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Using Catapults/Trebuchets/Cannons

Nuclearcow — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:28:26 GMT

(pardon the long post due to screen shots. It was the best way to make my point)
Pop question. You're at war and you want to attack an enemy city and the strongest unit you have attacks at '8'. That enemy city has 3 healthy Longbowmen with a City Garrison I (+20% city defense), City Garrison II (+25 city defense), and a Drill I (extra First strike chance) promotion on each Longbowmen. Plus, each longbowmen has been fortified long enough to have a forification bonus of +25%. They also have a fortified spearmen (you're using Ballista Elephants), and some Horse Archers and a healthy War Elephant in the city.

How many units will you lose attacking this city?
(screen shot of their city below)

Have your guess?

Ahh... but this was a trick question, because you didn't know how many Trebuchets you had to negate all that.

Ahh, thats a beautiful thing, isn't it? Each Trebuchet attacking, causing damage, and then withdrawing. Each attack with a Trebuchet then gets easier and easier as the enemy's ability to defend that city gets weaker and weaker.

Once you have Trebuchet-ed the enemy as badly as you can, then ATTACK!

(below is after the battle:)

So the answer to the original question is:
NOT A SINGLE DARN LOSS attacking and taking that city. NONE. ZERO.

If you had no Trebuchets or even catapults, I would imagine that city MIGHT have beaten every single one of those units I attacked with. But, I built several Trebuchets and gave them as many bonuses I could of city attacking. I didn't lose any, and each of those Trebuchets gained experience from withdrawing successfully, making future attacks all the more likely to succeed with additional city attack bonuses.

Bombard each city down to 0% defense then attack with some catapults, or preferably trebuchets, with as many city attack bonuses as you can. If you lose a couple taking it, isn't that a great trade off for taking a city and also while keeping your other offensive units healthy? If I had lost 2 Trebuchets in that attack, wouldn't that have been very worth it still?

I build about 10 offensive units and then build catapults and Trebuchets pretty much exclusively. As long as you attack each city in the above fashion, you shouldn't lose a SINGLE one of those 10 offensive units. Only the occassional catapult or trebuchet. Then each of those offensive units gets to stat-jack their promotions and be all the more impressive. Each surviving catapult/trebuchet gets more experience and bonuses to make it easier when you move onto the next city.

So, don't underestimate the power of the catapults, Trebuchets or Cannons. They will win wars for you.

Military Strategies

grandgeneral — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 21:23:53 GMT

[font=Wingdings][/font]
Now the Civ grid map world allows military strategy to be visible.
The best way to take advantage of that is to flank enemies. Now to do this simply surround your enemy. It is best to use the terrain to your advantage, such as water, though, u can only do this using water. The downside to this strategy is that it takes up alot of your own units. Look Below. The x's are your units, the o's is the enemy and -- is water.
xxx --- -xx and so on
xox xox -ox
xxx --- -xx
You can add control to your situation by adding 2+ rang artillery one square beyond each side or corner. With the addition of the artillery the enemy has more attack concentrated on them and additional prevention to escape.

Naval Combat has a few subtle changes from land warfare. first of all it is more expensive to produce, and alot of modern ships have artillery advantage. In sea combat, it requires myself to use a target ship(t), a battleships(b), destroyers(d), aircraft carriers(a), land(L), and port(P)
See below.
B B B L
DDD DDL A
DTD A DTP A
DDD A DDL
B B B L

(NOTE IN THE SCENARIO ON THE RIGHT, THE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS ARE SIMPLE LAND BASED AIRPORTS OR CITIES)

These are some basic strategies, i hope you can put them to good use, and i will be adding more strategies soon

Making the jump from CIV III to CIV IV

Nuclearcow — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:51:11 GMT

I thought I was an excellent CIV III player and won on the highest difficulty levels, so the 1st time I played CIV IV, I thought I would roll the computer on the Warlord difficulty, but it'd be a good way to get the hang of the game. WRONG. I got beaten badly and it wasn't really even close. On Warlord setting. Why? What is so different from CIV III?

Money. Pure and simple. In CIV III, you can expand (to the most part) as fast as you want and generally it pays off well to do so. CIV IV, you'll go broke expanding too quickly and if you hit 0% science and are still in the negative, you'll start losing troops, workers, etc.

In my humble opinion, as you start to master economy in CIV IV, you will start mastering all the other aspects as they fall into place and your scores will rise.

Here are my suggestions on less-common, but important ways to make money and keep economy high.

Hamlets. Obvious one, but coming from CIV III, I didn't like building them as I wanted to go crush fools with my production units. Build one or two hamlets on average per city and maybe tell that city (or all cities) to emphasize economy in its governor if you find yourself needing money fast. Biggest advice... build them next to streams as they already start with 1 gold per turn there before you build anything. I'm sure people will disagree with this one, but to me its VERY important when you have flood plains, to drop a hamlet on every single flood plain. If the city has 5 or 6... I would build them on every single one. It has the 3 food production anyways (same as farmed grassland) and since its on a stream, it has 1 gold per turn before you build. As the game progresses, that city will be awesome on money production and science as the hamlets grow and as banks, groceries and markets are produced.
Religion. Again, not as 'fun' as crushing your neighbor with unique units and things like that, but starting with a Spiritual civ that has a head start on Mysticism can get you a head start on founding a religion. Why would you do that? "Money." Think "money..." this isn't CIV III. ;) Assuming you get a great prophet in the game somewhere (I get at least a few on avg. per game) you use the great prophet to create your religion's special building in the city that founded the religion. That gives you 1 gold per city. Doesn't sound like a lot maybe, but if you have 10-20 cities, and you spread it like wildfire to your neighbors, that one building can be the difference in 20% or so science with that alone. Something to think about.... your neighbors will dislike you if they have a different religion, so spam them with missionaries. I like creating Buddhism with a Spiritual civ and spam your neighbors with missionaries early when they have no religion. They will become Buddhist which equals more money later to you, and they will be friendly to you because of your same religion. Also important is that when you kick their butt later in the game you can see into every city of theirs to see all of their units (when you have built the unique building to that religion with a Prophet). Nice, huh? Works with every religion, but I'd recommend going after an early one. One more suggestion. Expand your religion to each of your cities and switch to Organized Religion to gain that 25% building bonus. Think of it as an extra factory just because of your faith.
The order that you study technologies. If you get Iron Working or something like that, sure, its nice and has benefits, but usually about that point in the tech tree, is when you're expanding to the point of hurting for money and progressively turning down the science slider. I would suggest getting the 1st couple of rows of techs for defense and offense, but rather than going for horseback riding or iron working and things around there... consider going a little unbalanced on the tech tree to get Currency early. Building markets early helps keep science high, especially if you followed suggestion #1 above on making Hamlets. Yes, the war-monger in me hates taking several turns to make markets on all my civs, but then you can unleash the inner war monger and afford war. I do the same with Banking as I usually go a little unbalanced to get that and build banks everywhere. If you're a little behind on techs, going unbalanced and then trading for the older tech's isn't a bad idea. Though I don't like trading techs, it can be necessary.

I played a game with the Indians a couple of times where I NEVER dropped the science slider below 100%. In one of those games, I founded every religion and had the special building for almost every religion. I spammed everyone with missionaries and was wealthy beyond belief. I bought buildings, units, etc with the spare gold and had it rolling in. Remember that even 'just' 20 cities of 1-gold per turn for them having your religion is boosted by banks, markets and groceries as well, so it helps more than *just* the gold per turn from each religion/city.

Keep on top of courthouses and forbidden palace if you want to save money, especially if your empire is big and cities are taking high maintenance from distance. Think 'money!' Think long-term money.

Last strategy. If you think it'll take you 3 axemen to capture a city, take 6. I've seen the automated CIV suggestions when you're loading a game tell you not to take 50 when 15 will do or something along those lines. I think its a great idea to take more than you need and always take around double what I think when I'm picking a fight. Poor 'dice-roll' luck or unexpected surprises make it nice to have twice the number you think you'll need. Then you can take them and roll on to the next city. Also, pick a fight early once money is taken care of. ;)

These are especially effective on the bigger maps and slower games.

As always, people will disagree, but these are my thoughts and suggestions. Please respond as you see fit. :)

The Weenie's Guide to War

Dueck — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:07:46 GMT

This guide is intended to give some insight to the nature of war strategy in Civ 4.

Before we get started, some [size="+2"][b]general rules[/b][/size] for any civilization, warlike or not:
- [b]Do NOT neglect your military.[/b] You can not build an effective military in the time between a declaration of war and the enemy's advance towards your city. Always devote some production power to your arsenal.
- Have[b] roads[/b] accessing important points in your territory. Hills/forest are especially useful to be able to access, for the defense bonus (+75%).
- Each city needs [b]at least one [/b](up-to-date) [b]defender[/b]. Cities near your borders need more; a general rule is four defenders for any city which can be accessed in 4 or less turns by an advancing army.
- Have at least some semblance of a navy; amphibious landings can lose you cities. That being said, you should build at least one city on a coastal square, to allow yourself to build a navy.

[size="+2"][b]Ancient era[/b][/size]
In the earliest stages of the game, it may be possible to gain some advantage through conquest. However, a few things get in your way:
- Early military production will stagnate your civ's development.
It's important that you do not neglect your civ's development. There are ways to keep up with your neighbors technologically (demand tribute, trade) even if you devote too much resource to your military. Recall that the faster you build cities, the [b]faster [/b]your [b]production[/b] increases, and the [b]slower[/b] your [b]economy and technology[/b] develops. As you expand, building cottages and developing resources and your cities will offset the costs of maintenance.
- Long distances to enemy cities may make war more time consuming. Of course, if you start nearby your enemy this isn't a problem.
- [b]Lack of siege weapons[/b] gives the defenders a considerable advantage for holding cities. An archer, fortified behind a city with the smallest cultural defense gains +50% city defense + 25% fortify + 20% cultural defense = +95% bonus. This make a cheap unit into a buff 5.75 strength defender.

Here's a review of the [size="+2"]ancient era units[/size]:
[b]Warrior [/b]- a surprisingly useful unit for early defense, the warrior holds up your cities until the axemen come along, at which point the warrior becomes absolutely useless.
[b]Archer [/b]- as the civilopedia reads, this is the unit to garrison your cities with. It remains useful (and cheap) until the development of the longbowman.
[b]Swordsman [/b]- I'll have a few of these in my invading force for the obvious city raiding bonus. These are the somewhat costly archer counter.
[b]Axemen [/b]- what I consider to be the meat-and-potatoes army constituent, simply because it outdoes the warrior and spearman and its only foil in this era is itself. The best way to defend against axemen is more axemen.
[b]Chariot[/b] - I seldom use chariot due to the massive counter (spearman) which is available at an earlier tech. However, these are useful for a quick assault on an unexpecting city or worker, or for nimbly taking out an exposed, weakened unit.
[b]Horse Archer[/b] - The bonus against catapults seldom comes into play, but the usefulness of the speed and strength is great on the battlefield. This is also the strongest unit you can build without copper or iron.
[b]Catapult [/b]- An obvious must for any city attack. If I'm on the offensive, Construction becomes top-priority.

[size="+2"]Production[/size]
It's important to always have some production going into your military. This becomes easier with more cities. While you should have some long-term growth infrastructure going, if you do not keep your military up to shape, barbarians will cause you hassle and other civilizations will be more likely to declare war and invade you.

Conversely, if you do not develop your economy, you will technologically fall behind and your army will be gimped anyway. Pottery is an exceedingly useful early tech for getting your tech development rolling, but nothing beats a sound, gradual empire expansion.

When choosing a tech to research first, consider whether you'll be concentrating much on offense or defense. I usually like to research bronze working before archery, because I like to know where the copper is before it's all taken. However, I would recommend early archery for a civ who is only concerned with defense, since archer provide cheap, effective, early defense.

Similarly with barracks, if you are only defending, a single barracks may do fine, and you'll end up producing most of your defenders in that city. If you intend on overrunning your enemy, you may want to have a barracks in every fairly production city, to enable quick production of effective units later.

Finally, I can't emphasize enough how important is a good road network. It need not cover every square of your territory. In fact, you're probably better off building just a few key roads, and using your worker(s) to develop other areas of your cities. The important thing is that you can access key defensive points (forests, hills, forest/hills), transfer units between and near cities, and, if you're attacking, reinforce your army. Just as a reminder, your units cannot use enemy roads, vice versa: it's always a (huge) defensive advantage to have roads in your territory.

[size="+2"]Attacking[/size]
Beware the cultural defense! Your hordes of axemen will crumple to a handful of archers in a +60% capital.

Also, defend your attackers. Whenever possible, advance through hills and/or forest, in order to give you some protection against a counter-attack. It's often a good idea to bring along a couple guerilla archers to help defend. +45% hill defense will bring an archer near-par with any attacking unit.

Catapults will ease your assault greatly. As with all artillery, the bombard is almost essential for any city raiding, and collateral damage with several catapults are very very useful for softening up a defending stack. Here's how it works: when a catapult attacks, one unit will defend (as with all fights). These two units will duke it out, and the catapult may win, lose, or withdraw. Regardless what the outcome of combat was, if there were other units in the defender's stack, they will take at least some collateral damage just for being in the square. Sacrifice a few catapults and you can turn a tough city into a pushover.

[size="+2"]Defense[/size]
In the ancient era, you'll rarely find a civilization will attack you unprovoked. However, the threat is there. There's also the constant threat of barbarian attack, which you need to be ever-vigilant about; there's nothing more frustrating than losing improvements, workers, and cities to a handful of savages. :P

[b]Barbarians[/b]
The key to defending against barbarians effectively is your troops' placement. Fortunately, barbarians' actions are very predictable. In this order of priority, they will select one action:
1) Attack an adjacent, unprotected worker or settler.
2) Attack an adjacent military unit, paying no heed to defensive values.
3) Pillage an improvement they are standing on.
4) Invade an adjacent city.

If none of those actions are available, they will take some other action. At this point it's not clear exactly what their motive is, most times... they may move into your territory, or they may move away, but always prepare for their invasion.

Moving your workers away, and garrisoning your cities are the most obvious defenses against the most damaging barbarian offenses. However, a pillaged floodplains hamlet or farm can also be a pain. There are a few easy steps to protect your improvements:
- Identify areas where barbarians could appear. They will only generate in areas where NO civilization can see. Your borders which are nearby neighbouring civs are not subject to barbarian attack.
- Build roads to your improvements and between cities, in order to enable an emergy movement of troops.
- If you're feeling particularly defensive, post a few archers or warriors near your perimeter, on hills or in forest. Barbarians entering your land will not pass up an opportunity to have themselves massacred in a brutally pitched battle (archer: 3 + 1.5 forest or hill + 0.75 fortify = 5.25; even better, archer: 3 + 3 hills/forest + 0.75 fortify = 6.75).

[b]Enemy Civilizations[/b]
Civs which do become aggressive will tend to invade with larger forces. Here it's necessary to use whatever defensive advantage you can get. Here's the most important:
- Situate defenders on hills/forest where ever possible. There's always the chance that the defending civ will take the bait. Even if they don't, if you can successfully defend an outer point, the enemy will be forced to move past you, and you can use that hill as a staging ground for a counter-assault.
- Garrison with archers... put them everywhere. On hills, in your cities. The more the enemy has to clash with archers bearing a defensive advantage, the better.
- Have counter-assailing forces ready. Sacrificing a couple of catapults onto a stack can greatly decrease your casualties and improve your defense. Also having axemen or horse archers to finish the job is nice.
- Tailor your army to the attacker's forces. Metal-rich civs will tend to build melee units (use axemen), horse-capable civs will have chariots or horse archers (use spearmen). If you don't have metal, yourself, your best option is to load up with archers, and hopefully have some form of cavalry ready.

Edit 23/01/06: added ancient defense topic; BTW, if you weren't able to acquire copper, go for iron working, on the chance that you'll be able to secure some of that.

Guide on how to play with Mongolia

GKhan — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:21:04 GMT

This is just a quick guide on how to play with Mongolia. In my Civ4 experience, they are the most powerful Civ, and this guide will detail why and how they can dominate the early game. Any feedback or comments are welcome.

Starting out: 2 choices for your leader. The great Ghengis Khan and Kublai Khan.

Both civs are aggressive, so the choice here is Culture or Expansive. I would recommend Kublai for difficulty of prince or lower. And the great Ghengis for higher difficulty and larger maps. But both are great choices. Generally because of Kublai's culture advantage, he will be more likely to get you a higher score. But Ghengis can get cities to very high population levels, up to 12-14, thus creating very high production and income levels. For beginners Kublai is your best bet, and for more seasoned players, look to Ghengis for your glory.

Your capital. Kharakorum. When placing your capital if possible starting on a square of Hills/Plains is a good idea, for the extra shield it produces can give you a quick production boost. However any capital placement is fine. Your starting research should revolve around what bonus squares your capital is looking at. In most cases, religion will not be needed, as you will see later. I recommend going for animal husbandry especially if you have any pigs or cattle or sheep, but more importantly to show horses on the map as they will be the only resource you need to secure. After that make sure to get archery soon.

1 or 2 scouts should be your first build as early scouting is key for this game. You start with one, so do your best to pop a few huts early. These can give you a nice gold coffer to get you set up for the early war you will be waging soon. Get out and scout as effectively as possible and find your neighbors, in particular discover the location of their capital cities. Avoid bears, and panthers. Sit on hills and forest to end your turns so they have the best chance to survive, obviously. Depending on your food supply, build a worker after the scouts if your population is up to 3. If it is still at two, get a warrior or archer built and then a worker.

The early worker is key in all games I think, but particularly in this game. Have the worker put up improvements on your bonus tiles. Once the capital has some nice tiles to work with, look to expand to the horses. Now if horses are nowhere to be found, then you're looking at a tough game to run although Mongolia being aggresive can still become powerful. Mongolia depends on horses like Rome does on Iron. But most maps have abundant horse tiles and you should be able to find them easily if you did your scouting.

After that first worker is built, you will need that defender unit if you did not build one before the worker, if you did, start a settler. Your first city expansion should be in the direction of the horses. The placement of your 1st expansion city should be in as close to horses as possible while also being as close to you're capital as possible. I recommend going about 4-6 squares from your capital. You need low corruption but also to make early infrastructure more manageable. This is optional and subjective so the only key here is to get the horses hooked up as early as possible. If you have horses in your capital borders (lucky you) then look to just get your first expansion where you can build a lot of production and food, as you would usually do. Bring that 1st defender unit to the new city. Build a new defender for your capital.

2 Cities. Horses hooked up or on the way. After the 2nd defender unit is built in your capital, time for your last settler. Yes your last settler. Before that, what is your science doing? Well, your choice here is bronze working or horseback ridding. I usually go for the bronze first, as you will want to see those copper squares, and start to do some forest cutting. After bronze working, you have to go for horseback ridding, it is your most important technology in this game. Once the 2nd(last) settler is built (chop a forest down if your worker is available to pop that 2nd settler really fast.) Look to the opposite direction of your 1st expansion for your 2nd expansion. This will give you a nice land base, and make for easily manageable empire. Bring the 2nd defender to your 2nd expansion and build a new defender in your capital. Build barracks in all 3 of your cities after that. Once your expansion cities have a population of 3, pump out a worker from each of them. I don't like to automate workers, but if you're really lazy as long as your horses are hooked up you should be ok. But they will build farms and you need mines. So, don't be lazy and start those workers building mines on every possible hills in your workable land area. Production is the key, so get those mines up a.s.a.p. Also get an archer on those horses.

Your empire should look like this:

3 Cities

3 workers building mines

3 defenders fortified in your cities

3 barracks - 1 for each city

Horses hooked up and gaurded

A well scouted picture of the civilizations that will soon crumble under your feet

Insert Ghengis Khan and Kublai Khan evil laugh here.

Your 3 cities now should simply cue up one of the best UU in the game(IMO)

Mass build Keshik units in all 3 cities. Put them on repeat build so you never waste shields. Use the forests of your empire to quickly pump out as many Keshiks as possible. Upgrade them all with retreat/withdrawal upgrades. Depending on the amount of hills you mined and forest available, you should have a force of 16 - 20 within a fairly short amount of time. Your 3 cities should be pumping them out at about 4-6 turns apiece. If you use your workers to cut down forests, you can get thise type of force in about 12 -15 turns.

Depending on how aggressive you want to play, you have some options at this time. Your neighbors should be starting to creep up on your borders at this time. Don't worry this is good. Wait for a rival civ to get a city to pop 2, then just take that city from them. I recommend using the Keshik unit a.s.a.p so take your first 4 -5 and go mess with your most powerful neighbor. At this point in the game a straight out attack is not out of the question, as his capital will likely only have a handful of archers, and you could probably roll over their capital city easily enough. When you take their capital city, if it is close to your capital (Kharakorum), keep the city. If not then burn it to the ground.

If you don't want to gambit on your first little army, take out all his resources. Main thing here is to get the Iron and the Copper and pillage the mines and the roads leading there. In most cases and on lower difficulties, you might even beat them to that iron/copper. Keshiks are the best pillage unit in the game, up till gun ships, (IMO) since they suffer no movement penalty ever. Forest, jungle, hills, whatever the case they always get 2 movements. Look to pick off archers and warriors on open squares if they send any out of their cities. If possible, upgrade one your Keshiks to medic, and try to keep that unit out of harms way.

How you run your war effort is completely up to you. Basically, this army can easily over run any civ on your cotenant easily and quickly, while taking very few losses. The movement of these units allows you to wage war on Civs nearby or fairly far away. They also make for amazing scouts especially when you are at war or have open borders with a civ. They can quickly map out most of the land on the map, drop a couple off in a galley and they should have most of any new land mass mapped out quickly, with very little danger from barbs. Also very easy for 1-2 of them to raze an early barb city to get them upgraded. Very versatile units that offer many tactics all centering on the mobility of the unit. Pillage, Pillage, Pillage. These units can pillage and move in the same turn regardless of terrain. A civ with no resources or square improvements cannot do much.

Try to avoid attacking a city built on hills. This is why the capital sack is so easy with Mongolia. You can easily get to their capital quickly and the capital is less likely to be placed on top of a hill. In the early game if you sack a rivals capital they will do anything to make peace with you and you can basically leave them alone from that point on since they will offer very little challenge to you in the future. Leave them alive and demand tribute. Or just roll over them when you decide their end is at hand. You do not need to actually eliminate a Civ to take them out of contention. They key to all your efforts will be to simply not allow civs to have iron or copper. Spearmen can cause serious pain to your Keshiks. Although 2 will kill 1, its not good math for a war effort and you should avoid spearmen at all costs. They cant chase you. Just move your attention to new targets. Sneak up on them. Bring your armys towards them from directions unexpected. TIP: You don’t need to finish a Civ off. If they have 1 or 2 cities left with Spearmen hold up. Just end the war with them and move on to the next Civ. They wont be difficult to finish off later with Axemen/Swordsmen/Catipults.

The bottom line is while Archers are the primary defenders in Cities, your Kashiks can easily roll over those cities. Once Longbows start to pop up, your UU will no longer be able to actually take cities very easily, but you still have the best Pillage unit in the game.

This is just one way to use Mongolia and get the most out of their UU in the early ages. For all those who might have doubted Mongolia, or the Kashik, try this tactic and see how it works for you.

Feel free to post questions and comments.

A guide for startup on higher levels

mik1984 — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 08:07:33 GMT

I thought that this thread contains a lot of info that would fit for this board, so I had the idea of placing a link to it in here.
[url=http://www.1bcciv.com/Topic2222720-76-1.aspx]Tech race[/url]

Permanent Alliance

mongoose201 — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:57:31 GMT

I posted this in another thread in response to a question. I thought it deserved it's own thread in the proper area, so for those curious about the Permanent Alliance, here it is:

Permanent Alliances must be selected in the options list in the pregame menu. The default setting doesn't allow them.

Now, just because you have PA's selected in the menu, doesn't mean the work is done. You still have to cultivate a stellar relationship with at least one civ. I try to stay friends with two civs early to pick the best ally later, or in case the relationship falls apart with one through their aggression or my inattention. Also, if you choose two likely candidates, they should be friendly with each other or your friendship with one will harm your relationship with the other.

Pick a civ that has the same religion or that you can convert, that improves you chances greatly, and it's best that they not be too close so that border tension doesn't spark "disharmony" before you get to Military Tradition to get a Defensive Pact (DP) or Communism/Fascism for a PA.

Keep your target civ friendly. Give in to their demands. I know what you are thinking... I hate giving into other civs demands also, but if they are friendly previously, they won't ask as if it's tribute, it will be "helping them". That makes it a bit easier to take for me, but it's a fine line. Note: This is a necessary evil to achieve a PA later in the game.

Now... The first prerequisite for a PA is a Defensive Pact. These become available after Military Tradition is researched. Research Military Tradition as soon as possible and get that Pact with one and only one Civ. You must make your choice at this time. A 2nd Pact can drag you into a war which cancels your first pact. (You're DP's are canceled whenever one of the Pact civs declares war on a 3rd party, even if it's because of another Defensive Pact.)

If you and your DP partner have been at war in the past against the same civ, this process is a much quicker one. You'll notice the "Our mutual military struggle brings us closer together" in their +- comments about you. This is the quickest way to a PA later. If you have not been allies in war, you have to have a DP for a ridiculously long amount of time for them to accept a PA. It's not really realistic for you to count on both your civ and their civ staying out of trouble long enough to enable a PA. So, A past "mutual military struggle" should be deemed a prerequisite, although it's possible to achieve without.

Now.. Research Communism or Fascism. Communism is easier and you will likely get their first if you beeline for it. If you have had a DP since Military Tradition and have been warring partners with your DP buddy, then you will likely be able to select a Permanent Alliance in the trade screen when you get Communism or within a few turns of it.

There are three likely reasons why a civ that you have a DP with won't accept a PA right away:

"We haven't had a Defensive Pact or been at War against a mutual enemy long enough" (paraphrasing) - This is self explanatory and I have covered this above.
"You're too powerful" - Look at the graph (F9) and change it to show Power. You must not be the top of that graph. That means you can't build a big military. If you did, you can disband units or gift them to your chosen partner or others.
"We're doing fine on our own" - Look at the Power graph again. You're chosen partner must also not be on top or you get this problem. This means you probably can't gift him your units. If you didn't give him any and he's still on top, then you have to give tech and possibly units to another Civ. One that you don't plan to attack probably. Just a few units makes a significant jump up on the Power chart.

Once you have the PA:

You can open their city screens to view culture, build list, etc. Your workers can improve your PA civ's land. You can tell your PA what to research and which city to attack. You can ask for, and get, any and all resources. However if, for example, you take the only Horses, you're partner cannot build cavalry.

Your partner will share any victory or loss. If anyone declares war on you, they are declaring on your partner also. If you or your partner declares war, the other is automatically involved.