Offensive tactics and strategies - what do you use?

[Jazzmail]

Blitz: This tactic needs lots of fast units like cavalry, panzers, cossacks, and mod. armour. Rapidly overwhelm the garrison of a city in a surprise attack, and keep doing it every turn until the entire country is in your hands.

Juggernaut: This tactic is used with artillery and infantry, lots of both. Simply muster a gigantic stack and march through enemy territory. Shell every defending unit down to one hitpoint and storm the city.

I know of only 1 alternative tactic to these 2. I prefer blitzing but sometimes I resort to a war of attrition:
First you need to bribe allies into joining the war. If they bring in a few units, but not too many, much the better.
You do not care about keeping enemy cities initially. You want to pick off as many enemies in the open because cities have defensive bonus.

Have slow stacks of offensive units protected by defenders and artillery. Bombard the enemies into red and pick them off with a decent unit. Preferably use fast units for the last enemy in a stack so they can retreat back to safety of your own stack.
Place the stack preferably on a chokepoint where the enemy is passing through. If you don't have that, attack a city in juggernaut style and hunt for enemy reinforcements. You don't need to beat all defenders though and if you win the city, leave and let the AI try to retake it.

Eventually when the enemy has lost many units cities become easier to capture and you start conquering for real.

 

[mastertyguy]

I like blitzing before arties, and when I hit replacable parts, i build 20-30 of them, 20-30 cavs and ten inf per stack and goodbye! AI's gone!

 

[soul_warrior]

strategy is not tactics everybody

strategy
- i will aim for limited, short, brutal wars. what i want is to weaken to top-dog, while keeping the other AIs from becoming one. that means lots of MAs.
- i will go for a war only to get a resource-lux-wonder i need.
- keep your goals in mind and NEVER outreach yourself.

tactics
- build, if possible only attacking units. there are several SoD combos out there, such as
1- all fast attackers (horses, etc) to blitz your enemies
2- 50% fast, 30% artillery (cats, trebs, cannon...) and 20% defenders. here you go slower but have a much better survival rate. just let them crash against your defenders, finishing of the redlined ones with your faster units and retreat back into the SOD.
3- 20% defenders, 30% power attackers (archers, LB...) and 50% bombard. mostly infantry units here, so its slow going but you will be unstoppable.

try to map out your goal, so you can reach it at the shortest time possible.
pick a weaker enemy if possible.
if your aim is a power block, get some ALLIES.

CUT YOUR ENEMIES RESOURCES. use suicide squads if nessesary, but once you've cut ROME's only iron... no more legions... youre half way there.

USE PILLAGERS. if youre up against a power block, hurt him where it hurts. cut his luxes, resources and roads. burn everything you cant or dont want to keep. once you get peace, he'll be busy rebuilding his infra.
MUSKET ARMIES are VERY underrated. i highly recommend those.

and basically read most of the WAR ACADEMY Articles.
each one will shed light on some aspects, combine those to form your own methods.