Do you play peacfull, or Warmonger?

[Velociryx]

Early game: Brief period of peaceful expansion followed by all-out war till the starting continent is under my thumb/filled up with cheese ball client states.

Mid game: Selective wars to build up/tear down rival civs

Coast from there.

-=Vel=-

[nbarclay]

My usual style (mostly Monarch level) involves long periods of peace interrupted by (hopefully) short, decisive wars. A typical game goes something like the following. Note that this is all 1.16f and before; I haven't installed 1.17f yet.

1) Expand to cover the useful terrain near my capital. Cities normally produce barracks before building much if anything in the way of troops. (I doubt that I usually build even half a dozen "regular" land units in a game.)

2) Fight to gain some more territory since in the long term, size (as long as it doesn't get ridiculous) equals wealth and power. In my last few games, I got stuck on islands with another civ and started fighting in the archer/spearman era.

3) Once the empire is big enough, go into a peaceful improvement phase, usually until around the beginning of the industrial era. (Usually, there's a time a bit before factories and another one after factories and hospitals when several major cities don't really have anything to build except troops.)

4) Use a cavalry blitz on anyone handy who is close enough for his land to be worth something and doesn't have infantry yet. (The "value" aspect is important since I don't like razing cities.) Ideally, at least my first blitz will be against someone who only has musketmen.

As an aside, the ultimate in "cavalry blitz" tactics combines a very heavy weight of numbers with railroads to allow the capture of up to three or four cities deep in a single turn. (No, I don't use artillary to soften the enemy up first. (a) I'd rather capture the city as intact as possible, and (b) democracies are a lot happier with quick, decisive wars). Sometimes I build the railroads myself as I go - take a city, build a rail line to it, take the next, build a rail line, and so on, all in one turn.

5) Go back into a holding pattern once all my prospective targets (a) have infantry, (b) have enough weight of numbers to make conquest difficult, and/or (c) are too far away to be convenient and worthwhile victims. (Since I don't normally raze cities, a half-conquered civ can pose a serious reversion threat.) Until tanks show up, cities with nothing better to do tend to build infantry with an eye toward upgrading to mechanized infantry later, although a city with after-corruption production 80-89 will still generally build cavalry.

(6) I may or may not take advantage of the other two time periods when offense trumps defense - tank vs. infantry and modern armor vs. infantry or mechanized infantry. So far, I've never slugged things out to a domination victory, although I probably will in my current game.

By the way, from knights through cavalry, the vast majority of the troops I build tend to be offensive rather than defensive. Mounted counterattackers can do nasty things to an enemy's offensive troops, especially if a good defender can move in to cover them against counter-counterattack.

Nathan

[Cuervo72]

Builder, almost to a fault. I must learn how to instigate better...in current game, am Iroquois next to Aztecs (they've been on good behavior?), Persians, and haven't had a battle yet. Oddly, it doesn't seem as if anyone else has fought either, though we are only at 1100AD.

Now if someone picks a fight with me, they're toast.

[Arrian]

nbarclay,

What you describe is strikingly similar to my approach. The difference is that I won't pick a fight early - I'll wait until (and it always happens) an AI sneak attacks me. Then, I take their empire from them, or at least cripple them.

Mounted troops rule. Generally, I build 1 defender per city, maybe two in border towns, and the rest are all attack troops (knights/cav), until replaceable parts, whereupon I pump out some extra infantry. I like having extra infantry around, because I know at some point that my Tanks are gonna overrun a bunch of AI towns and I will need garrison troops.

The Cavalry blitz can be extremely powerful, and if I haven't fought yet, I will hit someone really, really hard with Cavalry. If I have fought in the middle ages, I may not use an all-out Cav blitz, because I will have used a fair amount of resources consolidating previous gains. It all depends.

Once I have tanks, I build loads of them, and then decide whose existence I wish to end. In my present game, I intend to destroy England. They have an island with 7 cities on it... and they have 8 silks (I have no silk, and Elizabeth "would be insulted" by my offer of oil, coal, spices and 25 gold/turn for silks... she's TOAST). Generally, like the above example, it's someone on an island - with luxuries I don't have.

I have occasionally gone for a domination win, but I usually run out of patience before that occurs, and build the SS.

-Arrian

[rpodos]

While I have turned into a warmonger (it's all about the GLs), you still have to be a builder to keep up / succeed.

If you want the productivity of Republic or esp. Democracy, war-weariness starts to kill your productivity (both directly, and indirectly, through not being able to achieve WLKD).

I find that being religious helps tremendously... first, you can jump in and out governments faster than my fiance changes dresses. Second, increasing happiness to achieve WLKD is great (if I'm playing religious, I will build temples, then cathedrals, then marketplaces, then colosseums. Third, a cheap temple also prevents cultural flips.

By the time a stop the ceaseless warring, I am ready to slam out libraries and factories and such. Once I've built out all my cities, I start to rub my greedy warmongering hands in chortling glee, as I build TANKS and TANKS and TANKS. Then, flip to communist (or not, if the empire is not too big), and the TANKS roll.

BTW, I never ever convert to mobilization.

R

[Qilue]

I also have never used the mobilize option. Since I'm usualy still in the process of developing most of my cities, being limited to military improvements would hurt my empire worse than losing cities.

[Tingkai]

One of the great things about Civ is that for this question I have no specific answer. It all depends on how the game unfolds.

I'll go on the attack if there is a potentially dangerous civ nearby during the early game, but my decision is influenced by the type of civ I'm playing.

Also, there are times when another Civ is on the verge of collapse and I'll jump in for easy pickings.

In general, I'll try to work hard towards RR simply because of the defense value it provides so that means I tend to play a more peaceful strategy.

[Arrian]

I may be converting. I have discovered the power of the Japanese. I'm still at least 1/2 builder... but the ancient war to secure my own continent has a lot of appeal. Plus, this ancient war does not trigger a Japanese golden age, which I want later.

Plus, my ego seeks higher scores. Score in CivIII is all about territory and population... mostly territory. Since that is averaged over the course of the game, the earlier you get big, the better.

-Arrian