Is my war strategy wrong?

[ChodeNode]

I notice a lot of you tend to war only until you take a few cities and then you rebuild. I tend to, but not always, stay at war until I wipe them out. I'm starting to see now why it takes me forever to win a game this way. What are some good rules of thumb on when you should sue for peace and rebuild before dropping the hammer again?

Edit: I've read the War Academy articles on going to war, but I don't really recall seeing this outlined. If it is in one of them, kindly point me to it and I'll gladly read it again.

 

[xanadux]

One thing is to generally go for peace if war weariness is starting to make a dent in your economy/production. Sometimes you get a key tech and want some peace to be able to build a new building in a few cities ... one example would be you just got education, and can't keep a war going and build universities at the same time.

Peace also usually decreases the amount of units your opponent builds. You can get peace, keep building units while stupid AI slacks off, then hit him with a big stack.

 

[Gooblah]

Peace enables revival of an economy, focus on non-military builds (Wonders, Granaries. etc), as well as the ability to revive/draft/whip an army into shape, then attack after the PT has expired or, if a ceasefire occured,

 

[Sjaramei]

I do this too. I hate having cultural pressure on my borders so i have the bad habit to just keep on even though war weariness is in the high 20's
(Gotta take the last two cities, even though they have Zeus!!!!)

It hurts but sometimes it's necessary, i don't think the games take that much longer time to complete?

 

[Big Boss Man]

To help you answer your own question " Is my war strategy wrong ? "
Ask yourself a few questions before your war , during your war , and after .
Question one : What is my army to acheive ( My Plan ) ?
Question two : My army has won or lost now what ( Assessment ) ?
Question three : What are my options now ( after war plan ) ?

Hope this helps

 

[Belisar]

War is a way of expansion and should be waged in an oszillating form.
You take a few key cities you are interested, then make peace and get techs/gold as a bonus. You get stronger, your target gets weaker.
You start a builder phase, then the next expansion phase (sometimes on the next military tech level)
If you keep your wars short, WW won't be a big problem and your growing empire can handle the increasing maintenance.
(by cultivating your economy in the peace phases)

 

[Harold Hardrade]

Ending a war at the right time can make the difference in a game. Even when I'm the aggressor, my goal is to ultimately to end the war. But as an aggressor, I know that I shouldn't end the war until I have delivered a crippling blow to my enemy. Otherwise peace will be meaningless; my enemy will go full out military build until they can retake what they lost. A good example of a "crippling blow" is taking their capital or taking a valuable strategic resource (for example, their only sources of iron/horses, so they can't really wage a counterattack later). Taking a couple border towns is insufficient to cripple your enemy. So here are my reasons for wanting to end the war as soon as possible (in otherwords, I drive as hard and fast for that crippling blow as I can).

1.) War weariness (as discussed above)
2.) When at war, build all military. But this means your cities will not be developing and you will be falling behind the Civs that aren't at war.
3.) Unit upkeep (you can shrink down your forces after the war if you know they won't be able to strike back to help get your economy back under control)
4.) Time to digest the cities I have captured. During the war, these will be drains on a) your economy and b) you will have to garrison a decent chunk of your attacking units in the city to quell the rebellion and make sure they do not recapture it.
5.) Finally, I often will wage war with an enemy that has a bigger army than me. I win by surprising them with a huge stack of units (12 maybe in ancient times plus a few catapults if I have the tech). While they have a larger army, it is spread out across their civ. If I strike quickly toward their capital, they can't/won't bring it together fast enough to stop my advance. However, by the time I take their capital, I will have used up a good portion of my stack (it does get reinforced as it goes, but not as quickly as it loses troops). What remains will be garrisoning captured cities, and wounded soldiers. Making peace lets me heal up, and does not give them a chance to counter attack now that I am spread thin. And after you have dealt a crippling blow like taking their capital, they will almost certainly take your ceasefire (unless you have razed their cities, in which case they may not).
6.) Once they have been crippled, you should be able to mop them up later. Just accept that in the short term, you will have cultural pressure on some of your captured cities (but this is better then pressure on your key cities right?)

 

[Jasonc]

2.) When at war, build all military. But this means your cities will not be developing and you will be falling behind the Civs that aren't at war.

I'm not sure I agree with this suggestion. I often find it more efficient to build a big army while at peace, then declare war. Once it's apparent that I'm going to achieve my goals and still have enough troops to defend what I gained, I'll switch to non-military building but continue to be at war for several more turns. This way, I'm not falling behind as much and I don't have an overly large army to support once I end the war.

 

[WTBCzero]

I'm not sure I agree with this suggestion. I often find it more efficient to build a big army while at peace, then declare war. Once it's apparent that I'm going to achieve my goals and still have enough troops to defend what I gained, I'll switch to non-military building but continue to be at war for several more turns. This way, I'm not falling behind as much and I don't have an overly large army to support once I end the war.

I only have my production cities building units, but they build units in both peacetime and wartime. However, since i tend to have a small number of production cities (say, 1 in every four or five), I usually find myself outnumbered (this is on Prince).

What do other players do?

 

[xanadux]

Depends on the land I have. Later in the game, with workshops getting better and watermills and lumbermills, almost any city can be a production city. Early in the game, I like about half production cities. A production city can usually run a few specialists if military is not really needed, and if nothing else, build wealth to support a high science slider. With BTS, I don't really worry about tons of commerce early on. Securing production is usually my first goal. Of course, if given the right city site, my capital or second city might get cottage spammed. Just enough science to get to alphabet, and all I need is a spy to take an AI capital.

But everything gets balanced around 2 things ... using the land you are given as well as possible, and reacting to the current diplomatic situation. Sometimes all early cities are military cities, planning on taking those nice river grassland cities the neighboring AI has ... in this case will usually prioritize Great Wall to make sure to have enough espionage points because I will likely be behind in tech for a while.

Sometimes I have little high production land, but good science producing land. Then it's try to tech to an advantage and hope to build enough military to get there alive. I find the hardest starts to be the ones low on production without enough food to whip much. I might get a tech lead easily, but building enough military is rough. Monarch and above, you just have to make sure you prioritize military before cultural borders are clashing. If not, you will get attacked, and probably die.

 

[Silence101]

I notice a lot of you tend to war only until you take a few cities and then you rebuild. I tend to, but not always, stay at war until I wipe them out. I'm starting to see now why it takes me forever to win a game this way. What are some good rules of thumb on when you should sue for peace and rebuild before dropping the hammer again?

Edit: I've read the War Academy articles on going to war, but I don't really recall seeing this outlined. If it is in one of them, kindly point me to it and I'll gladly read it again.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I often do the same thing... the way I figure, the Civ that you're warring against will probably lose most of their army strength in the opening turns of battle (assuming that you're winning anyway). Why stop the war and give them time to rebuild their military?

In the later game, war weariness becomes more of a problem... it costs more money via the cultural slider to keep people happy. Still though, I find the later wars are usually easier because I've got a good production base and a good sized empire by this time. I've never had a problem being competative with tech, and I'm always either at war or preparing to attack somebody. It seems to me that warring shouldn't cause you to fall behind in tech in most cases. If you're making progress, the money you make from capturing / pilliaging should offset army expenses to a large degree.

As long as you're not suffering from prolonged economic troubles and/or extreme war weariness, you might as well finish them off. (Though if you're not going for a domination or conquest victory, then I agree that it really depends on your ultimate objective. If you're going to finish them off at some point anyway, you might as well do it now.) Running an early SE will often take care of early economic/tech issues that are more prevalent with a smaller, less developed Civ.

 

[Silence101]

I only have my production cities building units, but they build units in both peacetime and wartime. However, since i tend to have a small number of production cities (say, 1 in every four or five), I usually find myself outnumbered (this is on Prince).

What do other players do?

I play Prince too... my capital and second cities are usually hybrids. After that, I'll usually build build production and commerce cities at about a 1:1 ratio. Commerce cities never stop building infrastructure, even during wartime... unless it's a real emergency. My hybrids will have the ability to switch back and forth based on needs. Having a substantial amount of production / production capable cities allows you to raise an army reletively quickly if you find yourself in trouble. (Without resorting to whipping as much as possible.)

 

[thadian]

The most important thing in war is knowing where to be. AI and Humans are different "people", and either can see 2-3 spaces into your cultural borders.

AI will let you pile up on their borders, so do it. Spend 5 turns mobilizing your army. First war, see if anyone else will war them first (to avoid diplo penalty), and charge in. Conquer their border cities, send out horsemen to pillage their improvements, and to cut off roads. By the 5th turn of war, you should have 2 conquered cities, and cut off a good portion of their resources.

Keep your other border cities defended well, and let your inside cities fall to 2 defenders. (one to kill suprise pillagers, a second to defend the city). Also, you can use open borders and spend a few turns mobilizing on the other side of their nation, and hit from both sides.

No human in MP will let you pile up on the borders unless they cant fight you. So make sure your forces are 4 spaces off their border.

Lastly, i normally use war 1 to pillage/capture border cities, war 2 to capture your strategic resource cities, and war 3 is about your capitulation.