Some may be angered upon reading this, but it can be fun to troll and harass noobs (or higher skill opponents) in the early game. You can also potentially gather many early-game advantages by grabbing a free worker from a rival neighbor (in addition to the free worker you get from a city state), disabling your opponent by taking their settler, or through other means. This guide is designed to help you identify opportunistic situations, and a large portion is intended to train you to analyze demographics to develop a better awareness of what's going on around you in the beginning of the game.


I recognize that some of the play styles taught in this guide may amount to bad diplomacy, and there are times where you may practice some of these techniques only to have them backfire, as you get stomped by a counterattack from a player that happens to be better than you. These techniques can also prove to be extraordinarily profitable in other circumstances, however.

To start off this guide, I want to include a section that will catch you up on basic fundamental concepts if you are already lacking. A large part of trolling and exploiting your neighbors early in Multiplayer Civ requires you to be stealthy. To be stealthy, you must be able to see from your opponent's point of view and know if they can see you or not. This requires you to know basic fundamental visibility rules, which will be outlined here.


(1) Border Visibility
A civilization can see all tiles adjacent to their borders. They can also see hills that are two tiles from their borders, provided that the tile between the hill and their border is a flat, open terrain tile. If your opponent has two consecutive hills extending away from their borders, then you can place a scout on the further hill to watch for workers/settlers and your opponent will not be able to see it. However, you will be able to see inside their borders with your scout. It will help you to be able to identify what tiles your opponent can see and which ones they can not.


(2) Unit Visibility
With the exception of America and sight-promoted units, a regular unit has two sight. Below is a list of rules that determine unit visibility:

• If you are on flat terrain, you cannot see tiles past adjacent rough terrain, except for mountains and jungle/forest hills. You can see a jungle/forest hill on the other side of a flat jungle/forest tile, or a plain hill, even if you are on a flat tile. You cannot see clear hills in this situation, however. So hypothetically you could clear the jungle/forest on that hill and become invisible from two tiles away atop that hill. (I've never been in a situation where this yielded any benefit but it just gives you the idea).
  
• If you are on a hill, you can see over clear hills, but you cannot see over forest/jungle hills.
  
• Units can see other units standing on hills 3 tiles away if the two tiles in between are flat and open terrain.

While you are stalking a nearby neighbor, you should identify whether or not they can see you, and which positions are safe to move to without losing stealth.


(3) Radar
Radar is a well-known concept that allows you to see non-visible tiles and tiles in the fog of war. Holding down RMB and moving your cursor over non-visible tiles will yield a red circle with no turn count in the middle for tiles that are occupied by a foreign unit, barbarian, mountain or some other obstacle to movement. You can hold down RMB and scan an unlimited area to determine what tiles are occupied. If you notice a specific tiles changes from occupied to vacant (or vice-versa) in the middle of a turn, that tile was most likely occupied by a human player who moved mid-turn. This could possibly be a settler, or a unit escorting a stolen worker back home.


(4) Zone of Control
Zone of Control is a movement mechanic between two units that are at war with each other, in which one unit has to exhaust all movement points to move from one tile adjacent to the enemy unit, to another tile adjacent to the enemy unit. If you see your neighbor marching a settler to a spot that you are trying to settle, you can slow them down by declaring war and standing next to them, and following their escort unit so that they are under constant zone of control by you. This slows down their movement and gives you more time to beat them to the contested settlement spot.

To dominate your neighbors (or at least contain them from doing anything devastating to you, such as forward settlement), it will help you greatly to know when they are building a settler, how many turns it may take them to build it, and many other things. A key way to determine this is through the demographics. The demographics can be accessed by clicking on the "Additional Information" button (which has a scroll on it) in the top-right corner.

The demographics show who has the most (and least) population, food, hammers, GPT, land, military, happiness, and technology, in that order.

Know When Your Neighbor is Building a Settler
If you notice that your neighbor has the lowest food (crop yield), say 6, but their capitol has 4 population, this heavily suggests that they are building a settler. This is because a 4-population capitol needs at least 8 food not to starve. Players usually only have food deficits while they are building settlers, because the food deficit does not cause starvation while they build settlers. You may use this information to build a scout or two and block the impending settler.


Know if Your Neighbor Has Found a Natural Wonder
The "Approval" statistic in the demographics reveals happiness levels. A Civilization with zero happiness will have 60% approval. For every happiness above or below zero, 3% will be added or subtracted from that civ's approval rating. Therefore a civ with 4 happiness will have 72% approval, and a civ with -3 happiness will have 51% approval.

If you notice that your neighbor has the same size capitol as you early in the game, but has one extra happiness, then this suggests that your neighbor has found a natural wonder, because finding a natural wonder increases happiness by one (increases by two for Spain.) This can be valuable, especially when your neighbor is Spain, because it can let you know that you need to watch for Spanish settlers and block them immediately from settling whatever Natural Wonder Spain has found.

If your neighbor has four extra happiness than you (12% higher approval) at a very early time, then they have probably just settled on a mining luxury and researched the mining tech, increasing their happiness by connecting the luxury they have settled on.


Know Which Tiles Your Opponent is Working
This is often very difficult, but can be done if their individual demographics are highly visible (if they are first or last in many categories). Often this requires you to have parallel map visibility of their land.

One way to discern this is by looking at GNP. GNP describes a civ's GPT income without accounting for expenses. A civ gains 3 base GPT from the capitol's palace. Any other early GPT must come from working terrain.

Example If you notice that your opponent has 4 GNP in the demographics for example, this implies that they are acquiring 1 GPT from the tiles they are working. This means they are working one of the following tiles: Whales, Crab, Oasis, Salt, Cocoa, or Citrus. Only these tiles provide one gold. Other gold-tiles provide at least 2 GPT, and some (such as gems) provide 3.


Example Your opponent has a pop 3 capitol with two cotton, two hills, and a grassland stone. They have 7 GNP in the demographics. This means they are working both cotton tiles, because they are gaining 4 GPT from working tiles. Therefore you need not worry that they are making a settler. Although, there is a tiny chance that they are building one very slowly, but this would imply they are a noob because they are not working production tiles (hills) while doing so.


Know if Your Neighbor is Rushing the Great Library
The Literacy demographic describes a civ's technology progress. No matter how many techs you have, your literacy will be at 0% until you discover writing. Therefore, civilizations which have above 0% literacy have researched writing. If this occurs very early, that person is most likely rushing the Great Library. (You can also tell this by pulling up their trade screen and seeing if they can trade you an embassy, or by wonder spotting in their capitol).

If you notice that your neighbor is rushing the Great Library by one of these three methods (demographics, trade screen embassy, or wonder-spotting), then you may wish to forward settle them and/or attack them to punish them for being a greedy wonder hog.

Stealing Your Neighbor's Settler early on can cripple them while providing you with an early free worker. To steal your neighbor's settler, you should first be able to identify when they are building one. One way to do this is by analyzing demographics, specifically the crop yield and manufactured goods categories, which is discussed in the previous section.


If a neighbor of yours is going Liberty, then there is an additional way to steal the free Settler that they will get by monitoring their social policies. This can be done by pulling up the Diplomacy Overview screen after clicking the "Additional Information" button, and then clicking on Global Politics. An Image of the Diplomacy Overview screen has been attached. Global Politics will show you how many social policies have been adopted from each tree by all players that you have met.


When people choose to take Liberty, they often take Republic as their first policy (+1 hammer and +5% building construction) and then Collective Rule as their second policy, which gives them a free settler.


You can check Diplomacy Overview -> Global Politics every turn to see when their Social Policies change from "Liberty: 1" to "Liberty: 2". On the turn this happens, you know that they have probably gotten their free Liberty settler. If you have units nearby you can move them in position near that player's capitol to steal or block if needed.

Additionally, if you are playing on Quick pace, then your neighbor will almost surely adopt their free Settler policy exactly ten turns after adopting their first policy (Republic). As a general rule, people are usually making four culture per turn when they adopt the first Liberty policy - 1 from the palace, 1 from liberty opener, and 2 from building a monument. On Quick pace it takes 40 culture for the second Liberty policy, so whenever your opponent takes the 1st Liberty policy (Republic), you know that they will probably get the Free Settler ten turns later, because four culture per turn will add up to the cost of forty culture in ten turns.

A minor issue to consider is that people sometimes take the free Worker policy (Citizenship I believe?) first from the Liberty tree, and then they adopt Republic and Collective Rule (free Settler). When somebody does this instead, they will not have the free Liberty Settler until they reach their 3rd Liberty policy, instead of their 2nd one. This rarely happens and a player usually does this only when they are rushing the Great Library. However, if you want to be sure about what policies your neighbor is adopting, you can always look at their capitol tile and turn on the yield icons. Normally, a city tile yield is one hammer for a flat tile and two hammers for a hill tile (unless they are on top of horses or iron). If your opponent has a flat capitol, but their capitol's tile has 2 hammer yield, you know they have received an extra hammer from the Republic Liberty policy, and therefore you can expect their next policy to give them the free Settler.

When playing a multiplayer game that uses simultaneous turns, there is a way to steal settlers and workers that other players are escorting by using careful timing instead of stealth. This method uses Zone of Control techniques described in the first section.


To use this technique, stand adjacent to the opposing player's civilian unit and the escort. The player will move one of the units first (usually two tiles away) and then they will move the other unit.

After they move the first unit, declare war on them while adjacent to the unit they have not moved yet. When they move the second unit, it will only move one tile due to zone of control. This will result in their civilian and escorting units being separated. Now you can move in and capture the civilian unit.


To succeed, you have to be very precise in your timing and declare war right between the movement of the civilian and escort units. It may help greatly to pull up the diplomacy screen and click "Declare War" ahead of time so that you are given the message "Are You Sure?" while you are on standby. That way you only have to click "Yes" in order for the war to begin, thereby activating Zone of Control.

Many are already familiar with the practice of attempting to kill the free Babylonian Great Scientist before it is able to build an academy. It may help to know when the neighboring Babylon player has researched Writing. On Multiplayer quick pace, this will usually occur around turn 12-15 if the player has teched straight to writing from the beginning.

Using the unit visibility information in the first section, you can place units near babylon's borders and wait for the scientist to appear. You can also watch the literacy demographic so that you know exactly when they research writing and receive the scientist.

In times of peace, military units can "move through" each other, but a civilian unit cannot move across (or through) a military unit, even in peace. This means that if your neighbor wants to settle somewhere, you can often block their settler movement simply by placing a military unit (such as a scout) on a chokepoint. Or, if you have a good idea of the exact tile where they want to settle, then you can fortify your scout on that tile, so that the only way they can settle in the desired spot is by declaring war on you and slamming your scout.

In the early game, scouts are often reliable at defending. A fortified scout with defense promotions on rough terrain can survive repeated attacks from warriors and spearmen.

If you notice that your neighbor is surrounded by mountains with narrow chokepoints, you might consider barricading their movement by blocking these chokepoints.

Often when you get a spearman upgrade ruin, barbarian melee units such as warriors will be too weak to attack them. Instead they often result to following your spear while zoning it turn after turn, thus restricting movement. This can be frustrating, but if you notice this happening, you can also use it to your advantage (or your neighbor's disadvantage). Simply walk your spear back to your neighbor's lands, and once the barb follows you there, it may detach from your spear and enter your opponent's territory if it sees civilians to capture or tiles to pillage.