How to survive Stone Age armies

[GePap]

As many of you know by now, there is a sometimes vicious debate over HP/FP going on, involving at least 4 threads. Well, i am not addressing this issue here, only the startling (well, for some of us, not that surprising) results of an experiment carried out by N. Machiavelli (for reference, look at N. Machiavelli's first post in Dmc507's thread in the general section about hit point [this is part of the title] before really moving on). This experiement made me think: How can a poor sap like me, who has spent hours using my treasure & time building up an advanced society survive the blitzkrieg from a dormant stone age rival who has spent the last few millenia building up? It may be hard after the invasion began, but it is possible. Here's how:

By the time you are in the late industrial age, regardless of difficulty level, you should have at least 10 core cities with enough shields to make a horseman in one or two turns. You should also have a RR net to move armies to where they are needed. Now, I am talking about horsemen because by this time you have nationalism, so the glory days of warriors or spearmen are over(was this intentional? did Fixarians predict N.Machiavelli's results?) and there is no going back. After you cut your supplies of iron and saltpeter though, you can make horsemen again (if you lack horse, trade the iron or the saltpeter for it- remember, at this point they are an impediment, not a plus. But you do need horses). So, begin building horsemen in all your cities. At this point you need no more science, or a minimum at most, so send all your money to the treasury-and becomee communist, since again, science is a non-issue. In a turn you should have 10 new horsemen, ten turns, a hundread, a hundread turns, a thousand! Obviously you may have some older, 'better' units. Keep them-the more the better-and use them for defense. Your ever growing mass of horsemen will be your mobile reserve and eventually, turn into the horde you will unleash upon the world (and if it could be done by warriors, horsemen would do it mcuh better). You at this point may ask, why not use tanks or cavlry? Are they not so much better, with one tank worth many horsemen? I think most would agree (including both sides of the HP/FP debate) that while a tank may have 8 times the attack power, it is not worth 8 horsemen, just a cavalry, with 3 times the attack power, is not worth 3 horsemen. The point here is for numbers, and you will build far more horsemen far more quickly than tanks or cavalry. Again, in a hundread turns you should have at least 1000 horsemen, if not twice that, with dozens pouring out every few turns and your economy should be able to handle the upkeep- though your CPU might not handle the overload.

Well, i hope this restores some faith to those of us who for some reason decided to create a CIV instead of a mass of units to pound our enemies to bits

[player1]

Re: How to survive Stone Age armies

Originally posted by GePap
The point here is for numbers, and you will build far more horsemen far more quickly than tanks or cavalry. Again, in a hundread turns you should have at least 1000 horsemen, if not twice that, with dozens pouring out every few turns and your economy should be able to handle the upkeep- though your CPU might not handle the overload.

And you empire will colapse becouse of high upkeep costs.

Plus, big cities can give you a tank in 2-3 turns.

[player1]

Still a agree in Horsemen vs Cavalry debate (2 vs 6),
but not in Tank vs Horsemen (16 or 24 vs 2).

[dexters]

Well... fortified units have 25% defensive bonus, not including any terrain bonus they may receive. So if you're a bit too proactive and try to take down fortified enemy units, you'll find yourself losing superior units far more frequently than if you fortify your units and let them attack you. Thus, I feel
the strategy discussed is pointless. The Quality vs. Quantity is not obsolete. I've been rushed a lot by the Aztecs and their legions of Jungle Warriors, especially in the early industrial age when my burgeoning American Civ needs to exercise its manifest destiny.

What you do is to array your frontline with fortifications, staff it with your best defensive unit, preferrably riflemen, but if your low on cash or haven't researched the tech to build riflemen, go for pikemen, swordsman as your second options. Just remember to maybe have 2 units defending instead of 1. Also, by this time, you should have cannons or artillery--catapults, I'm not a big fan of. They are innaccurate and clumsy. Space them out in nice even invervals so that most, if not all of your border is covered by the cannon /artillery fire. When war starts and the enemy rushes you, bomb them as they move in. The AI will usually pick a weak spot to attack, so I usually have a second force of cannons/defensive units I can rush in behind my lines to take care of the overflow of enemy units moving into my territory. Remember, the enemy can't use your road system, so even withour Railroads, you should be able to rush in troops intime to provide additional fire support. Effective bombardment will force enemy units to retreat, which can buy you time to build additional units. You can go two routes here.

One route is purely defensive, bomb the incoming units to reduce their numbers as damaged units will retreat to heal. Whatever unit is left will likely attack your fortifications or your cities and they will more than likely be killed--you might get a few unit upgrades to veteran/elite as well.

Or you can play an agressive role, and pick off damage units as they come in. You'll need more units defending your forts so that you can keep your artillery/cannons protected as you move units out of your fortifications to pick off the damaged enemy warriors/longbowmen/archers/jungle warriors.

You may also want to set your secondary impromtu defensive line further back, giving more time for your cannons/artillery to bombard, and more time for you to move troops to intercept and pick off the enemy.

I stress here that bombard units are extremely effective both in defense and offense. Don't cheat yourself by not using them. In Civ 2, catapults and howitzers were sort of useful, but the improvements in civ 3 with the introduction of bombardment as an attack type changes the use of these units. They have no defense and can thus be captured or destroyed immediately when they come in contact with an enemy unit. So they need escorts. But a stack of 5 artillery can mow down even the most heavily fortified cities. And they are perfect for defensive lines.

[GePap]

Based on the experiemnt

To dexter:
Loosing lots of units is immaterial to this strategy since you will have endless more behind-besides, your horsemen get to retreat most of the time and bombardment can't kill, so you till need to whittle down the mass. I am also not talking about facing the A.I. doing this, since the A.I. would NEVER stop advancing technologically to build an amy of 400+ warriors. Yes, it keeps around old units but it still advances technologically and never keeps an army that huge.
The point of the excercise is to state the following. Let say you have 3 inf in each fortress with 4 artillery and 2 tanks. Thats a lot, but I am attacking with ENDLESS masses. We all have experienced those strange combat results, so even if I loose 30 warriors you will have still at that point lost your 3 inf and a tanks and the arty destroyed. Repeat this for the rest of the line since the numerical pressure would be the same everywhere. I may loose an exponential number of units higher than you but I can afford it, not you. In the end, after some VERY LONG turns, I would still win just with sheer numbers vs your very good strategy. This is what so many of us are rebelling against-the power of %'s multiplied by the hundreds.

to Player 1:
It takes 1 gold per unit and many times I am spending 2000+ on science. If I put all of that in my treasury i could afford a 2000+ army, especially of horsemen.

[Jason]

The limiting factor is upkeep, not production. I fail to see how even with 0 science, you'd be supporting more than a few hundred 2 attack units. Additionally if there are water barriers, it would be difficult to transport the hundreds of units needed to do anything.

If you're saying only a total of 200-300 units but continuous attack, I'd just say look at supply issues. As well, since your units will also be failing to acheive much very fast, the opponent has the opportunity to attack you where you're vulnerable, your cities, with a normal force of artillery, high def and high offence units.

Innovative thought, but I'll believe it when I see it implemented

[dexters]

Yes, upkeep is indeed the limiting factor. And it is preferred that you don't go for a balanced budget, or in other words, 0 gold earned per turn. You need to build that warchest for emergencies. In wartime, it is easy to burn through 8,000 gold by rushing improvements here and there to meet your strategic objectives.

to GePap, I wouldn't build tanks for defensive purposes because they are offensive units. I also highly doubt the AI will have the economy to support 400 units, unless your playing the largest map. I'm playing a 180x180 map and I've just hit 360 units in the early modern era, which is comperable in numbers to my closest rival. No one has more units than me.

The point of your strategy is to overwhelm their numbers with your numbers. And I estimate at most they'd be rushing you with the bulk of their entire army, which will likely be around 200 units, maybe less or more if the AI goes on deficit spending and put their cities on wealth. But that's a loss to them, not you.

To me, that's highly inefficient. You need a defensive line that will hold, and if you want to attack them, send a contingent to take key cities, raze them and watch them beg for peace. You can turn stoneage civs into your ass buddy, aka Vassal state this way.

As for fortifications, I'm not saying build only one. every so often in the length of your border. Depending on how your terrain is, you can have secondary fortifications on hills and mountains. It doesn't cost all that much either. All in all, you can have 30 to 40 units defending your border, and the rest you can hold back as reserves to feed into any opening in your borders that needs plugging or for use in attacks.

The idea here is not to move your artillery. They can bombard, they don't have to move, and you should fortify a rifleman /defensive unit to protect them. A fortified rifleman will receive 25% bonus from being fortified + 50% from the fort =75% defensive bonus, without any terrain modifiers. By the time your artillery is through with the incoming forces, those that don't escape in time, usually with 1 or 2 hp can be finished off. And trust me, in their "attacking" state where they are likely not fortified and are moving toward your cities, your more advanced forces can cut through them like butter. Very little of that warrior kills rifleman thing. Those units that somehow escaped your bombardment won't be available in enough numbers to challenge your fortifications or your cities. You can have offensive units mopping up in the back end of your defensive line to deal with stragglers and any full health units that manage to get pass your bombardment.


In general, especially in regions where the rival civ's road system connect to yours, you will want to build forts right on the road itself, because more than likely, the AI will use those roads to move their troops into your territory. And in those areas, you pack your forts more tightly together so they can provide covering fire for each other. This strategy can be a highly effective buffer. If you destroy the enemy army, the AI will have to build more units. it's a battle of attrition, and the AI can't win. Because while they are wasting resources replacing lost units, you will be building an army to invade their territory. you're growing your army while theirs is shrinking.

Of course, you can play this purely defensively. If you're a pacifist civ with a militaristic bordering Civ, its a good way to take the wind out of an attacking army as their units won't get very far.

The caveat to all this is that you actually have to plan ahead. If you play aggressively, and the border stabilizes between you and a rival Civ, build forts right away and begin to move units to occupy them. The biggest mistake I made in my first game was declaring war without fortifying my borders. I had jungle warrios come down on my bordering cities that it sent my Civ reeling because I could not send reinforcements in time.

To the latecomers who are interested in what I've done, Read my first post for a more detailed explanation of how to defend your land borders. I've summarized the idea in this post so it probably won't make as much sense as it should.

[GePap]

The fatal assumption

Let me repeat again that this is not a strategy that the computer would ever carry out- the example I give is that of a strategy devised by a human player in an experiment he conducted (N. Machiavelli) in which his midless horde of warriors, 400+ strong, wipped out 5 late industrial age civs in monarch level.
Dexter- you also make a fatal assumption in that I would seek weak places in a line, seek to use roads, try to use the fastest route, heck, that i have any coherent strategy whatsoever other than throw a horsemen at you evey time, anywhere, with an endless horde, knowing that eventually, because of the current combat system, the %'s will work in my favor and I will eventually, inexerably, win. The only counter with the system as is, it seems to me, is to have an even bigger horde, so that the %'s will work for me, not the other guy.

[dexters]

I mispoke. It seeks weak cities, its been well observed. And because of the nature of how we play games, weak cities tend to have weak border defenses.

So i assumed both are equivalent. But yes, if you have a weak city with 1 defender or no defender, fortify the city with units and make sure the border is strong

[Monoriu]

Even though I am a defender of the current combat system, GePap does have a point.

Upkeep is not an issue. I have built a 300 unit industrial army and I can still easily afford to spend 50-60% of my income on science AND I still get a surplus. If he switches to 100% tax, he can easily maintain a vast 400-500 army with a fiscal surplus, especially under communism. Plus, under his strategy, his units will die a lot, keeping unit upkeep down. Heck, if he only fights one AI civ at a time and maintain good trading relatinonship with the other AI civs, he can easily take in a lot more money by selling techs and luxuries.

GePap, have you tried this out yourself?

Obviously, we should not allow a game system that allows a player making 400 warriors to overwhelm 5 industrial powers. However, let's keep in mind one thing GePap: more than the combat system is wrong if what you are saying is true. It involves maintanence, AI, production cost of units, and a lot others.

[dexters]

Well, its not the combat's systems fault if 400 units overwhelms a small advance Civ. The Chinese have use their numbers to overwhelm the technically superior Americans in the Korean war. Sure, they suffered horrendous casualties, but they were able to give MacArthur and his army a run for their money.

There is nothing wrong, gameplay wise with this. If a player has no foresight to produce high-tech high quality units in some numbers, he can have the best unit for all I care, but if he has only one of them, it won't save his cities.

Hence I feel the strategy as really a brute attempt at overcoming a simple problem. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it does look like it is a)inefficient b) is very costly for a civ. If your enemy have numbers, make sure you go for quality units but also with heavy emphasis on quantity. you may not be able to match his numbers, but you'll certainly have enough to fend off his attacks with units to spare to launch attacks of your own. The border fortification bombardment defense I described puts this assertion to the test and has proven to be versative, cost effective and brutally efficient in cutting down invading armies before they even get near my cities.

Further more, a medieval unit attacking a fortified industrial or modern defensive unit, either in fortifications, inside a city, on terrain with defense bonuses or simply a fortified unit out in the open, can suffer massive casualty rates. Thus, the combat system isn't really broken, it tends to favor defenders, as it should.

[Monoriu]

For starters, I love the combat system. I think fun is more important that realism and I have no problem with a spearmen defeating a tank once in a blue moon.

The questions that we are facing, are:

1. Is it true that a civ can make 400 horsemen or warriors, and rush them to defeat AI industrial civs?

2. If (1) is true, should the game mechanics allow such a tactic?


Its like its POSSIBLE to sell a luxury to an AI civ for a lump sum, cut off the road on the luxury squre the next turn, then rebuild the road and sell the luxury again..... its possible, but I consider it a cheat and this practice should be disallowed.

What about making 400 warriors to crush the AI? Personally, I don't think it should be a valid tactic, otherwise what's the point of getting technology? If it is true, the GAME system (not just the combat system) should be tweaked so that there is a reason not to use such a tactic.

The point is, there needs to be a reason not to use such a tactic, and so far I haven't thought of any. Upkeep cost is not a limiting factor, money is too easy to come by in this game especially if you sell techs a lot.

All that, is assuming that 400 warriors CAN beat 5 AI industrial level civs. I have read N. Machiavelli's original post and it seems that he got himself in a very specific situation (starting off on an island in a pangea map, probably on a small map). Let's hope nobody else can repeat that.

[GePap]

A worthwile tweak

Beside adding FP (all of you know by know were I am in that issue) I think a valid tweak to the game, which, goodness me, allows both for more realism and to prevent such things as N. Machiavelli did from ever happening again, is to place a limit on the amount of units that can be supported by civs of certain ages. One of the greatest limits to army size in the ancient and medeival ages was the fact that there was not much surplus labor around- all hands needed at the farm, basically. A huge army meant that huge numbers of farmers were taken out of production for long terms. A very long war could lead to starvation since less people were at the farms. One of the reasons landowners gained such power in Rome is that since so many men were always away from home, their farms became impovrished and the families had to sell to survive.

I say that a civ in ancient or medeival civs should be limited to an amount of units double their total poplulation point. If you have 10 cities at 6, thats 60 points or a max of 120 units. That is still alot of units- and I doubt that many in those ages reach those sizes, but it would be a limit none the less that would prevent N. Machievellian moves . Also, with it that high few would complain. (personally, I would set it at the number of pop. point or even less, but most gamers would howl at that). Obviously the limits are increased for industrial or modern since they can trully mobilize.

As for whether N. Machiavelli's results could be duplicated if he were, lets say, on the continent, I am not sure, but if he built a strong defense, (ala dexter's) he could probably still move to amass huge masses of horsemen (better than warriors if he were on the continent) and repeat the outcome. That is why things may need to be changed.

[dexters]

Well, it can be argued as a legitimate strategy.

The Mongol hordes have no significant culture. Unlike the Romans, Persians, or the Chinese, they did not even register as a great cultural, scientific or economic power. They were infact not barbarians, but an Empire of nomadic tribesman united under the leadership of Ghengis Khan who migrated into Europe in search of more open spaces for the tribes to roam.

It conquered most of China and its reach extended to Eastern Europe. The empire collapsed after I believe 200 years after the death of Kublai Khan.

So yes, if you want to create a horde like civilization that reign terror on your enemies, go for it. But I suspect the strategy could be limited on pangea maps.

[Monoriu]

I don't want to say anything more until somebody can replicate that sort of result.