I've heard of these 15 tank/10 infantry stacks in successful games... TELL ME HOW!

[Exsanguination]

I've been reading stories and strategies involving huge, HUGE armies with forces of 20+ units, yet the civilization is flourishing, with culture, science, and commerce! HOW???

I've tried and tried and tried, but I always find myself in the same dilemma for each game: either take the military route, or the ultimate empire route. The latter usually is susceptible to invasion forces and usually loses. How the hell do I do BOTH? Someone needs to write a strategy guide on this topic.

 

[God]

15 infantry, 10 tank? That will get you nowhere on standard map or larger.

To get more units, have more cities. In democracy you're going to spend money on support but save because less corruption and stuff.

You need about 40-50 cities on a large map. Have the top 20 or so have most of the improvements(barrack, marketplace, temple etc.) and build up an army.

The two governments that you should use are democracy and monarchy. Have democracy and build units, then switch to monarchy when fighting.

 

[allhailIndia]

I would reccomend that you practice this in the lower levels by sending those pesky Medieval BAbylonians to their doom by unleashing 60 Modern Armor and 70 Mech Inf on their pathetic pikemen

 

[No.Dice]

Originally posted by God
The two governments that you should use are democracy and monarchy. Have democracy and build units, then switch to monarchy when fighting.

Wouldn't staying a Republic be best? The only thing Democracy gives you that a Republic doesn't is the slightly faster workers, and the war weariness is far less as a Republic.


At the higher difficulty levels its nearly impossible to be churning out science and maintain a large military right away. If you focus on one, you'll fall behind in the other. All of the science/commerce buildings cost a huge amount of shields for the time they become available.

I prefer to go to war early, build my FP in a conquered city ASAP, and acquire my techs through warfare. If well-timed, (mid-late middle ages) i'll use my golden age to construct my libraries/universities/marketplaces..etc.

If my starting position was not fertile enough for an early war, (no restarting ) i'll concentrate solely on expansion and let myself fall a bit behind in other areas. If somebody comes looking for trouble, pop rushing a few archers can keep even the strongest civs at bay for a good amount of time, though you may have to part with one of your corrupt land filler cities for peace.

In my experience, at some point in the game, you're going to have to bite the bullet and let your military sag in favour of your infrastructure. Should a sudden war break out, you can switch production from those expensive buildings to whatever the current military unit may be. A terrible waste, but not every war is convenient.

I'm sure its different for each individual player, so you'll probably recieve a wide range of answers. I'm interested in what other players have to say, as i've had trouble with this area as well.

 

[Exsanguination]

Originally posted by God
15 infantry, 10 tank? That will get you nowhere on standard map or larger.

i mean attack forces that large. Even I could muster a pathetic army that big. I am referring to the players who have multiple attack forces that large, plus 5-6 defenders in EACH city, defensive lines, backups, and who only take 4 turns to researh the latest tech with money to spare.

 

[God]

Oh i see. 5-6 units per city is a bit ridiculous other than those front line cities.

people can produce such large armies if they have factories and can rapidly produce alot of units. Plus by then they will have alot of cities. And ofcourse they spend years building up their army before going to war.

 

[Shink]

Agreed - 4-5 defenders per city is way overkill. I usually keep two per city in the mainland that is fully railroaded. The ease of moving troops from city to city makes this plenty enough. Before railroads I try to keep three per city.

Invasive forces have to be absolutely huge or you are going to lose. If I'm invading another continent, I usually send 24 Infantry, 8 Cavalry, and 16 or so Artillery. Even then I have to hang around the shores until I can land on a mountain or jungle square. Invading another country is not easy unless you have a huge tech lead, so you will need lots and lots of troops, and plenty of bombarding power to break those infantrymen fortifying the city.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

I just finished a great game where I did have the big armies.

As they said above, defense is not important in your interior cities or those facing away from the enemies.

Having Sun Tzu is crucial for upgrades, and Hoover Dam for production.

I have found that early wars can be won with Knights and Cavalry only, especially when you beat them to them.

Late game wars require lots of artillery, infantry and tanks. Usually you can build the infantry before you research tanks, then switch to all out tanks. I had a few cities capable of producing artillery every turn and I exploited this. When you get Mech Infantry, the fun begins because your tanks can go full bore with out worrying that those swordsmen are going to chop them up.

If you are ahead on tech, you sell it to the others, use the money to finance 90-100% tech research. If you go to war, have allies, preferably have everyone else as an ally. I fought on my own continent and the allies were from other continents, so they really only harried the ROmans with ship to shore, but it meant they were dealing with slowed research and potential unrest.

Building up cash in peacetime is easy. At war, upgrade all you can and send it in the field. I stayed in democracy and painstakingly made sure cities stayed away from revolt levels every turn, also basically shut down science to do entertainment. If you play as a religious civ, you can switch over to communism or even despot to rush units and fight all out then switch back to get back on science track.

Expansion and lots of cities are important and there is a great strategy article in the Academy on this site about using granaries early to pop out faster settlers. I got the pyramids early.

My only regret is that the game always ends one war or another before I can ever get stealth fighters or radar artillery...

 

[God]

My only regret is that the game always ends one war or another before I can ever get stealth fighters or radar artillery...

Same with me. I have fought several large modern wars with modern armor, nukes, and mech infantry but I haven't been able to use Radar Artillery or any stealth plane.

I don't bother to research robotics or stealth because I always go for synthetic fibers, computers, rocketry and then the space techs.

IMO, AEGIS Crusiers, Radar Artillery, and Stealth planes are useless. Aegis cruiser can be beaten by a battleship in Civ 3. And they all come too late.

By then somebody has already launched a spaceship or I'm milking the game and couldn't care less about those units.

 

[Zouave]

My only regret is that the game always ends one way or another before I can ever get stealth fighters or radar artillery...

Precisely why the lack of a Scenario-builder is a terrible failing and disappointment in this game.


We could also build a Modern War scenario that does not require an entire game to TRY to get to and that does not have so many units it takes an hour to play a turn.

 

[RX2000]

I have fought several modern wars. If you dont have mass amounts of units though, you should just forget about it.

In my last game I was the Americans, the French were right next to me. We had never fought a war before, and it was now nearing 1800 AD, and I had tanks, and old Joan had about 170 or so infantry. I had a suspicion she might be thinking of launching a sneak attack, so after I had pretty much every city improvement built in all 25-30 of my high production cities, I started cranking out tanks and artillery. I had probably 70 or so tanks and 30 artillery, when she decided to send in 2 stacks of troops to my territory. When I right clicked on the stacks I almost had a heart attack. In the first one there was about 40 infantry, with some obsolete units thrown in for good measure. The second stack had maybe 15 infantry, with a ton of old units also..... mostly swordsmen and riflemen, things like that.

It was actually a one sided fight tho. I dont know if you've ever seen what 30 artillery can do to an invasion force, but if you havent, you should definitely try it next game. By the time I sent in my tanks to mop up, the artillery had basically all the units down to 1 hit point. So the tanks made mincement of them. After that, it was time for a full scale invasion of Joans now somewhat less defended cities. She mostly just had 2 infantry in ever city, with 1 in the smaller ones. It was sad really.

BTW, this game was on regent level.

Basically you just need to have 30 or so cities with good production, able to crank out modern units in at least 2-3 turns. Its not hard on a huge map (which I always play on... standard maps are just too dang small) especially if you place your FP right.

 

[Maple]

If you want a sprawling empire with massive science, production, and cash, the secret is...

-Use Sun Tzu for veteran units, quick heal, and easy upgrades.

-Use Hoover Dam for super production.

-Make sure you have 40-50+ cities for massive science and income.

-Improve land wisely. Don't irrigate shield grassland, etc.

-Railroad everything.

-Make objectives that accomplish key objectives for your empire.
Remember, goals are just dreams with deadlines.

-Build exactly what you need for each objective, and when it is accomplished either use the remaining forces for defense, reserve, or the forces for a new objective.

 

[Evincar]

-Improve land wisely. Don't irrigate shield grassland, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Why not??

 

[philippe]

becuase that would take away the big shield benefit of railroads....

 

[Evincar]

Originally posted by philippe
becuase that would take away the big shield benefit of railroads....

It won't.
No matter what the civilopedia says (think I won't ever trust in it after the galleys case ), the railroad benefits are as following:

railroaded irrigation produce +1 food
railroaded mines produce +1 shield.

So, if you irrigate a shield grassland and railroad it you'll get, 4 food, 1 shield. If you mine and irrigate, then it's 2 food, 3 shields. None is better tham the other, the decision depends enterily of what you need more, so if there are a lot of grassland, I'll mine it to get extra shield, but, if there are hills and mountains I'll irrigate it to feed the citizens working there.

Also, notice that there's no benefit in railroading a forest!! (apart from the free movement), so don't take too many efforts on them

 

[Anarch]

Originally posted by God


IMO, AEGIS Crusiers, Radar Artillery, and Stealth planes are useless. Aegis cruiser can be beaten by a battleship in Civ 3. And they all come too late.

Well they are not too late if you TURN OFF spaceship victory option. The most exciting part of game for me is latter when I use Stealth Bombers and sometimes even Radar Artillery to destroy a few thousands years old tempes and libraries in enemy's capitol! He gets so angry and his cultural rating rapidly falls down. I use Carriers to do this.

 

[eg577]

Quote: "I've been reading stories and strategies involving huge, HUGE armies with forces of 20+ units, yet the civilization is flourishing, with culture, science, and commerce! HOW???"

Are you making a large enough empire? It gets hard to manage a lot of cities, but shoot for at the very least 30 cities. More cities means more overall production power. Untill you have as many cities as you want, DO NOT LET UP on that settler production! Most of your first 5 cities should be making unit(s)-settler-unit(s)-settler-unit(s)-settler etc, the idea is to expand as quickly as possible. Have your cities overlap some to curb corruption.

-Are you properly managing you terrain improvements?
This is very important to making a good empire much better. Badly managing your workforce is like leaving a machine running without lubrication. You gotta start doing it right from the very begining.
-If you are a Civ2 veteran, you have to shake the habit of making mostly irrigation.
-During the very begining your workers should only be making road connections and a couple of mines per city, don't go overboard making too many improvement per city early on when you don't have enough workers to go around.
-Are you making enough workers? If your worked squares are going unimproved most of the time then you aren't. Making workers early in a city's life (soon after they stop their own turn of cranking out settlers) because at low pop levels one population point is easy to "grow back". A city at size 6 can also make a worker to not let the extra food go to waste.
-Don't improve more squares than a city is working. Improving one square more than the city is using is fine, since the city will grow eventually, but manage your workers to shuffle around to where they are needed.
-Mine every grassland shield square, and sometimes ones without shields too(depending on the city's needs). You probably will make mostly mines before monarchy.
-MANAGE your cities' citizens, at least during ancient times (where you have fewer cities). You don't need to be running a surplus of more than 2 or 3 food.
The idea is to get your cities at *large* shield productions, allowing to you have _spare_ time to make militairy units after you make improvements.

That said, usually when you want a militairy, you have to force yourself to delay improvements. That library in one of your core cities will just have to wait 20 turns while you make half a dozen units. When you want a militairy, you have to go all out to get it done before they become obsolete. Set ALL of your top cities to make units, a couple cities can take breaks from units to make improvements, but DON'T say you'll make units when your cities finish improvements, it just won't happen. Furthermore, you might be *wanting* to build libraries and marketplaces when you shouldn't. In say your outer cities with 5 science and 5 gold, a library or marketplace will have a very minimail benifit, so have them make the cheap militairy units instead (like infantry and artillerly). Expensive units, life offensive soldiers and cavalry, should be made in your big cities.

Don't expect to be able to make your first "large" army quickly. The first war you make in a game will involve a large amount of preperation beforehand just to make the units. Keep in mind that certain units have a "dead end" upgrade path. For example, the warrior to swordsman/legion/immortal path ends rather quickly. The archer to longbowman path ends with gunpowder as well. The spearman-pikeman-musketman-rifleman-infantry, the horseman-knight-cavalry and the catapult-cannon-artillery-radar artillerly paths all upgrade nicely into the 21st century. Making more of these units means you have to make less units later on.

 

[Merd346]

I generally don't go to war unless I'm forced to so my military is usually much smaller but more modern than the other civ's. When someone declares war on me and I need to catch up I mobilize. This forces you to build military and you build them quickly. You do have to make sure you have enough units to slow down an invasion, though.

 

[shotdown08]

Originally posted by Shink
Agreed - 4-5 defenders per city is way overkill. I usually keep two per city in the mainland that is fully railroaded. The ease of moving troops from city to city makes this plenty enough. Before railroads I try to keep three per city.

Invasive forces have to be absolutely huge or you are going to lose. If I'm invading another continent, I usually send 24 Infantry, 8 Cavalry, and 16 or so Artillery. Even then I have to hang around the shores until I can land on a mountain or jungle square. Invading another country is not easy unless you have a huge tech lead, so you will need lots and lots of troops, and plenty of bombarding power to break those infantrymen fortifying the city.

I agree compeletly. Use a mobile counterattacking force. This way you are able to use less defenders per city.