War Strategies

[Sparta]

Some of my Military Strategies:

First things first, I usually play at the Prince Level with Random Civs to vary my strategy. So I am not sure how this plays out at higher difficulty levels, but applying some of these tactics should work fairly well up to Prince.

I am personally a big fan of collateral damage. Multiple units taking damage while only impacting one of your own units is great. Sacrifice a unit or two to damage the whole stack is highly effective. By weakening their stack you ultimately reduce the risk of losing your own units which in my opinion is priceless. I often wait until I can build catapults before going to war that way I can save on production. I find replenishing your military to be a devastating blow to your economy if you have to keep producing units.

Catapults, cannons and Artillery are my disposable units; after all you are going to lose units, best to pick ones that are powerful but relatively cheap. I almost all ways use them first if there are 2 or more units to weaken the stack.

I almost always start any fight with the least experienced unit and save any promoted units to clean up what’s left over. By preserving the promoted units until the enemy is weaker, I am essentially minimizing the risk of attacking and losing them.

Pillaging is great!! I also pillage quite a bit. If I feel that I do not have enough units to eliminate an opponent, I will try and do as much damage by taking out all towns/villages, which gives you gold and in turn hinder their economy. Cut off any resources, especially ones used to develop military units.

If I am in a warmongering mood, or had a bad day at the office, I really enjoy playing the Chinese. Chinese are good for that since their unit does collateral damage without any training you can focus on First Strike, which is just a lethal combination when combined with collateral damage. A stack of 10 Cho-Ku-Nu and 10 catapults is a lethal force at that stage in the game. Cities fall in one turn, which is the way I like it. I hate to prolong battles because enemy units get stronger and I risk losing more units.

Take it for what it’s worth. Hopefully you will find some value in this.

Remember…..Always Bombard city defenses no matter how powerful you think your military is. The bonuses add up quickly which can really minimize your perceived advantage.

[Kc7mxo]

Well I been still playing on noble since i haven't gone through too many games yet. have gotten all the victories but elimination so far. My domination victory though was won by simply overwhelming them with numbers. . . same strategy the AI seems to use. Endless streams of infantry troops supported by bombardment units until the modern era.

This recent frustration was from trying to take out an primitive and constantly belligerant neighbor civ. Initial blitz snagged their border cities, and then massive streams of cheap trash just started overwhelming me. Its real painful watching one of your infantrymen kill 6 guys in one turn and then still get killed. . . . waste of good promotions.

I thought I had a pretty good invasion force, plenty of bombers, loads of tanks infantry and marines, and my scouts revealed real limited defenses. After things started going sour I reloaded and used the world builder, one of the northern cities was just packed with page after page of troops. Seems like that sort of army ought to be crippling financially, but I guess some folks been saying the AI cheats even at that level.

[BigWilly1974]

I'm still having nightmares of the Aztecs in a game I finished last game.

Monarch difficulty. The Aztecs attacked me time and time again. By 1800 I had a huge tech edge, and in our last conflict, I was sending what I thought was a huge zerg of tanks and mech infantry, but the Aztecs (who had roughly the same # of cities) must have had 4x the number of units, but they were mostly artillery/cannons and cavalry/riflemen.

I thought I was going to steam roll. After he lost dozens of units on my superior units, I eventually had to call for peace after taking 1 city because his zerg wore down my highly superior tech army with wave after wave of lesser units.

Made me win via the Space Race, and I wasn't happy.

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by BigWilly1974
I'm still having nightmares of the Aztecs in a game I finished last game.

Monarch difficulty. The Aztecs attacked me time and time again. By 1800 I had a huge tech edge, and in our last conflict, I was sending what I thought was a huge zerg of tanks and mech infantry, but the Aztecs (who had roughly the same # of cities) must have had 4x the number of units, but they were mostly artillery/cannons and cavalry/riflemen.

I thought I was going to steam roll. After he lost dozens of units on my superior units, I eventually had to call for peace after taking 1 city because his zerg wore down my highly superior tech army with wave after wave of lesser units.

Made me win via the Space Race, and I wasn't happy.

What you need is Medics in your stack and perhaps one or 2 good defenders with lots of first strikes.

I had a Modern ARmor with 4-7 first strikes (Drill 4) who took out 80% of the onslaught before becoming to weak to continue fighting (but didn't die).


This way your assault force can continue fighting.


A key in successful warfare is to take out key cities fast. In my game i noticed the AI does a lot of specializing. If you take out its production centers first, before taking out "convenient" cities, you'll have a much easier time.

Also forcing the civic Free speech via UN would help in the late game, to prevent the AI from drafting units.

[MattPilot]

I've been thinking about the "drafting" issue a bit.

I noticed that most AI nations usually run it at some point in time. Perhaps they use it to build up their military quickly?

Perhaps a viable military strategy is to switch to nationhood momentarily and draft units every turn. Perhaps have a "donor" city or two, where the population level is low (quick growth) and it has a good food source for quick food gathering.

This way you could quickly build up your military without sacrificing production in your major cities that are trying to build improvements.


Thoughts?

[padillah]

I've actually had to adopt a person/building/person/building... build order (after the first two or three settlers depending) because I kept forgetting to build units at all.

Next thing I know I look up and I've got all the techs and no ones at war with me and I've got the biggest army on the planet. (Warlord level, I know it's a little weak but it's the only one I can win on right now)

Worked well. 'Course I had warriors still around in 1985AD. But I upgraded them and was fine.

Tom P.

[BigWilly1974]

Yeah, I have to admit I've not used First Strike hardly at all as a promotion, mainly because I don't really understand how it works or how effective it is. Can anyone describe how it works?

I've typically been using those that up strength, or the +25% versus gunpowder/melee/mounted depending on game stage, and then in late game, tanks I've been giving +% to city attack and collateral damage to make them siege machines.

I may also need to start looking more seriously at drafting units. I've been loathe to do it due to it's effect on city populations and thus ultimately score, but it may be a real untapped option in my current strategy.

[padillah]

In short, mostly 'cause DeepO and Solver beat the math to death in his combat thread, First Strike means you get 'X' amount of hits "for free" before the fight even starts.

It's really quite useful to load up one or two units that get to hit an attacker 4-7 times before the fight even starts. Then the attacker attacks the strongest in the stack, which may not be the unit with first strike.

Tom P.

[BigWilly1974]

Cool, thanks for the link P. I hadn't seen that thread on combat before.

[Footie Mad]

It's really important on the offensive to stay focused. You must remember that the enemy has lots and lots of advantages on his own soil. Don't attack on three different places at once if you're not totally superior. You need to stay compact with your forces, so that they can cover each other in order to heal, complement one another against different enemies and have a bigger chance of acheiving the goals. If necessary have your whole invasion force in the same square.

If you bite off to much and can't chew it you can easily be overrun by weaker units.

[Artuero]

Been playing spiritual leaders for the past two games and have found the draft to be especially useful when a neighbor does a surprise attack and the bulk of my units are off in the new world conquering barbarians.

[Ironwolf]

I will have to recount my comment on combined arms. I was able to roll over the French last night with nothing but Infantry. He had musketeers and a few riflemen, but it was mostly archers in the cities. And as a bonus I ended up with an elite force of Mech Inf for the conquest of the rest of the world.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Well, yes, if you have a HUGE technological lead, you can ignore combined arms. In the real, an entire nation's military made up of helicopters is a bad idea if the opposing nation has jets, but it doesn't much matter if they're all using muskets.

[James M]

Originally posted by padillah
I've actually had to adopt a person/building/person/building... build order (after the first two or three settlers depending) because I kept forgetting to build units at all.
Tom P.

I find it works well to take one or two cities with good productive potenitial and turn it/them into pure military towns. Build a granary (if necessary), barracks, Heroic Epic and production improvements, but other than that only military.

Other cities can join in the fun when you're warmongering, of course.

[MattPilot]

My production cities never get improvements not directly related to happiness/health or production. Why should they? Usually base commerce is around 10. If i waste time building those improvements i might get +100% out of it.

Now on my commerce cities - wow.. those cities more than make up for any lost commerce in my production cities.

Trying to make "mixed" cities only slows you down, as you are trying to build both wealth/reserach and production buildings.