Unique and Devious Strategy

[ScipioAfricanus]

Excerpt from Scipio's CivIII: The Art of War -

When your civilization is running under a communist government, make the most of "people" power. To do so, one must create about four or so fast units and find one of those vast roaming hordes of AI workers. Then, with your fast units in position near the worker horde, rush in and grab all of the workers quickly. Have Artillery handy to help the cavalry run a rearguard action while the wokers are whisked off to a city of size 6. Once you load them all up into this city, have each and every one of them join it, and then conscript them all. Voila! A huge army of conscript riflemen is at your disposal. Now it may seem wasteful to do such a thing, turning valuable workers into mediocre military units, but when waging combat in communism is is best to make use of your incredible conscripting power without taxing your loyal citizens.

Whenever anticipating a war with another power that is potentailly your equal or superior on the battlefield, prepare traps and ambushes for them. Keep fast units in small groups to harass them, and try to stem the advancing tide of enemy units into a valley walled in with mountains. Once trapped withing such an enclosure, they must either retreat or face the brutal task of ousting your defensive units from thier mountain stronghlolds. Never underestimate the value of placing several well-defended fortresses on key mountains near your perimiter. They often serve to disrupt or even destroy the enemies' chances of making it deep within your empire. Defense is the best offense, especially when you must wage total war and cannot spare resources to do so. As a final note on this method of warfare, use lightning assaults with good offensive units to smash into the rear or the sides of the enemy empire. Check thier ability to regain lost strength by eliminating easy targets such as colonies, peripheral towns, and most of all make sure that you eliminate thier network of roads. Even in peace time, set about keeping unclaimed land free of enemy roads or other things that would allow them an easy way into your empire.

[Egbert]

Why turn communist?

[ducki]

I believe to take advantage of

your incredible conscripting power

which, IIRC, is much greater in Communism than Democracy or Republic.

Personally, unless I'm Religious, the odds of me using a "wartime" government are pretty slim, due to extended anarchy.

If this is an endgame-mop-up-the-AI-civs-strat, you've already won and this is for fun.

If you're actually using Communism for your "normal" government, then this would probably help, but you've probably got other problems besides military. (Unless you're playing AU203.)

[ScipioAfricanus]

In response:

I was indeed advocating the use of communism: and here's why -

-It is in the game for a reason.
-My playing style cannot allow for the vastly superior democracy.
-It really scares the piss out of some poor democracy to see a human wave of riflemen crushing everything in thier path! Its not even that hard to work up 20 or so of the buggers in one or two turns.
-Where technology loses, my industry wins out - I produce quite alot of artillery and naval units to support my cavalry and riflemen on land.

At the time you get Communism, the world is ripe for conquest, especially if you've managed to stay a couple steps ahead of everyone else in technology. Cavalry is the first decent fast attack unit in the game if you aren't Chinese, and its 3 moves per turn allow for some very flexible tactics when emplying them in the capture of large strings of frontier towns. For the larger bastions of the enemy resistance, the main body of the rifleman hordes surrouds or passes by them until the artillery/naval units can be brought into play. While the navy bombards the coastline and keeps them from shipping forces by sea, my artillery and rifleman reduce the cities until they can be taken by concerted attack. These newly acquired cities (usually around 12-14 population) then furnish rifleman replacements for my army.

Is this cost effective? No.
Is it unstoppable? No.
Is it even an efficient way of fighting? No.

Why do I fight this way then? Because my empire is often seperated into isolated provinces, I need a way to win which uses a unit every city can build, and a government that can support a war effort across such a vast territory. The selection of Communism reduces my choices momentarily to this strategy.

If the other civs manage to resist the surgical strikes which my cavalry and naval forces make, and even manage to stem the tide of my steamroller conscript army, they are usually a long time in recovering. Meanwhile I may indeed switch to democracy, or stay communist. that does not matter. After that I focus on tech, and try to outrun them before they recover.

[alva]

if you've managed to stay a couple steps ahead of everyone else in technology.

What level are we talking here?
To get level at this time , sure is possible, but to be ahead a couple (2-4?) tech anything higher then monarch is pretty hard to achieve..

[joncnunn]

I've gotten a half an era lead on Emperor once (running a Democracy)

In my current game, I had an 8 tech lead as a Democracy on Emperor level at its peak. (I then had to go to war to aquire some Alliumum which decreased my tech lead to 6 techs.)

Communism is a way to rapidally lose a tech lead.

[alva]

I've gotten a half an era lead on Emperor once (running a Democracy)

Once being the keyword here, I have been able to do so too, but it's hardly the rule, rather the exception, isn't it.
If it isn't, you really have to go and play deity.

[realpolitic]

It's amazing how much more diffucult diety is than Emporer.

[alva]

You can say that again...








Yes, I know you want to post same line again now, refrain yourself, don't !!

[georges bonbon]

Thanks for a way of conscripting useless workers.

Never thought about it.

Never read about it.

[Major Guz]

IIRC, you cannot conscript foreign nationals.

So if you capture, say, 4 workers then take them to your size 6 city, conscript 4 citizens (max conscript rate for communism), then you will have a city that consists of 4 foreign nationals (the captured workers living in the city now), which of course will be unhappy because you are at war with their homeland and 2 of your own nationals. (And of course the 4 conscripted units).

I would recommend against this tactic because this city is more likely to flip over than before (more foreign nationals than your own) and its foreign inhabitants will be unhappy if you are at war with their homeland.

But if you are really pressed for defensive units I would definitely give this tactic a go!

[Major Guz]

Oops I forgot about the unhappines that is caused by conscription.
IIRC, for every citizen that is conscripted into the army another one will be unhappy for 10 turns.
This means the situation in that particular city will even be worse (4 unhappy foreigners and 2 unhappy own citizens).
How do you manage to keep them under control.
Or do you starve the town and then repopulate?

[joncnunn]

Tiny map, starting with 4 civs on Emperor level

Long before then, the Aztecs had wiped out the Irq on their landmass.

I shared my landmass with the Japenese given how many river tiles were in my portion of the landmass. (2 seperate rivers -nd 5 cities along a river!) In addition, 8 of my 10 cities were coastal and so my income exploded as Hospitals were built.

The Japanese & Aztecs were fighting each other, in a highly inefficent war and weren't reseraching while I was at peace discovering a tech every 4 turns.

Originally posted by alva

Once being the keyword here, I have been able to do so too, but it's hardly the rule, rather the exception, isn't it.
If it isn't, you really have to go and play deity.

[Alex]

Re: In response:

Originally posted by ScipioAfricanus

Why do I fight this way then? Because my empire is often seperated into isolated provinces, I need a way to win which uses a unit every city can build, and a government that can support a war effort across such a vast territory. The selection of Communism reduces my choices momentarily to this strategy.

That is precisely the reason why I sometimes have to resort to communism.

[joncnunn]

The # of cities you have under Communism is the key comparing it to Monarchy.

With 1 city in your empire, it doesn't really matter.

At 2 cties, overall corruption / waste is lower under Communism.

About a certain threshold though, it crosses back over, an overall corruption is higher under Communism than Monarchy.

Evenually, every single city can be hopelessly corrupt under Communism while under Monarchy, only the cities far away from both the Palace & Forbiden Palace are hopelessly corrupt.

Under Communism, every single city is assigned a ratio between the number of cites you have and the OCN. (A FP if present under communism only adds 25%)

connection to the trade network, Court Houses, Police Stations, and WLTPD (for waste only) all efffect the effective city number. Any effective number equal to or greater than OCN is the maximum 95% corrupt.