1000+ year war

[W4r_Machine]

I'm new to Civ3 so I don't understand much of it.

I've been playin' as the Romans most of the time and I noticed that my troops are being picked off by enemy soldiers like children eventhough they have a much higher A/d/m.

I switch to playing the Aztecs as they seem to be doing the greatest damage and better at culture flipping enemy towns.

Now my problem comes when I start expanding my territory. Playing as warlord, and owning most of the island I can't seem concquer the remaining Babylonian in my continent. It has 3 garrisoned soldiers[spearman(2), archer]. So I sent 3 swords man, 2 archers, 3 catapults, 2 horseman, and 2 knights and a warrior. Some vets, ellites and regular.

Everytime I order them to attack they get killed as easily as if they only have 1/1/1. On top of it, I have isolated from every civ and destroyed all improvments arround it. The city is still growing and continues to replace the units I have manage to kill. At one point, their spearman killed 2 knights and 3 swordsman.

The war started at 350AD and by 1435AD all civs are at war with me.

[Lucilla]

The defensive strength of the units is higher than their normal value, because the city protects them. You also have to keep in mind that the attack / defense values only tell something about probability, they don't predict the exact outcome of a fight.

If a unit survives an attack, it might get promoted. So the regular spaerman you failed to kill in the first attack, might be veteran in your next encounter.

There's a civilization calculator on the net, that shows you the different factors and lets you calculate the probability of winning an attack (thanks to Theseus for the link).

[W4r_Machine]

So you're saying that for the past thousand years and who knows how many turns, the AI civ has been lucky. I've sent waves after waves of attack but o no avail.

Yes, enemy units do get promoted to elites when I failed to kill 'em but one unit winning against 2 elites knights, 4 vet. swordsman, and 1 vet longbowman and 2 vet warrior is ridiculous. All this in one turn.

[Lucilla]

I can understand your frustration.

Forgive me, if I'm asking a stupid question: Are you sure they have only 3 garrisoned soldiers[spearman(2), archer] in the example you mentioned? How do you know, did you use a spy? If you can't view unit locations you will always only see the unit with the highest defense value in the city. In the field you can see the number of units and their type by right-clicking on the visible unit.
If you kill lets say a spearman in a city and there is a second one inside, that will be displayed next and that might occur to you as if it were just produced, but it was there all the time, just not visible. I might be misunderstanding you, but is this a possibility?

[W4r_Machine]

Sorry if I was not clear the first time.

Extra Info.
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What I did basically was rush the Babylonians out of "my continent. I concquered their expansion town: 2 of them. Then I did the threat thing: my forces approach you city thing so I got 30 gold peace treaty and some technology. I then set up an embassy to their capital(the last town). That's how I know the # of garisoned units. I did thid very early on. I then sent archers and swordsman 7 in all but got plowed. To add insult to injury, only one unit was left defending the city with half it's life and promoted to vet.

Bombardment of the city doesn't help iether--they don't work. 9 out of 10 times the bombardment fails.

Now, I can't send an attack forced big enough to kill the blasted thing because all civ are at war with me.


Which then leads me my other Question.
Why is it that everytime I meet a new leader It's annoyed and wants all my gold and map eventhough their civ is much weaker than my Civ. And when I try the same tactic all I do is anger them even more or they declare war against me.

Thanks for you help. I'm fraustrated to hell and it's only the warlord level.

[Pythagoras]

Originally posted by W4r_Machine
Sorry if I was not clear the first time.

Extra Info.
---------------------
What I did basically was rush the Babylonians out of "my continent. I concquered their expansion town: 2 of them. Then I did the threat thing: my forces approach you city thing so I got 30 gold peace treaty and some technology. I then set up an embassy to their capital(the last town). That's how I know the # of garisoned units. I did thid very early on. I then sent archers and swordsman 7 in all but got plowed. To add insult to injury, only one unit was left defending the city with half it's life and promoted to vet.

Bombardment of the city doesn't help iether--they don't work. 9 out of 10 times the bombardment fails.

Now, I can't send an attack forced big enough to kill the blasted thing because all civ are at war with me.


Which then leads me my other Question.
Why is it that everytime I meet a new leader It's annoyed and wants all my gold and map eventhough their civ is much weaker than my Civ. And when I try the same tactic all I do is anger them even more or they declare war against me.

Thanks for you help. I'm fraustrated to hell and it's only the warlord level.

Well your information based on that embassy is probably hundreds of years old. Might want to hit the 'e' at the bottom right and do 'investigate city' just to make sure.

[W4r_Machine]

I did a spy on the city and it had 4 garrisoned units. I need to mass my conscripts just to defend myself from all the other civs--oh well.

The funny thing is babylonians are managing to send troops out of the city to my units outside.

[Lucilla]

Ok, some comments. They don't explain why you lost so many units, but might be of help anyway:

Originally posted by W4r_Machine
Sorry if I was not clear the first time.

Extra Info.
---------------------
What I did basically was rush the Babylonians out of "my continent. I concquered their expansion town: 2 of them. Then I did the threat thing: my forces approach you city thing so I got 30 gold peace treaty and some technology.

So far you did win your battles, didn't you? Making peace at that time was a good tactic to get some money and tech and then take the time to retreat and recover.

I then set up an embassy to their capital(the last town). That's how I know the # of garisoned units. I did thid very early on. I then sent archers and swordsman 7 in all but got plowed. To add insult to injury, only one unit was left defending the city with half it's life and promoted to vet.

As Pythagoras already said, there might be quite some time difference between the information from the embassy and the time your archers and swordsmen reached the city. The AI will have built as many units as possible, to get a good defense, and if there's no road between your cities and his territory your movement might be quite slow. The roads in your enemie's territory don't give any benefit to you at all.

Bombardment of the city doesn't help iether--they don't work. 9 out of 10 times the bombardment fails.

True, that's why I use artillery very seldom. The more modern units are better, but anyway, bombing isn't fatal, so you can't kill units with it. You only weaken them or destroy city improvements.

Now, I can't send an attack forced big enough to kill the blasted thing because all civ are at war with me.

Which then leads me my other Question.
Why is it that everytime I meet a new leader It's annoyed and wants all my gold and map eventhough their civ is much weaker than my Civ. And when I try the same tactic all I do is anger them even more or they declare war against me.

It's difficult to estimate whether they are actually weaker. The other civs apparently have good relationships amongst each other, so breaking up with one of them, causes a break with the others as well. Together they will always be stronger than you.
Entering another civ's territory without right of passage will always annoy the enemy. If that's the first contact and you retreat immediatly afterwards, they might forgive you.

A good tactic would have been to use the peacetime to build up more attack units, before you re-start the war. The AI gets very annoyed if you negotiate peace and then break that treaty within the 20 turns it's lasting. Not only the civ you're attacking will be pissed, but also the others won't be amused.
Nobody will ever trust you again and it's not likely that you will be able to have good relations / trades with the other civs soon.
Your enemy will be happily trading with the other civs, which gives him a major advantage.

Thanks for you help. I'm fraustrated to hell and it's only the warlord level.

I don't know whether you played Civ2 before, but the strategies in Civ3 are quite different. It's not that easy anymore to conquer civs and have long lasting wars.
I sometimes have games that start very aggressively, and I'm attacked soon by my neighbours. Even if I survive this, the whole tenor of the game will stay like this. But if you manage to keep peace in the early game, it's more likely that you can conquer them later. First benefit from trading techs and resources, build up good relationships and a good army, then you can go to war. Even better if you can provoke a war without declaring it yourself.
When I see that the game turns out to be aggressive very early, I sometimes just start a new one.
With some practice and maybe some reading in the strategy forum, I'm sure you will be managing the warlord level soon.

[W4r_Machine]

Very helpful post Lucilla. Thanks. Yes, I did break the treaty rule. The babylonian stronghold was only 4 tiles away from two of my cities. I can reach their city in one 3 turns.

Anywho, I got my butt whopped by Rome and Greece. MY econmy fell and I can no longer support my army. Workers should have the ability to whack with their shovels eventhough it wouldn't do any damage. That would be funy to see non the less-lol

Thanks again.

[Lucilla]

Your welcome
Glad I could be of help.
I got kicked around in the first games as well.