aelf
Ashen One
I'm still quite new to Civ4 and am in no way an expert player. I have much to learn about game mechanics and strategies from other players in these forums, but here's what I've discovered from experience. The stuff mentioned here might be quite obvious to the better players, but I hope some can gain a useful tip or two. Regarding difficulty level, I am not sure if this will work out with the very high levels. But my guess is it could be applied.
Your first war of conquest is very important. It is part often part of your early expansion phase. Unless you are playing pure cultural, it will figure in your plans, and usually early. If you are boxed in the initial REX phase, it becomes even more important if you don't want to get demographically strangled. That much can be agreed with, right?
It will be ideal to have copper or iron, with which you can wage early effective war. But sometimes you are stuck with only horses. Or, at the stage you may be building chariots (probably in desperation). Or you could be Persian and banking on your immortals capturing a city heavily fortified by archers and you are far from getting catapults. I shall not speculate on what. Why horses? Because they are the main requirement for this tactic.
Let's say you have 6-8 immortals aiming to take small border city defended by about 4 or 5 archers. You have other immortals being built. The chances of winning on the first attempt are not high, since there's the cultural defense bonus against you. Some of your immortals might win, some might retreat, and some might die. Maybe the enemy has one or two injured archers left - you can win against these the next round with your more experienced immortals. Maybe he has one or two more than that - you will need to reinforce your forces with a few more Immortals.
If you choose to go straight for the enemy city, the enemy might be able to reinforce his defenders with more archers after the first round, which would be difficult to crack with injured Immortals and/or a few new ones. Your attack can turn out to be a failure and cost you dearly.
What you can do is to surround the city with your Immortals the first one or two turns. If the enemy doesn't have spearmen yet, he usually will not attempt to attack the Immortals you stationed behind his city and he will not be able to reinforce his city with more defenders. You should know what happens next
After capturing the city, you might want to use some of your horses to pillage some road tiles around it to prevent easy enemy counterattack (to buy you time to bring in enough defenders). Now you have successfully conquered an enemy city, in this case, at a very early part of the game.
I haven't tried to see if this tactic of 'surround and conquer' works in any other stage of the game. Maybe I should title it "Early Persian strategy" instead, knowing most people won't be going for chariots that early unless they don't have any metal. But I just thought this ultra-early 'siege' is a neat little trick.
Your first war of conquest is very important. It is part often part of your early expansion phase. Unless you are playing pure cultural, it will figure in your plans, and usually early. If you are boxed in the initial REX phase, it becomes even more important if you don't want to get demographically strangled. That much can be agreed with, right?
It will be ideal to have copper or iron, with which you can wage early effective war. But sometimes you are stuck with only horses. Or, at the stage you may be building chariots (probably in desperation). Or you could be Persian and banking on your immortals capturing a city heavily fortified by archers and you are far from getting catapults. I shall not speculate on what. Why horses? Because they are the main requirement for this tactic.
Let's say you have 6-8 immortals aiming to take small border city defended by about 4 or 5 archers. You have other immortals being built. The chances of winning on the first attempt are not high, since there's the cultural defense bonus against you. Some of your immortals might win, some might retreat, and some might die. Maybe the enemy has one or two injured archers left - you can win against these the next round with your more experienced immortals. Maybe he has one or two more than that - you will need to reinforce your forces with a few more Immortals.
If you choose to go straight for the enemy city, the enemy might be able to reinforce his defenders with more archers after the first round, which would be difficult to crack with injured Immortals and/or a few new ones. Your attack can turn out to be a failure and cost you dearly.
What you can do is to surround the city with your Immortals the first one or two turns. If the enemy doesn't have spearmen yet, he usually will not attempt to attack the Immortals you stationed behind his city and he will not be able to reinforce his city with more defenders. You should know what happens next
After capturing the city, you might want to use some of your horses to pillage some road tiles around it to prevent easy enemy counterattack (to buy you time to bring in enough defenders). Now you have successfully conquered an enemy city, in this case, at a very early part of the game.
I haven't tried to see if this tactic of 'surround and conquer' works in any other stage of the game. Maybe I should title it "Early Persian strategy" instead, knowing most people won't be going for chariots that early unless they don't have any metal. But I just thought this ultra-early 'siege' is a neat little trick.
