First of all I just got this game so I am very noobie. I'm wondering if anyone has any tips or stratigies for war with the AI. I am trying to attack the cities directly and it does not seem to be working out as the city odds are usually way better then mine. I am mostly trying to win on domination or conquest mode with the pangea land setting, on huge with about 4-5 AIs, on quick speed, starting out in the ancient era. Also any general stratigies/tips for this set-up would also be greatly aprecieted. If any one could suggest a good leader for this that would be good too. I hope somebody can help me out.

First off, on any difficulty you should make adequate preparations. Early on, build a large, diverse group of fighting units. A good combo in the ancient era is swordsmen, axemen, spearmen, horse archers, and catapults.

Swordsmen are good for attacking cities. Axemen will mop up just about any melee unit in the field. Spearmen will rip apart mounted units. Horse archers add a little mobility to your army. Catapults serve two purposes: city bombardment and weakening stacks.

Also, get your units the 'cover' promotion as soon as you can. This helps against the archers that guard the enemy cities.

As for picking a good leader, that depends entirely on your style. In your case, I would suggest playing around with any leader that has the aggressive trait. Tokugawa is a solid choice for war-oriented approaches. But that's just my opinion.;)

To be a warmonger, your leader should have the Aggressive trait. That would include Alexander, Huyana Cupac, Kublai Khan or his psycho grandpa, Montezuma, Napoleon, or Tokugawa. The units of Aggressive leaders start with a FREE Combat I upgrade, which means you don't even need to build a barracks first (although it would be a good idea.)

Also, you should consider the Unique Units for each civilization. I haven't played all of them, but I find Napoleon's Musketeer to be pretty good -- they're fast enough to keep up with knights & cavalry, which make great raiding parties. Another unit that totally PWNS is Russia's Cossack, super-powerful Cavalry who will totally dominate the battlefield until tanks arrive. Probably the best UU is America's Navy SEAL; however, America's pretty weak in the beginning, but if you survive til modern times, you will be unstoppable.

While not Aggressive, Mansa Musa's skirmisher is great for early warfare. They're dirty cheap to build, so you can literally flood the map with them and overwhelm the enemy by sheer force of numbers. (Ever see the movie "Zulu"? Sorta like that.) They're not strong enough to take cities, though.

Speaking of taking cities...you need two things. 1) Superior numbers. At least 2:1, or 3:1 if you can afford it. 2) Siege weapons. Which means catapults, cannons, artillery, and later on tanks, battleships & bombers. Each city has a "cultural defense" which is the percentage sign above the city name. Use your siege engines to reduce that number to 0%, then attack WITH THE CATAPULTS. Yes, they will likely be destroyed...but they will cause collateral damage to the enemy units, which means they'll be much weaker for your other forces to wipe out.

And don't just head straight for the city...be sure to pillage along the way. Destroying the city's resources will make them weaker (and if you destroy their only iron or copper mine, they will be screwed) and net you some petty cash in the process.

Have fun. ;)

I think you might have a bit of a problem giving yourself a very small window to counquer a huge map. I'd play standerd map with standerd time to get the basics down.

Cities become infinetly easier to take if you have some units with city raider 3(+75% when attacking cities). a good place to start with war practice is the moderd era, then work your way back. You can focus on your stratagy of taking out cities instead of worrying about your very delicate economy.

A tactic that could help would be the decoy. This only works if they have more than one city on the boarder. set about 75% of your offensive army near one city(enemy city that is) that is on your boarder with your enemy. let them see your SoD in all it's glorious might. take the other 25% and hide it from your enemy near another one of the cities on the boarder. what this will do is draw the enitre enemy force to the main force. Then declair war and use the detatchment force to rapidly advance on the lightlyu defended "back door". The AI only prepares for what it can see.

Ok here are my experiences:

1) Early expansion really works well. You will have a larger kingdom and more cities. You will have more military, too.

2) Early game, get a habit of producing a little bit of military all the time, so the AI don't think you are too weak to miss away. At the beginning you can make warriors to garrison (which is obvious), and then you can make some backup archers so they can defend against barbarians. Later on, when you capture new cities, you don't have to produce new garrison units.

3) Try to avoid war as much as possible, and when you attack, you will wipe your opponent out in the shortest time possible. This is largely done through diplomacy, and some tech advance from yourself. Things are complicated, but you can't go too wrong with a large kingdom.

4) Diplomacy is not about making friends to everyone, but about selecting "enemies" that will be swallowed by you. Civ4 rewards players who possess diplomatic integrity. You try to stay loyal to a few friends, and smash the foes that might steal away your victory. You will be aligning to your enemies' neighbors, possibly bribing them to attack first. Try not to befriend with top-scorers. You can't bribe them, can't attack them, then you lose to them.

In Civ, 99% of the outcome of wars have been decided at the moment of declaration. The rest 1% is due to extreme lucks.

I haven't touched on the tactical aspects. For now, you can read the numbers of units to figure out what is best thing to do, and learn from mistakes. Have fun :)

Excellent advice here, some i myself find useful.

Another, quite common, but unmentionned here : When you declare war, you must have your armies built and ready to attack. If not, you've done something wrong.

My 2ps worth:

intelligence - keep an eye on the other civs looking out for those that might be gearing up to attack you, and watching for the ones that are weak and ripe for a kicking, i.e. post 'sentries', use religion to see into their cities, scout their territory, later on use spies. Look for weak spots in their defences.

defence - if a civ perceives that you are weak they are likely to attack, the more nutter civs (Motezuma, etc) will do so even if you have friendly relations. So make sure your defences are up to date.

preparation - gear your entire economy to war, consider switching off research to get cash for upgrades, use vassalage / theocracy. Only attack with overwhelming number. Revert back to peacetime as soon as you're close to achieving your goal.

timing - be the aggressor and attack swift and hard. A prolonged war deflects you from other priorities, and causes war weariness.

goal - make sure you have one. Is it to take out a pesky city near your borders, or a resource you covet, or to wipe the buggers off the face of the planet? Be prepared to change your mind as the war develops, and never press your attack without the overwhelming numbers, barrage units, supply lines, etc. or you'll get mashed. Never be afraid to get peace, you can try again in a bit!

execution - in the early game you'll want seige weapons, lots of them. Later on, use air bombardment and blitzkrieg with tanks. And don't forget that naval units can barrage as well as protect your coasts. The AI will often throw everything at you initially, and then their response will usually peter out, so hold your nerve. One nice tactic is to take a city, then stuff it full of defenders, let the AI suicide all their military against it, then mop up the rest, you might get some pillaging but nothing that can't be fixed.

1) Build Barracks in all your production cities.

2) Decide who your going to destroy first. If and Aggressive Civ is next to you.. i.e. Monty, then thats your first target.

3) Research Bronze and Iron before the AI and build lotsa swordmen and axeman and wipe out your first civ.

4) I tend to war at different Era's in the game..

first war - axemens and swords,

second - Catapults, elephants,macemen and crossbowmen (sometimes)

Third war - Calvary and cannons. You can wipe out a couple of civs if you research Military tradition way before they do. Even when the AI has riflemen, its still no match for calvary.

Fourth - Tanks and artillery.

Of course you have to manage your towns and build up your commerce to reach all the needed military techs faster in order to have the advanges of these units. But the idea is to space out your wars so that you have time to build up your cities and maintain a tech lead.

This is what has been working for me...

First, find a nice high-defense terrain spot, directly next to the city if possible. This is your seige camp. Fortify on this spot strong units or counter-units to whatever the enemy has. The enemy will occasionally waste a unit or two trying to dislodge you - this is free XP. A forested hill across a river from the city is ideal.

Next, put together pairs of marauders in a stack and go around dismantling the enemy improvements for fun and profit. You use pairs so that if one gets attacked it's not vulnerable to an easy kill on the second attack. Take out strategic resources - iron, horses, copper - to reduce the quality of enemy reinforcements. Then cut off the trade routes to the city by pillaging roads, if possible; pillage the road link to the rest of their city anyway even if it's on a coast. Use marauding teams to swarm reinforcing units as well... just don't let your marauders get too far from safety.

By this time your catapults should have reduced the city defense bonus to zero, at which point you make a stack of attack units, position them in the best attack spot, and fire away.

If at any point you have a significant advantage in strength or numbers, go ahead and attack the city.

The key is patience... put time on your side by fortifying and marauding, and wait for the enemy to use his strength trying to stop you - he is at a disadvantage in that situation, since he gets no defense bonuses while attacking.

What I like to do is use my most modern units as defense and make stacks of obsolete or soon-obsolete units as attackers - doesn't matter much if you lose them, they would have been deleted anyway.

Whatever you do make sure that you don't attack and fail to make a kill, especially in cities. The last thing you need is to give the opponent city defense promotions which can really make everything more difficult.

.....and make stacks of obsolete or soon-obsolete units as attackers - doesn't matter much if you lose them, they would have been deleted anyway.



I do this too, with one exception. If my obsolete, or soon to be obsolete units have several promotions, I'll save those for upgrading. I sacrifice all the non-promoted units, of course. Even if I don't take a city with these, they've usually softened up the city defenders enough to take with my more modern units with little to no damage, (and usually a couple of promotions for the stack).

[QUOTE=cardin411]1)

Third war - Calvary and cannons. You can wipe out a couple of civs if you research Military tradition way before they do. QUOTE]

I entirely agree with this. If you actually skip knights, riflemen and keep your army ancient or medevil (ie macemen, lonbowmen). when you come out with cavalry the enemy hasn't tried to research riflemen yet. Cavalry vs Longbowmen (I sense this is a bit unfair;) )

Playing on fast speed makes wars harder, the AIs can build units to block you much faster and your army will often be obsolete by the time it walks in. Normal or epic is a much better speed for learning fighting.

Other people have given good advice, one thing I'll mention is that the AI tends to do the same thing. For example, if a civ behind another civ or two declares war on you and marches though open borders to one of your cities, you can count on him hitting it in every war until you defeat him.

One thing to add:

Try to never go to war alone. Even if it's a relatively weak ally, it causes the AI to either fight a defensive battle, or to send his forces to attack someone else. I was very surprised the first time I called in an ally and watched my enemy's offensive forces suddenly withdraw.

A few tactics aspects...

1) It is nice to wipe out the enemies before they even know what's coming to them. :eek: The AIs love to use a "stack of doom", piling up a large number of units and kills anything that stands in their way. This is indeed very effective!

Before catapult is invented, you can use a huge number of axemen (they are available early, and can be chopped easily). Give them city raider and hack like mad. After catapult, you will use tons of catapults. Use them to bombard the city defense down to 0%, then use them to suicide attack. Their collateral damage will make your melee units' life much longer. City units heal fast, so ideally all of the suicide attacks + melee mopup happens in 1-2 turns.

2) Pillaging only works well when there is no way you can take the city! (then perhaps you shouldn't have attacked it...). Unless you can destory their only key resource (Iron, etc.) your enemy has in their entire territory, you go with the stack of death way. Even the Deity AIs love to pillage, and that's why they suck at war.

3) If your enemy has horses, remember to produce a few spearman before hand, to mix with your axeman, just for defending purpose. The AIs love to produce chariots / horse archers.

One simple fact I know is never go to war without some form of artillery. Taking cities can either be extremely costly and difficult (without them) or a breeze (with them). Bombard those defenses!

2) Pillaging only works well when there is no way you can take the city! (then perhaps you shouldn't have attacked it...). Unless you can destory their only key resource (Iron, etc.) your enemy has in their entire territory, you go with the stack of death way. Even the Deity AIs love to pillage, and that's why they suck at war.
I don't pillage around a city I intend to capture; therefore if intend to wipe out a Civ (capturing several if not all of its cities in the process), I don't pillage at all. I want to use those resources in my newly acquired territory, thank you very much.

However, if I know I cannot completely defeat a strong opponent, but I want to cripple him, I will pillage like crazy--around all but the limited number of cities I intend to wrest from his grasp. With his economy in a shambles and one or two key cities gone, he will likely be ripe for the plucking once I get a military tech lead a few turns down the road. (Remember that the AI will not send out workers to repair pillaged tiles if you have units within that city's fat cross.)

I never knew how to deal with a war on noble and above, so I did some test games and these are my main thoughts (on attcaking):
1. If you want to attack early before construction, you better do it before the enemies has iron/bronze working. Then you'll have to spam axemen and swordmen like mad and rush him.
2. If you conquer a city put your healing troops inside it and they won't cost you any maintanance.
3. Pillaging doesn't help, only if you're sure you can't conquer a certain city but there are other cities behind it, I sometimes move slower but pillage.
4. Your economy WILL crush, so you better research CoL fast for courthouses.
5. Catapults are great to weaken the defenders in a city with suicide missions.
6. If you don't rush a war, try to build many units, at least for every unit he has have 2 units.

I am still testing more modern war.
I also did one game when I built and only when I had a big tech advance I attacked. Then I got domination altough I small before the attack in about 25 turns.

Waiting until you develop construction and build catapults can be a big mistake actually, axemen or swordsmen with city raider and/or cover promotions can easily rip apart cities at +20% defense, as can horse archers (especially with flanking II), and chariots can use their insane withdrawal chance to retreat. I like building big stacks with a mix of all kinds of units better, but an early war with what you can build quickly can really help get you out of a hole like the AIs boxing you down to 3 cities.

Always check the demographics to check you do actually have a strong military. Its very disheartening to open up the demographics window and find your the weakest on the map or even 4-5th. :cry:

Your either aggresive or your not. You cant be both esp on higher levels.

yeah, in my last game I was 6th in power ranking even though I produced mostly military unit. I then decided to attack Monty(who was third or somthing) and got a city. WHO'S SIXTH IN POWER RANKING NOW. one thing to know about the AI is that the number of units in a city is based on 2 things. 1. city size and 2. visible threat. In an early war you can easily cripple the AI by going after the smaller cities first or by hiding your army until declaration.

Another AI weakness is that it tends to take it's mobile army and use it early. If you get someome else to declare war first, or attack someome who's already in a fight, you pretty much just need some city takers, the big stacks will be busy or destroyed. I've pulled some nice cities off of a 'more powerful' civ this way. On the other hand, be very careful if a civ hasn't been in a war for a long time, they'll probably have a lot of units headed across your border.

Thanks for all your tips. They have really helped me.