[GS] How do I prosecute an early war?

[HealthySnacks]

Hello all!
I rarely go to war in my Civ games, but I am trying to expand my playstyle because sometimes you need to go to war if you get boxed in by the AI. I am playing a game as Sweden on Immortal and find myself in this state:

https://imgur.com/a/Dfm6lXF

As the game stands, it is pretty clear to me that I'm going to need to prepare for an early war, most likely with Kongo. Further, I am probably going to want to conquer some additional territory anyway given how little room I have for expansion. With that said, I have some questions.

• What units should I build? How many?
  
• Should I build an encampment?
• Should I aim to take fight Kongo or the Inca?
• More generally, how should I prepare for a classical era (< turn 75) war when I don't have access to a unique unit and when I want to take territory?

Any general tips would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Mahasona]

The Inca are probably sitting around some awkward mountain/hills tiles, without seeing more map it's hard to know.

Kongo have a couple of cities in tricky terrain, plus a unique sword if they can get there.

But first I'd get rid of that barb camp, it has horses around.

Two Kongo cities have space for your two archers to attack. Switch immediately to making warriors and slot the adogee(?) card in to get them made quicker, and go after them with I dunno - 4 warriors and your two range and see how it goes...

Could get messy with that slow terrain around...

 

[HealthySnacks]

The Inca are probably sitting around some awkward mountain/hills tiles, without seeing more map it's hard to know.

Kongo have a couple of cities in tricky terrain, plus a unique sword if they can get there.

But first I'd get rid of that barb camp, it has horses around.

Two Kongo cities have space for your two archers to attack. Switch immediately to making warriors and slot the adogee(?) card in to get them made quicker, and go after them with I dunno - 4 warriors and your two range and see how it goes...

Could get messy with that slow terrain around...

Thanks for the response! So you can prosecute an early war with just 4 Warriors and 2 Archers? Thankfully the Matterhorn is near me so the warriors can get Alpine Training to mitigate the slow terrain.

 

[Bibor]

So you can prosecute an early war with just 4 Warriors and 2 Archers?

If you want to capture cities, the answer is probably "no".
What will happen that you'll get an enemy city down to 50% HP, but then the AI will outproduce you in unit count and slowly your units will start losing health and finally die.
If you start a war with so few units, make sure you follow up with horsemen or swordsmen you can chop out quickly. Early war means almost completely ignoring everything else.

For example, there was no point in settling Uppsala at all. That city needs tile to work and workers to improve it. You can't build anything with food.
The same is true for Linkoping - if settled on the hex you marked for a market, you'd have at least one plains hill to work, this way you have to delay both the campus and have crappy production.
Generally speaking, the first 3 cities need to be as productive as possible, as soon as possible. Land grab is not important, especially not if you plan on conquest.

 

[MrRadar]

@OP: In this position I would try not go to war at all. You have space to the west for a couple of decent cities on the coast, and lots of space to the east. I see no boxing in. As soon as you have religion spread it to Kongo and make them into friend/ally.
Because with both expands settled to the north where they are now they have abysmal production and will be very poor troop factories without further development.

 

[RealHuhn]

You can't get a religion and go to war at the same time, especially on Deity. Haven't played Immortal in a while. Just expand to the west and kill him later if it's still necessary. Also as Bibor mentioned, early production tiles are always the highest priority. Without them, you can't get anything done.

Edit: A religion based strategy with good faith generation has a very easy time of buying units with faith in the medieval era. No AI is capable of defending against that.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Classical age is not really the time to initiate war. It is however the time to prepare for a medieval war.

It is too late to start an archer offence.
Swordsmen suck.
Horsemen are kinda ok, but you'd like to have a siegetower to go along with them, and the heavy chariot -> knight is a preferable upgrade path. (although things changed in GS so the horses might be a better choise than they were in the past)
Xbows and/or knights are awesome and a siegetower is easy to get with knights unlike horsemen.

So i would tech to knights or xbows. Meanwhile keep settling and produce a bunch of archers or heavy chariots to upgrade the turn you get the tech. Then attack. I have no experience with buying units with faith as suggested above. I always use gold.

6-8 units is a nice number for an attack squad. (not 4 warriors and 2 archers though. 6 archers/xbows + 1 warrior, or 6 knights + 1 siege tower)

 

[pkaem]

If you want an early war on heigher difficulty it's true that you have to dedicate lots of resources to it. Note that since the last patch rams and towers don't work with cavalary anymore. There are some things to consider if you go to war, which can be benifical still, because you get land and cities. You can use them to set up a sv or go full domination. A cv is pretty much ruled out by this. You may want an encampment with barracks early to get a general started. It helps lots. You also get access to the raid card earlier. You want to pillage many tiles. Then you need to check which units you'll make first. You can push with horses, it's really strong but you need to be quick,when your enemy gets walls your advance is over. Swordsmen don't suck but you need them fast. Build at least two warriors and get bronze working asap, that means you go and fight barbs for eurekas and era score. If you want archers or horses you need to get a slinger for the archery boost. Build your encampment barracks and get a city with iron. With just one source of horse/iron you want +2 magnus for the resource diacount. You may even want to chop a unit or two. Denounce your target and declare formal war when you have 3 units, when you go with melee you want to bring a ram. It's the much safer option, because you can destroy walls. Get more units to reinforce. Don't go nuts in the units exchanging phase. Take good terrain and let him attack you while he suffers penaltys for river crossings, bad terrain, hills. When he runs out of units start working on the city defences and pillage. You can mix cav and melee aswell. Later advance to courser/knight plus muskets. Captapults are slow and vulnerable, i don't like them much but trying to get better with them atm. I personally don't like archers rushes, they a fragile. You need at least four archers and a warrior, much better six and two warriors and most important, good terrain. Archers need line of sight, so can't shoot over hills and through forests. Last, you can screw your plans if you hit a dark age in the classical era. Loyality will make you lose all newly conquered cities. To prevent lolyality swaps you can put a governor in your conquered citiea and/or chop in pop. But you will get problems even in a normal age when your enemy is golden and you fight away from your territory.

 

[seanos08]

Classical age is not really the time to initiate war. It is however the time to prepare for a medieval war.

It is too late to start an archer offence.
Swordsmen suck.
Horsemen are kinda ok, but you'd like to have a siegetower to go along with them, and the heavy chariot -> knight is a preferable upgrade path. (although things changed in GS so the horses might be a better choise than they were in the past)
Xbows and/or knights are awesome and a siegetower is easy to get with knights unlike horsemen.

So i would tech to knights or xbows. Meanwhile keep settling and produce a bunch of archers or heavy chariots to upgrade the turn you get the tech. Then attack. I have no experience with buying units with faith as suggested above. I always use gold.

6-8 units is a nice number for an attack squad. (not 4 warriors and 2 archers though. 6 archers/xbows + 1 warrior, or 6 knights + 1 siege tower)

I think you need to make a couple swordsmen to use the siege tower or bring a couple catapults.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Oh didn't know the siege towers dont work for cavalry anymore. I haven't really done any warring since the updates. In that case i would probably stick to mostly archers and xbows.
(I used to do nothing else in vanilla early game because it was way overpowered, got bored and turned myself in a pacifist only player now)

Did they change anything to make encampments viable ? Because in vanilla they were the most useless thing in the game.

 

[pkaem]

Not really imoroved but if you want a general what can be really benefical (most importantly combat strengh AND movement bonus, catapults can move and shoot in range of a general) there is no way around.

 

[seanos08]

When attacking a city you need 2 catapults in range. 1 catapult will be killed by the city ranged attack before it can knock the walls down.

 

[Victoria]

When attacking a city you need 2 catapults in range. 1 catapult will be killed by the city ranged attack before it can knock the walls down.

Not true
The city will shoot a scout over a catapult.
Move the catapult in range in tepees to limit damage
Use archers to wear the walls down as well.