Open Borders with Warmongering Neighbor: Foolhardy or Genius? ;)

[danaphanous]

I was playing a recent Deity Shoshone run. I spawned off isolated on a peninsula-like landmass with only Spain to the North and a natural wonder right next to her. So I went liberty, forward-settled her and trapped off the entire area for myself ~9 city spots on standard size!

Of course Spain disliked this, it didn't help that I raided her for workers earlier and killed a lot of warriors and archers with my early comps from pathfinders. She was feigning friendliness and I needed to get through her to discover more people so I trading open borders, soon I see an ominous sight building on the horizon. Huge numbers of comps and pikes...yikes! Clearly this means war, I prepared my border cities with settling on hills and start building walls and producing more comps. The wave starts to travel through my lands (open borders) because the target city is clearly my capital. .

If we hadn't had open borders there is no way my first city could stand up to a rush of this size with pikes. She did this just before I had the pikes to defend as I was still catching up and a couple techs behind. But because we had open borders she instead moves the whole army PAST my more vulnerable border cities and only DOWs when the first pike reaches my capital. This has the effect of splitting her force into 4 forces scattered all over my empire. Only about 1/3 make it through to the capital side. The rest keep hiking past my hilly border city and ignore it while I take pot-shots

As a result her entire massive army was destroyed and all I lost was one spearman. She later attacked my border cities with the smaller remnants of the split force from DOWing within my open borders but because it was split into 3-4 armies no one city was every really threatened and my walls+comps+hills were more then enough to chew through everything.

I take it the AI has no idea what DOWing in open border does...in this case giving her the borders prior to war saved me from losing a city as I couldn't mobilize in time otherwise without the time this gave me to prepare. You can see I wasn't quite finished with wall yet. I guess this was bad preparation on my part but she built her force extremely fast (about 20 turns time) due to high pop cities and holy warriors.

 

[komodowaran]

the problem when doing this is normaly that u wil loose a lot of improvements but other than that it works

 

[adsin15]

The AI is hilariously dumb when it comes to projecting power over long distances.

Recently I played a game, as Shoshone also come to think of it, and Alexander declared war on me from a different continent. I had neglected my Navy while focusing on defending myself from other hostile land armies on my own continent but I was able to Rush buy/Build about 5 submarines as I had just researched Refrigeration.

Stupid AI Alexander sends about 25 units at me...mostly ground units with about 10 destroyers/battleships and a couple subs. I made sure my subs intercepted his expeditionary force in the open ocean and I literally just camped out and destroyed his entire navy as they sailed past my subs. They could detect them...they could have turned back...but the AI ordered them to take my cities and they don't stop or change orders once given.

They all dutifully sailed towards my cities without ever once attacking my subs, despite them being in range and detected. SHooting fish in a barrel.

 

[danaphanous]

Yeah like I said, a better strategy would have been to build comps in expos and expand more conservatively, but I felt like an interesting game and when I saw the space I decided to pull off this risky strat and go settler crazy. She DOWed with the army just turns after I filled in the last of the space but knowing it was coming I had settled the two border cities in strong positions and grown them a bit. Her main mistake was going for my capital which was surrounded by hills, with reinforcing spots for more comps behind it and walls. I took down at least a dozen units and she never brought it under 3/4 health. If she'd gone after lower-pop cities she might have actually done some damage.

Turn 130 now, and I have universities in all the big cities and am about to get observatories in my jungle/mountain cities. Slowly building steam. We're about even on tech now and I'll soon pass her if I can keep her distracted for a bit longer. Debating going for gunpowder. It'll slow my tech path significantly so I might just hope pikes will be enough but taking down the conquistadors, tercios, and xbows will be a lot easier with them. Thoughts? She'll definitely try again soon...Already tried bringing france into the war, he just takes the money and does nothing so I'm on my own. I am friends with many people on the mainland though now.

I also have 2 fairly nice spots remaining for cities if I want to run a 9-city game. I couldn've settled them earlier but they lack luxes and I knew it'd slow growth in my jungle/mountain cities so I've put it off. Shame, I'd love to run a 9-city empire, but Spain's religion is absolute trash and has no happiness at all. Missed my own by just a few turns because there were no good faith pantheons. One with nature and Kilomanjaro to the north would've helped but I just didn't feel like wasting my pantheon on 4 faith. Bad decision, any religion would be better then Spain's trash. It's definitely aimed at defeating me. Faith for foreign cities (me), buy pre-industrial units with faith, buy industrial+ units with faith, Extra power near cities following your religion (me). lol, gotta be careful with that last one. ONly thing that helps me at all is sacred path which has been pretty nice. Kept my culture up even during wars and in lack of RB's.

 

[phillipwyllie]

....now Spain knows exactly where your roads are.......also Isabella will know what wonders you are building(needs confirmation from devs but you can see once the fog of war has been removed).

 

[redwings1340]

I'd have been too terrified to do that, but it definitely worked out! Gifting open borders could be a viable strategy to use in this situation with a large empire.

 

[danaphanous]

^^^
yeah, surprisingly well actually.

In addition to splitting her forces upon DOW. In this situation she hiked through most of my territory to get near Moson Kahni before attacking. This gave me almost 8 additional turns to prepare and produce comps and walls and a huge warning way in advance. Without open borders she probably would have DOWed at my border.

It sure felt vulnerable for a few turns but my cities were in very strong positions. The capital was almost unassailable without siege. I killed so many pikemen and comps down there...she pillaged my terrain for 10 turns or so though so definitely lost me a few turns off science victory. Not sure what else I could've done though against a holy warrior force that size...divide and conquer looked like my only recourse. 30 turns later she already has that same size force again and better tech. her faith from foreign cities, 20% attack bonus against cities following this religion, and holy warrior combo is looking dangerous...

This is the way REX liberty goes though and I love it. Can't wait for the next war, I'll probably have to cripple her or this will be a pattern all game. I'm thinking of trashing her territory to nerf production and letting France take over. He has a better religion and is friendly. Problem is he's more concerned with attacking his other neighbors...I don't have the happiness to take her over currently. Maybe I'll just perma-war for logistics and blitz promos. Could be fun.

 

[Kriogen]

...I'm thinking of trashing her territory to nerf production and letting France take over. He has a better religion and is friendly. ...

I would not trash Spain and let France take over. I would not want Napoleon to get too big. Divide and conquer.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Stupid AI Alexander sends about 25 units at me...mostly ground units with about 10 destroyers/battleships and a couple subs. I made sure my subs intercepted his expeditionary force in the open ocean and I literally just camped out and destroyed his entire navy as they sailed past my subs. They could detect them...they could have turned back...but the AI ordered them to take my cities and they don't stop or change orders once given.

They all dutifully sailed towards my cities without ever once attacking my subs, despite them being in range and detected. SHooting fish in a barrel.

protip: Submarines are the #1 most important unit to maintain in a navy, followed by battleships, and then submarine hunters, who are all but dominated (game-theoretically) by subs.

protip: Games with water NEED high-level advanced intelligent smart AI (with cunning) on water control. Every tactical or strategy game that has ever included the water obstacle has been dominated by the consideration given to water control by its competitors.

 

[adsin15]

protip: Submarines are the #1 most important unit to maintain in a navy, followed by battleships, and then submarine hunters, who are all but dominated (game-theoretically) by subs.

protip: Games with water NEED high-level advanced intelligent smart AI (with cunning) on water control. Every tactical or strategy game that has ever included the water obstacle has been dominated by the consideration given to water control by its competitors.

Yup. Also...do you always double wolfpack your subs? I do now. I find all the other promotions are weak. Double wolfpack (+50% combat strength) allows your Nuclear Subs to one shot kill everything except a Missile Cruiser I think.

I had all various promotions previously but now I only go with double wolfpack on my subs.

 

[z284pwr]

Yup. Also...do you always double wolfpack your subs? I do now. I find all the other promotions are weak. Double wolfpack (+50% combat strength) allows your Nuclear Subs to one shot kill everything except a Missile Cruiser I think.

I had all various promotions previously but now I only go with double wolfpack on my subs.

Always Wolfpack on subs. By the time you get Wolfpack 3 subs, they will decimate pretty much any floating object at sea. Get them to Logistics and the AI is more screwed than they already were.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

Always Wolfpack on subs. By the time you get Wolfpack 3 subs, they will decimate pretty much any floating object at sea. Get them to Logistics and the AI is more screwed than they already were.

I do the same mostly except I sometimes do add one sub with the weaker promotions to a fleet to cripple ships for my 'Privateer' destroyers to try and capture. Using wolfpack 2/3 usually means the enemy ship gets one-shotted and I can't try and capture.

It's also really helped me in past games that subs don't require oil and nuclear subs don't need uranium, if I'm lacking oil in particular I can save some for planes and battleships.

 

[beetle]

Yup. Also...do you always double wolfpack your subs?

I always pick Wolfpack over Naval bonus. I guess the later helps with defense, but you should not ever need it!

I pick +1 vision before double Wolfpack though. The extra sight increases survivability quite a lot.

 

[danaphanous]

lol, I keep coming back to this thread to check new comments but they are all about wolfpack subs xD

 

[beetle]

^^ Oops, so easy to get derailed!

Back to OP --> You were genius!

 

[danaphanous]

lol, thanks man.