Need advice on warmonger strategy

Sloty

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 14, 2010
Messages
44
Hi!

My next game i want to play a very agressive warmonger.
Which nation is good for this style?
What policies should i take?
General strats for warmonger?
Which units are overpowered?

Are there any good mods for warmongers?
 
China and Mongolia are the obvious choices. I think China tends to be stronger in the long run because of its economy and the fact that its GG bonus is useful for both melee and ranged units. But Mongolia is a lot more fun to play as, I think. Healing + movement makes it very good at capturing a ton of cities very early on.
 
greece is better than china for very early aggressive strat, probably slightly better than mongol before turn 100 but the mongols are best for long-term warmongering. kahn + keshiks + honor tree makes you into a monster. fyi I usually end up keeping my highly promoted horsemen and just building/buying keshiks. 4-5 of them should be enough for just about any map unless you are surrounded and need 3+ armies in different locations at the same time.
 
greece is better than china for very early aggressive strat

I agree, but the window during which greece has an advantage over china is fleeting. As soon as china obtains a GG or two, things are at least evened out.

fyi I usually end up keeping my highly promoted horsemen and just building/buying keshiks. 4-5 of them should be enough for just about any map unless you are surrounded and need 3+ armies in different locations at the same time.

This is quite sensible. The biggest problem with keshiks is their inability to take cities and lack of a blitz promotion. Horsemen with blitz + extra movement promotion + march are incredibly useful. Also, I think that without melee units, the GG's healing ability goes to waste.
 
TBH, any Civ is great as a warmonger. Just spam horsemen (I love speed).
 
If you're looking for long-term warmongering, I've been tinkering with using the Ottomans.

Run Cav until Gunpowder, then switch the entire military to Janissary. Nothing but a giant pile of Janissary. Nothing quite like upgrading those if you can keep them alive, and eventually having a pile of Mech Infantry that full heal every time they kill something, with Blitz.

Another that I discovered accidentally is astounding at long-term warmongering is France. Entirely because the Foreign Legion never obsoletes. Due to this, as France I never build Mechanized Infantry. I build Foreign Legions and upgrade them, giving all my Mech the Foreign Lands bonus when on the offensive.
 
Some of the advice here may depend on the level you play on. On Emperor and below, you can basically horse rush yourself into a very dominant situation with about any civ.

On Immortal, the AI's develop quicker and have large armies and horses and nice middle aged units like cho-ko-nus and longbows start to become obsolete much quicker.

Anyhow... and noting that I haven't played as Greece yet, I find Mongols, China, and Songhai to be nice warmongering civs.

Mongols with a fair supply of horses can easily wipe out a land mass with several AI civs on Emperor and below and without ever stopping attacking. Just keep a couple horsemen for taking cities and busting up the occasional cannon you may see, along with a keshik army and a Kahn and this is easy. On higher levels, you may not be able to sweep the continent clean in one go, but you should be able to cripple a nearby AI or two and expand via conquest into a very competitive later game situation.

The extra movement of a Kahn is extremely useful. In my last Immortal game, My Kahn was able to move along the roads on the eastern front and support what ever attack I was making during the part of the turn and then move again, to another part of the front to support that attack and then still get to safety to aid my defence vs Alex's counter attack. This went on for at least 100 turns and with industrial/modern era units (noting that I had an extremely horse poor start and couldn't do an early rush from my penisula). At game end, the Kahn was still useful supporting my mostly GDR army that pushed thru to Athens.

China is a good civ for warmongers also for three reasons. 1) Better GG's and faster generation of them. 2) Their nice UU, the CKN, although as usual on Immortal and above the dominant time frame for this UU is considerably less than on Emperor and below. 3) Their superb UB, the Paper Maker which is a Library with 3 free GPT per building. An army consisting of a few CKN's, a couple horsemen, and a GG is very effective vs equivilent age AI units and can take cities quite nicely. The economy, aided by the great UB, can also afford to purchase more units as needed and also to upgrade them when that time comes, and can usually rush buy the colosseum or circus if critical happiness is an issue due to quick conquest.

I find that Songhai is also a very good civ for warmongering. The triple gold from conquering a city is very helpful and results in nice purchases and getting 75 gold rather than 25 from whacking barbs is nice early on, often leading to a quicker Maritime CS alliance. Their UU, the Mandakalu Cav, can in groups of two or three overrun city after city in its time frame (of course a smaller timeframe on Immortal/Deity). The UB is essentially 5 free culture per building and this helps with rapid advancement thru useful SP's.

Certainly with Songhai, I always want to start with Honor for the barb bonus and then the 15% from adjacent unit combat bonus. I'd probably start with Honor for any major early war mongering plan, although I find Meritocracy a near must to keep happy later on.

.. neilkaz ..
 
If you play with barbs and city states, Songhai is the best warmonger.

The amount of gold you get through turns by killing barb camps, pillaging and taking cities is insanely ridiculous.
 
Aztec if you are warrior rushing. The heal-on-kill feature of Jaguar Warriors is one of the strongest traits in the game that carry over when you upgrade the unit.

Build nothing but warriors until you find your neighbor. Count the number of warriors you have at that point. Keep building warriors until you have twice that many. Start the attack when the last warrior is being built. The last one is for insurance...you won't need it to take the first city unless things go awry.
 
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