Attrition

[Cort Haus]

Good thread, Blaups

[Hauptman]

It's all about planning for this sorta thing ahead of time, especially with shaka on your border.

When it comes to ending a war, you MUST knock his power down, cities can do this, or just tear up his units. He refused to accept a white peace because he knew he had that super stack on the way. Had you done some seriose damage to it before taking peace, you might have been able to keep all the conquered cities. But like you said, you were worried about loosing promoted units, and sometimes that's a better plan than keeping some culture pressed newly conquered city.


As far as jungles on your border... Baaaaaad idea. Chop all but a select few wich get forts. Toss in some decent but cheap defensive units into those forts (i try to keep 3 to 4 per fort) and you will be amazed at the damage they can do. I've had super stacks march into my lands, see a fort on the way, attack it, waste all thier siege on some longbows, then turn the attack force right back around and go home.

The perfect forted border keeps forts within 3 tiles (for mutual cover) placed preferably on a wooded/jungled hill. Giving the units an undamagable 100% bonus. Add in the longbows innate bonuses with city and hill defense and it's quite formidable well into the gunpowder era. Once the AI attacks said fort and blows 6 or more units to kill (or not kill) your units, the other forts can send in more reinforcements to protect your attack units wich can now move into that fort and counter attack the now wounded invader. Ive purposly stopped expanding in a direction because i had this sort of defensive line settup in countless games. Border forts are much better to poses than border cities.

[Blaupanzer]

Not a big fan of border forts. Is it their irreducability that attracts? Forts on resources where a nearby city is not ideal (incense) or cannot be built because other cities across the border are too close make emminent sense. I try very hard to remember to keep units in them.

Ultimately Shaka appears to have a slightly longer attack cycle than that idiot Monty. In the game noted above, Shaka is my vassal. That stuff gets old. Unit preservation has been important to me because 3 civs are vassals of Monty, and I am the tech leader. So far when he attacks, I take vassal cities until he yields. He sends a fleet load to land on my coast each time, thus I need good units thruout the back part of the empire. Those stacks die instantly, but must be allowed for.

[Ming]

I would probably build border forts if Civ IV had zones of control. But since it doesn't, I see the AI just walk past them sometimes without wasting themselves on them. In Civ II, you could put a a single defensive unit in a strong defensive position, and watch the AI destroy themselves on it for thousands of years... Not so in Civ IV.

[rah]

But back in II the fort was important because it stopped the kill stack thingie.

Yeah, I would like to see forts and cities have ZONE of control. I think that would be a good compromise. Of course if they did we would probably see AI fort spam again.

[Blaupanzer]

In mid-game, post railroads, the AI puts a chain of forts on every other tile if no city can work the tile. Makes for weird looking placement if the border expands in either direction. My builder-first style creates lots of culture so my cities push the edge. Similarly, the creative civs up against each other can end up with little clusters of forts in desert border areas.

That one-on, one-off for forts in tiles seems to imply an alternative to ZOC. IF my expanding border eats these forts and I bother to man them, I've learned to put in one or usually 2 strong defenders and connect rail to the forts from my close-in cities and scrub rr/roads on the tiles between them. The invader usually passes between. This leaves the SoD in contact w/fort whether moving 1 or 2. That way I can hit the invading stack passing between the forts with units from the appropriate nearby cities. Any wounded survivors are covered by the forted defender(s). In effect, bypassed forts become counterattack launch points.

[rah]

Similar to the real world. It's not good strat to leave an opponent strong behind your advancing units. With retreat being more difficult being overrun was a very real posibility.

[Blaupanzer]

Apparently it is difficult to program the AI for a knife-like breakthrough. It always tries for a hammer insertion and a breakout followup. When the AI has the numbers (100+ stacks), then this is designed to foster the loss of one or more human cities simply for lack of a sufficient counterattack. However, post railroads, unless the human has either totally ignored or diverted the military, this attack will result in defeat-in-detail. Pre- railroads, the AI's overwhelming presence at the site and his cutting off reinforcement paths guarentees at least one city will go down and may escalate to additional cities.

[rah]

Even after railroads if you empty all you units from one side of your empire to repulse that killer SOD, you might find yourself the victim of another AI before you can recover.

[Blaupanzer]

Yes, as you take your standard 3 units per city to two and then to 1, the other AI begin to sense an opportunity. This is especially true if you turn vassals off as rah and I do. The AI who is half your power senses a chance to get well as you siphon your reserves to one corner of your empire, a corner far from him.

[rah]

Yeah, I had one where I was +15 so I figured it was worth the risk to strip the defenses from that border. BUZZZZZZ, wrong answer.

[Blaupanzer]

Yeah, even the "nice" civs recognize weakness on your part as an opportunity on their part. Don't ask me for a list of "nice" civs, as in relatively trustworthy civs, because the game is based on aggression. However, in some situations, some civs are more trustworthy than others. Only capitulated vassals can be relied upon not to attack. Even they will enable harm by offering only token resistance to invaders, who then show up at your less defended borders.

[rah]

This was early on when I didn't know about the Native Americans yet.

[slnz]

At Friendly (real Friendly, beware if you have vassals) no Civ can start to plan a war against you. They can start plotting if they drop to Pleased even for a single turn and declare at Friendly later. Most Civs can't even do this at pleased. Some can be bribed to DoW you at Friendly and all can DoW you if they take a peaceful vassal that you're at war at.

Your military power doesn't actually factor into this too much. There's a threshold which, if you exceed it, makes them not to declare on you. It's quite high though and it's very hard to exceed it especially on higher levels.

[rah]

So the joke becomes, why bother.

And usually the most friendly is your closest neighbor since it's more like you share a religion and have traded blah blah blah.
When it's time to expand by the sword the closer civs are usually your target
You've been a wonderful friend, but I want your land