warmongering advice

[shimmin]

This is my typical wartime experience:

Having a tech lead over a neighbor whose territory I covet, I decide to wage war against him. I build up a force to overwhelm the defenses of a city, declare war, and easily take a city.

Now, however, there have been casualties, and the newly captured city has to be garrisoned, and so the force I started with is no longer overwhelming. So, the offensive stalls while replacement units are built, and in the meantime, the enemy is sending units in to harrass me and pillage my improvements. There has to be a better way.

Is the best way to build enough units to take ALL the cities you want to take before declaring war? This would take at least twice as long, preparation-wise.

Or maybe I need more siege units in my stacks. At this stage of the game, I might have a stack of 6-8 maces / swords / axes, escorting two catapults, as a city-taking force. The catapults are mostly for reducing the city defenses to 0%, though I might use one of them for collateral damage just before sending in the shock troops. Is the best way to use more suicide catapults, until the other units will likely suffer no losses in the taking of the city?

[rah]

More suicide units help.

Waiting a few but not too many turns for extra units helps.

My biggest advice would be Take as much on the opening salvo as you can chew. Don't give the AI a chance to upgrade their units or slave the city down for extra units. (that's what you want the pop for)
Once you've declared war the AI acts differently.

Sea attacks where you can declare war, batter city defenses and attack the same turn can be quite successful because the ai can't upgrade or reinforce.


And have a few more response units for handling the pillagers.

[ZEE]

Re: warmongering advice

Originally posted by shimmin
The catapults are mostly for reducing the city defenses to 0%

i hardly ever use catapults for that reason anymore. it takes precious time and collateral damage is much more efficient, and you can use ALL your catapults for that reason.

Originally posted by shimmin
Is the best way to use more suicide catapults, until the other units will likely suffer no losses in the taking of the city?

YES. build a slew of catapults and ravage the defenders, then you can even use cheap, obsolete units to clean up the mess. bring some defenders for the city in your stack so you can keep your advance moving. also have a backup stack just in case.


catapults are the key, as cheezy as it might be. hope this helps... piece

[sjm]

You simply have far too few catapults.

You need lots and lots of them. They're cheap, they're effective and they mean you won't lose any of your other units.

Plus if you have more catapults, lowering the defence of a city to 0 takes 1 turn, not several. The quicker you advance and rip the AI apart, the quicker you'll achieve your objectives; and you won't give the AI time to switch to wartime production. It's best to blitzkrieg if you can!

Don't forget to set quite a few of your cities to producing catapults whilst you are at war - you'll need to replace several catapults per city you take.

And on that subject; if you aren't already producing replacement units BEFORE you go to war, that's too late. What is it that Sun Tzu says? "Defeated warriors go to war first, and then look to win". You need to look to win first, and then go to war.

That means that you want to have a nice wartime economy running; cities with barracks ready to roll and a reliable cash flow or kitty (units outside your territory cost money).

Also, make sure you have a medic along to make sure your troops are back on the offensive ASAP. Medics don't stack, so you only need a couple. As for garrisoning new cities - if you really need to garrison a city, try sending your garrisons from other cities deeper in your territory in a pinch. Other than that, it helps to send a city defender along with the inital attack force to repel any immediate counter attacks. However, if you are properly prepared for war, you should be rolling through your enemy too fast for them to seriously threaten your new ill-gotten cities.

[couerdelion]

Hmmm, well I’m sure that I’m by far the greatest CIV tactician around but this has never stopped me from giving my opinions so here goes nothing.

First rule when looking to declare war is stop what you are doing and start planning what you need and how long it will take to get that. Take into account that your rival might be about to upgrade. In planning what you will need

a) Does my rival have walls/high cultural bonuses which require bombard units?
b) What resources do they have – to tell you what your units will be facing
c) What tech level do they have?

If you need to find out more information then send a “scout” to find out what you can. Any unit will do but the faster the better. This information is going to be critical in your plans. Also allowing for the time, figure out where your opponent will be when you are ready. Also where you want your units to be when your strike. Sometimes a sudden two pronged attack will kill of resistance faster than a single stack.

The first objective in any combat is to destroy their capacity to fight you. Broadly, this will mean

a) defeat their field army
b) cut of their access to resources (in most cases)

Of course, do not make silly tactical errors. Generally, the simple tactics work the best. More complex and specialised tactics like deep-pillaging take more time and planning.

At the very least, you will have to defeat their spare army before you can relieve your reserves into the fight.

Reserves?!! Well these are the units that you need to keep back just in case a rogue unit (or twenty) suddenly appear on your borders but far from your target city. It’s unlikely to be twenty if you have a strong stack approaching one of their cities but be careful not to have any valuable, and weakly defended cities open to counterattack.

The level of reserves is largely dependent on how exposed your cities are an enemy attack. In fact it’s no different than in peacetime except that you are at war, and at least have some control over a part of the “front-line”. The longer the border, the large the reserves. For reserves, you want a combination of enemy unit counters (eg spears for chariots, axemen for swords, chariots for axemen) and maybe a collateral damage unit if you are worried about an enemy stack..

The attacking stack needs to be able to defend itself and whatever it captures. Assuming you strike hard enough, you’ll probably be able to get into the first city quickly and defend the main counter from there. Early on you might be going with a large stack and perhaps two catapults. These are for use against heavily defended cities rather than for having your forces sitting outside a pitiful 20% culture city. Later on you’ll want to get four and then seven cats so that the bombard time is much reduced. Personally, I’ve never been one to throw catapults at a city rather relying on specialist city raiders to do the job – since they last longer they get more promotions and so become more effective.

[sjm]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Personally, I’ve never been one to throw catapults at a city rather relying on specialist city raiders to do the job – since they last longer they get more promotions and so become more effective.

To me, that's the whole point of the cats - you don't risk the units that are actually more versatile and often require more resources - you use the cats and allow the others to rack up easy promotions. Cats are only useful on the attack; if you're not attacking with them, you're not utilising their biggest strength.

Because of the way combat works in Civ 4, damaging a unit only slightly can skew the combat odds in your favour quite dramatically, if the units are otherwise of equal strength. The biggest changes to the combat odds occur when two units are relatively evenly matched. Even a small change in one unit's strength results in a noticeable shift in the odds (say by 10% in your favour, to name an arbitrary figure). The larger the difference in strengths, the less difference it makes to the odds if a unit is damaged slightly more or less (i.e. tank vs. warrior, where if the warrior is at half strength, the odds change by something approaching 0.00000001% ).

So: The bigger your tech lead, the less use collateral damage is.

Anyway, the idea is to hit 6 otherwise equal or superior (with defensive bonuses) opponents for 10%+ damage, at the cost of one unit for a sharp increase in the combat odds for the next 6 attackers. To me, it's a good trade-off, especially if the odds aren't particularly favourable to start with (e.g. vs city garrison 2 longbow on a hill).

Cats also have the ability to retreat as well, so the odd one tends to survive anyway.

So: The smaller the stack, the less use collateral damage is, and you might as well just go straight for the kill. You get the best deal against 6 opponents.

[ZEE]

sjm,

you hit the nail on the head. fascinating analysis...

siege weapons are so usefull i cant see winning a war without them. bombers are good for this as well, but i personally like using field pieces rather than air units. your siege formula was very insightful as well, thank you...

[couerdelion]

I think it’s more of the case that most city attacks are against relatively small stacks (2-4 defenders). At an early stage, I will probably be using Swords with Cats against Archers so while the Cats have a decent chance of winning the combat, Swords are in the 70%+ range. And the job get’s done quicker if you do not wait after reducing the city defences.

With bigger defensive stacks, or where the defenders are well dug-in, I will use cats but since they cost just as much as swords and come at a time in the game where cost control is important, I’d rather work with a smaller, but heavier-hitting attack force than a large army of cats as suicide units.

The case is different with trebs and cannon. For their respective time periods, these are your key city raider units.

Which I suppose leads me to my pet hate of the artillery weapons. They give a unit a name which indicates what it does and then give it attributes which do something completely different. The ability of artillery units of any kind to destroy ground based units has always been something that has occurred just a few times for each level of technological advancement. After that, it just doesn’t happen. Artillery does not attack, but merely softens opponents. In this game, siege weapons make no more sense than light-sabres or elven swords.

Rant over

[Quillan]

I'm not generally a warmonger, but if you have to stop the advance after taking one city, then IMO you didn't have overwhelming force. To my way of thinking, overwhelming force means you have enough military to fully garrison all your own cities, defend your other borders against an attack by another neighbor while the war is going on, defeat your target's entire field army, take 3 of his cities while leaving garrisons behind to defend them, and take a fourth city, all without any major pause in action.

You definitely don't have enough artillery. As stated earlier, it's the single most useful unit type in all eras when it comes to taking cities and dealing with stacks of troops. Personally, I rarely bombard a city with only 20% defense, but once it gets to 50% I usually knock the defenses down before assaulting. Unless you have a HUGE tech advantage that 50% bonus they get can mean losing instead of winning. Remember the defenders will probably already have a 25% bonus due to fortification, potentially 25-50% bonus for defending a city (if bowmen of any type) and possible City Defender promotions. I've had riflemen/grenadiers/cavalry lose when assaulting a city held by longbows because I didn't knock down the defense rating.

When preparing for an offensive war, I try to plan ahead. Decide which cities you want to take, how many you can absorb at once without knocking your economy down in the gutter, and which you'll want to keep and which you'll need to raze. Try to build enough military to take all of those cities without stopping. Build garrison units for the ones you're going to keep in advance, and march them along with the army. Then you can take the city, drop the garrison force out and keep rolling. Survivors of the battle can pause to heal then catch up with the main force, which means you'll also need to maintain or repair the road network in conquered territory.

Scout the territory you're going to invade, and make sure you have counters for what your enemy uses. If possible, try to occupy his strategic resources; copper, iron and horses are especially important in the early game, and oil is critical in the late game. Just standing on it denies that resource to your opponent. Of course, pillaging it means he doesn't get it back just by defeating your unit. Never fight fair, bombard their stacks before engaging them. And be flexible, you may have to readjust on the fly if they come up with a previously unknown stack of troops or they talk another neighbor into joining the war against you.

[ZEE]

ok here goes...

before even starting the war, regardless of era, first get your base homeland defense secure. that generally means all border cities and coastal cities as well. get some good defenders AS WELL AS a few siege weapons and attack units to counter any surprise SoD's that might appear. then when you think you have the ATTACK force you want... do it AGAIN. then your BASE homeland is secure.

your main attack force should comprise of lots of city invaders, a few expendible scouts, some fodder, defenders for the cities you capture, and lots of siege units. also have a few fast units that can pillage squares you are on AFTER you move your main force of city raiders/siege. before you invade, have all your forces concentrated in a strategic location, so you can mobilize quickly.

go for the throat. hit the closest city to your borders if they are next to you. culture of one city can stretch out up to 5 squares so taking a border city can knock an opponent on his respective heels. if you catch them off guard they are in huge trouble. and once you wipe out that city, have the BACKUP SoD that you were building move in to a DIFFERENT spot. once you easily wipe out that city with the suicide siege strategy ive been advocating, the tide is in your favor. if you encounter field resistance wipe them out with your fodder and clean with good units. if its a SoD, hit IMMEDIATELY with your siege units. once you have control of a few cities, and resistance is futile, then you have them beat on TWO fronts.

This works different if you attack another continent or far away civ of course, but the key there is to bring plenty of good defenders to hold your ground. and continue to pump transports to your newly conquered land...

[rah]

When attacking another continent and establishing your foothold it is important to pillage all the roads next too your beachhead. Make that ai rush of seige units not be able to attack you beach head in one turn. Let them pile up next to your beachhead where they can easily be eliminated.

[Arrian]

You definitely need more than 2 catapults in your strike force, if you are after core cities. I'm thinking more like 6. You can probably bring less swords/maces, though.

One thing you may want to try sometime is a (nearly all) catapult rush. If you catch an AI with mostly archers for defense, you will do BAD things to them. You gotta do this early enough that you don't run into any longbows. Your stack will need 1-2 axes, 1-2 spears, etc, depending on what non-archer units the enemy has available, but the meat of you army can be cats. Once longbows are out, that's all over. You need Trebs to do real damage (or a ****load of cats). Cats are relegated to simply bombarding city defenses (until I can upgrade them to cannons).

Later on, I find something that really helps me is to remember to bring along a few units that are specifically intended to be the city garrisons for captured cities. So say I have a stack of 6 trebuchets, 6 macemen, 2 pikes and 2 knights. That's great for acheiving my objective of capturing cities. However, I don't really want to be siphoning off macemen to hold cities I've taken. Adding a mere 2 longbows to that stack can really help. That will let me garrison the first city with the longbows (and/or one of the knights) and move on as soon as enough of my guys are healed. Reinforcements can replace those 'bows and they can move up. My primary strike force should only be slowed down to the extent they get beat up and need to heal (having a medic is good, obviously).

...

Other random warmongering advice:

1) Whatever you do, in the early going, go out of your way to get 1 unit up to lvl3 for the heroic epic. It's hugely powerful.

2) I have taken to settling the first GG I get in my HE city. It's like being in Theocracy, without having to be in Theocracy Pumping out City Raider II trebuchets is sweet.

-Arrian

[Ming]

One good idea is to demand tribute before you attack. They may be stupid enough to give you all their money.
Then you attack. This way, they won't be able to upgrade units on you quickly

[Arrian]

Heh, Ming the Merciless. For some reason I never do that.

I do ask for "help" from pleased/friendly AI's, though, and often pick up 1-2 techs per game that way.

-Arrian

[ZEE]

when you get help from an AI your trade relations go down, and they are less friendly to you. still a good way to get tech though, i give u that...