Hannibal's Attack

[mavraam]

I was playing as Rome in an 8 civ game and for no reason Egypt declared war on me. Immediately, I got about 5 allies to form an alliance. They all had to go through me to get to Egypt so once I beat back Egypts attacks, I was the first to invade.

I really didn't want this war even though I knew I'd win, all of the cities were too far away and very well defended. I wasted a lot of units taking one city then I remembered Hannibal's war with Rome.

Once Hannibal defeated the main Roman army, Rome's remaining forces retreated into the walled city of Rome itself. Instead of getting embroiled in a long painfull siege, he went around the country pillaging trying to draw the forces out where he could crush them in the open.

So I did the same thing, I took about 5 knights and ruined all of Egypt's improvements causing starvation, lost income, etc. Whenever he sent someone out to challenge me, my knights slaughtered them.

Then I withdrew into my territory and continued to build while my allies carved up Egypt. The icing on the cake is that all my allies wound up with useless, completely unimproved cities far from their territory and therefore ripe with corruption that were huge economic drains.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out but my position is looking very solid after that war and I have great relations witll all the countries that are still alive!

 

[Arrian]

Good work on Egypt. If you don't have the firepower to take down cities, pillaging is the way to go. That way, you keep the initiative and you hurt your enemy (and make them much more receptive to peace talks), at minimal cost to you. Of course, I'd prefer to take the cities, but there are times when building that nice new university is much more important than a company of Knights.

One other nice side effect to your strategy is this: not only did your allies end up with useless, broken cities, but the bulk of their armed forces are over there now, and will likely stay over there. If you ever end up fighting them, you will likely end up slaughtering large numbers of obselete units in what used to be Egypt.

Also, you may just pick up some of those Egyptian cities near your border via cultural defection if Egypt gets destroyed (otherwise they'll likely defect back to Egypt).

-Arrian

p.s. I love the Patton quote. I've never seen that one before, but I couldn't agree more (Maginot Line, anyone?).

 

[Dragon2]

What difficulty level were you playing at? I ask because in a Monarch-level game I went out of my way to be nice to everyone except one neighbor whose territory I needed. Out of the blue, after I had destroyed that one opponent and was at peace with the world, my Iroquois neighbors declared war on me, and then everyone allied with them against me!