Can you ever be TOO Aggressive?

[kcmarkwell]

As the title suggests, from my experience I have found that you can almost never be too aggressive when obtaining land or building military might. The only exceptions to this are of course, do not over extend after you have killed off a neighbor or two until you get courthouses online.

When I first played Civilization 4, I thought there was hope for the "builders" of the game because of the big bonuses you typically get when defending vs attacking. What typically happens if you just defend on higher difficulties(and I am talking all game, not just for a little while, but the whole game), you got no chance at winning (aside from diplomacy of course).

I also play a good bit of multiplayer and the winners of all of those games are the most aggressive civ with the best strategic resource in their capital.

So, I would defintely say you can never be too aggressive with any game, even if you pursue other victory combinations other than domination and conquest. I would agree with this statement even as much to say that their needs to be some tweaking on the programmers side to make defense a more logical choice for victory. Maybe higher %'s for defensive positions, harder to crack cities, etc.

 

[madscientist]

I agree that you can never be too agressive with the following limits

1) If your agression unites the entire world against you. It is rare where you take on the entire world at once, you usually need friends or at least indifference.
2) If you overexpand and the economy tanks to the point where you cannot tech, either via a CE or SE. This can happen at several points int he game, and is not just solved with courthouses.
3) Your agression brings you into border contact with another stronge AI. Example is Ghengis and Shaka. Best to have a Pansy buffer.

 

[Daedal]

The problem with turtling and building at higher levels isn't necessarily that you'll lose, it's that you won't win. Land is power. Without good land you won't win even if you can adequately defend your tiny chunk of land. At higher levels, the AI starts with such a huge bonus against the human player that you'll never grab enough land to win without lots of aggression. The tweak that programmers would need to make to fix this is to create a more intelligent AI that doesn't need such insane bonuses to be competitive. Then you could play whatever style you like, as long as it fits the situation, and you'd be all set.

 

[kcmarkwell]

I agree that you can never be too agressive with the following limits

1) If your agression unites the entire world against you. It is rare where you take on the entire world at once, you usually need friends or at least indifference.
2) If you overexpand and the economy tanks to the point where you cannot tech, either via a CE or SE. This can happen at several points int he game, and is not just solved with courthouses.
3) Your agression brings you into border contact with another stronge AI. Example is Ghengis and Shaka. Best to have a Pansy buffer.

1) ahh very true, if you clearly attack everyone, not even the best civ player can take everyone on higher difficulty settings (i feel a new ALC in this one...)
2) typically if you play with enough AI opponents, you cant over expand due to either your army diminishing to where it would be pointless to attack or you are so far in the hole economy wise you cant afford another city, thus the reasoning to whip courthouses
3) personally i like to take out the strongest first, win the game early rather than later i always say

 

[Diamondeye]

I played a multi on the internet once where I was too agressive. What the heck, I had to try with Rome, popping BW and IW from huts, and starting with Iron in BFC. Pumped out Praets and took down Egypt, Celtia and Zululand. Had Byzans and Russia left, then my economy started to collapse (just like in real history) because of my huuuge maintenance. I lost to Russia when he came with maces against my CR Praets. Nearly reached Feudalism and longbows before I was eradicated.

 

[bardolph]

In the early game, you can definitely be punished for being too aggressive.

First of all, if your empire grows beyond its ability to sustain itself, you will end up with a collapsed economy, striking soldiers, and technological stagnation.

Secondly, military units cost hammers, and lots of military units cost lots of hammers. If these units are coming at the expense of commercial buildings such as libraries, marketplaces, and courthouses, you may end up with a very large, but obsolete army that costs a fortune to maintain.

Check out the "INSANE" walkthroughs by Obsolete in this section. He outlines a pretty solid strategy that does not require much land to win, even at the highest difficulty levels. This strategy relies on wonders and settled super-specialists, instead of huge land grabs. He often asserts that 6 cities are all that's necessary to win the space race on any level (due to the 6 forge requirement for the Ironworks).

There's an interesting phenomenon in Civ IV, called the "Conquereror's Plateau." As your empire grows, the maintenance costs increase quadratically, since each city adds to the cost of each other city as well as having its own cost. However, once your empire grows to a certain point, these costs abruptly stop rising, and each city then adds a strictly linear cost to your empire's expenses. Once you reach this plateau, you can pretty much expand at will until you've dominated the world.

If you wanted to tweak the game to discourage conquest/domination, the solution is the raise or eliminate this maintenance cap, methinks.

 

[dave330i]

The problem with turtling and building at higher levels isn't necessarily that you'll lose, it's that you won't win. Land is power. Without good land you won't win even if you can adequately defend your tiny chunk of land. At higher levels, the AI starts with such a huge bonus against the human player that you'll never grab enough land to win without lots of aggression. The tweak that programmers would need to make to fix this is to create a more intelligent AI that doesn't need such insane bonuses to be competitive. Then you could play whatever style you like, as long as it fits the situation, and you'd be all set.

Obsolete has shown that you can turtle in higher level and win.

 

[DaveMcW]

If you are surrounded by weak civs, aggression wins.

If you are surrounded by strong civs, good diplomacy wins.

 

[Rotty]

My favorite victory condition is Culture on huge maps, where it's simply inefficient to expand beyond two good commerce, one good food, and five average cities. Spending the whole game in agg/courthouses/agg/boost commerce/agg/repeat mode is necessary for the two military victories and the easiest way to get a UN victory, but there are better options if you want to go culture or space. If your problem is AIs DoWing and sacking cities when each one is crucial to your small empire, play Wang Kon (CE) or Sitting Bull (SE), build the Great Wall and Oracle, take Feudalism as your free tech, put two protective longbows in every city, and throw up cheap walls when you see the enemy coming or when you unlock castles. Actually, what you'll want to do is get Feudalism and Horseback Riding, make sure the Oracle city produces a Prophet for Theology (make sure this happens before an AI founds Christianity, unless your empire already has a religion!), and use the queue trick to make your production cities produce longbows and horse archers on consecutive turns, revolting to vassalage + theocracy and then out of them when you're done. Two CG 3/Drill 1 (Drill 2 if you're Sitting Bull!) longbows behind a castle in every city with a stack of horsies one XP away from their third promotion (3 from barracks + 2 from stable + 2 per military civic = 9/10) to attack pillagers will make your empire all but impervious to AIs. When you're attacked, attach the first Great General you get to a Woodsman 3 or Combat 1/Medic 2 melee unit with the goal of getting him up to Woodsman 3/Medic 3/Morale so you can defeat Stacks of Doom with a smaller horsie force than you could otherwise. Then just make your way toward the culture victory or spaceship techs and be cautious that none of your neighbors get to cuirassers or riflemen before you.

 

[kcmarkwell]

Obsolete has shown that you can turtle in higher level and win.

actually, in all of Obsolete's threads I have seen, at some point he has had to attack the AI. My point here is the total extreme of never attacking anyone, ever. I know its possible on lower levels, but higher difficulty you will always lose.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I think theres lots of situations where you can be too aggressive although your overall strategy can't be too aggressive.
In a recent game I knew war with the Zulus was coming and had been building up a decent army and was teching Construction. Then Wang Kon who was being hammmered by the Zulus offered to vassalise to me. I accepted and went to war with the Zulus. I eventually won the war but not having catapults until towards the end of the war meant I lost a lot more units than I needed to assaulting Shaka's cities.
War with the Zulus was inevitable but making my assault before I was ready cost me a lot of units and my tech rate ended up dropping to 0% until I got CoL and built some courthouses.

 

[kcmarkwell]

I typically would either early rush Shaka or beeline cats then get him. If you hit that midway point where he has decent city defense and you dont have cats, like you said, it gets ugly. Teching at 0% isnt bad as long as you have some specialists working.

 

[dave330i]

actually, in all of Obsolete's threads I have seen, at some point he has had to attack the AI. My point here is the total extreme of never attacking anyone, ever. I know its possible on lower levels, but higher difficulty you will always lose.

You're right. My bad.

 

[popejubal]

The first time I ever played the Romans, I had Iron in my Capital's Big Fat Cross.

Long story short, I didn't beeline to Iron Working, but the moment I had it, I decimated three neighbors in a very short amount of time and ended up with about 25 cities.

Before Code of Laws.

Before Currency.

...and I didn't even have a holy city.


I didn't notice that I was working with -50 gold per turn until I stopped taking cities since my conquest was earning me enough money to keep going. My entire army disbanded and I sat at 0% science with no army while I desperately tried to figure out a way to salvage the situation. I ended up losing the game when the one remaining AI on my continent wandered through my cities after he teched to Code of Laws.

 

[lilnev]

My point here is the total extreme of never attacking anyone, ever. I know its possible on lower levels, but higher difficulty you will always lose.

I've won a couple of games on Immortal without attacking anyone, ever (barb cities don't count). It is pretty rare, though. Usually I have to fight at some point.

But "you almost always need to fight at some stage of the game", and "you can almost never be too aggressive when obtaining land or building military might," are two very different statements. I frequently don't attack before rifles, sometimes even later, and may spend 90% or more of the total game at peace.

peace,
lilnev

 

[vicawoo]

That's why before code of laws, you need aggression and cottages.