Hello forum,

In another thread, I was speaking about playing as a pacifist, with the home-rule not to declare war against anybody. You can still win those sorts of games culturally, and eventually diplomatically or with a space race. Nevertheless, you will probably have to wage defensive wars - and you need to win them if you want to grab that extra territory and keep the pace with your opponents (for curiosity's sake, I play on Monarch difficulty - I like the challenge but I dislike lasting frustration).

But : as by definition you can not choose the moment when you go to war, you are less likely to be fully prepared when war breaks out than during a classical warmonger game.

Hence my question : how to wage defensive wars ? The trouble is to survive (as unharmed as possible) the first few turns of the assault until you're fully geared for war.

The few paths that I've explored :
- maintain a large, modern, standing army : that's useful but can put a severe strain on your economy - expecially if you want to run the "pacifism" civic to breed GPs.
- maintain a large, obsolete, standing army plus reserves of cash to upgrade it only when needed. Same as before, excepted that you free some hammers from unit production, but need to produce more cash.
- draft ! (I played as India which is "Spiritual", so switching civics was easy) With a good railroad network, you can draft and send quickly the poor guys to the front until you can field regular units.
- defensive treaties with close neighbours. This one works well when your neighbours are not to much behind in tech.

Please share your good ideas - for the cause of pacifism :)

Hello...this is definitely one of the more challenging aspects of the game, as you mentioned.

When the AI civs' power graphs are higher, they will tend to declare war more often. This even sometimes happens when your diplomatic rating with them is Pleased. The higher the difficulty level, the more likely it is that AI civs will have a higher power graph than yours.

The first step in waging a defensive war is to provoke the enemy to attack you. In order to do this, you should try to have a lower power graph than AI civs. This helps you economically, since you will pay less upkeep for your units than if you kept a larger standing army.

In order to improve the efficiency of your smaller army, build walls to improve the defensive value of your troops. This also raises your power graph, but chances are it will still be low enough to provoke the AI civs.

The next step is devising a plan to destroy enemy forces once they invade. Combine your Longbowmen with Knights or Horse Archers to provide a solid defensive system.

Hello forum,

In another thread, I was speaking about playing as a pacifist, with the home-rule not to declare war against anybody. You can still win those sorts of games culturally, and eventually diplomatically or with a space race. Nevertheless, you will probably have to wage defensive wars - and you need to win them if you want to grab that extra territory and keep the pace with your opponents (for curiosity's sake, I play on Monarch difficulty - I like the challenge but I dislike lasting frustration).

But : as by definition you can not choose the moment when you go to war, you are less likely to be fully prepared when war breaks out than during a classical warmonger game.

Hence my question : how to wage defensive wars ? The trouble is to survive (as unharmed as possible) the first few turns of the assault until you're fully geared for war.

The few paths that I've explored :
- maintain a large, modern, standing army : that's useful but can put a severe strain on your economy - expecially if you want to run the "pacifism" civic to breed GPs.
- maintain a large, obsolete, standing army plus reserves of cash to upgrade it only when needed. Same as before, excepted that you free some hammers from unit production, but need to produce more cash.
- draft ! (I played as India which is "Spiritual", so switching civics was easy) With a good railroad network, you can draft and send quickly the poor guys to the front until you can field regular units.
- defensive treaties with close neighbours. This one works well when your neighbours are not to much behind in tech.

Please whare your good ideas - for the cause of pacifism :)

Ways to prepare for defensive wars

1) Build the appropriate defenses, walls/castles/bunker/bomb shelters.
2) Locate expected fronteir cities on a hill if possible.
3) Figure out the likely attacking point of the AI. They will clasically attack one or two cities.
4) Keep most defenders as CG II or CG III archery or gunpowder units
5) Beeline to the best defending techs: archery/fuedalism/machinery/engineering/riflingmilitary science/assembly line/flight
6) Attack approaching stacks before they attak you. An attacking stack of Trebs can still destroy even CG III Churchill Redcoats!
7) Keep spears/pikes/rifles (comabt II formation) to combat AI mounted units whihc they love
8) Keep Alot of seige weapons (catapults/cannons/artillery, NOT trebs!) and suicide them to reduce the stacks.
9) Keep plenty of flanking II promoted mounted units and follow up that seige engine collateral damage with mounted unit attacks. You lose 25%-5-% of the mounted units but will trash the seige engines with flanking damage before they hurt your valued CG II CG III units.
10) Counter attack against teh AI with your own stack. Sometimes the AI has to see this before they negotiate a decent peace.
11) Consider the wonders: Great Wall, SoZ, Chihen Izca.
12) Diplomacy!

The washington, Chruchill, Mansa Musa RPCs of mine had some good defensive wars for examples.

si vis pacem /// PARA BELLUM ! :D

favor highly promoted units, and modern ones. I prefer to rely on quality rather than quantity when in defensive position. A leader I like for that is sitting bull : you can build lvl3 protective longbowmen with theocracy and vasselage, and then upgrade them the whole game.

you should also keep a counterattack force : mainly mounted units so you can pillage ennemy roads and intercept siege weapons.

Do those little forts workers can make count as cities for the sake of defensive bonuses?

Do those little forts workers can make count as cities for the sake of defensive bonuses?

Yes they act like cities for teh CG defense purposes (+25%). Unfortunately they are succeptible to CR attacks also.

Thanks everybody for the sound advices ! I was afraid that I could totally bypass something in the art of defensive wars - but it seems that the good old solutions are still the best around... The only one that came to my mind afterwards was : "go easy on the army and just build a powerful navy if you're on an island" (well, quite trivial indeed, but added for the record...)

Mad Scientist : thanks ! I'm actually reading "Chivalrous George" and loving it ! I just wish I had that brilliant idea myslef ;)

EDIT : I spoke too fast ! I actually didn't know that the forts counted as cities. CG-III +75 % here I come :D

I think one of the keys is developing appropriate counters to what they will throw at you. In a post engineering world you can do a lot of defense with a little amount of units if you appropriately build the counters to what they attack you with. In my current game the chinese have built a lot of mounted units and thusly im popping out level 4 pikemen with the upgrades to destroy mounted units. with a stack of 4 I've been able to annihilate 10-20 mounted units without losing a single one and without moving them across my border to attack them.

"Whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war" Vegetius. Take his advice. I usually dont build walls or castles unless its a border city. Just keep a large and mobile army. I usually have 1-2 Stacks of infantry( that means all foot troops, like riflemen, not just infantry.) with 1 stack of calvary. And until railroad always keep 3-5 units ( depending on difficulty) Remember, when fighting a def war, no SoD can stand up to 7-10 cannons:crazyeye:

Madscientist already mentioned this already, but the Great Wall is really one of the must-have wonders if you decide all your wars will be defensive. Having 100% more GGs means you get 2x the opportunities to create super medics, academies, or settle instructors. This equates into troops with more promotions, allowing you to do more with less as far as sheer force of numbers is concerned.
The espionage from the Great Spy you'll likely get are also great if you're going to play defensively, since espionage is great to steal techs during peace or lower defenses during war to keep costs for siege support down.

double post

1. Use natural chokepoints whenever possible.
2. Settle frontier cities close enough that you can either keep your defensive stack midway between the two and move towards whichever is threatened or close enough that you can hop directly between cities in one turn.
3. Culture is your friend. First the high cultural defenses never go out of style, as the AI will bombard, higher cultural defenses mean you have more turns to whip, draft, or rush buy defenders. Second, and argueably more importantly, high culture (particularly overlapping high culture cities) gives you more defensive depth and time to swap civics, whip build an extra unit, etc. One easy way to get good culture with 2 expansion cities is to build your second city in a decent location and your third quickly thereafter with 4 to 6 choppable trees in the initial 8 squares. Tech up to priesthood -> writing while chopping out the oracle. If you haven't had religious spread to your second city yet, you should end up with Confucianism founded in your second. This results is scads of early culture in these two cities and can push back borders even against an AI cap.
4. Draft, draft, draft. Who cares if it is a crap unit with low xp, who cares if you take some unhappiness. At absolute worst you just required the AI to burn health and an attack taking down yet another unit (thus making it easier for your real defenders to survive the onslaught and get promoted). Likewise more units means more spreading of collateral damage and more promos/gg pts from suiciding seige.
5. Railroad is THE tech for defensive warfare. You have a massive increase in ground mobility, your machine guns get interception, and best of all machine guns are immune to pinch, infantry bonus, and collateral damage. A handful of CG III machine guns (promoted from xbows for instance) can hold off truly obscene numbers of attackers. By the time the AI has marines, you should have some CG II infantry to counter.
6. Always have a medic in the city under attack. I like to use axes, xbows, or muskets. Ideally they will be medic I/woody III (requires Red Cross) or medic III/woody III/morale (requires GG/Red Cross); promote them up by giving them the easy shots against almost dead seige when you counterattack after surviving a stack attack. Medics + hospitals means that you can heal back obscene amounts of damage every turn.
7. Never underestimate airlifting. You frontiers should ALWAYS have airfields. The ability to airlift one unit per turn per city is just utterly huge.
8. Nukes are your friends. Yes nuking your own territory is some bad juju, but it is one of the few ways to counteract an extreme tech disadvantage. You have bomb shelters, they do not. You have railroad enhanced mobility, they do not. You can air lift in new defenders, they cannot. If you are facing modern amor with just armor, tac nuking their stack will allow you to survive an otherwise unwinnable fight. It is best if you move your defensive stack out of the blast radius, and then back in. For naval armadas, nukes are even more insanely useful. For truly good defensive nuking, try to control the UN, complete Manhattan, rush buy tac nukes in all cities, and call the vote banning the suckers ASAP.
9. Sealifted choppers and commandos ownify. Choppers can attack (and more importantly pillage) right off the boat. Cutting the rail links at chokepoints between the front and the support areas can buy you extra turns to crank out defensive units. Guided missiles are similarly useful.
10. Radio is so terribly worth getting first. Forget rock and roll, you want the Eiffel tower and Chirsto Redemptor. Being able to flop at will between PS/US/Rep/HR, V/N/B/FS, and OR/Theo/FR is utterly huge.

The key to defensive wars is to buy time to bulk up your defensives and concurrently to make the time you buy more effective.

Cheap tricks:
1. The sacrificial city. Found a city near obvious fronts (Shaka, Monty, Catherine, Izzy, etc.), make sure it is NOT on a hill or behind a river from you. Keep it lightly garrisoned and let the AI SoD waltz in for relatively light casualties. Counterattack with CR trebs/cannon/arty. To a lesser extent this works with well placed forts.
2. Spy the AI out of warmonger civics and into things you are running. Pacifism and OR work wonders to slow down rampaging AIs. If you are running an EE, for extremely cheap you can just keep key cities continiously sabotaged and burn improvements at will (having 10 spies parked on top of the AIs only oil is so ludicriously effective as long as you can replace losses). Rebuilding your capital directly next to their civ makes this cheaper so you can still muck the AI relentlessly without having a dedicated EE.
3. If you control the AP, either spread your religion so they can be forced to peace or let them take a city with your religion. Half the time you can then force them return said city.
4. Three nukes (give or take) and one commando cavalry = razed city.

triple post

I like flanking horses and siege for defensive wars. The Arabs are also spiritual and have a really good unit for this, the Camel Archer. With flanking 2 they have a 45% withdrawal chance which will make siege a non factor during their heyday, even if they bring pikes.

Of course have the normal defensive units, and walls and castles. I like the style of attack their stack before it attacks you.

My favorite trick is the fort city. Position it on a hill near a border, and build castles, walls, longows, machine guns, etc.

Watch as the enemy stack attempts to take it, and decimates itself.

Lots of good ideas here - maybe someone should write a strategy article on that topic. Not me, though - I'm still to young for that. And inexperimented. And lazy :)

mirthadir: Thanks for the time you took to write down those precious tips : they very much sum up all there is to know (excepted that I play Vanilla, so GG and Spies do not appeal particularly to me...). It was my conclusion also that in the early to mid game you have to be very careful about your diplomacy ; but once you have nationalism and railroad it becomes much more feasible to win defensive wars (without crashing your economy at least). I wonder if in the late game, once planes and helicopters have appeared, the advantage does not switch towards the agressor again.

Anyway, as you noted I usually put an heavy emphasis on expanding my cultural borders, to gain a few turns of delay until enemy units are in range - and that's why I usually end my games with a cultural victory. When I do when them, that is :)

Lots of good ideas here - maybe someone should write a strategy article on that topic. Not me, though - I'm still to young for that. And inexperimented. And lazy :)

mirthadir: Thanks for the time you took to write down those precious tips : they very much sum up all there is to know (excepted that I play Vanilla, so GG and Spies do not appeal particularly to me...). It was my conclusion also that in the early to mid game you have to be very careful about your diplomacy ; but once you have nationalism and railroad it becomes much more feasible to win defensive wars (without crashing your economy at least). I wonder if in the late game, once planes and helicopters have appeared, the advantage does not switch towards the agressor again.

Anyway, as you noted I usually put an heavy emphasis on expanding my cultural borders, to gain a few turns of delay until enemy units are in range - and that's why I usually end my games with a cultural victory. When I do when them, that is :)

Early game you either rush and end up on top, thus not having to worry so much, or you need to play the diplomatic game to end up in decent position. Early game defense just doesn't offer all that many defensive advantages. CG is mostly countered by CR, cultural defenses die to cats, and cats vs swords/HA is about the best trade off in the game for seige in terms of both cost and relative damage. You get a bit more flexibility once you can manage shock elephants or xbows.

The advantage do the defender is only there versus the AI. A human player is far more likely to utilize offensive advantages. However, vs the AI the only techs that swing things much towards offense are industrialism, composites/computers, rocketry and stealth. Tanks give back the ability to run fast offense that you lost at assembly line/railroad and are the strongest attacker:defender ratio in the game (and I think this holds even more true in vanilla, no anti-tanks as I recall). Modern armor gives you a shot at breaking even mech infantry and gunships. Stealth is the first point at which airpower between equals actually MIGHT favor the attacker.

Choppers are defensive units or raiders (I've experimented with choppers, commandos, and hordes of missiles, but it doesn't seem that much more effective than amphib attacks with a more modest number of missiles). The counter with SAM infantry makes them suck for offense (the counter unit also takes down your air support). The only real use they have is their obscene mobility. Planes work far better on defense; on offense you can bomb, but a small number of highly promoted interceptors will cause them to abort their missions and fly back. The ability to build bunkers is just too good to make offensive air truly viable. Large stacks of stealth bombers (the best offensive air unit) are tac nuke bait.

My favourite tactic involves having a high culture buffer in my border. Clearcut any forests so that the enemy is coming to you on flatlands, and have an army of siege and cavalry to take out rival SoDs. Longbows are only defensive units if you're unlucky enough to have your city attacked. =)

My favourite tactic involves having a high culture buffer in my border. Clearcut any forests so that the enemy is coming to you on flatlands, and have an army of siege and cavalry to take out rival SoDs. Longbows are only defensive units if you're unlucky enough to have your city attacked. =)
This is what I do, too. Clearcutting the defensive side of border cities is a special priority.

The most important part: Think before agreeing to peace. If your opponent still hates you, they might simply use the time to rebuild their army before coming after you again. A steady trickle of units is often easier picked off than a fresh SOD, you might gain diplomatic bonuses for a shared war, often you have the opportunity to pillage them dry and cripple them for good...

War isn't always a bad thing.