Composure of Ancient Offensives

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

How do you compose your early offensives? I want answers for the following situations:

1. Your empire is the largest, but not MUCH larger than your neighbors. You have access to iron and horses.

2. Your empire is smaller than the others. You have access to access to iron and horses.

3. Your empire is neither large, nor small; you have access to horses

4. Your empire is neither large, nor small; you have access to iron.

Assuming you use the warrior->sword or chariot->horse upgrade, how many warriors/swordsmen do you build, how many chariot/horsemen do you build, and how many spearmen do you build? Do you build any archers?

Note that I left "you have access to nothing" off the list as that can mean only one thing: an archer rush, which I feel has been explored thoroughly here.

Answer these questions as you would for your typical game. Don't worry about Total War, OCC, etc., unless you happen to play Total War etc. outside of the context of an AU course or specific challenge. In other words, I'm looking for rough numbers for a game where you have a victory of SOME sort in mind, but don't necessarily know right off the bat - an opportunist game.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I'll answer my own questions first. I recently moved up from Regent to Monarch, but I'm not having difficulty with it. However, I do not assume to put myself on the level of many of you whom I expect to respond. Hence, you "newbies" out there should NOT necessarily take my advice.

1. With a large empire, I generally do no research whatever, following the 40-turn minimums, saving gold for a mass upgrade. I'll typically upgrade about 25 warriors, and have built an additional 8 horsemen. I often have more warriors in stock to be upgraded when I have more money. I only build 1 or 2 spearmen at first, to be moved into border cities. After my first offensive is done, I won't build any more warrior/swordsmen... all new units will be horsemen or spearmen, at about a 3:1 ratio. Later on, I will upgrade my remaining warriors and use them as I see fit.

2. In this situation, I might be content with 10 swordsmen and 5 horsemen. I will remain in a war footing until my offensive has doubled, or near-doubled, the size of my small empire.

3. This would throw my strategy largely out of whack... in fact, I've never been in this position, but it would be interesting to see how to handle it. Most likely, I'd build about 15 chariots, or as many as I could before I got Horseback Riding (typically from the GL; I'm a GL freak). I would certainly be tempted to build more spearmen, maybe 1 for each city in my empire (or about 10). I might even consider building archers if I was worried about not have enough cash to upgrade my chariots.

4. This would change my strategy little, except that I wouldn't worry about the time associated with building swordsmen from scratch. I'd upgrade my 25 and keep cranking out swords until I captured a source of horses.

Obviously, "it all depends". Still, I'd say those are pretty typical numbers for me, even for civs with swordsmen UUs. As the Iroquois, I would go MUCH HEAVIER on the chariots, and as the Celts, I would restart and play as a different civ. (Actually, as the Celts I'd build only 1 or 2 Garlic Swordsmen to trigger my GA and do the rest of the work with the more reliable, and far more affordable, horsemen).

But I am a rookie. Let's hear from the pros...

[Harovan]

On crowded maps or without resources, I will archerrush after I have 2-4 cities (depending on space), either one neighbor with 5-6 archers and 2 spearmen around 1800BC or 2 neighbors around 1500BC, with 10-12 archers and 4 spearmen.

If I have medium space, I will use Arrians upgrade recommendation, building 10 vet warriors and 20 vet chariots, for 800 gold upgrading to 10 swordsmen and 20 horsemen, attacking somewhere between 1000BC and 500BC. The Horsemen are for attacks on open ground, the swordsmen nutcrackers for forests and hills.

If I have plenty space, I will not fight ancient wars whatsoever. I can outrex the AIs with a couple of granary cities and/or a settler flood from the rest. I'm typically pretty vulnerable in these games, but if the AIs have space too, they're too busy expanding themselves.

[Aeson]

I'll attack with my 1st Warrior, wait till my 100th Cavalry, or in some extreme cases, 200th Modern Armor. No 'typical'!

Economics (food being king) wins/loses wars against the AI IMO. If you dump enough shields/cash into just about any unit they will do well. I tend to build what is available, favoring offense and mobility, but also accounting for production efficiency. I often go several games between building any Spears, Pikes, Muskets, or Rifles though. The exceptions being with the Zulu or in the rare game where I feel using bombardment units will be necessary/enjoyable.

What the numbers are don't matter. 30 Swordsmen on a Small map would often be an 'end game' force, but would be relegated to a 'situational' or even just a laughable force on a Huge map. The only typical in my games is: "Compared to the AI, am I at the strongest I can get peacefully, and/or would I be able to make peace before the AI could hurt me?" If the answer is yes, I attack.

[Stuie]

I usually find myself aiming for a ratio of 2:1:1 (attacker:mobile:defense).

So....
1. 2xSwords 1xHorse 1xSpears per city I plan to take and hold from my enemy.
2. Same as #1, but usually I'm a lot more hesitant to attack, so it's more likely I'll be drawn into a war not of my choosing at a time when my forces are not where I would like them.
3. If I have to use archers... 3xArchers 1xHorse 1xSpear per city I plan to take and hold.
4. 2xSwords 1xArchers 1xSpears per city I plan to take and hold.

Of course all of that is subject to change based on how I actually find myself playing. Nothing is written in stone, and often I find myself jumping into a war of opportunity (is that a Settler I see under that Spearman?) without having my forces at some optimal level.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I encourage everyone to keep posting. I'd like to see the whole array of opinion here...

[Arrian]

It really depends on what I intend to accomplish.

I will often start wars early on when I see targets of opportunity (settler teams, or even just unprotected workers). Those wars often involve a small number of basic units (warriors, archers, maybe a spearman). The purpose is to hamper/cripple the AI civs nearby and fish for Great Leaders.

Later, I'll come back with some swords and horsies. 10-15 of each, I'd say, off the top of my head. That's standard map, Monarch.

I've been thinking of using swordsmen earlier on (in smaller numbers). The way I tend to do things now, I end up compiling my swordsman force last - using fairly built-up cities to produce warriors in 1-2 turns each, ramping up to 10-15 of them in practically no time at all. Prior to that, I'll be using archers in those distruption wars I was talking about, or building chariots. But why not aim for 5-10 swords earlier instead, and devote fewer shields to archers?

The only downside to that approach is that you cannot "cover" an elite swordsman with a less-than-elite spearman. Whereas a regular spear will defend first over an elite archer. Thus, the elite unit is "covered" from AI attack, and survives. Elite swords have a nasty tendency to soak up archer counterattack. At the least, the elite sword is probably damaged. At worst, it is killed. I hate that.

I've taken to building fewer spearmen. I still make sure I have a few vet spears, but I devote more production to chariots earlier on than I used to (I used to go waaaaay overboard on defense - 1 spear per city, plus extras for invasion forces). This often gives me a sizeable chariot (and therefore horseman) force earlier than I used to get it.

Since I've snapped out of my defense-heavy mode, in fact, my sword/horse wars have gone extremely well. So well, in fact, that I now face the problem of winning too quickly/easily: no leaders. Especially if playing a non-militaristic civ, one needs a bit of a slugfest (lots of battles) to have a reasonable shot at getting a leader.

I also have to force myself to build a couple of catapults. Cats aren't war-winners. If you're in a fight for your life, spend those 20 shields on a combat unit. If you're sure you will win, but you want to increase your chances of getting leaders (indirectly), a few cats can be quite useful. They really help prevent the loss of elite units to horrible RNG results.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Arrian

I also have to force myself to build a couple of catapults. Cats aren't war-winners. If you're in a fight for your life, spend those 20 shields on a combat unit. If you're sure you will win, but you want to increase your chances of getting leaders (indirectly), a few cats can be quite useful. They really help prevent the loss of elite units to horrible RNG results.

-Arrian

Cats are very useful if you are facing 2 move units with mostly one move units or weak units. Here I am thinking about Zulus sending Impi's to one of you frontier cities and they are not your neighbors. Those units can escape form say Immortals and may kill a horsemen, but if the cats drop them to 1 HP, they are not going to do either very often.
This is one of the few times I use cats.

[Arrian]

Hmm, yeah, damaging rampaging Impi would be a good use for cats. I hate Impi. Hate 'em.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Wow! I've got a lot to learn, if 1 spearmen per city plus a few extra is considered going "waaaaaaay overboard".

[Aeson]

I think Cats (and bombardment units in general) are a failsafe means of conquest against the AI. The worse the situation militarily, the more I use them, because the AI has no ability to counter Defender/Bombardment stacks (used offensively or defensively) even when given several times the production capacity.

The only problems with Defender/Bombardment are that it's borderline exploitative against the AI and it's also usually more efficient to blitz AI, because they just don't defend well when on anywhere equal terms economically.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
Wow! I've got a lot to learn, if 1 spearmen per city plus a few extra is considered going "waaaaaaay overboard".

Yep. Interior cities require no garrison. Having a spearman sitting there is wasteful.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by Arrian
Yep. Interior cities require no garrison. Having a spearman sitting there is wasteful.
-Arrian

Certainly there's some value to them, in so far as military police are concerned? I stay on Monarchy typically into the industrial era. OK, I know that practice is debately, or perhaps just wasteful, but assuming I keep that practice for now, aren't those interior troops useful to act as police?

And what about those Germans who are walking through your civ? Do you really want to leave undended cities for their taking?

[Harovan]

I use veteran warriors (from barracks or barb'ed up) for city garrison and MP early on. Later, when I'm a Republic, I build spearmen for the border cities and important highground points and upgrade the vet warriors to swordsmen. Interior cities remain undefended.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Numbers! Gimme numbers!