Attacko's Treatise of Unconvential Civ4 Mechanics

Sun Tzu's "Art of War" has led to more defeats than any other work.
The Chinese got whipped by the Mongols (and later by about 20 british soldiers and then by the tiny island of Japan. (Japan's generals were enamored of that work! one might cry- which they probably were- and why they too got soundly whipped in WW2.)
And what does all of this have to do with Civ4? Simply this - well written and analyzed tactics and strategies are doomed to failure against more modern and robust activity

"The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis."
[Attributed to Admiral Karl Doenitz, of the German Kriegsmarine]

"It's extremely difficult to second guess the American Navy, because the Americans rarely read their doctrine, and don’t feel compelled to follow it when they do."
(Attributed to Admiral of the Soviet Fleet, Sergei Gorshkov)

Even the botched paratrooper drops on D Day were successful because the Germans were confused about where they were landing and what their target was. Likewise- when your invading an enemy Civ this use of confusion
(not that the AI gets "confused" in the human sense rather in the sense of unit coordination and support.) is a better ally than Churchill.

A simple goal/plan is a starting point- not an end- one of the biggest mistakes strategy articles tend to make. While working within a general outline, one must be willingly and ready to both make and capitalize on a mistake. Once, not researching the Wheel and having built a worker, he was sent out and popped two huts and found Egypt and where horses were.

Give me tundra, a whale, and Diety setting, and the world is mine.

AI are not smart enough to be confused

Pls troytheface, there is a nice section for jokes.

how is this a strategy article? This feels like that long "Tactics, where it's at" thread that was just some gibberish and led to some funny answer and comic relief. Maybe this aims to do the same? Either way, please don't clutter the section with worthless babble, no offense.

cheers
-wannabewarlord

This joke is getting old, and the articles forum is getting cluttered with rubbish...

I`m still waiting for ``Run like Heel`` sic.

troytheface said:

Likewise- when your invading an enemy Civ this use of confusion
(not that the AI gets "confused" in the human sense rather in the sense of unit coordination and support.) is a better ally than Churchill.

Click to expand...

Well I guess thats a matter of nationalist opinion. I'm gonna swing for the other team on this one.

And I shudder to think that your proposing chaos as an advantage of tactical planning. You can over plan for sure, but you can certainly under plan as well.

You gotta understand a little bit about America and American thinking/attitude

1) Our nation was born out of a war. We were not a colony the fought off an invasion force. We were British citizans who rebeled.

2) That birthing war was fought by one of the worse prepared armies against one of the greatest at the time.

3) That pathetic army was led by a rich semi-competant general who learned how masterfully motivate people (charismatic is truely the correct trait for GW) and already knew how to manipulate a chaotic congress.

4) That chaotic congress often gave orders to that semi-competant general who followed what was fitting at the time.

5) The semi-competant general and chaotic congress ran alot faster over known terrain than the war-weary large and broke empire that was FAR away.

Points 1-5 gave the American people a very high and unbeatable opinion of themselves. Following rules or a plan is unnecessary as they we will win anyway, and alot of chaos in war is a good thing!

Couple of points:

America became independent largely because France and Spain beat the British fleet and Britain lost control of the sea.

There is a valid point about rigid thinking: circumstances can change rapidly and a strategy can become sub-optimal so sticking to one strategy regardless of circumstances is not a good idea.

pigswill said:

Couple of points:

America became independent largely because France and Spain beat the British fleet and Britain lost control of the sea.

.

Click to expand...

First of all very few Americans will admit to this.

Second, It took a long time before France and Spain joined the war, America was able to fight off the British for a good long while before Washington actually won some battles to show the rest of Europe America was for real!

pigswill said:

Couple of points:

America became independent largely because France and Spain beat the British fleet and Britain lost control of the sea.

There is a valid point about rigid thinking: circumstances can change rapidly and a strategy can become sub-optimal so sticking to one strategy regardless of circumstances is not a good idea.

Click to expand...

You'd have to say it was a combined effort .

Britain was getting pretty strung out trying to manage such a large amount of overseas land. Closer empires took advantage, it's not like they did it because they necessarily liked America though! I'm not sure the revolutionary war would have been a success if not for foreign interference, but with prolonged wars with enemies nearby, foreign interference is more likely than not.

I don't think Sun Tzu's overhyped treatise says it's good to be inflexible like an AI. It actually has chapters teaching about improvising and confusing the enemy.
Those defeats prove nothing, because, guess what, BOTH sides had studied Sun Tzu I bet.

I know some people couldn't improvise to save their lives but I'm sure lots of players do such unusual things. I use workers for short range exploring, specially playing as India; I gift away scouts once I don't need them, not sure whether it pleases the AI but it's useless and it might make them pay more maintainance as well as lowering mine; not rarely, I whip the hell out of citizens and chop all the trees around a far conquered city to make things like spies, then have them run cheap missions nearby so they get teleported to the capital.

As for the average American, they do seem to overestimate the country's military prowess. However it's not expected for the masses of any nationality to know that levee en masse and gunpowder made war more a matter of material and logistics rather than skill and courage.

Yay! Another article!

Or, well, I think it is. I will read the first post. Yes, I was too excited to even read the first post of the thread before this post.

Oh, I didn't see it was a thread of that such illustrous individual .

The closest I got to see an AI "confused" was when I settled on top of a hill four tiles aways from Shaka's capital, cutting him off from iron and the rest of the continent.
After whipping some walls and some discretionary use of catapults, the monster stacks that he duly suicided against that city made me a couple of GGs and let me spend 5000 years peacefully rexing the continent, while permanently at war.
Go figure...

this is Che Guevarra's "Foco Theory" in Civ game terms. cohesion - ie roads, settlers resources and stealing workers because worker liberation will let them give up their chains and build you roads and build towns instead.