Help...I can never develop my military!!

[Night.Haunter]

Well, its my first time posting here so:

Hi everybody!!!

Anyway, I have trouble on Noble (yes, kinda nooby). Usually, I can gain a technological edge over all of them and have a great start. As I progress towards the 1400~AD, when I am researching for musketmen, the AI always attack me and I am always hopeless and defenceless.

So, can anyone give me any tips or useful strategies to develop my military early?

Thanks in advance!

 

[cabert]

Well, its my first time posting here so:

Hi everybody!!!

Anyway, I have trouble on Noble (yes, kinda nooby). Usually, I can gain a technological edge over all of them and have a great start. As I progress towards the 1400~AD, when I am researching for musketmen, the AI always attack me and I am always hopeless and defenceless.

So, can anyone give me any tips or useful strategies to develop my military early?

Thanks in advance!

first, welcome to the forum

second, at 1400 AD you should be researching rifling. If you don't have musketmen in 1400 AD, you're late.

third, you can build units prior to gunpowder. You can even put them to good use and be the top dog (or even the winner ) a lot before gunpowder comes into play.

4th, you can kill better troops by pure numbers. If you're not totally out of date, you can even have an honorable loss/kill ratio. For example, a stack of catapults can decimate a stack of musketmen with ease. You lose the first 3, then you kill'em all.

5th, it's often better to be the attacker. You get to chose the battle ground, the moment, and if you still get suprise attacked, you have been preparing for war for a while, so you're not naked.

 

[Lanstro]

It's not hard to get a jump on your neighbours militarily, even on the higher levels. It's just a question of prioritising.

You only have so many hammers and beakers to work with at any one time. It's just a matter of prioritising towards military if that's your problem. Are you building too many wonders you don't really need? Are you chasing religious techs instead of hitting the military and economy ones? Are you building libraries, markets and colosseums out of habit when there's no need to?

The other key is to know when you have an overwhelming window of opportunity. At noble, you can usually war with a technological advantage. You say that you usually have the tech lead early, so warring early on should be easy for you. Natural windows of opportunity are:

exploring warrior v exposed worker (ie worker theft)
chariot v archers (pillage them back to the stone ages, more essential on higher difficulties)
axe/swordsmen v archers, macemen/cats/trebs v longbow or worse (take their cities)
cavalry v longbow/pikemen (easy to take their cities)
tanks v riflemen
powerful unique unit v inferior defensive units
etc

Usually you have a window of at least a few turns during which your units vastly outclass what they have as long as you played your cards right. Take advantage of it when it arrives.

 

[civtrader]

And don´t forget:

The AI trades tech like crazy. If one of them have something, ohers wil follow soon.

Your strategy must be:

1. Kill / weakn the AI-tech leader early like Lanstro told you.

2. If you decide to hit the AI, hit hard. On smaller maps, you should be able to capture/raze one ore two cities fast and be able to attack anotherone. The AI will normally agree to make peace (after 10 rounds of course) if you do so.

3. Yes, you must wage war sooner or later. No, it is not possible to avoid it if you want to win.

Welcome 2 the forum and good luck!

 

[Peqino]

I used to have same kind of problems the thread starter is having. I used to be a peaceful builder type, and never had patience to develop my military. This lead my empire being under serious threat in mid-game or so, even if my economy and research were flourishing.

My advice to Night.Haunter is to found a Military City as early as possible. It goes like this:

1. Found a production orientated city. It should have as much hammers as possible in its radius, and also decent food to grow enough to work those hammer tiles. The less commerce, the better, since the only goal is to maximize production output.

2. The only non-military thing you should ever build in this city is Granary (to boost population growth). After that, get Barracks and start building military units like there's no tomorrow.

3. Keep building units in this city throughout the game, whatever other options might become available. The only exception should be production-boosting buildings, such as Forge.

This way, I have managed to kind of automatize my military development to provide at least decent protection. Note, however, that this is for peaceful players who use their military only for defence and limited, small-scale offencives.

 

[Thrar]

When you're playing on Noble, you're hardly newbish any more I'd say. Of course there's lots more to discover, but that'll come with time (and these forums).

It's not necessary to go to war even on high levels while playing kinda normally, much less on Noble. There are several things to keep the AI from going after you.

- don't let your power rating fall too far behind
- try to have good (at least pleased) relations with your neighbors
- have the same religion as your neighbors
- be nice and give in to demands/requests, unless it's really going to kill your strategy.

Having said that, I do agree that most people usually have at least one or two wars during their average game. While you have a tech lead, make use of the opportunities Lanstro described, and maybe you'll find others. Maybe someone lacks a strategically important resource, or you can deny it easily, thus creating such opportunities.
Before striking, be sure about your objective, and that your force will be sufficient, even if you get a streak of bad results. Don't rely on winning odds below 95%, and even for those above it's better to have backup.

 

[r_rolo1]

First of all, welcome to the forums!

In second, in Noble ( like Cabert said) in 1400 you sould have at least grenadiers. Looking for what you said, it looks that you have constructed too much wonders and/or had too much cities before courthouses. That would explain the apparent lack of units you seem to have and the slow tech rate.

Like Lanstro said, this is a decisions game, that vs that , and wonders and settlers are expensive, so building a good army must be a priority ( and is cheaper for you to build a army and take the wonders, the cities and the techs that your neighbours gently got for you than to do it all by your self )

And remember, hit early and hard! If you focus on the army, 3 or 4 axemen can take easily a enemy non-hill non-shrine capital. If you try to do that when the enemy has four heavily promoted archers in it and 60% culture defense, probably you'll have to wait until catapults. And normally capital cities are in good spots....

Edit: A minor advice ( it worked for me ... ) : try to do a serie of duel maps with the objective of erradicating the enemy in the shortest time possible. It sharpens your early war skills

Good luck, then!

 

[bonafide11]

2. The only non-military thing you should ever build in this city is Granary (to boost population growth). After that, get Barracks and start building military units like there's no tomorrow.

3. Keep building units in this city throughout the game, whatever other options might become available. The only exception should be production-boosting buildings, such as Forge.

You'll also want to build a courthouse in your military city (and all cities)...

 

[slaze]

build the Heroic Epic and have that city only build units

 

[Peqino]

You'll also want to build a courthouse in your military city (and all cities)...

Yep, you're right of course. Some national wonders, such as Heroic Epic, are good in military cities, too.

I just tried to simplify my point. It's really easy to lose focus and let the military city slip into some kind of hybrid city. Been there, done that.

 

[Vizzini]

Don't be too afraid of building at least some culture into your military city. You don't need a lot, especially if the city is sandwiched well inside your own culture borders. If however the city is a border city you'll definitely want to put enough cultural/happines buildings into the city to prevent you from losing tiles to the AI's culture wall.

Usually a coastal city doesn't work well since you lose production to the ocean tiles. That said if you decide to do it (or have no other real option) try to minimize the number of coastal tiles within the fat cross. In a perfect city you'll have a little canal that extends strait out from your city two tiles before hitting open ocean (so that the ocean tiles form a 'T' with your city at the bottom of it) This gives you two ocean tiles in the fat cross which helps a bit with food and allows your military city to also spit out naval units.

Military cities by design will have very good production - try to resist the temptation to build Wonders there and stick with churning out military units non-stop.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

It's been said before but I'll say it again. Welcome to the forums.

I used to have the same problem with military, the main mistake i was making was building too much infrastructure. Like another poster said have a military city or 2. Once I learnt that I pretty much always had a big enough army to fend off any sneak attacks.

You also have to learn which AI to watch out for, there are some real nasty buggers out there like Monty, Alex, Catherine and Shaka to name a few.

Always be on the look out to stir up a few wars to, I'm frequently looking into the diplomacy screen to see who will attack who and for how much, set the dog's of war onto the tech leader. Some leaders will go into a war even if you're at Cautious, (Monty and Genghis i think) This will keep them off you back. For a while.

 

[Morgrad]

I agree with much of what has been said: build a military production city, and crank out units with it. Start early, and don't stop. I'd rather have to disband old obsolete units to save upkeep than stop building units. Of course, ideally I'll have old units with nice promotions that I'll upgrade, but that's not always feasable.

A great suggestion above is to play a couple duel maps with the goal to kill your enemy as soon as possible. Here are some more:

Shut off all victory conditions but conquest (or domination) for a couple games until you can win it fairly consistently. The AI sucks at most things but space-race, but this is about forcing yourself to do something you're not used to, so don't worry about the fact that the AI probably can't win.

Force yourself to play a game without building a single wonder. You'll be amazed what you can accomplish with all those hammers (and with how many wonders you'll end up with by taking them from your enemies!)

 

[Uncle E]

Maybe a couple runs w/ raging barbarians turned on might get you into more of a unit building mode and get a few highly promoted units that would get you off to a better start?

 

[Peqino]

Many excellent strategical advices given. I'd like to add a few tactical ones:

- When you've got your military city up and running, don't limit it to just one kind of troops. Each unit has its advantages and disadvantages, so having a diversity of different units makes your army much more powerful. Learn those advantages and disadvantages from manual or civilopedia, if you're not familiar with them, and fight wisely!

- Siege units are very powerful in Civ IV (a bit too powerful, in my opinion), bacause they inflict collateral damage. Have some of them in your army, even if you are not planning an offensive at the moment. When a stack of enemy units appears at the gates of your city, it's nice to weaken them with collateral hits before they attack.