Proposal for strategy of early aggression

[GenMarshall]

Most often in a Very large world. I often have the cities first produce military units and then build settlers to fill up the unclamed land.

 

[neutral leader]

i disagree with all the current posters.
a. an early attack will be an unnecessary drain on the economy
b. production time will be diverted from city improvements, wonders, and perhaps most importantly, settlers
c. we cannot risk damaging our reputation this early

neutral leader is a good, responsible provincial governor

Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!

 

[disorganizer]

As a member of the FANATIKAN ORDER, i totally support this moovement!
All knights will stand behind an early agression.

 

[Eklektikos]

Originally posted by neutral leader
i disagree with all the current posters.
a. an early attack will be an unnecessary drain on the economy

Au contraire, an early attack can often more than pay for itself in terms of cities captured, reducing the strength of our immediate rival plus all the tech and gold we can extort from them when the time comes to negotiate peace.

b. production time will be diverted from city improvements, wonders, and perhaps most importantly, settlers

It will be many, many turns before we have the technology to build any improvements beyond a barracks, and expending shields on ancient great wonders at emperor level rarely pays off. It's far more effective to either rush them with great leaders or simply allow the AI to build them and then capture them.

c. we cannot risk damaging our reputation this early

I'm not proposing a sneak attack here, simply a declaration of war followed by a swift assault. This should cause little if any damage to our reputation, as I understand it. To be honest, we will only need to be meticulous about our reputation if we don't play this game aggressively, since we will likely end up weaker than our neighbours and have to suck up to them to ensure our survival. I don't know about you, but this is not the future I wish for Fanatika.

 

[disorganizer]

to c):
as long as our rival does not have contact with other civs, these other civs will NEVER get to hear from our attack. If we manage to destroy our rival completely, our reputation will take to harm at all.
This also brings me up to supporting an early "assimilation" of our nearest rival.

Maybe a general strategy poll would be necessary to get the citizenries opinion on that topic.

 

[Eklektikos]

Originally posted by disorganizer
to c):
as long as our rival does not have contact with other civs, these other civs will NEVER get to hear from our attack. If we manage to destroy our rival completely, our reputation will take to harm at all.
This also brings me up to supporting an early "assimilation" of our nearest rival.

Maybe a general strategy poll would be necessary to get the citizenries opinion on that topic.

I definitely do not support fully conquering any civ until quite a lot later in the game. The only time I normally consider doing so in the ancient era is if they have sufficient culture to flip the cities that I've captured from them. Otherwise I keep them around and milk them for tech, gold, cities and maps with regular declarations of war, city captures and then extremely one-sided peace negotiations. Weakened rivals are simply too valuable to eradicate.

 

[disorganizer]

Well, then the reputation impact will be there ;-)
They will tell the others of our attack.

 

[Almightyjosh]

Originally posted by neutral leader

neutral leader is a good, responsible provincial governor

Almightyjosh is good, responsible, ACTUAL provincial governor!!
Are you campaigning for the next election or what?

 

[disorganizer]

I second AJ here ;-)

 

[chiefpaco]

I've not seen a reputation hit while the declaration of war is honourable (i.e. no units in enemy territory). So I am unclear where the reputation factor comes into play here.

If it comes to a choice of Civs, I think we should be wary of assaulting ones with an early UU (Zulu, Greece) or maybe militaristic civs (harder to beat with promotions).

 

[Grandmaster]

I agree with Shaitan. I say screw world opinion (at least at the beginning), we have to cut down on our opposition as soon as possible, when as few civs will know about it. However, @ Shaitan, I think the quote should be "Hit hard. Hit fast. Hit first." Oh, and to continue my daily rant, one more thing. As the Germans, we have to take advantage of our immediate possession of bronze working. We must research iron working first (saw post above) and soon thereafter start stockpile a massive army of swordsmen. Just a suggestion: research iron, build warrior, build barracks, then build lots of swordsmen. Ok, just had to say that.

 

[Shaitan]

With early aggression I normally destroy my early targets. I also play with respawning civs so this is part of my strategy. When you destroy the civ you get peace, 2 workers and 100g from the newly spawned AI. That also gives you a contact somewhere randomly placed on the continent which can greatly increase the speed of contact with the other civs. Since we're playing without respawning civs Eklektikos' bully approach is going to be better than a complete wipe of our neighbors.

 

[Eklektikos]

I actually prefer to give early UU civs an early kicking, with the exception of Greece (archers v hoplites = 1 sniggering Alex) whose UU isn't much of an offensive threat. A nearby civ with an early UU is likely to try to use it on us at some point in the none too distant future (particularly the Zulus), unless we significantly weaken them before they've got many of that unit in the field. Even if we lose an archer or two to their UU in the process, all they're getting from it is a ridiculously early GA which we should have rendered ineffectual before they can use it to their advantage.

 

[disorganizer]

Shaitan: well, i for example would consider your method cheating ;-)

 

[Grandmaster]

Once again, agreed. Just one question: once we cut our opponent down to a pile of rubble, will we leave a residual force within or just outside his borders? I'm assuming the answer is yes, but in case it isn't I'm gonna outline the advantges of this. Ok, so we get them down to the city. That city is probably gonna be on the lower end of average in size, culture, and developement, but it could be better. Ok, we achieve peace and withdraw most of our units from the area, back to garrison towns. But how about this: we leave enough units in place to encircle the city. Effectively a land blockade, we stop all settlers from going out (preventing regrowth), all workers from going out (preventing terrain developement), and its damned unlikely that after losing a war their gonna try to muscle their way out. If you mix in a couple of catapults, we can use or ground forces to pillage all the terrain around the city (which the workers can't repair), use catapults to get the terrain outside the ring, and in the case that we go back to war, we can quickly bombard the city and then move in without having to mobilize. Plus, we can do a quick bombard and then request peace to put pressure on them for tribute. Its worked for me before, anyway.

 

[Eklektikos]

@Grandmaster: Rather than leaving a residual force lurking around their borders, I'd prefer to just keep watch over whatever land lies between ours and theirs in order to spot any forthcoming attacks.
In fact as opposed to keeping them down to one city, I would actually want them to start attempting to expand again! This would mean that when we came around to declaring war on them again, we would hopefully gain a few nice new cities and not run a high risk of accidentally wiping them out by overestimating their defences. Also, it often serves to make peace negotiations more profitable since they're more likely to have more tech and gold if they've still got a few cities. Ideally our "vassals" should be kept weak but comparatively wealthy, otherwise my very un-Jimmy Stewart "bully" approach will be far weaker than it could be.

 

[Grandmaster]

Agreed, but their is something to be said about having troops close at hand to intercept or force back oncoming enemies of settlers/workers and quickly attack or besiege an enemy city when needed. Maybe leave a couple of units (2 swordsmen and 1 catapult?) on a piece of well-defendable land just outside their city borders? Sort of like a forward operating base, plus it would be a nice little show of power and maybe help us leverage a few more gold or a new tech from them? Or we could provide an "escort" for their moving settlers? Allow us to pick off their settlers or workers as they move (we'd need enough power to destroy the real escort) or take the city as soon as its founded? If played right, an escort service would also allow us to at will change the direction of a settler, discouraging the settlement of areas we want.

 

[Eklektikos]

Normally I wouldn't see much need for such an "escort service", although it could well prove useful for herding settlers away from any resources we've not yet grabbed for ourselves. Definitely something I'll be bearing in mind a bit later on

Anyway, I think we're beginning to drift away from the issue at hand. I'll be posting a poll on this proposal at about this time tomorrow. I'll post the proposed poll in this thread shortly.

 

[Eklektikos]

This poll has been superceded by another later in the thread

Poll Options:

Do you accept the proposal outlined in the 1st post?
Yes
No
Abstain

First Post:

Poll Duration: 48 hours from posting or until quorum is met, whichever is the later

The discussion leading to this poll can be found in this thread.

Proposal:
I would like to propose that we use the following strategy at the start of the new game:

1. Build a warrior to scout out the terrain
2. Build a second warrior to garrison the capital
3. Build a settler
4. Build a barracks in the capital
5. Build up a force of 5 or 6 archers backed up with at least 1 spearman, using the archers to further scout out the surrounding land.
6. Once our nearest rival has been located, send the archer/spearman force to attack - preferably taking their capital but making sure not to wipe them out.
7. After taking the enemy capital, or a significant proportion of their other cities, give peace for as much as we can squeeze out of them.
8. Whilst the assault is carried out, continue founding more cities and begin preparation for the next phase of aggression.
   [/list=1]
   
   I envisage the "next phase of aggression" as being either a horse or sword rush as described in the Strategic Advisory Committee thread, but this will be discussed and polled on later, should this proposal be accepted.

 

[disorganizer]

Hmmm. This poll should be settled by the governor of the province or the domestic department, as this falls under their reign ;-)
Maybe some alternatives in the poll would be nice, as i dont like yes/no polls (no can come out if only a few points are not liked).