Military conquest - single player

[Jim0322]

I seem to be having some trouble with military expansion in conquering other civs. I do a good job at establishing my civ early by the use of settlers. However, I have found that expansion through military conquest is difficult. I took Madrid, a city that was size 12 and was near the border of my civ. What happened is that the size shrank to 1 and it took forever to grow. I thought in the old civs games if you took a big city it was yours and was not likely to shrink but that does not seem the case here.

Is it better to just raze conquered cities? It seems like conquering a city should be more of a reward. What is the best way to expand your empire militarily? Should you raze cities? Should you conquer 1-2 and then ask for peace to build them up? I need some guidance on how to eliminate a rival and make the best use of his land. Is it burn and build new cities or does it pay to keep them and continue on?

I find in this game the world is fairly static. Civs seem to establish their boundaries and then they don’t change much throughout history. Is it much harder in Civ4 to win against the AI by military conquest than in the previous versions?

Jim

P.S. What is ICS?

[Silencer]

There must be some kind of error in your game.

I'm playing now with only conquest victory and almost eliminated 2 of 3 AI civs and don't have that kind of problem. I use tactics to develop industrally till modern age, then expanse military if in the time I have 2-3 wars i simply defend and kill all the forces that AI throws at me. When I attack i raze the cities at the range of my stealth bombers and capture the ones to rebase my planes. The cities that you capture shrink minimal and after 5-8 turns order is restored and cities begin to grow.

Yes it is little harder to win military now. I remember that in civ3 i built 100 F-15 and 100 Stealth bombers and AI didn't have even normal planes and it was normal difficulty lvl

Where is that ICS?

[cloudtoground]

ICS is Infinite City Sleeze, or Infinite City Spread. Basically, building cities every other tile and building tons of cheap units, like spearmen, at all of them. This strategy worked well in Civ2, and even to a lesser extent, in Civ3. Jury's still out on whether it would work in Civ4.

As for the conquest tactics, I'm still learning the ropes, myself. I conquered two English cities in my game last night. (Terra, standard, epic, 6 players, Noble). I had to halve my scientific research to support the new towns.

[art_vandelai]

I think a purely military strategy is difficult, almost impossible to win where the map size is Standard or larger, especially early in the game. The AI builds huge stacks of archers in its main cities, which take a bit longer to chew up, even if you have a slight tech advantage. If I start with a goal of taking 2 cities in a war, it may take an average of 15-20 turns to complete. I'm playing a very militaristic game as Napoleon on a standard map with 9 civs - I've made it to about 1500 AD, have the highest score, am largest or 2nd largest on my continent, and I am researching gunpowder to get my UU.

All the wars I've been fighting has actually made me the 8th most powerful civ militarily, since I don't have many defenders in the cities off the front. Plus, keeping all of those cities you take means more upkeep costs, and you have to really drop down the research %. In order to keep up with the AI, you can't go below 90% in tech IMHO (and that's on Noble). The AI is also good at upgrading its units. Trying to overwhelm it with numbers doesn't work that well because of the defender's advantage of always defending with the best unit on the square and the +25% defense bonus, you need to have both better and more units, especially collateral damage units like cats, to take a city.

I think as the Modern era approaches, it gets easier to expand through war, but then you have to pillage like crazy first. Usually by that time, I end up just securing my continent and then going for space race.

[Mayfield]

I think as the Modern era approaches, it gets easier to expand through war, but then you have to pillage like crazy first. Usually by that time, I end up just securing my continent and then going for space race.

The industrial - modern era siege is difficult but still possible. You just have to use a lot of cannon/artillery units to soften up, then use them for collateral damage, then send in the troops. It takes 3-4 turns but if you are prepared it will work. Pillaging with fast movers in front of a siege is always a good distraction for the AI though.

[Silencer]

Try to be nice to the AI but don't give them away free tech I'm not playing with 7 AI on standard map. Just me and 3 AI (2 continets). Only got a war with the nearest neigbour (Spain Izabelle) and only had static war - she had thrown axeman at my crossbowman I had a laugh when the axeman were killed in groups of 5 vs 2 crossbowman barricaded in a city After she was out of army I recruited some grunts and a catapult and raised her a city Meanwhile she had proposed me a peace treaty + some gold - Only accepted after raising that city (how bruttal of me). Some later on Catharine of Russia tried to storm through the ocean but her galleons where out of luck Only lost some improvemnts in land Now it is 2030AD Isabelle is RIP, Elizabeth of England is almost KIA. The only loses in modern warafre was 1 Modern Armor and few stealth bombers. Air combat sucks now. You can't use jets now to make a bombers free air space near the city.... but still 30 stealht bombers are able to destroy 2 cities walls and weaken the defence so tanks can roll in in one turn...

The funniest thing - my tank lost onces to a knight.... yep how can he do that and gunship was heavli injured by a knight - (a knight can fly in battle??)

[Richter]

Re: Military conquest - single player

I took Madrid, a city that was size 12 and was near the border of my civ. What happened is that the size shrank to 1 and it took forever to grow. I thought in the old civs games if you took a big city it was yours and was not likely to shrink but that does not seem the case here.

With regard to this specific problem- when you conquer a city, the cultural radius drops to 0. You can only work the city square itself. All the excess population turns into specialists. Once the city is pacified, the cultural radius will expand again and you'll be able to work the squares.

What can happen is that the reduced cultural radius can prevent you from working enough squares to feed the captive population. This is especially true if there are other enemy or neutral cities nearby. Their culture can balloon out and choke off your new city. A GP can really help in a situation like that to stabilize the border.

Also, depending on how things are automated, you may have to reassign the specialists into working the land.

[Quillan]

The same thing happened in Civ 3. Another possible problem is unhappiness. Since you probably won't get a single structure that generates , and it might not be connected to your trade network to get your luxuries, so even when the cultural radius comes back some of the people won't work.

[TheArsenal]

I’m finding it more difficult. My Civ III strategy was almost always a variant on clearing my continent of other nations as early as possible and turning my attention to the rest of the world. I’m not finding this at all possible so far. Taking over/destroying even the smallest nations in the early game is costly (n both units and money) and punitive. And even if it were possible, sitting on a continent's worth of cities before having a full blown economy would be crippling monetarily.

I’ve lbeen forced to learn to live with my neighbors more, which has made diplomacy and missionary work that much more important.

[BigWilly1974]

I'm actually finding it very difficult to win sweeping wars on Prince level.

It's a struggle (at least up until now), for me to keep up in tech with the AIs (at least those who are near the top of the science heap). So...that means I'm having to throw troops at their cities that do not have clear superiority - something that was always easy for me to do in Civ 3.

So, with the city defenses as robust as they are, and siege's effect on attacking stacks...it takes some time to take out a city. Then you have an arse-load of units that will take multiple turns to heal before you can go after the next city. Not to mention there'll probably be a delay while you build and move more siege units to the next city to be attacked.

Last night, I was attacked by the Chinese. I repelled his assault, then counter-attacked with what I thought would be enough units to take 2 cities quickly. It wasn't. I took both, but over many turns. At the doorstep of taking the 3rd city, the AI had made it to longbowmen, and upgraded their units in the city. I had to make peace then as my assault was doomed to fail despite many more units on my side.

So...I'm finding that wars must be much more surgical. In for a city, or a key resource, then sue for peace. Otherwise, for only incremental gains, you'll find yourself with pillaged improvements, at risk of losing your own cities, and at the very least adjusting your tech slider down to the point by the time you've sued for peace, you're behind enough in technology you're going to be playing catch up for the rest of the game.

The combo of falling behind in tech with the inability to sweep wide swaths of cities like you could in Civ 3 has made me very susceptible to playing a good game, but ultimately losing in the space race (unless I'm lucky enough to have the tech juggernauts on my borders, which hasn't been the case yet).

On balance, I'm finding this much more challenging than Civ 3 for those reasons. In Civ 3, I could eliminate most enemies in a couple of turns by amassing huge armies of tanks in later game. It was a tactic that never failed.

[Arrian]

I tried early war on Prince level last night and discovered it's pretty darn hard. I took one city and then bogged down. I was roughly even in tech, but founded no religion and was culturally poor. I had, with the captured city, 5 cities on a standard map. Eek.

I did a number of things wrong, though, and I expect will do better. I plan to replay it w/o some of the key errors and see how it goes.

-Arrian

[Silencer]

The best way to win war with AI is to capture/raze his city in 1/2 turns - artilery/airforce is the best thing to weaken the defences 4-5 artyliery units should destroy the walls and then its the open way for assulting troops.

Calssical Era - swordsman, mediaval - maceman, renesiance - riffleman (no point of using muskets - riffles are almost close after gunpowder), industrial - soldier, modern - tanks.
Of course units must be protected - archers for defence, mounted for offense (except vs pikes).

[BigWilly1974]

What I learned last night is how valuable pillaging the enemy's countryside is.

In Civ 3, I tended to make a bee-line for tank, build huge army, then annihilate...especially as I was usually the first to tank/modern armor so had tech superiority.

But last night, I attacked the Chinese. I was only able to take 2 cities, but I literally pillaged every resource, farm, cottage/hamlet/town that he had before finally making peace. A couple of hours (gameplay) later, my score was like 2200, his 1200. We were just about even at the time of the war.

The point is. I now think an effective strategy for conquering an enemy is to wage the first initial war without the intent of taking cities, but merely to destroy his economy. Kill his commerce, food intake, and hammer production...then go back in a few hundred years once you've totally outclassed him militarily and beat him like a rented mule.

It requires more patience to do this...but based on my current game's results, it seems incredibly effective. They simply can NOT recover. I'm around 1825 now (year), and the Chinese are miles behind even the 2nd last AI in score, power, and size.

[Arrian]

Hmmm... medic-promoted phalanxes might do that rather well...

-Arrian

[Aaron_Bevan]

Right now i have only played on Noble to learn the game mechanics.
One of the games I played as the Mongolians with their Keshik UU and totaly walked over 2 civs(Greeks and Persians) captured all but the badly placed cities.

At this point I had 8 cities of which I built 2(capital and second city I owned) and I was losing about 18g a turn but that was ok as I had a large surplus from my conquests. I had the military but not the coin to continue figting so I razed and pillaged the romans down to 1 city before he had enough concentrated might in his capital to stop me from razing it.

While fighting the Romans I dident buid much in the way of military except for some archers and instead concentrated on developing all my cities which quickly got my finances under control. At this point I was the largest Civ with the most points.

Anyway thats my story but it is certainly possible for early conquest though I am sure it would be harder on a higher difficulty setting. Later wars are harder and easier for various reasons but I find razing border cities, pillaging improvements(dont forget to destroy roads) and blockading ports from fishing helps alot.

ps. 1 ship stops all squares adjacent to it from being worked. I watching a size 16 city starve down to 6 because all its food was from fishing.