Settlers getting eaten

[sylvanllewelyn]

I think animals are too powerful in this game. They are only there to tell the player that it was a problem for primitive civilizations, not there to say "super bear army kills your 1000 warriors". And please don't suggest any 4 strength furry mammoths on ice age maps. Hence, I really feel animals should only have 0.1 strength, so they'll still eat unescorted settlers and workers, but any human militaary effort should beat animals.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

I don't know the mod.

Just adds more civs and UUs. See this thread for more info.

nationhood you can draft units

Yes, I'd forgotten about Nationhood, that would be useful.

best of all is that you can pillage someone in to capitulation.

OK, but if I'm going for a Dom victory I don't think I can take enough of her cities before she counter-attacks, and then I'll be on the defensive all the time. If I only take a couple of cities (the most realistic prospect) then I won't be anywhere near a Dom victory.

if she capitulate you can then turn your army to the last free civ.

True, but to get to his territory I have to go through Selamasina's, and I can't see her agreeing to Open Borders after I've razed her cities.

I'll give it a try, anyway. If it doesn't work I can always reload and try another tactic, although I don't like doing that.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

get factories as soon as possible. once you can outproduce her, you've almost one the war. then flight for bombers to kill oncomming stacks and to keep them in the cities. its oke to do the war in steps. raze some cities to cripple her. sue for peace. war. peace. war peace. you get the point.

 

[KMadCandy]

That's within 5 turns, isn't it? What'd you do, send your starting warrior into his undefended capital? Amazing luck.

it's possible to have a realllllllllllly close start:

i tried attacking early, but forgot i was across a river doh, got a bad roll (not surprising), never did try again. would be nice to have my first two cities both be "capitol worthy" as defined by the map generator tho.

 

[LucyDuke]

it's possible to have a realllllllllllly close start...

Oof... what were the settings for that game? Duel size, high sea level, 18 civs...? Whatever it is, that's unbelievable. Talk about an early war...

 

[OscarWildebeest]

get factories as soon as possible. once you can outproduce her, you've almost one the war. then flight for bombers to kill oncomming stacks and to keep them in the cities. its oke to do the war in steps. raze some cities to cripple her. sue for peace. war. peace. war peace. you get the point.

It's not going well. I razed two cities, but the third on my target list was way too well defended (she bombarded my SoD with lots of cannons and cats and there was little strength left in them to attack). Now I'm having to withstand a counter-attack against my frontier city, and I've had to pull back almost all my units to defend it, as her army is massive.

Oh, btw, she refuses to talk...

 

[Pe Ell]

I'm playing with the CivGold mod too. It's really lovely and ads a bit of extra flavour without messing around with the original game. Selamasina was in my latest game as well, but on the other side of the world so I never had any real problems with her. Good trading partner.

To defeat a massive army you need to be smart. The AI really suck at warring and believes that bigger numbers automaticly means they win. You need to be clever and use all the modifiers you can to bring things around. Collateral damage is really important. Suicide cannons onto her stack when she pulls it up to attack and put your troops on hill, in forests and behind rivers. And use the culture. Preferably as many of those bonuses at once as you can. Don't be afraid to sacrifice a city or two if you believe you can bounce back later. If the cost to her is high enough you should be able to change the fortune of war. And don't forget to have medics in your stack to heal them while they fortify.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

I understand the theory, but in this case I didn't have enough cannons to do serious damage to her stack. In any case, I was outnumbered (I wrote down the stacks on each side:

she had
3xRifle
3xCannon
5xGren
3xKnight
1xWar Elephant
3xCat

I had
4xRifle
2xCannon
6xGren)

So I was outnumbered 1.5:1, which doesn't sound too bad, but she'd bombarded my city defences to 12%. Oh, and she had another stack waiting behind. I had no reserves. I had to pack the game in.

I just played another game on similar settings, again going for Dom/Conq with much the same outcome. My attitude to warmongering needs some serious revision...

 

[cabert]

I understand the theory, but in this case I didn't have enough cannons to do serious damage to her stack. In any case, I was outnumbered (I wrote down the stacks on each side:

she had
3xRifle
3xCannon
5xGren
3xKnight
1xWar Elephant
3xCat

I had
4xRifle
2xCannon
6xGren)

So I was outnumbered 1.5:1, which doesn't sound too bad, but she'd bombarded my city defences to 12%. Oh, and she had another stack waiting behind. I had no reserves. I had to pack the game in.

I just played another game on similar settings, again going for Dom/Conq with much the same outcome. My attitude to warmongering needs some serious revision...

here comes the time to draft and whip
If you draft + whip every city you have, she will be outnumbered, and you should be able to finish/capitulate her.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

This is after drafting and whipping...

 

[cabert]

This is after drafting and whipping...

really?
you only have 4 cities?

If you want to win, you need to accept some unhappies = drafting and redrafting, whiping and rewhipping

 

[OscarWildebeest]

really?
you only have 4 cities?

If you want to win, you need to accept some unhappies = drafting and redrafting, whiping and rewhipping

I think I had six cities in that game.

Do you mean I have to whip & draft until it's impossible to whip and draft any more, thus taking not only a happiness hit but a population hit as well? That's a big ask.

Anyway, I've abandoned that game as a bad job.

 

[cabert]

I think I had six cities in that game.

Do you mean I have to whip & draft until it's impossible to whip and draft any more, thus taking not only a happiness hit but a population hit as well? That's a big ask.

Anyway, I've abandoned that game as a bad job.

if you have 6 cities, you have 6 rifles after 2 turns, and 6 canons too .
If it's not enough, you just go through the motion again, until you simply can't get any more troops this way.
Who cares if your people are happy, when you're in a possibly decisive war?
Who cares if you cities are size 12 or size 5, if you're going to lose?

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Most likely. before the war you draft whip every turn. during the war you keep on drafting, and whipping if needed. the stack you showed, isn't that big. I take you've lost a lot during the war. but if you know your going against a huge army, you need at least to have a 4 times as big an army to start the war, and produce a stack like this every turn or 2 to keep it going.
The ai probably refused to talk, because it tought it could win, and razing cities pisses the ai of.

btw: I;m a poor warmongerer. I ussually start building my army after declaring war. But then I whip my cities every few turns to create a massive army.

 

[LucyDuke]

Do you mean I have to whip & draft until it's impossible to whip and draft any more, thus taking not only a happiness hit but a population hit as well? That's a big ask.

If it's going to make the difference between fighting off the invasion or losing entire cities, isn't it worth it?

 

[Codex]

Oof... what were the settings for that game? Duel size, high sea level, 18 civs...? Whatever it is, that's unbelievable. Talk about an early war...

I don't have a save, but in a standard map, normal seas & civs, custom continents (random # of continents) I had my warrior start on top of my neighbour's settler, worker, scout & archer.

Since I settled first, the other civ was forced to march to another city site. I stole the worker (which inexplicably lagged behind the stack -- as a decoy?) and tried to knock out the archer & settler. As KMadCandy found out, it didn't work!

Needless to say, no animals were harmed during this war.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

Oh, well, I'll know next time.

Just for the record: I can draft and whip every turn, can I? Assuming I have enough population, of course.

 

[Caradoc]

Don't worry about leaving your capital undefended. Barbarians won't cross your cultural boundaries until several hundred years after they first appear (unless you set Raging Barbarians, in which case they'll attack immediately; but if animals are still around then barbarians definitely haven't shown up yet).

My build order is often worker-warrior-settler. This gives the capital time to grow to size 2 to work the newly-improved tiles, and provides an escort even if my initial warrior/scout died while exploring.

peace,
lilnev

Does worker-warrior-settler really allow your capital to grow to 2?

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

it can. ussually it will. espacially if you can irrigate a food source.
otherwise it would be worker-warrior-warrior-settler.

 

[Phoenix1595]

Yeah, you can get away with leaving your capital defenseless for a couple of turns while escorting a settler, regardless of level. I'd rather have my warrior exploring for goody huts and potential land grabs anyway.