Planning for war - how do you do it?

[EternalSpark]

I've never been a combat-oriented Civ IV player, but I'm trying to prevent a near-inevitable boredeom I get in a game by pushing military actions earlier before any enemy is really entrenched.

The problem? I've never really known how to 'set up' a war ahead of time that really works efficently. Here's what I currently do:

Preparing Stage
1 - Decide whose cities I want
2 - Switch my older cities's production to a quasi-equal mix of City Attackers and Seige Weapons.
3 - Wait X turns, where X is the amount of days needed to build those units
4 - Wait Y turns, where Y is the distance between the production cities (usually farther away from my enemy due to age) and the cities closest to my enemy
5 - Repeat steps 3 and 4 a lot of times
6 - Position them outside of their territory, declare war.

Then, the war itself:

Attacking State
1 - Move up to enemy city
2 - Bombard and attack with siege weapons to reduce defenses and collateral damage until the City Attackers (early on, Swordsmen usually) can attack with a good chance to win.
3 - Take over city
4 - Move entire army inside until the city until the Red-Fist-Thing-Whose-Concept-I-Can't-Remember thing goes away
5 - Wait until my previous border cities have created a Defender-Type unit
6 - Move that Defender unit into the new town.
7 - Move out army to next city, repeat.

The problem is that this is slow, and unless the bulk of their stronger cities are in a row or close together, the time spent going back to take the smaller cities down either causes war weariness to set in hard-core, and/or makes my newly-acquired cities to be under attack by the other "rows" of enemy cities.

Now, is there anything I'venot thought of that I'm doing wrong? Because compared to some comments and posts I read, I'm doing something really wrong and/or slow.

[Cyclotron]

It shouldn't be necessary to use your entire army as a garrison. Better to have a Medic unit or two with your stacks so they can heal up quickly and you can continue the offensive before your enemy can recover from the initial attack; have your cities produce a few defensive units to follow your advance and provide occupation forces.

The other important thing is to not stop producing units until the war is over - you enemy certainly isn't. You want the advance to gain momentum and strength, not slowly peter out in a series of long occupations and the gradual loss of units without reinforcements.

[MoonWolf]

Ever read Sun Tzu? Surprise and speed is the key if you attack an equal or strong enemy. I often try to go for an important city or a city I can use for a beach head. I prefer to move my troops to a adjacent hill and/ or forrest for the defense bonus. With BtS, spies are awesome to put the city in disorder (the red fist) the same turn you'll attack as all defensive bonuses will be gone.

Huge attacks, I normally only do in modern or industrial times. I do follow the same strategy, put make sure I have enough defenders to fight off the first counter attacks. The enemy has often a quite large army that will try to retake the city. If an AI declares war on me and I'm not prepared to fight in it's homeland, I try to land some good defenders the. The AI will then be busy with trying to kill those defenders and might also do so, but will hopefully lose quite a few units making them "waste" their army. I might also do this prior to an invasion for the same reason; soften up the enemy's army.

But all-in-all, I feel surprise and speed are important. If you can afford it, invading the enemy from two directons/ fronts can also give good effects.

[TriMiro]

I will also enter a cycle of war - peace. Declare war, get 1-2-3 cities, sign peace and get whatever I can get. If the AI is at war, it will produce units like crazy. If we are not at war, then the AI will not be making many units, while I will be resupplying/healing my army. Then wait 10 turns and attack again. Also I do not have to deal with war wariness between the surges.

[Ming]

Another strategy that works in certain situations is to declare war on the AI, and just sit back and watch the fun. The AI will create a SOD and send it into your territory... where you can then take advantage of your roads to land to destroy the stack. Since it's on your own turf, you save on WW... and then just gut his cities after that because most of his mobile troops are dead, and he has very little left to defend his cities.

[rah]

If the AI i'm attacking hasn't been at war with anyone for awhile and it's one of the more aggressive personalities, I'll do what Ming suggests, and take out his SOD on my turf. Since you know they've been preparing one. Mopping up afterwards isn't as costly in terms of WW or loss of troops.

If I move to attack I'll try to jump as many cities as I can in the first few turns after the DOW. Along the border and if it's later in the game, at least one sea attack at their core where they're weaker. The AI is much better at whipping troops now. The first few turns are critical because that's when the AI is switching civics and finishing off existing builds and switching to units. After that any city at risk will be whipping units. If you can take a handful of cities quickly you can make it difficult for the AI to build enough troops to respond. And any mobile force you don't eliminate can't possibly respond to all the different attack points.

And then there's the controversial, bait strat, where you send in a stack of obsolete units on good def terrain (especially resources) to tempt the AI to come out of their cities and waste units killing your bait. Then follow up with your real stack.
Pro's - AI will waste some good units and you can strike before said units have a chance to heal completely. Put those obsolete units to use and helps your maint when they die.
Con's- AI units get cheap promotions and are tougher to kill. Obsolete units used for happiness under herditary rule.

I'm in the camp that I'll only do that if I have enough obsolete units that there's a chance some will survive and accomplish a predetermined goal besides just being fodder. I'd rather use these troop as sap units in the first wave against a tough city to nick the best defenders prior to my premier shock troop attacks.

[snoopy369]

My main strategy is always speed and overwhelming local force. Substrategies include rah/ming's suggestion of blowing away their stack and then moving in (and this works on humans also, don't forget...), and razing/pillaging with fast horse units to either draw their defenses out (make sure to pillage the road also so they don't get to move back into the city) and also to reduce their ability to wage war in the future.

Speed, however, is always key #1. An enemy that has time to plan will be able to counter your attack unless you have truly overwhelming force; and you won't have that generally if you're playing at an appropriate difficulty level.

You need to bring enough force to take out the first city - preferably, cities, 2 or 3 - in the shortest possible time (direct transit time). IE, if you have a border that allows you to attack the city in at minimum 2 turns, you need to be able to take it in 2 turns, allowing for reinforcement and rushing units.

When you're moving in, as said above, leave only the minimum units in the city necessary to prevent it being recaptured. It won't swing back to your opp unless you are playing with that option set; if you're in an area with a third culture you may need to have a few more units, but the time it will take for it to revolt and flip to another civ often will be longer than the (meaningful) duration of the war.

Keep moving forward, and keep going after cities. Be aware of the force structure you brought, and what units are most likely to be lost; replace THOSE units, not just the most powerful units. If your force is trebs and grens, it's tempting to make all grens as they're more powerful; but you lose mostly trebs, so you need to replace those primarily. You'll do a lot worse with a stack of 10 grens than with 5 grens and 7 trebs...

[Hauptman]

Time your attacks to come with next generation units. If you do this, that is rush research to civil service/machinery, you have a huge advantage that can lead to an easy war. Granted many ai's will have longbows at this point, but that can be countered with a few extra catapults.

Keep your units devided into 3 mental unit types.

Type 1: These mainly include your city raiders, or main stack defenders. These units, do not loose. Make sure they survive and build up experience. Loosing a city raider 3 macemen should NOT happen, if the odds are close enough you can loose the unit, your doing it wrong.

type 2: Garrison and other defence units. Usually built up of units you carry with your stack that will get left behind to garrison cities as you cature them. Also may include that random pikeman or two that follows your force not to attack, but protect you from a roaming unit attack.

type 3: Throw away units. These are the units that you build to die. As well as fresh soon to be type one units. If your city attack 1 maceman dies, who cares. Catapults, trebuches, horsearcher/knights etc... Sacrafice these units, to protect your real units. Super stack coming at you??? Throw catapults and horsearchers at it, and laugh! Who cares if you loose them, because these are the majority of replacement units coming up from the rear.

A well defended city wont kill more than 3 equal siege engines generally speaking in averages. Keep that in mind and keep an extra supply just in case.

[Ming]

Just remember... Don't be afraid to lose units. Just make sure you lose the right units.

[Crossfire]

Do you usually bombard the city to Zero before attacking?

[Ming]

As required... it depends on many factors. In some cases, it isn't needed. If your units are that good, and the opponents aren't, why bother.

In some cases, you don't have the time to do so. I'm willing to lose a few units to keep things moving along. As many have already pointed out, speed can be critical.

If I bring enough extra seige units along that I can afford to take down the walls... cripple some units, then take the city all in one turn, I'll do so.

And in some cases, if the defenses are really strong, you have no choice but to take them down unless you want to lose way too many frontline units.

Many people lead their advances with spies, and let them put the city in revolt as the army shows up.

It really all depends on the situation.

[Robert]

If you have a visual on the entire map of your enemy, search for the strategic resources. See if you can easily destroy their tile improvements. Imagine fighting an enemy that has no iron or bronze....

If it gets it resources from other civs, try to end these deals. Remember, you can try this from two sides before you declare war!!

[Ming]

True enough... removing the strategic resources EARLY in a war will limit their ability to whip the "right" kind of units. Usually, you start seeing a lot of single cats walking around after that

[Solomwi]

I'll second a lot of the things said above. As snoopy said, speed and local advantage are crucial. A 200-unit SOD on the other side of the world doesn't help him defend the border city where you've concentrated your invasion force. In an invasion, like rah, my short-term goal is to take as big a bite out of the enemy as quickly as possible. Taking cities, however, stretches your defenders, so if I know or suspect that the enemy already has a significant second-strike capability, I like to destroy that before commencing the invasion. In any situation, the preparation makes all the difference.

Choosing a target - Consider more than just the quality of the enemy's cities. Consider his proximity to you, and any geographical advantages/disadvantages you'll have or have to deal with, as well as the geopolitical situation, expected resistance and desired/available composition of your invasion/local forces. Once a likely target is chosen, you can devise your plan of attack.

Choosing a time - It's usually not necessary to have everything in place before invading or declaring. Especially if you're invading at the opening gun, you can let some elements catch up while your stacks are healing or moving to the next city. A steady stream of reinforcements will often make your stack(s) considerably stronger at the end of the operation than they were at the beginning. Remember, every turn you don't attack is a turn your enemy can use to strengthen his defenses. This is particularly true in the ancient era. On the other hand, you want enough force concentrated at the point(s) of attack that you aren't trickling them into certain death.

Executing the invasion - Speed, speed, speed, for all the reasons mentioned above. After a battle, you'll have units all over the place in terms of health. If, say, four of them can heal fully in 2 turns and the fifth needs 5 turns, don't keep them all fortified for five turns unless that last unit is absolutely crucial to attacking the next city.

Plan for garrisoning the cities you plan to take. This can either be by stacking a few defenders with your initial force and supplementing the garrison with defenders in the reinforcement stream ( both newly built and moved from other parts of your empire). Ideally, you'll do a bit of both if you didn't have the defenders on hand to begin with. Waiting to build enough to garrison each city unduly delays your invasion, and not having enough at the start to garrison at least the first city you take does the same.

Use medics. This not only speeds up recovery in newly conquered cities, but, perhaps more importantly, triples the rate of recovery in enemy territory in the event of coutnerattack or siege (undesirable, but sometimes necessary). A WIIIMI medic bumps the rate to 30% from the 5% without medics. Sometimes multiple turns on a city are needed to make up for a lack of numbers.

Commando squads - One of my newer favorite tactics is putting together a spearhead of units with the commando promotion. If they're 1-move units, an explorer medic/supermedic can keep up with them in enemy territory. ASAP, I also give them March, then C5, for the extra 10% healing in enemy territory (total of 40% healing per turn with a supermedic). I usually don't accomplish a force of any size like this before riflemen, and the units won't have CR promotions, but once 3-4 such units are gathered, they can quickly and ruthlessly exploit soft spots and tech advantages. They're best used on cities close enough to the border to allow a defender to be moved in upon capture, or to reduce garrisons and let a slowmoving force actually take the city. Settling GGs in a WP city helps to get this force up and running. This tactic works best with Boudica, since it only requires 13 xp to get commando, as opposed to 26 without Agg or Cha.

[Lord Avalon]

ES, do you plan on having a city specialized for military production from the beginning?