The lazy man's method of military dominance

[Willem]

Playing on Noble, I've been trying out a technique using the the alternation between an Alt-click unit and a building. I've been building Barracks in every city and when it's done, I Alt-click a unit for it to build. Then I add a city building at the bottom of the list so when the unit is complete, my city will improve it's infrastucture. I just keep alternating like this all the time, and I've been way over the top on military all through the game. And without having to bother too much with micromanaging my military builds. And I almost always have new recruits coming on line each turn. I just might have to move up a level after this.

[Willem]

Well that's what I get for being cocky. Several civs kept trying to plant a city in this corner of my territory that I hadn't managed to colonize yet so I destroyed their city each time. After the last time, the next thing I know everyone was at war with me. I had a + 10 on "You declared war on my friend" with everyone of them. I was powerful, but not powerful enough to fight 6 civs at once. Especially with War Weariness starting to kick in. I guess I better keep a eye on my diplomacy in the future.

[Urban Ranger]

I reckon it is better to culture flip the first city instead of destroying it. You don't incur diplomatic penalties this way AFAIK ("-20 My people likes you better than me! Hmmppphhh!!"). This also stops others from building there once you flipped it.

[greenday_234]

This is definately an interesting technique. I'm going to try it out. Most of my problem is that I focus so much on infustructure improvements that I'm trying to build a massive military all at once and wasting 40 turns or so doing so. Has there been any point at which you have broken this rule of yours?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I reckon it is better to culture flip the first city instead of destroying it. You don't incur diplomatic penalties this way AFAIK ("-20 My people likes you better than me! Hmmppphhh!!"). This also stops others from building there once you flipped it.

Or I could have let it grow a little bit and taken it for myself. It was quite a popular spot, at least 4 civs tried to establish a city there. Oh well, I'll know better next time.

[Willem]

Originally posted by greenday_234
This is definately an interesting technique. I'm going to try it out. Most of my problem is that I focus so much on infustructure improvements that I'm trying to build a massive military all at once and wasting 40 turns or so doing so. Has there been any point at which you have broken this rule of yours?

No, never. The only thing I changed was having my coastal cities produce Frigates instead of land units after Chemistry. As a result I had the largest navy I've ever had at that point in the game. The approach works very well, you can build up your military without sacrifising infrastructure. And with the way the perpetual build switches in the queue, it's fairly easy to manage. When the unit is complete and waiting for orders, I'd just add the next building I wanted to the bottom of the list.

Oh yes, there was one change. I had one city that had so many hills, it just ended up building units until the Ironworks came along. It had no need for anything since it wasn't producing any commerce. What I did there was select an Alt-click, waited a turn then selected another and so on. So it was alternating between all available units.

Oh yes, occasionally I would bump something to the top if I really wanted it to be built, like Wonders that came along or Settlers for new cities. The nice thing about that was if a city was working on a Wonder, I still had all the rest of them building units, so it wasn't a big loss of production for me.

[axisworks]

I've found alternating between building buildings and units between classical and modern age is a great strategy, in particular. Mind you, I only got 3 wonders in my capital this way, but I ended up being the largest military force to be reckoned with very early in the game. It served me so well that I destroyed my best military rival in four turns. Mind you, the whole time I was carefully lining up my allies through diplomacy, and ended up getting a diplomatic win right after building the UN.

[unamablebuiler]

excellent post willem i have been experimenting with this rule also and have had mixed sucess. Against a pure builder it works brilliantly. However for a warmonger you would also need use your units more effectively than them in order to win.

the best thing is that you have constantly mordern units being built even though they are inexperinced. Also good is the steady improvement of the economy while at war
i never found woners a proble as i broke this rule for them as soon as i have the tech i will start building them appart from the start when establising your self is more important

[El Conquistador]

This can't be the way to go. Playing like this will inevitably lead to unit doing nothing and infrastructure being built too late. Also, this will not work very efficiently in combination with civics. Those will usually promote building either military units or buildings but not both.

[Willem]

Originally posted by El Conquistador
Playing like this will inevitably lead to unit doing nothing and infrastructure being built too late.

In that game I managed to get into more military campaigns than I've ever done at that point. Besides, you have to build up your defences as well as your offensive force. As for infrastucture, in a city with reasonable production, one unit doesn't take all that long to build. I certainly didn't feel like buildings were being delayed.

Also, this will not work very efficiently in combination with civics. Those will usually promote building either military units or buildings but not both.

Once you get to Free Religion you have neither, so what's your point? It's up to the player to decide his priority. Unless you're Spiritual, most people stick with their favoured civic to avoid the Anarchy, so your objection is moot. No player will just build one thing or another, no matter what civic you choose you have to build a combination.

In the game I just finished playing, I was tops in almost everything in the demographics thing, especially Military. And it was pretty much a tie for top place in tech between me and 2 other civs. I was also the largest civ on the planet. So I don't think this approach is all that bad.

[Cadarn]

Congrats on your triumph Wiilem.

However, on levels above Noble I would bet that your huge military would start to place a big burden on your economy.

Even playing (consistently) only one tier higher on Prince with Huge maps, 12 civs and Epic timescale I have found that I don't have the time to build all the buildings I want without making some sacrifices. (That's build choice OR population sacrifice!)

Even my mid-sized army would hurt me without my Holy City shrine and markets etc in good commerce cities.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Cadarn
Congrats on your triumph Wiilem.

Well it wasn't exactly a triumph, I got my buttkicked when four civs suddenly declared war on me. I was already at war with two others at the time. My military wasn't powerful enough to stand up to those odds.

[greenday_234]

With odds like that, few armies ever are

[Willem]

It might be interesting if the AI remembered your dealings with it from game to game. Treat a civ poorly in one game and in the next it will tend to dislike you a bit more because of it. Or vice versa. Of course that would totally screw up the warmongers who go for a Conquest or Domination win. It might favour the builder type though.

[rewster1]

Haha, then you'd start seeing things like....
+1 "You beat us in a space race!"
+1 "You were defeated last game!"

[Shaka II]

+1 "We enjoyed your impressive domination win last game!"
+1 "You were such a wimp last game, you must offer us tribute or face our numberless minions!"

[Shaka II]

Building a military unit every other turn may be a little too much, but that's the general idea, to interleave building military units with buildings, not to get trapped into just making buildings. So, it's good to do an F1 and check the build queues occasionally to see that there is a good mix. Even in a state of war, I may be building a few universities or banks in the key cities, maybe even a wonder, but most of production has to switch to war time production.

[Rook]

Just trying to grasp the concept here.

What difference is there if in the span of 100 turns you build say

Barracks
Warrior
Archer
Horse Archer
Obelisk
Library

or

Barracks
Warrior
Obelisk
Archer
Library
Horse Archer

In the end you would have the same 3 units and buildings either way or am I missing the point? I guess you would have some extra culture and research if you intermingle, but if you build the buildings first, you'd have even more. Just hope you don't get attacked too much.

This seems more like a way to dicispline yourself rather than a strategy.

[Urban Ranger]

Willem - how do you deal with obsolete units? Do you upgrade them in due time or just throw them into battles? If you keep upgrading your units you don't need an army as big.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Rook
In the end you would have the same 3 units and buildings either way or am I missing the point?

Yes you are missing the point. I'm using an Alt-click selection for my unit so I don't have to keep adding a unit to my building queue. All I do is add a building after the Alt-click and when the unit is complete, the city automatically switches to the building. Then I just add another building to the list after the Alt-click unit. Hence the term "lazy man". I don't have to bother with any unit selections, the city will just keep creating the same kind while alternating with a building selection.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Willem - how do you deal with obsolete units? Do you upgrade them in due time or just throw them into battles? If you keep upgrading your units you don't need an army as big.

I upgrade some, those with higher promotion levels. I was just deleting alot of them, but in the end I was throwing them into battle as cannon fodder. Just when all hell broke loose, everyone was shifting into Grenadiers/Riflemen and I had all these Medieval units hanging around so I figured I may as well do something with them.

[SandMonkey]

I also play on Noble, and I've used this strategy effectively a few times, but can anyone verify this as being valid on higher levels?

I find that you need a lot more units a lot earlier in Civ4 than in prior Civs, so i use this in the beginning to try and break my old habits of not building units in the early game.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Rook
Just trying to grasp the concept here.

What difference is there if in the span of 100 turns you build say

Barracks
Warrior
Archer
Horse Archer
Obelisk
Library

or

Barracks
Warrior
Obelisk
Archer
Library
Horse Archer

In the end you would have the same 3 units and buildings either way or am I missing the point? I guess you would have some extra culture and research if you intermingle, but if you build the buildings first, you'd have even more. Just hope you don't get attacked too much.

This seems more like a way to dicispline yourself rather than a strategy.

Yes, it seems that way to me too, but it's tough to discipline yourself if your a civilization builder.

If you didn't have to worry about being attacked, you'd be much better off doing the buildings first, but that leaves the door open for Alexander to take your civ away. On the other hand, if you build all military units first, your science and culture suffer a serious set back. So a balance is required. It depends on your objective, but usually, you shouldn't let your army fall below 40% to 50% of the top civ in the ancient era, and more like 50% to 70% in the mid game. If you're nice and diplomatic, you can get away with a weaker army. If you make everyone annoyed, you'd better have a good army to back yourself up, when the AI comes for you. If you want to insure victory, you'd better have an equal strength army, unless you've annoyed a number of civs, in which case you'd better have a really strong army. So the point is, you have to be careful diplomatically. If you have such a huge army, that costs you so much you can't advance in science fast enough, you lose, unless of course, you've managed to eliminate everyone else.

So, this alternation scheme seems like a good technique in the building phase. I usually check out the power graph to see where everyone is in relation to me, and if it looks like I need to boost my military, I focus on that. But usually, I already have a pretty key focus on the military, so I've only queued manually as needed to fine tune my army. Some cities can't be slowed down by building units, because they're more specialized science/commerce centers, except in war time or preparation for war, while others can be building mostly units, occasionally focusing on growth and production, but not science. Usually I end up having barracks in most cities, so they can all build units if the need arises, and it does.

I use the F5 key a lot to see the mix of units, and where they're distributed, F1 to see the overall picture of what's in the queue, F2 will tell you how much that army is costing you, F8 will tell you how many units you have compared to the leader, and the norm, and F9 yields the overall power graph for the big picture. That's the best graph of all, along with the total points graph. One without the other is not recommended.

[swat-spas2]

This works very well in the early-mid game. The advantage of doing this ASAP (preferrably as soon as you get copper) is that you don't really need to continuously alternate build new units in the middle-late game and can build up the more expensive infrastructure. You can become a quasi-builder because you will have a ton of units already. The old units used properly by effectively using cannon fodder (old low xp units and siege) will have ridiculously high experience (20+ easily) and thus should crush other units. You do have to upgrade eventually, but the $ from conquests is best spent on making the conquests still easier I think, thru tech or upgrades.

I particularily like putting the city attack bonus on units which eventually become infantry (prats/swords).. you barely need tanks with dozens of infantry running around with 3 city attacks... It costs some money to maintain the whole army/navy but really.. you shouldn't need a ton of garrison units outside of the front itself and maybe a few key coastal cities. So its probably not as expensive as it would seem. But then.. I often play as england and financial means never having to say you're sorry. Offensives are cheaper than having to rebuild improvements all the time and the AI kinna turtles once it loses handily somewhere. Aggressive AI doesn't so much... but then.. you need an army anyway to win that one.

Against the AI, I have been at war with 6 of 8 at once (that was only on emperor). Nobody even set foot on my main continent. I did actually lose a barrier island with 3 cities when Genghis sneak-attacked it and my navy was caught smacking around Izzy. I managed to weasel out of two of the six wars rather quickly (one AI was already about dead and one was about to be) but that left 4 supposedly strong AIs.

MP with a buddy we were at war with all 6 there too (that one is on immortal, still going, but winning so far, slow going at first). The basic idea would be to try to avoid pissing everybody off at once. Try to keep some neutrals, not even allies are needed, while you annihilate the nearest or weaker foes. Against people it should fare well too, but the aggression factor needed probably ramps up. People manage wars and counter-attacks alot better.