Meat grinder wars

[Catt]

Re: Meat grinder wars

Originally posted by SuperSlinky
. . . I have made the time to build universities, cathedrals and other necessities and I have managed to get most of the wonders, but in almost every other war I have had with an AI civ they start out strong and then collapse after a while. So what am I doing wrong? . . .

Like others, I'd say you identified your own problem. If fighting a stalemate or defensive war, you simply cannot sacrifice production for improvements -- if you don't have the materiel to bring a successful, conclusive victory, then you must devote all efforts to reaching that position. Build the universities and cathedrals 10 or 15 turns later -- in the meantime, produce the units needed to turn the tide -- one university equals an awful lot of legionaries or medieval infantries, or a fair addition of knights or cavs depending on you situation.

Catt

[SuperSlinky]

I think I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My military advisor is saying that compared to them I have a strong military. I believe the German house of cards will soon come tumbling down. For the last 15 turns or so I have been mobilized for war and cranking out cavalry and riflemen. My tactic has been to lure them to my territory and set up my best defending units as bait on open ground for them to attack. One turn they attacked a fort with a bunch of riflemen and lost an apalling lot of cavalry. They also attack the two cities I have taken relentlessly, but they are filled to the brim with good defenders and the first thing I did was rush walls in both of them. Dozens of German knights and cavalry have been destroyed in futile attacks on them.

I probably should have tried to attack strategic resources, but they have two sources of iron and saltpeter and it would have been difficult to get a stack together big enough to survive the trip, considering it would be attacked every inch of the way and could not heal. Anyway, it won't help now that they have riflemen who don't require any resources.

As for the idea of short oscillating wars, I did that for a while, but it didn't really put a dent in their power. I got into a long war with them because I wanted their territory, but another reason was that I didn't want them to build up a military that would be too hard to stop. I knew that as long as I was fighting them, I would lose fewer units than the AI, but if I let them build a 60 unit stack of doom, I may not be able to stop it before it did some damage. IOW, I couldn't out-produce them, but I could out-fight them. As it was, I faced 10-20 unit stacks every turn that I had to trick into fighting at a disadvantage so I could get a good kill ratio.

BTW, the game is monarch level and all victory conditions but conquest and domination are turned off. I have also done a lot of mods, many of which were intended to enhance the AI and balance game play, including all of the AI enhancements from the AU mod and drastically reducing corruption, which I an beginning to believe helps the AI more than the human player. Maybe I have been too successful at enhancing the AI. I have also added several units, which would make any saved game unplayable by anyone but me, although most of them have not been invented yet. The only reason I have most of the wonders is that the war has provided a steady stream of GL's to rush build them. I keep one GL on standby for when a new wonder becomes available.

Oh well, I guess the moral of the story is that if you want an easy win, don't play on large maps with max land area against an enhanced AI.