Winning the War

I originally posted this as a reply to another thread, but as it got bigger I decided to move it to its own thread instead. These are my thoughts on how to win at war. I would very much like to hear other people's strategies and feedback. This has all been said before, and is mostly common sense, but I'm curious to hear how others go about it.

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- Don't go to war before you're ready, and don't go to war on a whim. Build up your civ first, make sure it's economically viable before going to war. Otherwise, you're just asking for trouble. Keep your production balanced between buildings and units, even while at war. If you only construct buildings, your military will be too weak. If you only build military units, your civilization will flounder.

- Make sure you keep an adequate defense force, regardless of your invasion plans. If you're too weak militarily, you'll get attacked before you're ready for conflict. And if you attack one civ when your homeland is inadequately defended, another civ will take advantage of it and attack you where you're weakest.

- Have a plan! Don't just attack the nearest civ. Decide which civ you really want out of the way first. What do you hope to gain through conquest? What resources and other strategic advantages will attacking one civ give you, versus attacking someone else? Once you attack, don't just barge in with guns blazing and expect to win. In addition to your main force, send out fast-moving units to plunder and pillage the countryside, and to act as scouts to detect (and intercept) the enemy's reinforcements.

- Don't just send your best attackers against the enemy city without softening it up first. They will die. Use bombardment to soften up the city, and its defenders, and your survival rate will be much higher. It is possible to take a city by brute force, but this is very expensive and inefficient. Once a unit is built, don't waste it. Keep it alive! Once you've taken a city, you should have good defensive units ready to garrison the place, so your attackers can move on to the next target.

- Prepare for the long term, but don't be afraid to call a truce when it makes sense. Sometimes you'll want to destroy another civ, and will stay at war until they're gone. Other times, you may just need to grab some important resources, then call a cease fire once you've got them. If you find yourself over-extended, arrange a peace treaty so you have 10 turns to bolster your military, then attack again when you're ready.

- Build a well-balanced, flexible army. Each unit has strengths and weaknesses, and you should know what they are. Don't go by the "strength" stat alone. An army consisting of knights, pikemen and longbowmen is much more powerful than an army of the same size containing only knights.

- Take a good hard look at your enemy's resources, and neutralize them as soon as possible. If your enemy has military resources like iron, copper, coal, oil and so on, get some fast-moving units to those tiles ASAP and pillage the enemy's means of production.

- Culture plays a huge part in any invasion plan. If you're attacking a well-cultured civ, their culture will make invading them difficult. The first few cities may not seem worth it, since they may still be overwhelmed by your enemy's cultural boundaries. When choosing which cities to attack, and in which order, make sure you have a plan to eliminate the enemy's culture-producing cities (like their capital) as soon as you can. This is especially important late in the game, when the enemy's culture has had lots of time to grow. When attacking a distant enemy that doesn't border on your civ, you may need to take several neighboring cities before you even see a dent in those cultural borders.

- As a corollary to the above: when you take an enemy city, your first priority is to build that city's culture as fast as possible. Theatres, libraries, temples, universities and so on should be the first things you build. You may need to construct a wall or other defensive structure early on, but don't use newly captured cities to build military units.

- Remember that all plans of attack are only good until the first arrow flies. It is a mistake to go to war without a plan, but it's also a mistake to hold fast to a plan that isn't working out. Stay flexible, and keep reserve units available where possible so you can react to events as they unfold.

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This will be second nature before long. Once your warmongering skills start to build, you'll find it easy and enjoyable to crush your enemy beneath the wheels of your chariots (or tanks, as the case may be)!

One thing I would add is to get as many people on your side as possible- you may want to bribe someone first to attack then you move in when they are weak. Also the AI will then do all the softening up for you- usually with their horse archers, even into the middleages which always seems a bit strange to me.

Yes, I've barely seen enemy knights in this game. Stampedes of horse archers just pillage everything, then stake it all but one unit on a city assault seems to keep occuring.

always pillage area around cities u can't take.
raze selectively. especially when u realize the culture power surrounding the town is just too much for the city to be of much worth. I took a 19 pop town with 2 wonders and it shrunk to size 3 within few turns. Pretty sad IMO

If captured city is starved of culture border and dying a slow death, grab it. And gift it to your friendliest neighbour for extra diplomatic points. That'll incite some tension with your enemy too! Possibly making them hate each other more.

If there ar eadvanced player without any common border with you, but have one with another player - try to make 'em fight. They'll probably hate each other already, especially if advanced one is preparing to attack weaker neighbour - weaker will be on guard most of the time. So support him. Advanced player will be surprised when his armies, expecting crossbowmen as most advanced unit will face pack of knights, backed by pikemans.
Always try to made others in attacking your foe - promise cities, resources, everything but make opponent stretch his forces.
Make war with neighbour - but before that:
-have talks with third player to attackthat one, then assemble common forces. Then attack.
-After third player attack - make peace with attacked one(of caurce you discussed that plan from the beginning, do you?) and attack third. Surprise attack can be really destructive and it took some time to make some plan for third.
-Burn cities, burn crops, burn everything if attacking with descent or far away...even with border ones. Leave only those with critical resources.

Question regarding a point not mentioned:

Where should you rally your armies, prior to declaring war?
Does building up your armies right next to the border of your AI-enemy make him/her suspicious?

I usually build my armies up next to the border, because I find that convenient, and I have never seen the AI noticing it and e.g. building a line in front of it (e.g. guarding hills and other strategic locations). True, I haven't made it past Prince yet.

it doesn't matter
i rather save up movement points cause in 1 turn , the army's doing nothing but eating your income.

- An army consisting of knights, pikemen and longbowmen is much more powerful than an army of the same size containing only knights.

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It really depend on your opposition. If you expect your enemy to use War Elephants, mix your knights up with Pikemen. If you expect them to use Pikemen, mix them up with Crossbowmen. It's rare when it's worth using more than two types of units, more variation does not mean better. Using promotions creatively is generally a better idea.

I agree with Gufnork here. If you're on the attack and you run into something that your army isn't suited to deal with, ie. you'e stack of doom knights happen across some pikeman, it isn't a big deal to sacrifice a few knights against the AI. Obviously in multiplayer this doesn't hold true, but once the pikemen are weakened th advantage is gone.

I think the stack of doom strat is still very much alive against the AI in civ 4. The only thing you really have to watch out for is units that cause collateral damage. If the AI decides to suicide a few catapults on you it can get ugly very quickly. Aside from that I would say that it's always nice to have the right type of unit to deal with the situation, but if you're planning on invading another civ you should have enough units, and a proper resupply plan, to ditch a few in a glorious charge against an enemy unit with the advantage.

That being said, it should be obvious that your stack of doom or whatever you use should be comprised of the unit most likely to have the advantage for most of the battles. Exceptions can be dealt with, but make sure they're only rare exceptions. Don't fight a war with Swordsman against a civ that has stacked its cities with Axeman. That should be obvious though.

I just got the game two days ago, already I found myself having to take arm before someone came to flatten my city. (Lost three consective rounds but able to last a bit longer each round).

On my third round of play, I finally got my civ to create a catapul... and with three units of (2 warrior, 1 archer) I sent them to go after the French. The wall defense was reduced to 0%... but, somehow, the computer still kills all my troops including the catapul...

I didn't know about the stack option, and sounded like it is a mix feeling at this point... If not using stack, what is the best way to take down stronghold. (The French has army like looks like crossbow defending the city).