Oddball Strategies?

Do any of you have strange strategies or tricks that you've employed in a game?

I just played a game where I tested a really wacky idea (that I came up with while browsing the forums here). I played as Kublai Khan, and instead of building axemen to accompany my keshik pillaging force, I researched compass and built explorers (that's right, I found a use for them!) who matched the keshik's ignore terrain ability and 2mp, and with 4 defense and not being a mounted unit, they took the hit when attacked by the inevitable spearmen from the AIs. Their built-in guerilla and woodsman bonuses also gave them an advantage, because I could just maneuver myself to be in a forest or hill when attacked by the spearman. Anything else on the field was no match for the keshiks, (even swordsmen, as keshiks get a first strike). so they took on all other units.

This strategy allowed me to sweep across the continent and pillage every worthwhile improvement, without having to wait for a 1mp escort unit (granted it was small pangea with only two AIs, but I believe I could have taken on probably two more AIs this way with the force I had.) I quit the game when it was apparent I had pinned down both AIs to the point they would never be able to recover.
That was on noble, and I realize now I should probably move up a level or play another civ, if not both. But I digress. Anyone else have a strange or uncommon strat they've used? Or thought of using?

Well, that sounds interesting. How do you handle defending spears in cities?

A somewhat unorthodox though now popular use of explorers is as medics. 2 moves and rarely defends. Works even into the modern age as a wonderful complement to your tank force.

Craziest thing I once did was to use a shock promoted catapult to kill an axeman. I was dominating with a horde of praetorians and few catapults and killed every AI on the continent. Then a lone barb axeman popped up. Turned out the best unit to kill it was a yet unpromoted catapult which I rapidly promoted to shock. Worked though

That's easy. I didn't take any cities. I quit the game while researching construction, knowing that it was just a matter of switching production to cats and romping through the already ruined AI lands. There were a few smaller cities I could have taken with losses using just my keshiks, but the capitals and other larger cities just had too high a defense bonus, and/or spears. But with keshiks it was no trouble to walk all over enemy territory. Like I said, my force was large enough to have taken on two more AI civs, in my estimation... but war weariness may have been a factor at some point. I could also have built some axemen, walked them over, and taken a few of the cities, but that would have been with pretty heavy losses as well, while cats would come out pretty much on top of everything the enemy had, by first eliminating culture bonus and then straight attacking. At this point, of course, they couldn't build swords, spears, axes, chariots, or horse archers due to lack of resources, and only had a few spears left defending cities.

Unintentionally forcing a neighbour's city to flip to my nation. I didn't want the city because I was chopping forests around it that I wanted to go to my wonder-building city about 5 tiles away. Since I didn't want to make an old enemy even more angry with me, I installed a govenor (didn't raze). I instead gave the city to a friendlier, weaker third party civ.

Slightly odd I guess.

Hehe that's a neat strategy explorers are cheap too. But what about Crossbowmen with a +50% vs melee units they may not move as fast but you move the crossbow men backed up with a few units to counter other types of unit to the edge of their land just out of sight and then move the horse stack to move in just as the Crossbowmen swords/axe/sharpened watermellon tossers or whatever stack reaches there city; then you have a stack of horse and crossbow that can take out that city quicker than you can say blitzkrieg. The horse can then go merrily pillaging the rest of the area and moving back under the crossbow/water mellon wielders for defence.

xbows are pretty good but ChuK are just plain awesome.

I just had an AW game with the Chinese. I had a humongous stack of ChuKs, swords, spears, and catapults rumbling around. This war went a lot quicker than the standard suicide cata affair since I didn't have to replace catapults.

I bomb the defenses down with catas and move in the ChuKs. The 2 first strikes and higher strength mean "suicide" ChuKs often survive.

If I'm running vassalage/theocracy and I'm pumping out catapults / cannons / etc to take cities, I'll sneak a medic promotion onto one of them and restrict its use to bombarding defenses

Aren't explorers cheaper though? I only use siege for barrage and accuracy promos. The high barrage boys suicide while the accuracy ones constantly bombard. Pinch could be useful on cannons though as they are pretty good for killing grenadiers.

I've got my own little One City Challenge strategies, I'm actually able to do better with OCC challenge than without it. I've won space race victory on Emperor with OCC and loading, and on Monarch without any loading. While I've never been able to do a Space Race on emperor without OCC. It's all because of stacking of National Wonders and specialists exploiting.

That's actually a really neat idea. If you had a barracks and were running theocracy you could have Woodsman/Geurilla II explorers following around your Kleshiks. If you kept mostly to forests/hills you could keep your stacks safe from spearmen until you cut most of your enemy's road network in a given area, and you'd be able to pillage the countryside to your heart's content. Still doesn't deal with taking cities, but that's not really what Kleshik's are good for anyway. I'm going to have to try this out.

This is one little trick I like. Go for Construction early, make a few little teams of one Axemen and one War Elephant, and send them around enemy territory to pillage and threaten. You can do this quickly by building the needed Axemen in advance, and then just having your best cities crank out one round of elephants once you have the tech. The great thing about this little team is that even on open ground there is just no way for your enemy to attack them economicly unless they have War Elephants too, which will be especialy hard if you manage to pillage his ivory (if he has any) before he can react.

If your enemy attacks your team with a Spearmen, the Axemen will take him down. If the enemy attacks with an Axemen, the War Elephant will take him down. He can remove you by weight of numbers, but he'll probably end up using at least 3-5 units to kill this little duo, especially if you stick to defensible ground. If he chooses defend the surrounding terrain with Axemen/Spearmen teams he'll have to tie up a lot of units to do it. If he just ignores you you'll get to pillage him. No matter what he does your opponent looses. Drop a few of these axe/elephant teams in at the same time and it'll be a major drain for your enemy to deal with.

DangerousMonkey said:

That's actually a really neat idea. If you had a barracks and were running theocracy you could have Woodsman/Geurilla II explorers following around your Kleshiks. If you kept mostly to forests/hills you could keep your stacks safe from spearmen until you cut most of your enemy's road network in a given area, and you'd be able to pillage the countryside to your heart's content. Still doesn't deal with taking cities, but that's not really what Kleshik's are good for anyway. I'm going to have to try this out.

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Well, I had a barracks, but no theocracy. So I had to pick one or the other for my explorers. I picked woodsman II, because the natural terrain bonus is higher, and just picked my battles. But You could also just stack two explorers, one with each, and that would give you a wider choice of defensible terrain. Theocracy was out of reach at the time because I was researching construction, and hadn't gone up the religion tree at all. Vassalage was, of course, also out of reach, because I wasn't doing a "Feudalism slingshot" (I've never done any slingshot, on purpose, though I will pick an expensive tech and make the most of it if I get a great person early.)

This strategy worked wonders against two noble AI's, and should be doable against a couple more AI's simultaneously, or potentially on higher difficulties (but I've never played higher, so I can't say yet). Both AI civs were reduced to just about zero roads, and not a single other improvement, by the time I took a mulligan on the game.

EDIT Ok you edited your post just now so I'll edit mine.

This is one little trick I like. Go for Construction early, make a few little teams of one Axemen and one War Elephant, and send them around enemy territory to pillage and threaten. You can do this quickly by building the needed Axemen in advance, and then just having your best cities crank out one round of elephants once you have the tech. The great thing about this little team is that even on open ground there is just no way for your enemy to attack them economicly unless they have War Elephants too, which will be especialy hard if you manage to pillage his ivory (if he has any) before he can react.

If your enemy attacks your team with a Spearmen, the Axemen will take him down. If the enemy attacks with an Axemen, the War Elephant will take him down. He can remove you by weight of numbers, but he'll probably end up using at least 3-5 units to kill this little duo, especially if you stick to defensible ground. If he chooses defend the surrounding terrain with Axemen/Spearmen teams he'll have to tie up a lot of units to do it. If he just ignores you you'll get to pillage him. No matter what he does your opponent looses. Drop a few of these axe/elephant teams in at the same time and it'll be a major drain for your enemy to deal with.

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I like that one... though if you have construction, couldn't you just throw a few cats in too, and take the cities as you pillage (or forget pillaging all together, if you want the cities yourself)?

Mathemagician13 said:

If I'm running vassalage/theocracy and I'm pumping out catapults / cannons / etc to take cities, I'll sneak a medic promotion onto one of them and restrict its use to bombarding defenses

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That's one I hadn't thought of. Medic catapults. Haha, they heal themselves, and other damaged war machines as well. I guess medic is something of a crossbreed between a real medic and a mechanic, in this game.

PieceOfMind said:

Unintentionally forcing a neighbour's city to flip to my nation. I didn't want the city because I was chopping forests around it that I wanted to go to my wonder-building city about 5 tiles away. Since I didn't want to make an old enemy even more angry with me, I installed a govenor (didn't raze). I instead gave the city to a friendlier, weaker third party civ.

Slightly odd I guess.

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I am pretty sure I have noticed that when you raze a city after a city flip you get NO penalty in relations. You get penalty only if you raze a city after capturing it in the war, and in fact you get a penalty even to the previous owners of this city (if this city has changed hands many times).

Here's one I never see people talk about.

I really, really like the amphibious promotion in any game with a good amount of coastal cities.

These promoted units let me build a fleet which will be able to attack coastal cities without fear of reprisal... they can't get to my galleys/galleons/transports without first destroying all naval units protecting those fleets (caravels/frigates/destroyers), and there are no units which can attack me for collateral damage until flight or industrialism.

Even if an opposing Civ has relatively few coastal cities, this can be really useful... when warring with them, I don't immediately take their coastal cities; I just destroy all but one unit inside each one. The AI will then pull units from other cities trying to reinforce the defenses, making those reinforcements unavailable for counterattack or defense against my other land-based forces.

I don't know if this is really a "strategy" or just a little trick, but I like stockpiling promotions on my Mounted units until I get to Combat 3 & Blitz. What's the big deal about blitzing Cavalry? Not much....

Blitzing Gunships are the goal.

Strategy, little trick... same thing, really. Some strategies are sweeping, game altering ones, others are just neat and/or useful in the moment.

Now to go and work on my "compass slingshot" technique to get those explorers out even sooner!

compass slingshot? doesn't seem that useful. CoL or Metal Casting are better choices. If you can get civil service with it, even better.

Haha. Of course it doesn't seem useful. Oooh yay harbors. And explorers. In most cases, that is a pittance compared to bureaucracy, irrigation spread, etc. and the stuff you get with CoL on the way.
It was more of a joke, actually, though I may try it now, just to prove how useful it is! Well, at least if you are really interested in getting explorers for the reasons I had when I played the game that started this thread.

rewster1 said:

Haha. Of course it doesn't seem useful. Oooh yay harbors. And explorers.

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On jungle/forested maps explorers are pretty good if you get them early. Take woodsman 2 promotion and you get strength 8 unit on defense in forest/jungle.

Get guerilla 2 as well, park on a forest hill, and you get... a strength 11 unit! I think? The bonuses are all additive right? Now fortify for five turns, you're at 12. And there is no unit that has a bonus against recon units. Nice. If you wait long enough, you could probably eventually get up to combat 5, just sitting there, and then you are at str 14. Riflemen would be an even match for that. Well, unpromoted rifles. Sadly though, you can't upgrade them to anything. Oh well.