I could use some opinions on my military strategy. I play on prince at the moment (have yet to win a prince game), and epic length. I've been losing because I tend to play SimCiv (the building game) and that doesn't work on Prince. I need to be more offensive.

First off- I like my first war to start after I get bronze, as soon as I have built all the important buildings in my cities (barracks, walls, library, monastery, happiness and health enough for growth) I start churning out axemen. Campaign 1 is usually all axemen for me. I don't bother with swordsmen- they take more production, and just too situational (swordman attacking a city with an axeman in it die. So you can only attack archers. Since axemen can do that anyway, just bring 1 more of them). If the enemy has a lot of horses, I'll bring 1-2 spearmen per stack. Generally I take a stack 1.5 times the defenders and win the town easily. Peace treaty as needed to regroup forces.

Once longbows come, I stop attacking and build up/tech up, unless I just have one or two towns to kill a civ. Then I'll finish it. Nothing can really kill longbows yet, you really need 2-2.5x their stack to win.


My next round of fighting seems to come at the gunpowder age. I'm thinking a good army is 1/2 grenadiers, 1/2 cavalry, with siege unit backup. My reasoning is this: gunpowder units are paper rock scissors. Grenadiers kill riflemen, riflemen kill cavalry, cavalry kill grenadiers. I don't bring many (or any) riflemen because I won't be facing many cavalry- I'll be on the offence, and with their movement cav is an offensive unit. And if I'm in a forest or hill, that bonus alone will make the grenadier beat the cav. I start with a bombardment, then use siege to weaken their stack. My main attack sends grenadiers first (to kill off riflemen), then cavalry once the riflemen die. Cavs also fight off any non-rifleman flank attacks.




I'm not really sure how to fight between those 2 ages. It seems like knights/pikemen/crossbowmen might form a similar circle, but crossbowmen are much weaker than knights (whereas grenadiers and cavs are close) giving you a lot less total offensive punch. Using macemen instead gives more offensive punch, but you can't use it if they have crossbows there (who destroy macemen). Its doable, but you better have 2x the stack, at least.

I'm also not sure in later ages- it looks like infantry/tank/gunship may be a similar circle, but you would have to take some infantry for defensive bonuses. I have low late game warfare experience, so thats it for my ideas. I also haven't really experimented with flying units (they were so weak in Civ3).


Any suggestions or tweaks would be appreciated. Or does it sound solid?

(Stealth-)Bombers and Artillery are really useful in late game,
you shouldn´t go without them and should always be prepared to defend against them
(especially against enemy fighters/bombers, by having your own fighters and (especially on the offensive) SAM-Infantry or mech. infantry.

If you aren´t prepared to fight against bombers,
they can damage multiple units in your stack every turn, without getting damaged or shot down
(which is why they´re much better than artillery, especially if the enemy hasn´t the necessary tech for SAM-Infantry or fighters ;) )

1) Use artillery to lower city def

If you consider a city def can add up to tens of %, it's very strong. Add up the "city garrison" promotion and you add up over 100%. At least, bombard the city to lower def.

2) Swith to civics to give extra exp for promotions

3) Use those promotions tu create specialized units

Consider specially the "attack city" promotion. It will counter the "city garrison" promotion.

4) Bring enough units to take down a city

Be sure you will succeed. Don't say : "If I'm lucky, I will destroy this city". Maybe you will, maybe not. If not, you're going to lose a lot of time and money.

5) Choose your targets

Aim for a meaningful target. One which is strong, or one which has a strategic value. Avoid avancing mindless into enemy territory.

6) Surprise your enemy

A good surprise attack on a strategic city could give a death blow even before the civ knows she's at war. Again, aim for a big city, to cripple enemy production.

7) Choose the time you launch a war

When a enemy civ is disturbed by another war. When you just got that freaky new-tech unit. Keep money for upgrading key units after that new tech. It will save you a lot of time.
Consider pillaging if you think you cannot win the war.

So, hit fast (surprise, timing of attack), hit strong (artillery, unit with city attack, new tech units, don't rely on luck to win) and hit right (key cities)

Good luck!

I need to be more offensive.
No, you're already pretty offensive. <rimshot> :) I think you need to be more subtle. You don't need to crack skulls throughout the game - even one small war can be enough. But you need to do it in a way that makes efficient use of your resources.
First off - I like my first war to start after I get bronze, as soon as I have built all the important buildings in my cities (barracks, walls, library, monastery, happiness and health enough for growth) I start churning out axemen. Campaign 1 is usually all axemen for me.
You're trying to play an early rush style war, but not doing it early enough. As a result, you're left with brute force attacks that are wasting hammers. If you want to do an early, single-unit rush, then you only need one building in your cities - a barracks. Maybe. You don't have time to let the AI build up and diversify its garrisons. If, on the other hand, you're more comfortable waiting until after you have a few cities built up, then you need to use catapults and proper combined arms. Cats and Axes w/Raider promos can do most of the work, with a few Horses to skirmish and Bows to defend cities.

My next round of fighting seems to come at the gunpowder age. I'm thinking a good army is 1/2 grenadiers, 1/2 cavalry, with siege unit backup. My reasoning is this: gunpowder units are paper rock scissors. Grenadiers kill riflemen, riflemen kill cavalry, cavalry kill grenadiers. I don't bring many (or any) riflemen because I won't be facing many cavalry-
City Raider Riflemen upgraded from Macemen will be more effective all-around than any of the alternatives.

I'm not really sure how to fight between those 2 ages. It seems like knights/pikemen/crossbowmen might form a similar circle, but crossbowmen are much weaker than knights (whereas grenadiers and cavs are close) giving you a lot less total offensive punch. Using macemen instead gives more offensive punch, but you can't use it if they have crossbows there (who destroy macemen). Its doable, but you better have 2x the stack, at least.
I find the Middle Ages to be the easiest fighting of the game. You should have a strong core of cities and hopefully all necessary resources, but don't yet have the complexity of modern era units (flight, etc.). Macemen w/Raider will smoke just about anything defending a city (along with cat support) and Knights can sweep up most other invaders. It's true that Maces would have a hard time against crossbows, but how many crossbows have you seen the AI build? I think I've seen about one per game so far. Not worth worrying about.

I really can't overstate the power of the City Raider promo in all eras of warfare. It's essential because it sidesteps the whole rock-paper-scissors situation you describe - it doesn't matter what the AI defends with, you still get the bonus. With adequate siege support (bombard 100% defense bonus, then sac 1-3 siege units depending on terrain, defenders, and luck), you can take the same group of 8 Raiders as Axemen and work them all the way up to Infantry, never losing a unit. And the effect only snowballs as you keep promoting those units - A Raider123/Combat1 Infantry is quite a force in its era.

Hum... your way of playing aint really building game.

I played on huge map, 18 civs, emperor level. I never ever fired a shot before industrial age. Wait I did had a war once before that, cause i needed an unit level 5 unit to build west point and barbs only give you till level 4, but thats just a planned small skirmish. The thing about building game on higher difficulty is you must keep your military strength high enough so the AI would think twice to declare war on you. I play as QIn, I build tons of chu-ko-nu when its available and lasts till industrial age. By the time tanks rolling in, I had a sizable tech lead over 2/3 of civs, cause i never fought a war. Rolled the tanks all over the map, conquered 40 cities by 1500. Bombers, battleships, tanks is the combo to use and few infantrymen to defend. I build 12 bomber, really easy on city siege. Ai don't even have fighters yet.

Perhaps I should be more clear- this is how I'm trying to move away from a building game. Previously I would go all buildings unless I had none left to build. Problem was I would get my ass kicked by anyone who went offensive with me. These were ideas for fighting back.


Working ok so far- my axemen spam killed Germany, leaving me with 2 neighbors on my continent. Greece attacked at one point, but had bad timing- I was just upgrading my army with new longbow defenders, so I brought the neighboring defenders over to help the 1 city he attacked. Total losses was 1 longbow and 1 war elephant I made to attack his nights with, compared to 10-12 various units by him :) I'm building a gunpowder army now, I'll be attacking Japan with it (the neighbor I have the biggest border with) in a few turns. Just need a few more grenadiers/riflemen.


I'm curious about the idea of upgrading macemen to riflemen. Yes, that would work well, but upgrading costs a lot of gold. What do you do to make them, put science to 0 for a few turns?

Perhaps I should be more clear- this is how I'm trying to move away from a building game. Previously I would go all buildings unless I had none left to build. Problem was I would get my ass kicked by anyone who went offensive with me. These were ideas for fighting back.
There's nothing wrong with a building game, provided you do it right. If anything, cIV leans more toward building than warmongering compared to C3C. It's quite possible to have a warless game at Prince, and certainly I don't think you need to start a game planning on wars at certain time periods. Figure out when war is necessary, and how much is necessary. IMO, the game is actually harder if you take more land than you need to. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a hard-fought domination win if that's your cup of tea, or if you just want some practice. But keeping your military strength up (as weimingshi mentioned) and working diplomatic relations can keep things quite peaceful in many games.
I'm curious about the idea of upgrading macemen to riflemen. Yes, that would work well, but upgrading costs a lot of gold. What do you do to make them, put science to 0 for a few turns?
Sure, that would work. Or sell some techs or use Great Merchant missions. Or run your research slider a bit lower when you know you have an upgrade cycle approaching - 10% can mean a lot of money, often for no loss in research turns. You should only need about 8 units, which will cost around 2000 gold to upgrade to Rifles IIRC (but maybe that's Maces->Inf?). You do need to keep up a healthy economic infrastructure in a domination game, otherwise maintenance costs will destroy you. And upgrades, while costly, are important. Time is precious in a militaristic game - you can rebuild your homeland security forces more leisurely, but you need to keep your main battle group moving and that means you need to shell out to upgrade them rather than wait to rebuild and redeploy. For a good finish time, I would strive for a "turnaround time" of no more than 20 turns between wars. 10 is better, 40 is the outer limit.

My experience in Civ III has carried over fairly well in Civ IV regarding building up for military campaigns. While I have yet to fight a war of aggression in Civ IV, I have never been caught sleeping. They key is to settle and designate a "military city" early and concentrate on providing that city with everything it needs to crank out strong military units quickly. One or two such cities can modernize and strengthen an ailing military or provide the edge needed to outnumber and outgun the enemy.

These cities should almost always be building better and better military units when available, unless something more important comes along (West Point, Military Epic). Bring a large core of a given strong unit, with backup of other more specialized units. Always ensure that you have a strong defense force at the home front in case an enemy decides to take advantage of your preoccupations.

At some times, when I feel it is absolutely necessary that I catch up with modernizing my military, or when I feel war is inevitable, I will take every decent city and begin building up a huge military as fast as possible. This is much easier in the modern era, and it was not uncommon for me to have a navy of 50-60 ships with an even larger army and sizable air force for an empire of only 15 cities. (Navies though aren't quite what they used to be, so you may want to invest in more air units).