A defensive line tactic

[geofelt]

In a couple of games, I did well by founding a city at a choke point near a rival. This position was reinforced over time by building up the quality of the defenders. The ai kept sending in units wandering all over the place, and I was too weak to threaten war over removing them. I used the useless warriors to fill in every square allowing access to my terririory. I expected them to be cannon fodder for an attack, but it never came! In time, I built fortifications with strong units. I suspect that the ai will not attack individual units outside of it's borders to start a war. I have seen this phenonemon more than once. You do need to cover every passage, or the ai will slip past, and this may take a number of units.

[Cookie Monster]

Interesting idea

[monkeyman]

Re: A defensive line tactic

Originally posted by geofelt
In a couple of games, I did well by founding a city at a choke point near a rival. This position was reinforced over time by building up the quality of the defenders. The ai kept sending in units wandering all over the place, and I was too weak to threaten war over removing them. I used the useless warriors to fill in every square allowing access to my terririory. I expected them to be cannon fodder for an attack, but it never came! In time, I built fortifications with strong units. I suspect that the ai will not attack individual units outside of it's borders to start a war. I have seen this phenonemon more than once. You do need to cover every passage, or the ai will slip past, and this may take a number of units.

Yeah, this works until they get ships...then you have to fill the whole continent with grunts to hold territory...The Iroquois did this to me once and built a city right next to my capital. I'm guessing in early game they have less inhibitions about doing this, but the result is the same, the city was mine in 10 turns...

The question is, is it worth the outlay of shields to hold the territory just so you can have a large corrupt empire early game ? Or, does the corruption hurt your production in the inner cities more ?

-mm

[planetfall]

It works, but not best use of resources.

The AI will stop for both warriors AND workers. Don't waste early game time by having a line of warriors. Consider a flex strategy. Warrior space warrior..., or warrior space space space warrior... for front line. Second line ready to fill gap are workers {working now naturally} and horseman.

What is fun to watch is close the line just when settler pairs get there, AI returns. Wait til they are about 2 moves away, and reopen line. They will come back, close again..repeat until clean. Actually this does gain you, while AI thinks land settling is available it is slower to settle via ship. May save you 20-40 turns. Somewhere on this forum are many older threads about this.

For coastal areas later, you don't need to file every tile, but at least the "neutral" tiles between cities. I haven't seen AI land in city recently and then move out to settle. I did once, but no longer. Don't know if I am more careful about my lines or what.

Note, sometimes you WANT the AI to settle, especially when settling poor land by sea.
Let the AI build the improvements, then when
declare war don't pillage. You will gain roads, mines, irrigation and maybe a few workers and city improvements if fast enough.
Rather nice to have them build the city for me. Even better is to have the AI city succumb to a "culture bomb" {your culture influence} and revert to you. Fairly easy to do if city is far from foreign capital and you have cities developed close.

[Saint Marcus]

I usually fill choke points with warriors too early on in the game. When I've taken up all the good spots I reopen the gate to let AI settlers build some new cities in deserts/tundras that I will annex eventually anyway (conquest/culture/demand).

[monkeyman]

My latest game I had a "choke" point of about 10 tiles, but only 3 warriors. I was able to catch the Iroquois settler-warrior pair and do a sliding wall thing, forcing the enemy to pace back and forth just a lot of fun to watch. Fortunately, the Russians on the same continent never sent settlers until I was more ready.

It seems like an exploit to do this type of thing, but then, a human player you could warn off and they might be more reasonable, so there's really little way around it...

-mm

[asleepathewheel]

Its too bad that there isn't a Patrol option for units that would automaticly do this for you, but would probably be difficult to program. Or they could perhaps abstract this by the player paying a certain amount per border square that you wish to be protected, and if it was penetrated, war would ensue.

[rpodos]

Actually, the pre-cursor to Civ, Empire, had great patrol functionality, with waypoints even. particularly useful for air and naval units.

R

[monkeyman]

Well, SMAC had waypoints and patrol and ZOC, so it's not like it's really advance functionality... Really, there should be something where if an enemy unit enters your ZOC and your unit is on patrol or alert then you should have the option of challenging the interloper and the interloper should then decide if he wants to challenge you or not. Of course, perhaps ZOC IS implemented already, and your ZOC is the tile you are in...

-mm

[Inverse Icarus]

yes. scouts are good for blocking / herding peaceful enemy units.

[planetfall]

Now that is an interesting idea. Herding with scouts. I have not played civs with scouts. Will have to check and see which is cheaper, horseman or explorer. Yet another use for limited value unit. Good catch!