Do you divide your stacks of doom to avoid collateral damage?

As we know, siege weapon collateral damage was supposed to discourage stacks of doom. Well, does it? Do you divide your stacks to avoid collateral damage?

Sometimes I do, depending upon factors such as whether the enemy has a lot of siege weapons, what the terrain is, where roads are and how likely it might be that the AI is in a position to employ its favorite tactic (i.e., flank attacks). There are definitely situations which warrant dividing my SoD and, if I have sufficient units, it's often a very good tactic. Other times, it's simply not necessary.

Not everytime, its good having units stacked, to face different combats...

yes if fighting on "equal terms"
otherwise i tend to just mop up with superior troops in a stack

I tend to just make my SoD even bigger so at least some units come out of it unscathed

Troop limits per tile would be the only way to stop a Sod

if they introduced biological weapons or something that would work too

I guess I might sometimes, but it's usually easier and safer to have a big stack.

If I ever see the AI learn how to use siege weapons intelligently, then I might consider splitting, but until I do, it's one big SOD for me.

If there are siege units and I'm not facing grossly underwhelming odds, yes, I split them up. Also, I like to send multiple mixed stacks towards a city via different routes. This ideally emboldens the defending civ to attack the smaller stacks, thus thinning the defense in the cities. It also ideally has the effect of dividing any counteroffensives, which makes them less effective.

Anyway, a lot of times, when my multiple stacks arrive at a city, and if the enemy siege won't be much of an issue, I'll restack all the groups to speed up the attack turns.

I use smaller stacks, both positioned defensively, and in the attack. They usually end up together on the "final assault" but take different routes into enemy territory. Or, I'll use cavalry/mounted troops as screening stacks for the main effort of ground troops and siege weapons.

SoD seems to be the AI's preferred method of attack. I'm still getting used to the sizes of some that I've seen in BtS.

It's simply not needed to split up the stack.
Combine your troops, march into the battle, take the city. That's it.

It's simply not needed to split up the stack.
Combine your troops, march into the battle, take the city. That's it.

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It depends on the size of the stack. I have found that you can mount an effective invasion with fewer troops by using the tactics I described above. In fact, one time, to test it, I sent all of my troops in as a stack. Most were killed or heavily damaged by a counter offensive, and I had to abort. I reloaded, and this time I sent two stacks around to two other parts of the border, and left one at the original point of entry. This time, while still focusing primarily on the original point of entry, they divided their counter offensive. The stack at the original point of entry took some damage, but not as much as the first time, and the other two stacks easily fended off the troops the AI diverted to them. I took the city easily that time.

ShredZ said:

I tend to just make my SoD even bigger so at least some units come out of it unscathed

Troop limits per tile would be the only way to stop a Sod

Click to expand...

I think there's a mod floating around here someplace where units in a stack in excess of some number (9? 10?) were all subject to a -10% combat penalty while in the stack. So you had the best of both worlds -- you could still move units through others without penalty, so there were no weird movement penalties, but you couldn't just pile on the units. Admittedly, I have not played this mod (I generally like to play the straight rules wherever possible,) but it seemed like this might be a good idea. Somewhat surprised that this didn't get implemented in Civ IV vanilla, especially considering how they were trumpeting the death of the stack of doom.

In fact, last night, I was paging through that Bradygames Civ IV strategy guide, and it even says it in plain English: "The common Civilization III 'Stack of Doom' tactic is now the road to oblivion: Collateral Damage has put this tactic in the ground." (p. 23). Alas, it didn't turn out that way.

To answer the original question, though, I will often send multiple stacks into enemy territory, but it's usually to pursue different objectives, and not to mitigate collateral damage -- with different stacks trying to either take multiple cities, or at least keep enemy troops pinned down guarding some distant city, while the main force drives on the true objective.

I used to do that but since the AI doesn't use siege weapons enough to make me divide them very rarely I might do it I can only remember 1 time I've done it since I got the expansion.

Depends on what era, and how many horse they have.

If I have overwhelming odds, no. If I value my seigery on approach to their cities probably.

I divide (when circumstances permit).

I send a stack consisting of siege and force protection. This stack will be pummelled when it reaches the enemy city, so I need enough force protection that my siege units don't try to defend.

One or two turns behind them I send the attack force. By the time this stack reaches the enemy city, the enemy siege are all dead, the defenses have been knocked down and these guys are ready to play.

Also 2-movers such as cavalry and tanks can stand off one tile. This allows them to avoid being hit by collateral damage, because the AI generally uses the siege weapons from the city itself, not as often in the open field.

I have allways irritated my friends in this manner..the poor guy used to come with a stack of 15-20 troops right in front of my cities...then 4 of my trebs do a collateral damage on his troops and my knights sweep the leftovers away.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think collateral damage is limited to a finite number units. So if a SoD of height x is attacked an arty stack of height y, where each arty unit inflicts collateral damage against A units, then x - yA units from the SoD will not receive any collateral damage.

With that assumption in mind, I don't divide my SoD to avoid collateral damage. However, I will split a SoD in order to attack multiple targets in simultaneously.

^^ My understanding is that the strongest defenders get the collateral. As they get hit, they become less strong and somebody else rises to the top. With multiple siege attacks, that means everybody gets some damage.

For early rushes I don't bother to split.

For later warfare, I like to split, especially if I have a lot of Seige Weopons of my own and am against a civ with lots of Flanking units. I try to keep lots of unit variety in both stacks. It is also nice because you can pillage down two paths if you desire. I guess the disadvantage is you might run out of a unit that is the counter to the units that are attacking you. But you can always try to get your stacks together again before you meet their big resistance.