops in place to backstab Justinian. The situation looks very good; his big SOD is in a close border city, conveniently on the way to his capitol, and only two tiles deep in his culture. Around four turns before DOW Justinian manages to research Military Tradition. Eh no big deal. However he must have realized something was up, because only two turns later he proceeded to steal gunpowder from me! In the few turns it took to move the stack to the SOD-containing border city, he upgraded at least 12+ cataphracts to cuirs and immediately flanked the absolute sh!t out of my canons. Then he bribes his buddy Hannibal into the war and continues to spam cuirs...He pretty much pulled the only possible move that could have saved him.

I definitely spend much more time scrutinizing war situations as a result of my encounters with him.

Gotta vote for Ragnar as well, I've seen him use galleys to unload an army in my back territory even when we're on the same continent+sharing borders. Nasty.

Good Stuff! Enjoyed reading this no matter how painful. The tech stealing drives me nuts because I don't really use it myself. I'll park spies in my cities and the AI still has a fairly easy time doing what the want - mainly poisoning water, stealing techs and the occasional improvement sabotage.

 

[lymond]

Several people have said they dislike Joao for his fast expansion. Cathy seems to play that role in my games. She expands fast (and is also Creative) and is overall quite similar to Joao.

Also, the leaders that build a lot of units but aren't so quick to declare war: Julius Caesar, Mehmed, maybe Napoleon. They seem to have so many units in each of their cities - even when it's completely unnecessary. Simply knowing I will have to outdo that if I ever want to take their land is pretty discouraging. But instead of throwing their stacks against random enemies every few centuries, they simply wait and train more and more units, until they finally do declare war and often end up more successful than the less rational warmongers like Monty or Genghis.

Cathy is a pain if you don't keep her in check. I was just playing a game in which I was running a settler over to grab some good land. As I clear the fog in the region I see that not only does Cathy have a settler about to grab my spot by 2 more settlers in her stack ready to grab up more nearby land.

 

[Sincro]

I recently got my first ever Monarch level victory, and I would have to say that Justinian was the biggest pain.

I was next to Ram and Hannibal, shared a religion with Hannibal, but he had the shrine and I wanted it it so, well, yeah, I was prepping for a cannon/musket draft attack. My border with Ram, who is a different religion, consists of a single choke city that I have stuffed with longbows, horse archers and my old quechas upgraded to macemen just in case Ram got a little frisky. Perhaps 15 units in all. Plenty of defense against a low unitprob AI, against whom I have a massive tech edge.

2 turns before I finish teching steel, I happen to look over at the border with Ram, and what do I see? A solid 40 unit stack of knights, maces, pikemen and cats. I mean, half the bloody stack was cats. Now the thing is, I can see the entire map, thanks to map trading. Justinian had to send that stack 107 tiles (I counted em) from his nearest cultural border to mine, through the territory of 3 other AIs with whom he does not share a religion, specifically Monty, Sury and Ram. I lose the city, but manage to retake it a few turns later with my stack of ex-catapult cannons and muskets that had been prepping to take out Hannibal. We make peace. About 50 turns later, he does almost the exact same thing, except this time I was ready for him with a massive stack of cuirassers and cannons. I had to wait until teching Astro before finally being able to do something about him because I couldn't get open borders with Ram, and I couldn't get Ram to close his borders to Justy.

Grr.

Anyhow, I know that was a fairly long and pointless story, but he's currently #1 on my 'I hate you' list.

 

[NihilZero]

Gotta vote for Ragnar as well, I've seen him use galleys to unload an army in my back territory even when we're on the same continent+sharing borders. Nasty.

That's interesting, I guess it wasn't coincidence when he did the same thing to me. Completely outflanked my defences with a couple of galleys, declared war, and then landed three swords and a catapult beside a city defended by a single archer.

He also had a main invasion force on the front lines and bribed Hannibal into the war as well. Game over.

 

[AtriumComplex]

I wouldn't call him a nemesis but lately I've been finding that Sitting Bull and myself have had the mutual misfortune of being neighbours. I like early wars, but a large amount of highly promoted archers usually dissuades me from war until macemen and trebs, at least.

 

[troytheface]

fact- multiplayer- alot of indias and malis

fact- multiplayer- alot of carthages

fact- i always play babylon- overheard- "you always play babylon"

fact- archmemisis for babylon- persia and egypt

the evidence is clear

 

[Timhotep]

Sitting Bull - mostly because he was my neighbor in maybe 5 games in a row, backstabbed me in two of them while I was campaigning elsewhere, and I hate his dumb city names. (I've since modded him into Hiawatha of the Iroquois)

 

[jwez11007]

I'm gonna have to go with catherine because my last 4 or 5 games I've found myself part of the opposing religious block, she always starts too far away for me to rush, and she has grabbed SoZ in the over half of the games i've played against her(I beat her to it during my last game because i was sick of fighting against it). So Im left with attacking her nearby allies in short bursts or attempting to march a stack halfway across the map to target one of her cities just to keep my war weariness down.

Maybe just bad luck on my part, but I really don't want to play against catherine any time soon.

 

[Deathstar]

I remember a game where I had Shaka literally right below me in a map. Didn't have a happy ending in that game.

But in general, I dislike warmongers and they are on at the top on my list to rush kill. Jaoa is nice to play with, but not to vs against.

 

[BobDole]

For me it's gotta be Sitting Bull. In every game I've played he's fought me eventually. Usually in the early game he comes at me with a ton of tribute demands (which I usually blow off) so he declares war with me. In my latest game he was nice to me for most of it (probably because he was on another continent so I didn't meet him for a bit) but he got power hungry after I pitted Charlemagne in a war with him. Unfortunately, Sitting Bull beat the hell out of Charlemagne and then decided to demand that I teach him the secrets of Artillery, even though I pretty much owned an entire continent and a large and high tech army.....so yet again, we're at war, just like every game.

Honorable mention goes to Zara Yaqob because he always seems to get way too powerful and isn't afraid of backstabbing you when he sees an opportunity. In one of my recent games by the time I met him he already vassalized Napoleon and the French, and he had a pretty large empire overall, so I gave him a bunch of tech in exchange for going to war against 3 civs, figuring he'd get in some huge world war and lose a bunch of stuff. No way he could win a 1v3, right? He fights two of them for a bit and ultimately makes peace and makes the Americans his vassal, even though he captured like one of their cities and didn't even seem to fight with them all that much.