Why do I have to do all the work?

[Gyspsysmoke]

I am finding that it is a lot harder to play with AI's that leave eachother (and me) alone than it is to play with agressive AI's that go to war quite often. Left to their own devices at least one AI will surge ahead of me, as I painfully conquer all the other oponents...let me give an example...

In my current Prince game (standard, pagaea, marathon) I have played till about 1100 AD. Mao and Napoleon are gone (by my hands, Togu), MM is lagging behind, Fredrick is about equal in score (bigger empire but behind on tech), HM is crippled (by me; he is on a single square island city...he ain't going nowhere)...and Cyrus is absolutly kicking my butt six ways to sunday in score, tech..and power

The power part both perplexes and scares me. I don't understand it because from what I can see of his cities he is equal in military tech and doesn't have that many units out (he does however have twice the population and almost twice the land area that I do). He is also my strongest ally (we share religion, and I am scared to changed to freedom of religion because of that).

My war machine is in full swing (has been since about 1000BC with small breaks to build neccesary improvements), samuri/knights are pumping out. Till this point I have been razing cities to keep my coffers full (I took Paris for the Pryamids, that's it, 5 cities total). I plan on taking Fredrick down next and capturing all (or nearly all) of his cities as Domination is the only realistic option at this point (usually is the way I play). This will kill my economy as I am a long way away from State Property (though I am bee-lining to it) but I feel as if I have no other choice.

Is military expansion my only hope to beat Cyrus at this point? He is ahead of me in tech (non-military). I would try to get the other AI's to join me in a war against him, but I don't think they would and I don't want to be his only target. The alternative strategy would be to attack Cyrus next in the hopes of cutting the heart out of his empire (his capital and other old cities are real close to me) but that seems very risky to me....thoughts?

 

[Draetor24]

If you focus on eliminating Frederick, your military strength should be increasing constantly, while your research lacking. If Cyrus is not at war, and just researching, then after Frederick, it would be in your best interest to take advantage of your military strength. If not, you have to play catch up, and run the risk of never catching up because Cyrus was untouched all game.

If, after your war with the other nations, your empire is larger than Cyrus', and you have many productive cities with good land, you can try a massive cottage strategy to pass Cyrus in tech, but starting out with a military strategy, you're better off with a ton of farms/mines, going Representation, and using specialists for research. I just did this in my last game, as my economy had very few cottages and a lot of farms/population. If you use the auto government in your cities to select Research, it will best utilize food/specialists with Representation.

 

[Gyspsysmoke]

I'm starting to doubt the idea that the hardest AI's to warmonger against are the other warmongers....

Is a surgical strike to get Cyrus's capital/great cities something that would cripple my ability to conquer the other AI's?

 

[DaveMcW]

Ideally you shouldn't do all the work. You should have made nice with a medium size civ that you could bribe to attack Cyrus.

 

[maltz]

Bribing is very useful. You can plan ahead and switch your religion a few dozen turns in advance to make a few nice friends when you need them, and bribe them to attack your competitor. However, some leaders are extremely reluctant to attack.

 

[Gyspsysmoke]

I could try this strategy:

1. Bribe Fred to attack Cyrus (not sure if this is possible).
2. Move a stack and take Cyrus capital & stab Fred in the back by moving stacks against him.
3. Make peace with Cyrus at the ealiest possible moment and continue the war against Fred (I could also try and draw MM into this war).

The problem that I have had with bribery is that they won't even listen to the request, and you can't bribe civ's more advanced/rich than yours...

I have good dipo relations with Cyrus and MM, Fred is neutral due to my wars with the other AI's (they shared his religion) but he is so far behind me tech wise bribery may be possible.

 

[Matthevv]

The critical factor is relationships between Cyrus and other Civs. If they are annoyed with him, you stand a chance of getting them to attack him. If they are friendly to him, he will probably send them against you if you attack him. Trying to bribe anyone that is less than Pleased with you will be difficult, unless their relations are very bad with Cyrus.

If Cyrus is equal to you in types of military units, then you should have no problem with attacking him, even if he has more "power". Leave it and he will soon get better units than you, so that attacking him would be very difficult. The risk is that due to your bad relations with other Civs, one of them decides to (or is paid to) attack you while your forces are busy fighting Cyrus.

Trying to catch and overtake Cyrus in tech wouldn't be possible I think, from the situation as you describe it. He will have a lot of well developed cottages by now, and it will be a long time for any you build to catch up.

 

[Crighton]

Depending on the relative positions of the other civs, it might be a good idea to simply abosorb Cyrus's civ into your own since you already share his religion, rehabilitation of his citites will be much easier.

If Cyrus is currently your friend, and you do not fear the other Civs, then you should conquer him while you can, or at the least cripple him.

 

[Gyspsysmoke]

Played till just past 1500 and here is how it went down...

The situation at 1100 was such that I wouldn't of been ready to go to war with Cryus until at least 1200 and I didn't want to lose that much time. None of the other AI's were even willing to listen to any offers of going to war with him either so that wasn't even an option.

The good news was, I was quite prepared to go to war with Fredrick. I had most of his empire taken over by 1200 (didn't start till about 1150 due to troop movement), and he was off the map by 1300 (right about the time I hit State Property). This really couldn't of worked out much better as towards the end of the conquest I was running about -120 gold/turn, I turned this around and was running +40 gold/turn at 80% science by 1400. Fredrick had some really nice cottage cities and I grew the crap out of the conquered cities, planted 3 more of my own were HC used to be and spread out my forces to kill the chances of the barbs...

By 1500 I am nearly even with Cyrus in tech (the new cities/Freedom of Religion has me researching at a higher clip), and I am beelining for Industrialism right now, and just barely behind him in score. His army is about 20-30% larger than mine, but I am done catching up on wonders (just finished Kremlin/West Point/Hermatige...Scotland Yard is on the way), so I have started pumping out Grenadiers/Riflemen/Cavalry.

I just signed a Defensive Pact with Cyrus...so the question is this...can you have a Defensive Pact with more than one country at the same time?

MM is my next conquest (not going to break the pact with Cyrus till I get Tanks), and he is really chummy with Cyrus...and me for that matter...we all get along isn't that sweet?

 

[Boppo]

I just signed a Defensive Pact with Cyrus...so the question is this...can you have a Defensive Pact with more than one country at the same time?

MM is my next conquest (not going to break the pact with Cyrus till I get Tanks), and he is really chummy with Cyrus...and me for that matter...we all get along isn't that sweet?

Yes you can have multiple Defensive Pacts. When you declare war on someone it will break all of your Pacts though.

 

[crocodiledundee]

I haven't checked the save, but I'd say you'll run into problems if you fight Cyrus for a prolonged period. Your people hate to fight fellow adherents to[insert religion here] and war weariness will be high anyway since you are the instigators. The moral of the story is don't underestimate theocracy in a warmonger game; found your own religion and keep it.

Yeah, i know that's pointing out a problem and not a solution...bite me!

 

[Gyspsysmoke]

Yes you can have multiple Defensive Pacts. When you declare war on someone it will break all of your Pacts though.

so if Cyrus has a Pact with MM and I start a war with MM, Cyrus would attack me? cause that would be "sub-optimal"

I haven't checked the save, but I'd say you'll run into problems if you fight Cyrus for a prolonged period. Your people hate to fight fellow adherents to[insert religion here] and war weariness will be high anyway since you are the instigators. The moral of the story is don't underestimate theocracy in a warmonger game; found your own religion and keep it.

First, I am on Freedom of Religion right now and they are both still with the Budah (which is why I am out beakering them). Second, I either have to go domination or Space Race...so if I do go to war for Cyrus it will be one of those end game wars where I take his cities and wait for domination to come.

I need to take over MM's territory, my only worry is that it will cause Cyrus to attack me...which would be ugly

 

[Gyspsysmoke]

Ended up getting a domination win in 1840, 6 turns after I started a war with Cyrus.

He was kicking my butt in power until 1800 when a few things happened:

1. He finished the Apollo Program and started working on his spaceship.
2. I kept sabotaging his oil resource to keep him from producing tanks/modern armor

He had me out teched the entire time (when the war started his air force plundered the crap out of my border cities), but I started to edge him out on score and my economy was a monster so I was able to uprade my military to keep up with the tech. I never even reach flight but the quick hitting end war won me the game in all of 6 turns (I had to fight it on 3 fronts using 6 different stacks...he didn't know what hit him)

 

[Artanis]

Ended up getting a domination win in 1840, 6 turns after I started a war with Cyrus.

He was kicking my butt in power until 1800 when a few things happened:

1. He finished the Apollo Program and started working on his spaceship.
2. I kept sabotaging his oil resource to keep him from producing tanks/modern armor

He had me out teched the entire time (when the war started his air force plundered the crap out of my border cities), but I started to edge him out on score and my economy was a monster so I was able to uprade my military to keep up with the tech. I never even reach flight but the quick hitting end war won me the game in all of 6 turns (I had to fight it on 3 fronts using 6 different stacks...he didn't know what hit him)

Yeah, the "power" rating doesn't take into account how much better humans are at fighting than the AI