How do you win a war in Civ 4?

[uberfish]

Originally posted by nugog
Stacks of Doom do not work!

While the rest of that post was good, this statement is mistaken.

Unless you are facing a ton of sacrificial siege, SoDs are generally the safest way to travel in enemy land because of the larger number of healthy defenders that can be brought to face attackers in turn, and because you are putting all your units on the most defensible terrain.

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by uberfish


While the rest of that post was good, this statement is mistaken.

Unless you are facing a ton of sacrificial siege, SoDs are generally the safest way to travel in enemy land because of the larger number of healthy defenders that can be brought to face attackers in turn, and because you are putting all your units on the most defensible terrain.

I generally find this to be the case in most of my wars too.. I havent had to deal with much seige weapons turned against yet...

However, I believe that his point was 'Stacks of Death with ONE UNIT do not work' and this is true. If you pump out the 'strongest' unit you have, lets say a cavalry, you will be shown out the door when your stack of death of cavs get slaughtered by Riflemen. I agree with that and have many times won wars because of staying away from my Civ3 tendency to build a SOD

[Gatekeeper]

Fascinating thread, folks.

So what's the best stack composition? I'm on the verge of attacking Egypt in the modern era on a huge Earth map. I've got modern armor, mechanized infantry, artillery, destroyers and a few battleships en route to Africa right now, along with four divisions of SEALs.

Mind you, this is only my second full-fledged game on Civ IV (I played Civ II for years, but skipped Civ III) and it's on the Settler level, so I'm not expecting the AI to be anywhere near the maximum of its potential in terms of responses. Still, regardless od difficulty level and stage in the game, what's the best stack composition?

I figure, for mini-stacks: 1 defender, 1 siege, 2 offensive. Or should it be: 2 defenders, 2 sieges, 4 offensive?

"Stacks of Doom" ... hmm, well, I haven't used these yet. What are they generally composed of? About a six of each type of ground troops (i.e. defenders, sieges, offensives)?

Gatekeeper

[ElConejo]

A Civ4 stack of doom to me is all my units travelling in one square. A Civ3 stack of doom to me was all cavalry or tanks. Civ4 (thank goodness) makes Civ3 type stacks obsolete because all those cavs could get butchered by a handful of riflemen.

And one thing you have to get over with regard to Civ4 military strategy is that there are no more well defined 'defensive' or 'offensive' units - there is more of a rock-paper-sissors relationship in Civ4 units. Cavalry works well against Seige weapons, Riflemen work well against Cavalry, Grenadiers work well against Riflemen etc etc.

My offensive forces generally have this sort of makeup:
at least:

5 Riflemen or equivelant
5 Grenadiers
10 Cavalry
40 Catapults

That is the smallest battle group, consult Vel's Strategy Guide ( http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=151801 ) about more calculated ways of figuring out how many troops to bring along. I have learned that combined arms are /always/ best. And having double the amount of seige weapons than anything else makes capturing cities MUCH easier.

Obviously it changes with each battle and each situation. I ALWAYS try to scout or spy my enemy and find out what sort of units they are using. Once I find out what they are using, I can choose to build more of units that trump theirs.

Hope that helps, feel free to ask more and post screenshots and we'll try to give our input.

[Dis]

so what's the best unit to use against cities with riflemen? I still struggle against these guys. At least until I get tanks.

[ElConejo]

Long answer: Pummell the crude out of them with catapults, cannons or (if you have Warlords.. I do not..) Trebuchets. Knock down the percentage of defense they get from culture (?) and then suicide your seige weapons against the riflemen to make collatoral damage. Once you've done that attack with Grenadiers. Grenadiers trump Riflemen (I cant recall by how much, check the Civpedia) and they will more likely than not eat em up. I still go with bombardment and seige attacks first though, no matter how good my odds, because seige weapons are generally less expensive than anything else and they help the offensive strength of all other units.

Short answer: Use Grenadiers against Riflemen.

[Prussia]

Originally posted by binTravkin



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

Must have gotten lost in the translation.

I almost flunked Latin, anyways.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Quillan
In the very early stages of the game, axemen are the attacking unit of choice. Admittedly, swordsmen are a strength 6 with a natural 10% bonus when attacking cities, but axemen are a 5 with a 50% bonus (!) against other melee units. City raider II/III axemen do bad things to cities, and because they tend to win the open field battles as well, it's not that hard to get them there. With the Warlords expansion, chariots are +100% against axemen, but they are still good for attacking cities.

I've got to say, this one part I don't agree with. The AI loves to use archers to defend cities, with perhaps an occasional spearman thrown in, and considering the cost of an archer vs. the cost of an axeman, and the strength of an archer defending a city vs. the strength of an axeman attacking one, I hate to throw axemen into archers when attacking cities. I'd much rather use swords as my primary city attacking unit. If the AI has axemen, you never want to let swords go unescorted by your own axemen, and of course when it comes down to it I often end up using those axemen to finish off enemy wounded archers in cities. However, to actually take cities in the ancient times, I'm much rather have at least some swords then not.

[Quillan]

I agree with you on that point, but I still wind up taking more cities with axemen than I do with swordsmen overall. Axemen become available when you get Bronze Working, so you get axemen quite a bit before you can get swordsmen. As a result, I always have a number of axemen hanging around. Then there's the promotions issue. You start with 3 or 4 xp from the barracks, depending on whether you're running Warlords or not. Either way, that's one promotion and you get the second from your first victory, unless you start with it because of Theocracy or Vassalage. Regarless, you still have to win a couple more fights to get that third promotion. The axemen beat archers in the open because of strength. They beat swordsmen or spearmen because of their innate bonus. The swordsman's innate bonus is smaller, and only applies to taking cities. I commonly get anywhere from 2-4 City Raider III axemen just from dealing with barbarians. By the time I usually research iron working and can build swordsmen, I already have these dangerous axemen and that's what I use. I'll build swordsmen for extra numbers, but the axemen are already there.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Fascinating thread, folks.

So what's the best stack composition? I'm on the verge of attacking Egypt in the modern era on a huge Earth map. I've got modern armor, mechanized infantry, artillery, destroyers and a few battleships en route to Africa right now, along with four divisions of SEALs.

Mind you, this is only my second full-fledged game on Civ IV (I played Civ II for years, but skipped Civ III) and it's on the Settler level, so I'm not expecting the AI to be anywhere near the maximum of its potential in terms of responses. Still, regardless od difficulty level and stage in the game, what's the best stack composition?

I figure, for mini-stacks: 1 defender, 1 siege, 2 offensive. Or should it be: 2 defenders, 2 sieges, 4 offensive?

"Stacks of Doom" ... hmm, well, I haven't used these yet. What are they generally composed of? About a six of each type of ground troops (i.e. defenders, sieges, offensives)?

Gatekeeper

Generally speaking, you want a bunch of siege/city raider units (say catapults and swords) protected by 1-2 each of the various counter units (spears for defense against horse, axes for defense againts melee, etc). You also want a medic unit, and if you can afford it, having a city defender or two to help keep what you take is also good (garrison-promoted archers).

Obviously you will need to adjust the above depending on the circumstances. If your opponent doesn't have horses, you may dispense with spears and build more axes/swords/catapults. If your opponent is Ghengis Khan and has a bunch of Keshiks, you want more than 1-2 spears. And so on and so forth.

A final note: the fewer siege units you have, the longer it will take you to bombard down a city's defensive bonus. 2 catapults or trebs, even if they are promoted with bombard (or whatever that one is called) will take several turns to bring down those defenses. Trebs are better, obviously. I like to bring 5-6 cats/trebs in a city attack stack, and I often find myself wishing for more once I start losing them in battle.

Basically, you want enough that you can take down the city defenses in 1 turn. Better yet, take them down in one turn and have a couple of siege units left over to attack with (softening the defenders).

-Arrian

[Ming]

Trebs with city raider promotions can take out just about anything until modern times. Build a stack, defend them... walk them up to a city... first round take down defenses... next round, kill everything... Very effective units

[Nevordan]

I have a question about Collateral damage:

Do siege weapons and units that do collateral damage *always* do collateral damage? Because I've noticed sometimes a message will pop up saying, "Your so-and-so has done collateral damage!" And sometimes this message doesn't pop up...

Anywho, after this post I have had... some... success at warfare. I took some people's advice and just went for it. I started a war and kicked the hell out of some people, though I must admit to this: I didn't start any of these wars until I had riflemen/cavalry/grenadiers/cannons. And the only reason I won, I'm sure, is because my enemy was so far behind he was still using longbowmen and other medieval wimps. I *still* haven't done an "early rush" with axemen... I honeslty wouldn't know how when you have such ****ty production in those times. Even before the lousy 25% production the stinky forge gives you... I'm still a newbie ******... but I'm slowly learning... and I must say sometimes I find what people say here to be well over my head. It's like when people start talking about building PCs. I have no idea how to build a PC from parts. I wish I did.

[Arrian]

Nevordan,

Regarding low production in the early going... this is why I tend to focus on getting a level 5 unit asap, so I can build the Heroic Epic in a high-production city. That right there makes a *huge* difference in your military production. Then again, since the HE requires both the lvl5 unit and literature, it's not really all that early in the game...

The other thing people use is poprushing. I don't tend to use it for a military buildup, but then I don't really use poprushing very well. A guy like Blake, on the other hand, uses it masterfully and can do pretty amazing stuff with it.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

Ah...pop rushing. :drool:

I think finding room for military is a mental block for most people, really. "I need that *insert building here*". Yes...you might...eventually. Just because you CAN build that library or temple doesn't mean every city needs one.

As with most things in CIV, specialize your cities.

Get yourself 1-2 cities (depending on how early we're rushing) dedicated to nothing but troops and military. These should build only barracks, and units, and only stop when they hit/(are about to) health and/or happiness caps, then they can build a temple or aqueduct or something. And landscaping should be dedicated to maxing hammer usage.

But, may I suggest trying Epic or Marathon speed? It gives a bit more flexibility with builds, especially units. May help you get the hang of things.

[Nevordan]

Now that you mention it, I will try a epic or marathon game tonight.

Well, here's my games so far since I started posting here.

Ghengis Khan--my best win so far! I have a score of over 8,000, best I've ever done. I had 11 cities at the end of the game, all taken from Peter, poor bastard. I finally got to be the one doing the bullying this time, as opposed to being the one told what to do and when to do it, giving techs away to avoid having my people raped and burned, taking other peoples' state religions... NO WAY, MAN! This time, people did what *I* said to do... and what a glorious feeling it was! Ironically, though, I won a Space Race victory with almost 50 turns left... also my fastest win, but... Space Race is still the only type of victory I've ever had so far.

Elizabeth--Space Race...

George Washing--Space Race...

Catherine the Great--tried for a cultural victory... lost miserably. My first game since I reinstalled Civ IV.

Julias Caesar--I have shamed the name of this man by losing... since I haven't gotten the hang of warfare by this game, I never got to use those famed Praetorians. I was winning by a high score until the last 30 turns of the game, Bismark decided to make me his *****.

As Yoda would say, "Much to learn I still have."