Early conquest, pros and cons...

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Blake
Organized, Aggressive and Creative are IMO THE warmonger traits. A civ without any of them isn't really a natural for warmongering.

I agree, though expansive is not bad either when trying to make an early engine to fuel your expansion (+2 health per city, 1/2 price granary and harbor). Playing as the Romans which also have organized (-50% civic cost, and 1/2 price lighthouse and courthouse) , it offers a perfect compliment. On a stringy pangea map with lots of shoreline, those 1/2 price lighthouses and harbors came in handy, while granaries and courhouses fuel the interior. Building the Great Lighthouse and Colossus has formed the economic engine for my economy.

Also Praetorians are a great early conquering unit.

Of course the Mongols Keshik ignores terrain movement costs, which is great fun in the early game, when not many roads exist. Tough choice whether to play Ghengis or Kublai. I like both.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
I also found myself using "Build Research" to get back into the game .

Hum... you stumbled onto one of the main possibilities to recuperate after an intense period of war. I haven't seen it mentioned here, while a lot of people are complaining that the AI outresearch them at certain points in the game. Build research is not a joke!

DeepO

[Bobby Chicken]

OK, I can compromise. In some situations, researching horseback riding and archery can be good. But I think going for macemen/samurai/war elephants is less of a gamble with simillar success probabillity. Not going for early conquest means you can forget horseback riding alltogether and possible even archery. I'm not saying not to attack a city if you get copper early, just that you should start out with the plan of early conquest and that early conquest should be in moderation.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Bobby Chicken
OK, I can compromise. In some situations, researching horseback riding and archery can be good. But I think going for macemen/samurai/war elephants is less of a gamble with simillar success probabillity. Not going for early conquest means you can forget horseback riding alltogether and possible even archery. I'm not saying not to attack a city if you get copper early, just that you should start out with the plan of early conquest and that early conquest should be in moderation.

War elephants are absolutely great, and make construction even more important. however, this tech also gives cats... in itself enough reason to be on any warmongers initial wish list.

DeepO

[Bobby Chicken]

Catapults? I see what you mean. If you're going for the capitol, you better bring some along. From my non-warmonger perspective, I have failed to realize this. The reason is that I use war to pick off a few border cities of a weak empire. Thus, I find myself with elephants, not cats. Even if I saw a huge oppurtunity, I would still use elephants, since I am uncomfortable placing all emphasis on war. As, I see it, and other peaceful people are welcome to disagree, attack siege units should be left to the very commited warmongers. Not that there is something wrong with warmongers, but Civ 4 is a game of balance and warmongering puts you dangerously close to a disruption of balance.

[DeepO]

Bobby, catapults are not only needed for any decent warmonger, they are also the best defensive units you will have for a long time. Catapults can bring down superiour units to a point where obsolete defenses can deal with them.

And this is CIV. You need combined arms. One of the few combinations where you will only need 2 types of units in a stack to be highly effective, is in the cat-elephant combination (however adding a couple of swords can do wonders to such a stack)

DeepO

[Bobby Chicken]

I suppose the reason I have not noticed that is that the last time I had a city taken was in Civ 3 when I took right back. As for combined arms, they take a huge commitment. I agree that if war is your focus the stack of doom is not ideal, but the stack is still good and cheap for picking off less advanced civs. I still think bomber/tanks or bombers/marines is so good you can't pass it up (that is, if bombers are really as good in 4 as they were in 3; I haven't had a decent chance to use them). For combined arms I think all warmongers should use Elephants or macemen with catapults, Cavalry and Riflemen (or just Redcoats) with cannons. And of course, no warmonger should hesitate to use any combo that includes a bomber/stealth bomber. I just don't no about defensive combos; I probably would if I thought I was in serious danger.

[Blake]

But air is so late game to be irrelevant.
edit: I can't believe I just said that. What I mean by that is if your going for conquest on any scale you want to start much earlier because flight is kind of hard to get.


What I like is City Raider Axe/sword/macemen upgraded to Riflemen (which usually can't take City Raider), they kick some unholy ass. Really I'm increasingly seeing the light that Conquest must start early, conquering territory gives the industrial base needed for pumping out more units, and the highly promoted units can get some wicked momentum going. I'm starting to think that conquest is too easy .

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
, and the highly promoted units can get some wicked momentum going.

Yeah, promotions is one of the main reasons why fighting (limited) wars early on can be a winning strategy. An interesting choice to make is given by the 10 XP cap when upgrading: are you going to go for one more promotion (e.g. get to 17 XP), or lose the extra XP (reducing e.g. 13 to 10) but upgrade immediately?

DeepO

[Bobby Chicken]

Sounds like a good idea to me. However, I disagree that flight is to late game to be your only conquest. If you have a large civilization, you can churn out bombers and marines/tanks quickly enough for it to make a difference. I can, however, give partial agreement to flight being less ideal than it was in Civ 3 (this is a good change); cities loose population, so letting them grow their cities and then taking them over is not quite as effectiv; but still it is effective. Not knowing exactly how strongly you take this position I can argue one way or the other against what you said, and I think being any more specific than you have been would be foolish. That's one of the best things about Civilization; its different every time.

[Dis]

Initially it isn't worth it. As upkeep and maintenance may force the disbanding of you entire army even at 0% research. Or at least it did for me.

But you gain some cities which can become powerhouses later in the game. Even though I was competing against civs that had the same tech as me (due to falling behind in the tech race), I could outproduce them in anything. Instead of a handful of cities, I ended up with nearly twice the number of cities the AI had.

I think taking 2 or 3 cities early on is a good idea. Then when you get cavalry (after playing catch up), take 2 or 3 more. And then when you get bombers and tanks, take as many as you want (and have time for).

[BigWilly1974]

My last two games, I've gone for the "throat" early. One as the French, and more recently, as the Persians.

I can't tell you how powerful the Persian UU is in the early game for taking down cities and those pesky archer defenders. It's crazy.

In any event, I've changed my opinion yet again on a lot of early expansion. In these last two games (Prince level), I've expanded significantly in the early game by virtually eliminating two rival AIs. My score dwarfs all the other AIs. DWARFs them. Even in the late game, my score rocks the other AIs.

But despite my big advantage in cities and land mass, in two games I've been unable to get back totally to par with the AI in tech. As it happens, I'm about to lose my 2nd straight game to a rival AI's space race victory. Unfortunately for me, the rival AI in question in both games has been on the other side of the map (standard size), and I've been unable to take him out in time.

So while it's a fun way to play, despite a concerted effort to really focus on tech and infrastructure after the early wars, I was never able to get all the way back in the tech game. I was never eras behind, but never quite there with the top 1-2 rivals in terms of tech. And despite overwhelming score leads, and leads in other areas, I've lost both games due to the space race.

I think my next game I'll go back to a builder game with a heavy focus on cottages and tech infrastructure and see how I fare.

[Dis]

yeah I just don't think it's worth it to try to take over more than 2 cities. You lose too much time. It's so hard getting back in the tech race.

In fact, I'm beginning to think 2 is too many. I may only take over 1. It should allow you to gain more cities (even if by 1) than the other ai's. Giving you more production capability, and of course- score.

In any case. My current game is a builder game. I'm going for a cultural victory. But my neighbor attacked me and took over 2 of my cities. I had way more cities than him, so I let it go. As much as it pains me to do this. In civ3, I would have never let him keep those cities. But I need to focus on culture. I'm more determined to have my other cities build more military units. My army was waaay too weak.

[khumak]

Flight comes a bit later than I would like but it's quite possible to wait until you get flight before doing any conquest at all and still conquer most of the world before 1900 using bombers/stealth bombers as your "cats on steroids". When you combine the range bombers have with the deployment speed you get by using transports instead of overland travel you can conquer entire empires in a very small number of turns.

It's not unusual for me to average about 5 to 10 turns for each civilization I eliminate. With a fleet of 10-20 bombers and a navy that supports 6-8 transports you can easily conquer 3 or 4 cities about every 2 turns. The inland cities take a bit longer but usually more than half of the cities you conquer are coastal unless you play a pangea map.

Conquest by cats/cannons/artillery takes about twice as long because their movement rate is 1 instead of 2 and during that erra you don't have tanks yet so each unit only gets 1 attack.

[BigWilly1974]

True in theory, but I find I never have enough troops to just eliminate an AI in a short number of turns unless the AI rival in question is well behind in number of cities or tech.

Building enough bombers to make that tactic really effective means you can't build a huge land army. And with the split production (air/land units), I usually have to stop after taking a couple of cities simply because I don't have enough "fresh" troops to throw at the next cities.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Yes, you can wage war quicker in late game due to bombers/transports and such, but at least from what I've seen, it's hard to have enough units to go through a roughly equal AI in one relatively short war.