Choking Strategies / Advice

[SittinDown]

Choking is an aspect of the game that I'm not very aware of and don't utilize much.

I have a number of questions on the topic, and thought I'd assemble the best ideas here (in the top post) as they are discussed.

Basics:

• What is it?
  • Choking: When you DOW on an opponent with the goal of damaging their economy rather than conquering cities. The main emphasis is in gaining defensive advantages by fortifying units in defensive positions in their territory and / or pillaging strategic resources.
• When is it effective / appropriate?
  • In Always War games it's often useful.
  • In standard games Worker Stealing or regular conquest would generally be preferred.
• What units / eras is it useful?
  • Bronze Era Melee:
    • Axes / Spears with woodsman promotions can do well.
    • Good for parking in forest hills, can win fights even against an archer stack.
    • Not great at pillage control because of lack of mobility.
  • Mobile:
    • Chariots / HA's that stay away from city tiles - good until LB's - watch out for Archer spam.
• What do you target?
  • #1 - deny metals.
  • #2 - cut off roads
  • #3 - cut off happy / commerce power tiles (gold / gems / ivory)
    
  • #4 - cut off food power tiles (but this will probably leave you open to counter attack).
• What AI's are best to target?
  • Harder against AI's with resource-less UU's (Pacal - Holkan / Sitting Bull - Dog Soldiers, Monty - Jaguar)
    
  • Better against unit-spammers - keep them from gaining momentum.
    
  • Not as useful against peaceful AI's - just wait and conquer.
• What are the pros / cons?
  • Pros:
    • Can weaken an AI for future conquest.
    • Can pin down an AI or 2 during an AW game with a handful of units while you attack a 3rd AI.
  • Cons:
    • Not that great for a standard game.
      • Peaceful AI's should generally be allowed to grow so they can be conquered.
      • AI's will produce more units while in war.
      • Simple worker-stealing is better, or wait until you can break out

 

[krikav]

I'm curious too, whenever I try it myself I usually end up in a world of hurt.

 

[Qactus]

In Always War games choking is a very nice tactic: In that case you're at war anyway, so it doesn't hurt keeping a few units inside the nearest neighbour's borders, keeping them from connecting metal etc. Also, in AW games hurting AI development is always a good thing, whereas in normal games you may actually prefer to have a developed neighbour that can provide you with tech trades and then nice cities later on.

In normal games if I'm going to harass neighbours early, instead of choking it is usually a quick worker steal, followed by a cease fire at the very next opportunity to open up the possibility of another worker steal.

 

[Nick723]

Agree with the Always War comment - that’s the most obvious application.

I would add that Woodsmen promotions are the way to go, ideally getting an axe/spear to woody 2 allows for very effective choking.

Another tip is to play with tile yields on to spot copper / iron / horse in AI territory that you can’t see yet (shows up as an additional hammer beyond the normal yield).

 

[SittinDown]

on an AW game, do you continue to choke opponents with Longbows / Maces / Crossbows / Pikes? or do other strategies emerge by that point?

how do you guague how many units to put in there? do the AI's have a tendency to mass units to dislodge your stack, or can you get away with a handful of units, and they'll randomly throw a few units at it once in a while?

 

[Anysense]

In normal games if I'm going to harass neighbours early, instead of choking it is usually a quick worker steal, followed by a cease fire at the very next opportunity to open up the possibility of another worker steal.

Stealing a worker really hurts AI's development and gives you a very good boost, while protracted war makes AI build more units, far more trouble than its worth with some exceptions - stopping AI getting metal, for instance.

 

[Gumbolt]

On AW.
Choking is about cutting off military resources while trying to capture workers and get pillage gold. I like to completely remove roads if I can on AW.

Chariots can be okay vs archers. If you let them settle on iron/copper or horse then you may get an issue. At which point you ideally want to take down the city. With a lot of archers they could attack chariots.
The big downside is the Ai will spam archers. On Always war it's not a huge issue as long as their roads and economy is crashed. You need to adjust strategy when they get catapults or LBs as these will beat chariots and maybe HA too. I don't necessarily leave units next to the cities due to units being whipped. 2-3 HA will work better than chariots.

I had a game with China on always war when they reached LB and had ivory. The minute I lost 1-2 HA the AI quickly bounced back with stacks as I was unable to keep resources pillaged. Wonderng LB on hills or forest are a pain.

If you can keep the AI at 1-2 cities then you are doing well. If I have 3-4 HA nearby I will try to take down the 2nd cities if I can. On AW I tend to find you can spare 5-6 units to pin down 2 AI then have main stack taking down one AI. The minute you are only defending your game is usually in trouble. I tend to find taking out an AI is better otherwise you are merely creating vassals who get gifted feudalism. There is diminishing returns on AW as you can only pin down so many AI. There will always be at least 2 AI spamming units.

If you are playing a warmonger you certainly want to target them. That being said runaway financial AI can also be a pain. Romans too with their UU. If 2-3 units can pin down Shaka it saves you fending off stacks.

In terms of normal games. I find choking can lead to archer spam and then you find it hard to take them out. If you can get a woodsman 2 axe that can work well. Rinse and repeat you could steal 2-3+ workers.Question is what does this do to diplo and would it slow down taking out the AI? Yes AI with 4-5 cities will spam a lot of units! I rarely use worker steal unless I intend to take down the AI.

 

[Nick723]

on an AW game, do you continue to choke opponents with Longbows / Maces / Crossbows / Pikes? or do other strategies emerge by that point?

how do you guague how many units to put in there? do the AI's have a tendency to mass units to dislodge your stack, or can you get away with a handful of units, and they'll randomly throw a few units at it once in a while?

The key is to go early and prevent metal being hooked up. If you can do that you can choke an AI pretty well with just 2 chariots. The key is to not be greedy and put your units in a position where they will be vulnerable. In this situation the AI will just spam archers and eventually break out with them, but that takes a long time and normally you can just finish them off with swords or horse archers before that happens.

Harder civs to choke are the ones with resourceless UUs - watch out for them!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Has AW applications per above.

In regular play, the most practical way to execute a choke is if you can camp units like crossbows on hills or forests, then use chariot to pillage their strategic resources. Medieval wars vs AI are pretty easy if you can deny them metal, and sometimes using the large medieval "parity" window is easier than using a comparatively smaller rifle window. Especially if you have military traits.

I put "parity" in quotes, because without iron, the AI can't build more knights, pikes, or crossbows. If you also deny copper, it can't build anything but horse archers and longbows until muskets. So as long as you don't bankrupt, you can feasibly do philosophy bulb, trade into machinery + possibly engineering, and wreck a target or three with medieval junk (vassal chaining). Particularly good against low unit prob nations, since they won't have much initial force before you deny strategic resources.

Other considerations:

• AI has a habit of trading away strategic resources to your target and screwing you, so consider relations between AIs, who has iron/copper/horse, and possibility of also cutting trade routes (naval blockade, pillage roads, etc) if a trade is possible.
• Obviously, you need to scout in advance for this strategy to function. Fortunately, most AI are happy to give you open borders to map them early game with actual scouts, through their road networks.
• Walls and especially castles cost you time and allow AI to build up more junk. While something like CR 2 trebs + aggressive maces take pretty favorable trades against longbow spam, it's still better to get your war gains faster. Make some spies and put one in each city. You will have some fail chance, but at -50% stationary spy and some espionage slider turns you can make things go a bit more quickly.
• Avoid capitulating target until you won't get wrecked by their culture, if you capitulate them at all. IMO don't waste time running down iceball cities or junk though.
  
• It is really bad if you get your choke picked off. You might want a pike + some hill promoted xbows, which should dissuade most stuff for a while.
• The more iron spots they have, the less viable this becomes, as you commit a substantially larger % of your stuff to denying resources rather than capturing cities in timely fashion, and pay more maintenance meanwhile.
• If you can capture a popular holy city, you can stack stationary spy with that bonus to get some pretty high espionage bonuses. Any tech hole you find yourself in should be equalized relatively quickly with stealing/trading.