Help with war tactics/and possibly overall strategy

[Disgustipated]

I know this is a mod, but the game is basically the same in terms of battle mechanics. I'm using the ROM mod btw.

I'm realizing how bad my military tactics really are in my current game. Usually I have more tech and/or more units and blow through anyone. I normally play on noble or prince and the ai really presents no real challenge (yes I should challenge myself more, but don't wish to for one reason I'm discussing now).

Current game I'm facing an enemy with a larger army than me, and I'm struggling. Earth map 28 civs ROM mod. I'm the maya. I wanted a peaceful game, and I intentionally limited myself so I wouldn't get too high a score and the end game wouldn't be so boring. Well I don't have to worry about that now. The celtics blew through most of Europe and South east asia along with a few SE asian islands. They have a massive empire over 500 point lead and 1.3 power ratio in their favor (using one of the mods in ROM). Their navy is huge. I don't recall the normal game ai making this kind of navy.

For whatever reason they declared war on me out of the blue. Other than a different religion I really did nothing to them (I did bump up espionage a little bit so I could see what they were researching). It took my best efforts to keep them off North America (I held central america, mexico, and the contigual U.S., I left Canada to my vassals and babylon/iroquios (who aren't vassals). In the end, they were able to keep one city of my vassals. I had to end the war, as their navy was decimating mine, and I didn't want to lose my stack with 2 warlord units in it.

I recently watched the Let's Play Civ videos, and it seems so easy for them. But the ai doesn't behave like their ai did. Their ai just sat back and let the human take their cities. The ai here doesn't do it (maybe the beefed up AI in ROM helps in this regard). They will actively try to destroy my SOD. And my main problem is I'm having trouble protecting my SOD, especially my siege units. They are hit by flanking from their heavy cavalry (this is actually a middle ages unit) and horse archers. I used pikeman and macemen to help defend. But the flanking attacks beat up on my trebs pretty bad. I was hoping to take Paris and raze it to weaken them and force peace. But my attack stalled out, and I sued heavily for Peace. 4000 gold (the alternative was they waned a border city I called Ontario). Funny thing is their modifiers said they have -1 for war not going well for them. If the war wasn't going well for them, why did they want so much? I suppose because they knew they were stronger than me.

Anyways my navy that landed the ships near Paris was decimated. I was just barely able to get my troops over there without losing them, but then lost the ships after I landed. Their navy is staggering. I can't believe how many units they have (and this is on Noble difficulty).

I have the tech lead, but just barely. In fact, he beat me to naval cannon tech. So his navy is more developed than mine by far. The war is over, but I want to make these guys pay. Is this a good idea? I have a few ideas, I'd like to hear your suggestions.

a)turn all my cities to building units. Build up about 30 fluyts (carries 3 units) land about 90 units over in a 1 turn war declaration and hit them unprepared. I may lose my navy, but at least I get my land units over. I'm still several turns away from Cavalry and the Curis...whatever they are called. Might be like 20 or 30 turns away. I'm on epic speed as well (I normally play marathon), so I have limited time to use my army before he can counter it effectively.

b)wait until I get cavalry and cannons, then build up about 90 units and hit them hard. The risk is they will declare war on me again before that happens. I prefer to get my ships over safely during peacetime. It ensures they have less units on their western border (which is Paris). And they have so many ships, it's risky to try to get across safely.

c)wait until I get tanks, fighters, early bombers, and airports to drop in reinforcements.

d)wait until I get nukes

e)continue on my original plan of a "peaceful" game with either a scientific or space victory. This would require me to play "defense" and resist their attacks. I can keep my borders pretty well safe. It's hard to resist attacks on my vassals. Not that I care about them that much. In fact, it's almost better that they lose cities, so when I take them back I often get a tech (mod does this). It's easier to retake back a city on my continent, although I was unable to take back one before I sued for peace. I might be able to get them off my back if I change to their religion (or no religion) or maybe if I build up a stronger military than them they won't attack. But it seems to me the ai factors in their vassals strength when determining their relative power- I think.

The risk here is that I actually lose. I have never actually lost a game in the modern ages. I usually abandon if I think might lose. I know, I'm a wimp. That's why I'm making this post, I want to play better to ensure I win. I think the main danger is they win by diplomatic (they already have 4 vassals and more population than me), possibly cultural, domination, or possibly space ship (though I think I can beat her to the techs as I'm financial).

If I do go the warmonger route, how do I better protect my stacks? I think the better thing to do would have been to draw them out of the city. I realize that mistake I made. I wanted to make my attack fast before they could reinforce their western border with too many units (their roads allow 3 movement), but I failed evidently. It's hard to draw them out in enemy territory as they get so much movement from their roads. France isn't a very large area, so the coast isn't far from Paris. An alternative is to hit weaker cities in SE asia. But I'd like to hit their powerhouse cities and their capitol to severely weaken them.

[lymond]

First, I think ROM has a strategy thread. There are enough differences to the normal game which this forum is mainly about. Also, it really helps to give advice on a save and a lot of folks here may not have the mod.

[ori]

Moderator Action: moved to RoM Strategy and Tips

[DRJ]

I would suggest you make a semi-autarkic approach towards winning.

I myself concentrate on economy, giving me tech-advantage and hopefully I come up with bombards/musketeers/riflemen while AI still has middle aged units. Buying ships or siege units from friendly civs (possible with RoM: AND), you can upgrade these older units by the sheer amount of economical power. Having a early world religion helps with the finances, too.
So, besides the economical approach (builder style + defensive troop positioning) the diplomatic advance comes in mind as well, try to bribe the other civs to be your friends, make defensive pacts, gifts and send missionaries to gain some vassals while having 1 or 2 big wars to gain a foothold in the enemies lands - this offensive effort often makes it most likely that your homeland is save from a large invasion stack a AI Superpower could send because the foothold will be the most actual "alerting" point for AI, besides an AI usually has a-2cnd thought there, attempting to destroy your supply fleet out of the blue. So, make a good supply connection with fast tansporters and some islands as strongholds in between, position fleets where they can't be cought off-guard and tech to Machine guns. You are practically invulnerable then. This tactic is demonstrated is the screenshot below (or was tested later in that game) - I hope you can understand now how you could at one time be a peaceful player and on the other hand dominate the AI strategically, too.

As always, though, there are a few chokepoints in history - I show you the battle for the foothold (I already had a small coastal town in Neufundland but the path to Quebec was extremely heavily fortified...

Spoiler:

I then made peace, reinforced my troops over quite some time even after the peace agreement wasn't bound anymore. Then I sieged and bombarded the city from a forested hill, hoping for a suicide attack, which finally took place, killing half of his 230 stack and promoting my Warlord Vassal to 121 xp (he had 20 before^^) Having a great commander - general there is good, too.

Here is a screenie of the nearly won battle in this hundred-year/10 million-men-killed-war See that the Warlord has 191 xp now... as it is several turns later - my arty had to heal a bit from time to time...

Spoiler:

Next screenie shows a good positioning of cities, and placement of second palace to have a realtively small, economic-builder-style empire while covering enough ressources as well and blocking nasty AI mass settlements.

Spoiler:

An example of a early city-stealing warmonger-late game-builder style empire layout-composition was this game...

Spoiler:

[Disgustipated]

I could post a save too, I'm just not sure how to do that.

[Disgustipated]

Well I got it anyways. thanks for the help though. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought. I underestimate myself. I always suffer from lack of confidence, as is the case here.

I suppose I was looking for a "trick". Kind of like in civ2 where you can fortify a unit on a mountain, and they throw lots of troops at it killing most of their army. No tricks here, I had to kill off their army the hard way. It wasn't easy, and it took a while, but I did it. They were bigger than me, but they weren't as advanced (not during the 2nd and 3rd wars that is, the first one I described above their navy was more advanced than me with about the same tech on land units).

First war I described above. Second war Boudica declared on me again. I figured they would as I was a different religion. I prepared this time, and in fact, I was already sending over about 20 galleons with rifleman and cannons towards England. Maybe she saw those transports and declared on me preemptive like. The difference here is I had a larger navy this time, and my transports got across safely, and I slowly whittled her navy down with my stack. I took England first, then Ireland. I then did my "normandy" invasion with my stack of rifleman and cannons (North America doesn't have a horse resource, so I couldn't use cuirassers or cavalry till near the end when London's horse resource allowed me to build cavalry, took a while to get the tech for it too). My second wave of transports and ship of the lines landed troops in Sweden, and I took 3 cities in Scandinavia. My main group took Paris and Bibracte (their capitol) before my advance stalled out. I was unable to send more reinforcements as my newly built troops were battling massive stacks they landed in North america. I as liberating several vassal cities and eliminating that stack which could have posed a threat to my cities. They wiped out my army after I was trying to take a 3rd city in Western Europe. I got them to pay for peace at that point.

They declared war on me a 3rd time, and sent massive amounts of units to try to get their capitol back. I was a little worried they'd get it, but i had enough units that their cannons couldn't touch (thanks to the draft- I switched to vassalage while I was in a golden age). This time I eradicated them from Europe all together. They still have half of India, Indochina, and a few cities scattered on pacific islands and Australia. But they are no threat now.

So much for remaining small. I'm just not good enough at diplomacy to do that I suppose. I wanted a small peaceful game that I see other people do. But Boudica was getting too powerful, and even if she hadn't attacked me, I would have had to do something about her eventually.