Army encirclement

A

AuganM

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 14, 2015
Messages
73
Location
South England
The other day I was playing as the Huns and I noticed the Persians inching an army towards me as my spy just uncovered that they were plotting a sneak attack against me (very sneaky putting 10 units in clear sight). The units marched towards my capital and nestled themselves between my three cities, I decided for a giggle to buy tiles around their units in order to trap them inside my borders. So my question to the people of the forums is: Against AI, is army encirclement a valid tactic?
 
Do you mean valid in the sense of 'frowned on or not' or in the sense of 'good use of your units' ?

I am assume you did it because you weren't yet ready to face his troops, in which case blocking or encircling seems like a decent way to do it. It's a bit gamey, but hey! :D
 
I don't understand this tactic at all. If the AI doesn't DOW you, then the tactic is unnecessary and if it does DOW you then it's worthless.
 
It's because the AI won't DoW you until it reaches your borders. If you can keep it from getting there, it never will.
 
Are you saying that if you tile in a unit the AI cannot DOW you? If that is right that is totally brilliant. I might leave work early just to try that. Need to stop Siam from nuking me into the analog era.
 
I mean that if the AI is planning a surprise attack and marching its army, it will not DoW until it gets close to your borders. When it is some way out, if you use your troops to block, or as the OP suggests, actually encircle them, they will just get confused. They won't DoW you. At least it never happened to me the 5 or 6 times I blocked them.
 
I don't really follow what people are saying "if they never reach your borders they won't declare war".

If he bought tiles to encircle the units wouldn't that by default mean they've reached the borders? I understand how they might glitch the enemy AI if you use your own units to block the advance of the enemy and they won't declare, but it sounds like he's saying he's blocked them by buying border tiles. why would the AI get confused when all their units are touching your borders? Sounds like his 3 cities are located in some sort of circle or triangle pattern and the enemy is now trapped inside/in between.
 
Yore right about my cities being in a triangle, they were trapped in the centre like the eye of the illuminati. I just wanted to know if buying tiles to enclose someone's units is a valid tactic for rendering their armies useless, perhaps even on neutral AIs.
 
Army encirclement isn't always succesful because you won't always be able to have way more units than the AI. When you say army encirclement, I picture a large army of ranged units shooting at a solitary unit in the middle of everyone, no. You won't always have way more troops than the AI and if you do then maybe yes you will be able to pull off an army encirclement on the AI.
 
Most of you are talking about trapping an AI army with units, OP did it with his borders by buying tiles.

I've occasionally bought tiles to disrupt AI movement. In my experience it will confuse them and can delay DoW buying you some time to get more units, bring your units back home from barb-hunting or whatever they were doing. It can be valid if you buy one or two cheap tiles. If you need to buy more, buy units instead.
 
My bad. Encircling them with units is what I was talking about. With tiles I have no idea what would happen. Sounds like a really expensive way to deal with the situation. In fact, I can't imagine it. The biggest danger would be if the culture borders expanded to fill in the 'hole', which would cause the units inside to be teleported magically to the nearest neutral tiles!! :O
 
Sometimes, it's not that expensive. If you haven't bought (many) tiles previously (going tradition), you notice an army on it's way to your capital, moving around the borders of an expansion, and taking a narrow path between that expansion border and sea/mountain range, buying a single tile can split the army in two, leaving the AI confused as what to do next, re-running it's path-finding and taking a long path to get to your capital by another way and regroup the army, giving you time to prepare. Even if you can't block them completely, forcing them through a bottle neck will cause traffic-jam and delay them.
Of course if AI was smart enough to just DoW you and regroup inside your borders, it would be no help but when AI is in "positioning" mode, anything that prevent them from reaching their attack position will really cause them troubles
It's extremely situational and would be done better with some units to block their way, but if you were really careless not building enough and the few units you have are 15 tiles away clearing a camp for a CS, it might, with the right terrain configuration, save your day.
 
consentient said:
I mean that if the AI is planning a surprise attack and marching its army, it will not DoW until it gets close to your borders. When it is some way out, if you use your troops to block, or as the OP suggests, actually encircle them, they will just get confused. They won't DoW you. At least it never happened to me the 5 or 6 times I blocked them.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that makes sense with units. Although I would add that if you are in a position to block the army advance with military units you probably stand a good chance in a straight up fight, assuming reasonably close techs. Especially if you get to shoot the opening volley.

I block settlers from going where they want to settle (with units) all the time. Early in the game it can really slow a pesky neighbor.
 
lockandload said:
Although I would add that if you are in a position to block the army advance with military units you probably stand a good chance in a straight up fight, assuming reasonably close techs.
Click to expand...
No. You can actually block an advancing army with scouts and workers :p
All you need is tiles that cost 2 moves (hills, river, forest). AI could move over your workers, but not end their turn on them so they just stand there, waiting for you to move.
Of course, workers often have better stuff to do than block an army, but what about captured missionaries :D
 
Some units won't be able to go over workers when trying to move. For example, workers of your civilization won't be able to pass over a worker from another civilization or city state. That same rule applies to units that are the same as the units that are in your civilization and are trying to pass. Missionaries that can't defend such as workers, great people and missionaries have the same rules as the worker rules trying to pass above.
 
hmm, i wonder if doing this you could then get more than just a straight open borders trade. they'd maybe add some resources or gpt or something. but it should be worth equal to or more than the gold i paid for those tiles. i trap scouts with coast and borders all the time but they never pay more for those guys.
 
Hmm, I doubt it but it could be true that a civilization would try to open its borders only to free up one of its trapped units. I doubt it would though because the AI will probably try to look out for its own civilization first and then its units. At least in wouldn't try to open borders with another civilization and make it that important only for a unit particularly when another civilization is more influential than me. I also already mentioned the reason why I would open or why not and most of these opinions I copied from the AI if it doesn't seem obvious or even if it did.
 
This tactic sounds completely useless. Why would trapping the units with your borders do anything? As soon as they DOW you the borders mean nothing. If you are trapping them with your borders they are already in position and will DOW whenever they feel like it. Am I missing something here?

If you are preventing them from getting to your borders with units that sounds a lot more useful although pretty cheesy.
 
That's exactly what we said. Units work great, even workers or captured missionaries can block an army with the help of the terrain.
Using tiles is very situational. Mostly it will slow them down and buy you some turns by confusing their algorithm if they are ignoring an expo and heading for your capital. But sometimes half a dozen turns is what you need to bring units back home or get Construction tech. Very situational but i used this once and it helped me.
 
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