Decoy Strategy

[civsempai]

Thought I'd share an unexpected benefit that resulted in a slight planning error during a recent invasion.

I had just destroyed a city that bordered my territory and had landed a stack of musketmen, Riders and a settler to form a new city in it's place. I only had about one musketman and two Riders protecting the settler, and the AI had a shot at them the following round before the settler could build the city.

However, the poor planning led to me having a third Rider two tiles away all by himself. Now the settler and support stack was about 3 tile away from a pretty major city of the AI (pop 12 and just another 4 tiles away from the AI capital) so there was a good chance the AI would send several attack troops to take out the settler.

Instead, the AI sent out two Knights to attack the lone Rider, which was further away from threatening the capital and on a better defenable tile (mountain). As such, my Rider was killed, but it took two AI kights to do it, and nothing ever went after the settler stack. The next round, I built my city, and now I have a nice beachead just 4 tiles away from another major AI target.

So I started playing around with this and purposely left one weak unit just slightly behind my main attack force when approaching AI cities (usually an offensive unit, and on a mountain or hill when possible). Sure enough, the AI will send several offensive units out after the trailing weakling, drawing defenders out of the target city and saving the strength of my main attack force.

The AI seems to prefer attacking the weakest unit first, to be assured of at least one victory and taking out one of your units, and will do so at the expense of leaving them open to an even stronger attack.

By the way, this is on Monarch level.

 

[Hawkster]

Welcome civsempai!

A few opther people have noticed the AI seems to have a fondness for going after weaker units, so much so that some strategies have been developed to exploit this - leading the AI into a trap or misdirecting it.

From my observations and from other peoples comments it would seem that the AI will go after workers & settlers first then lone units first rather than use its attack more wisely or defend by attacking the units threatening it.

A lone unit can do a lot of damage just by drawing away the AI's attack leaving it vulnerable just as you have found.

Poor dumb AI!!!

 

[The Last Conformist]

In modern wars, you can sometimes effectively "freeze" an unwanted front (leaving you free to spend you energy on more important ones) by fortifing a couple of Mech Infantry on a Mountain tile inside the AI's border. The AI can waste untold numbers of Tanks trying to shift them, rather than simply by-passing them and attacking your territory. (This works less well if the AI's got Modern Armor - these'll kill of the Mech Inf pretty quick.)

 

[civsempai]

Yeah I'd read about that "freeze" strategy before, but I was thinking specifically about using a decoy in relation to an offensive campaign. I use the same tactic in RISK all the time but never thought about it for civ, even though civ essentially is an evolution of RISK.

 

[kb2tvl]

I send mech inf onto uncontested hills and mountains. Once the front is stabilized, i will draft from every town and send a round of mech as far as possible into his country. If i am succesful, i can place these near the comps industrial cities. this causes lots of problems for the comp since the comp wont build the high end pollution control structures... The comp becomes more and more polluted which reduces both pop and production...

Also, if you can pillage every square around his capitol, you will really mess up a comp.... This will take lots of conscript mech/inf but would be very worth it.

 

[robehans]

How did you notice the usefullness of the decoy so late? Ive played civ about 2 months and i noticed the "lonely unit is primary target" thingy in my first 10 games...

 

[ukrneal]

If you plan on playing multiplayer, don't let it become a habit!!

 

[civsempai]

I noticed it so late because I ususally did a much better job of stacking my attack units into one force and not leaving behind a straggler. In this one case, I had underestimated the defending force and had to send in reinforcements. I usually stack those as well but time was of the essence in this situation so I just sent them as I created them, something I rarely do.

I find that most of the strategies discussed here are a little unnecessarily complex. This isn't exactly chess here. Just build a good amount of offensive units, stack, attack, repeat.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Sometimes, I've used Cavalry as decoys. If I have a lot of them left over and I'm at the time of building tanks, I will send a stack of obsolete cavalry just inside the AI border and have them draw out a bunch of AI units from their cities. Next turn, the tanks mop up all those exposed units of the AI.

 

[Allemand]

My favorite decoy is to put a horseman near each barbarian encampment, just before the massive uprising is due. The barbarian horsemen will follow my horseman and iqnore my cities. I lead them to my best defended city and destroy them.

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by Gastric ReFlux
Sometimes, I've used Cavalry as decoys. If I have a lot of them left over and I'm at the time of building tanks, I will send a stack of obsolete cavalry just inside the AI border and have them draw out a bunch of AI units from their cities. Next turn, the tanks mop up all those exposed units of the AI.

Tried this approach during my first full length, all-out militaristic game as the Germans; had to/chose to invade Russia along a broad front with hordes of panzers.

My first wave was deliberately made up of obsolete cavalry who cut just inside the border to mountains or hills within range of several artillery positions. The Russians moved in, I lost some cavalry, on my turn the barrage started, and then the tanks rolled in. Worked like a charm.

(It produced a great leader, Barbarossa, too - irony?).

R.III