How do you play defensively?

[SrslySirius]

In strategy games I've played in the past, I often enjoyed building a stronghold and daring opponents to try and invade me. In Civ4 I have never bothered to do this. I never build walls, I rarely build defensive units like archers or machine guns, I never bother with defensive unit promotions, and I never ever play as protective leaders.

The main reason for this is pillaging.

Sure, I could fortify my cities and build nice big garrisons. But that doesn't stop the AI from running around and destroying all my improvements. There's no point in trying to defend my cities. I have to defend my borders. And defensive traits don't help with that.

So what I always end up doing is building a lot of offensive units. I use them to invade (of course), and when I'm not conquering someone, I keep them spread around on the outskirts of my cities. So if someone declares on me, I'm meeting them at the border. I feel especially safe when engineering and railroads come in.

If pillaging didn't exist, I would do things very differently. As far as I know, there's no way to disable it. So I feel like a big aspect of the game has been nullified for me. Anyone else feel the same way, or am I missing some strategy to cope?

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

There really is no defense in Civ. It is a war game, and the best thing to do in war is strike first. Fire the first nuke, and you win. Attack their stack first, and you win. Offense is the best defense.

 

[s.bernbaum]

CIV is only a war game, if you choose to make it one. True, you always have to be ready to war, at least locally, but you can play a peaceful game by using good diplomacy and having a decent military to use if needed.

As to how to play defensively, you can't win a military victory that way but you can win one of the non-military victories that way. However, you can't just hole up in your cities and wait for the attacker to foolishly lose all units against them. You have to have a good size field force (stack) that you use to attack and destroy invaders, once they enter your empire. You have the advantage of movement there and should be able to do so. In this type of defense, you are using your army offensively but only within your own territory. Once you destroy enough invading units, the AIs are willing to declare peace.

 

[shulgi]

^^ In that same light, siege are the best way to take down invading stacks, you have the advantage of mobility and can choose to attack when the opponent is on a plains tile. I don't think it would be too interesting to just sit back behind castles with longbows - the Chicken Pizza strategy isn't really much of a strategy. It's a change from civ2 and 3 but a good one

 

[SrslySirius]

So you all agree that walls/defensive bonuses/defensive promotions/protective trait are mostly useless and have little practical application for human players.

That seems odd. Why keep them in the game then?

 

[s.bernbaum]

So you all agree that walls/defensive bonuses/defensive promotions/protective trait are mostly useless and have little practical application for human players.

That seems odd. Why keep them in the game then?

They make the strategically poor AI a bit more challenging. Also, they can let one of your cities, attacked by an unexpected antagonist from an unexpected direction, hold out long enough for your field stack to arrive and destroy the attackers.

 

[shulgi]

Walls and castles are useful but they aren't a good basis for a general strategy, good for important border cities and so on... Without strong defensive bonuses (including culture), attacking would be completely over-powered, the numerical advantage of defenders is only broken by siege which is hard to counter. The game has strong offense and strong defense, one needs the other, that's why these crazy, brute force 20-60 unit stacks get built.

 

[Izuul]

So you all agree that walls/defensive bonuses/defensive promotions/protective trait are mostly useless and have little practical application for human players.

Yep, they aren't very useful. They can have some value if you start next to Shaka though

 

[jarhead_leif]

civ4 AI's are stupid that they focus invading on one city (or to liberate a certain city). That's why you only have to focus your defence on your front row and just leave a one unit defender on core/productive cities until later eras.
You can also easily flank they're rear cities while pressuring their troops to push front.

Thus making both AI and human likely similar in strategy.

Even the GreatHannibal in civ4 doesn't know how to cross the Alps.

 

[Core Imposter]

I think the design decision might have been made due to the AI's inability to war effectively. Not a very dynamic game if the AI simply turtles and the borders never move.

 

[Core Imposter]

Defense is a holistic concept in Civ4 rather than just walls and pointy sticks.

Aspects include unit choice and stack composition, placement of cities and design of transport system, terrain improvements, building choice, use of culture, diplomacy, scouting, spying, and research choice.

Also, placement of mobile reserves, clearing forests and swamps to deny defendable approach routes, fortifications, and placement of active defense elements in key locations.

Then of course, the number one defensive strategy of the Civ series. Reloading.

 

[jarhead_leif]

Defense is a holistic concept in Civ4 rather than just walls and pointy sticks.

Aspects include unit choice and stack composition, placement of cities and design of transport system, terrain improvements, building choice, use of culture, diplomacy, scouting, spying, and research choice.

Also, placement of mobile reserves, clearing forests and swamps to deny defendable approach routes, fortifications, and placement of active defense elements in key locations.

Then of course, the number one defensive strategy of the Civ series. Reloading.

^This.

 

[lindsay40k]

If the AI hasn't got Mathematics yet, and you've got the Great Wall, you can sometimes milk a GG out of their warriors rushing to their deaths at the hands of your defensive units. Even then, I'll have a counter-charge force in play to mop up the survivors.

 

[noto2]

I think the OP seems to have asked 2 questions - best defense strategy as well as what advantage defensive qualities offer.
Okay let's take a look at this: in RTS games the defender has an advantage or else the games would always be a boring competition to see who can rush the fastest. Things like turrets give this quality. What about civ? Does the defender get an advantage? Yes, in fact they do, but it is more complex than simply filling walled cities with archers.
What advantage does the attacker have? None really, other than surprise. The defender has the advantages of roads, city defenses, faster healing, and home turf. If you put all your units in a city you are really only exploiting one of those advantages.
In the very early game you can place archers in a city and build walls so that chariots and axes can't take the city. You can still get pillaged but you don't have to worry about losing the city, which is a much bigger problem. To deal with pillaging you would have to have your own stack of offensive units. The point of archers and walls is that you can protect cities with relatively few hammers and free up your other troops to be more mobile.
Later on in the game we get horse archers and catapults. This changes war dramatically. You can't win a war by simply sticking units in a city behind walls, but in this case walls and archers help negate the attacker advantage - surprise. You don't know when an attack will occur or what city will be threatened first. Walls and defensive units buy you time to move your army into position, without them the attacker would take your border city before you could react. Walls and CG archers mean the attacking army must spend time bombarding the city, and these are turns you move your troops into position.
The advantage of roads allows you to strike first. You hit the enemy with catapults and then follow up with your own units, and you should win the battle, especially if the enemy is in open terrain. How do you keep them in open terrain? You have some geurilla archers on your hills. Archers are cheap and your enemy would lose a lot of troops trying to remove them from the hills.
Also, if you went for mounted units, you can give them flanking and attack a stack with few losses, even against spears, and take out the enemy siege.
I agree that castles are a niche building, but they are sometimes worth it, if you have gone for engineering early on and particularly if you are protective/have stone. A castle buys you tons of time to deal with an invasion. Hey, sometimes your at war on one border and you get sneak attacked on the other side of your empire, while most of your army is away. A castle in this case could save a city, buying you enough time to react. CG longbows would also be saving that city. Will they win the war themselves? No, but they buy your offensive units time.
Again I agree about machine guns being niche units, but if you face an invasion by someone using rifles/grens they can really put a stop to it and make good stack defenders.
What difference does protective make? Well I agree that PRO is generally not as useful as even aggressive, but you can adapt your strategy to fit. Crossbows beat the crap out of all foot soldiers, so you can counter aggressive leaders with it, and later on in the gunpowder age protective is about the same usefulness as aggressive.

 

[noto2]

oops double post

 

[damerell]

So you all agree that walls/defensive bonuses/defensive promotions/protective trait are mostly useless and have little practical application for human players.

Not in the least. The purpose of city defenders (and cultural defense, before siege gets very powerful) is to hold a city while you look for a big stick. The stronger the defense, the longer you have to locate (or even whip out) a big stick; the result being, you need less previous investment in big sticks. Of course someone (Zx) will be along in a minute to tell you to just build big sticks; but you certainly can play defensively, holding each city strongly so that you have time to rush attackers over.

In the worse possible case, you may even end up with an enemy stack stuck in your land while you tech (for example) Rifling, able to kill cavalry raiders but not able to squash the stack. That's a bad situation; but it's defensive bonuses that mean they can't accomplish their goal either. I've been there as Louis against Sitting Bull, and he was not best pleased when all my Musketeers suddenly became Rifles and administered chastisement.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Not in the least. The purpose of city defenders (and cultural defense, before siege gets very powerful) is to hold a city while you look for a big stick. The stronger the defense, the longer you have to locate (or even whip out) a big stick; the result being, you need less previous investment in big sticks. Of course someone (Zx) will be along in a minute to tell you to just build big sticks; but you certainly can play defensively, holding each city strongly so that you have time to rush attackers over.

In the worse possible case, you may even end up with an enemy stack stuck in your land while you tech (for example) Rifling, able to kill cavalry raiders but not able to squash the stack. That's a bad situation; but it's defensive bonuses that mean they can't accomplish their goal either. I've been there as Louis against Sitting Bull, and he was not best pleased when all my Musketeers suddenly became Rifles and administered chastisement.

#2

 

[Paxel]

I always play "defensively" because I find war (attack) in CIV boring, and I'm able to win 80% of my games by space race at Monarch level. Fun for me is micromanagement.

Until gunpowder I usually check in the statitistics to be 4-5 (out of 7) in military power, this means that I got 2-3 invasions which can be rejected easily (if a get angry I often counter-invade, start pillaging and I often receive gold for peace request).
In modern era I never got attacked since I'm the tecnology leader and I have a better army with less units anyway.

I often donate units to weak empires when they are invaded, to prevent aggressive empires to grow too much. This is very funny.

To reduce pillaging (which is a problem only for border cities and cottages) I usually make the first cottages in the "inner" side of the fat cross (e.g. the side away from the border).

My overall strategy is quite unorthodox, I don't know if it can work at higher levels (emperor) I'll have to try. If interested I can post it.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

I always play "defensively" because I find war (attack) in CIV boring, and I'm able to win 80% of my games by space race at Monarch level. Fun for me is micromanagement.

Sounds quite similar to how I view the game Paxel!

I also play at Monarch difficulty, which is a good training ground for strategies like yours.
"Isolationist Supremacy" sounds intriguing, might be something for me to try.

 

[ben-jammin]

On higher levels when you share a border with a monty or a boudica or a shaka, you often know they'll be a problem before you're ready to go on the offensive. In this case it's quite effective to settle the city they will target on a hill. Cultural defense will be irrelevant. Strategic hill settling is especially important in Always War games.