TimTheEnchanter said:
Ouch. What was the matchup -- Non-vet cavalry against gunpowder units on the river? Were there walls? How far were you from espionage (for spies to bring down walls) or machine tools (firepower=2 rocks) or mobile warfare? That sounds like a case where rushing into the attack might have been counter productive, even with that many units at your disposal.
I started playing a space ship game and wish to finish that way. Sometime before 1500 I got tired of the Greeks and Vikings killing my caravans and sneak attacking here and there. I decided to get rid of them and contain Mongols whom I have been fighting a low scale war with. I switched to Fundamentalism as soon as it was available and started building my military up; first Dragoons and then Cavalry. Unfortunately all my enemies had gunpowder.
Soon Japanese attacked me too and I decided to eliminate them too. The war against Japanese went quickly as they did not initially have gunpowder. Mongol containment went a little slower than planned but not by far.
The war with Vikings did not go well at all. With Greeks it was worse. Both capitals are on river, had city walls, and about 3 vet muskeeters. Furthermore, Athens had no sea access. My first attempt using mostly regular cavalry failed miserably and I lost all my units (about 10 for each capital).
My attempt in 1754 invloved 4 destroyers (3 vet) and 4 Cavalry (some vet) agianst Trondheim which this time had only 2 musketeers. I lost 3 destroyers and 1 cavalry but succeeded. 8 of the 19 Cavalry I used against Athens (which had 4 musketeers this time) were vet.
I did try to take down Athens walls with spies in my earlier attempt but I only had 3 spies there and lost all 3.
I did not have artillery or tanks. Waiting to get them may not have helped much as more than one rival is researching conscription.
I have plenty of cities and plenty of money, so the units were not much of a concern. My biggest concern is staying in Fundamentalism for too long delaying my launch into space. In retrospect, my regrets are:
1. Not accounting for the fact that the cities were on river. (This is embarrasing but I only noticed it when you asked the question.)
2. Not making all vet units. I could have achieved this in 2 ways: rushing barracks or bribing Viking Uppsala which had Sun Tzu. (I eventually did bribe Uppsala but after my failure to capture the 2 capitals.)
3. Not concentrating on one enemy at a time. Although I did accept several cease fire offers and concentrated on 2 or 3 at a time instead of all 4.