how to defeat a FAR more powerful rival.

[marc_v3]

So I was playing a game, and I was to the far right if the map and my top rival was in the middle. It was a long stringy map (fractal) and there was a civ (who I had open borders with) between me and my top rival. This was in the industrial/modern era, and my top rival had a pretty good tech advantage on me. So for a space race victory I was pretty much screwd, and there was no way to win a war with this guy.

So here is my cool strategy:

I bring a good amount of infantry into civ in between me and rival, then declare war on top rival. My mission was to pillage ALL his villages, and pump a steady stream of troops and eventually win the tech race. Ok I learned a tough lesson: NEVER bring infantry anywhere farther than a city to attack. They got zepplined and artilaried out of their minds before they saw battle. So I send tanks. I destroy all their cities villages, with an unlimited stream of tanks coming through my allie's territory to attack the enemy. Now I have those future tanks, since I beelined to it, and eventualy make war and win without losing a single man.

So, a few points:

* I had MAD production. 2 of my cities could make a tank in 1-2 turns, another 3 could make them in less than 5.

* there was no way of enemy to strike back, since I had open borders with civ in between

* I never stopped making tanks, just sent them into the breech.

* By the end, I could research a tech in 3 turns, it took him 20.

I found this as a very effective strat, only way to deafeat a far superior civ. I did the same thing in anciant era to a civ that I was about equal to, with horses, and by the time I got muskets it was too easy. I won the game space race.

game was BtS, Prince, Fractal, 6 other guys on normal game speed.

What do you think?

 

[futurehermit]

well done, i believe one of the loading tips says something to this effect. if you're less powerful than a neighbour, pillage his tiles and draw him out of his cities, etc.

edit: of course nukes can do wonders as well...

 

[carl corey]

Attacking from friends who only have open borders with you is indeed a good strategy. The only downside is that it means you're attacking someone further away. And if the borders of your friend push against the enemy any enemy cities you keep there will be less useful as they won't have access to all tiles. So it's probably best to kill the 'friend' afterwards.

By the way, I've seen AIs sit with Airships in their cities and not attack incoming units. What patch do you use? I'm running Solver's unofficial patch but I noticed this in 3.03 games too...

 

[Ruler]

Fighter and Bombers are amazing for pillaging.

 

[CivMin]

You'd think in that situation the AI would send ships to your shores loaded down with attackers...but good job anyway!

 

[carl corey]

I've had the reversed problem. And should have detoured a lot with ships to get to the new enemy. The biggest problem was that I couldn't even declare war on the intermediate AI, since I fought with him earlier and took a peace treaty before this fight broke out! So I just set there and tried to soak up his units (especially nasty when your city is on the border, I wonder if I wasn't better off emptying the city...) while bringing reinforcements and trying not to lose my highly promoted but heavily wounded units.

 

[axident]

well done, i believe one of the loading tips says something to this effect. if you're less powerful than a neighbour, pillage his tiles and draw him out of his cities, etc.

edit: of course nukes can do wonders as well...

Hey Future you seem to be a guy who uses nukes, and I have no experience with them since I usually petition to ban them and everyone says yes since they have not gotten nukes yet. But in my Dutch Domination game, I messed around so long that a rival got Manhattan Project and managed to successfully Tactically Nuke someone/something before I pillaged his uranium mine. I looked worldwide for something like radioactive glow but there wasn't any to be seen, and my units seemed normal, and there wasn't some "nuke!" icon. He was at war only with me and my vassal. So what happened? Did he nuke a ship (I don't think he did) or do Tac Nukes not cause radioactive sludge or what? Even if there's no glow, all my land units seemed okay, too. Weird.

 

[futurehermit]

I'm not sure about that one tbh. I don't use nukes a lot, but properly used they can be insanely powerful.

 

[Brad55]

Not sure if this has been fixed with the new patch but sending spies into enemy territory and completely destroying his cottage based economy is the easiest method I've come across. No war weariness, fewer bad relations and the ability to keep your industrial and economic goals geared towards the space race.

One successfull mission completely destroys the town/tile your spy is occupying.

 

[Welnic]

Solvers unofficial patch changes this so that it drops it from town to village, etc, just like pillaging.

 

[futurehermit]

Solvers unofficial patch changes this so that it drops it from town to village, etc, just like pillaging.

that sucks imo. who in their right mind would even use this feature if it only takes the town down to a freakin' village???

spies RETURN TO THE CAPITAL after completing a mission.

can you imagine how tedious it would be to employ this tactic to cause any significant dmg?

currently it is fine imo. it costs a chunk of change and your spy has to travel back again.

so you can use an army of spies to do a lot of dmg, but it will still cost you $$$.

i think it's definitely fine as it is.

 

[popejubal]

that sucks imo. who in their right mind would even use this feature if it only takes the town down to a freakin' village???

spies RETURN TO THE CAPITAL after completing a mission.

can you imagine how tedious it would be to employ this tactic to cause any significant dmg?

currently it is fine imo. it costs a chunk of change and your spy has to travel back again.

so you can use an army of spies to do a lot of dmg, but it will still cost you $$$.

i think it's definitely fine as it is.

Destroying a resource improvement can be worthwhile with a Spy, but can you imagine if you could destroy Towns in one shot with such a tiny investment? It would make a Cottage Economy impossible to sustain since the most significant cost involved in Towns is the enormous amount of time it takes to get them to that point.

Even with military, you have to pillage a tile several times to completely destroy the Town.

Winning against a cottage fueled AI would just involve building 20 or so spies, cranking up the espionage level for a few turns and then completely destroying the AI's empire by Spy-Nuking all of his Towns.

Compare that to the military option where 20 Tanks (a MUCH greater investment) would be needed to even think about starting such a tactic.

 

[marc_v3]

WOW! I got alot more out of this post than I thought. I never even thought of spys or planes to destroy improvements! Paratroopers would help too. But destroying just one cottage spaming citie's economy makes a HUGE differance.

 

[Mesousa]

They got zepplined and artilaried

that sucks imo. who in their right mind would even use this feature if it only takes the town down to a freakin' village???

spies RETURN TO THE CAPITAL after completing a mission.

can you imagine how tedious it would be to employ this tactic to cause any significant dmg?

currently it is fine imo. it costs a chunk of change and your spy has to travel back again.

so you can use an army of spies to do a lot of dmg, but it will still cost you $$$.

i think it's definitely fine as it is.

Well, here's what Solver said in his patch thread:

It is too powerful. After some more testing and doing the math on it, I am convinced that destroyed Towns must become Villages, etc., just like through pillaging - this is an oversight.

Cottage: gives 1 commerce, grows after 10 turns.
Hamlet: gives 2 commerce, grows after 20 turns.
Village: gives 3 commerce (pre-Printing Press), grows after 40 turns.
Towns give 4 commerce (pre-Printing Press).

So a town takes 70 turns to rebuild. Suppose your Town is destroyed Town. Over 70 turns, the Town would provide you with 280 commerce. Instead, you'll get 10 from Cottage, 40 from Hamlet and 120 from Village, for 170 total. That's a loss of 110 commerce. Post-Printing Press, the Town would give you 350 commerce, whereas while rebuilding it, you'll get 10+40+160=210, for a loss of 140 commerce. If running Free Speech, throw in an extra 140 lost commerce.

We're talking up to 280 lost commerce from a single espionage mission. Given that even pillaging at war is more difficult, it's certainly unfair, and Towns should revert to Villages when destroyed through EP.

 

[Plato90s]

Compare that to the military option where 20 Tanks (a MUCH greater investment) would be needed to even think about starting such a tactic.

Why would you use tanks when it comes to pillaging?

Wouldn't cavalry be a much cheaper option? Use enough tanks to provide covering forces and use cavalry to do the pillaging.

 

[KMadCandy]

Hey Future you seem to be a guy who uses nukes, and I have no experience with them since I usually petition to ban them and everyone says yes since they have not gotten nukes yet. But in my Dutch Domination game, I messed around so long that a rival got Manhattan Project and managed to successfully Tactically Nuke someone/something before I pillaged his uranium mine. I looked worldwide for something like radioactive glow but there wasn't any to be seen, and my units seemed normal, and there wasn't some "nuke!" icon. He was at war only with me and my vassal. So what happened? Did he nuke a ship (I don't think he did) or do Tac Nukes not cause radioactive sludge or what? Even if there's no glow, all my land units seemed okay, too. Weird.

weird, i know even less about than that i do most things! you play a ton and know what you're doing, so it wasn't a nuke plant meltdown confusing you. and i'm sure you know you can click on the words in the event log to center the screen on where the whatever-it-was happened.

were there other civs left in the game? did you notice where he got any "you nuked our friend!!" negatives? assuming you were friends with anybody left around that is *giggle*. i'm quite curious about this whole tactical thingamabobdealie. it's a good thing that you didn't get any sludge or lose any units, celebrate, knock wood, yay!

 

[Oko]

Ah, nukes. I won my second Civ IV game ever with them.
Crap points and the whole earth was screwed, but boy was it fun.

I started with Mansa who was about to win with space race, nuked his towns into oblivion. Then went the other buggers who had the gall to call me up about using my precious nukes. How DARE they?!
In the end, I think it was good to leave the planet behind for Alpha Centauri. Having used well over 20 nukes, the lands we're quite quickly deteriorating.

Have yet to use the tac-nukes, though. Should give 'em a go sometime.