I got back into civ4 a bit last night after an escape to Oblivion for awhile.

I was playing as Ragnar. My capital was one of those completely tree-covered, but otherwise unspectacular capitals. I think I only had one good commerce city and the rest were largely coastal or mediocre. I had the space to build around 9 cities peacefully. I had Japan as my nearest neighbour with whom war was inevitable. Saladin and Shaka were on a continent reachable by galleys. We were all 4 of us Hindu and I was friendly with Saladin and Shaka, annoyed with Toku.

I decided that my plan for this game would be to eliminate Toku, which would give me around 20 cities total and then gun for a space race (intercontinental warfare being tedious).

I figured the most desirable time to take down Toku was during the period of the Berserker so I beelined CS/Machinery after currency while hoping to trade for other important techs.

It turned out my love for the berserker was misguided as the war turned into a slogfest (toku being agg/pro). Toku also had the Statue of Zeus, much to my surprise and the WW was very quickly crippling. I gave up the game when my units started to strike (it was 1am and I was playing sloppy).

In retrospect, I feel like 1 of 2 alternatives would have been much better:

1) I had ivory available. I could have hit Toku with elephants and catapults earlier, preferably before he hit longbows. This army comes sooner than berserkers, which gave him time to get longbows.

2) I had enough cities and a good tech lead (I also nabbed the colossus for my coastal cities--4-commerce tiles) and I got liberalism first ca. 1000AD taking nationalism. I could have gunned for rifles and would've easily got to them first imho. Then I could have drafted/built a large army of rifles and taken Toku out more easily.

Both of these approaches I often have a lot of success with (the other being an early axe-rush if I have a civ close enough to me, which isn't always the case).

But that leads me toward the purpose of this post: What about medeival warfare??? It just seems to me that this era represents a period of weakness for the human warmongerer relative to some of the other options I have mentioned.

Does anyone else have a lot of success with medeival warfare and would you care to share your tips?

It does bog down a bit once they start using castles. I usually mix CR maces (aka berserkers in this case) with counter units in a stack with siege. A lot of this siege has the accuracy promotion (easy with vassalage). Alternatively, you can use spies to weaken defenses and then just use siege for collateral. Getting enough EP early can be hard without GW though.

Collateral a siege unit, maybe two, then the CR maces should be able to clean any middle age troop up.

I ran across a couple of mudcrabs not long ago. Annoying creatures.

I think the real problem with medieval warfare is both that its tedious and it falls at an important time in the tech tree. Medieval warfare can be effective as long as you have the full slate of units, Knights, lots of CR Macemen, Lots of Trebs and Pikeman/Phants plus crossbowmen for stack defense. Medieval warfare just takes time, because the balance between fortification vs offense is tipped as far in favour of fortification as it is at any other point in the game.

The difficulty of the time it take is twofold in my experience. The first is that by getting the techs for all those units mean you neglect the liberalism tech path, lowering one's chance for a large tech lead later. Second point which reinforces the first is that you don't have time to build alot of important infrastructure which falls in roughly the same time period. Things like universities, harbours, theatres, acqueducts, grocers and some of the essential national wonders don't get built till later when fighting a medieval war, thus further setting you behind.

Also, depending on the map the medieval period is when one might want to be laying the foudations of an overseas empire for trade. So this means teching towards, optics building harbours and caravels instead of CR macemen and trebs.

So thats my longwinded way of agreeing with futurehermit that its definately preferable to fight a war either in the late classical period, especially if you have 'phants. Or fight one immeadiately after of the middle ages using liberalism to sling you towards rifles.

I enchanted my newly-found glass warhammer (15 damage atm) with a sigil stone of "damage health 20 points" last night, now it's awesome! :)

Anyway, yes you should have attacked Toku earlier, but not to take his cities (AGG/PRO units are a pain to fight), just to pillage his stuff and leave him crippled. One or two wars like this that go in your favour can leave you at a huge advantage; then in theory you can get to Berserkers/Trebs before Toku gets Longbows/Samurai/Castles. Of course, by doing this Toku has no choice but to turn inwards and spam archers to save himself. Taking him out might be difficult (a 'slogfest' for sure) but pillage warfare might be considerably easier, and can be done during any era (the earlier the better I think).

But yeah, medieval war is tough against an opponent with freely promoted archery and melee units, cheap walls and castles. If you absolutely MUST take him out during the medieval times, forget catapults and just spam trebuchets; as well as your city raiding units bring along horses or elephants and promote them with the withdrawal upgrades - throw these mounted units in first for extra softening-up of the strong defenders. Spies lowering city defense is an option, but unless you put valuable commerce into the espionage slider, spam courthouses and direct all your espionage to Toku, you will struggle to amass the raw espionage required to lower his city defenses.

In short, no I don't have a lot of success with medieval war - it's probably the hardest era to steamroll someone, particularly Toku. Generally I just pillage and defend my homeland while teching to muskets etc.

hitting him with berserkers before he get time to get longbows and statue should not be too hard...

It's possible to win a medieval war, with equal types of troops on both sides, if you have two things going for you:

1) unit quality

2) unit quantity

Even with equal troops, unit quality can be improved by having higher XP (or having a UU like the Berserker).

The second factor is unit quantity. You'd need to make sure your troop numbers are high enough before attacking. How did troop numbers match up vs. Toku, in your case? If he's Protective (which he is), you will need more than the usual.

Not picking fights with protective leaders would probably be a good start to successful medieval war. You haven't had as much time to surge ahead of them in tech at that point.

I'm with the masses here. Fighting a war in medieval times against a protective leader is very tough. If the leader doesn't already have feudalism and engineering, they soon will. It's easy enough to win the war but the cost is usually too great. Add the SoZ on top of the protective trait, and it is suicide. All they have to do is unit spam (which they will), and all the fighting within their borders will cripple you.

Even without facing the SoZ or a protective leader, medieval warfare is still a tough fight. It's very tech demanding (civil service, machinery, engineering, guilds) and doesn't really focus on economic techs or those preparing for the liberalism run. Most often, I find I'm better off focusing on liberalism (which means I've probably got civil service and will usually grab machinery) to take nationalism all the while building up on maces/Xbows. Chase the free nationalism with gunpowder, start drafting muskets, and get to engineering asap for trebs en masse. By focusing on liberalism and building up what troops types I had available at the time, once you get over the hump fill in the army with what is missing and then steam roll desired target.

If the situation arises where I stand to gain an awful lot in a medieval war (more than liberalism???), I like to do two things:

1. have a much earlier war focused on pillaging while defending the homefront. Trios of axe/spear/chariot (or some other combo based on some early UU's) can hold their own and a lot of times move and pillage thanks to the 2 MP of the chariot. This plan is designed to get me to the medieval era before them and hopefully fight a chunk of the war before they get to feudalism. If you're lucky, the AI will send a stack or two into your turf which you can crush and score an early GG in the process.

2. Focus on espionage prior to the war. Put all points into the target because taking down cities with walls/castles takes too long with the siege of the era. A successful city revolt takes the city down in one turn in lieu of five turns of bombard and an extra stack of CG x longbows to remove. This usually requires a push myself towards engineering for castles. If you should get a great spy, settle him or build scotland yard. They are both superior to infiltration.

If I played my cards right in this scenario, I managed to take down 1 to 3 cities before the target achieved longbows and spies are already in place in remaining cities just waiting to stir a revolt. Note: If the enemy doesn't yet have longbows, I wouldn't burn the espionage points on revolt in a city defended by archers. It should be easy enough to take already.

I've had plenty of success with medieval wars using this plan but against a combo of protective/SoZ, it's still difficult and would avoid it if possible.

My preferred play difficulty is monarch. I wouldn't attempt these tactics on emperor or above, I just don't have the skills to pull off a successful medieval war while maintianing tech parity.

I seem to be the odd man out here: I'm a fan of medieval warfare. I used to hate it, but now it's possibly my favourite era for warring, vying with the Industrial era for that title.

The Classical period has its attractions, but lately I find that by the time I tech to Construction for Catapults and start a war, not far into it the AI has teched to Feudalism for Longbowmen. And if you think taking on a Protective civ is no fun, try it with nothing better than Cats and Swordsmen. :mad: The modern era? Oy. It's a micromanagement nightmare, and often the game is more or less won by that point so it's just a matter of pushing units around the map.

I find the medieval era has a nice-sized variety of units--a few more than the classical era, but far less than the overwhelming choices available in the modern era. This suits one of my favourite tactics, the military queue build/war civic switch; my best production cities can load up their queues with one each of all the medieval units while my slower-building cities can focus on 1, 2, or 3 of them.

Facing a Protective civ with walls and castles and, heaven forbid, Chichen Itza and/or the Statue of Zeus is intimidating for sure, but not insurmountable. I use spies to figure out where the CI and/or SofZ are and make those cities early priorities. I make sure I have several Catapults with Accuracy promotions (sometimes as many as 10!) as well as many Trebuchets. Often I have to spend 2, sometimes 3 turns pummeling away at the city defenses with the siege weapons, so I just choose a good defensive tile to sit in. I always like to have one unit with Woodsman III and another with Guerrilla III to protect the stack on good defensive tiles.

The key to victory in this era are Trebuchets, undoubtedly. Trebs may be why I like warring in this era so much. C'mon, we begged and pleaded after vanilla Civ IV came out for a siege weapon between Cats and Cannons and they gave us one. The medieval era is the Trebuchet's heyday. How can you not take advantage of that?

And that's not the only unit to love. Knights and Pikemen are great for dealing with those annoying pillagers, and this is the era when my Macemen earn their City Raider III promotions, anticipating the day when they'll be upgraded to Grenadiers or Riflemen.

As for the pursuit of Liberalism, I usually manage to snag that too. This is why I'm such a fan of the Great Library; with it and the National Epic in my GP farm, I can produce Great Scientists to lightbulb Philosophy, Paper, and Education. I can do it without the GL, but it certainly helps a great deal! This leaves me free to research Engineering, Guilds, and so on; often I can trade Liberalism-path techs for them (I just wait until after I've lightbulbed the next one on the path before trading away its antecedent).

600 AD on Monarch is the cutoff for me. At that point, the AI has feudalism and longbows in its cities. You need cannons at that point. Forget rifles. Just get 10 CR1 cannons in a stack with literally anything and you can safely overwhelm your opponent. You can use chariots with the cannons if you want to, it doesn't matter. You should not ever lose a non siege unit when attacking a medieval city, because you are softening them up with cannons before hand.

Alternatively, you can use CR1 trebs instead of cannons if you have ants in your pants to attack, but I've found that by the time I have enough trebs to attack (I'm not kidding when I say that I want TEN of them) I'm just about to research steel, so why not just wait and make them cannons. The upgrade is laughably cheap (80 gold per unit.) The nice thing about upgrading the trebs to cannons is that they can't be flanked by medieval units and that they can defend themselves in open ground if attacked by medieval units, meaning that you don't need expensive troops to defend them, just bring along whatever old chariots or axemen you have lying around to mop up the cities after you take them. By this time, you also have musketmen to defend your conquered cities with, of course.

That brings up another point. The muskateer is actually a really nice unit. Its speed allows you to build them in your core cities and get them rapidly to the enemy cities where they need to be to defend. If you have theocracy and a rax, you can generate city defender2 muskets out of the box which will hold off quite a bit.

Furthermore, if you plan on smacking down your opponent at this stage, be sure to build castles in all your cities. You are not likely to beeline to economics, and you probably have stone somewhere by now if you have a decent sized empire, thus making them often only take one or two turns to build. Getting an extra trade route for two turns of production is a no-brainer. Also, this allows you to defend your empire against counterattacks with a minimal garrison in each city (the musketeer also can be very useful here with its extra mobility.) The AI will NOT have cannons at this point, so your castle walls will be a very effective deterrent. You, on the other hand, with your cannons, need not worry about the castle walls.

I know people love rifles over cannons, but the research time is MUCH longer and the upgrade from macemen to rifles is much more expensive. You can make a lot more hay, IMHO, with a treb to cannon upgrade approach.

Medieval Warfare... :sad:

The problem as I see it (I am a newbie though, so my views may be dubious):

1/ It seems impossible to achieve a tech lead during that time, I had to delay teching a lot of economy techs such as Phil (farm GP), Nat (for the Taj) and Education (for liberalism and universities) which hurts me in the long run.

2/ I would prefer to have theatres and jails when I go into a long drawn out war. War weariness is just too biased against human players... It is so very unfair.

3/ If I did not have enough cities, I would have got them by warring before enemies have longbows. If I rexed, I would be spamming cottages. Either way, I already have enough cities at that point. Not much incentive to war I guess.

4/ Recently, I discovered that if I beeline chemistry and get Mil Sci and Steel (using 2 golden ages to get there faster and to change civics without anachy and using a GM to do trade mission to get money to upgrade my siege weapons to cannons), while ignoring almost every other techs, I can often finish off an AI with Gren and Cannon before they get rifles, and my military losses is minimal. Even if they get rifles (but not military tradition, fcannons being flanked is no fun), it is not such a big deal coz Gren > Rifles, though I will need to replace more cannons.

So, I guess I try my best to stay away from warring with Treb and Macemen.

Civs with uus that are medevil are good civs to war with because Promotions and stacks can cost money but attacking cities gives gold and land and destroys an enemys army which will attack you at sometime anyway.

I am not the greatest civ player but I am with Siusitul in this. I love medieval times and my Macemen + trebs + knights + 1 pikeman.

I seem to be the odd man out here: I'm a fan of medieval warfare. I used to hate it, but now it's possibly my favourite era for warring, vying with the Industrial era for that title.


On the contrary, I'd agree with you in that the medieval era offers the 'coolest' variety for warfare and I am a fan. But when the victim is a protective civ or has the SoZ, I take a pass until getting past liberalism. I've usually found that one's economy takes too much of a beating during this era during a prolonged war. A protective civ means bring more trebs and longbows invariably seem to slaughter them (CR2 and all) and losing more units means fueling Zeus yeilding lots of red faces in city screens. Granted, the war is still doable; but usually the gains aren't worth the sacrifice. Consider this: most of the protective civs have their UU come to life in the medieval era.

Toku: Samurai
Mao/Qin: Cho-ku-nu
Saladin: Camel Archers
The King: Landsknecht

I prefer not to face these guys with troops of the same era.

Now, put a non protective civ in its stead and say I built the statue of Zeus. ; medieval warfare is a blast and usually has little effect on the economy. My previous post dealt only with protective civs, the rest are easy pickin's on the battlefield.

I guess 'true' Medieval Warfare would be a combo of Macemen, Trebuchets, Knights, and Pikemen. Move into Theocracy, Vassalage, Serfdom, and Hereditary Rule for better 'effect'. I would say being historically accurate is the way to go.

If your opponent is at tech parity, do what the Europeans did and stock your borders with Forts, Castles, Walls, and Longbowmen. Have a dedicated city producing Knights, two making Macemen/Pikemen (switch on and off), anjd 1 making Trebs

The Stack of Death should consist of 15-20 City Raider I/II or Combat I/Cover Macemen, 5 Flanking I/II Knights, 8-12 Trebuchets with City Raider I/II OR Barrage I/II, 4 Pikemen promoted like the Maces, and 1 Scout, Chariot, Horse Archer, or Pikeman as the Medic.

First, of course, use the Siege. Instead of wasting valuable Trebuchets on suicides first, try using the the Knights. They have the most raw strength (10), and with the Flanking Line have a good chance of withdrawal. They will also inflict heavy damage. Now bring in the remaining Trebuchets. Their odds of withdrawal will increase due to the Knight assaults. Use the Knigt city to replenish the fallen. Finally, mop up with the Macemen, and Pikemen if need be/

I ran across a couple of mudcrabs not long ago. Annoying creatures.

:lol: Any news from the other provinces? :lol:

I enchanted my newly-found glass warhammer (15 damage atm) with a sigil stone of "damage health 20 points" last night, now it's awesome!


that sounds like a nice weapon, although if i am going the warhammer route i like the warhammer artifact available around level 10 :mischief:

Thanks everyone, some good feedback here. Nice to know that my hunches were accurate.

The Stack of Death should consist of 15-20 City Raider I/II or Combat I/Cover Macemen, 5 Flanking I/II Knights, 8-12 Trebuchets with City Raider I/II OR Barrage I/II, 4 Pikemen promoted like the Maces, and 1 Scout, Chariot, Horse Archer, or Pikeman as the Medic.


Somewhat tangential to the topic but:
Trade in some macemen for bombard catapults and many more knights. You should not be using trebuchets under 60% odds generally. At worse odds catapults (if 3+ equally healthy defenders, Knights if fewer - Horse Archers are OK too as they have a better withdraw rate with equal promotions).

On topic: I concur that against a protective leader, especially one such as Toku who has no primary economic technology (and thus is some easier to beat to the grens/cannon tier while they have muskets at best), is not easy and the benefits of doing so need to be much greater since the cost will be.

In the game you describe would having those extra 11 cities that much earlier really benefit you empire? At that point in the game unless you need to catch up significantly in technology having more land (and fighting a war to get it) will put you further behind in getting to techs like printing press and constitution. If you could race ahead of Toku in technology killing him off would be easier and quicker leaving you less gap to make up with the rest of the world and, for a space race, you can plan on two or three of those cities becoming production centers which take considerably less time to setup and really can't even be established fully until techs like Chemistry and Assembly Line are online.

Middle age war does slow down tech. The land gained from it can be very useful for offsetting that however.

On war in this time period, in a bit more detail:

By far the most important techs are feudalism, CS/mach, and engineering. The 2 most necessary ones are engineering and feudalism. This is solid stack defense, and the second you hit machinery, nothing can kill you while moving in the field. This is very important, because trebs really clean up in the middle ages vs cities.

Under vassalage, trebs come in 2 varieties: CR II and CR I Accuracy. A combo of these can drop defenses lightning fast without major fortifications, and even with them accuracy promoted trebs can place a lot of hurt down. I find that when hitting with CR II trebs, most AI cities will be cleaned up after 1-2 trebs attack. I lose somewhere between 0 and 2 trebs per city, depending on the promotions of the longbows garrisoned, the number of units needing to be damaged on the city tile, and of course luck :). Point is, if you're producing at all during wartime, 10 trebs covered by any decent stack protection will cause grievous, likely irreparable harm to the you attack, even if you AREN'T lucky. If you are, you might vassalize or wipe them out.

Combining the whip with 2 or so good production cities, getting 6-10 trebs and a squad of 6-8 other units isn't that much of a stretch. You'll be able to do so long before anybody leaves the middle ages. Also, as you continue to churn units out, the AI will likely be less able to meet up against your growing stack. If the war goes well or you just picked a soft target, this momentum can easily carry you into taking ANOTHER AI before they start fielding muskets. Even if they do, if they don't have them at the start of the war or very close, it will likely be too late.

So why do this rather than quickly hitting grenades and cannons? Well, for one you can start fighting the AI in the middle ages, and enjoy pretty strong success even at tech parity. You shouldn't be losing considerably more troops than you would with rifles against culture D. Maybe 1 extra unit per city. You can get huge without worrying about massing troops for the sole purpose of protection, and in SOME circumstances you can win sooner this way.

I haven't really gotten into the nuances of the rough part of war in this time though: The enemy SoD. This, not busting garrisons, is the true problem in fighting a war at relative parity. There are a number of workaround to dealing with a decent-to-massive AI SoD. If you can't do one of these, I strongly advise going against a different civ, or waiting. Going toe-to-toe with AI spam at higher levels CAN cripple you, and is probably what a lot of people who don't like warring at tech parity (especially in this period) find tough about this time. So try to:

1. Backstab. Tried and true, get that SoD to deplete itself elsewhere or even get eliminated, then pull out a nice, cold, sharpened knife and stick it in. Low casualties (for you!). Also opens potential for mutual war friendliness. What's not to like...if you can do it.
2. Squish! Pick a soft target. How often do you hear mansa musa or ghandi and "SoD" in the same sentence? A lot, actually. Almost always in the context of someone's SoD crushing them. It works just as easily in the middle ages as any other :p.
3. Siege cheese! I love this one, because it leads to capitulations in a hurry. Here's the steps: A) Take AI city. B) Move your troops back out, other than a garrison unit or two to inflict some cheap casualties on the AI C) AI takes city back with oppressive SoD, because the garrison units prevent any wandering units from doing so. D) YOUR SoD, parked right outside their city, jam-packed with siege to cause collateral (with city raider no less!), lays some collateral damage on the AI stack. Then, clean up with whatever, as you hear the victory trumpet about 15-20 straight times. Cool! Works in any age, but CR trebs can certainly do it!

Of course, middle age warfare isn't the ideal in every game. I daresay I can't think of a tactic that is. However, the above should provide enough situations where it's potentially a viable (even strong) option.

Does this help?

Thanks everyone: I'm thinking two things:

1) Fighting Toku at that time was not the smartest decision

2) If I decided to do it anyway, I should have gone harder for trebs earlier

So, basically, with medeival warfare the goal is to get engineering asap and then let the chips fall where they may after that.

thks

I've got the same instinct. Interestingly, I also got into a game situation where I also had to take out Tokugawa in the Medieval Era facing Longbows on Castled Hills where he had SoZ.

I wouldn't have made a special effort to gun for Berserkers. They give you nothing more than a strength 8 Axeman-like unit. Toku's most annoying and cost-effective defenders are going to be Longbowmen. Berserkers and nothing special against them. You might as well have gone for Ellies, since you had them. Same strength, same XP (Stables vs. Agg), earlier schedule.

I would have gone for Engineering. This tech opens up the excellent Trebuchet unit (build 10-15 Cats, upgrade to Trebs shortly before attacking) and also gives you +1 movement on your roads - this makes reinforcement units come quicker, with important effect on frontline strength. Also gives you +1 more Trade Route in your strongest cities if you build the Castle, a small stopgap against wartime costs.

This warfare IS medieval. You're just declining to tech to and use Berserkers. Against Tokugawa, I would have instead gone for Knights, Ellies, and Trebs. Agg Berserkers are nice and all, but I try not to let the traits blind me to game situations. Pro Longbows and Castles are a royal pain. Teching to Macemen before the attack loses you your Medieval attack window.


Edit: In my own game, I wasn't Ragnar, so I didn't have any special incentive to go for the Macemen. I ended up skipping that unit altogether. I would do this even with UUs if the game makes doing so a better choice.

Roxlimn, keep in mind that one of the two techs that opens up Macemen/Berserkers is Civil Service, which also makes available the very powerful Bureaucracy civic and chain irrigation. It's a high priority tech--analogous in the medieval era to the importance of Bronze Working in the ancient one (opens up a powerful unit, a powerful civic, and an invaluable worker capability). CS/Bureaucracy/chain irrigation usually means I can tech to Engineering faster--the capital is producing more commerce, and chain irrigation means I can grow my cities to either work more cottages (CE) or run more specialists (SE). Since Machinery (also needed for Macemen/Berserkers) is on the way to Engineering, which I agree is vital, you'll have Macemen anyway.

Furthermore, the advantage Macemen have over Elephants and most other units is that they can earn City Raider promotions. That's the "something special" Macemen have versus Longbowmen.

However, I agree with you on the importance of Trebuchets in Medieval warfare, and not only for city attacks and collateral damage. With the elevated city protection I'm facing (mature culture, walls, castles), I often find it takes 2-3 turns of both 5-6 Accuracy Cats and my entire stack of about a dozen Trebs to get rid of that pesky defense bonus.

On normal speed, I grant that often found the AI had teched to Gunpowder and beyond by the time I had a good medieval army ready. But on Epic or Marathon speed, you should have time to field those medieval units and get plenty of use out of them.

A side note with Ragnar: I'm not too enthused about Berserkers in and of themselves; the Amphibious promotion is all but useless in that era of high cultural defenses and a lack of ships that can remove it. However, they come into their own in the next era (renaissance), when you upgrade your CR III/Amphibious Berserkers to Grenadiers and/or Riflemen. Now you can whittle away a coastal cities defenses with Frigates, attack from the ship by sacrificing a few Cannon, and then mop up with amphibious gunpowder units! And of course, they can become Amphibious Infantry and even Mechanized Infantry in later eras. Who needs those silly Marines? :D Go check the Ragnar ALC for an example of using them this way.

@ futurehermit:

I think more and more that siege is the key to combat in ANY age. You need a few garrison units and mobile defense units for enemy units that get into your terriorty. But other then that, I just beeline for whatever siege is dominant at the time, make a lot of it, promote it to CR1 and go get the enemy. Throw an anti horse in the stack for good measure if you feel the need. The collateral damage effect makes these units unparalleled in offensive firepower compared with the other units. Why damage ONE unit at a time when you can damage 5? Siege is also (too) cheap for its damage potential. Cho ku no are even more overpowered, just not as useful once the AI gets longbows (the CKN devistate all the other units in the stack, but you will still need a "canopener" to take out the city defense 2 longbow.)

Think about your own experience with fighting vs the AI. The only time that I ever lose a battle to the AI is when they hit me with a huge stack of siege (which is rare.)

I also find artillery MUCH more effective then tanks, despite the fact that tanks have a much higher damage number. Artillery causes much more damage and you lose less units because they get worn down progressively after you lose the first one or two "suicide" attackers.

So...

Catas, Trebs, Cannons, or Artillery depending on the age of the game and your opponent and you can't lose.

It's a tough situation you have there...

Having Berserkers gives you +10% city attack and amphibious (with free Combat I from Aggressive), but I'd rather have Charismatic Macemen that begin with 7 XP...that's CR3 after only one successful attack, even if it's >99% success.

Anyway, the Berserker is a solid unit, but it's not good enough by itself to win a war. Probably, my best guess, is that your stacks were lacking in disposable Catapult units. Ideally, they should begin with 5 XP, for 2 free promotions (this is regardless of Charismatic or non-Charismatic). The key is numbers...it helps to have Engineering, so you can make Trebs, but it's not necessary.

However, I agree with you on the importance of Trebuchets in Medieval warfare, and not only for city attacks and collateral damage. With the elevated city protection I'm facing (mature culture, walls, castles), I often find it takes 2-3 turns of both 5-6 Accuracy Cats and my entire stack of about a dozen Trebs to get rid of that pesky defense bonus.


One spy can take down city defenses immediately. It's taken me quite a while to incorporate espionage properly into my military campaigns, but now that I have I like to have a spy/missionary spam city as well for the bulk of a game. Military campaigns are planned well in advance so in addition to the usual tweaking of civics (whether its vassalage/theocracy for bulk creation/promotion of units or nationhood for drafting and the EP boost), switch all EPs to the target AI. They accumulate very fast and plan to spam the hell out of your target with spies. I like to have 2-3 per city roaming my vicitms countryside. I only reserve missions for counter-espionage or city revolt unless I stand to eliminate a strategic resource and then park a stack on it. However, since we're talking medieval warfare, the longbow requires no resources and during this point of the game I'd rather see the AI build anything but more longbows, especially if I'm conquering so sometimes the elimination of a strategic resource can backfire resulting in enemy longbow spam :yuck:

This warfare IS medieval. You're just declining to tech to and use Berserkers. Against Tokugawa, I would have instead gone for Knights, Ellies, and Trebs. Agg Berserkers are nice and all, but I try not to let the traits blind me to game situations. Pro Longbows and Castles are a royal pain. Teching to Macemen before the attack loses you your Medieval attack window.



Even without the traits and special UU status, a vanilla Maceman has the special property of being able to gain CR promotions, and also have a high base strength, as Sisiutil pointed out.

Now, the Trebuchet has a +100% city bonus, with a base strength of 4, but that's not the same as a base strength of 8, since the bonus is actually subtracted from the defender's strength.

Knights and Elephants have the high base strength, but no CR promotions.

So, the bottom line, your ducks aren't all in a row with this combo, and having the Macemen or Berserkers helps you get your ducks in a row.

The thing for me is that I play on normal speed, so the gap to strike in the medeival era is quite small--especially when I could use liberalism (+ financial with Ragnar) to gun to be first to rifling. That gives a much longer, and stronger, window for attack the enemy--not to mention that gunpowder units avoid a large chunk of the city defenses.

So, yeah, basically I figure axes, axe/sword + cata, or elephant + cata works fine because we are talking pre-longbow or else just wait until renaissance when the above-mentioned bonuses come into play, as well as DRAFTING (is huge).

I'll stay open to the idea of medeival warfare, and part of that will I think involve a higher prioritizing of engineering and probably spamming even more units. I attacked with about 25-30 units and made a good initial impact, but I underestimated still I think the number of units I would need against Toku to do all the damage that I wanted to do in a timely manner.

Did I need his lands that early in the game? Let's just say it would've been nice because my own lands were fairly lackluster, but I probably could've held off until rifling and still been ok because I had the tech lead at that point and none of Shaka (who had vassaled Saladin), Saladin, or Toku constitute a legitimate tech threat.

So, yeah, I just chalk it up to a 1am mishap! But I think that I just need to rethink medeival warfare a bit more and your guys' tips have been very helpful, thanks!

I think if you play normal speed, you have to choose a handful of the units available in the Medieval era and attack with those--say, CS and Machinery for Macemen and Crossbows, and Engineering for Trebs and Pikes. Forgo/delay Guilds for Knights and even Feudalism for Longbows until/unless you can get those techs in trade. Use Crossbows with City Garrison promotions and Pikes to protect your cities from attack. Heck, you could even try just using Macemen and Catapults, but you'd have to stock up on the latter, and you'll probably need a bunch of Spearmen as well, since the AI loves mounted units so much.

I know people love rifles over cannons, but the research time is MUCH longer and the upgrade from macemen to rifles is much more expensive.
Plus, it's more historically accurate! :D

I would have gone for Engineering. This tech opens up the excellent Trebuchet unit (build 10-15 Cats, upgrade to Trebs shortly before attacking)

Catapults and trebuchets serve different roles and as such catapults cannot upgrade to trebuchets. Both of them upgrade to cannon with the discovery of steel but that is decidedly NOT medieval.

I also find artillery MUCH more effective then tanks, despite the fact that tanks have a much higher damage number. Artillery causes much more damage and you lose less units because they get worn down progressively after you lose the first one or two "suicide" attackers.
I always give every single tank I build a barrage promotion to cover this aspect. In my experience it works pretty well, especially if the tank does well in its attack and gets to go again.

Sisiutil:

I play at Normal speed as well, and of a similar (but probably slightly lower) difficulty level as futurehermit. That would be Monarch, FYI. I track his problems and try to get "tips" from him and his questions because I think we're kind of at the same level but use different styles, so I benefit from him. It's only fair that I share back my own (usually failed) experiments.

While it's true that Bureaucracy is a high priority civilian technology, it doesn't complement the war effort by itself. You can't wage war with chain irrigation and a 50% more commerce capital. Even the hammer advantage isn't all that great considering the distance involved. Your Macemen could very well be obsolete by the time they get to where they're needed!

You don't even know if you're going to HAVE Machinery by then. As far as I can tell, if you have Elephants anyway, and going against a hard time limit of Tokugawa going Feudal, Elephants are more than enough. If you're going to tech, I would really rather tech Engineering first before going for Bureaucracy.

This means that you WILL get to the AI cities with your Elephants and your Trebs before he gets Feudalism. Tokugawa getting Gunpowder?!?!? That's a horror. You do NOT want Tokugawa getting to Gunpowder.

I think CR's overrated anyway. I do without them just fine. I put CR on my suicide siege units, not on other units in my stack. I'll maybe have 2 or 3 CR Axes, but with 5 XP Elephants? No problemo. Just give them Cover or Shock or whatever's appropriate. As I said, I've been in that situation before, and Tokugawa eventually finished Feudalism before I finished him off. I'd teched Bureaucracy by then. Upgraded my CR Axes to Macemen. I wasn't all that impressed. Trebs+Ellies still did the bulk of the real work.


Heck, you could even try just using Macemen and Catapults, but you'd have to stock up on the latter, and you'll probably need a bunch of Spearmen as well, since the AI loves mounted units so much.


Ick.

Believe me, I speak from experience when I say "Ick."

Catapults are crap compared to Trebs when it comes to lowering defenses and leading city attacks. You won't have Pikemen so your ginormous stacks of Catapults will be vulnerable, and they ALL move 2 spaces each going to the frontline. You'll probably obsolete your units before you make any headway. Hopefully, you'll have teched Engineering by then.

Teching Engineering first won't yield you Bureaucracy, but so what? You're in a war, you want a wartime tech advantage. Engineering is it. It gives you Trebs, Pikemen to protect your Trebs, and 3 movement on roads to move both those units 50% faster to the frontline. It also gives you Castles so you can wage defensive war and keep your holdings, as well as inflate your power graph, even with cities so far removed from the warfront that their units have no hope of ever getting there in time to do much of anything.

Artichoker:


Even without the traits and special UU status, a vanilla Maceman has the special property of being able to gain CR promotions, and also have a high base strength, as Sisiutil pointed out.


I'm not particularly impressed by it, to be honest. CR doesn't impress me that much on a melee unit. A CR Treb has two very important abilities a CR Maceman doesn't have - it can help lower defenses and it does collateral damage. Those are more important than a slightly higher single percentage chance of winning. I would rather have a stack of mostly CR Trebs than a stack of mostly CR Macemen.

But they'll die to Horse Archers, easy!

That's where the Ellies come in. Ellies have the same base strength as Macemen, but they have one important ability Macemen don't have. They defend your stack very, very well against Horse Archers. That means that they can protect your stack AND attack with power when it comes to mopping up after the siege. It's like having an 8 Strength Pikeman! That benefits from Stables!

It's a much better stack composition, IMO, than Maceman+Trebs or Maceman+Cats. By the time my nonsiege units are ready to attack, lack of CR shouldn't even be an issue.

thks mate, i agree that elephants or trebs would've been the way to go in this game (or else wait til rifling as Toku wasn't teching that fast, as usual :lol: )

I enchanted my newly-found glass warhammer (15 damage atm) with a sigil stone of "damage health 20 points" last night, now it's awesome! :)

I always prefered absorb health. Vampiric weapons are awesome.

On topic, medieval warfare simply poses too many sacrifices for me. It usually means abandoning infrastructure in favor of stack protection units like pikemen and foregoing the liberalism race. I will happily attack with Janissaries or Oromo Warriors by beelining gunpowder, but otherwise I won't bother with it.

Catapults and trebuchets serve different roles and as such catapults cannot upgrade to trebuchets. Both of them upgrade to cannon with the discovery of steel but that is decidedly NOT medieval.
Actually, there was cannon around in the medieval era, but in its infancy and wasn't that effective.

Sisiutil:

I play at Normal speed as well, and of a similar (but probably slightly lower) difficulty level as futurehermit. That would be Monarch, FYI. I track his problems and try to get "tips" from him and his questions because I think we're kind of at the same level but use different styles, so I benefit from him. It's only fair that I share back my own (usually failed) experiments.

While it's true that Bureaucracy is a high priority civilian technology, it doesn't complement the war effort by itself. You can't wage war with chain irrigation and a 50% more commerce capital. Even the hammer advantage isn't all that great considering the distance involved. Your Macemen could very well be obsolete by the time they get to where they're needed!

You don't even know if you're going to HAVE Machinery by then. As far as I can tell, if you have Elephants anyway, and going against a hard time limit of Tokugawa going Feudal, Elephants are more than enough. If you're going to tech, I would really rather tech Engineering first before going for Bureaucracy.

This means that you WILL get to the AI cities with your Elephants and your Trebs before he gets Feudalism. Tokugawa getting Gunpowder?!?!? That's a horror. You do NOT want Tokugawa getting to Gunpowder.

I think CR's overrated anyway. I do without them just fine. I put CR on my suicide siege units, not on other units in my stack. I'll maybe have 2 or 3 CR Axes, but with 5 XP Elephants? No problemo. Just give them Cover or Shock or whatever's appropriate. As I said, I've been in that situation before, and Tokugawa eventually finished Feudalism before I finished him off. I'd teched Bureaucracy by then. Upgraded my CR Axes to Macemen. I wasn't all that impressed. Trebs+Ellies still did the bulk of the real work.



Ick.

Believe me, I speak from experience when I say "Ick."

Catapults are crap compared to Trebs when it comes to lowering defenses and leading city attacks. You won't have Pikemen so your ginormous stacks of Catapults will be vulnerable, and they ALL move 2 spaces each going to the frontline. You'll probably obsolete your units before you make any headway. Hopefully, you'll have teched Engineering by then.

Teching Engineering first won't yield you Bureaucracy, but so what? You're in a war, you want a wartime tech advantage. Engineering is it. It gives you Trebs, Pikemen to protect your Trebs, and 3 movement on roads to move both those units 50% faster to the frontline. It also gives you Castles so you can wage defensive war and keep your holdings, as well as inflate your power graph, even with cities so far removed from the warfront that their units have no hope of ever getting there in time to do much of anything.

Artichoker:



I'm not particularly impressed by it, to be honest. CR doesn't impress me that much on a melee unit. A CR Treb has two very important abilities a CR Maceman doesn't have - it can help lower defenses and it does collateral damage. Those are more important than a slightly higher single percentage chance of winning. I would rather have a stack of mostly CR Trebs than a stack of mostly CR Macemen.

But they'll die to Horse Archers, easy!

That's where the Ellies come in. Ellies have the same base strength as Macemen, but they have one important ability Macemen don't have. They defend your stack very, very well against Horse Archers. That means that they can protect your stack AND attack with power when it comes to mopping up after the siege. It's like having an 8 Strength Pikeman! That benefits from Stables!

It's a much better stack composition, IMO, than Maceman+Trebs or Maceman+Cats. By the time my nonsiege units are ready to attack, lack of CR shouldn't even be an issue.

Horse Archers flank cats, not trebs. Knights flank trebs. Before knights, basically anything will protect your trebs no problem (you want to worry about protecting the stack in general of course, but nothing specifically threatens trebs until knights). Elephants are a great counter of course, if you have ivory. Otherwise, just make pikes! Of course, if you don't even have iron, this middle age warfare probably isn't in the cards...