Hello. I suck at warfare. I attack with too little force too early and without police state and usually while I'm able to capture and hold a few cities I either do not have the strength to kill enemy SoD or if I kill it I can not conquer the remaining cities as I'm dried. Also wars cause me to fall behind in tech as I need cash to upgrade the units in captured cities (I typically play on normal speed big and small map where obsolete on arrival is a problem). So typically I end up with a few cities that can not control the resource I started the war for due to huge cultural pressure from remaining enemy cities. Also my ratio of loses with similar tech levels and slight lead in power is close to 1:1. What should I do to improve?

Catapults!!

Please post screenshots of what army you typically attack with.

When attacking make sure of the following things:
1) Bring enough siege to remove cultural defenses in one go if possible
2) Bring enough siege to suicide. After that mopping up is a breeze
3) Bring an army consisting of all units as in get a stack composing of mainly macemen for city attacks and a couple of crossbows, longbows and pikemen as stack defenders and later on as city defenders.
4) Make sure your SoD (stack of Doom) is big. 10 is not a SoD normally midgame unless you are way ahead in techs. My normal SoD is something like 30 units or so at normal speed.
5) Bring enough siege.
6) Machineguns are great stack defenders. Immune to colateral damage and can take down airships. Also great city defenders.
7) Bring enough siege
8) Police state is almost never necessary unless you have some catching up to do combined with nationalism.
9) Spies do an incredible job at removing cultural defenses by inciting revolts. So make sure you divert your spy points to your target.
10) Did I already mention enough siege?
11) Make sure your horse units get some flanking promotions to take out defending siege units like a breeze while damaging top defenders.

How do you stop the enemy if he has a SoD and you don't and he declares on you? Is it OK to retreat completely from border cities and leave them unprotected to save the units and not give XP/GG to your foes and strike only when you have your own stack composed?

no, it is not.
it is not normal to not have a SoD when your enemies do.
it is not normal to allow them DoW you unexpectedly.
always monitor the diplomacy and who of AI's has made a war roll.
if he did and you are in list of possible targets prepare to war

on your question, it is sometimes nesessary to leave a border city to a significantly stronger enemy stack unprotected and then counterattack to make use of your siege, F and CR promotions, but it is by no means normal.

i think you just have not enough units. War in cIV is all about numbers.

I don't know if you are using BUG but that mod shows the power numbers and comes really in handy. Also get to know the AI behaviours a bit more. Some are notorious backstabbers and others are plain crazy and will always go to war with you (Monty for instance).

If you want to know more about the game then check the either sisiutils ALC's or madscientist RPC's. Both have a high educational but also entertaining factors. I know I learned an incredible lot from these threads.

Well in one of my earlier games I had a rather small stack of CG3D2 mech inf (Cyrus FTW) from WP HE GG city that spammed them and I thought it will hold well. The rest of my empire was busy teching for spaceship. Also I had a huge stack of former privater destroyers with lots of upgrades (mostly D4C2) with a couple of carriers and battleships. Than Ragnar and his two vassals bombed my super elite mech.inf . with lots of jet fighters killing my outdated fighters intercepting from the carrier and nearby vassal city. My navy did not help (my marine squad that captured enemy city should have destroyed it as it was recaptured in a couple of turns and afterward my navy did not help much (well I easily destroyed his navy but could not do anything else with it as we were on a huge continent. I di not keep the save but I was separated from enemies by vassal and my core empire was on fairly large peninsula also I possessed a freshly conquered zulu peninsula on the other side of my vassal and small mostly industrialized conquered Arab continent. I had equal score with my enemy yet his vassals had more score. Overall techwise I was above but I had peaceful techs while he had adv flight and rocketry. Again I did not keep the save, but what would you do? Could I win if I retreated my stack of mech inf and artillery from vassal cities, assembled my own drafted stack at the peninsula choke point, teched advanced flight to gain air superiority with C4Ace fighters? Or maybe I should have teched for modern armor?

I lost that game as I just sent the lone elite Mech.infs. to vassal cities as my GG HE city could spew one every turn. These were killed one by one with no losses on enemy side.

Focus on winning wars long before modern units. Modern vs modern wars are usually bad news unless you have a lot more land then the AI's already.

12.) Bring enough siege

War elephants/cats are good units to attack with. You can go for quick steel for cannons/muskets/knights, or quick military tradition for cuirassiers. Other good windows are riflemen/cavalry and trebs, or riflemen/cavalry and cannons later. After that infantry and artillery which hopefully will be the last war you need. Possibly tanks/bombers/artillery later. Anything after that i try to avoid messing around with.

Basically these units are all great to war with given the right opportunity. Getting Heroic Epic built in a good production city is important - as well as understanding other ways to build lots of troops, be it workshops (after chemistry) or whipping units, or drafting riflemen.

Cannons are usually the most influential unit in my games - they are very powerful if you get them long enough before the AI's get rifling.

If it's not what units you use or production issues, i think your trouble might not really be with fighting wars at all - it's diplomacy which makes you fight wars before you're ready, or research rate if you never have an advantage over the AI. I think maybe you should ask for tips in these areas as well (specific ones) and post some screenshots of a game around 1 AD and 1000 AD.

Here is the 1090AD save. After a quick immortal rush I control a lot of land, partially unsettled. Partially unimproved. I need more workers. My neighbors are not reachable by land but reachable with a galley. I have 2 great henerals and I'm not sure what to do. I have no good production cities and my HE is in a very bad city. :( My bad. Did I mention more workers? So what's the plan? For now I want to spread religion, go theo/vassalage and spam some CR3 trebs with the help of my GGs and attack Asoka as noone loves him. What's wrong with my plan?

I just sent the lone elite Mech.infs. to vassal cities as my GG HE city could spew one every turn. These were killed one by one with no losses on enemy side.

why did you do this? do not split your forces. do not bother defending your vassal's cities.
i think your very main problem is bad diplomacy, which leads to you being attacked unprepared.
the second is poor strategical plannings, as garrisonning M.I. in vassal cities by one.
i think it would be extremely useful if you read some strategy articles and walkthroughs here on the forums.
fighters vs jets is bad of course, but if yours have 5promotions, it should be fine. C5 fighters beat C2 jets, especially with support from some interceptII M.I. (for some reason i do not understand, combat promotions seem to mean more in air combat)
gunships are of no use in the hands of AI - they do not know to use them and suicide against M.I.
thank you for the save, unf. i can't open it here on *nix. :( screeenies, please :cry:

settle a city with BIG production and food capabilities. look out for rivers especially since they become powerhouses after Steam Power. This city will build units non-stop for the rest of the game.It is only allowed to take a break to build production improvements (Forge&Factory) and health (usually you never have happyness issues there since it never grows too much, being focused on production) and -ofc- the Heroic Epic!
Every 5-10 cities (depending map size and game speed), be sure you create another city like that. Have one building attackers (usually mounted units), one building defenders (units with a bonus vs another unit type like x-bows&pikes) and one city building siege units.
Again, depending the size of the map+ the game speed, SoD size may vary. Usually a ratio of 1:1:1 attacker/defender/siege is good enough. A small scale war usually requires no more than a 15-20 size SoD to grab 2-3 cities and be able to defend them as well. If you are looking though to take down a whole civ, better plan for a 30 -> 45ish size of SoD.
Lastly, always keep some units in your homeland for defense. As a general rule, count down the number of the enemy (civ you are in war with or plan to) cities which equals to X. You should have X-mounted and X-barrage promoted catapults left at home to be ready to defend vs a backstab.
All SoD of the AI heavilly rely on siege. In order to cut their advantage, suicide your barrage siege first on them and then attack en-mass with flanking promoted mounted units. They will "flank" the opponents siege, doing damage to all of them if they survive from the attack. So with some siege to soften up the spears and some horse archers or knights following, you will be able to completely destroy the AIs siege, having him suicide his SoD vs your defenders.

Last thing : try to play with civs that are aggresive, imperialistc or charismatic and focus on military victories.
You'll be fine ;-)

@muxec

Didn't look at your save, but if you have lots of land to settle and improve after a rush I would think your priorities should be getting that land up to speed: build workers, settlers, tech economic techs (writing/currency/col), build up your economy and production, and then think about expanding again...

I agree with all these comments here. Here are some tactical suggestions:

- Don't underestimate the power of suicide seige units. Build lots of catapults / cannon and throw them at your enemy ruthlessly...who cares if they die, they're so cheap to build. Your enemy will quake in his boots.
- When you're out on the open battlefield, be sure to use the terrain wisely. Make your enemy attack you across rivers, through forests, up hills. Pillage roads to kill his mobility at key geographic junctures. Grab the great defensive spots and don't let go. Try to scout ahead before crossing an expanse of open plains that offers no defensive bonus. Plan your geographic attack route before you set out.
- Along those lines, you mentioned something about retreating to defend an isthmus. There's no shame in retreating and consolidating your power, but be sure to pick a defensible spot. If the isthmus is pure desert or plains then find another place.
- Select promotions that are best suited to your circumstances. If your opponent is attacking you with lots of longbowmen and the map is full of jungles, then pick cover and the forest promotion.
- Don't send mech infantry (or any unit) alone into the combat zone...you're really asking for it. The power of any army is teamwork and there are no individual heros. Likewise, if you haven't figured this out yet, NEVER send a combat ship on the open ocean alone. ALWAYS travel in fleets. Even when I build my 1st frigate, I don't let it leave port until it has a wingman.
- Always attack with a variety of units. An army of 5 catapults, 5 longbowmen, 5 elephants, and 5 pikemen is far more powerful and flexible than an army of 20 elephants. Also select a variety of promotions: 20 elephants with all the same promotions can only fight 1 type of battle.
- Be careful how fast you conquer. Capturing a new region is worthless if you can't defend it or if your economy can't support it. Keep in mind the further you push the front lines, the longer your supply line will be, which means it takes longer for new units to get there. And you may have to defend the supply line in some cases. Your headquarters must be able to "communicate" easily with your front lines at all times.