A budding warmonger needs help.

How do I war? Or more specifically, how can I start and win early wars and advance across the map taking city after through the eras?

Normally I play on Emperor or Immortal, and generally I go for science victories and normally win turn around turns 230-260 (I can generally get the NC up between turns 80 and 100). I am alright at cultural victories, and diplo victories are mainly just about still being alive at the end and buying the city states before the vote.

My main questions are, what should I be teaching, straight along the bottom half. Go for National College and then tech military? What should I be building? Policies? How many units do I need to take a Capitol? I know the general strat of having an injured, fortified melee unit in cover to draw fire while my ranged bombard the city.

I intend to practice on standard or small sized Pangea and continents.

Open archery, build 3 archers, minimum. It's ok to barb your way to 30xp on all your units, but after that you need to pick fights. Warrior gets medic promotions, scout gets visibility, archers get either Rough 1/2/3 or Open 1/2/3. Archers' next promotion after Rough/Open 3 is Range or Logistics. Pick Range and then Logistics, or vice-versa. If at any time you can't normal-fight, farm for xp. Intentionally get damaged just for the xp, and let your medic warrior help heal you. Get Honor tree to help get faster xp, GG, all that.

3 archers with range and logistics, and you'll be dropping cities so fast you'll have happiness problems. I get both Tradition and Liberty to help with that.

tetley said:

Open archery, build 3 archers, minimum. It's ok to barb your way to 30xp on all your units, but after that you need to pick fights. Warrior gets medic promotions, scout gets visibility, archers get either Rough 1/2/3 or Open 1/2/3. Archers' next promotion after Rough/Open 3 is Range or Logistics. Pick Range and then Logistics, or vice-versa. If at any time you can't normal-fight, farm for xp. Intentionally get damaged just for the xp, and let your medic warrior help heal you. Get Honor tree to help get faster xp, GG, all that.

3 archers with range and logistics, and you'll be dropping cities so fast you'll have happiness problems. I get both Tradition and Liberty to help with that.

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Is this enough to get me across a standard sized Pangea, assuming I upgrade my soldiers when possible, or will the last few AIs have superior units by the time I reach them? What about on continents? How do I cross the seas and get to them on time? Or am I better in that instance to focus more on science till frigates ( get NC up and then start warring?), with a bit of warmongering on the side.

I stumbled on the hilarious tactic of building 4 Composite Bowmen and 1 Spearman and then Rush Build Terracotta Army. Send your 8 Composite Bowmen and 2 Spearmen towards any AI for some Early Domination Cheese.

That isn't how Terrracotta works. If you have 4 comp bows and 1 spearman, Terracotta will give you 1 comp bow and 1 spearman. You get one of each type of unit that you already own.

Browd said:

That isn't how Terrracotta works. If you have 4 comp bows and 1 spearman, Terracotta will give you 1 comp bow and 1 spearman. You get one of each type of unit that you already own.

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Odd, I could have sworn it worked as I posted, my bad folks. Oh well, now it is another Wonder I won't be building because a handful of 'Cloned Units' seems kind of underpowered.

The "secret" to making Terracotta cost-effective is to have scads of different types of units immediately prior to finishing the wonder -- such as 1 scout, 1 archer, 1 comp bow, 1 spearman, 1 pikeman, 1 warrior, 1 swordsman, 1 chariot archer, 1 horseman, and 1 catapult. Finish Terracotta and get one of each type of unit. Assuming you have gold to upgrade the more "primitive" units, you have a real army.

Of course, if you don't use that army immediately, the maintenance cost is going to bleed you dry. And if you haven't expanded enough, you will suffer over-supply penalties.

3 archers certainly won't get you through the game, but OPENING 3 archers sure will. Except maybe on archipelago. What to do after or with the 3-archer opener is situational and the subject of entire dissertations.

I like TC for a good classical rush on immortal or emperor, but it should be no secret that it only works on different types of units. The "secret", per se, with TC is in having both the upgraded and unupgraded versions of the same unit, e.g. archer and composite, or swordsman and warrior, chariot and horseman. And rush-buying/faith-buying stuff in a 2-for-1 deal (which probably will be your catapult).