I've just been fighting a two war front against the romans and the arabs. I didn't really care much for the arabs so i put very few troops their so I could take out Caesar. After a while I ended up killing most of Saladins field army but didn't have the men to take his cities so i adopted a pillaging tactic against him.
I organised my army into 'teams', which consisted of 1 cavalry and 1 machine gun. These were absolutely deadly in killing towns. The machine gunner protected the team from infantry and cavalry attacks, while the cavalry protected me from cannons. When pillaging i would move the cavalry to a town and pillage and move the machine gun. The next turn the cavalry pillaged twice and the machine gun once. This destroyed the town back to nothing. The next turn i would do this again.
I had about 4 teams and they were almost never attacked, although Saladin still had a respectable army inside his walls.

I haven't tried this with other ages but i guess that it would work. Axeman+Horse archer, Knight + crossbowman are the 2 other teams that i think would work.

I imagine modern warfare would consist of modern armour/mech infantry+gunship? Or maybe just using aircraft(though you don't get the gold or force the AI on the defensive).

Originally posted by Lord Olleus:
I had about 4 teams and they were almost never attacked, although Saladin still had a respectable army inside his walls.

I tried pillaging in a monarch game recently. I was surprised to find the same thing you did. I had small teams pillaging all over the place, and the AI never tried to stop me as I burned farms and cities, and cut access to some important resources. I thought the AI would want to stop me once in a while! :confused:

Gunships are wonderful pillagers.

I learned this when taking out Torky who had a lot of desert. I didn't want the land but didn't want anyone else getting any freebies. Took out the roads too. I left a spy there so I could watch the vultures zoom in with their settlers. It wasn't too long before wars were breaking out everywhere while I sat home and sipped a martini.

Musketeers... especially on smaller maps with little or no horses.
First on their own, and later teamed up with grenadiers, and later with infantry, and so on... really no need to upgrade them until tanks. (...or you get horses.)

Yes, the cavalry/machine gun combo makes an awesome pillaging combo, as I discovered against my war with Isabella. She turtled in her cities with 2 SAMs + Infantry while my 3 cav/1 mg groups went from town to town, pillaging each in one move. However, the technique was not so useful against Tokugawa, who didn't have steel yet and was able to crank out 5 catapults per turn, which he'd throw at my MG followed by six grenadiers and a few rifles. Wow, that guy doesn't f*ck around. (On the bright side, I finally got to see MG's in action!)

Another good combo is horse archers or knights with Explorers, especially if they have Guerilla II/Woodsman II. Later on, Explorers make good medics for cavalry groups.

i always find it amusing that after pillaging every single square in an enemys nation that they dont have a permanent "-1 or -2" because of it. I think excessive pillaging should result in atleast as much permanent hate as bringing in an ally~ I know it pisses me off!

Correct idea, and you really don't need to wait so much to find good combinations - but always small teams are crucial for devastating pillaging. Cavalry+machine gun is just the "advanced version" of anti-melee Knight+pikeman (deadly at his age), but my personal favorite is even earlier: playing the Greeks, either anti-melee axeman+phalanx or (the ideal) anti-melee horse archer+phalanx. Note that the axeman+horse archer combo you say is vulnerable in horse archer attacks, and the Knight+crossbow is vulnerable to Knight attacks.

The real point of the small teams is to make extremely "expensive" an attack with catapults etc. - and against these combos you usually can't win without many losses.