I suck at war (Emperor level)

[Forbiddentwo]

Here's what I've tried:

1: Early Rush with Monty.

Result: Miserable failure because walls go up really really fast, usually after I've taken the first city. Then I get overwhelmed/bogged down.

Okay, fair enough.

2: Slightly later rush with Trajan.

Result: Initial success (although encampments can be a problem sometimes) unless/until barbarians attack my flank, forcing me to divide my forces and buying the enemy time to tech. Between ravaging barbs back home (or assaulting a city I've just taken) and being bombarded from cities and their encampments and being attacked by enemy units I just get bogged down and then it's like CIv: Vietnam.


On a related note: Is it city walls that causes encampments to also be able to bombard?

3: War any later than that.

Result: Even if I have a much higher tech level in terms of units, it seems that encampment and city defenses are based on overall tech level, so I can have my Winged Hussars mowing down swordsmen and spearmen, then getting mown down by cannon or even machinegun(!) fire from enemy cities and encampments..

....

Siege towers seem to help (although they tend to come too late for any early rush), as do great generals (although they don't solve the issue of barbarians flanking me). A friend recommended Catapults... I guess I'll try those next...

---

Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I can NEVER win wars, and sometimes I sweep the continent, but I'd like to be able to do it more reliably- or at least be able to spot untenable situations earlier.

As it is right now, in the early game I have to frantically crank settlers and make some Archers to keep the AI from attacking me, then engage in an epic marathon of clicking "next turn" and getting stuck in a rut. Early war is a crapshoot, and late war feels cumbersome.

Because of that, any early UUs feel wasted.

Any suggestions?

 

[KmDubya]

Let's go with Trajan as you've used him before and he is great at this.

1. Build three slingers while teching Archery, making sure to stop at the halfway point.
2. Scout around with your warrior clearing the fog away from your city. Find the barbarians. Attack and heal until your first slinger gets there for the kill shot.
3. Upgrade your three slingers to Archers. These will protect you from barbarians and the nearby AI who like to surprise DoW.
4. Go Settler then Builder or vice versa depending on how fast your neighbors are grabbing the good nearby terrain.
5. The goal is Iron Working so focus towards that. Deviate for tech needed for amenities, maybe an early campus if you have a nice spot.
6. If attacked respond with your archers and kill the troops with focus fire. Fight war with archers and follow back to the enemy heartland and conquer. Five archers and a warrior to take the city on last hit will usually do the trick.
7. Set up a city for troop production, get Agoge for the production boost. Make warriors if you have a good gold income for upgrading, else just get ready to hard build Legion.
8. At this point you've defended/deterred any AI attacks, possibly gained all their cities. You have a good production center set up with an Encampment and are producing warriors for upgrade, if you have a fair bit of income, or hard producing Legion. Once you get three or so Legion you can start the ball rolling. Use your archers to kill troops with focus fire and shoot at the walls while you surround the city with the Legions. You want to stop the city from healing.
9. Have a goal when you go to war, be it conquer a single city, take a capital, or genocide everyone you meet. Keep your eyes on the prize and focus on the goal. You aren't trying to get a religion and grab just a "few" wonders, your mission is to bring Roman civilization to the unwashed masses via good Roman steel. Focus on that.
10. Tech battering rams and siege towers to handle the walls. Adding catapults make a big difference as they can near one shot a wall. Also a core army of melee and siege will help through all the eras. Ranged start having problems with walls and just get worse as time goes on. Use the melee to take the hits while the siege hits the walls.
11. After you have these basics you need to prepare for the Pax Romana. Tech and build Commerce Districts and relish the fact that unlike others who need to send trade routes to crappy outposts to get roads, you get free roads and can send only the most profitable trade routes.

Once you've cleared out either your neighbors or your continent you can pretty much choose whatever win condition that you want. Your massive empire will catch up and overpass everyone else within an era or two. Don't try and meet everyone in the world while you are busy performing genocide, better to have some stay ignorant of your past sins, that way you might have some good friends in the future.
.

 

[Forbiddentwo]

Huh. Is it really okay to wait that long to start colonizing?

If I weren't playing as Rome, where/when should I fit a monument into that build order?

 

[KmDubya]

Rome gets monuments for free. EDIT - reread your comment concerning monuments for other than Rome. - I'd fit it in where you can, as long as you can hit the eurekas missing the monument is not that bad. Take care of needs before wants - you need adequate defense, you want faster civics.

Most of your cities are going to come from the AI either through capture of the two they start with, or capturing their settlers. Also since your attack comes a little later, the AI has probably already built a few districts in the cities that will soon be yours, maybe even a nice shiny wonder.

Basically at higher levels the AI has so many buffs that you can't out produce them but you can take their stuff and use it more efficiently than they can. The more bonuses they get the better city you will conquer.

 

[Jarms48]

Let's go with Trajan as you've used him before and he is great at this.

1. Build three slingers while teching Archery, making sure to stop at the halfway point.
2. Scout around with your warrior clearing the fog away from your city. Find the barbarians. Attack and heal until your first slinger gets there for the kill shot.
3. Upgrade your three slingers to Archers. These will protect you from barbarians and the nearby AI who like to surprise DoW.
4. Go Settler then Builder or vice versa depending on how fast your neighbors are grabbing the good nearby terrain.
5. The goal is Iron Working so focus towards that. Deviate for tech needed for amenities, maybe an early campus if you have a nice spot.
6. If attacked respond with your archers and kill the troops with focus fire. Fight war with archers and follow back to the enemy heartland and conquer. Five archers and a warrior to take the city on last hit will usually do the trick.
7. Set up a city for troop production, get Agoge for the production boost. Make warriors if you have a good gold income for upgrading, else just get ready to hard build Legion.
8. At this point you've defended/deterred any AI attacks, possibly gained all their cities. You have a good production center set up with an Encampment and are producing warriors for upgrade, if you have a fair bit of income, or hard producing Legion. Once you get three or so Legion you can start the ball rolling. Use your archers to kill troops with focus fire and shoot at the walls while you surround the city with the Legions. You want to stop the city from healing.
9. Have a goal when you go to war, be it conquer a single city, take a capital, or genocide everyone you meet. Keep your eyes on the prize and focus on the goal. You aren't trying to get a religion and grab just a "few" wonders, your mission is to bring Roman civilization to the unwashed masses via good Roman steel. Focus on that.
10. Tech battering rams and siege towers to handle the walls. Adding catapults make a big difference as they can near one shot a wall. Also a core army of melee and siege will help through all the eras. Ranged start having problems with walls and just get worse as time goes on. Use the melee to take the hits while the siege hits the walls.
11. After you have these basics you need to prepare for the Pax Romana. Tech and build Commerce Districts and relish the fact that unlike others who need to send trade routes to crappy outposts to get roads, you get free roads and can send only the most profitable trade routes.

Once you've cleared out either your neighbors or your continent you can pretty much choose whatever win condition that you want. Your massive empire will catch up and overpass everyone else within an era or two. Don't try and meet everyone in the world while you are busy performing genocide, better to have some stay ignorant of your past sins, that way you might have some good friends in the future.
.

This is pretty spot on. I personally prefer getting Heavy Chariots rather than Warriors, but we are talking about Rome in this circumstance. The reason I prefer Heavy Chariots is that they only have 1 gold upkeep; meaning they're free with Conscription, they upgrade into Knights which are amazing; it also lets you get more experienced knights as soon as they're available.

 

[Bluetooth]

My Early Rush is really early; I usually build four Slingers. All of them are scouting and clearing Barbarian outposts. Then I build a Builder as this is an easy way to boost a few technologies. Now I keep building Slingers until I get at least six of them. In the meantime, I research Archery and upgrade all Slingers to Archers.

As I don’t build any Settlers I can now attack my neighbor(s) very early in the game with at least five Archers and my initial Warrior. Usually they don’t have Encampments or Walls so bombarding the Cities with five Archers is very efficient.

With this strategy, I can usually take two or three Cities and usually get another City in the peace negotiations. Usually I can take one of their Settlers as well. This way I end up with five or six Cities without building a single Settler.

To get this to work you need good Production in your Capital.

 

[gimper42]

As someone above mentioned already, Heavy Chariots are decent and upgrade into Knights which are very powerful when they come online.

You mentioned Siege Towers but like you said, they come pretty late for the early rush. I always make 1 battering ram for the early rushes. I usually manage to get 1 or 2 satellite cities before walls go up, then you will need support units to manage the walls. Use the battering ram until you can get that siege tower online. Try to have 5-6 melee units minimum with at least 4 range units. That force, along with a support unit, should be able to take down cities into the Renaissance and beyond if you keep up with timely upgrades.

 

[KmDubya]

Past the first early war where the civs have early walls, ranged units like archers and crossbows do not do very well versus walls. They do great against troops but walls are tough. Better to start building catapults as soon as you can. As long as there are not multiple archers or multiple cities/encampments firing at them they last for a couple of shots. If through lots of war and getting the free promo from Terracotta Army you can get to the level five and get the +1 range you will be unstoppable.

Musketmen and Bombards use the same resource and are next to each other on the tech tree. Beelining for these techs will take your veteran swordsmen and catapults and turn them into a renaissance juggernaut. Add in corps for adding fresh recruits in with the veterans and aim for flight to get the observation balloon. Three range bombard corps are a force that while slow will just chew up city after city. After artillery upgrade and armies there's not much that can stop you.

 

[Forbiddentwo]

As an aside, I got pretty far with Scythia (yes, I gave in to the temptation to use easy mode) and my armies of helicopters were pretty formidable but they also did amazingly little damage to enemy cities . I was imagining them firing hellfire rockets instead of using that little piddly machinegun. Oh well, I guess you can't have everything.

 

[Victoria]

It does seem to depend heavily on where you start in conjunction with neighbours but 3 archers 2 barbs is a sound attack strat as a city does not heal with 2 barbs ZOC the city so the city cannot heal and archers reduce. Its pretty quick done right. So those troops first then it depends on your civ as to what strat to take. The idea being speed and conquest as the primary priority. Then beelining what is required next.

For example last emporer game (as england) I got to iron fast and took an iron city state (as well as a brazilian town), both with archers. I then got to swordsmen, upgraded and as England I get a free swordsmen in every city I take and at one stage took 3 greek cities within 2 turns.
Continent taken I beelined redcoats and gold and took some settlers overseas amd just wasted with my main limitation being speed.

Never had or needed a navy

 

[Forbiddentwo]

Right now I'm trying to find a decent balance because sometimes when I focus on building an early military to take some cities from a nearby enemy I'll find that I'm all alone except for some city states and end up looking like a jackass... I guess in that situation I might as well just invade a city state or two...

 

[Victoria]

Sounds familiar.... You build your archers as you need them for eurekas and take 95% of city states, there is always one people like. For me it it Kumasi and changes my game. When taking the closest with archers you should get some idea about if you are alone in the world and can then either change strat or restart.

 

[Forbiddentwo]

Sounds familiar.... You build your archers as you need them for eurekas and take 95% of city states, there is always one people like. For me it it Kumasi and changes my game. When taking the closest with archers you should get some idea about if you are alone in the world and can then either change strat or restart.

I hit another roadblock: If I get unlucky with Barbarians I'll have to stop to deal with them and then by the time my forces arrive at their destination the enemy has walls .

---

And then there's the creeping sense that by not immediately building certain stuff (pausing my war effort to do so) I'm screwing myself over in the long term.

(The stuff in question is usually a commercial district + industrial district + workshop, and possibly a marketplace.... and of course the associated trade units).

I think the commercial district and the trade units may be justifiable, but the other two somewhat less so, but OTOH once those walls go up my units aren't going to be conquering anything until I get catapults...

 

[Bluetooth]

I can’t see how you can do better if you avoid an early rush. I just started a game yesterday and had a few saves so I could reload and try a different strategy.

The settings are: Small Map, Continents, Immortal, 4 AI Players, I play as Cleopatra. Spain is the second Nation on my Continent.

In the game with an early Archer rush, I made peace with Spain turn 70 and I had six Cities, Stonehenge, two Holy Sites with Shrines and one Encampment. Spain had one City. When I tried to play peacefully from turn 39 to turn 70 I ended up with three Cities, no Wonders and no Districts. Spain had five Cities.

 

[tommynt]

on anything but deity u go like this - builder, improve your land then build 3 or 4 slingers if the 1. is lucky to et a kill shot at a barb u finish archery with eureka if not just tech it - its like 3 turns ..
with the 1. slinger u kill nearest barb camp then upgrade and go to next ai city and kill it which is supereasy with 4 archers and a warri.
Meanwhile u build a worker a settler (usually all civic boostet) and if needed a unit to def against barbs.

from there on do whatever - usually more settler and then districs

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I'm playing mostly Emperor, so I can give a few tips.

• I usually open with 3 Slingers. It gives me enough time to find some barbarians and kill them, which triggers the Eureka for Archery.
• Be sure to put cities under siege. The lack of healing will be crucial for a fast conquest, even if you "waste" a turn positioning your units.
• When walls come online, build Heavy Chariots and Battering Rams. I like Rams because it actually takes down the walls, impeding the city from shooting. Once walls are down, you can safely use your Archers again (though their damage will likely be low, the city won't heal if it's under siege)
• Preparation is key. Clear all surrounding camps (especially those with Horses nearby), scout your enemy and leave some gold to buy a unit if barbarian comes. Also, usually my first neighbor falls before walls, but my second one have them at least in the capital.

 

[diamond geezer]

One key thing about attacking cities - once you knock down the defence the city can no longer damage your units, so it's worthwhile taking some damage to achieve this state. If they're also under siege and can't heal, you can then take your time about finishing them off.

 

[greygamer]

I hit another roadblock: If I get unlucky with Barbarians I'll have to stop to deal with them and then by the time my forces arrive at their destination the enemy has walls .

---

And then there's the creeping sense that by not immediately building certain stuff (pausing my war effort to do so) I'm screwing myself over in the long term.

(The stuff in question is usually a commercial district + industrial district + workshop, and possibly a marketplace.... and of course the associated trade units).

I think the commercial district and the trade units may be justifiable, but the other two somewhat less so, but OTOH once those walls go up my units aren't going to be conquering anything until I get catapults...

I have been experimenting with early war strategies. Tested on a duel map against Scythia where I declared war as soon as I met them, they are difficult due to 2 horse archers unexpectedly appearing out of their cities which can murder your archers very quickly when combined with city walls. Currently testing on larger maps.

Home Capital - I go max food until pop 3/4 then prioritise production (but still try to hit the housing cap). For a starting location I want 1 tile 3+ food and 3 tiles with 2+ cogs (or that can be improved to 2+)
Build order Scout/Slinger - Builder - Slingers (until Archery) then a couple of warriors (take the tortoise promotion when available).
Barbarians are an opportunity to level your troops, try to get a kill with a slinger asap. Camps get you extra gold. Spend early turns to clear out the nearby camps.
Research Bronze Working to see if you can get Iron

If you don't have horses/iron the Wheel can be the best option (heavy chariot). It's still a good option if you have horse because they upgrade to knights

Horsemen are great for forcing a siege and pillaging, but scouts will also do if you don't.

Upgrading Warriors to Swordsmen only requires 1 iron so plan accordingly, i.e spam warriors to upgrade later on.

I often don't need to build even 1 settler during this period. 2 slingers cost less than 1 settler

Policies: Discipline - Agoge (from Craftmanship) then Conscription (if gold is a problem 4 archers/3 warriors costs 4gpt and more archers are better, 4gpt * 50 turns = 200 gold). For chariots/horsemen get Maneuver.
I try to stay in ancient era for as long as possible, but if I need Swordsmen/Horsemen that takes priority. In the Ancient era you can kill city states without upsetting the AI too much. Try to declare on your neighbour before you hit Classical era.
Don't be afraid to raze. I keep the first 2-3 cities but after that I consider if it is a help or hindrance (does it give a new luxury/strategic resource or have good production potential)

Target City States that you don't need, early on there is no Warmonger penalty (although Tommy will hate you for making surprise attacks). Do this especially if they have Iron you need

The key is to avoid piecemeal attacks
Try to get 3+ units within the 2 tile radius at the same time, be sure to have a reserve so you can rest damaged units (heal often)
City defence values seem to go down when you pillage tiles, I'm not sure how this works I just noticed it when attacking the Scythian capital (50 strength went down to below 30)
If an enemy target city is distant maybe build a city a few tiles away to help with healing

 

[Bluetooth]

on anything but deity u go like this - builder, improve your land then build 3 or 4 slingers if the 1. is lucky to et a kill shot at a barb u finish archery with eureka if not just tech it - its like 3 turns ..
with the 1. slinger u kill nearest barb camp then upgrade and go to next ai city and kill it which is supereasy with 4 archers and a warri.
Meanwhile u build a worker a settler (usually all civic boostet) and if needed a unit to def against barbs.

from there on do whatever - usually more settler and then districs

An early Archer rush can be done on Deity as well. Just don’t build any Settlers until you have at least 6 Archers and 2 Warriors. You need a Builder though.

 

[FurballRocker]

My standard start these days is to go straight for a slinger while using your warrior to scout for nearby barb camps then use the warrior and slinger to take out nearby barbs while building more slingers.

If i have found a rubbish CS i tend to DoW them as soon as i see them and take them out first, hopefully getting a builder along the way. If not then drop a builder into the build queue where suitable.

I usually DoW the civ when i have 2 warriors and 2 slingers/archers so i can start taking out their military and hopefully capture a builder and settler and then once i have my full attack force of 2 warriors and 4 archers i move to the cities which shouldn't have walls, even on diety, unless you have been taking too long.
If you haven't taken the CS by now you can leave it until your finished with the civ.

Make sure you surround the target city to siege it for quicker capture and don't be afraid to use your warriors to attack to speed up the capture then you can let your warriors heal after capture while your archers start on the next city as you should have killed all their units already.

Rinse and repeat.

On immortal and diety i usually find the enemy will have 3 cities up already unless i managed to grab one of their settlers and about half the time the final city will have walls so i tend to build a battering ram in preparation and depending on the situation i will either wait for swords which should be pretty close if not already available or just human wave the last city (maybe building a few extra sacrificial units) as the opportunity cost of finishing off the civ is worth more than the loss of a few units.

My choice of tactics for the last part depends on other nearby neighbours.i.e. is there someone else i want to take out afterwards.

By the time you move to a second civ you will start having warmonger penalties but if you finish them off quickly any penalties usually deminsh quickly.