Lesson #1: Don't hold all your cavalries in one basket

[Elear]

I kept the city because it had Sun Tzu's, Leonardo's, and the Pyramids. It was only to be held for one turn to reap the benefits (namely wanted to make a few upgrades, temporary barracks in all my cities). Thus I stored a big stack of injured cavalry in it, as well as two 4 cavalry armies, which was the brunt of my attack force on that island (my main army is off fighting the Japanese).

Go figure.

 

[Quintillus]

Ouch! That's a hard city to not keep, though, with all those wonderful Wonders. It looks like your Trebs are exposed now, too. I think it's happened to all of us at one point or another.

 

[Elear]

The trebuchet you see is actually a stack of a dozen cannons; the trebuchet is just on top. I wasn't worried about them: the main risk was flips. The French were so defeated at this point, they didn't even have enough troops to capture my artillery. I walked up my artillery stack unguarded to the last city pictured (Tours) and then bombarded and struck with cavalry simultaneously.

The big threat are the Japanese. They are backwards tech-wise (I am in the Industrial Age and they are still in the late Middle Age) but they have a ridiculous amount of troops. It is almost like playing Deity or Sid because of the huge stacks they have built up on their 9 city island.

I'll still win handily, it's just delaying my conquest victory.

 

[Elear]

After picking off the island cities and finishing off the French, I was involved in an absolute slugfest with a Japan Monarchy.

Therefore, I decided to do something that would make military commanders cringe...

My four armies are in red, with arrows showing their attack plan. The mass of orange in the right is my trick. Since the AI of course LOVES to capture workers, cannons, attack loose troops, capture cities, I let them have it. Aren't I generous?

Their slow moving troops would simply turn around and go back to the cities if I didn't do SOMETHING. Then I'd have something worse: big stacks in cities with barracks. The AI couldn't resist my gambit here. I sacrificed all my loose cavalry, cannons, workers doing this. However it left few defenders in any of the cities.

This worked perfectly, except for an annoying Japanese settler roaming around. They formed a city and moved part of their stack into it. My armies arrived there quickly and started picking apart the city, but undoubtably, the rest of their stack would arrive the next turn, then I'd be back where I started.

So I did it again.

Of course, the idea of luring the AI around is nothing new. But it is truly the poor man's Funnel of Deception, because while my armies were out razing cities, I used pure numbers instead of lines of armies. It was funny while it lasted.

With their army...preoccupied, it was really no challenge for my armies to take their city the next turn.

This resulted in a conquest victory in 1665 AD. It took 5 turns in all from the initial screenshot. And the final minimap and power graph:

Happy civing!

 

[sercer88]

NIIIICE!!

And what difficulty is this?

Given the look of the Histograph of Power, it looks like you could have won maybe around 1000 AD. What was the big hold-up? (Just curious, not trying to say: bad job )

Oh, and yeah, it doesn't look like you had ALL your cavalries in one "basket," or else your power certainly would have gone down more than that, right?

Not to take away from the sheer hatred you must have felt for the French at that point in the game

 

[ecuwins]

oops.. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I got so

Now I stack them in there as soon as it is taken and leave 1 or 2 defenders there after the initial IBT.

 

[Elear]

NIIIICE!!

And what difficulty is this?

Given the look of the Histograph of Power, it looks like you could have won maybe around 1000 AD. What was the big hold-up? (Just curious, not trying to say: bad job )

Oh, and yeah, it doesn't look like you had ALL your cavalries in one "basket," or else your power certainly would have gone down more than that, right?

Not to take away from the sheer hatred you must have felt for the French at that point in the game

This was Emperor difficulty. All the world settings were random + sedentary barbarians + Standard size map + Standard aggression. Obviously, it seems to have ended up 80 percent continents. I took the first start I got.

The big hold up was simply getting to the enemies. All the others were separated by a big ocean. During the time when I gained nothing in power, I was building ships, horsemen, armies, and getting to Magnetism + Military Tradition. Once I got there, I used the English UU to trigger a golden age and shut off research. I used a SGL to rush the Military Academy. Then, using +700 GPT, I upgraded 50 horsemen and bought some armies. That's how I got to the invasion of the other continent. While I was dealing with France, Inca, and Dutch, I built more troops to invade Japan. It mainly took so long because of how the early game went.

The beginning of this game was very difficult for Emperor level. I was boxed in at the north, and the south was tundra. I did have Ivory and Furs, but I had to work for my Iron and Horses. I spent a long time warring against the civs in my region: Portugal, Mongols, Zulu. At one point, I was at war against all of them because of sneak attacks. I was plagued by flips while hunting down island cities. So time I could have otherwise spent researching, etc. in a Republic was lost.

And no, it wasn't all in one basket, but I could have done more to spread them out. The rest of my cavalry were able to deal with the French remnant.

 

[Tasslehoff]

Identical thing happened to me in a COTM... Like, exactly identical. Captured Paris, leaving France with two island cities. Put all my cavs into Paris to heal, and then it flipped, making it so much longer to conquer Spain...

 

[Elear]

Was this COTM41 by any chance?

 

[Tasslehoff]

I think it was...

 

[iambenben]

haha that was a bit unfortnunate

 

[ThinkTank]

I remember loosing a stack of 16 modern armour like this in the just conquered Babylonian capitol.

You learn. With CivAssist you can see the amount of troops you need to prevent flips and often this number is so large (50+ units) that it is completely impractical. Instead, if there is a very valuable city, make that the last city you take.

 

[Marsden]

I remember loosing a stack of 16 modern armour like this in the just conquered Babylonian capitol.

You learn. With CivAssist you can see the amount of troops you need to prevent flips and often this number is so large (50+ units) that it is completely impractical. Instead, if there is a very valuable city, make that the last city you take.

Or, park right outside of it and keep grabing it back. A good side effect of this is the city loses on pop per change, which helps get the flip risk down.

 

[Rodrig0]

Or if you're communist, just whip them to death.
Advisor: Rushing a factory would cost too many lives!
Ok, so just rush a worker. 1 citizen dies. No problem. Now with those shields rush a harbor -> another citizen, a temple - 1, a market -2, a bank - 2, a factory = all the rest. By the end you'll have at most 2 unhappy guys who will most likely be upset and won't work, so one will starve Much faster than just starve the city manually, risking a flip every turn.

How cheap is this? Is it banned somewhere?

 

[TheOverseer714]

That would assume that all resistance has been quelled. Can't rush anything while there is resistance. It takes a bunch of units to quell in one turn. Also, you have to be communist, despo, fascist, or feudal to whip, and most on here shun those governments.