I pillage everything I can, even pre-war in the early game. Nothing like seeing the AI build roads on neutral ground. Just BEGGING for me to deny his routes of resources. Once it's war time, gotta make the call on whether or not it serves any purpose. Propably a couple cavalries in the deep end of their area taking down happystuffs and war resources.
Do you pillage during wars?
- Thread starter popejubal
- Start date
I pillage everything I can, even pre-war in the early game. Nothing like seeing the AI build roads on neutral ground. Just BEGGING for me to deny his routes of resources. Once it's war time, gotta make the call on whether or not it serves any purpose. Propably a couple cavalries in the deep end of their area taking down happystuffs and war resources.
Yeah, perhaps I wasnt clear.
Often the AI player creates roadnetwords between his two cities, only one of which I share borders with. Those networks are free game whenever I stumble upon them.
And yes, I too build roads with mind for future conquests. Makes reinforcing that much faster.
Often the AI player creates roadnetwords between his two cities, only one of which I share borders with. Those networks are free game whenever I stumble upon them.
And yes, I too build roads with mind for future conquests. Makes reinforcing that much faster.
ownedbyakorat
Warlord
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2006
- Messages
- 242
I love pillaging those roads connecting AI cities that are outside of their cultural borders. Easy way to ****** their progress, and they get no war justification out of it. I'll do that even to a "friendly" AI - better for me to be the advantaged member of any relationship, even a good one.
Had not considered that as a reason for pillaging. Good tip.
I never ever (ever!) pillage. I just mass my troops and go straight for the city. And I don't care about losses. As long as I win I can loose 90% of my army. I often suicide axes to get those hillplaced 60% culture capitols when I don't have catapults yet.
The wierd part is that I often end up rebuilding most of the countryside anyway to get rid of all those farms and whatnot. Still, pillaging takes time and I rather take the city a few turns earlier.
The wierd part is that I often end up rebuilding most of the countryside anyway to get rid of all those farms and whatnot. Still, pillaging takes time and I rather take the city a few turns earlier.
jeremiahrounds
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2003
- Messages
- 404
To me extreme pillage == game over for that AI. So yeah I pillage after the start. You have to understand I expand aggressively at the start so I really typically dont want another city. Pillaging every square around a city is about as good as razing it with alot less damage to yourself. I mean you pillage half the AIs empire and that AI will never be a force again in that game.
And I found the AIs reaction to a total pillage was odd. HEre I am not talking about the tactical AI, but the roleplaying AI. You can take a city and the AI will hate you forever. You can burn his entire nation to the ground via pillaging and he will act like nothing happened after peace is declared.
I stopped playing before warlords did they fix that? I mean people acted like the AI couldnt easily be improved upon, but imo holding a grudge for aggressive pillaging would make the AI seem more real..
After all one thing that really got me in a broil was loosing a few towns.
Anyway strategically I find focusing your war on extreme pillaging is alot easier to achieve with fewer units and if done to your chief opponents pretty much lays the groundwork at the strategic level for an easy later win.
And I found the AIs reaction to a total pillage was odd. HEre I am not talking about the tactical AI, but the roleplaying AI. You can take a city and the AI will hate you forever. You can burn his entire nation to the ground via pillaging and he will act like nothing happened after peace is declared.
I stopped playing before warlords did they fix that? I mean people acted like the AI couldnt easily be improved upon, but imo holding a grudge for aggressive pillaging would make the AI seem more real..
After all one thing that really got me in a broil was loosing a few towns.
Anyway strategically I find focusing your war on extreme pillaging is alot easier to achieve with fewer units and if done to your chief opponents pretty much lays the groundwork at the strategic level for an easy later win.
Uncle E
Long time Prince player
If the city is a bit far from my borders and needs to be razed, I'll pillage to help offset costs to keep my army that far out. No use in helping that country rebuild or another AI from swooping in and getting a fully developed countryside.
I did that to Ghandi today after killing off the Zulu's w/ a praetorian rush. I almost stayed in war all the time to make enough $$$ from capturing cities (then razing them) to help fund my research at a 70% pace ... wierd eh?
I did that to Ghandi today after killing off the Zulu's w/ a praetorian rush. I almost stayed in war all the time to make enough $$$ from capturing cities (then razing them) to help fund my research at a 70% pace ... wierd eh?
Polycrates
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,288
Very true. I think a lot of people don't appreciate how devastatingly powerful pillaging can be. Working tiles is such a fundamental part of victory that losing hundreds of worker turns worth of development is absolutely devastating. It's partly because in the interim, your opponent is losing hammers, food and commerce by the score (a special resource left unworked for even just 20 turns is probably costing 60 factors of production), but that disguises the true effect.
Food is a very marginal product in the game - you're almost always spending the majority on "food upkeep" and so little differences can mean massive relative changes in "food profit". Similarly, once you've developed a bit, commerce becomes increasingly marginal, with all the costs for units, city upkeep and civic upkeep and again, small changes can translate to large percentage differences in commerce profit - and so large changes in science rate. In a civ with decent-sized cities, you're suddenly using pretty much all your working population on food just to keep from starving, thus drastically reducing your ability to generate commerce and hammers - well beyond the loss just from the lost mines and cottages. What little commerce you are now generating goes increasingly towards just paying your upkeep, with a resulting near-total loss of scientific ability and possibly even complete bankruptcy.
Production comes in a dismal third, meaning you have a hard time developing your empire and building the things that would alleviate your problems (i.e. workers and military). It also doesn't help the whole situation of just feeding yourself when you lose a whole load of health and happiness resources, or your commerce when you lose masses of trade income either.
Because of this marginality (is that even a word?), a pillaged opponent is now spending all their efforts just keeping their head above water.
And that's just the pure effect of the pillaging, without considering the consequences when you're also embroiled in a war. Production capacity for building units goes way down, and without resources you can't build your best military units to stop it anyway. Pillaging units draw forces away from the front to deal with them, as well as to garrison cities that they might be near. This division is even harder when you've got no road networks left, and makes pillagers progressively harder to attack. It also makes it much more difficult to get reinforcements to threatened cities, so a pillager with a semi-decent main attack force has improved chances of taking a couple of outlying cities too and crippling them even harder.
And for the attacker? You don't need a great number of troops, and they don't necessarily need to be particularly high quality. You get a whole bunch of money while you're doing it, that can easily offset the cost of having them in enemy territory. You're not fighting many actual battles so you're not losing many units and you're not generating much war weariness. So with very little cost you can keep the "war" going well after you've finished pillaging, to ensure their workers and settlers stay inside and hinder them that much more every turn.
Pillaging rocks, and a well-pillaged enemy is dead - even if they don't know about it and even if the score doesn't reflect it, they're dead.
Oh yeah and it lets you quote all this sort of stuff about "defeating your enemy without ever fighting a battle" and "using an enemy's strength against him" from Sun Tzu or Yoda or whoever which makes you sound totally deep and philosophical.
JimT
Warlord
In the early game I am careful about what I pillage but later I will pillage loads (got the workers to replace them)
all mines
most farms (keep one or two to get pop up or running), all where I raze
strategic resources (if he doesn't have another one)
cottages/villages/towns where a) I willl raze or b) I want a production city
The only improvement that can't be rebuilt quickly are villages/towns everything else is a sitting cash pile. Roads I keep because they have no cash value but are extremely useful once the cultural borders are gone.
As for stack costs. I tend to pillage after I have razed/captured a city. I have a few turns of anarchy and free movement through neutral territory. Cav can pillage two improvements (5+ gold) in one turn then.
I only pillage so freely around standing enemy cities: when weakening him, because I can't capture it, when he has no units left to defend it (and I will capture it next turn anyway) or when bored.
all mines
most farms (keep one or two to get pop up or running), all where I raze
strategic resources (if he doesn't have another one)
cottages/villages/towns where a) I willl raze or b) I want a production city
The only improvement that can't be rebuilt quickly are villages/towns everything else is a sitting cash pile. Roads I keep because they have no cash value but are extremely useful once the cultural borders are gone.
As for stack costs. I tend to pillage after I have razed/captured a city. I have a few turns of anarchy and free movement through neutral territory. Cav can pillage two improvements (5+ gold) in one turn then.
I only pillage so freely around standing enemy cities: when weakening him, because I can't capture it, when he has no units left to defend it (and I will capture it next turn anyway) or when bored.
JimT
Warlord
RoddToddDurango
Chieftain
I know it doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of the game but my favorite things to pillage are roads in neutral territory. This is especially enjoyable because you can hinder (for a little while) opponents' trade networks without damaging reputation even when you are not at war.
The Navy Seal
Emperor
I only pillage key resources, but if I have mounted units in a group with foot units I do one pillage with the mounted guys and then move.
Depends, if it's an enemy I feel I can conqure in one war I don't pillage anything, if it's a bigger enemy I hit farms and mines. Occasionally I will destroy cotteges in territory that I know i'm not going to conqure or if I need to destroy a runaway civ's economy. Mature cotteges are the hardest to get and most vital improvement, if I can steal them that's great but if I can't capture a city i'll burn its cotteges and run away, making it a fraction of its former worth.
CIVPhilzilla
Reagan Republican
I usually pillage so I can keep my economy and research afloat while at war. A large standing army can get really expensive real fast, especially in enemy territory, if I can get them to pay for themselves through pillaging it makes my job much easier.
Pillage resources. Even send stacks whose job it is to take and hold a key resource.
I pillage roads quite often. By breaking the road network, one can significantly reduce the chance the AI will counterattack into my terrain..
Only pillage Towns/Villages in the case of razing and/or "I can't beat this guy's cities right now, but I need to cripple him so he doesn't outpace me".
Farms/Mines are cheap to pillage, so long as I am not in a "need my mass of workers" phase of the game. When you get railroad, lumbermills, etc your idle workers are all of a sudden needed -- outside of that time, rebuilding a handful of destroyed farms/mines/roads is pretty easy.
And then there are "wars of annoyance", when you are at war with someone on the other side of the continent (because someone you want to befriend asked you). Heading over there and mass pillaging cripples that will-be-hostile-to-you empire's economy, and the pillaging tends to more than pay for the costs of keeping an army over there.
I pillage roads quite often. By breaking the road network, one can significantly reduce the chance the AI will counterattack into my terrain..
Only pillage Towns/Villages in the case of razing and/or "I can't beat this guy's cities right now, but I need to cripple him so he doesn't outpace me".
Farms/Mines are cheap to pillage, so long as I am not in a "need my mass of workers" phase of the game. When you get railroad, lumbermills, etc your idle workers are all of a sudden needed -- outside of that time, rebuilding a handful of destroyed farms/mines/roads is pretty easy.
And then there are "wars of annoyance", when you are at war with someone on the other side of the continent (because someone you want to befriend asked you). Heading over there and mass pillaging cripples that will-be-hostile-to-you empire's economy, and the pillaging tends to more than pay for the costs of keeping an army over there.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
That's definitely a good strategy. Although of course, as the game progresses different resources will become more important to pillage... oil is a big one once the game reaches the industrial/modern ages, for instance.
As for me, I will usually only pillage when I am in the situation of the 'underdog' and do not have any real chance of taking and holding cities. Other than that, I will almost always prefer to capture the cities with the improvements intact (or raze the cities and quickly move onto new ones without wasting turns pillaging the terrain, I can come back for that later).
bardolph
King
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2007
- Messages
- 739
I usually don't pillage the FIRST city I conquer in a war, since that's usually a lightning-strike with overwhelming numbers, and if that city is near my borders, it will usually have plenty of tiles available to it after conquest.
After that first city, I tend to pillage like a maniac under these conditions:
1) I have mounted units that I don't want to expose to enemy spears/pikes.
2) I have ground units in position to attack a city, but I'm waiting for my siege units to finish taking down their defenses.
I basically pillage whenever I have an extra move that I'm not otherwise using. After the first city is captured, it often takes few extra turns for siege and ground units to heal up and get to the next target. Why not pillage while you're waiting? It makes good money for the war effort, plus it cripples the enemy's economy.
And when I intend to strike deep into enemy territory, I also pillage roads to cut off reinforcements and counter-attacks.
I'll even pillage enemy villages and towns. War is expensive. The quick cash you get from pillaging mature cottages is vast. Don't underestimate it. You're going to need that money to fund research and unit upgrades, as well as paying for your new cities.
Also, you have to consider the fact that conquered cities have zero culture, so the tiles near them will often stay in enemy control, even when the war is over. Pillage those tiles! You're not going to get them anyway. Also, if you're running anything other than slavery, you're going to have serious starvation problems with your new cities, since they won't have access to enough tiles to feed their citizens. You'll need farms to feed them, so you might as well pick up pillaging cash before you farm over that land.
After that first city, I tend to pillage like a maniac under these conditions:
1) I have mounted units that I don't want to expose to enemy spears/pikes.
2) I have ground units in position to attack a city, but I'm waiting for my siege units to finish taking down their defenses.
I basically pillage whenever I have an extra move that I'm not otherwise using. After the first city is captured, it often takes few extra turns for siege and ground units to heal up and get to the next target. Why not pillage while you're waiting? It makes good money for the war effort, plus it cripples the enemy's economy.
And when I intend to strike deep into enemy territory, I also pillage roads to cut off reinforcements and counter-attacks.
I'll even pillage enemy villages and towns. War is expensive. The quick cash you get from pillaging mature cottages is vast. Don't underestimate it. You're going to need that money to fund research and unit upgrades, as well as paying for your new cities.
Also, you have to consider the fact that conquered cities have zero culture, so the tiles near them will often stay in enemy control, even when the war is over. Pillage those tiles! You're not going to get them anyway. Also, if you're running anything other than slavery, you're going to have serious starvation problems with your new cities, since they won't have access to enough tiles to feed their citizens. You'll need farms to feed them, so you might as well pick up pillaging cash before you farm over that land.
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