Taking Out Civs Early On - How?

J

JohnYoga

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Jan 23, 2006
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Hello!

My friends & Family start games in the Medieval era, in order to speed up the conclusion, so to speak.

How does one take out Civs during he early game?

With the one military unit per tile, and, aside from this, sometimes many of the other Civ's cities are on the coast. Whatever city you attack will bombard you, as you need to get within two hexes to attack.

For now, I make my way to artillery, then attack Civs. But, I want to take out Civs/Cities much earlier. Is there a way?

Regards,

Marc
 
Well generally in the early game if you are looking to warmonger I would look to a specialized Civ for that, Assyrian siege tower can be very effective for this, the Huns are ideal with their battering rams, both of these are most effective earlier then the medieval era though, with the start era you are dealing with the Mongols come to mind but they don't have any real buffs to taking cities just super effective Keshiks which excel in hit and run, they work for taking cities but it takes longer then with the Huns and Assyrians early.
 
IMO, Arabians are the beast for Middle Ages conquest.

Camel Archers are so versatile for both field and city siege combat, with minimal losses. And their raw power is better then of Keshiks.

In fact, the biggest issue while playing Arabia is to forget that you need some healthy melee units to enter the enemy city in order to conquer it.

Plus Arabian UA and UB are great in generating more money, making it easier to pay upkeep for good army.
 
player1 fanatic said:
IMO, Arabians are the beast for Middle Ages conquest.

Camel Archers are so versatile for both field and city siege combat, with minimal losses. And their raw power is better then of Keshiks.

In fact, the biggest issue while playing Arabia is to forget that you need some healthy melee units to enter the enemy city in order to conquer it.

Plus Arabian UA and UB are great in generating more money, making it easier to pay upkeep for good army.
Click to expand...

Hello Fanatic,

Excellent. Thank you.

Are you saying that Camel Archers can handily survive City bombardments? And/Or, are you saying that Camel Archers should be used for "hit and run", rinse and repeat attacks against a City?

Regards,

Marc
 
CAs are pretty resilient, but, depending on city strength, you should plan on cycling a few injured CAs out and some fresh ones in before the city falls.
 
Browd said:
CAs are pretty resilient, but, depending on city strength, you should plan on cycling a few injured CAs out and some fresh ones in before the city falls.
Click to expand...

Thank you, Browd. Often you are there to answer questions for me; I always appreciate this.

Arabia it is!


Regards,

Marc
 
Camel archers do not need to survive city bombardment. Their awesomeness comes from the fact that they can withdraw from enemy range after firing. If you play your cards right, you can conquer anything you want with no more than 3 CAs. After some time they will also get one bonus attack from promotions. They are also strong enough to survive enemy counteroffensive.

My 2nd choice would be Siam for their immensely powerful elephants. They are very good at eliminating large enemy armies and a little worse at taking cities for they are mele units.

You can also go with Poland and focus on their Hussars. With the fall patch, you can hire landsknechts and upgrade them later to Hussars, which will give you extremely fast and strong cavalry, who will be able to plunder fantastic sums of gold. Their downside is that they come a little later. On the other hand, they are fast enough to move away from cities after attacking them, earn experience extremely fast and have very handy promotions.
 
No, we play Co-op over the internet. My family is in PA and I am in CA. My friends that play this are either "local" or around the world.
 
Makavcio said:
Camel archers do not need to survive city bombardment. Their awesomeness comes from the fact that they can withdraw from enemy range after firing. If you play your cards right, you can conquer anything you want with no more than 3 CAs. After some time they will also get one bonus attack from promotions. They are also strong enough to survive enemy counteroffensive.

My 2nd choice would be Siam for their immensely powerful elephants. They are very good at eliminating large enemy armies and a little worse at taking cities for they are mele units.

You can also go with Poland and focus on their Hussars. With the fall patch, you can hire landsknechts and upgrade them later to Hussars, which will give you extremely fast and strong cavalry, who will be able to plunder fantastic sums of gold. Their downside is that they come a little later. On the other hand, they are fast enough to move away from cities after attacking them, earn experience extremely fast and have very handy promotions.
Click to expand...


Thank you, Makavcio. I have written down what you've stated. Right now, I jumped into a SP Diety, Medieval start, Small Pangea, six Civ, 41 CS map to see how Arabia plays out.

We normally play Earth, Huge, Medieval start, CStates nearly maxed out (40-45) and 12 CIvs. Trying this one alone. :)

Regards,

Marc
 
So, nobody ever mentions Zulus who get 3 move spearmen as early as Bronze Working with Ikanda and pay only 50% for those. Get a handful of those and 3-4 Composite Bowmen and you can take out an entire civ in Classical era without (much) troubles. Upgrade them to Impis in Medieval and take out another 2 Civs.

The real question is do you want to eradicate possible trade partners or not. You'll have to keep some CS allies to trade with if you really want to go this way, or use only internal food TR and hope to make enough money all by yourself.
 
You don't need any special civs with special unique units to take enemy cities early on. Sure, it helps- but all you need is 3-4 melee units and a couple of catapults. An archer or two is nice, but not needed. The trick is in positioning them prior to the attack on the city, so that they aren't getting killed off before you can get your catapults into attack position. This takes a lot of practice, patience, and experience, to get just right. And yes, there are some city positions and locations that are very difficult to take even with a good plan and the right troops. Just don't get locked into the mindset that you can only take opponent's cities with 2 or 3 specific civ choices.
 
JohnYoga said:
Co-op.
Click to expand...

Well my advice is just to move in a slightly injured (say, 90-95% health) melee unit with double cover promotions, then fortify down. The AI will nearly always target the injured unit, and since you got massive damage reduction, you should be able to take the hit for a number of rounds. Then it is just a matter of bringing in some bows/cats to bring down the city health.

Mr. Bob is correct about Zulu Impi. They get 30% range reduction just from Buffalo promo's. My last game as them I managed to completely take over Poland with only 3 composite bows and a few Impi to soak up the damage.

Against human players I'd think you would just need to bring in enough firepower to drop the city in one turn and brute-force it, but I don't play a lot of multi-player so someone else here may have better advice.
 
Smokeybear said:
You don't need any special civs with special unique units to take enemy cities early on. Sure, it helps- but all you need is 3-4 melee units and a couple of catapults. An archer or two is nice, but not needed. The trick is in positioning them prior to the attack on the city, so that they aren't getting killed off before you can get your catapults into attack position. This takes a lot of practice, patience, and experience, to get just right. And yes, there are some city positions and locations that are very difficult to take even with a good plan and the right troops. Just don't get locked into the mindset that you can only take opponent's cities with 2 or 3 specific civ choices.
Click to expand...

Hello Smokeybear,

We start on Medieval, and, it seems I can never get this to work as I am usually fighting a City "on one side", as its back is either by the ocean, or by mountains. And/Or, I find that there are too many of their troops to have me do this effectively.

Thanks for your post, by the way...

Marc
 
JohnYoga said:
Hello Fanatic,

Excellent. Thank you.

Are you saying that Camel Archers can handily survive City bombardments? And/Or, are you saying that Camel Archers should be used for "hit and run", rinse and repeat attacks against a City?

Regards,

Marc
Click to expand...

Actually, they are pretty resistant to city bombardment. But they as unit can be used for hit and run, to minimize any loses.

Still, they are unable to take cities, so you need some melee troops, and make sure that those troops don't get destroyed by city defenses, otherwise there is nothing that can capture the city.
 
player1 fanatic said:
Actually, they are pretty resistant to city bombardment. But they as unit can be used for hit and run, to minimize any loses.

Still, they are unable to take cities, so you need some melee troops, and make sure that those troops don't get destroyed by city defenses, otherwise there is nothing that can capture the city.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the advice. I started up a quick game as Arabia; let's see if I can kick some butt! I see that it is going to take me a long to get Camel Archers as they come at the end of the Medieval tech tree, even though I started at the beginning at the Medieval period.

Regards,

Marc
 
Bob Morane said:
So, nobody ever mentions Zulus who get 3 move spearmen as early as Bronze Working with Ikanda and pay only 50% for those. Get a handful of those and 3-4 Composite Bowmen and you can take out an entire civ in Classical era without (much) troubles. Upgrade them to Impis in Medieval and take out another 2 Civs.

The real question is do you want to eradicate possible trade partners or not. You'll have to keep some CS allies to trade with if you really want to go this way, or use only internal food TR and hope to make enough money all by yourself.
Click to expand...

Bob,

Thanks for the Zulu idea and especially your comment in the second paragraph. This is one reason why I/we play with 40+ City States, regardless of the map size.One other reason for so many City States is to find ways to keep/increase our Smilies up.

Thanks for your comment; I appreciate it! ;)

Regards,

Marc
 
Just remember all ranged units cant fire over hills, forest, mountains, or jungle(except artillery etc...). If you place your ranged units on hills then they can fire over hills, forest, and jungle.
If you have forest adjacent to your city don't cut it down and fortify melee units on hills within your territory.
If you build the Great Wall then all his units take 1 extra mp so catapults/trebuchets/cannons will be especially vulnerable as they take 1 mp to set-up.
 
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