Civ5 And The Art Of War

[davis freeberg]

So far I've been able to master the Prince setting, but once I move to the higher levels, I can't seem to get a conquest win. Since we don't seem to have a war academy for Civ5, I was hoping more experienced players could give me some advice on how to take my game to the next level. I've got a pretty good sense for city placement and I seem to be able to defense pretty well, but taking cities is nearly impossible. How many troops should I have before trying to take a city and what make up should they be? It seems no matter how many I get, there's never enough. Also how do you manage your science game, so that you're not in the middle ages when the computer has tanks?

 

[DaveMcW]

6 units is always enough to take a city. Surround it then attack together.

If the city has natural defenses that prevent you from surrounding it, some of your 6 units need to be ranged.

 

[chazzycat]

Are you on King now? King is generally a good level to experiment and try various things to see what works for your style. I'd recommend just trying lots of different things with different civs - take different policies, beeline different techs, play peaceful, play conquest, play horizontal & vertical, etc. Eventually you will get a feel for things and your style will coalesce into some kind of actual strategy.

Now for some actually useful advice pertaining to your questions:

- it seems you have trouble keeping up techwise. Taking cities is only very difficult when you are outclassed, otherwise it's only somewhat difficult. If you are on even ground with your opponent, usually just a couple siege units and a few strong front-line units will do the job. it's very important though, to engage the enemy on neutral ground (i.e. not near their cities) and destroy their fighting force before attempting to invade their cities. You can live with the damage from cities, but when you are being assaulted by cities and units at the same time even poor AI will kill your units. Basically, beelining cities is no longer the strategy, kill the army first.

- the more dedicated you are to warfare, the easier it becomes. Taking cities is easy as pie if you have upgraded 3 siege units with extra range, logistics & indirect fire. It takes centuries of warfare (and careful protection of said units) to get there though. And you still have to be on the same level tech-wise as your opponent.

- with regards to tech, there are 3 ways to dominate the tech tree:

1) Out-expand everyone and rely on huge population & infrastructure
2) Stay small, build the NC early, then focus on gold and sign as many research agreements as possible
3) Focus on city-states and get to the scholasticism policy as soon as possible

These can be combined in different ways. Personally my favorite is #1, as that leads to the strongest overall economy. It's then easy to add bits of #2 and #3 if you go that route, which is not as true if you start small; it limits your options more. But on the other hand, certain maps & civs will make staying small more attractive, and in those cases, you definitely want to pursue either #2 or #3 (or both) aggressively.

Another general piece of advice that helped me a lot in moving from Prince to Emperor is just to remember to always sell your resources. Aggressively shop everything you've got at every opportunity. You can sell luxuries for 300, and Strategic resources for about 220 if the civ actually wants it. Open borders is even worth 50. Use this gold to buy settlers (best purchase most of the time) open up CS, sign RAs, or rush key buildings.

Diplomacy is another aspect you learn in this stage, and the more you understand it the better you will be. This ties in with the paragraph above as well - you will get better payoffs on your trades if you maintain "friendly" status.

 

[Smote]

6 units is a good amount. 2 to break defenders, 4 to take city. I generally don't do a full 6 surround because its a little harder getting to the back hexes. This doesn't apply to city states, where you can wait to declare war until you have a full surround.

Generally, rule of thumb for taking cities: Very difficult if city power is twice your soldier power or more. So capturing a power 12 city with warriors is extremely difficult and should be avoided. But a power 30 can be taken with longswords.

 

[EditorRex]

It's also important to look at what units you can field based on your resources as well as your tech. I've found that strategy changes more based on specific situations in this game that it usually did for me in Civ 3 or 4 (Build Stack, Attack Stack). I was playing a recent game where I was hurting for cash due to circumstances and was not eager to bargain with other civs for Iron or Horses. However, I was at a tech level to have a mix of early gunpowder units -- Muskets, Rifles, Canons and Artillery. I wanted a quick war with Suleiman to sieze his only good port city and, most importantly, two iron hexes. Geography was a short hilly north-south border between a City State and the sea. This was a perfect opportunity for me to declare war and dig in for a few turns, letting his mounted attackers kill themselves on my defenders while my artillery finished them off. While we're fighting, I pick up Infantry and Ironclads from RAs. Suleiman had a pretty sizable army of Knights, Crossbows and such, but by the time I actually went after that first city, it was a piece of cake. Not always a great strategy, but it's an example of the makeshift strategy, because of tech level, resources and geography, that worked perfectly in a specific situation.

 

[davis freeberg]

Thanks for all of the advice, I think that I was trying to start my wars too early instead of invading with the right troops. I guess I'm just used to the rush strategies in Civ4. I also think that I've been overlooking the strength of the catapults. Iron always seems to be in short supply early on for me and it's hard to protect them, but they do seem unstoppable when defending a city and I can see how getting three or four of them upgraded could really start to take down some of the fortresses. I think I'm going to try a game where I ignore the victory conditions and instead just focus on military to get more experienced.

 

[bronzeager]

great advice given so far. and yes, i'd never attack with warriors...at least wait for iron working, which doesn't take that long.

also, if you don't get iron in your borders and it isn't very easily obtainable, probably change up your strategy and focus on a culture or diplo win. you'll be outmatched until rifling, and while it's easy enough to build a good defense without iron units, aggressive campaigns are nearly impossible.

 

[EditorRex]

great advice given so far. and yes, i'd never attack with warriors...at least wait for iron working, which doesn't take that long.

also, if you don't get iron in your borders and it isn't very easily obtainable, probably change up your strategy and focus on a culture or diplo win. you'll be outmatched until rifling, and while it's easy enough to build a good defense without iron units, aggressive campaigns are nearly impossible.

I disagree with this. It depends somewhat on your Civ. If you have a good non-Iron UU, then you may be fine. Germany can spam their UU pretty early given its cheap production. And there's an excellent thread here devoted to turning the China UU into a unstoppable Warmonger force. That's just two that come to mind. The China strategy mentioned above would also appear to be fairly good with ranged non-UU troops in combination with Horsemen. That requires a different resource, but I've had a lot more games without Iron than without horses. Not sure on the math on this, but it's just my experience.

 

[bronzeager]

I disagree with this. It depends somewhat on your Civ. If you have a good non-Iron UU, then you may be fine. Germany can spam their UU pretty early given its cheap production. And there's an excellent thread here devoted to turning the China UU into a unstoppable Warmonger force. That's just two that come to mind. The China strategy mentioned above would also appear to be fairly good with ranged non-UU troops in combination with Horsemen. That requires a different resource, but I've had a lot more games without Iron than without horses. Not sure on the math on this, but it's just my experience.

yes, true...i wasn't taking UUs into account. Songhai and China can get by just fine without iron. Probably add France and Ottomans to that list as well, but you're still waiting until at least Rennaissance era to be aggressive.

I've also found that horses are much more plentiful than iron...

 

[slobberinbear]

great advice given so far. and yes, i'd never attack with warriors...at least wait for iron working, which doesn't take that long.

also, if you don't get iron in your borders and it isn't very easily obtainable, probably change up your strategy and focus on a culture or diplo win. you'll be outmatched until rifling, and while it's easy enough to build a good defense without iron units, aggressive campaigns are nearly impossible.

The warrior/jaguar/maori rush is viable and powerful, but you have to be willing to commit to it early and devote some policies to Honor. See the "Kamehameha Challenge" thread in this forum, wherein on Emperor a Maori rush was pulled off against the Aztecs, overseas no less.

6-8 warriors + great general (from Warrior Code) + Discipline = sacked capital, VERY early. It is harder to pull off against Japan, Babylon, and Polynesia, and any capital that you can't surround.

 

[Hammurbabble]

It's interesting that nobody seems to be talking about bombardment units, except for the reference to the Chu-ko-nu thread. Bombardment units are, IMO, the key to sieges. My attack force always includes a couple of catapults, trebuchet, cannon, etc. take a couple of turns to bombard a city and it will fall very easily to attackers, who will not take much damage and will heal up quickly for the next attack. The Chinese (or English or Arabian) unique units are especially good for this but not essential by any means.

Another thing I've discovered is that unlike in Civ4, in CiV musketmen are actually worth building. They are slightly weaker than longswords, but cheaper and they require no resources. That means you can field a LOT of them in a short time. One musketman doesn't beat a longsword but two musketmen do. Don't be scared to use them, either! With bombardment support, they do fine. If I haven't gone warmonger by the time I get gunpowder, which is situational and depends on who (if anyone) is near me, I do it then, usually. (Warmongering is a good idea I find unless going for a cultural victory. I even have a theory about that which I've never tested involving the Aztecs. With their civ bonus, it could be a good idea to declare war every so often, send an army into enemy territory, kill their units, but don't take their cities. Just fight for the culture bonus. Might or might not work. But if you're going for science, diplo, or of course domination, you want to be a warmonger for at least a sizable part of the game.)

 

[snarzberry]

great advice given so far. and yes, i'd never attack with warriors...at least wait for iron working, which doesn't take that long.

also, if you don't get iron in your borders and it isn't very easily obtainable, probably change up your strategy and focus on a culture or diplo win. you'll be outmatched until rifling, and while it's easy enough to build a good defense without iron units, aggressive campaigns are nearly impossible.

I think you're right that if you are planning on an early war campaign that it is almost always a major pain to not have access to iron. Nobody likes that right? It is also good advice IMO to consider changing your strategy if you had planned on a LS war and find you have no iron.

As others have said there are some UU's that make non-iron early wars particularly doable. The one that springs to mind that hasn't been mentioned is Mongolia, the Keshik is a deadly unit that needs no iron and can easily take a continent with a horseman in support.

But, as I've said in other threads, if you still want to commit to an early war and find that you have no access to iron that it can still be pulled off with any civ using an army of crossbowmen and pikemen. It's just that you can accomplish much more with longswords.

I'm not saying that iron isn't important, and I'd agree that overall with all things taken into consideration that it's the single most important strategic resource in the game. But I feel that often it's importance is somewhat overstated.

 

[Nurgle84]

Another point I personally didn´t use at lower levels. If you are ever low on cash, declare war on your weakest neighbor even if your are obviously not able to capture his cities. Then take some mounted units and pillage his country. Its about 20 Gold per pillaged farm, so a mounted unit can bring in 40 Gold per round. And, if I interpret the latest diplomacy analysis correctly, you do not get a warmonger tag, as you are not taking cities.

I like to play this way with Montezuma. Pillaging for gold, killing for culture.