Just wanted to share this recent game experience.

I was playing as Alexander at Emperor level. After conquering Rome, I was debating whether to move on to Arabia. My tech, unfortunately, had crashed after Writing and I lacked Construction for catapults. I had no new buildings to build (lacking the enabling techs), and couldn't afford to settle new cities, and Saladin was expanding into the power vacuum of our continent. My choice was to turtle up and do a crash SE or ... attack without siege!

So I attacked Saladin with just Phalanxes and a few Spears, razing everything but his capital and holy city. I'm sure I lost at least 30 Phalanxes taking about 12 cities.

Would it have gone smoother with siege? Yes. But I can't say it would have gone necessarily faster. And by keeping up the pressure, my war booty enabled my "pointy stick research" and I was finally able to get some beakers going even while churning out Phalanxes.

Superior numbers can get the job done even without siege. It didn't hurt that my new units were generally Combat I + 2 promotions, and that Phalanxes are hard to counter, either.

With a high hammer output and little else to spend the hammers on, yes, it may seem that the greater efficiency provided by siege units is unnecessary to some extent.

The truth is, the major expense of war besides extra maintenance of new cities is the unit upkeep and unit supply that you are required to pay for your units. But if your units die shortly after they are produced, then your total army size won't grow that fast, and may even decline. This has a beneficial side effect of reducing your maintenance costs, while at the same time allowing a select few military units that are successful in battle to reap very high XP rewards.

How does WW factor into this? Is it still earlier enough in the game to not really matter? I've seen people just spam HA or Curraissers sometimes with no siege and just win a war of numbers.

This game sounds interesting. Any Screenshots? Were you whipping a ton or did you have some great hammer cities? How many cities did you have in order to build up that nice siegeless force? I'm sure this would have been a lot harder without AGG?

More details please! :)

If you're doing such large-scale warring, bring cats anyway. Dont bombard then, just attack with them immediately too. It's still a stronger return than axes exclusively.

IMO horse archers are the best for this as their flanking promos give them a very high survival rate for these kinds of attacks.

Another alternative to siege is using the Oracle or a Great Prophet to Bulb Theology for Theocracy. CRII right out the box makes a huge difference and will allow you to press a classical era war without the use of siege engines. Just make sure to build up experience on the smaller cities to hit CRIII before you hit the capitol.

The fact that you're killing your troops will save precious early GPT as well. Once you have siege, your other guys aren't going to die very often, and you'll have to pay for them.

"Reducing army maintenance by not bringing siege"

Yeah that has to be good for morale :-)

This game sounds interesting. Any Screenshots? Were you whipping a ton or did you have some great hammer cities? How many cities did you have in order to build up that nice siegeless force? I'm sure this would have been a lot harder without AGG?

More details please! :)

I wasn't whipping at all. I was producing units from four mid-sized cities (two of mine, two of Augustus') after learning Monarchy. My cities were generally geared for hammer production plus a couple of specialist scientists where I had the extra food.

I declared on Saladin (protective, mind you) with about 15 Phalanxes and the odd Spearman (Sal had a few elephants running around or I wouldn't have bothered). Most of his cities were defended by 4-6 units. I lost about the same number of Phalanxes taking each city. The "cannon fodder" were given Combat I, Cover, and CR I. Given both time to heal a bit and slower travel time in enemy territory, my army grew as the war progressed despite some heavy losses.

In the end, I had two level 6 units and several level 5s.

Being aggressive helped tremendously due to the immediate access to the cover promotion for green troops.

"Reducing army maintenance by not bringing siege"

Yeah that has to be good for morale :-)

My point was that you can't build siege before you have construction, and you won't be able to research construction (or anything else) if you have a bazillion soldiers.

I will avoid seige engines if I have flanking II mounted units with my CRII + III units. Attack with the mounted unit to damage the defender and have about a 50% of survival. Usually this is enough for the Melee units to take the city.

Siege weapons are just there to save hammers. Instead of losing high XP city raider units/losing city raider units before they even get XP you sacrifice 1 or 2 throwaway catas for a city and can keep your stack moving more efficiently.

Naturally, if you've got a ton of hammers and nothing else to do with them you can easily just churn out a zillion units and run them over, but 99% of the time siege weapons are the best option.

"Reducing army maintenance by not bringing siege"

Yeah that has to be good for morale :-)

Also, reducing the number of . .. .. .. .. .ing soldiers by sending them to their death. The squeaky wheel gets sent to the front line!

Just wanted to share this recent game experience.

I was playing as Alexander at Emperor level. After conquering Rome, I was debating whether to move on to Arabia. My tech, unfortunately, had crashed after Writing and I lacked Construction for catapults. I had no new buildings to build (lacking the enabling techs), and couldn't afford to settle new cities, and Saladin was expanding into the power vacuum of our continent. My choice was to turtle up and do a crash SE or ... attack without siege!

So I attacked Saladin with just Phalanxes and a few Spears, razing everything but his capital and holy city. I'm sure I lost at least 30 Phalanxes taking about 12 cities.



I'm not concerned that you lost a lot of troops in doing this but you did have to raze a lot of cities due to your poor economy. That probably cost you time and effort after the war to build settlers and then develop the tiles and infrastructure once your economy could afford to expand again. I think you would have done better to have developed your economy before attacking. Something like, research Alphabet (allows you to build research and extort techs) and then research Currency (markets and build wealth) or since you had Monarchy just research Code of Laws (courthouses) and preferably all of those.

The success of your war depends on how strong your economy is. Overexpansion is bad and razing a load of enemy cities is bad, it is often better to wait, build up a strong economy and then take the better developed enemy cities for free (and keep most of them since you can afford them). If you do attack later you're going to need catapults but then you can afford to research them with your strong economy.

Hmm

So would would a mixed stack of Axes and Spears help me with this situation (in spoilers as it's my on-going Noble Napoleon game).
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/5198/atlantis2citiesfw0.jpg

I'm still researching IW, but I have a barracks in Orleans and can send a smallish stack down pretty quickly. There are two cities, both on hills, defended by archers.

I'm not concerned that you lost a lot of troops in doing this but you did have to raze a lot of cities due to your poor economy. That probably cost you time and effort after the war to build settlers and then develop the tiles and infrastructure once your economy could afford to expand again. I think you would have done better to have developed your economy before attacking. Something like, research Alphabet (allows you to build research and extort techs) and then research Currency (markets and build wealth) or since you had Monarchy just research Code of Laws (courthouses) and preferably all of those.

The success of your war depends on how strong your economy is. Overexpansion is bad and razing a load of enemy cities is bad, it is often better to wait, build up a strong economy and then take the better developed enemy cities for free (and keep most of them since you can afford them). If you do attack later you're going to need catapults but then you can afford to research them with your strong economy.

On high difficulties, keep taking cities until you can extort alphabet, then build your way to currency/col (or extort them too after partial research).

On lower difficulties, keep the cities. You can probably afford to if you use cottages and turn the slider off enough in advance after securing requisite techs (writing, pottery).

You can go crazy on marathon and push well over 10 cities in the BS's...usually the AI tech rate will hold you more reasonably on faster speeds.

On high difficulties, keep taking cities until you can extort alphabet, then build your way to currency/col (or extort them too after partial research).


I was talking about the advantages of having a strong economy before attacking.

Your advice is contingent on the AI that you're attacking actually having Alphabet. Often they don't; particularly if they've spawned 13 cities (partly into the space left by an earlier war as the OP describes) and usually don't have Code or Laws and even if they do only slowly build courthouses. Despite their lower maintenance costs they have a weak economy and try to spam even more settlers and workers and then garrison troops to wreck it even more. I like to give them enough rope so they hang themselves and meanwhile I build up a strong economy. A successful war springs from a strong economy, that was my point.

I've been slowly grinding into the painful realization that early siege just don't earn their keep in hammers investment if they do anything other than hack at defenses. And even then they should be the plan B for when EP generation can't keep up with the pace of conquest. No construction? Just wait for EPs to regenerate before going on to the next city. (This is where GW comes in again...)

I was talking about the advantages of having a strong economy before attacking.

Your advice is contingent on the AI that you're attacking actually having Alphabet. Often they don't; particularly if they've spawned 13 cities (partly into the space left by an earlier war as the OP describes) and usually don't have Code or Laws and even if they do only slowly build courthouses. Despite their lower maintenance costs they have a weak economy and try to spam even more settlers and workers and then garrison troops to wreck it even more. I like to give them enough rope so they hang themselves and meanwhile I build up a strong economy. A successful war springs from a strong economy, that was my point.

On the difficulties where I find the AI "hangs itself", city maintenance is laughable. It's fairly simple to turn off research after writing and try to brute force research via deficit or specialists too. Alpha is all you need if you have a lot of cities and a gold buffer.

IMO, high-level (like, say, immortal) AIs don't hang themselves. They take all your land and then they will tech with it halfway decently. The options to the player that are actually viable at anything faster than marathon are:

1. Hit them well before they spam cities and units (or else they're going to just outspam you and you lose)

2. If there's a lot of land, just out-expand the AI. Kills short-term tech, but seems pretty easy to catch up with enough cities (like, 12+)

3. If boxed in a bit but not horrendously, just out-tech the AI then wtfpwn it with rifles or infantry as you can to get enough land. Tech rate will do better if you don't get to 14 cities before 500 AD.

In the short term, the AI bonuses are such that if you build your economy some first, they're a lot more fortified and prepared. More walls, more units, more cities to take, more reinforcements which they can generate very quickly out of most cities. All of this is alleviated by hitting them sooner.

I find that the Vassalage-based approach is a good middle-road path between UncleJJ's and TheMeInTeam's near-opposite approaches.

By concentrating mainly on economic infrastructure during the tech progress toward Feudalism, you set up your economy to go full military once you switch to Vassalage. After you start conquering cities, you can still use the tech extortion method to gain extra techs well after Alphabet and Code of Laws.

I find that the Vassalage-based approach is a good middle-road path between UncleJJ's and TheMeInTeam's near-opposite approaches.

By concentrating mainly on economic infrastructure during the tech progress toward Feudalism, you set up your economy to go full military once you switch to Vassalage. After you start conquering cities, you can still use the tech extortion method to gain extra techs well after Alphabet and Code of Laws.

How do you actually do it? Settle enough cities, manage your production of troops, AND tech to the point where vassalage is meaningful (aka the AI doesn't get xbows when you have mostly melee, then knights mid-war). I can never seem to expand to like 10 cities+ then pull off a medieval war on immortal. They just get too far ahead during that time period, and they have too many hammers at their disposal.

On monarch/emp (winning 60/40 monarch, losing 60/40 emp, so I haven't decided which one I "am" yet), what I do to try to survive is:

1. REX as much as I can into what land the map will give me, which is usually not much. Usually can only settle about 10 cities that way.
2. Turtle up along the borders. Units, units, and units, everywhere, until each border city is nicely defended.
3. When defenses are laid down, 1 city continues with units full-time while the others build the buildings they need.
4. Tech trade with the enemy of the most powerful AI (deliberately bringing on the DoW)
5. Repell invasion, draining the AI of the unit/power advantage.
6. Go on offense, start taking their cities.

Key to this is diplo and finding windows of opportunity, either a tech lead in one area like the first to be able to build Macemen, or when the target AI is at war with someone else.

Usually there has to be a halt to the war for economic and ww repair, and by then the AI is no longer "most powerful", but rather "most manageable". Then on down the list, basically taking the most powerful AIs and knocking them down to manageable size via war, going onto the next, rebuild and repair, and repeat.

So, what you are telling me is, on Immortal, the chop --> axe --> rush approach from the lower levels, becomes viable again? Sure as hell never EVER works for me on Emp. Too much archer spam. And I've tried it with 20 axe stacks.

How do you actually do it? Settle enough cities, manage your production of troops, AND tech to the point where vassalage is meaningful (aka the AI doesn't get xbows when you have mostly melee, then knights mid-war). I can never seem to expand to like 10 cities+ then pull off a medieval war on immortal. They just get too far ahead during that time period, and they have too many hammers at their disposal.

IMO, the biggest advantage of using vassalage is having 5 XP Catapults, which otherwise are hard to get because of the slow XP advancement of Catapults.

Execution-wise, I think it's OK for the enemy to get crossbows as long as they don't come in excessive numbers. One of the key tactics I have learned is using Catapults to counter crossbowmen. As for Knights, the key is to get them while they are defending, so that they suffer from lack of defensive bonuses.

If you can do this successfully, then you will actually want them to get ahead in tech, because then you can leverage their tech lead to get those techs yourself by signing peace with them.

However, I usually go to war well before getting 10 cities. The expansion to 10+ cities, in my game, is acheived through the war itself.

I see, so you literally meant it as an in-between. You're not boxed in, but you can't REX out 12+ cities, either.

Edit: I'd have to imagine HE and forges to be absolutely critical.

I think everyone has forgotten things stated in the OP's post. He didn't have anything to build EXCEPT units. So rather than let his economy tank further or disband them....he went to war. Having a solid economy was NOT an option

I see, so you literally meant it as an in-between. You're not boxed in, but you can't REX out 12+ cities, either.

Edit: I'd have to imagine HE and forges to be absolutely critical.

Exactly...one way to think of military units is as a substitute for settlers. One main difference, however, is that with settled cities you need to start from pop 1, whereas conquered cities have pop of 1 less than the original pop. This means it's often worthwhile to wait before actually taking the cities, in order to give them time to grow...think of the enemy cities as fruit that need to be ripened. If you pick the fruit too early, it won't be as nutritious or sweet as if you wait until the right time.

Regarding the HE, I believe it depends on how prolonged you want the war to be. For a prolonged war, obviously you will want it up soon. But for a quick war with Vassalage->Bureaucracy in mind, I think whipping from high-food cities will be enough to sustain production for small-scale wars, just big enough to win you a few free techs and wonders.

I think everyone has forgotten things stated in the OP's post. He didn't have anything to build EXCEPT units. So rather than let his economy tank further or disband them....he went to war. Having a solid economy was NOT an option

There is something else to be learned as well...there is strength in numbers. A lack of siege is alarming because it forces you to fight at very weak odds. But if you have sufficient numbers to keep hammering down the enemy units, you can still win battles nevertheless.

Now add in siege, and try to extend that principle even further. A strength in numbers, supplemented by the power of Catapults and the XP of Vassalage, allows you to fight at a tech disadvantage in some cases, and still win decisively.

I can't understand anyone axe rushing on Emperor or Immortal. It just doesn't work for me either - sure I can cripple an AI and take another capital - but I actually get less land than if I had REXed normally and my position relative to the other AIs is poorer than if I had done my normal expansion.

My preferred time to war is at catapults. By then I should have at least six cities. I will have built an academy, built granaries and barracks, developed lots of tiles and have a good team of workers ready to chop out my SOD. With real luck I'll have ivory too, but swords and cats can do the job by themselves.

With construction in the bag, I can tech towards currency, code of laws and civil service (in that order) which will be the techs I need to recover from the rapid expansion thats going to follow. I can use the cash from capturing cities and pillaging if necessary to keep my economy running despite the drastic impacts of rapid expansion and a big army.

Every single tree will be chopped to make catapults, swords, axes and elephants if I am lucky. Every city will be whipped multiple times. The goal will be to have a stack big enough to march straight to the enemy capital taking every city along the way in one turn.

Catapults pay off in that my losses will be smaller - a lot smaller. Probably just one or two catapults per city. More to the point that tech tends to coincide with the time in the game where I have the cities that I want and the remaining areas I could settle are a lot less interesting to me that the green fields of my neighbours.

I can't understand anyone axe rushing on Emperor or Immortal. It just doesn't work for me either - sure I can cripple an AI and take another capital - but I actually get less land than if I had REXed normally and my position relative to the other AIs is poorer than if I had done my normal expansion.

Generally I agree with you, but in the game in question, I was Aggressive Alex with copper hooked up early, and I had Augustus fairly close. I wanted him gone before he hooked up iron, and took his four cities (keeping two) with just my first two cities. Having the early UU was also a factor; I consider Phalanxes underrated, because they have no hard countering unit.

Once Augustus was defeated, my settled great general allowed Athens to pump out level 3 units (including the Aggressive Combat I freebie). My economy was really in the tank and my research was running on fumes, so I attacked Saladin with waves of Phalanxes with no siege support.

There is no question that I could have expanded peacefully and then attacked, but my advantages would be largely wasted. As it was, I owned my continent on Emperor in the B.C.s .. yes, with a lot of tech catch-up to do, but with plenty of elbow room to do it. Having captured two capitals and a holy city helped too. :devil:

Generally I agree with you, but in the game in question, I was Aggressive Alex with copper hooked up early, and I had Augustus fairly close. I wanted him gone before he hooked up iron, and took his four cities (keeping two) with just my first two cities. Having the early UU was also a factor; I consider Phalanxes underrated, because they have no hard countering unit.

Once Augustus was defeated, my settled great general allowed Athens to pump out level 3 units (including the Aggressive Combat I freebie). My economy was really in the tank and my research was running on fumes, so I attacked Saladin with waves of Phalanxes with no siege support.

There is no question that I could have expanded peacefully and then attacked, but my advantages would be largely wasted. As it was, I owned my continent on Emperor in the B.C.s .. yes, with a lot of tech catch-up to do, but with plenty of elbow room to do it. Having captured two capitals and a holy city helped too. :devil:

I had a somewhat similar game once on Emp but not as obvious an excuse to do the rush: I was Brennus jammed up against Justinian, just him and me on the land mass. I had copper just outside my BFC and I "lost it" when I saw he had two scouts eating up goody huts. I DoWed for no good reason other than that his very existence pissed me off. Had nothing but a warrior but he killed both scouts, then went and started the siege on Constantinople. Workers were kept idle that way and his land unimproved, at least. Punched out about 8 to 10 warriors just because, to cover the higher-yield unimproved tiles and deny him that food/hammers while waiting for axemen.

After about 5 or 6 axemen were on scene to set siege I was nearing the Strike zone, and even though I knew this wouldn't be a successful raid, I had to do it to get rid of some unit mx. Killed one archer at the expense of all the warriors and all but one of the axemen. Predicted result, though, so I wasn't too upset. "Let's see what happens next time."

Next time, put about 12 axes downfield before STRIKE started closing in on me, so did another assault. Double the success level: two archers dead, two axemen survived. Killed a few more archers defensively in the woods as he had some CII archers promoted to suicide counterattack.

Third time was the charm. Economy was a little better by then so was able to support about 30 axes raiding a cap that had about 8 archers, and after finally taking it had about 12 surviving axes, mostly CRII, 1 or 2 CRIII, a gg-led super-medic in the making, etc., but with the new city and one barbarian one I took, was back near the strike zone. Had so go into economic repair mode for quite a few turns and delay REXing into the remaining land mass.

The big problem was that I was so far behind when I met the other AIs, I had nothing I could trade with (and trades are my usual way of climbing back up from behind, as there's usually at least some AIs almost as backward as me, and I've gotten pretty good at wheeling and dealing my way to just missing out on 1 or 2 leading techs some others have).

Did a replay study of that same game several times using different strategies, and found that the optimum would have been to build 4 cities with a fairly solid infrastructure (libs, granaries, barracks), DoW the AI, and during the war research Curr/CoL so that when economic repair time comes, it can be more effective. There were more cities to take that way, but I was better able to take them AND KEEP them due to the preparation (and knock down defenses via spies).

although putting a warrior next to a cap is a great way to cripple an AI, it's not always smart if you plan on invading quickly: instead of building workers + settlers and infrastructure, the AI will just keep building military. Plus, why would you object to the AI improving your tiles and building some cities for you? :-)

although putting a warrior next to a cap is a great way to cripple an AI, it's not always smart if you plan on invading quickly: instead of building workers + settlers and infrastructure, the AI will just keep building military. Plus, why would you object to the AI improving your tiles and building some cities for you? :-)

Because for a while at least it's theirs. Although I can see your point about how that would alert the AI to focus on unit builds early.

Again, my test replays did show it was more effective to wait somewhat after a few cities got expanded out (on both sides) and then really ramp up the axemen. The AI was more distracted and by that time I had revolt-supporter spies, the human siege engines. Even though the conquest process had to be repeated for the other cities the AI built, I was better able to do those repeats.

In my current game, I was totally boxed in at the end of a long peninsula by Ragnar. So he had to go as soon as my 3rd city was down. That was a pure axerush, and it killed my economy due to my keeping too many cities. But no worries, right? Whip libraries, run specialists, let the science rate drop to 20 or 10 even.

Except, just beyond Ragnar was Gandhi. And I was again boxed in, and already way behind in tech. A long way from Construction, even, at my pitiful beaker output. But as was noted, those Flanking II Horse Archers can be quite useful against (argh) Gandhi's Longbows.

Anyway... back on topic. Did I mention that I was playing Qin? :evilgrin: No need for siege there... Even those 60% culture cities that Mohandas had could be taken with enough Flanking HAs and Chokonus.

I'll probably still lose (tech lead is Willem and this is a water map... :( ) but it was an interesting opening game nonetheless.

I dont understand how flanking horses can be in any way viable as a poor mans siege. Even if they survive half their fights against strong city defenders, thats still an entire horse archer plus a mopup unit for every defending unit. Seems to me like you would need to have a larger army than your opponent for this to work. So 4 horse archers, 2 of them dead, plus 4 more units to take a city with 4 defenders or around there? Depending on what you are up against, 4 suiciding CR axes might work just as well and cost about the same amount of hammers...

That said, i would like to thank the people involved in this thread for giving me a little inspiration. Im playing a siegeless game and it looks like it might be my first finished game in months.

The problem with suicide axes is that they, well, suicide themselves. Against longbows (as I was), they'll just die and die and die and die... If you're unlucky, it'll take many axes to whittle them down to where the next axe has a chance of surviving. You can run out pretty fast, and then your offensive grinds to a halt.

Flanking II HAs do die half the time (assuming they're attacking at around 1% odds), but CR axes attacking with similar odds die just about all the time. I'd rather lose half my attackers than all of them. The survivors get promoted, and hopefully do better next time.

And to your other point, you DO need a larger army than your opponent for this to work. Unless you're attacking longbows with Grenadiers or something like that.

But HA are almost twice as expensive as axes anyway, so what does it matter if you lose 4 axes instead of 2 HA? Also, CR axes ought to have better odds than flanking HAs, which also means doing more damage. (combat odds, not survival odds)

But HA are almost twice as expensive as axes anyway, so what does it matter if you lose 4 axes instead of 2 HA? Also, CR axes ought to have better odds than flanking HAs, which also means doing more damage. (combat odds, not survival odds)

Axes have 1 move. Horse archers have two. As they ignore first strikes, HA's have at least as much chance if not more to deal significant damage on the archers (archers are quite poor vs HAs, you can just use combat II guys and even if the city has 20% D they'll still be around 75% win chances).

But back to that 1 move vs 2 move thing. Discounting that is painfully ignoring the greatest advantage of the mounted line. I doubt most people understand what it means when they plan a war.

2 move units literally mean you fight less troops to begin with. 1-2 less per city whipped if you don't use siege with your 1 move guys, but 3-4 less if you do (though siege can then help). If you're attacking (and losing) axes to archers, it's going to add up vs the significant increase in archer #'s. If you are looking at this across conquering four cities or so, the HAs start looking much better - leaps and bounds better than the axes unless you involve siege, but even if you do the outcome of which is better isn't entirely clear and depends on the opposition. Oh and...HAs come way earlier than siege if you prioritize them. The tech even trades decently.

Comparing the two is a little iffy though. The two are at their best in different windows of time. You'd axe rush if you are extremely boxed in but have copper. If you have horses and room for more cities/etc, HAs are definitely superior units. You said long ago that draw goes to the defender, but that's only true if the defender isn't ultimately killed on that turn...otherwise withdraw favors offense! Which unit survives and gets XP? Not the dead archer.

Basically, 4 axes =/= 2 HAs in terms of survival chance. The HA advantage is magnified...and quite greatly...by AI whipping tendencies and the way it spams units out of its cities after war...but only if it still has them.

Oh, HAs are the same hammers as cats too, and tend to survive more frequently. If the city has <4 defenders, and one is pretty tough...well i'll let you do the math.

I can't understand anyone axe rushing on Emperor or Immortal. It just doesn't work for me either - sure I can cripple an AI and take another capital - but I actually get less land than if I had REXed normally and my position relative to the other AIs is poorer than if I had done my normal expansion.

Some maps are kinder than others. The more room you have to grab cities peacefully, the less appealing the axe rush. I can easily describe a few situations where I could/would pull it off on either of those difficulties:

1. Boxed in to 3 cities or less: Not much choice here...you're probably on a peninsula. Hope you have copper.

2. One AI on the continent/landmass, and it's near you: Pretty straightforward too. You kill this AI, and you get 15+ city sites to settle at your leisure with nobody taking them in the anywhere near future. Might as well get that AI out of the way. Maybe it's different on deity, but IMO getting 15+ cities on immortal is game-breaking. A game breaking advantage that soon? I'll take it.

3. You spawn next to a non-protective leader that is virtually guaranteed to attack you: Basically any close-spawn to a warmonger. The war mechanics work in such a way that if you'll be the only civ bordering with one of the monty/shaka/gk/alex type asp-hats, you're going to be attacked. You're the first target they will look at every time they roll their RNG declare-odds. They're likely to roll an attack before you get them to pleased, much less friendly. Note that if they border someone else, getting them to pleased early will make them almost certain to hit someone else. But if it's just you, it's probably going to save hammers to just kill them. It's not like you can settle 0 cities after the axe prep. Sure, you'll have a bigger AI to deal with later somewhat, but hopefully it isn't one of the other PS loving idiots who will also declare (if it is, don't rush if they border you unless desperate, or you're a sitting duck and they will see you as one).

I find I axe rush fairly infrequently now, but I've seen maps that warrant it.

Of course, if you play on marathon, you'll probably want to take advantage of the free heroic epic in every city as soon as possible. The AI buildunitprob is set for each AI regardless of speed - the human's is not. A free HE in all cities means that much of the AI spam advantage can be erased by raising one's own tendency to build units...the AIs just don't take advantage the same way.

Good points. Guess there is still lots of little war tricks i dont know about, what with being a small empire pacifist type. Also i have always used siege until now, which was one of my more annoying issues so im still learning how to go without them.

Don't get me wrong, siege is VERY helpful. Even Chokonu can't knock down cultural defenses. But sometimes, you don't have the option to wait for Construction.

Like TMIT said, often it makes sense to expand as much as you can peacefully. In my current game, I was on a medium-size landmass with 1 neighbor. I considered rushing when I got copper early, but decided not to. Instead, I expanded fairly quickly, but not at the expense of my economy. I also based my decisions on where to found cities on what the next best city location was, and didn't not rush to block off my neighbor, even though I could have. In the meantime, I traded techs with my neighbor. Once all the good land was peacefully settled, I built an army and continued my expansion through conquest. One big bonus was that I captured 3 holy cities (actually two as one was double holy with two shrines!), and several Wonders.

By leaving the AI civ around, I basically got improved land, improved cities, tech, trade routes, wonders, and holy cities, in return for a hammers on a short war later on (I used espionage to blitz). If I had killed him off early on, I would not get most of this. It took a while to meet other civs as well, so I would even lose trade and tech by essentially isolating myself by eliminating him.

Granted this was a pretty ideal situation for keeping the AI around for a while - peaceful techer AI and fairly isolated from other AIs - but it shows that just because you can rush, doesn't mean you should, with respect to where your civ will be in 4000 years.

Things to consider:
1. Room to grow
2. AI usefulness (tech trading and wonder building) and aggressiveness
3. Distance to AI
4. AI defense (hill cities, protective)
5. Any other AIs? (don't want to isolate yourself)


Back to the main topic - I agree that if you're going to lose units from upkeep, you might as well use them in war if you can get something out of it. And being able to attack without waiting for bombardment does make things faster.

As mentioned before, using siege does give the AI more time to whip and bring reinforcements. I guess that's why the spies + mounted combo is so effective. Not only do you prevent much whipping in the immediate target, a quicker war means their other cities producing less too. This is especially useful if you have a big tech lead, like early cuirassiers.

Generally though, I'd stick with bringing siege units. It's much more efficient hammer-wise, and especially useful against large garrisons. Sometimes, parking your stack outside a city while bombarding will cause the AI to reinforce it with units from elsewhere. This can be to your advantage, as it allows you to destroy many units in one shot, while maximizing collateral damage.

When I have enough EPs, I spy down the city defense and bonk heads with axes/swords. Against archers they do well enough (just minor attrition from bad luck combats). Against LBs on flat land the swords obviously do better than the axes, but the swords are still doing the job (still with minor attrition, losing 1 to 2 per city raid). It's when the AI bring crossbows into their city D that I have to rethink the CR lineup and start to include siege and/or horse. Or get the CR upgraded to Maces.

When I have enough EPs, I spy down the city defense and bonk heads with axes/swords. Against archers they do well enough (just minor attrition from bad luck combats). Against LBs on flat land the swords obviously do better than the axes, but the swords are still doing the job (still with minor attrition, losing 1 to 2 per city raid). It's when the AI bring crossbows into their city D that I have to rethink the CR lineup and start to include siege and/or horse. Or get the CR upgraded to Maces.

Yeah, it seems like if the AI has a decent mixed defending stack, it's hard without seige ... which is why we have seige I guess :D

For the "horse only" stack, I cringe when I think of a typical AI's 2 to 3 pikemen in with their LBs on a hilled city with 80% culture defense. That's a lot of "retreat" that had better happen, or it can get ugly.

For the "horse only" stack, I cringe when I think of a typical AI's 2 to 3 pikemen in with their LBs on a hilled city with 80% culture defense. That's a lot of "retreat" that had better happen, or it can get ugly.

...lbows AND pikes? How late are you "horsing"?!

Horse Archers can be had in FORCE in the 1000 BC to 0 AD range on most maps. That's well before at least some civs are going to get longbows (exception: deity most likely). Spears and archers are more reasonable and palatable.

Xbows are garbage vs HA's.

If it's getting later on, it's time for knights, or the more likely to be successful cuirassers/spies. That is...assuming you don't have too many cities from HAs to begin with.

For a ridiculous but still somewhat realistic example, check out what DaveMCW did with keshiks in round one of EC III.

"horse" as in... including knights. I guess hit 'em before anyone anywhere so much as has a sniff of Engineering, or it's all over.

I don't care what you use, it's not a good idea to take it up against an era-ahead counter unit. Pikes are a little troublesome for knights, but if the city had its d lowered by spies, the same can't be said for shock cuirassers, and you can get those pretty fast.

Knights are my least favorite/used troop in the mounted line, only because of their awkward tech placement.

My siegeless game crashed. Boo. Started and abandoned about half a dozen other games so far, maybe someone can help me fix my problem.

See, i got 2 major issues with war in this game: siege and chokepoints.

Playing without siege is doable with spies and early rushes and whatnot, but im having trouble finding a map setup i like. Anyone know what settings to use if i wanted a big landmass with room for say, 4-5 rival civs and a lot of chokepoints? Not necessarily single tile chokes, just city-sized chokes.

"horse" as in... including knights. I guess hit 'em before anyone anywhere so much as has a sniff of Engineering, or it's all over.

That late in the game you should be able to have a conventional force, as well as +15 knights. Create a distraction with your main force, and destroy weakly defended cities with a surprise attack. Can obviously be done in the same fashion with horse archers earlier. Works great on human players. It's kind of boring to do on the AI though.

The only time I don't use siege is early rushes (mostly Axerushes and sometimes Sword or Horse Archer rushes) and Shock Cuirassier/Cavalry rushes against medieval AI with Spies to send the cities into revolt.

I find that siege is most critical in the medieval age. This is the age where defenses are very powerful and it's hard without Trebs to fight a war efficiently against the enemy. As TMIT said, it doesn't help that Knights are on an awkward tech path.

@TMIT I always see you rush massive amounts of HAs at AI. In general you always seem to be able to must such a massive force seemingly out of nowhere. Being a massive noob, i just have to ask. HOW DO YOU DO IT!