How To Kill a Big Army

[DogCiv]

The AI likes to attack with large stacks, and will frequently send a huge army into your territory after it starts a war. The stack will often be headed towards one of your big cities on the border, taking a route through grasslands/plains squares.

One way to take advantage of this behavior is to encircle and then kill the enemy army, rather than attack it head on.

For example, in a recent game, I was playing Egypt and in the Industrial age with Infantry/Artillery/Cavalry, with Persia having similar military size and technology.

Persia attacked, and promptly sent a single stack of about 50 infantry and cavalry into my territory.

I encircled the army by destroying improvements behind the army to slow down their retreat, and surrounding it with infantry, and stacking 8 infantry in the city they were targeting (it never fell). I placed artillery 2 squares away and blasted away at the Persian army, and finished them off with Cavalry after their units were down to 1 hp.

Well, the Persians took a beating, and tried to retreat. By the time they got back to their territory (very, very slowly), they had 2 units left. I lost 4 or 5 total. After that, we were a pushover.

[Cookie Monster]

Interesting thought.

I have a question for you though. Didn't the AI attempt to send in another stack to try to rescue the encircled stack?

Most of my gaming experience sees the AI sending in 2 or 3 smaller stacks of about 6-8 units each. I have yet to see a massive 50 unit stack in any of my games but will look out for them. Meanwhile encircling the AI stacks seems to be a good idea!

[DogCiv]

when does AI send One Big Stack

This happened with Railroads and a contiguous land border.

The AI will send multiple stacks if it doesn't have the movement points to concentrate. When it has RR's, it has the ability to focus all of its offensive effort on the path of (apparently) least resistance. You see this when it attacks into your territory, as well as when the AI counterattacks to amphibious landings

What I had done was garrison mountains and hills on either side of a grassland/plains area on the border, and left two empty squares of grasslands/plains between. Sure enough, the Persians poured into the gap. Since it was my territory, they didn't get very far.

Another interesting thing is that at that stage of the game, I captured quite a few artillery units (10 or so) which can be used on the same turn to attack the enemy.

I noticed the AI can be "lured" by the following bait:
- workers/settlers
- artillery
- empty squares.

Since the first two items are valuable, I tend to just use empty squares as bait.

[Jawa Jocky]

I like to bait the AI too. I leave a city with only one unit and I leave a hole in my border defense. You know the next part.


It's a lot easier to conquer your neighbor if you can destroy their units outside of a city.

[Theseus]

Welll... I think the AI can be a little more creative than that.

My current game, that I described elsewhere as "ultra-early" war, has turned epic.

I think part of what happened was that by being so aggressive so early, I triggered whatever flag there is to increase AI aggression. The world was been war-torn till now (early 1400s AD), and although all 12 civs are still around (I incorrectly said 16 in the other post),4 are jokers, 4 are middle-weights, and 4 (myself included) are military-oriented behemoths. And everyone hates me.

I'm up to Rifleman, Cavalry, and Cannon, while the 3 other major civs, all of whom I border, have gotten to Infantry (sh-t!!!). I was still on Electricity when the following took place:

First, the Greeks showed up from the south, through German territory so they were constrained to a single attack path, with over 50 units.

Then, France showed up from the east, with four stacks but all coming from the same general direction... with over 160 units!! Thank god, they didn't attack right away, but just started marching toward the heart of my empire.

Then, as if I didn;t have enough on my hands, the Germans join the party too, with six 20+ stacks.

Just then, the French attack, 10 tiles deep into my territory!! Over a couple of turns, as I'm defending for my life, and they re-configure stacks, I realize that one of the stacks now has over 100 units!

They have all been attacking with a primary mix of Infantry, Rifleman, and Longbowmen, with a smattering of Cavs and Knights, and ZERO cannon (thankfully).

I am fighting for my life... but I haven't lost a city yet. Just need to stay at it another couple of turns, until I have Infantry.

When I am done, I'll review all the tactics I've used to destroy three huge military threats at once.

[Cookie Monster]

Re: when does AI send One Big Stack

Originally posted by DogCiv
This happened with Railroads and a contiguous land border.

The AI will send multiple stacks if it doesn't have the movement points to concentrate. When it has RR's, it has the ability to focus all of its offensive effort on the path of (apparently) least resistance. You see this when it attacks into your territory, as well as when the AI counterattacks to amphibious landings

What I had done was garrison mountains and hills on either side of a grassland/plains area on the border, and left two empty squares of grasslands/plains between. Sure enough, the Persians poured into the gap. Since it was my territory, they didn't get very far.

Another interesting thing is that at that stage of the game, I captured quite a few artillery units (10 or so) which can be used on the same turn to attack the enemy.

I didn't know that. Interesting...........thanks for the advice. I would like to try this out in my current game.

[Theseus]

OH MY GOD... the French have BOMBERS!!

[Coracle]

Originally posted by Jawa Jocky
I like to bait the AI too. I leave a city with only one unit and I leave a hole in my border defense. You know the next part.


It's a lot easier to conquer your neighbor if you can destroy their units outside of a city.

Yea. Baiting the stupid AI military has gotten too easy. You can do it in various ways: leaving resources, workers, or bombardment units undefended; leaving unoccupied a path to one of your cities across plains - a great killijg zone for your counterattacks; and other things. What is really bad is the AI keeps repeating the same errors and doesn't learn.

That's why Soren's AI sucks.

[Tuberski]

Wow, just like civ 2, eh Coracle?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Coracle



Yea. Baiting the stupid AI military has gotten too easy. You can do it in various ways: leaving resources, workers, or bombardment units undefended; leaving unoccupied a path to one of your cities across plains - a great killijg zone for your counterattacks; and other things. What is really bad is the AI keeps repeating the same errors and doesn't learn.

That's why Soren's AI sucks.

I'd like to try the Coracle AI, I'm sure it is much better than Soren's and can learn and close those exploits.

[Tuberski]

Hey, asleepathewheel, don't you feel like you are beating your head against the wall with Coracle? I sure do.

He never backs up his statements. Just whines and leaves.

Why do we bother?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Tuberski
Hey, asleepathewheel, don't you feel like you are beating your head against the wall with Coracle? I sure do.

He never backs up his statements. Just whines and leaves.

Why do we bother?

I don't know why. He just flames and runs. What a pus. I don't I've ever seen him respond to a critisism of his criticisms. Probably because he can't. I would like to see his AI though, since Soren's sucks so much. (face it, he's probably 13 in his parent's basement. seems to have poorly developed social skills)


On topic.

I have faced a large army or two in my time. once, army of immortals moving towards me. I countered against his cities in the North. I also moved warriors near the stack at different squares, so when the immortals attacked, the stack would be fragmented, easier to take on. rinse repeat. MW's save the day (again

[Theseus]

Given, the Soren and Coracle AIs are incapable of learning.

However, let's not assume that the AI now has one battle strategy (big stacks, mostly of footsloggers).

In the epic wars taking place against the proud Egyptian people, the Greeks asked for peace, and got it (@$$@#@#@!). Now the goddamned sons-of-*****es have re-entered the scene... but with a new twist. They came in from the northwest, through France. This time, they are wandering around my territory, without declaring war, in hunter-killer packs of 2-3 Cav. They are VERY conveniently always within 3 moves of one of my cities. This while I chip away at the now 100s of French.

It's actually been a big problem, as I have been leaving many cities empty while dealing with the French scoundrels. Now I ahve to balance out my defense, to make sure that no empty city is too tempting for the French [edit: sorry, the Greeks] to declare war.

I'm exhausted.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Logistics and Economics

Theseus,

Any idea how the AI's in your campaign are doing economically ?

I just finished a Regent level campaign that saw the might Egyptian Culture produce the Spaceship by Y2000 and never fought a war:

When I finally did get my spies in place, I was astounded to see how many units the AI had: from about 16 cities, the Indians had 162 Mech Infantry, 5 tanks, 1 Bomber, and 3 ICBM's at the top of the list. The rest were legacy units and always at least one unit that starts their GA. The other 2 major civ's, the Babylonians, and Japanese had similar totals. Only the lowly Greeks who were down to 6 cities had about 55 Mech Infantry and a fistful of Subs.

All the civ's were Democracies, and the unit costs were over 300 per turn. I was having problems keeping enough units (50 Mech Infantry, 25 Modern Armour, 50 Artillery) to maintain their respect (thank god for us having at least 2 Artillery, 2 Mech Infantry, and 2 Modern Armour per city and the Frontier Guard's Mech Infantry and 2 Artillery unit firebases) and not go bankrupt while building the spacehip.

The logistics appear to be unmanagable since trade will only get you so much. And I made sure the Egyptians were getting most of what the others had for spare cash (about 100 gold/turn on average) I know the research was me versus the world most of the time, so that explains how they kept up in technology, but how the heck did they pay for all those units ?

[planetfall]

Theseus,
Don't forget to give us a review of the game's progress and tactics that help. This seems like a real nightmare and all too common when you have a strong civ.

I presume all civs are refusing alliances and probably have trade embargoes.