I've done that many times, and it'll stop an opportunistic attack, but not a serious one. The computer sucks at maneuvering and you can exploit that to enormous advantage in small-scale fights, but if they launch a sustained offensive they're eventually going to reach your city and turn it into a numbers game. When the computer shows up suddenly with 12 units, gold-buying one or two defenders is not going to save you, especially if they have an edge in tech.darkmaster wrote:I think you're probably just bad at the game, because Civ 5's combat is super easy, the combat AI is entirely incompetent and literally all you have to do if you get caught with your pants down is cash rush a few units and proceed to destroy the entire attacking army.Manxome wrote:Also, my overall experience (at least on higher difficulties) has been that I can easily grow faster than the AIs, but I still get crushed if they decide to make a massive surprise attack against me before (roughly) the renaissance era. This is probably partly because I pathologically over-invest in growth at the cost of defenses, but I'm pretty sure a large chunk of it is that the higher difficulties give the AI players mostly starting bonuses instead of growth bonuses.
Having recently won on the highest difficulty level, I am reasonably confident that (1) the higher difficulty levels definitely revolve around giving the computers starting bonuses rather than growth bonuses (e.g. they've got 2, sometimes 3 cities when my scout first meets them 10-20 turns into the game), and (2) I can't be that bad at the game.
And I never said Civ 5 was better than Civ 4 for newbies, just that I personally enjoyed it more. I haven't played Civ 4 recently enough to even guess how they compare from a learning-curve perspective.