rise and rule of ancient empires cheats
You don't need to keep a large standing army around your
empire, especially in the early stages of the game. Cities
have a defense value even when there are no military units
stationed in them. Even if an opponent gets lucky and
blunders across one of your cities with an exploring unit,
he probably won't be able to take your city...and even
if he gets lucky and takes your city, your people's affinity
for you will likely return control to you on the next
turn.
I don't even think about raising an army until I have
located at least one opponent. Instead, concentrate on
building the improvements that allow you to build more
advanced units. Military units are cheap, and you can
raise a respectable army in 2 or 3 turns if you've built
the infrastructure first.
If you should discover an opposing civilization before
it finds you, send a small to
medium-sized force to threaten at least one city. Approach
it from a direction other than directly toward your own
civilization. The idea here is to panic the other player
into raising an early army of weak units, and to mislead
him as to the direction of your own cities, while you
continue to advance your infrastructure.
It's also a good idea to station some pickets near your
enemy, as far from your own cities as possible, to keep
his explorers away.
Don't waste time or resources on internal trade. External
trade will help with conquest of opponents' cities, but
as a practical matter the AI opponents will rarely maintain
peace long enough for you to trade effectively. Merchants
are a valuable unit in head-to-head play, but have minimal
impact on a solo game.
