Why do I keep getting attacked?

[akuratnik]

Ok, so I recently got Warlords. For the past week or so, I've been trying to win a culture victory on Emperor difficulty in regular civ, so I decided to do the same in Warlords.

I usually go Frederick (people say Catherine is better, but I'm stubborn) in regular civ, but doing some civilopedia reading, I decided to do Louis for Warlords (industrious for faster wonder building and the salon with free artist is kick-ass, especially when you have representation).

So basically what I've been trying to figure in both games is how the hell do you get away with not getting attacked the entire run through the game. I was doing well in regular civ, but in Warlords, I keep getting invaded!

I usually get 1 or 2 early religions, I usually am able to grab oracle or stonehedge, pyramids, and the parthenon, expand to 3 cities, etc. I try to build up an army for defense with 2-3 archers per city, walls in each city. My early religions tend to spread to my neighbors, so they have the same religion as me and thus do not hate me. I always give tribute/aid, as well.

But what inevitably happens is that I get invaded. Past couple of games, I had no copper nearby, so I had to go defend with archers against axemen and swordsmen. Even if I can resist the invasion, by the time the war is over, my whole development is screwed up, I'm far too behind on tech, etc. What gives?

Why do these guys invade? They are never worse than cautious to me, they are usually far away from me, yet they always come. Do I need to sacrifice a religion/wonder and just mass-produce archers in all my cities? Any tips? Thanks.

 

[Xanikk999]

Because your military is weak. Or your cities arent being defended adequatly.

 

[Greencardman]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the AI makes a jugement call to see if it can pick up an easy city/win. If it just happens to have macemen sitting around, and notices your whole army consists of four longbowmen in each city, it may think you're an easy target.

I've noticed always upgrading my units, always building at least one or two of the latest thing keeps the AI away longer. Try building some offensive units to take out their stacks and show them you're not to be trifiled with.

In short, build more units and they'll stay away.

 

[akuratnik]

ok, so different question: does the AI automatically know the strength of your military? because sometimes I got attacked by a civ that lives far away an even if it had open borders with the civ bordering me, i never do open borders with potential attackers, so there is no way they could've seen my cities and how well (or not well) defended they are...

 

[Rancid Sushi]

ok, so different question: does the AI automatically know the strength of your military? because sometimes I got attacked by a civ that lives far away an even if it had open borders with the civ bordering me, i never do open borders with potential attackers, so there is no way they could've seen my cities and how well (or not well) defended they are...

You can see the relative military power rating of all civs, so it's only fair that they know where you stand as well.

 

[SwordofStriker]

In my experience, the AI is much more likely to invade you if they have more "power" than you.

You can check this by looking at the graphs (the button is in the upper right hand corner of your screen). If someone has a more powerful army than you, and happens to be fairly close, you should start buidling defenses and units.

Even if you manage to fend them off, you will most likely have been weakened yourself, which means even more people have more power than you. Then you keep getting attacked.

I tend to check the graphs every so often so that I know who the potential threats are. Some leaders (like Monty) don't care and may attack you for any reason, or no reason at all, but but the sane ones tend to be more predictable. Also, remember that even with a diplomacy rating of "pleased" you still may be attacked by that person. Only the rating of "friendly" will insure you don't get attacked, and there are even some extenuating circumstances on that as well.

 

[Rancid Sushi]

In my experience, the AI is much more likely to invade you if they have more "power" than you.

You can check this by looking at the graphs (the button is in the upper right hand corner of your screen). If someone has a more powerful army than you, and happens to be fairly close, you should start buidling defenses and units.

Even if you manage to fend them off, you will most likely have been weakened yourself, which means even more people have more power than you. Then you keep getting attacked.

I tend to check the graphs every so often so that I know who the potential threats are. Some leaders (like Monty) don't care and may attack you for any reason, or no reason at all, but but the sane ones tend to be more predictable. Also, remember that even with a diplomacy rating of "pleased" you still may be attacked by that person. Only the rating of "friendly" will insure you don't get attacked, and there are even some extenuating circumstances on that as well.

That's what I was getting at. To my knowledge, Catherine is the only leader who will attack even if she is friendly to you. Also, some AI leaders may be 'annoyed' at you even with no negative diplomacy points.

 

[glokkonn]

I've been playing around with attempts at cultural victories, but a few levels below you.

On Noble - I rarely get attacked, and when I do its easy enough to fend off the attack. Yeah my land gets pillaged, but once peace is declared I just rebuild everything that has been pillaged. I almost never lose a city, and as long as I keep my workers safe in cities I just have to patiently wait out the attack before rebuilding my land. As much as possible I attack the invading units, especially the mounted units with my spearmen or pikemen, and that often gets me 1 or 2 generals which increases my military production for the first one and gets me 2 extra xp per unit for the second one.

Even when I get attacked I have more than enough time to get a cultural victory. Only when I am overly tired do I mess up and not win.

Prince - I expect to get attacked by a BOATLOAD of units at least 2x per game. Once again I rarely lose a city, but sometimes the invading country delays my culture enough to grant victory to another civ. This is good coordination between the enemy civs - one civ knocks me down enough for another civ to win. But often even after fending off one (or more) attacks, I still can often get victory anyways.

I am slowly learning the diplomatic tricks of the trade. Like one game where a civ declared war on me - and was soon at war with 4 or 5 other civs I forget how many. The good news is that the DOW civ did not last long - but the bad news is that he was replaced by an even stronger civ on my border. Oh well best laid plans

The first few times I dealt with massive invasions by distant civs that had exactly zero chance of success for the attacking civ I was upset about it. Now its just what the enemy civs do, and I am learning to deal with it. I no long go ballistic at getting every possible civ to attack that civ - but getting that civ's NEIGHBORS to go to war with him gains me HUGE benefits.

Old way: Ceasar attacks me from afar, allowing MM who is right next to him to waltz to victory.

New way: Ceasar attacks me from afar. I bribe MM to declare war on Ceasar. Not only does this blunt the attack, but it weakens MM, giving me more time to get my victory before he gets his.

Current way: Noble is trivial, Prince is somewhat of a challenge.
New way one day: Prince will be trivial and Monarch will be my "challenge" level.

 

[Yakk]

One huge advantage the AI has is free unit upgrades.

Which means every warrior they build in the early era becomes a maceman by the late era. So a civilization that hasn't been involved in a knock-down war has a huge supply of top-shelf units that they didn't have to actually build.

Getting AI civilizations to fight each other at reasonably high tech levels means that they grind away their prebuilt armies, and have to replace their units at the current costs instead of at the old cheap costs...

 

[glokkonn]

Thank you Yakk for that post.

I was wondering why neighboring civs changed from being "safe" (2 warriors and a bunch of archers and a few horse archers)

to "very dangerous" (lots of high powered effective attack oriented military units)

once Chemistry was widely available.

Although I have known for a long time that AI civs get cheap almost free unit upgrades

until your post I never put 2 and 2 together as to why AI civs tend not to attack me until more modern times.

Thats when they get basically a free army that is large and up to date tech wise and very capable of offensive military operations.

 

[Willem]

Why do these guys invade? They are never worse than cautious to me, they are usually far away from me, yet they always come.

Keep an eye on your power graph, which you'll find in your Demographics screen. If you're on the very bottom, you're ripe for invasion by any civ in the game. Even Ghandi might give it a go. You need to keep yourself in the top third at least to prevent the other civs from seeing you as easy pickings.

 

[Zebra 9]

I agree you must keep an eye on your power graph. Another tip I find useful is that a good offesive is a good defensive (Where did I hear/read that). The other day I was haveing the same problem you have. People a million miles away declared war sent a huge stack of doom and I was rather weak (3 cities, 2 archers per city, good off on tech). I made it through the war (against julius w/ iron working) just because I poped construction and built a few elephants then I poped civil service and he gave peace for that. But like SwordofStriker said I was weaker then everybody by now, and well, Kublai declared.

 

[Gaius Octavius]

akuratnik:
You keep getting attacked because you're playing as France.
My advice is to try to devote one city exclusively to building military units, some defense but also offensive. Of course, this is always easier said than done...

Is the AI really smart enough to know whether it should attack you after it has seen your cities and defending units? If not, then it really doesn't make much sense to deny them open borders.

 

[Antilogic]

That's what I was getting at. To my knowledge, Catherine is the only leader who will attack even if she is friendly to you. Also, some AI leaders may be 'annoyed' at you even with no negative diplomacy points.

Hmm...somebody hasn't bordered Monty recently. He arbitrarily attacks his own allies, whereas you usually have to refuse some tribute/don't gift to Catherine before she will attack you.

 

[Morgrad]

1. Keep your military strong - that means numbers *and* current unit types (I learned this the hard way and just figured it out fairly recently).

2. If you share a border with Monty, kill him as soon as you can. Don't let him capitulate, don't accept peace - for the love of all that is holy, wipe him out.

3. Keep your neighbors at war with their neighbors. No one is going to attack you if they're already fighting someone else. This is often easier said than done, but if you play your diplomatic cards right, you should be able to do OK with it most games.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I usually get 1 or 2 early religions, I usually am able to grab oracle or stonehedge, pyramids, and the parthenon, expand to 3 cities , etc. I try to build up an army for defense with 2-3 archers per city, walls in each city. My early religions tend to spread to my neighbors, so they have the same religion as me and thus do not hate me. I always give tribute/aid, as well.

To me this is why you are getting attacked. (my bold sorry). You seem to be playing the "head in the sand- please leave me alone" mode, which unless you have a very powerful completely pliable ally, will get you attacked every time. While you are stagnating with a couple of cities, the AI will probably be founding 3 or 4 times that number. Thus just by the fact of adequetly defending those cities, will produce the situation where the Ai has a huge power rating over you. This will inevitably induce a war declaration. Even if you defend those 2 or 3 cities very well, you'll still be way behind in power, and the same result will incur, and if you do this you might as well be expanding anyways.

At higher lvls, try and pick maybe one of the earlier wonders (if you really want it) whilst still expanding. Don't be too worried about falling behind in tech, as once you have archers,axes and spears, you are pretty much safe militarily until an ai has macemen, which needs both civil service and machinery, which is way, way off. More land equals more science in the longterm, which is what matters. You just can't grab all those wonders and expand as you need to on the higher lvs, it doesn't work.