How to fight a fast indutrial war without tanks

[Alvin]

First, I don't have conquest... so bear along.
The begining of the industrial age to the discovery of tanks is a realtive peaceful time, why? because there is no offensive unit that could match up with the infantry. There is a way to wage way execpt for the realtively slow war that you have to proceded with the slow infantry. This techinuqe is called the railroad pile techinuqe.
1. Get a bunch of workers, and get a right of passage with a someone you want to invade.
2. Build rail road all around your and their empire.
3. Put arty. around the enemy cities.
4. pile up punch of infatary around the enemy cities.
5. When the twenty turns pass....decalre war and start bomb them.
6. after 1 turn of bombardement, start attacking. if they outnumber you, attack slowly.
7. If the enemy tries to counterattack you, well, stack more and more infantry around the arty. to protect them.
8.try to capture all of the enemy.

 

[Tomoyo]

Wouldn't that be an exploit? It's ROP Rape. If you declare war on another civ with units inside their borders, you get a reputation hit.

Personally, I war a lot during the artillery period, but I move the artillery inside enemy territory the conventional way. You could also use combat settlers to get your artillery within range on the first turn.

 

[Jurimax]

This definitely has exploit written all over it. But hey, everybody has to play the game within their own ethical insights. I used to ROP rape a lot, now I never do it.

Greetz Jurimax

 

[Alvin]

Yea well, ROP rape would be the word for it if you are playing on the internet.
If the twenty turns are over and the civ ask you to leave and you decalre war, there wouldn't be any reputition problems, I don't think....

 

[homeyg]

Yes there would be. Because there are still troops inside of their territory, you would recieve a rep hit for declaring war.

How to declare an honorable war-
1. Do not break a right of passage.
2. Do not have any troops inside his territory.
3. Do not have ANY active deals with the AI.

Just thought I'd throw that in there...

 

[Wakboth]

Originally posted by homeyg
Yes there would be. Because there are still troops inside of their territory, you would recieve a rep hit for declaring war.

How to declare an honorable war-
1. Do not break a right of passage.
2. Do not have any troops inside his territory.
3. Do not have ANY active deals with the AI.

Just thought I'd throw that in there...

Let me add something to this.

My understanding is that the 20 turn limit will always expire during the AI's turn, not yours. Thus, they will always tell you to move your troops before you get to attack anyway. I'm not clear on the formula for when they'll just ask you nicely and when they'll tell you to "move automatically" or declare war, but in either case, the game rules handle it just fine.

It's definately not an exploit of any kind. If there is a hit, you take the hit. If there isn't, then there's nothing wrong with it. You're not taking advantage of a game bug here. You're mouting a classic "surprise attack". This is no more an exploit then moving your units into his territory a turn at a time, and then attacking (assuming you don't get the "move or declare war" bit). It's certainly no worse then the AI (who does the sneak into/across your territory bit all the time).

 

[homeyg]

I wouldn't even call sneak attacking the AI with a ROP an 'exploit'. It is a game option, but it comes with a cost. There is no bug there. Let me remind people what an exploit is. An exploit is taking advantage of an error made in the game by the programmers (bug) for your own benefit. Sneak attacking is NOT an exploit.

 

[Jawz II]

in most of my games,i either conquer 90% of landmass before tanks,or i lose the game and i have PTW too!

cavs r good enough in numbers,but only after shooting citys down to small size,and defenders to redline with massive arty bombardment

the rep hit is okay,but only if theres no other nation worth caring about,as in there r 2 super powers left,u and 1 other civ


hell once i even built fortresses on top of mountains in enemy territory,n strategicly important spots!

 

[dreamvirus]

I agree with the last couple of posters - the whole point of the game concept of reputation means that things like ROP-rape, signing gpt for tech and then declaring war etc are not really exploits, but realistically sneaky tricks of the sort that nations also use in real life. Anyone who thinks a reputation hit is no big deal should try doing this early in the game on a high level - not being able to trade for tech will often mean game over.

I had a game recently where my only option to take out someone who was racing ahead of me in tech towards a spaceship victory was to sign ROP and use it to take out his capital and core cities in 1 or 2 turns. My rep was ruined but at that point I didn't care as I had the resources to research tech for myself and defend myself.

You can see a parallel in real life quite recently. The U.S. built up a massive invasion force in the Persian Gulf for months before it declared war on Iraq and was running bombing missions in the "no-fly zone" for years. They didn't get a mandate from the U.N. but went ahead into Iraq anyway, and have taken a massive International reputation hit which they are now having to deal with. They reckoned they were strong enough to deal with their reputation suffering and that's the same kind of decision you get to make in Civ3.

The "purists" are just people who have artificially high standards in their own minds - if you observe real life and warfare you see that anything goes. There's no conception of fair and unfair, there's just what you need to do to win or lose. I'm not saying I "like" this state of affairs, just that this is how things are, in a game or in real life. If you can do it, it's not cheating, and in the end the only person you're trying to impress by doing things the "right" way is yourself.

 

[Tomoyo]

The point of me saying that it is an exploit is that the game does not punish you enough for it. All it does is the AI will never sign a ROP with you again. Another reason why this is an exploit is because doing this will allow you to win the war way too easily, in a way that the AI will never match. The AI will not recognize that you have a sizeable force inside their borders that will destroy them if you have a ROP.

 

[Renfield]

I disagree Tomoyo.

The game does punish ROP rape severely. It's not the AI that you invade that punishes you. It's the rest of the AI's that will no longer trade favorably with you.

And I wanna echo what others have posted. ROP rape is not an exploit. It's accounted for in the game code. Some may argue it's an unbalanced tactic, but it's not an exploit.

 

[Alvin]

Yes, but when you have alot of gold and land.....

 

[homeyg]

Originally posted by Tomoyo
The point of me saying that it is an exploit is that the game does not punish you enough for it. All it does is the AI will never sign a ROP with you again. Another reason why this is an exploit is because doing this will allow you to win the war way too easily, in a way that the AI will never match. The AI will not recognize that you have a sizeable force inside their borders that will destroy them if you have a ROP.

Note that the AI will not only refuse right of passage deals, but also ANY other type of deal (GPT, luxuries, etc. if you have that sort of deal with them). All AIs will refuse the type of deal that you broke for a very long time. I would call thas a very severe punishment for ROP raping or any other non-honorable war declaration.

I'm can't tell whether breaking one type of deal ruins all further types of deals or just the type of deal (GPT for instance) you had. Could someone fill me in?

 

[Wakboth]

Originally posted by Alvin
Yes, but when you have alot of gold and land.....

If you have enough gold and land that you don't need or care about agreements with the AIs, then you probably could use or not use an ROP rape tactic and it wouldn't matter anyway. You're playing on too easy of a level and you've already won this particular game, so what difference does it make?

Presumably, the point of discussing tactics is that there's a need for using them in order to win the game you are in. If you've already super far ahead, you can feel free to randomly disband your units, sell off all your factories, and otherwise just dork around all you want. Those aren't good general gaming tactics, but if you're really that far ahead in a game, you *can* do it and still win.

Um... But if you actually are in a situation where you're trying to get every bit of advantage you can in a game, then knowing when to use an ROP rape is important. Being aware of the rep hit is important. Rep may not matter at all in a chieftan game where you're leading everything. But try playing on emp or deity and taking even a moderate rep hit early on. It's a disaster. In many cases, it's a "start a new game" level mistake.

 

[Jawz II]

rop rape is indeed a great tactic if you r facing 1 superpower,and all else or dead or dying

the game im talking about was me against my old allies irowuis,we shared all countries then there were none left excpet indians island,midsized and far away

so i build a series of fortresses in a ring in a really good spot where all his reinforcments had to pass,stationed near 50 units of inf, and cav and 50 arty,they blew his railroads to bits,making reinforcments take forever to make to front line for them,then blew all nearby cities to pieces,since my fortressess were adjacent i could move units from one to the other

then after i took 5-10 cities my forces joined the guys up in the mountain fortresses

all thanks to ROP rape

and sure maybe i wouldve won anyway,but im not sure,they were bloody huge as i was!!