fighting wars

[elderotter]

I seem to be having problems fighting wars - should note here Warlord with AI's agreesive is what I play - noble kicks my a** ALL the time.
As an example - in my current game Arch/arch large map 9 civs. I was on the same medium sized continent as Mongolia and the Arabs. From east to west it was the Arabs the Mongolians and myself - Rome. Mongolia became very agressive towrds me - whereas the Arabs were pleased with both of us.
Mongolia made a city that the city itself was on my border - next to it was a hill with pigs on it. they ended up with the pigs thru eventual culture expansion.
I considered this an act of war - however I did not want the Arabs get mad at me and join the Mongolians. So I put a stack o3 citykiller praetorians on the city's western border and a stack of 3 horse archers on it's southern - hoping to slide the culture back - you could do that in Civ 3 and I wanted to see if it would work. After 3-4 turns Mongolia - which was "annoyed" declared war - launched a pretty good attack with their UU - destroyed some cottages and a farm and were poised to take my Eastern most city - which had my copper mines.
I took the Mong. city that had started this and drove the Mongolians out - after 2 battles to take my copper city - Cumae and 1 battle over the mines themselves. Any time I tried diplo good old Genghis said " not talking to you" or "go away". Now I am driving into mongolian territory - but their cites were heavily defended and creating more and more military is causing my cities to lose size(slavery civic). So instead of driving them off the continent to their island fortress to the north.. I looted for awhile till Genghis talked to me. I got 50 gold and a peace treaty out of it. Question is how do you fight a war like this without draining your cities. And my builds are usually military then a building, Military then a building etc. Till I am in a war. Some suggestions please.

 

[Mazruk]

Dont use pop rush for your troops (unless you REALLY are desperate).

Use the right civics to give extra XP.

Target your promotions on the troops you will attack.

Use combined arms.

Use catapults.

 

[Steelsmith]

I posted some of my general thoughts on winning war in the following thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=142955

It sounds to me like this war started fairly early in the game. If so, it may have been too early to switch between buildings and units every other turn. My experience has been that the AI will attack you if it thinks you are weak, and sometimes even if it only thinks one city is weak or under-defended. My guess is that the war could have been prevented if you had had more defensive units in your cities. It seems to me that a stronger army is needed to deter invasion than it was in Civ III. By which I mean, more units actually in your cities, even if you have a reasonable number or units out in the field.

When an AI attacks and your military is weak, it can be difficult to really smack down the attacker. You not only need to bolster your defenses, but build new units to go on the offensive. I hate being in the position of only building military units, though it is necessary sometimes. When this happens to me, my main goal is to simply end the war as fast as possible, so I can bolster my military while also getting my cities built up. Once the invaders are repelled, this usually means pillaging enemy lands until the enemy throws in the towel. Then I get the 10-turn peace deal so I have at least 10 turns to recover and bolster my military. Then once I'm ready, I attack the former aggressor in earnest.

To be honest, if you got out of the war with a city and 50 gold, I'd say you didn't come out of it too badly. I think the lesson here is, it's far better to put resources into a strong enough army to deter invasion, than it is to try to play catch-up after the war starts. Of course, I'm only guessing here about why the AI decided to invade, but that's been my experience.

 

[Valas]

Its been my experience on Noble that to win wars you have to constantly keep your military up in which case other civs don't usually attack and if they do, you are prepared to hold them off until you are ready to fully engage them. It might even be best to give them a scientific advancement or some gold to make peace while you prepare for war on your own terms. When you find you have a scientific military advantage over another civ, that is the time to engage them.

 

[Steelsmith]

I don't think you can prevent an AI from attacking just by buttering them up with gifts.

Case in point:

Last night I started a game in which I (Roosevelt) shared a continent with Tokugawa. I decided the continent wasn't big enough for the both of us, and attacked. The war went well. Too well, in fact, and by the time I eliminated Japan, my research was suffering due to the maintenance costs of my newly-acquired cities.

About the time Tokugawa was down to his last few cities, our continent got discovered by the other civs. My military was stretched thin from my invasion of Japan, and many of my cities were defended only by a single Archer. I upgraded them to Longbows (thanks to a Great Merchant), and did everything I could to make nice with the civs from the other continents, including gifts of resources, sold some minor techs for cheap, etc.

Most of the other civs started to warm up to me, though Napoleon got no better than cautious. He made demands, which I agreed to, I sold him resources for cheap, and even gave him extra resources that I couldn't sell. Still, before long I had French troops on my soil. I got Caesar to the point of being "pleased" toward me, yet still he declared war and invaded not long after the French.

I was able to fend off the invasions without losing anything besides some pillaged tiles and sunk fishing boats, and the wars ended not too long after that. But to make a long story short (I know, I know... too late), gifts alone won't hold off an invasion if the AI thinks you're weak.

 

[Bunion]

The computer seems to know your military strength and will take that in account when it attacks you. One game I hadn't upgraded my military in awhile and Montezuma attacked me, he brought a huge stack of knights and war elephants against one of my border cities which only had a couple of musketmen. I then upgraded 4 troops to machine gunners and watched him throw his whole stack away. He brought another stack and I took it out too, I then took his nearest city and razed it, after which he was willing to negotiate.

Awhile later in the game Egypt declared war on me but was on another continent and had sailed some troops over, while I was defending against them, montezuma declared war on me again. At this point I had just researched the tech for Mech Infantry and I had a large gold reserve so I upgraded a ton of troops and crushed Montezuma. Funny thing was even as I took one city after another, he never asked for a cease fire.

One key thing to do is while taking enemy cities is if they are near another large civ's culture boundries, you are best of razing them as you won't be able to build up enough culture before they flip to the other civ.

 

[Trojan Sheep]

Playing on Monarch I find early wars with the AI particularly fruitless. Without catapults it is very difficult to take any large cities. In a recent game Monty surprise attacked me (ok so it wasn't a very big surprise knowing Monty), and razed one of the three cities I had managed to found in the early game. The war that followed was brutal and bloody since neither of us had construction.

He got lucky with the RNG on his attack, but my attack force consisting of twice as many attackers as he had defenders got killed to the last man trying to penetrate the city he planted near where mine had been. No culture bonus, no walls, just a plain ole size one fishing village that stood there mocking me at the loss of my own far more developed city only turns before.

I finally managed to raze his city to the ground (It had grown, but I sure as heck wasn't going to let it live after the previous insult) when I brought three times the amount of attackers (all swords) that he had defenders (mixed archers and axemen). We went back and forth, him razing the new city I had planted, and me returning the favor several turns later, until I finally managed to secure a hold there and inflict enough losses to get peace without him wanting a city for it. Every time we took the other's city though it took a huge amount of troops to do so. Once I had cannons (yes cannons, I was horribly backwards after all that fighting, but unlike monty I was good at tech trading), I came back and plowed through his cities razing them all without losing a single troop. Once I had his head on a pole and his score at zero I figured my original city had been properly avenged.

Collateral damage simply cannot be underestimated, a single siege unit can turn an impenetrable fortress into a mound of rubble when it has the proper supporting attack force. My attack force fighting monty consisted of two cannons and a stack of swordsmen/axemen/spearmen. Once the cannons had each killed a defender, what was left over was easy pickings. Replace the cannons with four catapults and you have an equally effective fighting force, although you'll lose your catapults rather frequently.

 

[atc_chief]

Taking cities is much more difficult than in previous CIV versions. In CIV IV I like to focus on denying the enemy his resources and pillaging his improvements. You get a nice $$$ bump from pillaging towns. Draw the enemy out of his cities and force him to attack you in the field.

Do what the coalition did in Iraq and avoid getting bogged down around the cities; bypass cities and attack everywhere else. Then go back and focus on key strategic population centers.

 

[elderotter]

ok thanks guys - alot to think about