Well, the Carthaginians, for one.
I should probably elaborate on that. As much as I enjoyed Civ II, the Carthaginians ruined every game I had with them in it. I viewed them as I view Montezuma, Boudica and Isabella in Civ IV, a scourge that had to be dealt with.
In that game I was ahead and my empire was thriving, but the Carthaginians attacked, as I expected them to. Since I was ready for them and ahead in tech they lost a lot of units in their first war. But they tried to steal tech from me constantly. Every turn a diplomat would approach my closet city to them only to be expelled by my diplomat. But it got old, and I wondered how this same diplo could possibly be coming back EVERY turn. So I sent a unit out to see what they were doing. There was, I shit you not, a line of diplomats from Carthage heading my way. At least fifty of them. Maybe more. I cursed myself for not destroying them earlier in the game. Eventually they’d manage to get tech from me and if we were wevenly matched they’d waste no time in attacking me directly. So I nuked their capitol city and took it, which split their empire in two. (The second half became the Indians or something…I miss that feature in Civ IV…)
In Civ IV Monty will almost always attack you. I don’t like starting off close to him because of that. You will be forced to go to war to defend yourself and I’m more of a builder than a fighter. Boudica is pretty much the same, though I’ve managed to coexist with her if I convert her to my religion early in the game. surprisingly I did that with Isabella in my last game. She didn’t found buddhism or hinuism (the 2 earliest religions to found) so when I snagged monotheism and found the Jewish faith I converted her cities and had an entire game with her as an ally. There is something satisfying about hobbling an enemy in those games. I used to love Alpha Centauri, and Yang was always my worst nightmare in that game. One game I managed to block him on a peninsula early in the game where he had room only for 3 bases. I never had to fight him. I used a probe team to frame him for an attack on Santiago :D. and she took him out for me.
I think he’s talking about real life, where attacking someone who has a longer range, and can run away faster than you can charge, is suicide. Having a river between your archers and their melee infantry should be a shooting gallery.
If they could carry enough arrows, and if the barbies could be trusted to commit to a frontal attack while fjording a river, I suppose. 
I fell that was about Sister Miriam’s religious fundamentalist faction in Alpha Centauri. I’d go out of my way to crush her and get a mild sexual thrill about her surrender, imagining stripping away those ceremonial robes and calling for my whips.
Ahem.
So…you played as Pravin Lal, then?
They armed Dumbo, obviously.
Miriam was a joke by mid game since her tech penalties made her easy to beat. But it was always satisfying to destroy her.
I find the whole process of war in Civ to be aggravating. Especially early in the game when the simple of act of assembling a half-decent army and marching it to even nearby cities can take several centuries. At the end of which, the enormous defensive bonuses mean that you’ll halve the size of your force even when you successfully attack a city. Plus of course, you’ve got to deal with those clever pre-medieval roads which stop working if they sense you’re walking on them with ill intentions.
Just say yes to random seed!
That is one of the reasons I rarely attack in ancient times unless I really have to. (aggressive neighbor, or resources I really need, etc). I tend to wait at least until miliary tradition comes around. Then I’ll create “armies” of ten to fifteen units each, and attack four or five enemy cities at once. The AI rarely uses this tactic and deals with it badly. The AI will run aound trying to bolster defenses in several places at once and I’ll use my stacks to pillage the area and go after the weakest city I can reach. I usually don’t even take a city, just weaken my enemy by wars end.
Unless the city is possesses something I want. Keeping enemy cities is usually more of a pain than its worse. I just raze them.
Prokhor Zakharov, actually.
Curious, this: In my first game of Civ after this thread, where I said massive attacks never happen to me… I get hit with 75+ knights. Never happened to me before. It pretty much ruined the game for me. Curious.
I picked up a new computer on Friday.
I am looking forward to playing a non-crippled version of Civ. Yay!
That being said. I have used that exact tactic against the computer, and it almost never ever works. I tried a game where, instead of upgrading units, I would take all my “obsolete” units, and focus them on one point on the map, and use them as a spearhead to destroy the infrastructure and soak up counter-attacks from my enemies.
It was only marginally successful, and wasn’t worth the loss of unit levels.
These kinds of complaints are exactly why I didn’t bother moving from III to IV, but CivRev on the XBox actually resolves this problem somewhat with “overrun.” If you are 7 times as strong as your opponent, you win automatically. (Zulu gets 4x instead of 7.) Very nice feature.
I couldn’t imagine doing that. My obsolete units are the backbone of my English army. I upgrade all of my swordsmen and axmen with 25 city attack to redcoats and I go from a third rate power to usually taking the entire continent in three wars.