Unwritten Laws

[JP Jonesy]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Are you losing due to (wiped out by opposing civ), or due to (opposing civ gets to space) or somesuch? That makes a big difference.

Wow, thanks for the replies, gentlemen.

Lost two diplomatic, and the last one I was invaded by a huge stack of cannon and cavlary. I had only six infantry a piece in my three border cities- and although they all had the second city garrison promotion it was a matter of time and they marched on my capital.

The Civ that invaded me was in the lead, however, the diplomatic points between each other were overwhelmingly positive (same religion, gifts, fair trade, etc.). You never expect your friends to turn on you.

I suppose the reason I don't build beau coups of soldiers is I'm secretly afraid of the maintenance costs.

Allright, back to the game, looks like the computer has picked Alexander. So, tons of Phalanx, right?

[rah]

Since I usually use the no vassel option, I really don't want to talk to an opponent, I want to totally eliminate them so most of your negatives for razing don't come into play for me.

I do slightly disagree with you comment about city placements in BTS. While the ai has slightly improved it's city placement, it's tendency to favor hills still means the placement is not optimal, and the AI still builds too many junk cities just to create cities.

[Unimatrix11]

JP: i dont know how big the stack was, that attacked you, but generally speaking, it´s most times not the best idea, to defend yourself by having your troops sit in the cities. What you do, is to assemble a nice stack on your own. So you had 6 infs in 3 cities each. Make that 1 inf in each city + 15 in a stack, add a couple of cannons to it and go get him ! Do not promote your units, until it is needed (e.g. city garrison only when the unit will probably be attacked the following turn and if it stands in a city, city raider when you are about to storm the enemy city and so on) - dont promote when there is no immediate use (which includes the additional healing sometimes). So out of your 18 infs, probably none should have been promoted yet, and thus 15 could have recieved a useful promotion right before counter-attacking the enemy stack... In summary: You need a standing army in addition to city defenders, and not too many of the latter (more in coastal cities actually) and consider the timing and choice of promotions carefully.

If you fall to far behind in military, anyone will attack you, even your closest friend. How far you have to fall behind for this depends on your relations and the AI-personality (some are more aggressive than others - read their civpedia-texts to get hints - or just google their names and see how they acted in real life). Use the demographics screen to see, how you do militarily - if you are at the bottom there, it is definetaly time to reinforce asap. I also heard (and it makes an awful lot of sense), that the AI decides to attack at one point, but attacks at another (later, duh!) time. So you might be past your point of minimum military and think that you got away with it, but really the AI has already its troops on its way to you, because it DID decide to attack you when you were so weak...

[Felch]

Originally posted by pedrojedi
I must say that specializing the cities is, for me, by far the most difficult rule to engage.

I keep building everything on almost everyone of them.

I'm with you on this. Also I tend to promote my units as soon as I build them, and I go for Wonders I don't really need. I'm not the perfect player, but I have fun with it, and that's the important thing.

[Unimatrix11]

Yeah, i tend to ´under-specialize´, too. But spreading out your defences is really easily avoidable. What counts in war is local (!) superiority and if you try to fight the invading enemy by having your troops spread out, sitting in the cities in order to defend them, you will never achieve that and thus never win a battle. Get there fastest with the mostest. Thin, spread out (and passive) lines of defenders may be good to prevent smuggling (which is not in the game), but are also a good recipe for desaster in war.

On the defence, though, you dont need a stack sitting around either: The AI is pretty predictable sometimes - often it is obvious which city it is going for. So you position your troops in a way that as many as possible are able to strike the tile you believe his stack will be on next turn. Dont assemble a stack right in front of his nose in preparation for a strike the next turn, cause he will pummel it with siege weapons (colleteral damage). Remember you have a movement advantage over the enemy on your own land, since he cant use your (rail-)roads.

Thinking about it, one could call the invader in a civ-war the strategic attacker, but the tactical (field) defender, and the one who is being attacked is the strategic defender, while the onus of attacking at a tactical level is clearly with him. Generally, when being attacked, you want to chase the enemy from your lands asap, while when you attack someone, the only combat you want to do, is taking his cities and any extra-battle is a detour that you need to take to get there. The attacker tries to get his stack through to the enemy cities and take them, while the defender tries to wear down and eventually destroy this stack before it even gets to his city. Urban battle is only a last resort, or done to stall the enemy, but usually the city is pretty much doomed if the enemy reaches it with sufficient cohesion and is not being counter-attacked by the time the defending city´s defence level has been bombarded down to zero at the latest. So counter-attack is a must. And you better do it en masse, because the more units engage in battle, the more likely it is, that you actually score kills on his city raiders, after maybe only having wounded the tough stack defenders (eg the counter-unit to the one you are predominantely using for the counter-attack).

[pedrojedi]

Originally posted by Felch


I'm with you on this. Also I tend to promote my units as soon as I build them, and I go for Wonders I don't really need. I'm not the perfect player, but I have fun with it, and that's the important thing.

[joncnunn]

I think I covered that under #3 (City extremely badly placed)

Originally posted by ColdPhoenix
I'd agree with joncnunn after adding a fourth instance to raze, when going for a conquest victory and additional cities would weaken your economy.

[joncnunn]

I didn't say the AI BTS city placement was optimum, I just said it's more likely to be "good enough." (And I'm also explicity excluding the Barb cities which are much more likely to be in outright horrid spots)

There is the hammers (and food used as hammers) cost of building a settler to consider along with that city could have been building something else.

Now when the city in question is too be raized without a direct replacement since it's close to other cities your keeping, the oppertunity costs of raizing goes away.

Originally posted by rah

I do slightly disagree with you comment about city placements in BTS. While the ai has slightly improved it's city placement, it's tendency to favor hills still means the placement is not optimal, and the AI still builds too many junk cities just to create cities.

[rah]

Understood, and that's why I said I slightly. It is better but i still think it over emphasizes the hills.

[Mace]

I guess they programmed the AI to do that for defensive purposes. It does make it just a little more difficult for us humans to conquer their cities...Longbowmen + hills caused me grief in my last game.

[joncnunn]

I think what's going on with AI choosing to found cities on hills where a human would found on plains (in SP) is complementing the AI defensive strategy. The AI is much more likely to use citadel defense than a human.

I did find it noteworthy in both the Civ 4 MP Democracy Game and the Civ 4 MP BTS Game that humans do sometimes value the defense of a hill over the economic disadvantage that tile had vs a flat plains tile. The humans though do so only in what they know are choke-point and/or border cities. The poor AI though doesn't have a good concept of where the border cities will be and thinks when it's founding every city it's a border one.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Mace
I guess they programmed the AI to do that for defensive purposes. It does make it just a little more difficult for us humans to conquer their cities...Longbowmen + hills caused me grief in my last game.

See seige weapon advice above. Any defense position can be whittled down. Will end up throwing away several catapults/trebuchets/cannons to weaken that hill position enough to facilitate your assault. I often make sure I have at least 12 assault units as well, as the AI seige weapons sometimes cause collateral damage as much as six deep. That way I have 6 fresh assaulters before I have to risk the lightly wounded.

[Ming]

Unwritten Civ4 Law

Always bring more attacking units than you see in the city you are going after.

The AI is good at reinforcing cities (if it still can) and whipping. One of it's key defensive strategies is to have more units than you have attacking.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Ming
Unwritten Civ4 Law

Always bring more attacking units than you see in the city you are going after.

Shouldn't that be "than you think you need" ?

A 1:1 comparison doesn't work for some units that aren't able to kill (siege, medic scouts, etc.). Also, with blitz that messes it up too.

The underlying advice is good though... bring more than you think you need.

[Ming]

Originally posted by wodan11
A 1:1 comparison doesn't work for some units that aren't able to kill (siege, medic scouts, etc.). Also, with blitz that messes it up too.

That's why I said "attacking" units... meaning units that could kill. I was going to post "more than you think you need', but that seemed kind of "infinate" to me, because I always think I need more units. And sometimes, you end up waiting too long to build those "few extra" units, and your window of opportunity closes