Battling Warmonger Fatigue

[Eggolas]

One of the areas I need to improve upon is sustaining a winning war. Whether it's war weariness in my cities, lack of troops to garrison towns captured, or just the time it takes to keep moving all those units and figuring out the attack strategies, after awhile, maybe after I kill off a civ or two, I simply stop and rebuild the economy to a 70% sustain level from 30-40.

So, on Monarch level, Marathon speed I end up with a fairly easy space race in the 1700s, but no domination or conquest. The map size is usually large, continents.

What do you all true warmongers do? I've seen domination and conquest games on large maps that I can only guess as to the overall tactics. How do you fill up the areas razed and keep pressing a strategic or tactical advantage (such as an axe rush or making the most of a powerful UU or position)? How do you keep the energy going?

 

[Gnarfflinger]

If you keep your forces in position but not attack until you are ready to occupy the city or re-settle the area yourself. Keep their supply lines down and their economy flat-lined, while yours doesn't deplete as quickly. I've heard that keeping your units on forest and hills will cause them to lose more than you do.

 

[The Tyrant]

Try to eliminate one civ before turning your attention to another. If you allow the first civ to live, the war weariness is "remembered" when you go to war again, but if you completely eliminate a civ then WW is basically erased.

Also, wars should be over as quickly as possible to keep the war weariness as low as possible while you're fighting. Let it go on too long and you won't be able to sustain a war of elimination because your cities will lose too much productivity. That means I'll gladly accept falling a little behind in tech while I build a large army, letting unit upkeep cut into research. Once I declare, it is a mad rush to take as many cities as possible as quickly as possible. I'll leave the seriously wounded behind in captured cities so they can heal, but everyone else (full-health and the lightly-wounded) move on to the next city. If your stack has to sit in a captured city to heal before it can move on to the next city then either 1) You should have brought more units, or 2) You should have brought more seige units to soften the enemy. Large stacks, smash city, move to the next, fast, fast, fast, go, go, go.

Before State Property, I try to expand to no more than 12 cities because even with courthouses the city upkeep can drag research too low. After reaching 12 cities, but before SP, I'm alternating phases of building infrastructure and units (OR or Theocracy). The key here is to make your economy as strong as possible. The economy is what will make the war possible. You'll need commerce for research (you want to have more advanced units) and to cover the upkeep costs of your army. Founding a religion, building the shrine and spamming missionaries can be a huge help.

You still have to build units to keep a conquest-worthy military even though you don't intend to go on the warpath for a while. The strong up-to-date military will ensure that anyone who declares on you will suffer for their foolishness. It also makes it possible to go on the warpath immediately after getting SP. After SP I take out my enemies first, then my friends. Use diplomacy to keep the AI's on good terms until it is their turn to fall. Before you know it, you've got a domination victory.

 

[Mutineer]

One more note, you war wareness is smaller you other civ declared on you.
So, it might worth it to go on war rampage if you can after you beat up there original assult.

 

[obsolete]

Founding a religion, building the shrine and spamming missionaries can be a huge help.

That's all great and all, but if your busy cranking out units for warmongering, you really dont have that luxury do you... unless we are talking about settler mode here, then what's the point anyway?

 

[The Tyrant]

I frequently dedicate one city to missionary production. Not only does the shrine income allow you to run a higher science rate than you could have otherwise, but you also get better relations when someone converts, and the shrine allows LOS intel. I consider missionary spamming an important part of my strategy -- important enough to dedicate a city to it.

I also speed up conversions by gifting missionaries to civs that have already converted. You don't have to spend all those turns moving the missionary to the target city and then hoping he succeeds. Just move him inside the borders of a religious buddy and gift him. The AI takes the missionary from there and will use him in its own cities first, to get the benefits from religious civics. Once all his cities have the religion, he will then start sending the missionaries into other lands (anyone he has open borders with) to add that religion to their cities. You can use this to convert civs that you don't have open borders with, as long as one of your religious buddies does have open borders with them. Since the AI seems to have a much higher success rate with missionaries, this also allows you to spend fewer turns producing missionaries, as you're effectively getting the AI success ratio instead of the player success ratio.

Because of the shrine income, higher science rate, LOS intel and the diplomacy benefits (not only friendlier relations and wartime assistance, but better tech trades as well), missionary spamming should be a high priority for any warmongerer.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this has the additional benefit of spreading your religion before you capture the cities. When you take cities you don't have to wait to get a missionary there; you get the benefits of your religious civic in that city the moment it comes out of rebellion.

 

[jimbob27]

A lot of the skill in warmongering is knowing when to pick and choose your wars.It all comes down to experience. Sometimes its best to attack the strongest civ to stop them getting too powerful, and sometimes its better to wipe out your weak neighbours first, and then use the experienced troops to attack the stronger neighbour. You've also got to take into account the power graphs, and the likelyhood that someone will declare war on you.

Religions are useful for maintaining relations, so I usually make sure my first victim has got a holy city for me to steal. (I don't research them myself, because I find its better to get axemen and steal other peoples holy cities.) The more you try it, the better you'll get.

 

[StrideCollosus]

There's lots of techniques you can apply to reduce war weariness (civics, religion, etc) which other people have covered.

I think the key point though is speed, i.e. the easiest means of preventing war weariness crippling your civ is to get the war over with ASAP. Therefore always ensure that your goal(s) for the war are clear in your head and take some time to plan your attack. Don't be afraid to change those goals as the situation evolves, but be careful that you're not getting dragged into a prolonged conflict which takes your civs focus away from other priorities as well as generating weariness.

When I started playing I tended to just react to other civs agression and fight my enemies without much planning. Now I know better! Short, blitz-krieg style attacks are the best to take that wonder, or resource, or annoying border city. Take/raze a couple of cities, sue for peace, hopefully for techs, maps, or dosh. Rinse. Repeat.

Before I got better at warmongering, I used to find that I'd be building military units with appropriate civics (vassalage, etc) right up to re-establishing peace. Now I find I'm often back in infrastructure mode by the time I start the war, largely because of the above, i.e. better planning, and war on MY terms.

 

[Hans Lemurson]

The fastest a war can go is the speed at which your armies move. Your goals in a war are first to win it, and secondly to conquer your enemy. You win the war by defeating their standing army in the field, and forcing them to hunker down in the cities. You conquer them by busting open their strongholds and taking the cities.

Winning the war is the easiest part, and the quickest. Most of your war-optimization efforts should then be directed towards the expedient conquest of the enemy's cities.

Large "Stacks of Doom" are good for conquest, since you have enough of a troop and artillery concentration to basicly take the cities the turn you arrive, without really breaking stride. SOD warfare moves at the speed of your stack.

For even faster warfare, the Sirian doctrine is quite useful. Simply put, have all of the movement done by ships instead of walking (and the consequent concentration of firepower you can achieve). Warships are very mobile artillery platforms (carriers even more so), and transports allow for your army toarrive at the destination ASAP. Normally, your army's movement rate is going to be a hobbling 1 square/turn, even a galley moves double that! You don't even have to limit yourself to coastal cities; you just need to be able to land your troops by their target as quickly as possible. 4 Galleons can move 12 units at 4 squares/turn. Since you'll likely never have to replace them, that's quite a profitable investment right there. Navies thus are upgraded from mere net-guards to the essential backbone of a mobile assault.

Another tactic to make the enemy roll over quicker, is to cruelly exploit the AI. Find an important city that is not too far from your borders, and make your assault there. The catch is, that instead of capturing it, just trash its defenses and kill all the units in it except 1. The next turn, the AI should be rushing in reinforcements to that city to ssave it from your ravaging hordes. Assault but once again, refrain from capturing. The AI does not know when to give up, so it will continue to send reinforcements from its other cities to reinforce the besieged one. When they arrive, they will be sitting ducks, since the city has no defenses, and they haven't even had time to fortify! Your city-raiders however, still get their bonus, and you hopefully haven't forgot the artillery. In this manner, you can destroy the majority of their entire army. Not just their offensive stuff, but their precious defenders too, since that's what they are going to try to save their city with. The rest of the victim's cities should then be depleated of their most experienced (and annoying) units. Deciding when to stop and actually start conquering is a trickier issue. Basicly, when they start reinforcing their city with sh*t-units, you know that they are exhausted. This tactic trades many turns of potential conquest for easier conquests. You spend the first 10 or so turns of the war minimizing your casualties and preparing the rest of the civ for quick-killing. If they are depleated enough, you should be able to increase your rate of conquest by splitting your stack into smaller ones for individual targets. You can even do this tactic against multiple cities simultaneously with a stack for each of them. This tactic is most useful when you are assaulting an enemy whom you do not have a compltete and overwhelming advantage against, and need to shift the odds more in your favor. If you already possess overwhelming force, then don't waste time taking pot-shots at the enemy, get on a ship and kill them fast!

 

[malekithe]

Another tactic to make the enemy roll over quicker, is to cruelly exploit the AI. Find an important city that is not too far from your borders, and make your assault there. The catch is, that instead of capturing it, just trash its defenses and kill all the units in it except 1. The next turn, the AI should be rushing in reinforcements to that city to ssave it from your ravaging hordes. Assault but once again, refrain from capturing. The AI does not know when to give up, so it will continue to send reinforcements from its other cities to reinforce the besieged one. When they arrive, they will be sitting ducks, since the city has no defenses, and they haven't even had time to fortify! Your city-raiders however, still get their bonus, and you hopefully haven't forgot the artillery. In this manner, you can destroy the majority of their entire army. Not just their offensive stuff, but their precious defenders too, since that's what they are going to try to save their city with. The rest of the victim's cities should then be depleated of their most experienced (and annoying) units. Deciding when to stop and actually start conquering is a trickier issue. Basicly, when they start reinforcing their city with sh*t-units, you know that they are exhausted. This tactic trades many turns of potential conquest for easier conquests. You spend the first 10 or so turns of the war minimizing your casualties and preparing the rest of the civ for quick-killing. If they are depleated enough, you should be able to increase your rate of conquest by splitting your stack into smaller ones for individual targets. You can even do this tactic against multiple cities simultaneously with a stack for each of them. This tactic is most useful when you are assaulting an enemy whom you do not have a compltete and overwhelming advantage against, and need to shift the odds more in your favor. If you already possess overwhelming force, then don't waste time taking pot-shots at the enemy, get on a ship and kill them fast!

The seems like an exceedingly good idea, and one I hadn't thought of before. You can send all your beefy city raider infantry to take out the good defenders in one city, and then let your more mobile cavalry seige the recently evacuated surrounding cities. I'll have to give this a try sometime. This way, your cavalry doesn't have to wait for your artillery to catch up. The artillery can do all of their support work without ever having to move.

 

[Hans Lemurson]

It really just lightens the load on your city-raiders, and gives them training-fodder. Sending your cavalry against the other cities will still have you facing defenders and an intact defensive bonus. I guess that's ok if you attack with enough cavalry, but you're still gonna take losses. I guess really it would just lower the number of defenders your mobile corps would be facing, and thus make them easier to outnumber.

That tactic however was not originally thought of by me, I just don't remember who thought of it first. But it works. It works best the more mobile your opponent, so is a very good modern-age assault tactic, since the city will be easily refilled every turn.

 

[jimbob27]

You can take that tactic one step further too, if you find an enemy city that doesn't have any hills/trees nearby.

Just pillage the roads connecting the city, so when they try to send reinforcments, they're forced to travel across a tile or two of unimproved land.

Just means you can attack them outside the city, nullifying any city defender bonuses. Works great if you've only got axes and swords, and the enemy has longbows.

 

[Andorim]

My usual tactic (I would like to hear from others if they think this is the best way to go) is to take my stack of doom to the first city, capture it, then move on to the next city. Would it be better (faster or more effective?) to have two smaller SODs simultaneously attack two different cities? Should the attack be focused only on one city at a time, or would attacking on multiple fronts be better?

 

[Eggolas]

Some nice ideas, thanks. I can fight the wars, it's just weariness after awhile ... my weariness. So much movement, so many things to put together, that after awhile, I declare peace and just take my insurmountable lead into a space race.



So, it appears that there are some good ideas here for speeding up the wars. I'm going to try them.

 

[Paeanblack]

The pot-shot strategy works amazingly well, especially if your target city has a wonder or a shrine...the AI will go to great lengths to keep that city, and you get to whittle down the pile of defenders in each city down to one or two.

I find that potshotting actually speeds up a major territory grab because of two reasons. Firstly, the AI seems to place a much higher priority on city preservation than open-field kills, so you can safely split your catapult stack and have them wander off without escort for advance bombardment. The AI will only attack the cats if they are in the direct path of the reinforcements flowing to the city under seige. Secondly, you will do all of the heavy fighting while remaining stationary, and this provides many extra unit-turns where you are eligible for healing. This translates into smaller army requirements in the first place.


Other random war-planning tips:
-Check to see if you can pay someone else to do most of the killing. You lose the extra experience, but a good AI vs AI bloodbath can be had for a pittance with some good diplomacy.
-Lure the AI into transports by pulling the garrison out of distant cities. Then sink the transports. (The flipside of this is: avoid sinking an empty AI transport...wait for it to fill up first.)
-Don't forget to build extra city defenders and have them near the front lines before the war. If your attacking force gets stuck having to garrison a conquest for lack of spare defense, get a cease-fire ASAP. You are just building war weariness for no gain at that point.

 

[Hans Lemurson]

Before the war starts, you should be concentrating on building up your Offensive military. After it has started, you should concentrate on mass-producing cheap city-defenders so that your main army doesn't have to split-up and babysit. You don't have to have extra city-defenders right away, since you will in fact need to spend a few turns hunkered in the city healing up your wounded, but the sooner you can get your fighting-troops fighting, the quicker your conquest will go.