How do you win a war in Civ 4?

[Nevordan]

My word, that is a whole lot of advice! My thanks to all of you. You know, the real thorn for me is production time. If you really need 2 to 1, or 100 units, wouldn't the game be over before you had the chance to win a conquest victory?

[Nugog]

Listen to everything Vel has to say - he is "most Knowledgeable" about these things!

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by nugog
Listen to everything Vel has to say - he is "most Knowledgeable" about these things!

Most true. Even his ramblings and scattered thoughts are pearls of wisdom

I would recommend running a little practice using Worldbuilder to try out different patterns of unit combat, terrain defenses, promotions. Compare city attacks with swords against archers and against archers with axemen. Put the city on a hill, give it culture and compare garrison promotions for the archers to drill. If you have Warlords, give one of the archers Garrison I-III and Drill I-II because you will see these about with the new Protective trait – I need to see how tough these are. Compare the city attack with Axemen (with raider promotions) rather than Swordsmen with raider promotions. Add some catapults and do same with them or simply wear down cultural defenses.

Also play around with stacks of units. There are quite a few around so a good place to start would be with ancient era units: the archers, axes, spears, swords and chariots now (Warlords) are a lot more interesting with the additional element of the axeman counter. If your not playing with the Warlords expansion then this at the medieaval level with maces, crossbows, longbows, pikes, knights, war elephants and trebuchets because the trick is to get to know the “counter-units” that Vel rightly explains should be second nature.

There’s also a strategic element to consider in war and here you need information. If you know where the enemy’s horses are then by capturing that city, or pillaging the tile, you will deny access to that resource and you will then need fewer spearmen to escort your forces about (though you will have to clear the horses he already has). The same goes with iron and copper. If you are strong enough, or the resources are easy to take, you can effectively deny your enemy the ability to build anything but archers and catapults (and jaguar for Monty) and all of these should hold little fear for you. To do this you will have wanted to scout your neighbours lands soon enough just in case they later become an enemy.

One interesting scenario you might want to consider is setting up a custom game just between you and Julius Caesar on a small map. Run it one turn and then go into the WorldBuilder and find Rome. Then set up a city nearby and fast-forward the game by giving each nation some basic techs (Bronze-Working, Ironworking, Animal Husbandry, and modify the cities a bit to show some development. Make sure that Caesar has Horses and Iron linked up and improved and then give him a small army or Praetorians and Chariots with a few promotions. Your job then will be to figure out how to defeat this army. Give yourself a small stack of units with a few promotions and then declare war. If anything it will be a way of showing the differences between stack combats and individual combats because one thing you will find very difficult is breaking up his stack once it starts marching on your city but you might fare better if you can get his units to attack your stack on favourable terms.

Moving off the practice field, there has been talk of two groups of units (garrison and field). I prefer to think of there being up to six groups

1) Garrisons (defend cities and rarely move)
2) Mobile defence – For early game barbarian hunting and mid to later came security if weaker defenses are breached or to counter surprise attack
3) City busters – the things you need to break into a city (early game these are probably City Raider Swordsmen and Catapults
4) Stack escorts – they come along to help your city raiders (medics, scouts, and enemy unit counters)
5) Commando troops – not the promotion but simply the job. They go in and pillage or are used as bait to draw enemy units away from your stack or off their roads. They need movement so will come in three types (mounted units, Woodsmen II melee units, and Guerilla II Archer units).
6) Scouts – purely for intelligence. Usually well out of the war when war breaks out

If you are not actively preparing for an offensive war then groups 3)-5) will carry out the duties of 1), 2) and 6).

Finally, there’s also the question of knowing a little more about AI behaviour (as long as you have not set it to random). The comments about Monty are so true so learn tricks for dealing with him. Julius also is one for early warmongering so prepare for this or perhaps pre-empt him by getting in early when he doesn’t have iron. Isabelle just loves her religions. Napoleon seems to me to be more aggressive than Monty while some other civs will also exhibit sudden aggressive traits if the conditions are favourable. But you’ll get used to this in time after playing lots of games.

Good luck

[SirIlya]

Originally posted by Nevordan
My word, that is a whole lot of advice! My thanks to all of you. You know, the real thorn for me is production time. If you really need 2 to 1, or 100 units, wouldn't the game be over before you had the chance to win a conquest victory?

You don't need 2 to 1 overall advantage, you only need this advantage at the specific city you are trying to take.

The easiest way to create this local advantage is to kill the AI's field force. Then you can walk around with 2-3 balanced stacks and crush city after city. Once the AI's field force is demolished you mostly just need a few defenders in each offensive stack to handle the occaisional sally from the AI. After you kill their SoD, be wary of transports trying to sneak past the front lines and dump troops by an interior city--the AI seems to love this tactic. Note that even a costly naval victory is a massive net-gain in hammers if you are able to send alot of his troops to Davey Jones.

The BEST time to attack an AI is when he is fighting someone else or has just finished. When the AI's war they will throw their mobile armies at each other meaning you can often invade and just crush his cities without facing much in the way of field opposition.

In addition to city-busting siege engines, take some unpromoted or collateral-damage promoted ones for softening up his stacks. The AI tends to let troops heal before attacking you with them, so if you can generate a situation where you can soften his stack before it strikes you can encourage him to attack you piecemeal instead of with a single overwhelming force.

Invade with one huge stack to start with if your borders are conducive to do so without leaving one of your cities vulnerable. Ironically, one huge stack is less vulnerable than multiple small ones because the collateral damage for suicide siege engines is more spread out and it will take alot more attacks against healthy defensive units before the AI can start killing off your offensive troops. After you've absorbed the alpha strike on this force, you can split up into 2-3 city-busting armies.

Pre-railroad you can create a "stack magnet" by taking a city you can capture on the first turn of the war and filling it with garrison troops. He WILL send his stack there almost every time as long as you don't have a nearby vulnerable target. This works particularly well for attacking a civ with a large military. If you have a great artist handy you can bomb for instant defense bonus. Alternately, if his empire is large enough you might have enough time to pop-rush Walls before his full strength can arrive. You are probably going to sacrifice all those malcontented citizens for the good of *your* empire anyway.

Strategically, it is rarely a good idea to leave an AI "merely wounded" if you can avoid it. Once you have defeated his field army make sure he is either wiped out completely or crippled so that he will never be a threat again. Take as many of his good cities as you can absorb without grinding to a halt economically and then, if he is still too big, burn a few more cities before giving peace a chance. The AI seems to place a high priority on wars that seek to reclaim sundered citizens (ie: cities you have captured from them either militarily or culturally) and if you have declared war on him he will probably hate you for the rest of the game barring bribery or mutual religion.

The one exception to this is if you are waging a "pillaging" campaign to merely slow down an out-of-control rival civ. These *can* keep a civ's growth stunted long enough for you to get enough stronger for conquest, but you will need to keep going back every 10-20 turns and re-pillaging to keep the bootheel of oppression firmly fixed on his throat. Pillaging wars work best on "builder" AI's as they stunt their growth and give you lots of opportunities to bully techs.

Finally, one of the best things you can do before an invasion if you have a shrine for your state religion is to spread it into their cities. Make nice or even bribe a little bit if you have to in order to get Open Borders and spread the faith. First, this generates more income for building your war machine and it means the cities already have religion when you take them, which is nice. But most importantly, you can see the troops stationed in and near their cities and plan your invasion and track their stacks as they move toward you.

[Dis]

Originally posted by trev
2 to 1 works well if the troops are fairly even in strength, but not true for uneven strength units, as found by the player with 30 swords and cats as well. Amphibious assaults reduce the attacking strength by half, and swords are weaker than longbows in cities too, so assuming a culture defence of 40%, it becomes something like strength 4 against strength 15 probably, so many units will be wasted. 4 swords are almost certain in the early game to kill 2 archers, or archer and spearman, the AI defenders of choice, but bad luck is of course possible.

yeah well. I never do amphibious assaults. Even when I played the Vikings. The Bezerker was not strong enough to crack cities without trebuchets. And trebus can not effectively attack from ships (that -50% hurts too much).

And I would not take swords against longbows.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by Nevordan
My word, that is a whole lot of advice! My thanks to all of you. You know, the real thorn for me is production time. If you really need 2 to 1, or 100 units, wouldn't the game be over before you had the chance to win a conquest victory?

Slave-rushing troops will get your army ready more rapidly. Later on, drafting can do the same thing.

Conquest victories can be achieved fairly early in the dateline, even on Continents maps, if you focus on military and ignore Great Wonders. However, game time can be quite long because of the time taken to move all your units.

My default gameplan - once I'd got the hang of the game - is to set down a few good cities, attack a neighbour (with Axes and Catapults) to claim a few more. Then settle down for a Spacehip win.

[Stuie]

I'll add my two cents:

When a war starts, don't go rushing into the enemy's territory. Let him send whatever he's got at you, and pick off those units (luring them into favorable terrain before attacking). That should help deplete his forces while gaining valuable experience for yours. Make sure you rest your damaged units back to full strength (preferably with a health unit or in a city to speed the healing).

Then when you move to the offensive, make sure you are using COMBINED ARMS and have defined objectives. Take cats/trebs/cannon/whatever and beat down the city defenses and defenders before attacking with your regular units. Spread your units out - have multiple stacks each with an attacker/defender/artillery rather than a single mega-stack. Once you have met your objectives, don't over-expand; negotiate for peace and take whatever else you can off your enemy.

Then heal up, rebuild as needed, and start another war.

[Arrian]

Spreading your forces out is the right move if the enemy has catapults. If they don't, stack-of-doom is better.

Is is just me, or does the post-Warlords AI build less siege units? I feel like I'm seeing fewer AI catapults. Hence I'm doing fine with large stacks (I may have more than one so I can pursue two enemy cities at once, but that's not the same thing).

-Arrian

[Stuie]

Funny - I feel like I'm seeing more. I could usually get away with stacks in vanilla; now they are getting hammered.

[Footie Mad]

This thread is full of great advice on both a macro and micro level so I will just try to add some tidbits that I didn't see mentioned that much, or at all. To be fair I haven't read every single word in the thread.

Adapt your civics for the situation. This is worth doing even if you are not a spiritual civ and can handle the turns of anarchy, if you have the luxury of chosing the time and place of the conflict there should be plenty of room in your schedule for this.

Hereditary rule will enable you to keep order even if resources are pillaged and citizens are unhappy with the war, if you have a well spread religion there is the option of Theocracy. Also consider vassalage as it grants you better quality troops. In modern times a lifesaver can be Nationhood and the immediate reinforcement of drafted troops, also consider Police state for a long winded modern war.

Know which leaders are good friends in war and which leaders that would rather hide behind their desks in your time of need. A single warlike friend could be better than three peaceful builders who only bother with protecting themselves. All leaders will go to war sometime, but few will rally to your assistance in a tough situation. Also be prepared to pay bribes, "loyalty"often has a price.

Expect the enemy to drop of stacks of units next to your main cities if they are located by the coast. The AI loves this.

If you have coastal resources, count on enemies trying to pillage and prevent you form working them.

Know when to cower, know when to be ruthless. Sometimes you may have to give up technology or gold to make peace in a situation where the tide has turned against you. Return another time. When you have the upper hand, do not hesitate to eliminate your enemy. Honor and compassion has no place in politics.

[binTravkin]

Repetitio mater memoria.

That's latin, for:

PRACTICE YOUR ASS OFF

A good way to rephrase 'practice is the mother of remembering'

[ElConejo]

Although I dont want to detract from the thread or the incredible advice, I would like to interject and state that practice does not make perfection, practice makes permenant.

If you practice or get used to playing a certain way for a long enough time, you will make them permenant habits in which will be difficult to drop. This is the logic behind playing at harder difficulties from the very beginning, so that you do not pick up bad habits on the lower levels of difficulty.

Just wanted to point that out but all in all, this thread is incredibly helpful in manners regarding warfare, and I myself have learned alot from it, thank you all!

[Blake]

Firstly, i think that when you want to win cleanly it's ALWAYS best to have a war ally, since that's the most inexpensive way to clean up hte field force of your target.

If you can't bring in a meaningful ally the next best way IMHO is to lose one of your border cities to the AI and then massare his forces with your city raider units - the AI will tend to use both his field force and garrisons from other cities to try and fortify this captured city, which with 0 cultural defense will leave all his units very vulnerable to the city raiders. AI units will also spew forth from the city and try to pillage, these units also make for easy pickings.

War weariness is generated whenever you kill a unit in territory which isn't culturally yours, this means if you want to minimize war weariness you should do the bulk of the killing in your territory or territory which was yours (this definition is done by accumulated culture on the tile, not the current owner of the tile). By carefully choosing and manipulating where you fight, much of the war weariness can be negated.

[Hellcat]

I want to emphasize that when fighting an extended offensive camapign there's no such thing as having too much artillery. You generally want to have a few units specifically designated for taking down city defenses (the Accuracy promotion is useful here), a couple city attackers to wear down defenders (you may need more or less depending on how well-defended the city is) and it's also a good idea to have backup city attackers as you will inevitably lose some of your siege units at one point or another.

[rah]

Originally posted by Blake

War weariness is generated whenever you kill a unit in territory which isn't culturally yours, this means if you want to minimize war weariness you should do the bulk of the killing in your territory or territory which was yours (this definition is done by accumulated culture on the tile, not the current owner of the tile). By carefully choosing and manipulating where you fight, much of the war weariness can be negated.

I didn't realize this. I have seen this but always attributed to a different reason. I thought I suffered less war weariness when the AI declared war on me, but it was really because we were fighting on my territory. Yes, there are a few situations where this info could be quite beneficial. (obviously not when I'm continent busting )
As always, Blake has provided additional illumination. Thx.