Strategy

[Arnelos]

mrmitchell,

the only problem with creating an UBER-Maginot Line (the Maginot Line reference was mine, btw - I was referring to using hte tactic in a single-player game as Spain fighting the MUCH LARGER England ) is that it would be prohibitively expensive in workers and units.

[DAVOUT]

You begin the Maginot line with units, and you progressively reinforce the line when you can and when you know better what are the most sensible points.

[Arnelos]

The problem with a Maginot Line in multiplayer is that a human player will be smart enough to build up a huge stack of mobile units and just poke a hole in one area of the wall... meaning that all those units you have ringing the rest of your empire are far away and not terribly useful on the front that now matters.

It's honestly more sensible to keep the bulk of our forces as centrally located in our empire as possible. Then we can use our defensive mobility advantage to speed large numbers of defensive troops to form makeshift maginot lines in front of slow oncoming enemy stacks (and do so relatively quickly).

However, as mentioned before, we will have to be VERY CAREFUL to watch out for diversion attacks... this is going to be tricky. This is why all cities should ALWAYS have 2 veteran defenders behind city walls whereever possible (that's insurance against being caught off your guard - it'll at least slow the attacker down).

[DAVOUT]

We cannot generalize on that subjet, it depends a lot of the terrain.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Celts? Who chose the Celts? GS are still dithering to a degree, but GoW chose China.

[GeneralTacticus]

Where was this announced?

[MrWhereItsAt]

It hasn't been - just wait and see.

[Arnelos]

China, eh? That's more dangerous than the Celts...

[History Guy]

Oh dear. The Chinese. We'd better watch out here.

[Nuclear Winter]

people, are you all sure that China is worse than the Celts?

*Thinks for 2 seconds and remember about the riders and the Ind/sci traits*

Hmmm, this just doesn´t sounds good!

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by History Guy
I agree with Ninot and Arnelos where the Celts are concerned, but...we must not build on hills. If we build our cities on hills, we'll be in the Ancient Age when everyone's in the Industrial Age, and the Middle Age when everyone else is in the Modern Age. Building on hills is folly!

why is it folly? you are no longer penalized food-wise for building on them (let me say again another way, you still get the same 2 food bails in your center city tile), and unless it is the only hill in the city radius, mine the others; you won't miss those 2-3 shields until the city is size 20. And odds are, if you got a reduction to 60 shields a turn vs. 63 a turn, you can still build a 120-shield whatever in the same 2 turns... so you haven't really lost anything. But you gained a free 50% defensive bonus for units in that city.

[astrologix]

ruby_maser

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Nuclear Winter
people, are you all sure that China is worse than the Celts?

*Thinks for 2 seconds and remember about the riders and the Ind/sci traits*

Hmmm, this just doesn´t sounds good!

I share your concern.

[Ninot]

Although what civ the other teams pick will be a factor... worrying about it wont make US better.

cmon guys, some solid strategizing

if we are gonna be facing the speed of the riders, a defensive wall can only last so long. We would have to fight with a mobilized defense of the same nature.

[Nuclear Winter]

Ninot, I agree with you that we must make plans in advance. We seem to have two schools of strategy thinking. Comparing this to post WW1 france,the first one would be Petain´s France: Building a sort of a Maginot line and another, Morle Charles DeGaule oriented, in favour of building a sistem for a fast counter attack instead of a barricade. Even if it covered the whole french frontier, the MAginot line probably would have failed... there are very few defences who can withstand a perseverant and well prepared attack force. if you are defending, the best think you can do is sit and pray the enemy won´t get a lucky strike. Let´s take for example arnelos defensive line. If you could get to break through the first casemate( and with a good attack force you can break through 2 infs and 1 art) and fortufy inside of it, you could keep this ``hole`` on the wall open time enough for the bulk of the attacking force to go through and wreak havoc on the almost nude cities!
Of course this is in late industrial. This would be much worse in ancient/medieval. A maginote line before having units with area of control would require one casemate for each frontier tile! Well that is just plain impossible!!! This is, without considering frontier growth and all...
IMHO, we should have a decent stack in cities as to minimize the effects of a surprise invasion (losing less cities, even though losing them, then taking our strong attacking and fast moving divisions to attack those bad-in-defense, non-fortified, without the use of roads and without capacity to heal units (at least until the small wonder battle medicine, wich is far away) of the enemy, seizing the opportunity to retake our cities and luckly enough take a good piece of the enemy´s territory !
Just another historical example,when germany started to think like France, and concentrated their efforts in the Atlantic wall, an useless giant, that was crumbling apart even before the invasion started.
Learn with our ancestors´s mistakes!