How do people sustain long wars?

[AdMech]

(If it's too long, I numbered the most important parts. )

My wars always run out of steam! It may be that I just need to build bigger armies, or I attack too early. (1) What sort of numbers would one need for a war on Noble?

My strategy has been to build up one large stack, then move it across my enemy's territory in a methodical manner, conquering the cities closest to me first. Should I be using multiple stacks (say, as in a pincer attack)? I'm also thinking of striking straight for the largest and most important cities, instead of doing my usual "clean sweep."

As an example, I just built up maybe eight swordsmen/axemen and half a dozen catapults, then went to war. I conquered three out of my opponent's seven cities, but what with losses and leaving garrisons behind, I ended up running out of steam there. I thought I'd just build up my army a little and keep on truckin', but then the most puzzling thing occurred - it's taking forever to reach a good army size!

Quite a while has passed, and my army is only just now the size it was before. I'm not sure how long it should take, so maybe this is normal... but sheesh, that means that by the time when I'm ready to wage war again, I'll be using muskets or even rifles... and my first war was with axemen. (2) Maybe I need to constantly build troops in all cities, without pause for any but the most important infrastructure?

I think part of my problem is lackluster production in my cities, since only two of them produce troops in 3 or so turns, and they're far away from the front lines. (3) Do I need lots of 1-turn unit-producing cities or something like that?

Thanks for any tips!

 

[6K Man]

Plan ahead. Have at least one city always building units. There is no set number of units that make up a good attacking army.

Make sure your armies have enough siege engines, (@50% of your stack) so you can bombard defenses in a single turn and not give the AI time to build more defenders.

If you're at war, be at total war. You should be building units wherever possible, other than perhaps 1-2 commerce cities that are driving your research.

Build siege close to the front line, and mounted far to the rear. That way, they'll all arrive at the front at the same time.

 

[yanner39]

Sometimes it's easy to neglect the top line of the tech tree, but getting Literature (and a level 4 unit) means you can build the Heroic Epic which gives +100% military unit production. Build it in you military city.

In my current game, pre-1000AD I was building siege and maces 1 each turn.

Just to add, since my return to Civ4, I've been working on warring. Have a look if recent threads were I gotten some great advice. Here's a few...

Proper scouting of the enemy. Why? Well, identify the enemy's main stack and let it attack you if your cultural border. Also, if the enemy has axes defending it's cities, bring axes instead of Swords. The reason for this is because Axes have a bonus vs melee units. If Archers are defending the cities, bring swords as well.

 

[6K Man]

Decided to answer the non -numbered questions too...

My strategy has been to build up one large stack, then move it across my enemy's territory in a methodical manner, conquering the cities closest to me first. Should I be using multiple stacks (say, as in a pincer attack)? I'm also thinking of striking straight for the largest and most important cities, instead of doing my usual "clean sweep."

Don't split your stack unless you have overwhelming superiority. Attacking the capital is generally a good move, unless you'll be moving a long way through AI culture.

As an example, I just built up maybe eight swordsmen/axemen and half a dozen catapults, then went to war. I conquered three out of my opponent's seven cities, but what with losses and leaving garrisons behind, I ended up running out of steam there. I thought I'd just build up my army a little and keep on truckin', but then the most puzzling thing occurred - it's taking forever to reach a good army size!

That is not an especially impressive army, if you're attacking in the AD period. You should expect to lose a couple of catapults per city... so keep building them. With enough catapults (later Trebs/Cannon/etc), you will seldom lose any other attackers.

 

[Mantic0re]

Unless your caught with your pants down you should have a good idea where the AI's stack of doom (SoD) is located. Kill this and they collapse quickly.


I've no idea on the right answer regarding upper level planning of an attack. I generally take a border city (hopefully large) and then head for the highest production city (capital is 2nd target) I can see. Anything between these two points gets hit along the way. Sometimes I'll see the AI heavily fortify a city along this line. If I've got enough units en route to the battle and a one-city stack I'll occasionally march right by in hopes of capturing a major production center.

As far as maintaining a long war; I think the limiting factors are WW and other AI's. If your in too long the tech race can be lost to peaceful AI's. Faster wars are better. WW can be contained by some civics, the culture slider and the whip if necessary.

 

[lymond]

Well, my general rule is to not fight long wars. It's generally not effective unless you are setup for true warmongering. And even with warmongering it's good to have periods of peace to recover.

Wars should generally be quick and decisive. This requires an adequate number and mix of units to quickly take cities. Going for the cap is often a good idea as it will weaken the AI significantly and they will cap sooner, if that is what you want.

If you have taken 2 or 3 cities or more and find your army is out of gas, then sue for peace and usually get some techs and gold. This helps you catch up. Heal the remaining units as you reenforce and then attack again in 10 or so turns.

Conversely, when I find myself in a position in which have attacked with insufficient forces or planning it ends up in much longer war which is harder to recover from.

And yes, if you are fighting war, most of your empire should be dedicated to the effort. However, the whip will allow you to get necessary buildings in as well along the way. Whipping and chopping can help immensely in the war effort. Late game - draft or rush buy.

 

[kossin]

My long wars are usually several short wars glued together

 

[AdMech]

Thanks to all of you. Very helpful advice. I've just started a new game, and I will probably soon be posting a 4000 B.C. and an ~A.D. 1500 save so y'all can tell me where I went wrong. Unless I actually win!

That is not an especially impressive army, if you're attacking in the AD period.

So I should probably build a larger army, as well? I'm used to playing on Warlord so I think I may have underestimated the number of units required.

However, the whip will allow you to get necessary buildings in as well along the way. Whipping and chopping can help immensely in the war effort. Late game - draft or rush buy.

I know how to whip, but how do I draft and/or rush buy? Is it in the same location as the Whip button? What techs are required?

I'll try to figure it out on my own in this next game, as I'm sure it's fairly obvious, but I've never actually heard of these things before except in passing.

 

[lymond]

Rush Buy is next to the Whip button / Draft button above both

Nationhood > Draft

US > Rush Buy

Keep in mind that you should have your empire in the right shape to use this features. You don't just draft for the sake of drafting or even run Nationhood for that matter. There's some good articles on the use of each that can do better than me, but simply the keys/basics:

Drafting: Lots of Food and Population / Happy resources and civics

Rush Buy - generally need a pretty good economy so lots of cottages, merchants, trade routes, building wealth

 

[vicawoo]

Faster wars: Let reinforcements/healing units be a temporary garrison.
Don't waste time healing siege, just use them to bombard and let unused/reinforcement siege do the collateral.
Don't overuse siege to weaken defenders past the collateral limit.
Use promotions to heal.
On splitting your army: the main stack should always be big enough to take out the enemy city in one turn (two if bombardment is required). Any excess can heal/make a separate stack.

Petering out: Have workers build a direct road. You may have too few cities. You also probably whipped good tiles away, which give you a short term boost at a longer term cost. Try to avoid whipping special tiles/grassland mines.

This is under-rated in difficulty, but try to plan ahead the unit composition of your reinforcements. For catapults, I like my first attack to be 8 catapults + enough units to kill off the units + some safety units. The next wave of reinforcements should be enough catapults to replace catapult losses and then some, in case there are walls. When you've killed their main cities, you need smaller numbers of siege to kill off the 20% cities, so those extra catapults allow you to split the stack. Then it's mostly planning to replace losses.

 

[AdMech]

Thanks y'all. Keep 'em coming!

Use promotions to heal.

Should I save my barracks promotion until after a battle?

Petering out: Have workers build a direct road.

For reinforcements to travel along?

You may have too few cities.

I settled four, captured three, and lost two of those to eventually end up with five. I'm playing on Large Earth2 (Epic speed) and all the AIs have more, so I'm thinking I may need more... but there's not much good terrain left within my borders...

 

[lymond]

I recommend smaller maps like standard.

Barrack promos - It depends. For attackers it may be best to save the promos if you have the siege to wear down defenders. However, I usually go ahead and give the siege CRI or II to increase their odds of survival.

Roads - For reinforcements and to speed up the initial attack. Great for early rushes. (also, your new cities will have instant trade routes)

lastly, don't lose cities

 

[coanda]

Here's what a typical war looks like with no medic and only 6 catapults. ~3-4 turns moving your stack up to an enemy city. 2 turns in siege to bring down defenses. 1 turn of collateral and attack to kill the defenders and take the city. ~4 turns healing. Rinse, repeat.

Ideally, a war looks more like this: ~3-4 turns moving your stack to the enemy city. 1 turn to bring down defenses, collateral defenders, kill them, and take the city. 1 turn healing. Rinse, repeat.

Congratulations, you've just taken about half as long to do the exact same thing. That actually means your full war will be more than twice as fast, because the AI has less time to do things that will prolong the war. Less chance to build new cities, counter-attack and force a recall of your SoD, build more defenders and force you to call up reinforcements, get a tech advance that renders your army obsolete and forces an early cease-fire, drag other people in as war allies against you, whatever.

Here's the key, though. The second option only works if you bring enough siege along to do the bombard and collateral all in one turn, make proper use of collateral so you don't have heavily damaged units (except maybe a few catapults, who you can just drag along damaged and never use to attack, just to bombard), and have a medic along to heal your troops more quickly.

On the topic of getting a medic - when you get your first great general of the game, you want to stick him on the same square as one other military unit (e.g., a warrior), who has no promotions assigned yet (although if he has 3 exp from barracks not yet used, that's even better). Then you attach the general to the unit, and immediately give him Combat 1 -> Medic 1 -> Medic 2 -> Medic 3 -> Forester 1 -> Forester 2 -> Forester 3 (until you run out of experience; probably at Medic 3 or Forester 1). Your great medic will never take risks. Feel free to have him grab experience if fight odds are >99.9%, but otherwise keep him out of the fray. And your great medic should always be with your big stack. If you haven't gotten a great general yet, just give some unit Combat 1 and Medic 1, but get the great general as soon as possible to replace him.

 

[vicawoo]

Actually, when you hit a walled city, you can skip the healing turn.
If you hit a walled city, use that one turn to promote and heal.
When you win with a few units to spare (probably injured), use that turn to heal since the rest of the stack won't move yet.
Healing for 3 to 4 turns (ahem withdrawal) is probably the biggest reason people think catapult wars take so long.

 

[yanner39]

Here's what a typical war looks like with no medic and only 6 catapults. ~3-4 turns moving your stack up to an enemy city. 2 turns in siege to bring down defenses. 1 turn of collateral and attack to kill the defenders and take the city. ~4 turns healing. Rinse, repeat.

Ideally, a war looks more like this: ~3-4 turns moving your stack to the enemy city. 1 turn to bring down defenses, collateral defenders, kill them, and take the city. 1 turn healing. Rinse, repeat.

Congratulations, you've just taken about half as long to do the exact same thing. That actually means your full war will be more than twice as fast, because the AI has less time to do things that will prolong the war. Less chance to build new cities, counter-attack and force a recall of your SoD, build more defenders and force you to call up reinforcements, get a tech advance that renders your army obsolete and forces an early cease-fire, drag other people in as war allies against you, whatever.

Here's the key, though. The second option only works if you bring enough siege along to do the bombard and collateral all in one turn, make proper use of collateral so you don't have heavily damaged units (except maybe a few catapults, who you can just drag along damaged and never use to attack, just to bombard), and have a medic along to heal your troops more quickly.

On the topic of getting a medic - when you get your first great general of the game, you want to stick him on the same square as one other military unit (e.g., a warrior), who has no promotions assigned yet (although if he has 3 exp from barracks not yet used, that's even better). Then you attach the general to the unit, and immediately give him Combat 1 -> Medic 1 -> Medic 2 -> Medic 3 -> Forester 1 -> Forester 2 -> Forester 3 (until you run out of experience; probably at Medic 3 or Forester 1). Your great medic will never take risks. Feel free to have him grab experience if fight odds are >99.9%, but otherwise keep him out of the fray. And your great medic should always be with your big stack. If you haven't gotten a great general yet, just give some unit Combat 1 and Medic 1, but get the great general as soon as possible to replace him.

QFT

This was posted in another thread I started a while back. I based my war campaign strategy on it and it works great. At the very least, it gives me an idea how I am doing and whether it is taking so long.

What I have trouble sometimes is picking my war route. What I mean is, some say you should go for the capital, which I 100% agree. However, in my current game, I took the first border city no problem, took 3 or 4 turns to then reach the capital, took the capital in 2 turns.

At this point, I've just split the enemy empire in two. I can either go for the cities to the east and to the west. Either way, you need to stop the war at some point because of ww and to heal. If not, you then need to march your army across the continent to take the remaining cities.

Anyways, I'm getting better at war and now, alot of my games are warmongering games.

Another thing I've done is play on a small map. This allows me to get more games in for practice.

 

[oppy]

Sometimes it's easy to neglect the top line of the tech tree, but getting Literature (and a level 4 unit) means you can build the Heroic Epic which gives +100% military unit production. Build it in you military city.

In my current game, pre-1000AD I was building siege and maces 1 each turn.

I have a pretty contradicting view. I play on IMM/NOR and the cost of maintaining extra units that aren't doing anything can really escalate. For the most part, I try to keep the minimum amount of units that I can, and then once I get a good tech position (like first to steel or rifles or cavalry), I whip / draft / rush buy like crazy to get as many units as possible as quickly as possible. I try to be ready to war in less than 10 turns.

The idea of one city always building units in peace time without really preparing for a war seems just awful to me. I notice a couple of deity level guys replying to this so I'm interested if they agree.

 

[yanner39]

I have a pretty contradicting view. I play on IMM/NOR and the cost of maintaining extra units that aren't doing anything can really escalate. For the most part, I try to keep the minimum amount of units that I can, and then once I get a good tech position (like first to steel or rifles or cavalry), I whip / draft / rush buy like crazy to get as many units as possible as quickly as possible. I try to be ready to war in less than 10 turns.

The idea of one city always building units in peace time without really preparing for a war seems just awful to me. I notice a couple of deity level guys replying to this so I'm interested if they agree.

I do agree with this. For me, it's really because I'm never sure about the power rating so I always want to make sure I have enough units. Most of the time, I tend to over-build units and it does cost me in terms of gold.

I'm still not at the point where I'll declare on Shaka with a 0.7 power rating like kossin did in his last RPC. I'm still practicing my warring so I'll get there soon enough.

 

[kossin]

I have a pretty contradicting view. I play on IMM/NOR and the cost of maintaining extra units that aren't doing anything can really escalate. For the most part, I try to keep the minimum amount of units that I can, and then once I get a good tech position (like first to steel or rifles or cavalry), I whip / draft / rush buy like crazy to get as many units as possible as quickly as possible. I try to be ready to war in less than 10 turns.

The idea of one city always building units in peace time without really preparing for a war seems just awful to me. I notice a couple of deity level guys replying to this so I'm interested if they agree.

Not only that but hammers spent in units are hammers not spent on workers/settlers/infrastructure which makes your empire better.

10 turns for a military buildup is good however it depends on how many cities/what you're up against of course.

 

[gilmore606]

A tip that helped me out for enduring the grind: during a war, turn the science slider down and the culture slider up to get some happiness to counter the war weariness. It also helps borders pop faster in newly captured cities.

 

[yanner39]

^^ this.

One war to capture cities, and hopefully their iron (very important if they are ahead of me in tech and about to get steel).

One war to capture their best cities.

One war to clean up.

The first two wars can be reversed in order, if I already have a tech lead and enough to easily overwhelm my target.

Note: when way ahead, I do fight single wars. That is rare when playing challenging levels though, except as the final war in a domination game.

This is great advice. Going after specific types of cities. When I DOW, I don't consider the quality of the city - simply just go in on a pre-determine path and go after whatever city is in my way. It frustrates me that I never thought of this.

@kossin; @oppy

Are you suggesting that building the HE is not always worth it? I've always tried to build the HE in my military city (I go hunting for Barbs in the early game). However, after I build it, I should only be building military in this city. It is true that I could use this production city to build workers/settlers.

I usually try and build the HE earlyin the game. Should I delay it until all the land is settled? It depends I guess on whether on want to settle this land through war?