I finally found a use for Explorers

[Svar]

Until now I never built explorers because the world is usually known before they become available. In a test game that I'm running to check city placement production I needed a great leader to switch my palace to the opposite side of a huge world. I decided to start a war with the civilization that was in second place.

The world that I'm playing is a custom built one I designed for Civ 3 where there are 2 large continents and 1 small continent in the approximate location of the Americas, Australia and the Europe/Africa/Asia super continent. The shapes are not close to the real world and there is a large section of jungle in the middle of both the large continents.

I occupy the small continent and the 2 large continents are isolated from each other as I'm the only civ with navigation and wont trade any contacts or maps with the other civs.

Since I'm way ahead in tech and production I have an excess of production capacity. Just as the war starts I decide to build a couple of explorers to see if they could be of any use.

My battle plan was to land cavalry and musketeers near the middle of the Mongols continent where there is mostly jungle and hard for him to reinforce.

I don't have any trouble defeating the defenders of a Mongol city and setting up my base of operations. Being mostly jungle my cavalry doesn't have its usual speed advantage and I keep running into counter attacks after 1 tile advance. When my first 2 exployers arrive I discover that they will move 6 tiles even through the jungle.

Wow, what an advantage, coupled with a stack of cavalry I can scout most of the surrounding terrain looking for enemy troops before moving my cavalry. Needless to say I have eliminated the ambushes and have a complete picture of the local area of operations. Using explorers as scouts sure makes waging offensive operations much safer.

I have my great leader but am having fun just rampaging through the countryside capturing Mongol cities and giving them to the other 2 civs on the continent.

 

[Grille]

Yes, explorers come handy to spy around in enemy territory. But they are also able to pillage!
Pillaging will eat up 1 ("normal") mp (=3 "explorer mps"), so you can pillage one tile and travel around 3 tiles far each turn. If you stack some explorers w/ some defensive units, you can cause really much damage by mass pillaging (crippling ai's economy in general, isolating cities to hinder reinforcement arrivals/cut down resource delieveries, forcing ai rep hits due to resource deals). Just make sure your explorers will end up their turn under your defensive stack, otherwise they will be captured.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by Grille
Yes, explorers come handy to spy around in enemy territory. But they are also able to pillage!
Pillaging will eat up 1 ("normal") mp (=3 "explorer mps"), so you can pillage one tile and travel around 3 tiles far each turn. If you stack some explorers w/ some defensive units, you can cause really much damage by mass pillaging (crippling ai's economy in general, isolating cities to hinder reinforcement arrivals/cut down resource delieveries, forcing ai rep hits due to resource deals). Just make sure your explorers will end up their turn under your defensive stack, otherwise they will be captured.

Thanks, I wasn't aware they could pillage. I'll have to try that.

 

[Sodfather]

There is an article about explorers in the War Academy. Maybe you'd like to read that, also.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by Sodfather
There is an article about explorers in the War Academy. Maybe you'd like to read that, also.

Thanks, I never saw that. This was the first time I used them and my cities could produce 1 per turn so I built 20 of them over about 3 turns and used them as suicide pillagers. I think I destroyed over 40 tiles before the mongols eliminated the last of them. After they were gone I accepted peace and went back to my test.

 

[dexters]

I use explorers as observers in foreign wars.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by Svar


This was the first time I used them and my cities could produce 1 per turn so I built 20 of them over about 3 turns and used them as suicide pillagers.

As said, if you stack some defensive units, you don't need to suicide those explorers. Best time to perform mass pillaging is the age of infantry and cavalry (an army filled w/ defensive units is also fine, of course). Your protecting stack of infantry (or infantry army) keeps on moving one tile each turn through enemy territory and your explorers pillage every surrounding tile (and the actual tile the protecting stack is placed on). Explorers must end their turn on that tile where the infantry stack ends its turn, of course. An optimal route for the mass pillaging stack would be defined by zig-zagging through enemy territory, as this would increase the number of stack-adjacent tiles per turn while reaching a final destination (perhaps the capital to freeze trade) in the same time on the long run (go zig-zag similar to naval exploring). That zig-zag route might be "blocked" by city placement though. You need two explorerers per tile to remove all improvements (incl. railroads). 10 explorers w/ 5-10 infantry units should be enough. 10 explorers might be high number, but this way you can occasionally perform potential suicide pillaging attempts from your stack if a -say- resource tile lies around disadvantageously to your route. Have in mind that the ai tends to avoid attacks on large defensive stacks/armies, especially when there are weaker targets for them available. In general, the ai can't recognize the threat of such a stack and wouldn't attack it.
This strategy can be very fruitful in somewhat long, "static" wars (not to be recommended when blitzing around), that may occur when you fight an enemy that has a much bigger military than you (or when you need some time to build up your forces). As time goes by, they simply can't afford a big military anymore. If you force them to run a deficit, one unit and one building gets auto-disbanded; unit will be a worker in the beginning - but that's ok since they'd be needed to recover the damage.
I have seen ai cities falling into disorder for a couple of turns (!) that were size 30 metros once (so I suspect they couldn't run a lux tax anymore). Then the former super power will be down the drain (and your forces are built up), you can start conquering. Even if you end the war by now due to war weariness spreading around your empire, ai normally wouldn't be able to recover within the next 20 turns of peace.

Of course an *invasion* of suicide explorers can cause a lot of damage, too. But here the effect vanishes as tiles near the border are pillaged.

 

[Svar]

My suicide explorers pretty much marched all the way through the Mongol empire taking out selected targets. There were so many of them the Mongols could only take out 3 or 4 per turn. For some reason the average 3 defenders per city will not leave there defensive position to easily eliminate the explorers. If you use them this way they can target a tile 5 spaces away per turn. In three turns they have penetrated 15 tiles. Of course you may only have 8 left by then.

 

[nickmandler]

I'll be sure to use this advice. Of course, I prefer bombers, but doing it with explorers sounds like fun!