Offensive tactics and strategies - what do you use?

Blasphemous

Graulich
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Feb 23, 2002
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Jerusalem, Israel
I was bored earlier and started reading a bit in the War Academy. Suddenly I wondered how other people like to conduct their conquests.
Personally my strategy hardly ever varies. I pick a weak neighboring rival (even when at war with multiple enemies), I assemble fast or at least powerful offensive forces at their border (or within it if we're already at war) and then sweep as fast as possible through their cities in such a sequence as allows me to conquer all of my targets (which usually include anything that could become contiguous territory in my control.) I usually attempt to pump out and bring in good defenders to hold the cities and let my attackers continue their blitzkrieg, but I always end up with too few defenders to hold everything. Fortunately, picking on the weakest rivals I can find usually mean they don't get a chance to take any of their cities back and they're constantly on the defensive. I also make sure to dogpile any enemies I go to war with using alliances, if I intend to take all of their cities or if I expect it to take a while. When I expect it to last only a few turns and don't expect to get them out of the game alliances would get in the way of suing for peace and getting cities in compensation for my trouble right after I'm done conquering.
When railroads are around I make sure to keep my cities connected to a rail network so I can bring my forces to the front with maximum efficiency and easily withdraw my attacking forces to defend against other intrusions when necessary. The same applies to roads, but to a lesser extent.
Note that I play exclusively on RoX.
I think that's pretty much it for me. What are your usual offensive strategies and tactics?
 
I very rarely start a war against a neighbour unless I know I will conquer the whole of the nation or I DESPERATELY need a resource which they have close to my border.

I also don't start wars unless the units I have at the time can over-run the defending units the AI have. Once the AI gets Infantry I tend to use Bombers to reduce a city to ruins before I move troops in.

I stockpile defending units so that they can quell resistance as the bombers move onto the next city.

There is nothing worse than being bogged down in a long war so make sure you have either lots of units or the ability to produce them.

I don't like to sign Alliances as it annoys me when the allied civ takes a city I want but I sign them so I don't get dogpiled.
 
I usually play on Continents or Pangaea, and my stragy depends upon the type of the world:
I play Pangaea only when I play on easy levels, so the strategy is not important here, but when I play on continents the strategy counts a lot.
I usually am on the same continent with 1 to 3 opponents.
If I have 1 opponent on my continent I concentrate on his newest built or weakest cities (for this I need to have a lot of offensive units everywhere in the world), than I try to be very fast (if I don't have railroads) and before that city can build any defense I attack it with 3-4 units. Usually I don't need more. In this case the city has only the defense it was build with or only the defense it had before I get close to it. This is why I try to attack the smallest cities while my enemy is in Despotism (after that it doesn't count), because he can't rush with a very small population. After I conquer the city I have some units prepared before the war and I enter with them into my enemy's territory. Then, they get scared and make peace giving me a lot of gold per turn, techs, maps and resources. If I want to conquer more cities in one war I need a tech lead. I attack with 3 units they cannot build (usually with Cavalry or Legionary) and I get 4-5 cities from one war.
If I have two opponents I pick the closest one and attack him as above.
If I have three opponents I pick the smallest one.

If I attack a big civ from another continent I never try to take a coastal city, usually I try as fast as possible to colonize something on that continent and even if I bring my units from another continent, I firstly put them in that city and after that I attack from it. BUT: If I am very afraid of a civ I try to get with my units by sea, so they don't have time to rush the production when I declare war (I declare and I attack in the same turn).
Coastal cities are dangerous becaus they usually flip.
 
And I forgot to say I sign alliances with anyone I can against my opponent, but usually not with very strong civs, because I don't want them to take some of the important cities!
 
Ooh and I only attack in one direction.

Spliting your armies into a two pronged attack is the path to ruin.
 
I usually aim for the largest civ, getting allied with the rest of them. Try to declare before moving in so they move units towards the allies. Then strike couple of turns later, take a nice bite out of them with not to many units. Continue with the new largest civ, to make sure there´s just one top dog left, me! This way you can win of far lagers civ. Try to get allies which are bordering the target.
 
PrinceOfLeigh said:
Spliting your armies into a two pronged attack is the path to ruin.

Depends how big your army is. Sometimes you can trick the ai to move defender form town to town by positing 2 stack in the right place. With their wide city placement they won´t make it in 1 turn and turn into sitting ducks with no defensive bonus.
 
nerovats said:
I usually aim for the largest civ, getting allied with the rest of them. Try to declare before moving in so they move units towards the allies. Then strike couple of turns later, take a nice bite out of them with not to many units. Continue with the new largest civ, to make sure there´s just one top dog left, me! This way you can win of far lagers civ. Try to get allies which are bordering the target.
Does it work while playing on a difficult level? Anyway, you must play on a Pangaea for this strategy! And if there are only 4 or less civs left, you have to be on your own, it's hard to convince them fight each other.
 
When you´re down to 4 civ´s you should be top dog and have a tech lead, and easily bribe them. Doesn´t really matter how many civ´s there are. If there´s just 1 more the the enemy bribe that one. In te beginning when there are a lot of civ´s you only have to bribe the closest neighbours usually. This will on any world. Works even better on arch when 2 opponents are on another island. Let them finish eachother off. Can be difficult to manage, you don´t want 1 civ to trake over their island completely as there´s a risk of them getting even more powerfull taht way. Strategy works fine on any level, usually play emperor and up. At highest level, you might not be able to take the top dog firts then take on the largest one you can beat. Warring will reduce science spead, and afford you to keep up in techs. This is really usefull when you have GL. Civ´s are at war, so slow tech pace. This means you can set science to 0. After 20 turns redirect effords against most advance civ. You´ll have loads of gold, are still (almost) tech leader and can focus on settling the land the fighting AI will leave.
 
I usually take key points to allow easy defence. I don't attack weakest nations, I just attack neighbours. It's a variation between defensive and aggresive war.

If I have a border of 5 cities opposing another civ whose touching border only has 4 cities, I'll aim to take all my units from the 5 cities (5 stacks) and take the 4 cities (all the same time). This allows me to split one of my stack and give me a better protected border now after conquering the 4 cities. If that makes sense...

Then I just keep advancing, so that the enemy has a tough time recapturing their own cities.
 
The biggest reason to sign military alliance is not that you count on their help, but that you hate the possibility that they will sign MA with your target against you. At higher level, human's military force is always hardly enough to deal with one frontier, a two or even multi frontier war is nightmare.
 
I have two main offensive strategies. I like to call them Blitz and Juggernaut.


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 also like to bribe neighbors of my enemies to declare war on them, the AIs are bad at fighting two front wars, and AI to AI wars are very costly for both sides.
 
Blasphemous said:
I usually attempt to pump out and bring in good defenders to hold the cities and let my attackers continue their blitzkrieg, but I always end up with too few defenders to hold everything.

I used to do pretty much this strategy when conquering, but after reading around here I decided to try never building defensive units. It works. Defenders slow everything down and they get lost to flips, and like you said there never seems to be enough to hold everything. So instead of that strategy try building only attackers and draft your defenders later in the game.
 
Evil Tyrant said:
I have two main offensive strategies. I like to call them Blitz and Juggernaut.


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 also like to bribe neighbors of my enemies to declare war on them, the AIs are bad at fighting two front wars, and AI to AI wars are very costly for both sides.


All three points here are very good. The blitz is good when you've got a tech or resource advantage over your enemy. If your troops are stronger than theirs, you can tear through an entire civ very fast if you use nothing but fast attack units. The juggernaut is slower, but it's the surest way to win if you're fighting from a disadvantage. I'd like to add one more:

Instant Army: Build only the units with the best attack power to shield ratio, like archers, swordsmen, or medieval infantry. Maybe add one defender to cover the stack. This gets you the maximum punch for a smallest investment of shields and time. This is best for short, limited-objective wars near home. Without bombardment or retreat capabilities, you'll have heavy losses. But you can accomplish your objectives with minimal investment, and get back to growing and building as quickly as possible.
 
Arties, once you get them, your invincable. Problem is getting them (on higher levels). When played right you won't lose a single unit anymore.
 
ZubieMaster said:
I used to do pretty much this strategy when conquering, but after reading around here I decided to try never building defensive units. It works. Defenders slow everything down and they get lost to flips, and like you said there never seems to be enough to hold everything. So instead of that strategy try building only attackers and draft your defenders later in the game.
Well, I can't recall about normal C3C, PTW or VC3, but in RoX it's still much cheaper for me to produce some defenders to defend my cities with than it would be to use attackers to defend, since I'd need many more attackers than defenders. One the defenders come in the attackers that were holding the city can move on and conquer some more, and I really don't lack attackers... I definately don't wait much for defenders, it's just that sometimes it takes me longer than I'd like to bring them in and free the attackers that were waiting for them while the rest of my army marched on.
However, I think I may start incorporating more dual-purpose units in my army (units that have similar attack and defense) to add some flexibility... With them I can hold conquered cities better than with attackers and they'd still be helpful on the offensive. I used to use them almost exclusively but then I realized I can just used combined arms for cheaper and end up similar results... But when I use fast units as my attackers, that kind of combined arms doesn't work.
 
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.

These two are the tactics I usually use. Mainly the Juggernaut. Problem with that is that it takes ages to get the gigantic stack ready and thus reduces the potential efficiency of the civ I'm playing (I could take more cities without waiting for a massive stack). And it costs plenty. Also, Blitz is good if you're a smaller civ, because you don't have to have too many units in the field - so it doesn't cripple your economy just keeping them. It can work effectively for large civs.

BOTH HAVE THREE SERIOUS PROBLEMS THOUGH.
* If you have to fight on more than one front you're going to find it hard (fighting on more than one front means twice as many units or loss of cities).
* Both Juggernaut and Blitz work less efficiently if aimed in more than one direction (you're still have to attack one city at a time with either tactic)
* Both can become bogged down if your attacks slow (awaiting reinforcements or crossing hills or something)

Generally, these three problems are things to avoid when conducting warfare. I've never fought a successful war when any of the above take effect. Plus, when you have one of the problems, chances are, you have the other two too. When that happens, that's the time to make peace :p

That's my strategy :king:
 
ZubieMaster said:
I used to do pretty much this strategy when conquering, but after reading around here I decided to try never building defensive units. It works. Defenders slow everything down and they get lost to flips, and like you said there never seems to be enough to hold everything. So instead of that strategy try building only attackers and draft your defenders later in the game.
This is why I love Rome! :goodjob:
I make 4 to 7 Legionaries for every city and if more than 2 survived, I fortify these two into the city, defending it and recovering, with the rest of them going as fast as possible to another cities.
With Legionaries, you can conquer an entire continent before the enemies discover Military Tradition.
 
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