Hello again!

Emboldened by the thorough responses to my previous questions, I have a more philosophical one for you.

As an old timer (Civ 1 and 2 experience only) this new Civ incarnation has voluminous strange and new content -- which I love, appreciate, and thoroughly enjoy.

But then there is war.

Waging war has been the most arduous, frustrating, and bothersome task I've had to do in any video game since grinding for rep in World of Warcraft.
I know I must be missing something so let me break it down for you, so that you could advise me on what I am doing wrong.

Im speaking of waging campaigns against a slightly weaker AI nation. (when you out-tech them, then its easy--I'm after the sword-on-sword midieval combat!) I usually play quick games of standard or small maps on Warlord. Here's my war MO: rival civ has the land I want, and is a bit weaker than me, but strong enough not to be a total steamroll. I spend several turns building up my economy to make sure i can support the army, and then switch civics and build my forces. Lets say my civ has 7 cities at this point. I spend about an hour of real time doing nothing but building my seige and my army and sending them to the border. This gives me enough for at least two giant stacks (lets say 20+ units apiece) to march towards two different cities, some border patrol stacks, appropriate city defense, and one or two infiltration/pillager stacks.

Here's where it starts to grind my gears. After the 3 or so turns it takes to get into seige position, I begin bombardment. On the tooltip for trebs, it says that bombardment reduces city defense by ~10% or so. Well, each
bombardment attack of my trebs is only reducing defense by ~3 or 4%.
This takes 4 or 5 turns to reduce to 0. The next turn, I do the suicide cat routine, then attack and take the city, usually after heavy losses, as the enemy has had ample time to reinforce and build or rush defensive units.

This leaves me with a city defended by half-dead units and all my seige suicided, because otherwise there would be absolutely no chance of taking the city in the first place.

Which essentially brings me right beack to where I started! Now I need to spend another 45 minutes building up my next wave?!? This is usually when I shut the game off and go to bed.

How can I improve this process? Of course I can wait till I grossly out-tech them, but I honestly enjoy the thought of waging midieval war, and can always have gunpowder wars against other rivals. As it stands, with early war I get incredibly frustrated. Longbowmen on a hilltop city destroy me all the time. When I use knights, the pikemen counterattack.

I suppose know the obvious answer--build more units and build vastly more seige. Although I must rant for a moment about how outrageous it is that in order to wage offensive war you MUST suicide an army of seige units for each city--IMO a faulty and stupid game mechanic. I can't reduce the difficulty level, because then everything becomes too easy for the game to be entertaining.

Is war supposed to take this long? Is each war supposed to be a total war, where all your cities focus exclusively on war producion? Was it this way in Civ 3 and Alpha Centauri?

Am I doomed to be a wussy until Rifling is discovered?

Thanks for reading!
~neckface

I am sure you will receive a lot of great advice from this forum, and in no way am I an expert at this game, but I do understand what you are saying. You want to maximize your armies efficiency, and gain maximum resources in the process.

I usually, before waging war, send a spy into enemy territory, or obtain open borders (then close them 10 turns later), in order to scope out which defensive unit they favor the most. For example, if the AI has a lot of archers, I will build a lot of swordsmen with cover, or if they have a lot of axeman, I will build a lot of chariots, but essentially my point is, bring more of a counterforce when challenging another civilization.

If you have horses, or elephants, and can afford to spend production on stables, get the lvl 2 flank. Usually when I arrive at an enemy city I will have as many horses to their archery+spear, all with 2nd level flank, and attack with them second after a small wave catapults soften them up. This saves catapults, as maybe 50% of my horses will survive. Then I lead in with my axemen/swordsmen, and save the rest of the catapults for the next city.

It always helps having a scout, or warrior, or whomever with a medic promotion, so that you can heal that extra % per turn in your newly conquered city. But as your war continues, build support troops to backup, or replenish your lost troops while they heal, then move on.

If you feel that your powergrip is slipping, spend as much time as you can afford pillaging their lands, then sue for peace once you get what you came for.

I am not sure exactly if you have the expansions or not, but you may want to head to the civfanatics download site, and obtain some scenario's, like the Alexander The Great scenario, or Barbarian's, which strictly deal with war, and help with those conquest types of wars you may be interested in.

Great advice OctavianFlu, thanks. As I mentioned, I am still getting used to all the new aspects involved in Civ IV, so it seems I have been neglectful on intelligence, among other things. Although this much I HAVE learned--NEVER wage a war when you are on parity with a protective AI. :P

The main thing I'm learning is you need troops. Every city you lose a couple of siege units and/or city attackers and have to leave a couple of city defenders behind. Every SoD needs lots of surplus units, how many depends on how big the empire you're taking out is. You can have your production cities churning out additional units during the war but its good to have a decent sized army at the start of the war rather than stall half way through.
If you do start running out of units see what your enemy will give you for peace. After a 10-turn treaty hopefully you'll have reinforced your army enough to finish the job.

It sounds to me like you're spending too much time in some sort of military production phase before you decide to attack. I do a lot of warring in Civ, myself - generally, I find that the first few battles with a civ are going to be the most difficult, but if you're successful, you should really be able to hinder their ability to effectively produce. I often end up steamrolling over the final few cities of a civ that I'm a war with. I'm a little confused about why you're spending so much time preparing.

In my games, I designate certain cities for the purpose of production. That's just basic city specialization. Other than building production oriented buildings, my production cities do nothing but build military. When my military gets big enough that it starts cramping my economy, I'll usually declare war. I've noticed that a nearby AI at war will usually come to you first with a load of units. Since the advantage tends to be with the defender, let them come and attack. This is better for war weariness, as well. After that, you should be poised to attack that civ - they'll still be producing military to replace what they've lost, but regardless, if you can wrestle a few cities from them, their production ability will be minimized.

The main point is that I don't have a 'military production phase' before going to war. I'm constantly building military - at peace, at war, whenever... so my military production phase lasts the entire game.

The main point is that I don't have a 'military production phase' before going to war. I'm constantly building military - at peace, at war, whenever... so my military production phase lasts the entire game.

This basically says it all.

Don't think of it as get military tech -> build units -> go to war. By the time you've teched to civil service, machinery, and engineering, and built your entire army of trebs and macemen, the AI will probably have caught up.

Think of it as an already good military + some technologically superior units = unstoppable force. You don't need whole stacks of trebs and macemen; after your couple of trebs and/or maces have taken down city defenses and neutralized the strongest defenders, those cats, swordsmen, and axemen you already had are more than enough to take the city.

By the time you've teched to civil service, machinery, and engineering, and built your entire army of trebs and macemen, the AI will probably have caught up.


I see exactly what you guys mean--this has always been the case for me, then i get super annoyed when my massive army meets surprisingly advanced resistance.

What was the name of that infamous bungling Union general who wouldn't attack until Lincoln sent him thousands and thousands of troops, squandering many opportunities to strike at the rebels?

What was the name of that infamous bungling Union general who wouldn't attack until Lincoln sent him thousands and thousands of troops, squandering many opportunities to strike at the rebels?

George McClellan. Nothing wrong with planning for battles, just don't overplan to the point that you waste an advantage...

neckface one thing I would mention, which helped me a lot, is to make sure you are using the civics for war when you are building a lot of military in the phase before you attack, so that you get the most powerful units with the right promotions. The promotions in this game can be the difference, even if on tech parity with the AI. Then you won't need quite as many units or feel overwhelmed. Also make sure to scout your opponent's land to see what units they are building to counter them (you can do this now with spies, you don't need open borders).

also consider drafting with the Nationhood civic, and whipping with Slavery, to quickly pump out more units while you are attacking. In other words, don't try to do too much: focus entirely on war and don't worry so much about economy and infastructure while at war. So I guess to answer your question, it's yes, it is usually better if it's total war for your empire. But think of it this way: in real life if a nation is not totally focused on war, the best you can expect is maybe to pillage or hurt your opponent, not take all their cities. You are probably thinking in terms that you can just give partial attention to war but still capture cities. It really shouldn't work that way. It's very hard to capture cities, so you need to focus on it. Or, you can wage partial war just to pillage cottages or deny them a valuable resource, or get others to join you in the war.

And make sure to have a medic unit for faster healing - use a Great General for a super medic unit that travels with the stack and once you take the first city, heals them up quicker. And keep moving.... it takes a bit more micromanagement but you can start moving your healed units out to the next target while some others are left behind. There are a lot of tactical things like this you can do, like luring the enemy out of cities, or onto better tiles, etc.

Although I must rant for a moment about how outrageous it is that in order to wage offensive war you MUST suicide an army of seige units for each city--IMO a faulty and stupid game mechanic.

Also wanted to address this: you absolutely do not have to do this to take cities... in fact in many situations it's best NOT to suicide all your seige weapons. Check the battle odds before attacking for certain units... highly promoted city raiders, once the main city defense is down, can do well against defending units of certain types. For example sometimes it's better to suicide a unit other than seige first, to weaken the best defender. Then the seige units or other units will have much better odds and finish them off easier, and you keep most of your seige weapons for the next city. And with the withdrawal promotion you often will keep your siege weapons longer. And consider attacking with injured units, don't think you need to necessarily heal them 100% before attacking again - check the odds, because sometimes they can still win and it speeds up your attack.

So just experiment with this a little.. but don't box yourself into thinking you must follow the pattern of: siege bombardment, seige sacrifice, city raider mopup. In reading these forums people have opened my eyes to all sorts of nifty tricks and such to get it done in different situations.

Vast help so far.... thanks all and keep the tactics coming!

A few things I found useful when warring:

Keep the siege coming. You can always use more so keep buidling them all the time.

Bring good defensive units along. The AI often tries to overwhelm you after you take it's first city. Bring a few longbows/crossbows with CGII along, fortify them in the new city and your damaged troops can heal in peace. If your newly captured city is on a hill and you are protective, you can decimate the AIs army by doing this. Try doing this with Churchill and you'll have a blast.

Learn how the AI wages war. You say you are dividing your troops into two stacks.Then you should chose two different times to attack. From what I have learned, the AI has mobile units and stationary units. The mobile units are the ones reinforcing the AI cities after you declare war and the stationary ones will stay in cities no matter what. If the AI can't see your other stack it will move many units towards the zone you are threatening with your first one. If you have a good distance between your insertion points you will find less defended cities when you deceide to attack with your second stack. Just keep it out of sight for the computer until it's time to move in.

Edit: I forgot something. Bribe someone to join you in your war. The best case scenario is to have an AI sandwiched between you and your war ally. First bribe your ally to attack, wait 2-3 turns for the victim to move his units to the other side of his lands, then declare.

oh I did think of something else: queue loading your builds: start building a military unit then when it's 1-2 turns from completion switch to another type of military unit (for example, build a maceman, then switch to a catapult, then switch again to a crossbowman)... then if you need to, switch into the military civics for promotions (vassalage,etc) and then finish all the units in just a couple turns all at once. As long as you don't delay finishing a unit for about 10 turns (normal speed) the hammers will not start to decay. This is a great way to leverage how you switch into civics for war, because you are not paying maintenance costs for extra units while you wait for more to be built.

... usually after heavy losses, as the enemy has had ample time to reinforce and build or rush defensive units.

One thing I do to prevent the enemy from reinforcing is to surround the city as best I can. I break up my stack into several smaller stacks that each include a strong defending unit, some city raiders, and one or more seige weapons. Then I place these stacks around the city, between it and the rest of that civ's empire, blocking any reinforcements. This also has the advantage of minimizing collateral damage to my stacks, should the AI open up with a catapult/treb/cannon of his own.
Also, and this I have to verify, but if I am occupying squares around his city, he can't use the food/hammers/etc on them, so it's more difficult for him to build reinforcements. (Of course, he can still crack the whip!)

Here's where it starts to grind my gears. After the 3 or so turns it takes to get into seige position, I begin bombardment. On the tooltip for trebs, it says that bombardment reduces city defense by ~10% or so. Well, each
bombardment attack of my trebs is only reducing defense by ~3 or 4%.
This takes 4 or 5 turns to reduce to 0. The next turn, I do the suicide cat routine, then attack and take the city, usually after heavy losses, as the enemy has had ample time to reinforce and build or rush defensive units.

~neckface

Sounds like you're playing Beyond the Sword (or Warlords maybe) where blasting at a city with walls and/or a castle will only reduce its defenses a small amount each turn. Wheras on Vanilla you could take four catapults and reduce a walled city to nothing in one turn. Bringing in more cats and trebs sounds like it would be the thing for you. Keep in mind too that a city without walls or castles and be reduced down pretty quick, so those might make better targets. You get enough of those siege weapons they can take the even the walled city's defenses down pretty good in one turn. Even if the AI's got like 20% defense left you can still blast in there and knock the enemy out on that same turn before he even gets the chance to reinforce. Taking that first city out lightning fast can really make the whole war go better.

The solution to the wall/castle/cultural defenses and the slow rate they get bombarded at before you get cannons is to knock down the cultural defenses with a revolution. As you are gearing up for war put all your espionage points into your target. Build up a lot of spies and send them ahead of your troops. Once your troops are next to the town start a revolution and the defenses will be down for that turn.

Another war tactic not to neglect (assuming you have Beyond the Sword) is the good old spy. Send a spy to the city you plan to attack, make sure he sits there for five turns to get the -50% mission cost bonus, then have the spy incite a revolt the turn you plan on attacking. The revolt reduces the defence of the city to 0%. All your siege gets to focus on softening up defenders, then mop up with your stack. Another advantage of the spy tactic is that it's much quicker than sitting your stack outside the enemy city for a few turns whittling down the walls. This ultimately means they'll have less mobile defenders reinforcng the city, and gives them less time to slave units as well.

Edit: I forgot something. Bribe someone to join you in your war. The best case scenario is to have an AI sandwiched between you and your war ally. First bribe your ally to attack, wait 2-3 turns for the victim to move his units to the other side of his lands, then declare.

I'd say this is the most important one. It's really hard to fight two opponents at the same time, and the AI is bad at it. Usually your ally will be able to take out any counterattack while you can focus on taking cities. Your ally might take a few as well, perhaps even ones you'd really like to have, so that's a risk.

As for how to bribe your friends. Declaring war first and then offering a bribe, really cuts the costs. But then again, the first one to declare will probably suffer the heaviest counter-attack. Also, try to have your friends help you for free.

Another tactic that hasn't been mentioned yet: amphibious assaults. You need frigates for this to work well, because they can bombard enemy cities. The idea is to surprise your enemy, by landing next to poorly defended cities. If you really manage to surprise him, you might get away without landing at all, and attacking straight from the ships. If you plan well ahead and have some units with the amphibious promotion this can really pay off. Your units can move something like four tiles in a galleon, and heal at the same time, greatly increasing the speed of the war.

I've had exactly the same problems--wars in this situation can be extremely tedious. As several people have mentioned, there are a couple of good tricks. (1) Add spies to your stacks to take down defenses. This works particularly well. (2) Have your cities closest to the front producing backup trebs and cats (and someone to defend them while they are heading out to the front). NOTE: One thing that I think may be a big difference between Civ 4 and Civ 2--in Civ 4, it is really vital that you vary the units in your stacks. Pretty much every unit has a serious vulnerability, so having all or most of your units be of the same type will really hurt you. As I recall, that was much less of an issue in Civ 2...

Good advice here... I'm beginning to get the hang of this - a little.

I use the theory of resupply and heal - with decent success. I leave damaged units in my newly conquored city until healed. The AI will usually leave it alone - IF you are attacking another city. When they are healed, have them join the battle or move on to the NEXT city, depending on where you are at.

Send your new units to that city - use it as a staging area to your next attack(s).

DO NOT use all your seige units on a city - unless you absolutely have to. Early on (for example) enough axemen will take a city - even one with with a bit of culture defense.

I will have to try the sparating things out tactic. I don't usually send enough to ring the city & I just hate it when what used to have "a couple" ouf units now has "a lot". But if you kill them all, that will be less to defend there other cities.

Speaking of collateral damage, I noticed recently that a tactic pulled by some AIs is to move a couple of siege units out to you AHEAD of the battle. They suicide, and you are weaker when you get to the city. Split them up BEFORE you get close.

Which leades to MY question:
Promotions...
Which are best? And Why?

For example, Shock and Pinch. Since Pinch is only good on Gunpowder units, I usually delay that until I see gunpowder units. Aren't gunpowder units also melee??

And since you have to get experience to get promotions (OK a couple you can get with certain civics and buildings), how do you send new units into combat with level-2 promotions??

And I don't think I understand how "flanking" works... [can someone explain?]

Thanks!

For example, Shock and Pinch. Since Pinch is only good on Gunpowder units, I usually delay that until I see gunpowder units. Aren't gunpowder units also melee??


This one I know :D ...the answer is no. Unit classifications are unique and a unit only has one classification. Regardless if your grenadier is an upgraded axeman, he's still identified purely as a gunpowder unit.

One tactic that I've found very useful in the early (ancient to medieval eras) game is the war aimed not at taking cities but economically crippling a rival. The AI tends to fortify itself in cities, allowing you to raid the countryside. You can devastate his ability to grow, tech, make war, etc. and also net yourself a good amount of gold by pillaging. You lose relatively few units, as you're not hitting his positions of strength. I may eventually take a city in this war, but overall I use this war to bring an equal down so that I can overwhelm him in the NEXT war.

Great advice in this thread. Thanks fellas!