Scorched Earth

[Braindrop]

One of the best tactics I've found when an opposing civ starts to pull away from me is to dump a dozen or so mobile units into his civ with the express job of pillaging everything they can before they die. This doesn't work very well once the civ is railroaded, but prior to that you can severely cripple his economy in just a few turns.

Brain

 

[eyrei]

This is an extremely effective tactic with samuari. During their time in history, their defense is as good any other units offense, which means, with terrain advantages, they will probably survive several attacks, and pillage many improvements. One of my favorite uses of this is to find a city that is connected to the rest of the AI's empire by only one or two roads. Send one mobile unit to cut of each road, and then move them to the now isolated city. Within the next few turns, you can pillage nearly every improvement in that city's radius, and maybe even take it over, with only two or three good units.

 

[Magnus]

Pillaging is always part of my war strategy. Try playing the Zulu sometime - impi's were made for pillaging!

 

[Yezdegerd]

I am playing my first game using the Japanese,and i am very impressed with the Samauri!
The treacherous Romans declared war on me,and kept sending single Leigon units to my continent to raise havok,so i returned the favor,by shipping 6 sam's over to thier land to pillage iron resources.
I parked them on thier iron deposits,and they took on all comers!!
Needless to say,Rome could no longer produce thier mighty legionairy,and thier civ,is now a part of the glorious imperial Japanese empire

 

[57%]

Yup, I've found the "strategic" offensives (pillaging, bombarding, or bombing terrain improvements) far more damaging to the opponent than any of the "tactical" unit vs. unit battles.

And once artillery arrives, that 2-range bombardment ability just rules. Not even modern-era "air superiority" can defend against arty firing with impunity from a nearby mountain range.

Destroy the luxuries first (next turn, all their cities go into disorder), then destroy the important strategic ones (whichever they have least of, then all the rest), then cut the roads to neighbors, blockade their harbors, destroy the farmland, then take out all the farmland you can find. All while fortified, in the mountains, with riflemen or better. No risk of losing units on the offensive.

After half a dozen turns, their economy is in shambles. It'll take a century for them to dig themselves out ... unless you pay a neighbor to invade. Then it's extinction in no time.

Originally posted by Yezdegerd
I am playing my first game using the Japanese,and i am very impressed with the Samauri!
The treacherous Romans declared war on me,and kept sending single Leigon units to my continent to raise havok,so i returned the favor,by shipping 6 sam's over to thier land to pillage iron resources.
I parked them on thier iron deposits,and they took on all comers!!
Needless to say,Rome could no longer produce thier mighty legionairy,and thier civ,is now a part of the glorious imperial Japanese empire

 

[infanta]

ya, i gotta agree that pillaging is great for giving you some breathing room to get ahead and build up.

currently on huge real world in south america playing zulus and my location is real bad

the other civs are expanding like crazy so after a couple of restarts the first thing im doing is finding those civs and sending an impis at the first opportunity

its task is to pillage like crazy, maybe grab a worker and generally tie up forces and stop the flow of settlers outa the capital

so far its working nicely, the impis can retreat and no-one has fast movement things to stop em. Just move, pillage, fortify. Its usually taking 3 units to kill one of my imps.

in the meantime im now bout 2 cities ahead and accelarating

if you aint got the numbers or the tech then pillaging can cripple the other civs

if you got fast units then you can fortify a spearmen in there terrain and have the fast unit move/pillage/return

trying to take on spearmen who are fortified is as bad as trying to take em outa cities

all this combat also increases the chances of leaders and elite spawning

you don't have to destroy cities to get them to sue for peace, limiting there expansion works just as well and can allow you to extort tech and gold from em

it also means you can keep them distracted on their home turf till the rest of yer forces can get there

 

[Greadius]

I'm not a big fan of pillaging. I'm from the fast, overwhelmingly large offensive force school of war. I just find that when I pillage its more of a pain in the ass to rebuild the improvements than it was beneficial during the short time between my armies moving in and taking the city.

Perhaps different warfare styles, or my inability to have automated workers do anything good so I do it all myself. Micromanaging workers has me so it is more annoying to have a road destroyed than a city sacked.

 

[infanta]

pillaging can be defensive in nature

current game i'm on i'm getting well and truely stomped in the ancient age by the iroquios

so far they have razed 4 of my cities and are building momentum

spotted a couple of swordsmen coming my way so its time to go defensive

that means finding those damn iron deposits and horses and cutting the supply, them horses proving a real killer

some impis in his terrority tearing up the roads should mean no more damn horse/swordsmen so once the current batch dealt with i can rebuild my defences and plan an apropriate excessive (im damn mad bout him razing my cities) response

 

[Buecephalus]

I'm a huge fan of pillaging. One thing I like to do if I share a border with an enemy is to destroy roads along that border and set up killers on my side. That way, slower enemy units are forced to "expose" themselves to my killers by wasting their movement traveling across unimproved terrain. I also LOVE bombers, I once got in a fight with the Aztecs and they sent a gigantic force of cavalry against the one city I had on their continent, my infantry managed to slaughter most of 'em before giving up the ghost and allowing them to raze the city. I was able to put bombers in place to continually destroy improvements on their one horses tile. Never saw another cavalry unit for the rest of the short time the Aztecs posed a threat.

 

[Joben]

Try taking an army and walking it throught enemy territory.
the AI almost never attacks armys so all ya have to do is find and enemy
strategic reasorce deposit and fortify your army on it.

An army of elite knights fortified in a mountain blocking the enemys only iron
sourse is a beutiful thing.


Im not realy a fan of general use pillaging it seems like a lot of time
and effort and dead units of often marginal gains plus the annoyance of
haveing to fix things yourself if you capture the land.
However taking out roads over reasorces is definitly an exeption.
Also roads when they are important for troop movment or when there is only one or 2 connecting one section of his empire to the rest. In the latter case destroying the road has a decent chance of causing civil disorders or other useful things.

 

[Fossil]

<p>Cutting the captial city off from resources denies the resource to *every* city. So, I plan (hehe) to sever ALL roads to the capital of my opponents in my current game.</p>
<p>I've now got three(!) armies. I plan to load them with infantryman, and do "Sherman's March to the Sea" pillaging all the way. I plan to split the Indians, who are adjacent to me, into three pieces. The middle piece will contain only their capital.</p>
<p>The armies will provide cover for artillery and workers. As the army walks, the arts will shell 2 squares on each side of the line being walked. The workers will turn their nice improved terrain into forest.</p>
<p>I have 130 workers, most of them foreign nationals captured in previous wars, so I can turn a square into forest in one turn, no problem. Since they don't have many workers, it should take them centuries to recover. </p>