Stacking from 1UPT Tips?

[Vylsok]

I'm coming from Civ V back to Civ IV because of the added layers of complexity. The one gotcha I can't seem to get around is unit stacking to take cities.

Feelings aside about which is better, can anyone offer me some sound advice as to how to make the strategic adjustment a bit easier? To start, I tried a quick rush on France as Rome in Earth 18 and got roflstomped.

Any advice would help!

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Very easy have all of your non city defenders in one stack.... What is there to wrap your head around?

 

[Vylsok]

Bonus modifiers to stacked units? What would constitute what is essentially a 1UPT "army" in V in comparison?

For better or worse, in V 1 unit equals a "division" in your army. I'm just trying to determine what the basics are.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

You get no bonuses for stacking units, but if you have 1UPT the AI will just pick off all of your units. Stacking units allows you to protect all of your units at once. Don't think about what type of army division you have it really doesn't matter. Just stack your units or you will lose.

 

[K.Murx]

Stacking units has the simple advantage that the strongest defender defends. E.g., a knight attacks a stack of macemen, trebuchets and a pikeman -> the pikeman defends because he has the highest strength against a knight.
If a maceman would attack, a maceman would defend because he has the highest strength against melee units.
If the knight had damaged the pikeman and a horse archer attacks, a maceman would defend because the pikeman is due to the damage taken no longer the strongest defender.

And so on.

 

[Um the Muse]

I've never played Civ V, so this advice may or may not help. Anyway, the single most effective way to handle combat in Civ IV is to employ siege weapons. Catapults, trebuchets, etc. are extremely effective because they are almost guaranteed to damage multiple units (if they attack).

To take advantage of this, you must have other units with the siege, for a couple of reasons:
1. To damage multiple units, the siege unit must attack--there's no collateral damage when the unit defends
2. Siege weapons cannot kill enemy units when they attack, and
3. Units in Civ 4 heal fairly quickly every turn (how quickly depends on where the unit is, ranging from within their own city to in enemy territory and on whether they have a unit with the Medic promotion(s))

Since siege is so important, I tend to try to build units that can protect them. For catapults and trebuchets, the best unit is the elephant. Since ivory is fairly rare, you can use other units such as axemen and spearmen (pikemen, crossbow and macemen later).