On military matters

[Carl v.]

Among all other things, the civ-gamer is the supreme warlord of his empire. In the beginning it is quite simple: How do I use my warrior/scout most efficiently?

Quite soon, however, we have to face the first strategical question: Do we go for archery or bronze working? The answer is political. Here we change hats and reappear as the old, wise chiefs of our tribes who knows our neighbours. Are our relations with the other tribes so good that we can expect to survive with just warriors until we have axmen? Or should we go for hunting and archery first?

If we have possibilities to build camps, it is a factor to be considered.

Unit tasks
Archers are cheap to build, and are good city defenders. But we need more aggressive units too. Depending on how strong the attacking force is – compared to ours – our axes have one of two tasks: Either to meet the enemy in the open and defend improvements, or to take out weakened enemy units after the attack on the city has failed.

If we do not get bronze or iron, we stuff our cities with arrows. If we can not build chariots, they are our strongest unit and have to be used not only for city defence. We expect to loose lots of them if we must attack hostile forces.

Attack on the defence
We must attack in case of war. Even if an enemy does not have enough forces to conquer a city, he still is deadly dangerous. If not attacked on your soil, he will start to pillage improvements.

At this phase of the game, it is like scissors, stone and paper: swordsman (mostly) beats city-defending archer, axman beats swordsman, chariot beats axman and spearman beats chariot. Chariots are often underestimated, but are highly effective against axmen.

The mix of your forces depends on the theatre. If a neighbour has horses, we need spears in the border cities. If not: axes and chariots. In the defence we go for aggressive units. We shall not only deplete the attacking enemy, but annihilate him.

The Archer
The archer is all but forgotten in this scenario. He is our last stand if the enemy survives long enough to launch an attack on the city. If he is not there, the barbarian hordes will flood our city, rape our women and kill the grand-dad. And that, we will not. So we build at least one archer to each city.

The archers have the best cost/city defence-value ratio of all our units at this time.

But when do we attack?
When we think the circumstances are favourable to us. But we must be prepared to loose units, even if ours are superior.

If we have bronze or iron, and production capacity – and your neighbour has no metals – a violent expansion might be a good idea.

First we need intelligence; how strong is the garrison in the city we will attack? How high is the city’s defence-value? According to this, we start to build troops for our expeditionary force. If we have enough troops garrisoned to execute a campaign, we probably have build to much military in peace-time.

Strength evaluation
It is hard to determine how strong force we need to take out for instance two archers and a chariot. Strength (with promotions) and special abilities, plus terrain features, can give a rough estimate. But we can never rely on that a swordsman (6 strength plus city rider) will take out an archer (3 strength plus city-defence special ability).

In this case, we assume that 3 swordsmen will do the job. But if not, there are two axes present to finish off the remnants of the defenders. The axes have two tasks. First: to defend the valuable city-attackers in enemy territory. Second: to act as garrison troops in our conquered city.

Culmination
Now we are past our first culmination point; we will have to build strength if the campaign is going to continue. Fresh units are on their way, and all of our cities are producing troops. Never build anything but troops during wartime. And our workers build roads to increase manoeuvrability.

From a military point of view, it makes sense to go on on the war-path. The enemy was not preparing for war, while we have produced military units for a while now. He also has lost some of his production capacity. His prospects look grim, even if he now has got access to metals.

Barracks
For this scenario, we assume we have barracks, and the AI has not. The value of barracks could hardly be overestimated. Units with 10 percent extra strength should – in theory – beat enemy forces without promotion (regarding terrain). We still estimate a loss from 20 to 50 percent. But even if our units are depleted (a better word than “wounded”?), they are still there, and need time to heal.

From an economical point of view, we get more power for each hammer with barracks.

 

[Carl v.]

In my previous post I described some principles of warfare and how these could be utilized in early gameplay. More detailed on some points in my text is “10 FAQs before Declaring a War” by maltz, and “The Stack o’ Doom: Effective Composition And Use Of The Offensive Military Stack In Civilization IV” by Sisiutil, both very useful reading.

Revise plans
As our Empire grows, and our forces become more sophisticated and the manoeuvrability increases, we revise our defence plans. Factors to be considered is: distance to border (how many turns will it take from an enemy has crossed the border until he attacks a city?), enemy weaponry (with horses the red-tape is halved), distance between cities in a certain Area of Operations (AO) (how long will it take to hurl in reinforcements from other cities?), topography and what kind of forces our neighbours have (or at least; what we believe they have).

Vulnerable SOD
After we have build suzi-cats, the hostile SOD is even more vulnerable. The enemy’s forces can be depleted with suzi-cats, of which there is one in every city – promoted collective damage. (In his study, Sisiutil mentioned the need for defensive units in a SOD, based on the fact that the AI does not like to attack well defended units. But with human gamers, be prepared for anything, and add more defenders).

We base our military strategy on initial defensive warfare with the aim to take out as many as possible of the hostile unit on domestic ground.

Freedom of operations
Our forces moves two (or three, later on) times as fast as the enemy’s (except horses). This gives us possibility to mass troops as the enemy advances. This is first priority. If we can not defend our cities, all is lost. Naturally.

As we have a quite large freedom of operations inside our borders compared to the enemy, we will be able to take out attacking units with lesser loss than the intruder suffers. When we have cleaned up our own backyard, it is time to think about crossing the border. In this period our surviving units have gained promotions and strength and are our best troops.

Conquest and defence
So we ask for peace, or build an adequate SOD. Adequate means that the SOD has capacity to get to the city we want to take – despite attack en route, is strong enough to capture the city, and defend it thereafter.

When we have taken the city, our expeditionary force has lost some of it units, and others are wounded. The force is able to defend, but not attack. Now new units are being built, and we make sure we still have our defence capacity intact and can continue to eliminate enemy forces on domestic soil.

Only one front
Next step is to rebuild our army, defend as we build our strength. In this period we can count on more enemy raids. When we have enough troops to a form a new SOD, it is time for the next attack. In this force are also promoted troops from the former SOD: We do not establish more than one front. In this way we can concentrate our troops to a more potent force.

If the enemy can repel a city-attack, it is a waste of troops. It also is a waste every time a wounded enemy unit can escape our rightful revenge.

Besides; it takes more time to build two SODs, and one potent SOD gives us more freedom of operations than two depleted ones.

 

[Carl v.]

Since the beginning, man has made fortifications to fit the weapons used. Most of the time, the fortifications had the upper hand. But as catapults and trebuchets became more effective, the fortifications had to be more extensive. The many massive medieval castles still to be seen, are examples of the last jolly days of fortifications.

After that, the siege weapons were at the top of the pyramid. The siege of Constantinople in 1453 is probably the first known major battle where the brand new concept of cannon showed its capability. By the way, it was our old friend Mehmet the Conqueror who had got hold of a German blacksmith named Urban, and made him design and build an eight meter long siege cannon to smash Constantinople’s protecting walls.

When it became feasible to build cannons in a size possible to put wheels under, they were taken out on the battlefield and used against personnel.

Remarkable siege weapons in CIVIV
Compared to the world outside CIV, the CIVIV concept – with more or less suicide-units – is hard to understand. But as it is, there are new possibilities with the “collective damage”-capability.

The SWs are the city-raiders best friend. When we have possibilities, we build many of these units. Now our SODs mostly are made up of siege weapons (cats-trebs-cannons-artillery), with defence units. SWs have two distinct advantages; ability to bomb city defences, and collective damage.

Avoid massacre
When we have climbed the tech-tree to catapults, the defence value of enemy cities might go up to at least 60 percent. Under such circumstances it means massacre of our own troops if we try to attack a city without initial bombardment. And even after that, longbowmen are still a menace.

We must sacrifice some SWs when we attack. But each time several defenders are wounded. This is the main difference from all other units, which attack only one enemy unit at a time. SWs can also return from battle. And even if the strength is down to almost nothing, it takes only a few turns until they again are ready for fight.

After some initial rounds with collective damage-promoted cats, the trebs can start to take out defenders. A trebuchet with a few city raider-promotions is a little monster.

Later on, we use cannons and artillery with barrage and city rider-promotions in the same roles.

Collective damage
Trebs are cheap compared to other units of the time. As city-attacker it has the same strength as the rather expensive maceman. In addition it inflicts collective damages to other defending units, and is able to destroy city-defences. We might conclude that we get more power for each hammer if we use SWs to take a city (especially trebs).

This awesome power of the SWs is the reason that we give priority to destroy SODs with siege weapons as soon they enter our soil. Even if it means we have to abandon improvements so they can be destroyed by other enemy units.

But remember: Trebs should only be used to city raiding. They are lousy defenders, and we avoid using them against personnel. Except in dire need.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Trebs are cheap compared to other units of the time. As city-attacker it has the same strength as the rather expensive maceman.

This is not correct. Strength 4 with +100% combat bonus, is very different from strength 8.

 

[Agarwaen]

After the patch the trebuchet is 80 hammers, more than the maceman (70).

 

[MidlandC]

Trebuckets are not in every version of Civ IV. Specifically, which mod are you speaking to?

 

[Carl v.]

I play Warlords, and have downloaded the patch.

 

[SwordofStriker]

This seems pretty accurate to my version (Warlords with newest patch).

Also, a trebuchet with strength 4 bumped up to 8 is equal to any other unit with strength 8 and no other bonuses. Don't believe me? Hold the button before you attack and the game shows you battle outcome possibilities.

8 = 8

 

[DaviddesJ]

Also, a trebuchet with strength 4 bumped up to 8 is equal to any other unit with strength 8 and no other bonuses. Don't believe me? Hold the button before you attack and the game shows you battle outcome possibilities.

Try an unpromoted trebuchet against a fortified archer in a hill city with 20% cultural defense (4 vs 4.35), and then an unpromoted maceman against the same archer (8 vs 7.35). They are very different.

 

[Artrix]

This is not correct. Strength 4 with +100% combat bonus, is very different from strength 8.

A strength 8 maceman with comabt 1 will have an eventual strenght of 8.8- a trebuchay with +100% and combat 1 will have +110%, or 8.4. The Maceman is better, presuming you can give him at least one upgrade if you ignore the collateral.

It is best to balance raw strength increases with equivalent increases in multiplyers.

 

[DaviddesJ]

A strength 8 maceman with comabt 1 will have an eventual strenght of 8.8- a trebuchay with +100% and combat 1 will have +110%, or 8.4.

You are wrong. The combat system doesn't apply the +10% modifier for Combat 1 in the same way that it applies the 100% modifier for trebuchets against cities. Therefore, you cannot simply adjust the combat values in this way and get a valid comparison.

 

[Artrix]

You are wrong. The combat system doesn't apply the +10% modifier for Combat 1 in the same way that it applies the 100% modifier for trebuchets against cities. Therefore, you cannot simply adjust the combat values in this way and get a valid comparison.

Realy? It always displayed them in the same manner in the combat odds box- infact, although I haven't use trebuchays much, whenever I have a maceman with +25% vs combat, it displays it as a total of +75%, implying that it does them in exactly the same way. Which would seem to be the normal way of doing it

How would you say they do it?

 

[Zombie69]

All bonuses are applied to the defender, except combat promotions which are applied to whoever has them. That's how they differ. For more on the subject, read the combat explained thread.

 

[Artrix]

All bonuses are applied to the defender, except combat promotions which are applied to whoever has them. That's how they differ. For more on the subject, read the combat explained thread.

Do you know why they are displayed like that then?

 

[DaviddesJ]

It always displayed them in the same manner in the combat odds box- infact, although I haven't use trebuchays much, whenever I have a maceman with +25% vs combat, it displays it as a total of +75%, implying that it does them in exactly the same way.

The +50% inherent bonus for maceman vs melee units, and +25% for the Shock promotion, are handled in exactly the same way. So it makes sense to add them.

But the +50% bonus for maceman vs melee units, and the +10% for Combat I, are handled in different ways.

If you want to understand how combat works, you have to read the Combat Explained thread.

 

[Artrix]

The +50% inherent bonus for maceman vs melee units, and +25% for the Shock promotion, are handled in exactly the same way. So it makes sense to add them.

But the +50% bonus for maceman vs melee units, and the +10% for Combat I, are handled in different ways.

If you want to understand how combat works, you have to read the Combat Explained thread.

Sorry, and this probably should be on that thread, but what I meant is, is there a reason it is displayed as +75% for the attacker rather than -75% for the defender, perhaps with a little attribute? Since, I think, the two are definitly different.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Sorry, and this probably should be on that thread, but what I meant is, is there a reason it is displayed as +75% for the attacker rather than -75% for the defender, perhaps with a little attribute? Since, I think, the two are definitly different.

I don't think there's a good reason. The on-screen display is definitely confusing.

 

[Artrix]

I don't think there's a good reason. The on-screen display is definitely confusing.

Glad to know it's not just me. At least it doesn't round 99.95% up anymore.

 

[Zombie69]

It can't be displayed as -75% for the defender, since that's not the number that's applied. Well, it is if the defender has 75% bonus of its own or more, otherwise it comes up to a different number.

 

[DaviddesJ]

It can't be displayed as -75% for the defender, since that's not the number that's applied.

Of course it could be displayed that way. Even if it's wrong, it would be less wrong than what's presently displayed.