Newbie Military Help

I've played a few games and found myself being targeted for war.
I'm not sprawling (I've founded 4-5 cities) and I thought keeping my military around 4/5 (average) of 8 would be sufficient.

Instead I'm finding every game 1-2 civs DoWing me, which really stunts my growth. I'm playing on Prince with a Standard map.
I wanted to ask if there is any easy to understand "guideline" on how to build a military.

I thought:
-Having one ranged unit fortified per city, upgraded when possible would be sufficient.

I'd like to know
1) Aside from the 1RU fortfied for city, how many other units (melee/range/seige) should be built?
2) How many units outside of the cities should you have?
-What should they be?
-Should they be moving randomly, fortified (if so where), or in/at enemy territory?

3) For cities outside your home base, on another coast or continent, should you have even more military?

I just would like to have some guideline so I can have a military to deter other civs but not at the expense of building up my city/economy.

First things first : Build a solid city as capital, walls, barracks; a bunch of weak, defenseless cities are easy meat for Bozo(s).; 2) Scouts are for exploring, assign them sectors to find stuff; 3) Early workers MUST be escorted, I like a warrior/spearman (either) and an archer (any) to discourage Barbs and other filth, dead workers build NOTHING; 4) Random movement is for AI., you need to plan what you're going to do; 5) Remember that military units have a ZOC (zone of control), and as your worker groups (#3) work tiles around the city to make improvements, you MAY want to slip in a 'grunt' or 2 to spread your ZOC farther out from the city ... ; 6) For 2ND CITY, build a worker group (spear, archer, worker, THEN a settler) to exploit what your scouts have found . That's just for military ... For economics, build FOOD, production(hammers) to build stuff, science to buy tech, grab luxury's in city(s) range, and trade as soon as you can . As your Realm grows, so should your army. A mix of grunts(melee) and ranged units will do you well .

Here's some tips I've picked up along the way as I've been playing:

1. Don't underrate the power of militaristic citystate alliances. Always check to see what UU they provide (hover over the word 'militaristic' on the CS screen.) If they give an early game UU, especially the siege tower, battering ram, or legion, that can give you a huge advantage.

2. Hold off on building the units if you can. If you really think that you're going to get attacked in the near future, the walls are more important. Focus on getting the science and the money to upgrade whatever existing units you have laying around. Prioritizing economy will really pay off in the end. If your economy is strong, you can crank out the units and mobilize them fast when someone declares against you.

3. Give careful thought to how you position your troops and fortify your borders. Keeping archers on hills near the edge of your borders is a good idea. Take advantage of rivers. If you have a river between you and the foe, an archer two hexes behind the river can hit their units twice as they are trying to cross the river. Fortifying spearmen in forests and jungles that border open spaces is also a good idea. Try to position your units so that they can fall back two hexes, if they need to.

4. Build roads as early as possible and if war looks inevitable, beeline to engineering ASAP.

5. If you're being attacked, don't try to advance on the enemy units. Let them come. Pick them off with your well fortified units. Don't advance until you've broken their ranks.

6. Terracotta army can be worth building sometimes. If you decide to build it, keep one of your archers an archer, and one of your warriors a warrior, to get a couple more units out of it.

On Prince to take Cities, all you need is Three Ranged/Siege Units and Three Melee Units. Focus fire on AI Units, and stay out of City Bombard Range. If a City has 15 or less Defense Spearman are good when backed up by Archers or better yet, Composite Bowmen. If the City has 30 or less Defense you need Pikemen backed up by Catapults or better yet, Trebuchet. If the City has 50 or less Defense you need Musketmen backed up by Cannons, or better yet Artillery. If the City has 75 or less Defense you need Great War Infantry, backed up by Artillery and maybe 4 Great War Bombers and 2 Triplanes.

Rank up your units and make units to attack and defend your cities during times of war.. Have your units get good rankings so that they can be more effective against cities and be undetectable by city fire. Use great generals and place them in the map to find an advantage in destroying enemy units so that you can take it easier in military.

rover6695 said:

I thought:
-Having one ranged unit fortified per city, upgraded when possible would be sufficient.

I'd like to know
1) Aside from the 1RU fortfied for city, how many other units (melee/range/seige) should be built?
2) How many units outside of the cities should you have?
-What should they be?

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1 ranged unit per city is not a bad start, but also build 2-3 melee units. I like Swordsmen, but if you don't have access to iron then Pikemen do just fine (although their upgrade path is worse). If you are reasonably up-to-date with city defenses (walls, castles, etc.) then city attack and ranged units should do a good job of taking out enemy melee units approaching the city, but melee units will help you take out larger numbers of ranged/siege units they make bring with them, and can form an effective shield wall to prevent too many units attacking your cities at the same turn. Like others have said, also prioritize infrastructure to help unit movement in and out of strategic defensive positions on hills and forests, being able to swap units back and forth to minimize losses can be key to a successful defense.

Edit > I'd even add that I usually have a couple of ranged units fewer than my number of cities, depending on how the lay of the land is. If I can predict certain directions are safe from attack, I'd rather build a couple of melee/mounted units instead of one or two ranged units, or at least prioritize building these first and then building the remaining ranged units later.

For defending, it's basically all about destroying the enemy's units before your city's hp reaches zero. If you have melee units, the enemy will target these first, so these do act as extra hp for your city , however they are so squishy it's generally better to build additional ranged units to kill the enemy faster rather more meat shields. Melee are generally there to act as meat shields for when you are attacking an enemy city, and to capture enemy cities with when they get to 0 hp. The exception is

1) Against Atilla, his battering rams cannot attack units, so even a scout with both survivalism promotions is a good thing to have between you and your city.

2) With the faith healers Pantheon, any unit fortified next to your city will heal 50 hp per turn (20 basic healing in friendly territory + 30 from pantheon) . The enemy will unload most of their firepower trying to kill this unit, but will probably not succeed. For additional effect, build a fort or even a citadel on this tile.

The rest is all down to city placement. Use mountains to create bottlenecks, obstacles like lakes, rivers, marshes and hills to reduce enemy movement speed so they can only move 1 tile per turn within bombardment range, put your city on a hill and behind a river so they get a penalty when finally making their attack, and make sure your city is on a hill and has all hill forests chopped in the first ring so it has line of sight to shoot out to two hexes.

Personally I very rarely fortify cities. The best “unit” in any army is information; I keep my units outside of the cities and pick off anyone who tries to get close. I generally avoid “fighters” like legions and swordsmen, I prefer to use spearmen at the front in defence, with ranged units behind them, and a horse on the flank for hit and run tactics. For defence I generally have 1 each of spearmen, archer and horse per city, but not in the city itself. If things go wrong (They shouldn’t do!) then you can always purchase more units. I don’t like cities taking out enemy units as that’s lost EXP. Positioning is 9/10’s of winning a fight early game. Get in Forests, get RU’s on Hills. You need clear line of site for firing, and rivers can be a god send.

Aside from that; befriend any militaristic state you can find, the support can be invaluable. And if the unit isn’t great, or not useful, either sell it for cash for yourself, or donate to another city state, particularly one at war with someone.

Lastly, Terracotta Army is invaluable, so long as you can afford it.

My current game is huge map with 8 civs, and I have about 30 units (Medieval era). Of those I only built about 10 of them, the rest were gifts and Terracotta, and only 4 units are anywhere near my cities. 2 of the cities are totally undefended, but can’t be reached, aside from a spawning encampment, and even then there’s roads so I can get troops there fast if I need to.

1. EVERY City you found has to be founded with DEFENSE in mind. DO NOT settle closer to the AI's capital then your own. Unless your confident that he won't be building a military any time soon or unless it's got a number of undeniable luxuries, even then you have to build a military because it will be attacked. Try to build a city on a hill. It's harder for melee to attack and it allows your range unit in the city to attack every tile in range without another hill blocking them. It also gives you an extra production point. Try to be adjacent to a river but have the river between you and the AI's border so that they HAVE to cross it.

1B. Always build a city near your capital but between you and the AI. At the very least this city will act as a speed bump. The AI always focuses on cities and just goes in a straight line attacking every city between their capital and yours. So they will only take your capital after conquering your cities in between them. Having your city in the middle of your empire allows you to spread units quickly to border cities and insulates it from invasion.

2. The only cities that need protection are outer cities. Because AI never skip cities when they come to conquer. If they never take that outside city, they'll never threaten the rest of your empire. They never have tactics like splitting their army into maneuvers like pincers movements they just go straight ahead. So focus on only that city in between them and your capital. That way you don't waste ranged units sitting in unimportant cities. In the ancient era I have one ranged unit in the city and two melee on the outside. In the classic, if I'm near an agressive civ/ if I have the economy for it I add another ranged unit or 2.

2b. Try to carve your empire into the corner of a continent. I hate being in the middle of a continent between to civs. I like to have a coast at my back for trade and because you can defend your coast by just building a huge navy if necessary. But the AI can't do naval warfare well so it never comes to that. So by building with the coast at your back you can cut down the number of cities at the edge of your border. Also I always try to settle border towns near choke points so that a single city can keep an entire army or 2 from touching the rest of my empire. It saves you money because instead of building a military for 3 cities your building a military for just one.

3. In the renaissance era make sure you have roads to connect all your cities. Then build a range unit or 2. 2 melee units and 2 or 3 horsemen, depending on your economy. Place them dead center of your empire. They will be back up if you get attacked. Send those units to which ever border needs help during war. I also use this group as a counter attack. So i may wait to send them to a border city getting attacked if that city can handle it. I let the city and the defensive army wipe out the invasion force then I send that extra army in behind them to dive into the attacking civs borders. I use them to mop up any retreating army and use them to surround a city. Usually surrounding small city is enough to scare a civ into a favorable peace deal. Even if you don't have enough ranged units to seige them the AI will not call your bluff. If I'm an agressive civ I may send both my counter attack and defense army and have enough to actually conquer.

4. Be careful if you do conquer their cities because now your outer city is closer to their capital then yours and odds are the civ didn't make it easy to defend and it may be easier for that Civ to surround you. The last thing you want to do is play England vs France and war perpetually for centuries. If you do decide to conquer even one of their cities they will hate you forever. So do not leave them in a position to build an army ever again. If you conquer one city. Do not stop until you've razed all their luxurise or demanded them in a trade deal, raze their trade routes, destroy any army not found in a city, steal workers and pillage improvements. If you shatter their economy in the early game. They may never build an army that can threaten you ever again.

I'm playing BNW here.
I've watched an AI game on deity mode, and this cleared my eyes a lot.
First, the AI seems to bother almost nothing on defending their own cities: this means that if they are intenting to attack you, consider their whole army an attack party.
The military strength in the demographics map is basically the SQUARE ROOT of the enemy power multiplied by 2000. This basically means that what appear a small extra army in the statistics will mean a HUGE extra army stat... So, to keep at 4/5 as you suggest will simply mean that you are a sitting duck waiting to be conquered by those civs that are building an army.
Citadels are a Big defense improvement, specially in the late game. Consider the possibility of keeping a great general in reserve near your borders, so that you can build a citadel in a place that will make the most damage...

Build roads EARLY: they may seem expensive for small cities, but there is an unwritten tradeoff here, that is to increase units mobility. I always strive to keep my empire connected, so I can quickly send some units to fend those pesky attacks.

Sun Tzu says in The Art of War about "controversial territory". If you are placed between two or more civs, you are target practice for them. Make a Maginot Line on one side of your empire and conquer the other. Double fronts are a b*. Both in real life and in a civ game.

The AI will attack you at some time. I think it is better to attack first and keep them under control (or simply eliminate them outright). The AI completely sucks handling hit-and-run tactics. You will get heavily promoted units in the early game, specially if you run marathon speed like I do. By using hit-and-run and patience you will conquer even the strongest cities in the mid game.
The formula for hit-and-run is:
1-fast archery units with the "Logistics" promotion: You have two range attacks and can move back outside city range.
2- slow archery with the "Range" promotion (and later the "Logistics" one). Archers are much more resilient than siege units and will more likely withstand the city bombardment. This may not hold true for catapults.
3- slow siege units, like catapults/trebuchet. Only use them at the start as a safe target dummy: a unit that will get in range of a weak city, only to get XP. When they get the "Range" promotion, it will become a really interesting monster city-taking unit.
With this kind of units the recipe for success is only bombard, bombard, bombard and then conquer (even with a proper promoted scout, with the "scouting 3" promotion, or a horseman).

Another thing: my opening promotions always includes the obvious catalistic promotions TRADITION (3 culture bonus on the capital), HONOR (show barbs and get culture when killing them), LIBERTY (+1 culture bonus for each city). This is almost a no-brainer for me. And, lately, I'm always building an army up to SUPPORT-3. SUPPORT-2 will be a new settler for expansion. Then HONOR "Military caste", and LIBERTY "representation": this Lately, I'm considering heavily to have the full HONOR tree developed later: the extra experience, the great generals you receive, the barb farming, are all significant advantages, unless you are playing with a very small (or very crowded) map.

b7fanatix said:

For defending, it's basically all about destroying the enemy's units before your city's hp reaches zero.

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It's good to remember that for defending it's basically about destroy the enemy's Melee units before your city's hp reaches zero, because ranged units cannot conquest cities...

Another idea: before going on the Warpath, to build enough units, to replace those you are sending to a target city(s), as there is a cost of doing business; casualties, and occupation units . This way you keep your conquests .
Think of this as cell division .

When the AI DoW's you, it is all about buying time. Every turn you delay him is another turn closer to you getting an extra unit, more HP off his units. Put a scout on a wooded hill in the path of his army. Your scout will die but AI may waste as much as 2 turns killing him. That is two more turns towards a wall or an Archer.

Once he gets close concentrate on taking out his range units at first, until your city gets low then try to kill any melee units within striking distance of your city.

Won't help you avoid an attack, but scouts are good for- well scouting. They can tell you what is coming your way. You need walls, and has been mentioned, position your cities well.

Importantly, upgrade your units whenever possible (this is a tough one with competing priorities).

If possible have a gold reserve so you can buy units when the war starts. And as has been mentioned have roads- mobility is so important to switch units to trouble spots.

And if ypu are on the same continent as the Zulus- good luck.

It seems to me that OP is asking more about avoiding DOWs than war tactics per se.

In my experience, a standing army only helps a little with avoiding DOWs, and that being around 4/5 (average) of 8 would be sufficient, except that the game is programmed for war to break out. I am guessing the developers did this on purpose, to keep things interesting for new players. It gets a little frustrating.

So I think OP is actually asking about diplomacy. If you want a peaceful game, you have to pay your neighbors to fight each other. It feels quite wrong, but often this means bribing neutral civs to DOW your friends.

Another trick: almost build an Archer in each city. Change production to something else when there is one turn left. You just have to remember to complete the build before you get machinery and you won't lose the hammers.

Benefits are that you don't pay maintenance on the almost built Archer, and you might be able to squeeze in a barracks before completing the build, meanwhile you have a 1 turn Archer available in the event the AI DoWs you.

You can do this with any unit at any time during the game but I find it most effective early game when you are struggling with your economy and debating whether you can afford a barracks before building up your defenses.

If you want to go crazy you can almost build both an Archer and a spear in the same city. Useful if YOU are building up an invasion force, you can prebuild the last couple and avoid a few turns of maintenance cost. Just make sure you can afford them when they pop out and don't forget to complete them before they are obsoleted by a tech advance.

Remember that hammer decay for units starts 10 turns after you start building the unit and decays 2% per turn thereafter. If you wait too long, your hammers may be (mostly) gone.

I've noticed most Civ's don't do a lot of pillaging when they come through your lands. They seem to have want to keep your infrastructure up so they don't have to repair it, my guess at least. I on the other hand have no problem burning every single tile they have. So if some Civ DoW's me and I know it's going to be a tough fight I typically will send a few units around their military and into their lands and start hunting strategic resources and anything that will provide them hammers. As was mentioned before, they never defend their lands adequately when they are on the attack. It's a good way to soften up their attack force and their ability to replenish military units.

I also don't defend very aggressively for this same reason (unless it's like, Harald). They won't typically trash a lot of tiles and simply march straight for your city. I will line my units up in ranks next to my city facing into their attack line. As they pour in I will focus on taking out weak units first, focusing all my ranged attacks onto something soft. The AI seems to have trouble compensating for lost units and will spend turns reorganizing itself instead of attacking, which you can then use to further pick them apart.

You don't need a massive military to defend like this, just enough to endure. The AI hates losing resources and it hates losing units. Keep burning their lands and frustrating their attack and they'll be begging for peace in no time as long as they don't have a completely overwhelming force.

Oh yeah, pillaging with mounted units do help give you a preview of the lands youre conquering.. pillaging next to peaks or tight 1 tile spaces isnt recommended.

Browd said:

Remember that hammer decay for units starts 10 turns after you start building the unit and decays 2% per turn thereafter. If you wait too long, your hammers may be (mostly) gone.

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Can you explain what you mean by this? Thanks!