Me against the world.

[kolpo]

I had beaten down the 2 other civs on islands near me and have now the biggest empire. I discovered a big continet west of me inhabited by the french, the russians, the english, the chinese and the germans. My abassador told me the Enlish still guarded there cities with pikemen while I had cavalry technolgy. SO I thought "this is my chance!".

I builded galeons and cavalry and sended +/-30 cavalry. I expected an easy win BUT the chinese and the russians had a mutual protection pact and activated it, the frenc had one with the russians and also activated it, the chinese also had one with the Englisha nd activated it(even while they also had one with me) even worse: they seemed to have a rights of passage with each other and a good railroad connection over the whole continent. As soon as I took an English cities was I first attacked by tons of russians cossacs, after that by English cavalery, after that came the chinees ,near and after that by french calavry and I saw masses of there other troops comming near for teh enxt turn. I saw the English started to build riffleman in there cities and even inf! At the same time became the war warriness on my continent so big that I started a revolution because nothing indicated this war would end soon. Everyone refused to speak with me.
result: in a couple of turns lost I all my cavalry and all cities I occupid there, I managed in a last breath to raze 2 english cities and that was the end of it.

Now are there ships nearing my coastlines , bombarding the improvements and cities there, and I'm just waiting for the first galeon to come to my continet where some cities are still defended by warriors. So I think I will now have to change my strategy to defense and build tons of inf and maybe also the military academy so I can defend the coast cities with armies of inf. Every form of succesfull offense seems me currently impossible, I even don't know I will survive and now comes the humilating part: It was on WARLORD difficulty

So does anyone know how to still win this? I don't want to have the humilation to lose on warlord difficulty! The AI at least wars better then in civ2

Edit: I'm currently also locked up in mobilization.

[Laertes]

You can assume the AI will try and make a beeline for your most weakly defended cities. However, if these were to be inland, you can do a pretty good job of stopping them on the coasts.

As you say, you need to build a bunch of defensive units. If you really are in a rush, use some money to upgrade. Upgrade your warriors to swords, as they will be able to hack down some horsemen.

Make sure your cities are all linked by roads, if not already, so that you can move scarce strong units between weak cities.

It is worth rushing barracks in lots of cities as well, so that when attacked, surviving units recover in 1 turn.

Assume that the AI will eventually make stacks of 8-10 units. But because he is coming on boats, he will have to land in 3s and 4s. Have some more cavalry around to attack and deplete these units as soon as they land.

Protect your strat resources, get some infantrymen on them.

Try and get the tech for the first metal boat, ironsides or whatever it was called, and build a couple fo vets to sink the ships before they arrive.

Try and get somebody to make peace and attack one of the other AIs. In my experience at warlord, all AIs immediately retreated when attacked at home. Thus would get you out of mobilisation too.

Good luck

[vmxa1]

Post a save so it can be evaluated for the possible paths. For inspiration read So Very Cold.

[PrinceBimz]

Kolpo, ugly situation there, now I don't feel so bad afterall...LOL. I normally play on Regent level, but you can still get in trouble on Warlord depending on your situation. Anyway if you haven't already checkout my thread here about my previous game...http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=63373

I think the best way to stop them from landing troops on your land is to sink their ships before they get there. Its not a matter of "if" they will do it, its a matter of "when". Especially considering there are many advanced nations you will be dealing with. Drop your science down to 10% or even 0 and put whatever you have used there into entertainment. Make sure you can spare enough for taxes because you need funding for this war.

Next, start production of navy ships and defensive garrisons. Look towards your biggest and most productive coastal cities, preferably with harbors and start the naval production in those. If you can upgrade any of your current garrisons then do it in as many cities as you can afford. Mainly the most threatened ones.

As soon as you get some vessels out of the docks then get them to the seas and coasts. Open fire on any enemy ships you see even if you barley have a chance of winning. Sometimes just damaging them is enough to send them back to their port. Try to at least damage some and mainly look for those transports!

Probably nearly impossible to stop all the ships from making a landing, but the more loaded transports you can sink the better. It also may be a good idea to get some cannons setup in your nearest coastal cities as well. Good luck!

[Golden Bear]

Hmm, my one word of advice is artillery

You're in a tough spot if you are low on cash and/or low on technology and infrastructure. But, I have managed to turn back some huge onslaughts with a combination of artillery and cavalry (or ANY decent offensive unit).

First, the best idea IS to find an ally on the other continent that will declare war and cause the attackers to turn their ships around.

Second, your best defence is to sink the transports.

However, assuming that you are in a hole and that neither are possible, try to defend with strongholds. An advantage that humans have vs. AI is that we can concentrate our force better. Figure out where the troops are aimed to attack (which city), run your artillery in there (do you have RR? that may turn the trick for you). Use the artillery to weaken the attackers and then counterattack with your offensive units from inside the city against weakened units. Never kill the last unit in a stack. Be active in your defense, but never leave any of your scarce and valuable units exposed. Heal when you can, but attack with unhealed units if they have enough strength to beat the defender- you are playing at the margin and need to use every edge and resource you have.

Usually, once you have demolished the initial wave of attackers, the AI has problems building up forces again... they will sent units in piecemeal. So hang tough during the first "wave" attacks. Make them pay for every advance they make. Also, those artillery will drive away the ships bombarding your shores since you can knock them down to 1 health and they will run home to heal.

BTW, when I say use your artillery, you may need 10+ units if you are going to be on defense for a while. Arty is not too useful for attack, but if you are under assault, they are really handy against troops and ships.

And BTWno2, I do not see much talk about cruise missles around here, but when they are available I keep a big stockpile of them around since they can sink ships and dig MI out of cities.

Good luck. Post a save.

Carlos

[kolpo]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Post a save so it can be evaluated for the possible paths. For inspiration read So Very Cold.

Here is the save file. Another important detail: Only domnination and conquest victory are active.

[jshelr]

Sounds like you are in great shape to me.

If you have a RR network finished you have no defensive problem to speak of. The AI rarely mounts a massive sea invasion, in my experience anyway.

The advice about artillery above is great. A combination of twenty arty, more is better, and some units to make the final kills virtually makes an AI sea invasion into a target shoot that will generate Great Leaders for you. Bombard them down to the red line.

Be sure to plant units on coastal mountains, and even coastal hills. You want the AI to land on squares without defensive bonus.

Winning will be your next step. Patience. The AI will tire of fighting with you and start fighting with each other. Use diplomacy to encourage that behavior. Even some gold for bribes would be well spent.

[Arrian]

Step 1: Build some infantry and garrison all coastal cities with at least 1.

Step 2: Build some artillery, say 10-15 units. Bombard anything that approaches the coast, and if they land troops, concentrate all fire on those units.

Step 3: Build some Cavalry in order to kill off landing units. I would suggest about 10.

--mobilization is good for now, as it will help you quickly accomplish steps 1-3.

Step 4: What jshelr said about diplomacy. Get a couple of civs out of the war via bribes, and concentrate on the others. The moment you make peace with someone, you can drop out of mobilization if you wish.

Step 5: Get out of the war entirely and try and out-tech the AI. Get Tanks ASAP.

Step 6: Put together a new invasion fleet: transports loaded with Tanks, some infantry and artillery, protected by battleships & destroyers.

Step 7: pick the weakest AI civ and prepare to attack. Note that "weakest" includes checking if they have MPPs with stronger civs. To the extent that you can call in allies, do so.

Step 8: After destoying the civ you picked in Step 7, pick another. Continue until you win.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

You already have some good advice. As you can see invasions are not easy, especially with calvary units against cities that have even rifles, let alone if they have better units. I do not like to do that with out tanks. They need to win the fights and not be wrecked, so they can defend counter attacks. I do not recall if you said how you got into anarchy, but with all the unhappy folks you have, it is going to be a bugger. Once you get past ED, at monarch and lower, I prefer to do my own research, so I can get in the lead and get ToE and Hoover before they do. You do not even have ToE under construction. I know you got sand bagged with MPP and are now at war with nearly all, but you needed to prevent that and now need to get some civs on the sidelines.
The military has enough units to make the advisor view you as strong, but many of them are acient and worthless (warrior/swordsmen) and a lot of unupgraded spears and pikes. You have lot of cash that is not doing you much good, if the units were upgraded, some of those civs would be inclined to leave you alone.
I would not have wanted to get into a war until I had my RR connected to all the cities on the land mass. To that end I see some cities with all tiles RR and none to other cities, this suggest automated workers. At least take control of them until the RR are up. You probably need to do a personal touch on the citizens to get the unhappiness down and insure that they are productive. I see some cities with max pop, and people working on food tile, while mines are unworked. This is in a city that is building units. Look at the cities to see how many tiles are irrigated and mined and of them how many are going to be able to be worked. You do not want improvements on all tiles in a world were you have no larger than 12 citizens. You do not want to make more food than you need at the cost of shields. This is the price of automated workers.
Once you are in the running for tech lead, you really need to go all out, as much as you can afford on reseach, sometimes even going negative.
I would retrench here and get my RR up and upgrade units, get the research on to tanks and defend until I have tanks and transports.
One more thing, you have no cities in the top 5. I forgot the level you are on, but that should not happen below emp at this point in the game. The AI got way too many of the wonders, unless this is Deity. The low shield production is the reason. I would also suggest a look at the city layout. I like to see a pattern in the early ones to optimizes tiles, little bit of over lap. Not massive gaps on some and many tiles shared on others. Good luck

[vmxa1]

kolpo, any chance you have a save prior to going into anarchy and mobilization? It is just too depressing to not being to control the cities. It looks like it can be saved though. I grabbed control of all workers and units. I started to make RR to connect the cities. One island that had 13 cities (houston/st lou) only had 2 or 3 workers for the whole place. Shufled off some calv to the small island that has a greece or persian city (why was it allowed to stay around?). Moved all sea borne troops homeward. To tell you the truth, I would go back to before the invasion and not invade until I was ready ala Arrian suggestion. The MPP and RR is just too powerful to attack with calv. You would beed to break up some of those packs or at least have tanks.

[vmxa1]

I think you can stop the AI from over running you from this point. In fact I checked on FR and they will accept peace for some cash. I would not do it, but it is good to know that you can call off the dogs if need be. China landed 3 units next to Houston, but I had dropped three calv on the island and they whacked them and got two elites. I reset the cities task and will soon have some arties to stop the bombardment and a few ships as well. The ships are not real effective, so it will just be a bit of pain and you can repair the damage. I upgraded impi to inf. I would have prefered not to have so many swordsmen. I would disband them at some point to hurry better stuff. I switched off of the calv builds as they are a dead end and you have enough. I would rather have inf as they can defend better in a pinch and can be ugraded.
With the RR and some calv you can defend what ever they land, until they get tanks. By them you should be able to field your own. I would want to get out of war as soon as I could to reduce the WW. Nothing can be gained here for now except to get a leader and capture the Perisan town. I would grab it and make it so no one could RoP via that avenue. It is 1812.

[vmxa1]

Ok, I went to 1816 and made peace with all but Germany and Persia, who will not talk. This got me out of that stupid mobilization. That cost the ToE as I could not switch the Sufferage shields to anything when it was build by someone. I see why you fell into such low output now. No hospitals were build and many cities had no coll/cath/lib/markets/fac. Well I don't think any have factories yet and that is a big loss. The lack of workers is costing shileds all over the place. I will stop here as winningis a given now. I say that as you are basically even in tech and now I would crank up the prodcution and soon pull away in tech and that is all she wrote.

[MoonWolf]

I don't know if you know the "trick", but when you're close to finish research a tech (1 turn left, maybe even at 2), you should lower your tech rate as low as you can without increasing turns left. This way you will get a maximum output of your research/money. It can be real helpful during war, especially if you have lots of money in the system. An easy way to get some extra 100's of gold...

I haven't looked at the save game as I'm at work now...

[The Hun]

When I am engaged in a war in which I cannot gain any ground, I switch to a guerrilla war. Put a few of your best defenders, an artillery, and a worker (optional, for fortress) in a ship. Find a resource laden area and pillage/bombard everything in sight. If you have troops to spare, isolate the capital.

If you take out enough resources, the AI will lose the will and the means to fight.

In my current game, China declared war on me. He was #1 and on a different continent. I could easily mop up his daily shipments of rider/calvary. To end the war though, I sent 4 infantry, 2 artillery, and 2 calvary to an area with 3 dye tiles. China offered peace a couple turns later and has been polite to gracious ever since.