Calling all generals! Tactics for my conquest....

[PrinceOfDenver]

Well, I'm no longer playing Custer, thank God. Civ 2 tactics worked the same as Civ 1, but Civ 3 tactics are radically different.

One of the things that was infuriating was an enemy that would not die. I was deadlocked with the Iroquios until I finally got my Immortals and Knights, then I proceded to swallow up all the purple on the map. However, when I came to his last city, he kept springing up level 1 cities everywhere.
This wouldn't be as big of a problem, but I had the issue of War Weariness. No matter if I sat it out for a few turns in a paper-thin treaty, the cities would riot all over the very turn I tried to attack one of his camps.

Question #1: Do you feel it is worth it to wipe out the Civ when you are on a roll, or just cull them into a position where they will never be able to do jack for the rest of the game (1-2 cities)?

At any rate, I got tired of hunting down the Iroquis and suffering a lot of headaches for each crappy city I took. I turned my attention to my remaining neighbors on the continent, the Zulus.
Shaka and I had a good treaty and some good trade going, but let's face facts. It's midgame and one continent isn't big enough for the two of us. That, and I have only space victory and conquest as the winning conditions.

The problem is, we had a safe passage agreement too. His hopis and archers were all over my continent. Big deal, says I, my musketeer units will protect the city against their feeble units. So I broke up the mutual passage treaty and demanded Shaka withdraw his units. Here's one of the dichotomies of the game. When THEY demand you pull out, you automatically teleport all units away. When YOU demand, they give lip service but do nothing.

So I declared war anyhow. Mistake. Some of my cities did not upgrade and pikemen fell, and the city flag changed. So I spent most of my time quelling these annoying internal captures, and, oh joy! The cities revolt because of war weariness. Realizing I just got a tactical kick in the groin, I sued for a convenient peace. Shaka wasn't going to talk. I had to reload rather than deal with this soup sandwich.

The Zulus have weak units but they have three huge advantages.
1 - They have a very big army.
2 - They are everywhere in my territory despite my requests for them to leave.
3 - The north of the continent is almost all swamp. It's a nightmare getting my units up there.

Question #2: How should I go about getting the Zulus?

Now, here's the map I'm dealing with. Three large continents.

...ZZZZZZZZZZ.................RRRRRRRRR...............GGGGGGGGGGG
ZZZZZZZZZZZ.................RRRRRRRRRRR...............GGGGGGGGG
************..............RRRRRRRRRRRRRR.........GGGGGGGGGG
**********.................RRRRRRRRRRRRRR..........FFFFFFFFFFFFF
*************............RRRRRRRRRRRRRR............FFFFFFFFFFFFF
***********..........RRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEE.........FFFFFFFFFFFFF
************....@EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.............FFFFFFFFFFFFF
.....*****II......................EEEEEEEEEEEE.................FFFFFFFFFFF

KEY:
* - Me. Small army but technology out the a$$
Z - Zulus. Huge army, they have a lot of swamp land. But they have a lot of coal and I have none.
R - Russians. Huge army, they are densley packed.
E - English. Don't have much intelligence to go on. They are packed pretty dense, though.
@ - The English City of Coventry. VERY close to my shore. A good entry point, I think.
G - Germans. Hindenburg is really getting on my nerves by demanding everything, but he and Joan have been fighting it out since day one.
F - French. They have HUGE cities to the south which I think is their production base.
I - Iroquois. I pushed them to the Se and theres nothing but crappy mountains about.

(I hope this comes out clear, I doubt it will though.)


Question #3: After the Zulus are whipped, who should I invade?
Question #4: How do I conduct a successful amphibious assault? Should I drop a camp in their area on the border and build up?
Question #5: I'm in 1730 AD now. Is there a time limit? When I get to 2050, is it time to hang it up regardless (like in Civ2)?
Question #6: How can I play the English and Russians against each other? Right now their alliance is tighter than Jennifer Lopez' a$$.

Thanks all! I'll award medals accordingly if your tactics win me my first Civ 3 game.

 

[runaway]

1) It's been my experience that if you leave a weak civ strangled somewhere, they won't be a nuisance. In fact, one of the other civs may eventually wipe them out for you.

4) Research Amphibious War.

5) Yes, the game has a timelimit.

The others, I have no suggestions yet; I've only played three full civ3 games so far.

 

[Zannhart]

aaaaa

 

[Suvorov]

I generally just blast down other civs to the point where they're nto a threat then finish them when it's more convenient.

As to Zulus all over your territory... build your army. Shaka is not scared of you because he knows your army is smaller than his, even if you're more technologically advanced. If you build a big enough one hopefully he'll be scared off.... if not, upgrade your pikeman and use your surplus units to shadow and then pick off the zulu units when war is declared to prevent them damaging your infrastructure. Depending on your war weariness and army size, you could probably try taking and holding the Zulu cities (they always have a low culture in my experience) or just burning them down to reduce their threat and try and force a peace.

Then i'd suggest you go for the Germans. If they're already committed to a war on the border opposite to your one you might be able to march in quickly, take some big cities (hopefully hold them - have some money spare for cultural improvements) and quickly declare peace.

Since you're (i presume) a republic, try to avoid constant campaigning and go instead for the smash-and-grab.

 

[Mnus]

1.) It just depends on the situation, thiers no "universal" yes or no on this question. Alot of the battles I have fought I entered thinking they would be over in one or two turns, with just a simple goal of taking a city and suing for peace. They almost inevitably end up dragging on over about 9-10 turns, at which point I'm more then happy to get things over with.

Overall, though, the idea is that if you thrash them within a few inches of being wiped off the map, chances are they are never going to rise up against you anymore. I've seen even a slight loss of a few cities by the enemy completely humble them, and if I can settle for peace with gaining another city in the trading table, I will usually always go for it.

This DOES, however, create a dilemna if your goal is world conquest, since from now on, if you want to take over those last few cities, your the one that's going to have to be the bastard that fires the first shot. I think this overall leads to more war weariness, much quicker. But generally in a situation like this your going to have the complete upper hand, both in number and technology, so by planning it right you could pretty easily resolve this in 1-2 turns (or so it seems. Like said, these battles, for me at least, always end up dragging on. Sorta like vietnam. )

2.) How to go about dealing with the Zulus? First off, I'm not really clear on wether you went into peace with them. I hate to judge unless I can see all the facts for myself, but It sounds like you had your @S$ handed to you on a platter. I would go for peace, and hope on your superior culture to take back those lost cities. But thats because I'm a peace loving, stinky Hippy.

If not, well it's goint to be rough. It looks like the zulus have a pretty thin strip of land thier. JUst curious--do you have a good shot at thier capital? I haven't tried this tactic yet in Civ3, but in CIv1+2, taking over thier palace city REALLY messed'em up. Maybe concentrate your forces for a quick lightning raid thier.

Another option - ask another nation for help. Possibly the russians. An amazing thing about the AI on Civ3 is that they really know how to give a helping hand, and I've had my arse saved on multiple occasions by doing this. The Sea in between you might create some problems, though. Maybe it's a long shot, but also give the Iriquios a Right of passage, a military alliance, and they may barely help tip the battle.

 

[plasm4]

another thing you can do is keep put some defense in your cities, and get a right of passage out of the zulus and get about 6 or 7 units plus a few canons camped outside of his capitol. make sure your troops can defend your cities. then all of a sudden attack his capitol, it shouldn't be very well defended. you don't have time to siege the city because he probably has a ton of horseback units within his borders to respond, you have to do what you can within one turn. now after you bash him with your artillery or catapults attack that capitol and raze it to the ground.
those units will probably die in the next round, but if not you might be able to raze one more big city, or at the very least draw some of his troops away from your territory.

after that try to buy some allies and try to wipe him out in thenext age or something.

 

[Mnus]

Gonna continue down your question list on to #3.........

3.) After the Zulus are whipped, who should I invade?

First off, just sit back a little. Don't invade immediately, consolidate your position, get your population accusamated to peace again, so no weariness. Go ahead and build up your military, ANd research. If you have a chance to get tanks, do so, and then protect that tech like your life depends on it, cuz it probably will.
Your gonna have a few choices here, and I'm just going to throw out a few ideas. Pick and choose, since YOU are the one playing, and you know your position much more then anyone here does.

A.) Take on the English/Russian Continent. I think If you are going for world domination, this is the big hill your going to have to eventually climb over. I really wish I knew, technologically, where all the Civs stood here, cuz it's going to make an enourmous amount of difference. War and Mass conquest in this game is pretty difficult, But If you can get tanks/carriers/bombers before anyone else, you will have an enourmous upper hand. If Russia/England are already far ahead in tech, I'd go for a France/Germany strategy. I'm going to assume in these strats here that you have tanks/bombers, so if i'm incorrect, sorry bout the rambling. But the general strat will stay the same. IN GENERAL, were going for a MASV, D-Day style invasion here. I mean like 3 carriers, loaded with bombers, 4 transports with tanks/infantry, and a few settlers to quickly replace the land that you raze when you take over the cities (I'm thinking razing the cities would be best. This Island is far away, and corruption will mess you up to all hell. But if you simply let the land stay empty, your troops will run out of a base really quick, and the enemy may also resettle quick.) Here goes:

A1) Either get Russia to attack england, or the other way around. taking on both will definetly be a challenge. As you said, though, this may not work (J.Lo's rear is awfully tight ). But still, I think this would be easiest. Land your forces about 4-5 turns AFTER thier war begins, possibly spreading your forces in different weak spots on thier island. If not.......

B1) get either France or germany to help you out. The only problem here is that thier probably to busy blowing each other up to really add much kick. So, your plan is going to temporarily shift here. Pick one as your ally, start trading with'em to make friends, (i'd lean towards france, since Joan is a nice swingin chick ). And then blow the other one out of existance. You'll gain both land and an ally in the process. Make sure you don't accidently screw up relations though...... THEN, if you still haven't got england/russia to go to war, make an alliance with Your buddy to attack russia/england. Again, be careful to only actually land your forces AFTER your ally does, just so your troops don't soak up ALL the bullets.


PLAN B.) Assuming ENgland/Russia is just too powerful for your weak force of peons, land a force against either the French/Germans. This strat will PROBABLY not end up in world conquest. I'll right more later, but right now gotta eat.

 

[PrinceOfDenver]

Wow, thanks guys for the awesome tactics (especially you Mnus, you seem to be very tactically-minded)!

Oh man, the days I thought were over are back. I was up until 4am because I HAD to wipe those Zulus out. It was a matter of principle. To hell with the fact I had work today, I had to whup em before I could sleep. It was slow going in the jungle, and I had disorder on my hands by 1/3 through the campaign (boy, war weariness sets in FAST!).

So I decided to go to communism because I got weary of war weariness. It took 10 turns for me to get a "select government" menu!! It was a long, long campaign due in large part to my inefficient strategy (just had a huge battalion of riflemen march through the jungle north, while a combined calvary/rifleman unit hit west and just choked them off). But my ironclads and frigates were bombing the coastal cities and they were softened up real good by the time I got there. And thank goodness for the raze function, otherwise I would have lost a lot of troops to fortifying useless, crowded cities.

Well, somehow they managed to set up a colony down in the far south where the Iroquis met with an unfortunate incident (namely, ME ). How they got down there I don't know, but they are done.

Well, now it's 1882. I just got tanks. Looks like I wasn't the only one who thought the English and Persians should be neighbors. Lizzie sent over a bunch of troops who are strutting around my border and setting up cities.

I guess I should chill for a few decades, but time is running out. I still have 2/3 of the world to conquer and there are still 4 very big and powerful armies out there...

I'm going to manufacture a bunch of tanks and planes and hit her hard when I get back tonight, methinks....