Natural Warmongers

BadHorsie

Prince
Joined
Mar 6, 2006
Messages
458
Do you think some people are just made to be all-out war-fighting bastards and some aren't? I have tried - only on Noble - to be a really early, aggressive war monger, and I think it's just not for me.

I started on a small map, quick game, 3 AI civs. Frederick, Mansa Musa & Monty. I immediately chop-rushed some axes and went and conquered the Germans next door - which was fine, because I had the initial lead from chopping, and luckily I cornered them on a little coastal notch on the land mass. I then tried to take over Mansa Musa, but couldn't get the job done. This was because I found myself in a vicious circle:

My cities were so awful (compared to how they are if I'm playing relatively peacefully) I couldn't lead with technology very well, so I was churning out all these units and it was just taking so many to capture cities because they weren't really superior to the AI's units. Eventually I was on a par with all AIs in terms of units, and I decided to try to get my techs back on track and get a more advanced unit to crush them with.


So I made peace with Mansa Musa (leaving him with 1 city) and then before I could do much, Monty had his inevitable period and declared war on me. I then got stuck in a seriously boring stalemate whereby we were just slaughtering hundreds of our riflemen against each other, with absolutely no useful outcome. I managed to advance 3 tiles towards his land by 1940. Seriously.

At the same time, Mansa Musa founded little cities everywhere while we were fighting, and his existing cities crushed the ones I captured with his superior culture.

In conclusion, I've decided I can't even be bothered to finish the game, and I;m just gonna stick with what I enjoy - which is peacefully building up my civ then crushing everyone with my superior units. It's all about fun, and I just found all-out war really boring, unsatisfying, messy and tedious.
 
My game last night was my first attempt at war mongering and I have to concur with you. Bleh.. The game just doesn't seem to evovle much the units are upgraded but I don't get excited because now its 10-8 instead of 6-4! so what?? didn't think it was much fun. I was lucky to start on continents and have Japan at the long end of a skinny pennisula : ) so my first settler went for a walk and sealed him in.

All in all I much prefer diplo and trying to minipulate others into doing the fighting.
 
If Monty is a close neighbour, you should take him out first. He is guaranteed to be trouble. On the other hand, you can usually co-exist peacefully with Mansa until you are ready to attack him.

There are a few others like Monty (Toku, Cathy, Alex) that will almost always be a problem if you let them have a chance -- the point is: try to priorize your enemies and get rid of the hard to control ones first.
 
Being a warmonger does not mean all out war. You must have infrastructure in order to sustain any war period. Wars should be fought it periods and you should try to end them quickly. Always attack when you have the advantage and exploit the AI weakness. You should not be losing all those units to the enemy. That's what cheap CATs are for and any other unit that does collateral damage.

When attacking the AI try to find a good defensive spot outside their cities like a forest or hill and have some defensive and healing type units in the stack as well. The AI will send some it units to attack you weakening the city defenses.

For your home territory defenses you really only need a couple of units in each city for garrison duty but have one stack of fast movers(if you can) that specialize in killing a variety of units but not have city attacking promotions. With this stack you can defend your homeland with the ability to move some of your city garrison to any particular point. This is the main weakness of the AI as they don't consolidate their units like a player does.

City specialization is also key to being a successful warmonger. You really should only have a couple of city producing the majority of your units. Though I do usually build barracks in most of my cities because if push comes to shove I like have the ability to have my entire empire produce a massive army in a few sort turns and it is usually the only thing to build except for units at certain points.

It is better to TAKE it by force than to build it yourself. I think that statement is what classifies a true warmonger. I try to start out in the very first turns by capturing the closest Civ's workers and then I usually beeline for BW to take out that Civ and capture its cities therefore saving me the trouble of producing settlers. Now mind you always have to watch out for over expanding and what not but if you are a builder then having good infrastructure shouldn't be an issue. I believe the problem you are having is that you are making and losing way to many units.
 
migthegreek said:
I was churning out all these units and it was just taking so many to capture cities because they weren't really superior to the AI's units.

I then got stuck in a seriously boring stalemate whereby we were just slaughtering hundreds of our riflemen against each other, with absolutely no useful outcome. I managed to advance 3 tiles towards his land by 1940. Seriously.

What you need to do to be a successful warmonger is to fight better than the AI. Don't try to copy them by building units and sending them off to die in a steady stream, of course you won't get anwhere that way. And don't just build units and throw them at a city. I typically don't use cats for collateral damage on most cities, but I normally only lose 0-2 units taking a city, hardly huge losses.

Build armies with some city raider units, some general combat units, plus some catapaults for bombardment, and a few more cats (which are cheap) for collateral damage, and you should be able to take cities losing only a few cats in the process. Be sure to nuture city raider 3 macemen in the middle ages to upgrade to city raider 3 riflemen/grenadiers/infantry later on.

Also, why were you slaughtering each others' riflemen for years; why not just research chemistry (it's only 1 tech from gunpowder) and use grenadiers, which get a whopping +50% when attacking riflemen? And don't grind it out in a field, retreat to a city and let him keep attacking through walls into units with city defender. While you defend against his attack (which will come mainly at one city, with an occasional unit elsewhere), take a stack with some cannons and go take a city that's not on the direct path between his army and your target city.
 
Something I like to do as well, especially in the very beginning, is just send a few Quecha/Axemen/Swordsmen over to a couple of the AI cities and just have them hang out next to the cities in a forest. Go pillage anything important, especially cottages. The AI will pull in all of their workers, and essentially produce very little research and units. This will allow you to take a tech lead very quickly. In the game before catapults, have 2.5x as many swordsmen/axemen as they have archers before you actually attack the city...minimum. I still think that a few swordsmen and a hampered opponent are better than building a settler. =)

I am a builder converter to warmonger. :goodjob:
 
The only times I can have a really succesful war is on warlord and below, and even then I typically start a war, finish it, wait 500 years, start another war, finish it, ect, so my infrastructure does not implode or fall way behind other civs.
 
migthegreek said:
Do you think some people are just made to be all-out war-fighting bastards and some aren't?
All-out war-fighting bastard. Yep. That's me. :) No, I think it is learned. When you're learning to ride a bicycle, you fall a lot. Same when learning to warmonger. Some pick it up quicker than others, but everyone has to go through a learning phase.

migthegreek said:
I then got stuck in a seriously boring stalemate whereby we were just slaughtering hundreds of our riflemen against each other, with absolutely no useful outcome. I managed to advance 3 tiles towards his land by 1940. Seriously.
Nightravn and Pantastic both gave some good bits of advice for improving how you handle wars.

The two most important points I think are:
1) The first step to becoming a good warmongerer is becoming a good builder. A warmongerer has to know how to build an economy that can support the war machine.
2) Concentration of firepower. Build large stacks and mix in units that can deal collateral damage. When you attack, apply so much force in one turn that the units you're attacking don't stand a chance. Don't go head-to-head with equal-strength opponents. You want to overwhelm with overkill.

If you would like to read some more on warmongering, there are a couple of good links in my sig. Remember, warmongering is a skill -- and skills are learned.
 
migthegreek said:
For those about to rock... we salute you.


:rockon: :rockon: :rockon: _________ :band:

FIRE!

:sniper:
 
I'm not a natural warmonger and tend to expand peacefully at the start of the game as much as I can before I build up an army. Having said that once you've run out of room its expand or fizzle so war it is. Stack of doom and annihiliate one civ at a time and yes after first peaceful expansion I tend to build very few cities.
From what I've read in the forum I'm going to have to become an early warmonger on monarch (not yet ready to go there).
 
Pantastic said:
And don't grind it out in a field, retreat to a city and let him keep attacking through walls into units with city defender.
I tried that initially, but he just pillaged everything in sight and began advancing towards my central cities continuing. The AI doesn't seem to attack a city if it knows it has no chance of winning at all (which he doesn't because I have a couple of Garrison III riflemen).

I would like to clarify that I can fight quick, successful wars and take out many civs in one sweep of the map, but just not early-game

I think perhaps my mistake was going for Frederick and Mansa Musa first, allowing Monty to comfortably expand across his half of the map and advance his technology and infrastructure.

I had a wide variety of promotions amongst my units, and I was prepared with cats too, I just couldn't even get near his cities to take one though, because he was producing units as fast as I was - that's why I was at a stalemate with him and wasn't advancing anywhere. I just couldn't over-whelm him, because I had to keep sending units out to stop him pillaging everything in sight, and cutting off my links to resources and generally impairing my ability to build units fast and keep up with the attacks.
 
It does sound as if you got your warmongering (edit:actually targetting) strategy wrong in that particular game. If Fred was boxed in he was a low priority. MM generally seems peaceful (and has a solid early UU) so if you'd gone for Monte first you'd likely to have done better. That doesn't make you a bad warmonger.
 
migthegreek said:
I think perhaps my mistake was going for Frederick and Mansa Musa first, allowing Monty to comfortably expand across his half of the map and advance his technology and infrastructure.
You should definately avoid Mansa early on. Axeman are no match for Skirmishers, tough bastards, unless you greatly outnumber him. You have to wait for cats or elephants to take them out, horse archers can't hurt them either.
 
migthegreek said:
I think perhaps my mistake was going for Frederick and Mansa Musa first, allowing Monty to comfortably expand across his half of the map and advance his technology and infrastructure.

Likely so. Freddy rarely turns into a threat, and Mansa makes a good trading partner. Part of warmongering is knowing who to make friends with, and who to alienate from the start.

I like to get on Monty's bad side. He will always start a war that he throws all of his troops into to die, then screws himself for the rest of the game by refusing to stop.

In your case of a deadlock, I would try to get a peace treaty to give yourself some time to regroup.
 
I recently played an MP game where I played Rome. I sent out my warriors as feelers to find a neighbor. As soon as I found him, I waited for the worker to appear. Grabbed him up, but kept 2-3 warriors by him to pillage and camp outside of his town.

By the time those units were dead my Praets were on their way to kick in the door. His capital fell to my 1st Praet and his 2nd city fell 15 minutes later to 3 more Praets. Then, I had 4 cities and everyone else had 2-3. Even at 50% research and constant war I got to Music before anyone else.

30 minutes later the 2nd player fell to me saying "You take all the fun out of the game". Muhahaha. The last player faced off with me. He had gotten a CS slingshot off so he was sending Macmen against my Praets. Simple enough, I bee-lined to guilds and tossed Knights at him. He got a stack of 10 Macemen passed my front line (where I had killed player 3) so I surrounded him with Knights and Cats and ended him. Right as I pushed my units to the front he surrendered to me. His 2 cities could not out produce the 9 I had going. And with 1-turn Grenadiers it was quickly over for him.

I started out as a builder and enjoyed Ghandi in most games. It is very possible to become a warmonger, you just need to use the right civ and have the right mindset.

EDIT- Funny addon. The last player as he lost his stack of Macemen said "Wow, this map is bigger than I thought". I laughed. No one every came near my home cities
 
Howitzah said:
In your case of a deadlock, I would try to get a peace treaty to give yourself some time to regroup.
I don't think there's any chance of that happening.

I can't get a screenshot right now of the situation, but I'll try to draw a diagram of some sort:

Code:
                     |
                     |
                     \____________
                     [COLOR=darkgreen].[/COLOR]             \
                     [COLOR=darkgreen].[/COLOR]              \___________________________
Monty's   --->       [COLOR=darkgreen].[/COLOR]                                   [COLOR=darkorchid].[/COLOR]        
Land      --->       [COLOR=darkgreen]. [/COLOR][COLOR=darkorchid].  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .[/COLOR]     [My city]
          --->       [COLOR=darkgreen].[/COLOR].                           
                     [COLOR=darkgreen].[/COLOR][COLOR=darkorchid].[/COLOR]
                     [COLOR=darkgreen].[/COLOR][COLOR=darkorchid].[/COLOR]           [My city]              [My Capital]
Dotted lines are cultural borders. The straight lines are the coastline.
Basically, my border city closest to him is where he's sending the troops, but if I don't intercept them, they walk along the top, where my border doesn't cover that thin stretch of land, around to my central cities, pillaging everything in sight.

So what I was thinking is sending a stack with a settler up to that little unclaimed corner by his land, and building a city to block him, so that he will hopefully just attack the two cities and not walk down the middle of them. There was a city there before but it eventually got razed after switching back and forth.
 
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