How to survive Stone Age armies

[dexters]

It is theoretically feasable, and the game I'm playing have at least 15 major industrial cities close to my captial / forbidden city that can make units en masse.

The question is, whether you'll have 100 peaceful turns to build that many units. All you need to do is build an average of 10 units per turn to get 1000 units.

[N. Machiavelli]

I agree that this strategy was very difficult to do, and was heavily reliant upon many things to actually accomplish. For one thing, the Pangea map was very important, but not the deciding factor to this.....'surprise', numbers, and pressure were. As I stated, the map itself was kind of interesting, it was one super-continent with a smaller island off it's western shore. I happened to start on that island (why there were 2 land masses on 'Pangea' is another question). Simply transporting the endless stream of troops the 3 squares to the mainland was a long and tedious process as was coordinating the troops. It simply wasn't moving masses out from your cities across roads, I had to actually move troops out of my measly 7 cities to the other shore. So you could (in theory at least and at great cost to your sanity), move such formations across the sea if there was and island chain for your galleys to reach every shore, or you tweaked the Lighthouse wonder to never expire. The only problem would be that you would have to build even more troops....

The entire reason why this strat was even possible was constant pressure. I had each of my 7 cities building a Warrior every turn, and likewise, I had 7 warriors landing on the coast every turn after my initial horde landed. My initial landing was concentrated in one area by 200 galleys and 400 Warriors (exactly). With reinforcements landing every turn, and no stopping other than to heal what units survived combat, I continued unabated. The primary thing I was relying on through-out this entire thing was the 'crazy' odds that spring up every now and again. There were actually cases of Warriors attacking a Panzer and killing it without losing an HP. This only happens, say one out of every 50-100 times, but multiply that by hundreds, and you get some wacky results happening 'frequently'.

I do not think this 'tactic' is really a serious one to consider using...it takes a great deal of preparation, and you need to be committed to it every long, long turn. I know I am never going to realistically use this strategy outside of testing purposes...it took all the fun out of the game by making it a heck of a lot longer, tedious, and it confined me to a single doctrine for the entire game. That wasn't the point of doing it.. it was to prove that since all combat in Civ3 is played by 'loaded' odds, you could win by nothing other than sheer numbers. No culture, no diplomacy, nothing....numbers.

This is why FP is a way to help this out a little. By the Civ3 combat system, attack/defense does nothing more than decide the 'odds' that a tank and a warrior will hit one another. The tank supposedly has a much better chance of hitting the warrior than vice verse. However, regardless if whether it's the tank's 105 mm gun, or the warrior's axe, the only damage given is 1. This means that all the warrior needs to do is aim REALLY carefully and his thrown axe will deal the same damage as a 105 mm cannon. FP changes this by stating that the 105 mm cannon deals a heck of a lot more damage than an axe, regardless of what the 'odds' are that it will strike the guy. Whether he hits or misses, the explosion is just as large. Giving the tank a FP of 3 shows this fact.. if the tank hits the hapless caveman, it'll blow him away in one or two shots... not 4 or 5. Likewise, it'll still have the Warrior technologically inferior by noting that even if Fate smile upon the little fellow, and he somehow hits the tank from a few hundred yards off, his axe is still not going to hurt a tank that much. With all damage being equal, war can bog down to attrition like in WWI; only instead of equal units (riflemen vs riflemen, machine gunner vs machine gunner), you have Warriors vs tanks. Even with FP, the above results could still have been theoretically possible, but would have required somewhere around 10-15 times as many warriors....I shudder thinking about the amount of time it'll take one turn to end in that game.

Regardless of all this, when the attack phase was actually under way it was neat to see the sheer quantity of troops surrounding and destroying otherwise superior enemy fortifications.

[jack_frost]

Anyone know how upgrade costs are determined?

Using this type of strat could be devestating combined with unit upgrades if the costs for upgrade aren't dependant on build costs (or are lower then the gold -> shield conversion rate for production).

Pumping 5 warriors a turn for 40 turns while keeping 100% tax then upgrading all 200 to swordsmen could be devestating.

[barefootbadass]

I think upgrade costs are related to shield difference, but I haven't bothered checking myself to be sure. Anyway, building cheap units(by denying some cities resources) and upgrading may be a very powerful strategy if you have leo's workshop, in fact, coincidentally, last night I started thinking about all the kinks in that kind of strategy when I accidentally lost(temporarily of course) some resources and had to build cheaper stuff.