Pre-siege warfare

[TeeWee]

Prince-level currently.

I'm having a lot of trouble making the early warfare pay off. With early, I mean pre-catapult warfare. I just don't seem to be able to make it work properly.

I can usually bring down the nearest city, but to deal the decisive blow is out of reach for me. At that point, the juicy targets usually have about 5-8 units (Arches, axes) defending the place, which means I need 12-18 units (Axes usually) to take it. This I cannot do without crippling my empire, making it a Phyrric victory at best, a mexican standoff regularly or a wasted army and defenseless heart land at worst.

Because I'm bad at this part of the game (as opposed to rifle wars, which I'm competent at) I'm trying hard with my current games to get it right.

My usual way is to explore and expand a bit to about 3-4 cities, with both capital + 1 production city usually, while hooking up copper if available, iron if I lack copper. Then I build some axes if there's a suitable target nearby.

I can usually overwhelm the first city, stealing a worker, because it's bound to be the city near the border, a new one at that, and guarded with about 2-3 archers only. With about 10 axes that I've built by then, it's a piece of cake. Then, I march to the next target (about 7 axes remaining), where my problems start: AI will have reinforced to about 5 archers by then. While I'll keep on producing units, so will he. And AI only needs about 1 unit for every 2 that I make; in the end, this will cost me heavily in the manner described above.

Any tips?

 

[mariogreymist]

you're expanding too much. The key to winning a pre-siege war is to get to the fighting as quickly as possible. Once you decide the map is set for such a war, research the tech you need to generate your military unit (bronzeworking or animal husbandry in most cases) and settle one city to get that resource. Then use that city and your capital to make units. Don't build anything but those things which help you. 2-3 workers for chopping, the one settler (assuming the resource isn't in the capital bfc), maybe a barracks in the capital, and either axes or chariots. NOTHING ELSE, until after you destroy the enemy.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I can usually overwhelm the first city, stealing a worker, because it's bound to be the city near the border, a new one at that, and guarded with about 2-3 archers only. With about 10 axes that I've built by then, it's a piece of cake. Then, I march to the next target (about 7 axes remaining), where my problems start: AI will have reinforced to about 5 archers by then. While I'll keep on producing units, so will he. And AI only needs about 1 unit for every 2 that I make; in the end, this will cost me heavily in the manner described above.

What happens if you order your targets by priority, rather than proximity?

 

[huerfanista]

Both Mario and VoU have made the important points. I will add that for a chariot rush you should be attacking by 1500BC with 6-10 chariots, and you should go for the capital first. At that date your target will generally have only 2-3 cities, and their secondary cities will be too small to produce extra defenders. The capital is the primary source of AI defenders, so taking it first is the top priority. You should face 2 or 3 defenders at most, and at prince some of those will be warriors.

 

[mariogreymist]

If you've spotted a copper mine, it is not a bad idea to devote one of your 6-10 chariots to pillaging it on the first turn of the war. With a little luck, the AI will not yet have built a spear.

 

[coanda]

If you need more than 12 units to pull off the rush, you're too late (or you picked a bad target). It might be possible to make it work anyways, but you would have been better off just REXing or teching to Construction. Also note that worker-stealing will make the AI produce more units, so just because you can doesn't mean it's always a good idea.

 

[TeeWee]

This:

attacking by 1500BC with 6-10 chariots

Probably means sacrificing a lot for executing a rush, a lot more than my sketched plan is suggesting.

A next set of questions then to form my thoughts more clearly:

1. Does this mean that all pre-siege wars should be treated as rushes?
2. Is decisive pre-siege warfare (conquest, knocking out a player) unpractical after about 1000BC and after that wait for catapults or stick to raiding?
3. Are swordsmen practical without accompanying catapults?

An introspective observation: this probably means I misprioritize Construction as a tech, because there's usually a large period of time where I have access to Axe/Sword, but not to Catapults. Time to re-evaluate the tech tree and make my decisions more consciously (instead of simply realizing mid-war: I need catapults; hmmm, haven't got Mathematics yet, let alone Construction...)

 

[Dave Hartwick]

1. Does this mean that all pre-siege wars should be treated as rushes?
2. Is decisive pre-siege warfare (conquest, knocking out a player) unpractical after about 1000BC and after that wait for catapults or stick to raiding?
3. Are swordsmen practical without accompanying catapults?

1. I'd say not. You might only have limited aims in a pre-siege war, or maybe an AI declared. Rush implies total, offensive war.
2. Probably in many cases. Definitely not for Rome or Mongolia many times.
3. Yes. Usually if I'm looking at taking out a neighbor with swordsmen it's because I couldn't find copper or horses. Or I'm Rome. Or a neighbor I hadn't planned on attacking built something particularly juicy. Something has to happen to make me prioritize Iron Working. It's important that there's no metal in the target's territory because sword vs. archer, even with 20% cultural bonus isn't so bad. Sword vs. axe is bad and with the way combat works, any chariots you can bring will have to deal with archers first.

 

[Agramon]

1.) If you don't rush it ends up in an expensive slaughter and massacre of troups where you have little to gain,

2.) Mostly, but can be done on low and mid levels with e.g. massed Horsies

3.) Swordsman are only useful if your opponent has no metals. (Most Barbs)

against axes -> axes better
against spears -> axes better
against archers -> swords better

Although most defenders are archers, you'll be slaughtering a lot of swords against an axe defender.

 

[Kid R]

I'm having a lot of trouble making the early warfare pay off.

In many games the payoff of a rush is worse than the payoff from expanding into vacant land, so the advice perhaps should be "avoid early warfare" more often. Obviously game settings affect that, along with how the starting positions roll out - closest enemy etc.

If you have 4 cities, and somehow manage to capture 4 more in the early game your economy will be toilet-bound. Which is another reason rushes work best when e.g. your 2 cities conquer AI's 2 cities, leaving you a nice core 4, with manageable maintenance and plenty of land around.

If an early rush is not on, but you know you'll have to take on the neighbour very soon, an alternative is to send pillaging and choking units in straight away, and keep the enemy backward and metal/horseless, for when you're ready to finish them off. In which case construction may not be a major priority.

 

[vicawoo]

What do you mean by rush?

Let me outline something which may or may not be what you're looking for. You're looking to maximize the amount of units you can produce to attack at the time when they have the minimum defenders. As opposed to expanding normally and trying to outmuscle your opponent.

It takes a good deal of practice, as you have to get a feel for what the window of opportunities are, you have to tech carefully, and reconsider building something that would decrease your total troops during that window. I have a post somewhere where I took a lot of screenshots and described rush decisions.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9490008&postcount=11

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9235678&postcount=27

 

[TeeWee]

Thanks all for the replies so far.

Things I get out of this:

You all seem to agree on one thing: I tend to expand too much (thus compromising the immediate war effort) before going to war. The window of opportunity will have passed at that time: a good defense is, after all, easier to set up than a decisive attack. It's logical that my war plan should fail, because by the time my war machine has started, the defender will have a decent amount of units set up and probably has some metal hooked up as well. Once that happens, go for a logistical strategy and/or wait for cats.

A rush is a very early war effort in which you sacrifice most other advantages for an early kill. Of course, you will still have the immediate food and infrastructure techs, but most importantly your builds will be limited towards getting as many of your chosen unit out as early as possible to overwhelm the opponent before he has the chance to prepare a defense. Things you sacrifice for a rush are:

• Optimal city placement (in vicawoo's example, he speaks of placing a second city in a long-term suboptimal spot to have the essential resources within the small cross for a non-Creative civ)
• Growth builds like granary
• Settlers

A rush should probably be decided upon by the time you're ready to build your first settler: you need to know if you want to build the settler and if so, where you want to place it to facilitate the rush (resource grab / production capacity). After that, you're usually better off building up your economy.

After the initial rush-window, warfare will probably not be decisive in the immediate sense: don't count on being able to knock down a capital with just your axes / chariots / swords, because your opponent will have Barracks'ed Axemen / Spearmen / Archers to defend and some infrastructure to reinforce. Warfare can serve some purposes however:

• Seizing a rare opportunity like a lightly defended juicy target
• Stop your neighbour's expansion by attacking a travelling settler
• Stunt growth by raiding, denying worker movement and denying resources

It's unlikely you can kill an AI at this stage without cats. But with the above in mind, you can keep the AI weak until you can get to the cats.

So what to do if, somewhere after you've plonked down your second city discover that a neighbour is, after all, too close to be called friendly? Probably: try to box him in with culture, or hit him logistically, deny metal and/or aim for cats.

I will see how I fare in the next few games. I will expect a few more failures as I'm very consciously playing out of my comfort zone to improve my game.

@vicawoo: thank you for your detailed posts. Illustrates your decision making very well!

 

[TeeWee]

In many games the payoff of a rush is worse than the payoff from expanding into vacant land, so the advice perhaps should be "avoid early warfare" more often. Obviously game settings affect that, along with how the starting positions roll out - closest enemy etc.

Clear and good advice; but, I'm in a phase where I want to improve my early aggressive game, so while this is good in a general sense, it doesn't help me learn the technique I want to learn right now.

If you have 4 cities, and somehow manage to capture 4 more in the early game your economy will be toilet-bound. Which is another reason rushes work best when e.g. your 2 cities conquer AI's 2 cities, leaving you a nice core 4, with manageable maintenance and plenty of land around.

If an early rush is not on, but you know you'll have to take on the neighbour very soon, an alternative is to send pillaging and choking units in straight away, and keep the enemy backward and metal/horseless, for when you're ready to finish them off. In which case construction may not be a major priority.

This is the right lesson for me I think: the goal of warfare in this window of opportunity is not immediate gratification, but to stunt their growth in a logistical way and kill them later at my own leisure.

 

[theskibum]

Clear and good advice; but, I'm in a phase where I want to improve my early aggressive game, so while this is good in a general sense, it doesn't help me learn the technique I want to learn right now.

I don't think his point was that you should not learn the early rush, but there are some very map dependant things to consider prior to committing your early game to a rush. Its particularly important as you go up in difficulty where small mistakes early on can lead to longer term consequences. On easier difficulties the small mistakes are more forgiving.

If you want to practice it, there are two ways I went about it. First I played tiny maps with 2 other civs just to figure out HOW to do it. Next, and more importantly, is recognizing when to do it. To do this play the size you typically like and learn to recoginize when a start demands an early rush or where one would be greatly beneficial.

Early (from turn 1) exploration is critical to success here.

I always prioritize techs in this way: worker techs then rush techs. This means Agriculture, Mining, AH and BW are nearly always my starting techs. Swap Ag for Fishing if necessary or remove Ag altogether if I won't have anything to farm and had Hunting as a starting tech. Basically I prioritize AH and BW from turn 1 since I don't know if the map will force to me to rush early or not. This allows you to be on track to rush as early as possible if required. Also as a fall back, you get access to worker techs and Slavery/chopping early if you don't need to rush.

I prefer Chariots if I can get horses easily for a rush since they have speed and Flanking I w/barracks. I find fewer Chariots are necessary than axes since the AI simply can't deal with the speed. Chopping will get those units coming quickly. Don't foget the barracks though.