Best defensive options for tall civs?

[Vathris]

I play tall Tradition empires, and go for Science, Diplomatic and Cultural victories. I find it hard to defend my cities, and tricky to balance when to make units with when to tech up and grow. I play lots of MP in the NQ group.

What are the best ways to defend tall peaceful empires?

The first choice is what pantheon to take. I could either pick something that directly benefits my empire like growth, culture, production or faith, or go for a defensive bonus. Most games that I play end up with my cities being besieged and taken by large amounts of ranged and naval units. The two defensive Pantheons are "Goddess of Protection" with +30% increase in city ranged combat strength (stacks with Oligarchy) and "Faith Healers" which heals units adjacent to cities by +30 HP a turn. Which is better? Should I ignore both and pick a more useful pantheon?

When I play, I often convince myself I don't need walls "yet," until 10 archers or 10 frigates show up at the gates, and at that time I'm too focused rushing out units. What defensive buildings or wonders have the best bang for the buck (hammers?) and when do I build them? What are the best garrison units?

These are other questions that come up:

- What are the core units I should be defending with?
- Do I build barracks/armories/milacademies just for a small defensive army?
- Do I defend an area ahead of my city or pull back and bunker down directly around the city?
- Do I upgrade the few core units or disband and pump out new ones with those +EXP upgrades?
- Which particular units are amazing at defense? Frigates, artillery, crossbows?
- Late-game, should I focus on building an air-force for flexible defense?
- Is it worth it to build forts when they can be used against you?

 

[SirPepsi]

To be honest, the advice you are looking for varies greatly depending upon the difficulty level you choose to play.

However, I find that by selecting a Tradition-oriented path and subsequently founding 3-4 well-placed cities, you can easily stave off enemy attacks by:

A) Hilltop Ho! - Founding your major cities on hills, provided each has fairly good access to the surrounding resources and that planting on the hill will not inhibit your growth nor impair your ability to effectively build the city you would like to. Each hill will provide a significant defense bonus - not to mention a nifty production boost - to a city. This can be crucial early game, when barbs and rushes by Monty and/or Attila make life difficult.

B) Terrain and Placement - Make use of your terrain, if you are preoccupied with building your NC/Granary/other early game improvement buildings and cannot afford to dedicate too much time to spamming units, at least make sure that the few units you do have are positioned to cause maximum pain to any enemy. (Ex. Archers should be placed on hills or behind rivers to grant the largest range, Mounted units with movement bonuses should be used to dart in and out of enemy lines and be placed strategically behind melees - this is because the AI loves to spam Pikes, and these tear up Mounted units, place Melees on the front lines but make sure each has flanking bonuses, when possible)

C) Where did my Death Machine go? - Target siege units!!!! Without them, the AI cannot capture a city. I recently played a game as Gandhi and was rushed around turn 110 or so by Monty. He brought 3-4 Catapults and 5-6 Jaguars. By using City-Bombard and Melees to kill off Catapults and CBs to kill off the rushing melees, you'll be in good shape. (He retreated and offered me all resources + all GPT for peace 3 turns later). If you knock out the AIs (or another player's) only ability to do severely detrimental damage to your City Defenses, they're practically helpless.

D) Build up, Build up, Build up! - Make sure you take advantage of your workers! Use them to plant as many improvements as possible. This not only allows you to grow and develop more quickly, it allows you to outlast a long siege! If the enemy should decide to occupy quite a few tiles or (gasp!) pillage improvements, at least you have access to enough food and production to keep from starving and continue pumping out units! Don't neglect those workers!

E) 300!? - Even 1-2 CBs/X-Bows, City Bombard, and a single Melee unit can hold off a massive horde of enemy troops. By targeting siege, then ranged and melee units, the invading army can't hope to break you!

Miscellaneous: Select whichever Pantheon you feel will best benefit your empire. There is no need to go for Goddess of Protection unless you happen to be surrounded by Shaka, Monty, and Attila. Barracks, etc. are useless early game unless you plan to war quite a bit (or have extra cash). Promotions are great, but if you're strapped for GPT, skip 'em. Upgrade units - ALWAYS. If you're worried about defense late-game, artillery should be good enough. If not, a strong navy/small airforce is more than sufficient. Forts? On unused terrain like ice and desert (w/out Petra), they can be huge turnabouts, so yes, if you have extra workers w/ nothing to do but don't care to disband, forts are a decent investment.


I wish you the best of luck, and I truly hope I helped!

Regards,
SirPepsi

 

[Buccaneer]

Pepsi gives great advice. Except being outnumbered 18-4 by an early Japanese horde, I've had pretty good luck with defending - if I remember to get to Construction and Machinery and Dynamite in a timely manner, as well as Walls. What helped me a lot (which can be map dependent) are Submarines. Since I'm prioritizing Refrigeration, that really gets me an advantage since if the AI has to come by sea (typical since I generally have coastal capitals), you wouldn't believe what 1-2 Subs can do to a large invading force, not only Frigates/Privateers but Carriers as well - until Battleships appear. It's the same as Pepsi's targeting Catapults advice - go after the ships that can hurt your city.

 

[kb27787]

great citadels on chokes are my preferred options... and a handful of submarines... and one maybe two SAM. Nothing the AI can do except walk in and die.

 

[Catan_Settler]

Well defense in general is a lot easier than offense. From the sorts of things you're talking about, I don't see you have a problem with defending per say, but a problem of actually being ready to defend. This is simply something you have to make yourself do. I see a lot of players like you in MP games and I really don't get it. I mean, I understand you don't want to spend the whole game building units, because I don't like to either. That being said, what is the point of putting all your efforts into these awesome cities... only to lose them?

Anyways, for defense against a small rush or a probing type attack, you really only need 2-3 ranged and a melee. Ideally your cities are settled in such a way that you have some terrain bonuses... settle across the river from the enemy city. Settle on a hill. Nestle your city into a corner of mountains if you can. What you're trying to do with terrain is two things-- 1: get a defensive bonus and 2: limit tiles from which your city can be attacked.

The defense bonus is easy to understand. You get a flat % bonus for being on a hill or in a forest (forest wont stay under a city though). The limiting tiles thing comes down to placing your cities so you can't get surrounded. Or at least, making it impossible for him to say, line up 5+ ranged units in one turn, that can all fire at the same time and quickly ruin your city. If you don't have mountains to cut line of site, you can also use another city. If you put two cities close-ish enough to each other, you can make it very difficult for him to position his troops for the one-or-two-turn city kill. They can come at you from one side, but if they try the other they're taking crossfire from two cities. Ranged and siege weapons can't hold up to that. And if you're forcing him to attack from only one side of the city, than you can limit him to only a few troops at a time can trickle in and take shots at it. That's how you prevent your cities from being one-shotted. Make it difficult and/or impossible to hit your city from multiple angles at once.

Other than that, well I don't know if pantheon is that essential. Faith healers is really powerful though, not gonna lie. That being said, what owuld serve you better on defense is a production or culture belief, or just a generally strong religion with tons of faith perhaps to use with Holy Warriors for free troop production. Production naturally will help you get defenders out sooner. Culture will expand your borders further faster, which can also help make approaching your city harder. They have to walk fruther. You can see them sooner, and so on. But ultimately yeah, you have to make it a habit to build troops. In the early game, I will build 2 buildings first (monument then shrine) then a couple archers, then the next two buildings (granary or watermall and library) then a couple more archers and then a wall. Walls are very important. They cost no maintenance, so build them now. In fact in every city other than the capital, the walls are always one of the first three buildings I'd built. Library, monument, walls. Or if it's right beside an aggressive player, it'd be walls, monument, library. You simply need to do it because again, ignoring your defenses is a losing strategy as you've discovered. You can have the biggest, best city in the game, but that just means you're a target. You must be able to defend your turf, or there's no sense building that stuff.

 

[Maxym]

You could also focus on having killer veteran units from early on. If you play with barbs and CS in the game, make a habit of stealing a CS worker and being in perm war with them. Pick a useless hostile one, and just use it as target practice for your archer line, until they all have log and range. 4-5 XB with those promos using terrain to their advantage would be enough to dispatch all comers. Protect them with few sturdy meat shields and a horse or two to flank attack and that's all you need. If coastal then try to have a navy with frigates and privateers early. Frigates upgraded from galleas. And maybe harass your opponents if you know they will be coming anyway, send some horses their way, kill they scouts, pillage improvements, maybe capture a worker or two.

When arty becomes available try to have your ready to upgrade from cannon, and don't get beat to flight too badly. You need to be able to shoot his bombers down.

 

[evilcat]

Imho defensive pantheons are not so good. You will benefit more from some fertile rites, or something which grants you a religion.

As for army its generally worth to get composite bowmen fast enought. And of course place city on hills.

 

[Vathris]

You could also focus on having killer veteran units from early on. If you play with barbs and CS in the game, make a habit of stealing a CS worker and being in perm war with them. Pick a useless hostile one, and just use it as target practice for your archer line, until they all have log and range.

Unfortunately XP-farming is against the NQ house rules.

It's interesting that people are not real fans of the defense Pantheons, I can only speak for myself though when I say that every time I have taken Goddess of Protection I've found myself besieged and able to strike back at the invaders with harder-hitting cities. I'm not sure about how great faith healers are when it's often speed that determines what lives or dies during the simultaneous turns of multiplayer.

Fertility Rites is general all-around "nice" to have but I can't "feel" its impact, unlike GoP where I can very clearly see my cities decimating oncoming units.

I find that melee units are not very useful for defense. Again, in the simultaneous turns they act more like suicide units. Moving forward to take out a unit of crossbows with longswordsmen, though it does the job, quickly gets the unit killed by the 3-4 idle ranged units to the rear who are now in range.

I've heard that siege units are not useful for defense, even garrisoned in cities. Is this true? I've heard people say not to bother with siege units until artillery, and MAYBE cannons.

What I try and do in MP is leave as many of the besieging units at low health as I can, without killing them, especially on open plains. The idea is that a killed unit is immediately replaced by an idle fresh one from the rear, but if you leave the units severely damaged they clog up the zone of attack and make it much harder to actually get effective units in. Perhaps I'm wrong about this...

I'm going to try keeping one hidden unit close to valuable enemy tiles during peacetime, so if he declares on me I can immediately start wreaking havoc on his iron, horse and luxury tiles while stealing workers and settlers. What unit would be best for this? I think scouts or cavalry are the two best choices.

 

[kb27787]

Unfortunately XP-farming is against the NQ house rules.

It's interesting that people are not real fans of the defense Pantheons, I can only speak for myself though when I say that every time I have taken Goddess of Protection I've found myself besieged and able to strike back at the invaders with harder-hitting cities. I'm not sure about how great faith healers are when it's often speed that determines what lives or dies during the simultaneous turns of multiplayer.

Fertility Rites is general all-around "nice" to have but I can't "feel" its impact, unlike GoP where I can very clearly see my cities decimating oncoming units.

I find that melee units are not very useful for defense. Again, in the simultaneous turns they act more like suicide units. Moving forward to take out a unit of crossbows with longswordsmen, though it does the job, quickly gets the unit killed by the 3-4 idle ranged units to the rear who are now in range.

I've heard that siege units are not useful for defense, even garrisoned in cities. Is this true? I've heard people say not to bother with siege units until artillery, and MAYBE cannons.

What I try and do in MP is leave as many of the besieging units at low health as I can, without killing them, especially on open plains. The idea is that a killed unit is immediately replaced by an idle fresh one from the rear, but if you leave the units severely damaged they clog up the zone of attack and make it much harder to actually get effective units in. Perhaps I'm wrong about this...

I'm going to try keeping one hidden unit close to valuable enemy tiles during peacetime, so if he declares on me I can immediately start wreaking havoc on his iron, horse and luxury tiles while stealing workers and settlers. What unit would be best for this? I think scouts or cavalry are the two best choices.

Horses (ignore ZoC ones even better) are amazing at razing strategic resources and can often do so and run away with impunity.
Sure, the penalty is not the -50% on prince at diety, but at least if you kill his existing ones now he cannot replenish them.

 

[SirPepsi]

I've heard that siege units are not useful for defense, even garrisoned in cities. Is this true? I've heard people say not to bother with siege units until artillery, and MAYBE cannons.

This is true simply for the fact that CBs and X-Bows are far superior to Cats and Trebs in terms of defense. This changes with the extra range from Artillery, however.

 

[joshua43214]

SirPepsi pretty much nailed it.

I only wish to emphasize the importance of city placement. Settle hill/rivers always unless its just impossible. Even if the lux you are after is in the 2ring, settle the hill, your borders will get there pretty quick if you took tradition.

Watch Maddjinn's video's on youtube, he is a master of using minimal forces for defense. For this I recommend the older vanilla and G&K ones, he has gotten a bit cavalier in recent videos and you see him occasionally throw units away needlessly. I've said before that his Korea OCC changed how I played defensively https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwV6wdIuaE8&list=PLFB680AE4B196AB7C
Skip to 28:30 when he gets DoW'd by Germany, and watch just that part, the rest of the series is out of date unless you play vanilla.

The other video I highly recommend is elcee's China G&K video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovaTaYrhMaI
Its the worst nightmare situation where Rome forwards settle on his cap on T5, then spams cities around him, promptly puts up the great wall and DoW's him while Siam is forward settling on his rear.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

When I play, I often convince myself I don't need walls "yet,"

This is probably the biggest problem.
Sometimes you know your city is safe because its not easy to access.
In most cases I will build walls early, especialy in my capitol. If you have a good resource and a wonder built, the AI will be targeting you.

Build walls. They are cheap, no maint. and with walls its tough to take a city. I usualy dont build castles unless I know that city is going to be a target. If your city has no wall, then every AI in the game will be drooling over it.

Like everyone else is saying, target enemy Siege units, then other targets of priority.

until the industrial age, 1 unit per city should be enough, or 4 units total. 6 is better if japan is right next door. after indutrial hits, you want 8 units. this will by itself prevent most invasions. Make buddy buddy with a military CS, get a couple of freebies.

many times, its good to have a couple of units on the border. this keeps invaders wary of you. I have had a few hoards of vikings or mongols turn away at my border because I met them there with two units. war was never declared, they turned away and attacked my other nieghbor instead.

Personaly, I think its best to have a ranged units in the city (xbow, cannon, artilery) This lets you fire 2 shots per turn from your city. Sometimes, just wounding the enemy units will cause them to do stupid things, so take little bites of the most threatening units. Make sure you destroy siege weapons.

Once your enemy has flight, you MUST have AA guns or fighters. MUST. AA / SAM are best because the AI will build tons of air units, and you will shoot them all down without trying. Even when playing against a real person, if they think you dont have air defence, then you are going to need air defence soon! You dont need a lot these, two AA guns can work wonders. Fighters are OK because they can attack naval units and land units as well, but if you have artilery in your city then youve got that covered. AA guns have saved me from otherwise un-winnable wars, and they dont need oil.

If you have coastal cities, things can get a little rough. You will want to save the whales (so you can eat them!). By this i mean you might need a frigate / destroyer to sit on the resource to protect it. If a big floatilla shows up, retreat to a city and hope to win by combined force of artilery.

Building a navy is expensive, so if you can sink a few of them, that can be very painful for the attacker, they will probably retreat.

If you make it to the late stage of the game without winning yet, a single nuke sub can be very effective when properly used. If you are located near sea ice, its nice to have a sub under there for surprise defence (or offense).

 

[Ayestes]

Just like to remind everyone I think his emphasis was on NQ MP games and not dealing necessarily with the AI. There are a lot differences defensively with a human player vs. a Deity AI.

 

[Vathris]

Just like to remind everyone I think his emphasis was on NQ MP games and not dealing necessarily with the AI. There are a lot differences defensively with a human player vs. a Deity AI.

The AI tips are useful but admittedly only 20% of my games are single-player.

In MP humans seem to focus on the following units: Composite Bowmen, Crossbows, Cannons, Frigates, Musketmen, Bombers.

The difference between playing against humans and AI is like night and day, I have to deal with extremely intelligent attacks and plans. Sometimes I have to give kudos to the speed of a surprise attack from an opportunistic neighbor.

I get the feeling that some units in the tech tree are superfluous, given that even on "Normal" game speed the periods in which they are relevant come and go quickly. In multiplayer it often seems that a balanced army is a weak army, it's not long after I get "X" unit that unit "Y" is coming into play for the other guy in a few turns.

Like, I don't see the long-term payoff of building an aircraft carrier and filling it with goodies in MP, in my experience the more elaborate your plan the more enemies are going to be leaving you in the dust progress-wise.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

The AI tips are useful but admittedly only 20% of my games are single-player.

In MP humans seem to focus on the following units: Composite Bowmen, Crossbows, Cannons, Frigates, Musketmen, Bombers.

The difference between playing against humans and AI is like night and day, I have to deal with extremely intelligent attacks and plans. Sometimes I have to give kudos to the speed of a surprise attack from an opportunistic neighbor.

I get the feeling that some units in the tech tree are superfluous, given that even on "Normal" game speed the periods in which they are relevant come and go quickly. In multiplayer it often seems that a balanced army is a weak army, it's not long after I get "X" unit that unit "Y" is coming into play for the other guy in a few turns.

Like, I don't see the long-term payoff of building an aircraft carrier and filling it with goodies in MP, in my experience the more elaborate your plan the more enemies are going to be leaving you in the dust progress-wise.

Doesnt this just make Walls even more impartant to have early? am I wrong?
And getting some free units from a Militant CS even more important since you are looking to avoid hard building them yourself? Sometimes these will be "garbage units" that you can waste in some way, but since your not paying for them, who cares. If you are expecting brilliant fast sneak attacks, you should have a scout unit (not a "scout" per say) keeping an eye outside your boundaries. Submarines, lancers, whatever. Its just an advanced warning system.

Use your spies to see what going on out there if you can. Knowing that a player has been building X units for 40 turns is a good way to prepare yourself.

If you know a flotilla will arrive one day to take your coastal cities, then your going to need your own frigates. 3 of these +2 cannons should be enough. Honestly, if they have 6 frigates, and one meele ship and a great admiral, I dont know if you can defend against that. they dont even need the meele ship if they have an embarked land unit. Dont build coastal and then your safer i suppose.

Get the Himeji castle, the defensive bonus will pay off. If you are the tech lead, you should be able to get this. This of course relies on you have units in your own territory, so you should have some units! I am going to stand by my statement of having 8 units with a focus on 4 of them being ranged, and 2 being AA guns once flight appears.

It sounds like you need to slow them down as much as possible, especialy if your not going to be building a big agressive force yourself. Get some AA guns late in the game for sure. Fighters might be more relevant in coastal cities.

If XP farming from a CS is taboo, then maybe you can XP farm from a barb camp if you just let it sit there spawning units. I dont know how viable that strat will be.

 

[Catan_Settler]

Melee are very essential for city defense, and not to be used as kamikaze units. You use them as blockers. Block tiles beside your city so they cant put their melee there. Block a hill with good line of site on your city. You always want your melee to be the units eating hits, so the ranged can dish out the damage. This is why in MP those paper thin rushes using a couple horses to cap a city and no melee are so easy to repel. You throw a sword or two around your city and use zone of control to stop their melee from getting through, while you chip away at their ranged units. If one of their melee forces his way to that tile beside your city, focus fire him with ranged. This is how I do defense priorities:

#1 priority: melee close to city
#2 priority: ranged close to city

And if you have say 2 swords or a couple pikes to rotate in and out of those tiles right beside your city, you will give yourself a lot more time to pick off all those ranged units they brought. Correct use of melee means, even if they can drop your city to 0 health with massed ranged units, they still can't do anything about it because you keep putting melee in their way which via zone of control, can make it a real bloodbath for the attacker. They can't get the city hit in AND they can't so easily pull their wounded units back to heal. Also if you get a horseman or something, go send him around back of their army. I'll use horsemen as suicide units for stuff like that, simply to park him right behind the enemy wall of archers so they cant get away. Now they're easy pickings for my ranged units.

 

[Ayestes]

I've actually liked Horse units in MP games as well, because they can get in blow up a ranged unit and back out. Generally the only melee units that get used though are Unique Units. The problem with melee units is they can't attack over a unit and receive damage in return. They may win fights more easily when fighting mostly ranged units, but that damage they take in the recoil often means it's dead in the archerswarm. With simultaneous mode on archers seem to have even more of an advantage, but I wouldn't be able to fully explain why.

Best defensive tips I have for MP games are having a good road system, lots of archery units, and make good use of the horse units. Walls are a good idea as well but you usually don't need to put them up until you know they are coming. Making sure you scout any incoming attacks is also rather key. So to directly answer the questions in my opinion:

- What are the core units I should be defending with?
Archers and Horseman alongside all of their upgrade paths early. Try to keep Melee Units to a minimum, but it's not like they can't wipe out an Archer in the open. Later game it becomes pretty erratic with Air units involved as that becomes the primary focus. Any Unique Units are generally helpful.

- Do I build barracks/armories/milacademies just for a small defensive army?
It's really a matter of when you can spare the time safely. That's a game judgement that has to be made everytime. They do matter, but I'd take 3 Crossbowmen over 2 Crossbowmen with a Barracks any day.

- Do I defend an area ahead of my city or pull back and bunker down directly around the city?
Defend the most defendable area. Most of the time that should mean your city can also fire on the troops just barely. Sometimes you may have a better defendable spot ahead filled with trees and hills while they can only approach in the open. You want roads to be capable of moving your groups into the fight that are constantly being produced. So really you want to plan your city spots so that they can be used in defense with a well roaded area.

- Do I upgrade the few core units or disband and pump out new ones with those +EXP upgrades?
Upgrading with gold is often more efficient then producing new ones in my book. Usually you should just do both. Keep the old ones upgraded and the new ones should continuously coming out in a war.

- Which particular units are amazing at defense? Frigates, artillery, crossbows?
Ranged Units and Fast Units. Those three as above are pretty good. Siege Units aren't very good until Artillery at least for defense.

- Late-game, should I focus on building an air-force for flexible defense?
You should basically max out your Oil with an Air Force. You do need some ground, but air superiority is vastly more effective then a ground army. Rushing to Flight can give you a great advantage.

- Is it worth it to build forts when they can be used against you?
It's circumstantial. Generally you should be able to use them better since you should be putting them in positions you can use.

The biggest thing in MP games though is how much you can get away with. If you can neglect military and actually get away with it then you should be ahead in Growth and Science which should win the games anyway. It's a lot like Poker in a way, since you have to read your opponents. They may want peace early, but will that last? Should you be the one to break it? Are they actually paying attention to a Cultural Victory? It's not just the military aspect of it all as much as it's knowing your opponents.