Frustated Warmonger needs advice!

[Belfran]

I know, I know: Civ games aren't War games. They can be, though... right?

I've started winning games (by time victory *eeeewww* ), Space Race and by Diplomacy. I am a Warmonger at heart, so I want to try a win by Conquest and I need some advice!

What I've been doing:

I usually go for the first religion available (generally Hinduism) and stick with that for all the game. I beeline to military oriented techs and start to build armies! I switch to Civs that help me maintain happines in war, and get unit upgrades. So far so good, right? Wrong. Trying to plan ahead, I also try to build a strong economy to maintain my wars....whilst doing that I go and build some wonders for border expansion to reach resources needed for my armies. So I start to spread out too thin in research and construction and ages fly by me! I then start to go after mine enemies (neighbors if hostile, friend's neighbors if otherwise) and while I do manage to extinguish two or three civs, I can never see the end of the game squashing everybody out!!

I deseperatly need some suggestions!

Peace out! (hehehehe....get it?....errr.....sorry: More coffee needed)

 

[brokguitar]

Maybe try and set the victory conditions to conquest only?

 

[Sadan01]

Let me start off by saying I am not a warmonger. Never have been with any of the Civ games; however I sometimes will try a variant such as AW and generally fail miserably . Anyway, I have however conducted smaller, more regionalised wars in all versions, including Civ4 so what I am really trying to say here is that I'll give you some advice but compared to others, it may not be the best advice or even correct - up to you to try and just give it a go .

whilst doing that I go and build some wonders for border expansion to reach resources needed for my armies. So I start to spread out too thin in research and construction and ages fly by me! I then start to go after mine enemies (neighbors if hostile, friend's neighbors if otherwise) and while I do manage to extinguish two or three civs, I can never see the end of the game squashing everybody out!!

I deseperatly need some suggestions!

Peace out! (hehehehe....get it?....errr.....sorry: More coffee needed)

Have you got your terms confused here (such as improvements) or do you really mean you build Wonders? If I was going for a military conquest/domination victory, I think I'd steer clear of most wonders (my only possibilities might be: Chichen Itza (for defense in cities); maybe Versailles for reducing maintenance costs across your empire (expecially if you are keeping enemy cities instead of razing); definitely The Pentagon for xp; possibly The Kremlin for cutting production costs; Mt Rushmore for WW; definitely the Heroic Epic and West Point and possibly the iron works to push a city's production even higher to improve the output of military units. That's it for me and besides, I think the same thing applies as it did with Civ3; Wonder fixation can be a downfall as much as making mistakes elsewhere. I'd also concentrate on increasing commerce to fund your military as it does become costly quite quickly.

It is a fine balance between managing your economy and continually building and improving your military.

You might even want to look at this succession game regarding warmongering for more tips: Handy 22 Always War C4 Noble. There are others in the succession game sub-forum too.

 

[mharmless]

I know, I know: Civ games aren't War games. They can be, though... right?

I've started winning games (by time victory *eeeewww* ), Space Race and by Diplomacy. I am a Warmonger at heart, so I want to try a win by Conquest and I need some advice!

I'm pretty much a warmonger so I hope I can help. You haven't said anything about the game setings you use most of the time, so my advice is coming from the perspective of playing Terra or Continents maps on Prince as any of the aggressive leaders (most often Napoleon), with all other options being defaults.

I usually go for the first religion available (generally Hinduism) and stick with that for all the game. I beeline to military oriented techs and start to build armies! I switch to Civs that help me maintain happines in war, and get unit upgrades. So far so good, right? Wrong. Trying to plan ahead, I also try to build a strong economy to maintain my wars....whilst doing that I go and build some wonders for border expansion to reach resources needed for my armies. So I start to spread out too thin in research and construction and ages fly by me! I then start to go after mine enemies (neighbors if hostile, friend's neighbors if otherwise) and while I do manage to extinguish two or three civs, I can never see the end of the game squashing everybody out!!

Skip the starting religion all together. Your neighbors will do this for you. Even if you end up being alone on an island on a continents map, you will be able to get along just fine with no religion at all. Taking a holy city is every bit as good as making one yourself, and requires zero research. The _only_ way it works out better for you is if you found two religions in the same city so you can get 200% bonus on two shrines worth of income. It isn't worth it.

If your chosen leader starts with mining, then research bronze working and kick out a worker right away to do forrest chops. If not, research mining and build a warrior in the interim. Once the worker is out, start choping down trees and useing them to build warriors. Every tree in your city radius dies, and plenty outside it too. After your first two to four warriors kick out a settler, then back to warriors. These warriors all need to be out scouting for other civs. You don't even need to leave one at home in the opening turns, human barbarians won't appear for awhile and I've never once had the computer initate a war this early.

Don't let them auto explore, control them manualy it will be much more effective. If you find annother civ's city radius, make sure to walk the entire edge of it and see what territory he has. If you spot a worker inside the radius, go ahead and start a war right then and take the worker. If you see a hill/forrest, start the war right then and fortify your warrior in it. The AI will basicly be shut down trying to uproot you and he has essentialy no hope of doing so. If you started a war over a worker and there are no hill/forrests in his radius, find one between his city and yours and take up residence there until he can be sued for peace. If you did find defensible land, then get a second warrior over there for backup as soon as reasonable.

Focus research toward iron working. You wont have it by the time your first settler is founding a city, but you should by the time your second settler is ready. Every single game I've found iron somewhere on the map exposed by all those scouting warriors. Start building a road to it the moment it is exposed to you, and get that second settler over to found a city by it.

The first expansion you built should make a barracks, unless you started with Mysticism. If you did, then stonehenge and chop it down. After iron working is researched, but before your third city is built, often there is a window to research mysticism and get stonehenge built in the second city (after the barracks for non mysticism leader).

Long before your iron city is built, you should get a promotion or two from the warrior pair holding down an AI player. Medic promotions first, will drasticly cut recovery time and guarentee you don't lose the pair. Long as you dont lose your toe hold, the AI is going to have a hell of a time going offensive.

Once that second settler is sent out, capitol switches to barracks. Both/All workers will need to complete that road network as fast as possible, and idealy all three cities will be hooked to the iron before capitol and third city are done with barracks. Second city will be on stonehenge usualy for a good 15 turns, but get it up to speed as well.

Research post iron working should be hunting->archery, and then pottery->writing->math->currency. Archers will take 10 turns tops, needed to actualy start defending your land from barbarians. If you see a barb, move an archer out to a hill near the barb, they will always suicide on you. Currency is required if you actualy want to keep up the conquest. You are quickly going to be reduced below 100% science, and you will need markets to slow the decay. After currency, go for construction. By the time you research this far, your war machine will be halted without catapults.

With barracks and iron, kick out swordsmen with city raider. If you didn't get iron, copper will get you axemen with city raider. Both are plenty good. Build as fast as you can and ship them to that fortified point being held by a warrior. Steamroll the AI at 1:1 odds. 3 defenders will fall to 3 swords this early in the game, they have no chance of stoping your swords with pathetic 20/40% defense boosts and base strength 3 from archers.

Almost never will the first AI steamrolled this way have more than 1 city. Hes out of the game now and you have a very nice city. Leave a warrior on guard duty and move out with your swords/medicwar for the next target you spotted. New aquisition builds barracks while your workers build a road to it. Typicaly I make this city pump out nothing but archers, to move in behind the main army and secure conquests and to spread out in a picket on hills to prevent barbarian spawn.

If one of your targets has a couple of cities, burn down everything except the capitol unless it is in a very nice location. You cant actualy afford to support a large empire yet untill you can get markets and some cottages up in a few of your cities. Dont be afraid of even 40% science. Your empire should be FAR larger than anybody else by the time it gets that bad, and as long as you aren't picking up poorly located cities you will still be able to stay reasonably close to the computer even with his resarch advantages and your low science rate. Knowledge of Music won't save his ass when level 4 city raider 3 swords with catapult back up come a knockin'.

The only things that should hault your rightous rampage are science droping below 30% or running out of targets. It is not unusual to exterminate three opponents during this initial round. By the time it ends, you should have catapults and currency. Your new research targets should be metal casting and code of laws, and a little bit of concern for backfilling technologies such as... fishing, animal husbandry, agriculture. you know, the basics your barbaric little civ has been ignoring in favor of bloodlust.

This lull is the first consolidation phase. At this time, you focus on generating commerce in your cities. Build markets in most cities (you will never be 100% science all game, so it will benifit you in all but the worst towns) and build courthouses when that becomes available. Cities near the capitol build markets first, your farthest conquests build courthouses first. During your spree odds are very good that you have picked up a holy city (or two!). Now is a decent time to go ahead and make one of those your state religion. If once of the holy cities has a shine already built (not uncommon), then make that one your state and dedicate a city to manufacture of missionaries to spread it out. 1.25 gold from every city goes a long way to paying for the empire. During this time, also identify cities with plenty of flat land for cottages. You need to start specializing a few cities for wealth to pay for the next expansion phase.

If you have more neighbors left, then the first consolidation phase is over when your science rate can get back to 60%. If you have exterminated everybody on your island, then the first consolidation phase isn't over untill you have researched astronomy and found yourself some new friends. Typicaly you will now have macemen, drop the science down a notch or two and get all your city raider 3 swords upgraded asap.

Second expansion phase goes very much like the first, and typicaly ends when the enemy is fielding rifles before you. Third expansion phase will be as soon as you can upgrade all those city raider 3 maces to rifles and it usualy lasts till the game is over. By that point your empire will be monsterously large, and you will be able to exert overwhelming force with only half your cities focused on the war effort. With the other half of your cities able to support other endevors, funding the empire should be trivial.

Note the total lack of diplomacy. If you intend to go with a domination win not a conquest win, then pick a civ as far away from you as possible to be friendly with. Open boarder agreements are fine if anybody will sign for them, extra trade doesn't hurt. However, you don't need to toady up to anybody. You have the millitary might, you have an overwhelming tactical advantage because the computer players are stupid, and you are planing to kill them all eventualy anyway. If it is a minor threat then sure, caving in won't realy hurt. But never give up any technology. They will already be ahead of you anyway, don't help them backfill.

 

[Belfran]

Dear Harmless:
Thankyou for the enourmously helpful post!!! I imagined my empire growing as you narrated and I drooled...literaly.

Knowledge of Music won't save his ass when level 4 city raider 3 swords with catapult back up come a knockin'.

Laughed hard and had to spend 15 minutes explaining to my wife the joke.
Anyways, enough about my lack of frontal brain activity: a question.

Your new research targets should be metal casting and code of laws, and a little bit of concern for backfilling technologies such as... fishing, animal husbandry, agriculture. you know, the basics your barbaric little civ has been ignoring in favor of bloodlust.

Around what year are you at this point? And how in the name of Zeus do you get your cities to grow without Agriculture or Fishing? Or is city growth not much of an issue for us beligerant types?

Anyways, general, I'll take your advice. I want to make them Japanese squeal in terror!!!

 

[Shillen]

Play on epic speed if you're not. It makes a huge difference.

 

[King Ash]

Civ not a wargame? Civ is all about war. Its just gotten a lot harder to fight 'em. I find that if you don't war the AI just gets large and strong. Very hard to remain ahead scientifically.

 

[dh_epic]

What I've been doing:

I usually go for the first religion available (generally Hinduism) and stick with that for all the game.

Therein lies your problem. Instead of wasting your time with religion, it's best to head right for bronzeworking (if you have mining) or animal husbandry (if you have agriculture or hunting). TAKE an early religion from some peacenik foolish enough to think he can hold off on powerful units.

Early War

Don't bother building a second city. It will only cost you more maintainance. You'll still be able to found a few cities near your capitol later, since your capitol's culture will discourage the AI from getting too close. And if they do, they'll be easy to conquer anyway -- but that's later.

You need to choke the AI before you send the real forces. That means you perform a sneak attack that steals their workers, or at least scares them behind their city walls. You usually only need two units for this -- be it two axemen, or two chariots. Also, you'll want to make sure they can't build axes to counter axes/swords, or spears to counter chariots/horses. CUT OFF THE RESOURCES.

Expect casualties if you're trying to take their capitol this early. But it will be well worth it. More room to expand, one fewer opponent, might even steal a holy city. At the very least, stealing a capitol with lots of resources around it is worth way more than trying to found your own cities.


War In General

You don't have to do a rush to win a domination victory. But it helps. If you don't want to try an early war like that, you just have to find the first moment where you have the slightest advantage. Drop whatever you're doing -- wonders, improvements. You need to shift all systems to war the moment you have a good offensive unit that your opponent doesn't have the counter for yet. (e.g: having crossbows before your opponent has knights. having catapults before your opponent has catapults of their own. having cavalry even a few turns before your opponent has gunpowder.)

Don't say to yourself "oh, but in 8 turns, I could have that unit." 5 cities in 8 turns could probably build 10 units, which is enough to take one city right away. Feel free to build the new unit after the war has started. You'll need reinforcements to be built as the war continues.

The old habit I had in Civ 3 was building enough units to wage the entire war, and building defenders to hold the cities I took. In Civ 4, you have to get away from this. You need to build a lot of units in a short period of time, and build backup as you go. And ignore everything else but war, at least until it looks like the war is downhill.

 

[mharmless]

Around what year are you at this point? And how in the name of Zeus do you get your cities to grow without Agriculture or Fishing? Or is city growth not much of an issue for us beligerant types?

My current game is Terra/prince/standard/all defaults as Napoleon. It is 325 AD and just entered that first consolidation phase. Researching metal casting right now, just finished Currency. I do have agriculture, because the French start with it. No fishing or animal husbandry yet. Victory status says 19.67% of the world occupied, however there is plenty of land between the eleven cities of the empire that is unclaimed and will be backfilled by culture expansion during this consolidation. The empire is Hindu, picked up the holy city from the English early on. Stonehenge provided the great prophet to make the shrine. Very good position.

Researching and using the basics does no good unless you have time and resources to spend using them. Coast/Ocean tiles don't produce any hammers and all that matters is military units. On prince your cities only get 4 happy 2 health for free, so you can't handle a very large population before you have to mess with placating them. Better to stick with small cities, and use slavery to get units built in cities that lack for decent production squares. French have agriculture to start, so I do have some resource farms (corn/rice/wheat), but those cities aren't a great deal more productive because they are still limited by happyness.

Even if you wanted to start up a commerce city very early, you will be better off with grassland/cottages than fishing anyway.

 

[Eleventhtower]

Not much to add, but I just wanted to chime in and thank you all for the nice thread. I really appreciate it when people are willing to write out a well though out post on their tactics.

It is very helpful and I have learned a lot.

Thanks,
ET

 

[Gufnork]

Conquering the world with Swordsmen isn't very easy. I suggest you don't try. What you want is the tech lead. Eliminating a civ or two early is kinda useful for the extra space to expand and getting some City Raider units. After that I suggest you hit peace mode and aim solely on infrastructure. Your goal is tech lead. Once you feel you're there, beeline for the closest fast unit you can, hopefully Cavalry. If you get Cavalry before your opponents get Riflemen, the world is yours. Once they do get Riflemen, either continue with a mix of Riflemen, Grenadiers and Catapults or hit peacemode and aim for tanks.

Supporting a total war early in the game is next to impossible. Later in the game it is now.

 

[mharmless]

Conquering the world with Swordsmen isn't very easy. I suggest you don't try. What you want is the tech lead. Eliminating a civ or two early is kinda useful for the extra space to expand and getting some City Raider units. After that I suggest you hit peace mode and aim solely on infrastructure. Your goal is tech lead. Once you feel you're there, beeline for the closest fast unit you can, hopefully Cavalry. If you get Cavalry before your opponents get Riflemen, the world is yours. Once they do get Riflemen, either continue with a mix of Riflemen, Grenadiers and Catapults or hit peacemode and aim for tanks.

Supporting a total war early in the game is next to impossible. Later in the game it is now.

I'm not sure what difficulty level your advice is coming from, but I'm going to have to completely disagree about waiting on cavalry to get the conquest moving when your goal is a Conquest/Domination victory on prince or less. I can't speak to monarch or higher yet.

Swords dominate archers. Hell, upgraded swords dominate anything in a city, even axemen. I can count the number of times I've seen a unit with more than garrison 1 in an AI city early in the game on one hand. For that matter, swords with catapult backup also dominate longbows/pikes/muskets.

Cavalry are wastefull. The catapults can't move with them, so even if you get so far ahead in tech that you have them prior to rifles you will be facing 60-80% defense values and longbows/pikes/muskets. 25% city, 25% fortified, 60% cultural leaves you with 12.6 str longbows, 100% mounted, 25% fortified, 60% cultural leaves you with 17.1 str pikes, and 25% fortified 60% cultural is 16.65 muskets. That would be a typical zero promotions defender built with no barracks, not even excessive. I dont know what level the cavalry are, but you don't get city raider promotions so your only real options are more flanking to cut lossess, or the less efficent (relative to city raider) strength promotions. Playing as an agressive civ you are giving up your largest bonus by using mounted units heavily - the free str pomotion in melee/gunpowder.

Sure you can probably swarm out cavalry and win even with poor odds and no catapult backup. But each of those cavalry are costing far more than a comparable melee/gunpowder unit, and you are losing the effectiveness gained with catapult/cannon support. And cavalry are even more expensive than catapults, which is actualy about all a sword/catapult combo is going to be loseing against pre-rifle civs too.

Finaly, cavalry might as well be a dead end. They can only upgrade to gunships. Gunships are far away in the tech tree, and I strongly doubt anybody in this forum is going to come out and sugjest that gunships make for fantastic offense. If you don't pull off your win before infantry start appearing, your offense is dead while you start manufacturing new units to replace them. And you won't have the piles and piles of city raider 3 units laying arround to keep up the offensive push, so even once you restart you will be less effective.

Cavalry are a good unit with a role to fill in weakening an extremely strong defender in a city with a 50% chance of making it out alive, and they are excelent intercepters and pillagers. However, They are a poor choice of unit to build an entire war arround.

 

[Gufnork]

I've recently conquered half the world with cav, so I know it works. I gave them all March upgrade, which meant I never had to slow down. I was facing Longbowmen in pretty much all cities, the few pikes that were built were often out protecting their resources. I had a stack of catapults that always headed for the most cultural cities, while my cav was busy taking over the newly founded border cities. 12.6 strength longbows are no match for 16.5 strength cav. Pikes are a pain, but the AI isn't smart enough to train them. No civ had muskets.

The problem with Swordsmen is that your offense isn't that fast while research is, so any civ that gets to live peacefully until you reach them will get Longbows long before you reach them. And most importantly, infrastructure won't be built up so reinforcements are a pain. Cavalry can go six squares to reinforce, Swordsmen usually only one.

And if you go up agains the Chinese, your army will be Chu-Ko-Nued into oblivion. Samurai are even worse. Maybe it can work on Prince or less, but if you're good enough to conquer the world before Machinery you really should be playing on a higher difficulty for a challenge.

I must agree that once your opponents get Riflemen, Cavalry becomes almost obselete (they are only useful for pillaging, but Chariots would do the job almost as well for a much lower cost). Horsemen are really bad in this game, only useful when you're dominating in tech.

My cavalry domination (actually I ran out of continent when I had 62% of the land mass so I had to go for time) was on Noble with a twist, but I usually play on Emperor/Immortal.

 

[dar]

Cavalry are a good unit with a role to fill in weakening an extremely strong defender in a city with a 50% chance of making it out alive, and they are excelent intercepters and pillagers. However, They are a poor choice of unit to build an entire war arround.

You should try waging a few wars with just cavalry, especially if you play France a lot since you have defense units that can keep up with them (musketeers). You will have loses with no bombardment, although flanking promotions will reduce them considerably. Your wars will be much shorter, since you can take satellite cities fairly quickly, and you can even send some cannons/cats to the core cities using your enemies own (until recently ) road network.

 

[corruptionsucks]

Calvary, as mentioned, are great until rifleman. I usually go in ahead with my calvary, pillagin towns and key resources, while I wait for the catapults to rolls in. Small cities quickly fall if they have only 20% cultural protection and only longbowmen protecting them.

If I'm the first to military tradition, I don't, under any circumstances, trade this technology, until the very last moment. Calvary rule the world if you are the first to them.

 

[Ghraabthar]

I think the best advice is that in order to be successful in Civ IV at the higher difficulties, having a well rounded civ is the key. Therefore, I never totally ignore any aspect of my empire. However, my aggression is organized to allow for periods of growth mixed with periods of war. Like real life a long protracted war is your enemy, therefore careful planning before war is very crucial.

I usually play on large continent maps default except low sealevel, epic speed and monarch setting. My first goals are to develop a good economic base, and build up to eliminate my nearest neighbor with a combination of swordsmen/archers. Basically, my goal is to to eliminate at least one rival per time period after classical. After eliminating my neighbor I have some time to prepare for my medieval war, where combined arms is the key. If I've been fortunate with my units by the time I have hit the industrial age, I can upgrade some of my macemen to riflemen with city raider promotions, which I find are better than cavalry at assaulting cities. By the time you can build tanks, its simply a matter of how strong your economic base is at home to determine the speed of your victory.

A well balanced approace is the key to victory in my mind, as well as setting up situations where you know you can win. Don't attack a city until you know it will fall within a turn or two. Don't go too deep into enemy territory without an intact supply line for reinforcements. Don't hold cities that you can adequately defend. Always have your borders well protected. This type of abstract planning is your advantage over the AI, so the better you are at it the more successful you will be.

Also finally, in my experience, I will always achieve a domination victory (or even a diplomatic one) before conquest. So I don't have any advice to achieve that victory in particular, however the primary engine of my success is thoughtful warmongering. My last game I won in the 1890's, with the Incans and a final score of 29000. My score before the game ended was around 6000.

 

[mharmless]

The problem with Swordsmen is that your offense isn't that fast while research is, so any civ that gets to live peacefully until you reach them will get Longbows long before you reach them. And most importantly, infrastructure won't be built up so reinforcements are a pain. Cavalry can go six squares to reinforce, Swordsmen usually only one.

And if you go up agains the Chinese, your army will be Chu-Ko-Nued into oblivion. Samurai are even worse. Maybe it can work on Prince or less, but if you're good enough to conquer the world before Machinery you really should be playing on a higher difficulty for a challenge.

I went ahead and moved up to monarch over the holiday weekend. I've tried three times to win with this buisness of staying tech focused till cavalry, and every time has been a failure. At most seem to get 20 turns of cavalry warfare, which can double the empire's size. But since it was smaller than the AI in the first place it isn't saying much. The AI seems to easily keep up in research (of course) and still have his monsterous millitary. Defeated by war once and spaceship twice.

After those three failures fell back on early and constant warfare, with technology being allowed to be several techs behind the AI. Same basic game plan as what outlined before with prince. Still works like a charm. Swords/Catapults crushing everything up to muskets. Mace/Cat vs rifle, Rifle/Cannon vs infantry, Infantry/Cannon vs MechInf...

You dont need a tech advantage to beat the computer, so why even try to compete in the area it gets to cheat in?