How to war?

[Ita Bear]

Hello folks,

Despite playing the game for a few months I'm still struggling to surpass The Strong difficulty mode because of my main weakness, which is war. I simply cannot win a war unless I know I significantly outweigh the AI in terms of soldiers and orders. Their units hit like a freight train, taking 75% of my units' health at a time whereas mine appear to be using nothing but bad language, despite upgrades and generals.

I always seem to lack units. I tend to only produce units from my military family cities; perhaps this is a mistake and I should produce more. I often overlook militia units as well, which can be useful in high-food cities. The AI always seem to have a tech advantage as well, using maces to my axes or archers to my slingers. I just can't catch a break.

When do you normally aim for war against AI powers? What are some general rules for training units? Any assistance much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[jguy100]

Liking to subscribe! I have the same issue. I have a feeling that a big part of it is my own hesitation and fear. I don’t like to strike early, and I rarely fully commit.

 

[PiR]

Try Greece. Once you have Alexander and +300 shields per turn, that you can use the Hero ability "Launch Offensive" to attack twice a turn, it makes a huge difference. Build your forces with his father, stack 2000 shields and attack with him.
And finish off Persia.

 

[Dale]

Terrain is a big factor. Specially defending in your territory. You can heal, they can't. AI will use a lot of generals too, so watch for that.

The AI is very good at combined arms. A few ranged to weaken, some melee to punch down, then a mounted unit at the end to chain rout your units.

Get around these tactics. Sit in a forest, let them come to you. Ranged damage is severely weakened when attacking into forest tiles. Use stabby units (spears) to counter mounted. And splitters (axe) on ranged. Always try to attack from defendable positions (hills, forests into flat tiles) and defend from behind rivers. Make use of leader abilities like offensives.

The AI tends to move damaged units back to their lands for healing. So if far away from their lands damaging a chunk of AI units (rather than trying to wipe them out) can break up an attacking army.

 

[PiR]

How do hills help defend? Except the range of ranged units?

 

[Dale]

How do hills help defend? Except the range of ranged units?

Range and visibility. Which helps in defence. Not a specific +25% or anything (unless you got the hill promotion), but that extra tile on archer range can be a life saver.

 

[PiR]

Oh yeah sure and the visibility can be key as well. Maybe I should build more scouts.

 

[nolegskitten]

It's hard to provide solid advice without seeing you play, but if you're coming from civ some relatively generic but relevant advice might be :

- You need a lot more units than you think you do.
- Reaching specific unit techs matching what you can produce or upgrade is often critical and should be the main criteria to decide your path through the tech tree.
- Visibility is crucial, and in particular spy networks in neighbouring cities. OW units are a lot more mobile than civ units in general, and a key to success if achieving local superiority
- as such, timing is quite important. You can inflict decisive blows against a stronger opponent if you have more forces when and where it matters, can deny their reinforcement and inflict attrition bit by bit (defeat in detail), deny visibility
- Some units have better order economy than others, in particular ranged units because they don't have to manoeuvrer as much to attack, and mounted units because routing allows for very high concentration of forces
- Leader archetypes are crucial to warfare. A well placed offensive by a hero can decide a war. The order advantage schemers and orators can achieve sometimes feel downright broken. The stun ability of a cunningly used tactician can sometime be incredibly decisive. But if you haven't done that already, try "launch offensive" (hero leader ability), then once you recover from the shock try to use and abuse it every way you can (you will learn a lot along the way).

also of course what Dale said is very true : one needs to account for which units counter which. spears counter cavalry, axes kill spears, cavalry kills siege, forests protect against range, etc, and using the terrain to your advantage (to minimize the number of attacks your units can be inflicted when the terrain is constricted, use rivers to protect against melee, force your opponent to attack in the open while you benefit from the protection of forests and urban tiles (not against siege weapons !), etc

 

[Dale]

And remember that mounted units rout is the most efficient form of cleaning up the enemy. 1 fatigue for long rout chains.