Composure of Ancient Offensives

[Harovan]

Numbers depend on map size And the # of spearmen depends on the length of the border you share with your neighbors. As for the warriors, well, I try to have 2 in each city to max my population without having to increase the luxury slider. So if I have 10 cities, that makes 20 swordsmen. This usually leads to yet more cities.

[vmxa1]

Yahweh Sabaoth, often you are better off to forego the MP and use the slider. Better still if you can gets some luxs. If you are in an easy game, it does not matter, otherwise it could be the edge you need to go thin on defense. Maybe not as thin as Dom, but thinner than you normally do it.

[Egbert]

Umh, interesting thread. Me thinks my garrisons may be too large after reading this. I like to keep two defenders and an attacker in each frontier town and coastal town and one defender and two mobile attackers in each interior city (more if a city is particularly valuable). I also like to keep a few loose mobile units running around as a sort of rapid response team. The idea is to withstand a sneak attack anywhere at any time (including sneak attacks from trespassing AI units) and immediately kill anything that invades. I usually play at Warlord or Regent and sometimes Monarch so I don't see those big invading SOD's anyway.

I tend to be a bit paranoid as you can see.

Umh, vmax, Arrian, Aeson. What do you do to prevent opportunistic sneak attacks by the AI? Do you have your neighbours constantly sending a unit or two directly to your nearest undefended interior city? Do you dare to grant ROP's? (I very rarely dare to grant ROP even with all of my cities heavily defended).

I would love to reduce my garrisons if I dared so your further responses would be appreciated.

[eric2075]

I have the same question. If I leave a city undefended, AI units walking past it CANNOT resist the temptation to capture it. And you don't dare demand that they leave unless you're ready for war.

[vmxa1]

I had a long response for this, but the IE crashed on me and I did not have it saved.

First, I can not even recall my last RoP, but I have done a few, only when I have a need or want to help a very weak civ.

Undefended cities and no having MP's are two different things.

[vmxa1]

MP's are only valid in unrepresentive forms of government, so once I get to Republic, I can not use MP's. I am likely to get to it as quick as I can, within reason.

So if I am in despotism, it is early in the game (normally) and I do not have to worry about AI units too much. In std maps, they are not likely to be on top of me right away. Once I have located them, then I can determine where threats are going to come form and will have defenders in that area. Front line cities will have defenders, be they MP's or just defenders. The AI is not going to launch an attack with its one wandering warrior very often.

After you have played enough games at the level you are currently using, you get to know what to expect from the different civs under most all condiions. This is what lets you cut corners a bit.
If I am in despot or Monarchy I will try to get by with either luxs or the slider or if it is only one large city you may have to calculate what is cheaper, an entertainer, MP's or the slider. This city is not likely to be exposed, it will be an interior city.

I am not going to have front line cities exposed to an attack, be it a civ or barbs. You may just have a sentry out to alert you and give you time to recover. Now if you are in the middle of several civs, then you may have to take a different tactic.

Once you have gotten most of your expansion done and are in contact with a neighbor, then you will start to build up troops and put them where they make sense.

I do not have much trouble with the AI crusinig through my lands, unless they are at war with some other civ. In that case I may just ignore them, but ensure they do not have a free shot.
If they are sending a settler/escort that is another story. I like to whack them and make them suffer for their carelessness and get the two free workers. They will not cross your cultural borders, unless you are considered weak.

[Aeson]

Umh, vmax, Arrian, Aeson. What do you do to prevent opportunistic sneak attacks by the AI? Do you have your neighbours constantly sending a unit or two directly to your nearest undefended interior city?

I don't believe in having neighbors...

I like to use Swordsmen/Horsemen, Knights, Cavalry, and then Tanks/Modern Armor as my 'defensive' force.

If I'm sharing a border, I make sure there is a 1 turn buffer zone so I get first shots if the AI invades. Normally the setup is something like a bunch of Knights sitting on the Hills/Mountains around my cities, and nothing actually in the cities. The AI will strike for the cities always, leaving their units exposed to counterattack. Bombardment units work really well in a support role here.

Keeping the AI's waring with each other is another very good way of keeping your borders safe. Declare war on civs hopelessly far away from you, and then sign up the civs around you to alliances against them (just don't do it if you would be between the two). That will draw a lot of the AI's units away, and basically all they will have left in their homeland are their defensive units. Even if you don't take advantage of the opening, the neighbor AI's are much less likely to turn on you, and will be out of position if they do.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by vmxa1
If they are sending a settler/escort that is another story. I like to whack them and make them suffer for their carelessness and get the two free workers. They will not cross your cultural borders, unless you are considered weak.

I like to "herd" settler/escort pairs with my mobile reserve (chariots, horsemen) to a single tile and cage them there. Once I had six russian settlers on a grassland tile this way, escorted by four warriors and two spearmen. This made up twelve foreign workers one turn after the next war with Russia started. Of course this behavior is exploitative, but so is bombarding, tech whoring or using the luxury slider. And it is at least an opportunity to punish the little AI cheat of knowing the whole map and all resources from the start and ignoring your borders.

[rush]

I hardly built any Spears. maybe max 10 in a game (normal map size) - 1or 2 Spears for the capital , 1 each for say the 3 largest cities, and the rest follow my attack force. I do built lots of Warriors for Swordmen upgrade, and subsequent MI upgrade. Usually first attack comprise of 10 Sword plus 3 spear. Sometimes, when i don't feel too comfortable, eg enemy city on Hill, difficuilt terrain, I may go with 15-20 Swords. The captured cities will be defended by the Sword, which has the same defensive quality as the Spear, but has higher attacking points.

Only problem is when there are no Iron and i panic. The usual solution is : quickly built 10 Archers plus 3 spear plus a few warriors plus worker and shoot straight for the nearest city with Iron and capture the city. Try and rush the barrack and connect the Iron asap. Upgrade the Warriors.

I admit I never master the skill of attacking with Horsemen. I lose far too many horse even with the Retreat capability. So it's always Swordmen & MI for me.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by rush
I admit I never master the skill of attacking with Horsemen. I lose far too many horse even with the Retreat capability. So it's always Swordmen & MI for me.

Well I'm not the "master" of anything, in fact, I'm not that good a civ player, so perhaps I shouldn't be saying this to you, but: LEARN to use those horsies! Horsemen are very valuable units... I'm still adjusting my tactics to Monarch from Regent level, and it seems to me that Horsemen might, in the future, make up a greater amount of my attacking forces... say, half-swords half-horse instead of a 2:1 ratio... the ability to retreat combined with the fact that it's not really THAT hard to kill a spearman with a horseman (and REALLY irritating to lose a swordsman to a spearman), and finally considering the upgrade to knights/cavalry, seem to give horsemen an edge... sure, swords are needed as nutcrackers, but I would encourage you to use horsemen as much as possible...

Next time I play without iron in my starting area I might go with a horseman offensive instead, and see where it takes me. I'm sure there's an AU course on this somewhere, right, guys?

[Arrian]

There is no trick to using horsemen, all you need are numbers.

I don't often grant RoPs. I'll sometimes do it really early on when the AI is still in REX mode (and thus highly unlikely to sneak attack me) in order to explore their territory. Early on, my cities will have troops in them (I will be stockpiling vet warriors & chariots), so it's not that big a risk. Herding/cutting off the border can also be done.

In the hotseat game I've been playing with my girlfriend (monarch, standard, 6 ais), I just opened up an attack on my nearest neighbor, China. I'm Carthage, so there are no spearmen in this example. My numidians (I have about 5) are reserve forces only to be used in desperation. The invasion force was 12 swords and 3 archers. I also have ~15 Chariots standing by, so that when I beat HBR out of China, I can ride down to Persia and pay those bastards a visit (the turn prior to my invasion of China, Xerxes moved archers into my territory, and declared war when told to leave. It's all good - I enlisted Korea to fight him while I dealt with Mao). Ideally, I would have liked to have upgraded the chariots and brought them along to China. But I was getting impatient, frankly. Hotseat, though infinitely faster than PBEM, is still slow. Anyway, by the time I get into warfare with Persia and/or Korea, I should have 10-15 of each (swords/horses) running around breaking things. If I wasn't carthage, I'd have some spearmen (consider the 5 numidians roughly equivalent to 7 spears).

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

10-15 swordsmen and horsemen TOTAL, or EACH? And by "breaking things," what do you mean exactly? Seizing small cities? Seizing major cities? Razing cities? Leaving cities untouched and just "levelling up" in the fields?

[Arrian]

Each. So 20-30 attack units total.

"Breaking things" is my term for warfare. This includes killing units, capturing/razing cities, and/or pillaging if necessary.

In this particular case, it's going to mean selected city capture/destruction to prevent the Persians getting iron, followed by just killing their units at a leisurely pace, hoping for a leader. I'll probably switch back and forth, beating on the Persians and Koreans in turn. This only changes if one of them actually manages to build the Pyramids. In that case, I will go for the jugular sooner rather than later.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Thank you for the clarification, sensei.

This is OT, but I really hope the "scientific leaders" in C3C make huge map, max. enemies games more than just war, war, war your tribe gently cross the map... as fun as that can be at times...

[Egbert]

Originally posted by vmxa1

If they are sending a settler/escort that is another story. I like to whack them and make them suffer for their carelessness and get the two free workers.

You are a bad influence. I thought of this quote last night when I spotted a French settler so I just whacked it without further ado. I finished up with all of France.

Nice little stack of 6 swordsmen with a few reinforcements did just nicely for the first war. (I researched iron working first and the war started just after I connected my iron). I had 8 spare swordsman for the second war which commenced on the same turn as the first war ended because we were alone on a big island (trying out the "Arrian deception").