you want to go to war?
answer those few questions :
-
why do I want to go to war?
possible answers :
1) to win by conquest(or domination but beware, it's pretty different)
2) to get some needed resources that I can see in my neighbours land (Irak?
)
3) My neighbour has finished the wonder I wanted, and he must give it to me.
...
-
What do I need to reach my goal? (if it's total annihilation you aim for, replace it by "what do I need to kill myneighbour")
possible answers 1) 6 axemen
2) some military tech, then some units.
3) a war ally
(could be more than 1 of the above)
As soon as you have what you identified as necessary, you attack. If you're a beginner in this matter, you probably will think you need 20 swords, 20 catapults before you can attack.
After a few assaults, you'll see that most of these units were totally useless, and delayed your assaults and made them more costly.
It's no big deal at low levels, since you will get there eventually even if aiming too high, but at higher levels, you will find yourself facing a technologically advanced foe, with more troops than you could manage because you waited too long.
A few other questions you could ask yourself, but don't always need to (depending on the answers above, the settings, and so many other things I just don't want to list) :
- who will be pissed if I attack? what can I do to avoid getting dogpiled?
- what tactics will I use? (ie from where will I attack? how many stacks? will I try to lure units out of cities by sacrificing workers? will I load boats to attack from the coast?)
- do I need to change civics to withstand the war weariness or to produce faster?
a few typical war civics : police state to prevent WW and build troops faster or universal suffrage to build units with your friends or enemies' money (extortion is always fun), bureaucracy for more hammers from the capital (good combo with PState) or vassalage for 2 more XP for each unit or nationhood for fastest and cheapest troops (but no variety, and less XPs), slavery to keep the war machine going (whipping troops, whipping necessary things in captured cities) or caste system to get the border pops after conquest faster (artists) and to keep the war machine going (merchants to avoid strikes!), theocracy for 2 more Xps where you have your state religion?