Hammurabi and his stack of doom

[Red Wegener]

Hi all,

I have been reading the CivFanatics boards since I got Civ III and have been playing since Civ I. Civ is still my favorite game of all time.

I had a very funny thing happen in my current game that caused me to finally register so I could post it.

I am playing a monarch game as Zululand on a normal, pangea world with 8 civs. I was allowing my allies to finish off Rome while I built factories when Hammurabi sends a stack of doom next to one of my cities, 79 units mostly infantry.

He is attacking my city where I have a 3 tile choke point with fortresses in the mountains. I had kept Babylon trapped here the whole game and I guess he finally got fed up with it.

The city was defended with about 6 infantry and I had 4 more infantry plus some swordsman and Impi in the fortresses. I only had 2 units in every other city so I moved 1 from each to this city. That gave me about 23 units to defend against his 79.

I press enter and Hammurabi declares war. When the dust clears, poor Hammurabi has lost 70 units and I have lost 8 and gained a great leader. It was so funny to watch all his infantry attacking and dying.

I'll post the save in case any of you want to watch the carnage.

Red

 

[wohmongarinf00l]

loved the carnage!
i wonder why the like to use infantry for attacking....and poor babylonians are stuck with a miserable upgrade chain(bowman ->longbowman). didn't have a stitch of cavalry in the whole stack - such a shame!

 

[philippe]

hehe they are fools.but you too.YOU could had hinderd the stack,bring on the artillery bombard the hell outta them and have no casualty!

 

[Dynamic Cow]

23 units... killing off 70 units... while you only lose 8... what happended to swarming, overrunning etc...?

 

[History_Buff]

It forgot about how easy it is to win a defensive battle when there are no tanks, planes, or artillery. Take WWI for example.

 

[elfstorm]

What is it with the Babylonians and their stack mania??

The biggest stacked armies I've seen (35 and 24) were both Babylonian as well.

And they were both wiped out. Nice of Hammurabi to provide me with so many Leaders though.

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by wohmongarinf00l

i wonder why the like to use infantry for attacking....
.....didn't have a stitch of cavalry in the whole stack - such a shame!

This is an unexpected result of the latest patch (1.21f) where the Firaxis programmers flagged infantry and mech infantry as offensive & defensive units. I believe since they are as cheap as cavalry (infantry) and cheaper than tanks (mech infantry), the AI builds them instead.

 

[Red Wegener]

Philippe, normally I would have used artillary against it but I didn't have many at the time and they were defending against rome. Usually I have more at this point in a game but I had taken over so many roman cities that I was working to get infantry into them to defend.

I don't know if Babylon had many calvary he could have used to attack with. He sent a few on later turns but not many. I had the tech lead so no one had tanks. I was about 12 turns from tanks.

He should have used Artillary to weaken me, but as many people have pointed out the AI just doesn't know how to use artillary.

Red

 

[Solver]

Yah, this is what the AI double flag strategies lead to. It uses the Infantry on offensive in a massive fasion, and this is what you get.

Oddly enough, I've also seen stacks of 80 units by Hamurabbi - that was a fun war.

 

[wisefool]

My guess is because Hammurabi is a bipolar nut. He will be nice and polite for a few thousand years, building up strength and power. When he has a strong infrastructure and all he can build is units, he will expand his borders and spend some of his army.

He is similar in this aspect to Joan, except Joan is much more pragmatic and backstabbing.

Compared to the Zulu or the Aztec who just declare war because they are bored..

 

[Shabbaman]

What's wrong with that? That's what I do when I get bored...

 

[WarlordMatt]

Welcome to the forums, Red!

I didn't download the save yet but I can already tell the battle made a helluva show!!

LOL

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by philippe
hehe they are fools.but you too.YOU could had hinderd the stack,bring on the artillery bombard the hell outta them and have no casualty!

It's often better to do as Red did, even if you have artillery available. If you wait for the AI to attck you with his infantry, he will attack with really bad odds (6 attack vs. your 10 defense modified by city/fortifying). Keep the artillery in the city and you'll take a few HP's off the attackers as well. The result is that the AI will lose all his units while you'll lose just a few and probably get a leader.

If OTOH, you bombard the stack before it attacks, all the wounded units will retreat back into a city to heal. You must then attack them before they get back home (which may make you lose quite a few attacking units) or let them get back, heal and then come at you again - or even worse - see them defending the cities you want to attck.

 

[Carver]

Originally posted by Solver
Yah, this is what the AI double flag strategies lead to. It uses the Infantry on offensive in a massive fasion, and this is what you get.

But this is historically acurate. In WWI simple infantry is just about all that was available. Infantry were used offensively, but were better on defense, as in Civ3. That's why the battle lines didn't move much in WWI, and they won't move much either in Civ if all both civs have are masses of infantry.

 

[Archbob]

I usually declare war because their shields aren't they same color as mine.

 

[JuicyCivNewbie]

Originally posted by Carver


But this is historically acurate. In WWI simple infantry is just about all that was available. Infantry were used offensively, but were better on defense, as in Civ3. That's why the battle lines didn't move much in WWI, and they won't move much either in Civ if all both civs have are masses of infantry.

Actually though, in WW1 they did more of a human tactic, bombarding with artillery first and then attacking with infantry. I'm pretty sure they didn't use the 'ai tactic' very often (just attacking the enemy without even trying to soften them up).