The "stasis rush"

Since a bit after I moved up to Emperor in BTS, I've been advocating a strategy I've been calling the "stasis rush"... I don't believe I'm the first to come up with this by a long shot, but I've found a lot of people in the forum find it to be a novel concept. I've had *tremendous* success with it - and tremendously consistent success - but recently I've had a few members tell me that it isn't working for them. For me, I find, when I do it right, it works more or less 100%. In light of recent accounts of it not working though, I wanted to ask the forum, does this strategy work, or am I just really lucky?

To outline the strategy, let's see... The basic idea is to camp a small group of units (usually no more than five archers) outside of an enemy capital city really early, and when the units are camped there, the AI will not move a settler out of the city until they destroy all the units, even if they could do so very easily by just sacrificing most of their stack. So, instead of an expanding enemy, you get an enemy that sits at one city stockpiling archers and not moving their settler. For me, I've kept cities in "stasis" until they get longbowmen with a single city - far past when they could be competitive. Overall, I've found this strategy to be incredible, and assure me expansion room in even loaded maps, without having to go on a full scale rush against an established Civ.

For the details... Start building warriors really early. Find a nearby enemy, gather two to three warriors on their borders before they expand, and then go in declaring war (capturing a worker if you can). Then move those warriors to a square directly adjacent to the enemy capital - a forest, or preferably, a forest hill for the defensive bonus. A hill *may* work, but it'll cut down the chances of it working by a good margin. As soon as you do this, the enemy will start to crank out archers, so you have to be ready to bolster your stack with either archers, holkans, dog soldiers, or other better-than-warrior units fast. The enemy will build up archers until they have an overwhelming force and then attack with one or two units - if they win with those units, they will steamroll your stack - if they lose, they will sit there and keep building, letting your stack heal. They will cap out at around 15 archers, with settlers and workers sitting in the city doing squat. They will occasionally attack your stack with a few archers and, if that doesn't go well, just keep building or sitting there - so all you have to do is get a stack that's impervious to 2 or 3 archers attacking, and you're set. Five archers in a forest/forest hill usually suffices for this. With your fortify/forest/hill defensive bonuses, their units should lose badly, so they will essentially be stuck.

I should add, for me, I've had this work mulitple times on capital cities that were wide open... I camp my units on the left side of the city, and a settler in the city COULD safely move out the right side, but it never does... If I move my units away for even a turn, the settler makes a break for it, but as long as I maintain my directly adjacent blockade, they don't move.

This takes advantage of a little quirk in the AI that makes it not send out settlers unless it deems them safe - which it does not if it has a hostile force outside of their city, even if that hostile force is stupidly overmatched. It will wait until until your stack is wiped out before moving the settler out. The result is what I think is appropriately called a "stasis rush" - you rush with a few units, set up a stack of five or so archers, and just keep the enemy in stasis until you're ready to go and deal with them at a major tech/production base advantage.. If you catch them at one city with this, in my experience (and I've had probably 20+ successful games doing this, many Emperor and a few Immortal), you lock them at that one city wasting a fraction of the resources you need to to actually take the city down... Then you can come back with catapults and take the city when it has 15 or so archers in it.

My question is... Does this really work, or am I just stupidly lucky? I'd ask anyone who is bored to give it a try and let us know your findings... Is "stasis rush" a figment of my imagination, or does the AI predictably act the way I'm describing for others? Just to let you know, I'm running 3.13 with Bhruic's.

Thanks for your input, and I hope this helps some people with their games.

Have never tried it, but it works in theory.

Mattimeo said:

Have never tried it, but it works in theory.

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Yeah, it all depends on how the AI really works... My experience tells me that this WILL lock the enemy settler in the city if your blockade isn't broken, even if they have a perfectly safe way out. I'd just love to hear some forum feedback... See if I'm playing Sitting Bull and spending a bit too much time on the peace pipe. So, is this theory, or is it practice?

Husband and I have tried this a couple times... It can get expensive and war weary, but it does seem to work nicely. Don't forget to pillage the improved tiles, if any. If you want to be really ridiculous, at Noble I've been able to completely fill their fat cross with warriors...

The other similar thing we've done is send in 4 or 5 units and "chain" them, one per square, but in an adjacent line. Usually it's pretty easy to get the AI to pull an archer from its city to kill one guy...who's now wide open for your other unit next to him to kill. If the AI only has one city and you have three or four by this point, you can keep cranking out cheap units and usually afford to trade them off on a one-for-one basis.

Husband also claims that if you stick four stacks capable of taking on 2 archers and put them one square away from the city in the cardinal directions, the AI won't register the threat, keeps building settlers, and sends them out for you to capture. (Haven't tried it myself.)

Sounds alot like moonsinger's choke strategy with Quechua...

ParadigmShifter said:

Sounds alot like moonsinger's choke strategy with Quechua...

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Haven't ever heard of it/read it, but I never use Quechua, so if that strategy is limited to that unit, this isn't... Makes me all the more curious

Kate said:

Husband and I have tried this a couple times... It can get expensive and war weary, but it does seem to work nicely. Don't forget to pillage the improved tiles, if any. If you want to be really ridiculous, at Noble I've been able to completely fill their fat cross with warriors...

The other similar thing we've done is send in 4 or 5 units and "chain" them, one per square, but in an adjacent line. Usually it's pretty easy to get the AI to pull an archer from its city to kill one guy...who's now wide open for your other unit next to him to kill. If the AI only has one city and you have three or four by this point, you can keep cranking out cheap units and usually afford to trade them off on a one-for-one basis.

Husband also claims that if you stick four stacks capable of taking on 2 archers and put them one square away from the city in the cardinal directions, the AI won't register the threat, keeps building settlers, and sends them out for you to capture. (Haven't tried it myself.)

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My idea with this is, you don't want to get into a resource war with the CPU - you want to get a small stack, and have them do the job with no losses... Allowing your empire to stabilize while keeping an enemy in a very prone position. Sending out sacrificial archers, or multiple vulnerable stacks, just isn't really what I've gone for - just one stack, no losses, keep them locked with minimal resources until you're ready to wipe them out easily. The advantage is that it gives you huge expansion room with limited military expenditures early on.

Good idea, heard of it before. Might also be done as the "Impi choke".

I usually play like this also, preferably if a neighbour is really close, and if it has some good defendable tiles in its bfc. [I put them in their bfc but the idea is the same.]
It doesn't work all the time though, i play mostly immortal with agressive AI and some civs [the agressive ones] will attack you anyhow.
But this really in my opinion is the biggest AI-flaw. Most ai's will indeed just keep on building archers and never attack the lone warrior on a forested hill.
Well almost never.
On emperor i made a habit of declaring war on the nearest civ i find, just to stall him. Maybe get peace after i have 4 cities. [And later destroy him of course].
My theory is that if you look at the end of a game which civ's did the best, they always have the best starting location, with a lot of fertile land to expand. So if you effectively take the room from your nearest neighbour you have a good chance. Then again, on higher levels you wouldn't really want to expand fast, so then you go for the best spots, and the capital of another civ always is going to be a great city.

Just did this and it was working great (archers vs. HRE/Protective archers with promotions). I was getting restless, however, and massed 10 chariots and 5 archers against their 6 archers (2 workers and a settler where also present). I then proceeded to commit mass-suicide. I managed to get their units down to about 30HP each but ran out of units before I could finish them off.

As a side note, he had 3 cities prior to my starting the siege but I razed 2 of them before swarming on the capital.

The strategy seems to work OK but I find that I am to impatient to properly execute it, and I overestimate the costs involved in maintaining the siege. Secondly, I also tend to forgo self-expansion during this phase which really hurts since the other AI end up settling all that great land anyway while I am reinforcing the siege.

It doesnt always work.
I do this most of the time when the enemy is too strong for me to attack directly (by strong i just mean having promoted archers and high cultural defense/walls). Even with a stack of units parked on a forested hill adjacent to a city the AI still manages to sneak out some settlers occasionally, and its hard to notice it.
Then you see that he has 2 cities on his trade screen instead of none , and wonder where the hell that came from.

You need to camp 2 areas either side of the the enemy capital city to prevent them from using the the back door to move their settler. If you have the city flanked, then it works at all difficulty levels, and is very useful on higher difficulty levels where the AI can produce settlers far faster than you can.

Whilst the tactic does prevent one AI from settling land you want and linking up a military resource like copper / iron / horse, beware the other AI on the same continent, as they will settle the extra unoccupied land that you have created by choking one AI at their capital.

I just lost an Immortal game where I choked 2 AI at the same time using a warrior rush to slow their expansion. My warriors eventually died, but it slowed both AI long enough for me to win a war against them. The problem was that I was so scientifically backward at the end of a long war, that I lost the game. An early war on the higher difficulty levels cripples your cash / science, so I think you either need to be facing just one AI, or have a good financial starting position, (i.e. gems are probably the best, as you get them on hills and grassland). Trying it against 2 AI at the same time was a bridge to far, given that I didn't have bronze, and had no gold / silver / gems / ivory to help pay for such an early war.

Regards - Mr P

Real interesting idea. It seems to me that situations where it would be the optimal strategy are fairly rare, though. In any rush, the opportunity cost is generally infrastructure and an early wonder, and that would be case here. In my opinion the biggest prize in a rush is not necessarily land, but another cap as my 2nd or third city. You lose out expanding on your own, but you get a lot of room and maybe another AI city or two in addition to it's capital. With the stasis rush, you don't get the cap any time soon, and assuming you expand in the opposite direction of your target to cut off other AI's moving in on the land you've saved yourself, you get some space to plunk down another 3 or 4 cities when you can afford them. In the meantime, your rush never ends as you have to periodically reinforce your stack on his doorstep. I'm away from CIV at the moment and I look forward to trying this out, but it seems to me that this sort of scheme is only best when it's not feasible to rush in a way that grabs the cap. I would guess that this would be optimal if:

1. You have more then 1 AI on a landmass with you.
2. You lack the resources or ability (due to AI protective archers or UU or whatever) to rush the cap and take it.
3. You can expand the opposite direction of your target and block off his land for you settle later.
4. The AI is close enough to cramp you and to make a rush feasible.

Let me see, yesterday I won an almost-conquest-turned-diplomatic-victory-by-a-misclick. Noble/normal AI/Lincoln of the Americans/Big and Small (which turned into a medium - mine - and a big continent). I stasis-rushed William the Dutch (forgot how to spell his name properly) with only one Woodsman I warrior. When he was able to break the "siege" with two archers and a warrior, I had three cities, iron and a regularly built (non-chopping) force of about 8 swordsman and two catapults. From the time between my warrior's demise and finishing and moving my stack, he managed to use his freed settles to build 2 cities, but no improvement, no copper, iron whatsoever. Yeah, piece-of-cake. That skinny Egyptian lady (Hapteretc) was so impressed she immediately turned in my voluntary vassal and never, ever, broke out of the alliance - so my continent was mine without too much sweat, and without leaving the tech race aside, while still in BCs.

Ok, I'm going to revisit this old thread because I thought about it a bit and realized that, hey, I could post a test case! I did some thinking... With guys like the Incans, Native Americans, or Mayans, this is easy because of their resourceless UU's. So, I've avoided using them and instead went with Shaka on an Immortal Marathon game to show a successful lock-in. This was my second try at it (first time I found out I was on a solitary island and that just wouldn't work. So, I started in as Shaka with the intent of stasis rushing someone.

Here are the stats... Immortal game, marathon speed, big and small map type, snaky continents, islands mixed in, 15 civs, no barbs. I almost always play with no barbs, so of course it's a bit different for me, but that's my preference of how to play.

So, here goes... Start of game:



Ok, reasonable start. Will be a good, but not great city. No gold or anything (didn't want any in my capital) so I won't have an amazing tech start. Overall, pretty good.



Ok, I've skipped ahead a lot here. I've explored a lot. My first tech to research was archery, and then mining, and as you can see I'm well into bronze working now. I built one warrior, put a few turns into an Ikhanda (Shaka barracks), and then worked on an archer once I got archery, and one directly after that. My archer and warrior declared war on Saladin before he got a settler, and ran around his forested area pillaging roads and such until the second archer met up with them - and that's what you're seeing here. You can also see a stolen worker running away off to the west there - a nice little perk for the whole endeavor.



Ok, fast forward 60 or so turns. I've built my second city. I've added one archer to my blockade - and I've moved the warrior around just so you can see what's going on back there, though I would have kept him in the blockade if this weren't a showcase. Saladin is still completely stuck in his city - nothing will move out other than the odd archer.



Another 13 or so turns in the future, just for a glimpse of Shaka's city. Everything stagnating, even when he has A) the forces to escort his stuff out, B) a clear route out the back.



Another 30 or so turns in the future. I've added one archer to the blockade, brining it up to four, and Saladin is still totally stuck in his city. I've created another city myself, and my empire is really picking up steam - and no-one is encroaching on my territory since Saladin is stagnating.



Another 50 turns in, and this is where I saved up. I've added one more archer to the blockade, bringing the total to five. I've expanded once more, and have tons of good land sitting there for me. Saladin has lots of units in his city, but won't do anything. I pretty much have free reign to do what I want, and my empire is picking up.

Now, in this game, I wasn't really paying much attention to my empire - just wanted to showcase how well this can work with very few units. Some guys it doesn't work again - anyone with a resourceless UU tends to be able to bust out, or if their capital is sitting on copper or something. Some guys attack more often - Saladin was pretty docile... But archers in a forest tend to slaughter attacking archers, and the CPU is unwilling to put too many of their defenders into an attack. Your blockade starts slow, but you bolster it a bit as time goes on. I've never had a bigger blockade than five units, and I usually stop at four, so the resource drain is quite small.

What I hoped to show: The CPU won't attack a fortified force even with their larger force. The CPU won't run a settler out of a viable route in the back - there are rare exceptions to this (they have a pre-built road which leads them out, sometimes). And lastly, this is a cheap way for someone who wants to expand, rather than conquer, to conceivably do so without having ALL the land taken, even on Immortal.

This does slow your start a bit. Leaders without hunting off the bat, or a resourceless UU, don't work as well with this - but below Immortal I consistently do this without starting with hunting, and just using three warriors until I get an archer in there. The payoff is well worth it - you get lots of expansion room that would otherwise be tied up, and a nice gift-wrapped little capital for when you're solidified enough to take out the defending archers.

Anyways, hope this works well for anyone who cares to try it. It has become a very important part of my usual Immortal game, and has allowed me to focus much less on war in the early game, overall, since I can create a sustainable and competitive empire without having to gear my early game towards military tech. The save is at the bottom for anyone who wants to see Saladin sit there.

like the name. reminds me of the Foco theory (in so far as giving something a name, not a tactic- although in real world it actually may be similiar if you could stretch your imagination a bit. Cool extension/amplification of the warrior in the woods on a hill first contact thing one learns.

It sounds very doable but I have to ask. If you are cranking out a 5 stack that early and the AI has not expanded, why not just go the extra tile space and take him out completely?

Dont think i've used it since i played original civ4, it just feels cheap. And back then it was incredible easy to strangle civs in their cradle, one max two units outside their capital was enough to delay their expansion enough for you to just mob up.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4_epic6_1.html
It's a fine excample, and Sulla's page is a good read - allthough quite a bit outdated by now.

omnimutant said:

It sounds very doable but I have to ask. If you are cranking out a 5 stack that early and the AI has not expanded, why not just go the extra tile space and take him out completely?

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Check the earlier screenshots... The blockade started at one archer, one warrior, when he had three archers. I got my guys there pretty much as soon as I possibly could The CPU immediately - and I mean immediately - starts cranking out more archers as soon as yours enter his territory.

As for taking his city, right off the bat, if I COULD even pull it off (how many archers does it take to kill off three fortified in a city, which will expand to four and then five within a few turns of your guys showing up?), his city is far away and not exactly loaded with gold and gems - on Immortal, between the cost of all those early resources dumping into whatever I needed to actually take the city, and the cost of paying for that relatively distant city (-4 or more per turn is a big deal early on) would be absolutely crippling to a fledgling economy.

By turn 225 I had five archers, and as long as he has no copper, iron, or horses (hard with just his capital that he won't improve), he basically can't do squat. Five archers by 225, and fewer before that, is a relatively low cost for securing a great deal of territory to expand and, at your leisure, a capital city. Without a UU that specifically makes taking the city possible, or aiming for an axemen rush (a huge commitment of resources in the early game - assuming you have copper - which also means you'll be fighting a small empire rather than just one city), taking the city is a longshot at best. This isn't a longshot, and it's a relatively peacemonger way of securing something that is very hard to come by on emperor +... Room to expand.

Anyways, load the game and give it a try. Taking the city won't be easy

Egnarts said:

Dont think i've used it since i played original civ4, it just feels cheap. And back then it was incredible easy to strangle civs in their cradle, one max two units outside their capital was enough to delay their expansion enough for you to just mob up.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4_epic6_1.html
It's a fine excample, and Sulla's page is a good read - allthough quite a bit outdated by now.

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Interesting. I'll take a look at it. And, I do agree, it's somewhat cheap... But on the other hand, almost every rush strategy out there is - and it's almost a forgone conclusion that you rush someone with some early unit or another to secure early cities on higher difficulties. This is just one type of rush that promotes expansion rather than conquest - us builders really don't get much love as you move up in difficulty, with the rate the CPU expands... You either take cities by force, or... Well, you take cities by force. This is just something I've been doing as an alternative - an alternative that lets me build my own cities, and not get into any empire VS empire wars until I've established myself.

Edit: Read a bit of that, and I'd guess that the work he did in the beta got Firaxis to change some AI code. Now they mass build units when you park something outside of the city, and a stack of three or less is almost sure to drop in a periodic attack. 4 is a bare minimum number, they more or less have to be all archers or better, and they need at LEAST forest to camp in, or your blockade is toast. That is, after a little while... In the early going, four archers can be tough to cough up, so some warriors and archers mixed do the trick.