I think Kayess has written on an important topic that has been given only scant attention. Much thanks to Kayess for bringing out the difference between grand strategy, operational strategy, and tactics.
I think we can only generalize certain principles which are at best vague for grand strategies, but I doubt we can ever formulate equations that will help us find a grand strategy. Grand strategy determination is the result of carefully anazlying all factors that are at play which affect the outcome of a struggle between players. But since each game is different from each other, the grand strategy used in the last game can not apply to the current one.
Tactics are simply tools and instruments that are used to fullfill grand strategy. So once we have determined the grand strategy, all that we need to do is read the "strategy" articles on this forum to look for those tactics that will help us achieve our grand strategy. In that sense, perhaps "strategy" articles should really be called "tactics" articles.
I have read quite a few war stories on this forum where the authors write out their war plans. One author wanted to attack Egypt, and the plan was to attack by creating two fronts, one on the north, and the other on the east. Meawhile, later on into the game, the author planned to create a third front.
The plan is good. It sounds organized, and systematic, but I have always wanted to ask what motivated this plan in the first place? What was the thought process that was going through his mind that led him to decision to open three different fronts? Why not just two? Or why not four? Or why opening more than one front at all? How will the three front strategy be superior to a two front strategy or a four fronts strategy? This is something that the author had never satisfactorily explained. A strategy that sounds organized and systematic, like the three fronts strategy described above, won't have much value if it doesn't in the end help the war effort any more than a four fronts strategy or two fronts strategy.
Grand strategies require rigorous analysis of the situation and all factors involved first. Only have these been done can we find a grand strategy. And once we have a clear strategy and a set of objectives, we can pick and choose tactics that we wish to use from this forum that can help us achieve our goals.
Grand strategies involve technology, economics, diplomacy and military, not just military alone. Sometimes our grand strategies may not have anything to do with military at all. Certain game conditions such as the player's civilization attributes may require a strategy of technology diplomacy in which trading of tech forms the basis of the game. Somtimes grand strategy may be all about religion. Sometimes it is a combination of many things.
A player once found himself in the rare and unfortunate situation in which he had no access to iron or copper, resources that are needed to build swordsman. He had only horse to work with that allows him to build mounted units. Most players seem to have agreed that mounted units are not as good as swordsmen in the beginning of the game, so most tactics articles written on this forum talks about how best to use swordsmen, while little attention is devoted to the best use of mounted units.
What should the player have done? The player's strength is finance, wealth, and decent technology, while the enemy's only strength is his abundance of resources. The player's finally settled on a grand strategy. First, he will appease his militaristic neighbor who has swordsmen through payment of tributes. This was to buy time. Then, wiith the time purchased from tribute payment, he was to build forts all along the boarder between his enemy and himself and staff the forts with archers and other defensive units. Third, he was to build a largest army based on mounted units the world has ever seen. Mounted units might not do well when attacking someone else. But they make decent defense army. Moreover, their extra movement points allow them to penetrate deeply into the enemy territory, enabling them to pillage land improvements, destroy roads that connect to vital strategic resources to ruin the rival empire's economy. Fourth, the deep penetration by the mounted units were further amplified by the player's decision to reach for seafaring technology which enable him to build ships and transport his mounted units to all parts of the enemy empire in a much faster manner while his technologically inept enemy still had no ship building technology.
Through merciless focus and discipline, the player executed his grand strategy brilliantly. The grand strategy is best described as economic destruction that quickly left the rival empire technologically very behind. Although the rival empire had swordsmen, the more technologically advanced player eventually had superior army to work with, making the enemy swordsmen irrelevant. This is grand strategy.
Many players sometimes find themselves trapped on a tiny island that supports only at most five cities. When this happens, they often throw up their hands to declare surrender. A more strategic player might have decided to do the following.
The first obvious thing to do is to obtain shipbuilding technologies. With ships, we can sent settlers to build cities on other continents. However, building cities on other continents will drain huge financial resources because of the distance from the capital. Two ways to mitigate this situation is Forbidden Palace as well as the founding of religions, building of shrines, and spreading of that religion worldwide.
So for players trapped on a tiny island, the national policy is to expand onto the other continents. The operational strategies are to first research searfaring tech, the tech that is needed to build Forbidden Palace, found a religion, and spread it like crazy.
At the same time, players can opt for another strategy. Much articles have been written that talk about diplomacy and allies. One article I remember is the triangular diplomacy. Perhaps, we can employ concepts from triangular diplomacy to build a an alliance with two powerful neighbors so that together the three (including the players) can attack a weaker rival. This will allow the island players to seize cities from the weaker rival, thus gaining a foothold on the continent abroad.
A combination of the two aboved described strategies will work even better. We can pick a spot on a distant continent that is yes unoccupied. With Forbidden Palace and spreading of religion, we can finance our city buildings in this region of the continent. However, to the north of this region is a computer rival empire that might not particularly like our presence on this continent. So we use triangular diplomacy to secure an alliance with two other computer empires on the same continent in order to attack our enemy to our north. Then we take as many cities as we can. This way, the cities we take from the enemy will form a contiguous landmass with the cities that we are building ourselves in the south. This is grand strategy.
In the end, maybe your grand strategy will not work. But that's okay. The fun isn't whether or not the grand strategy will ultimately take you to victory. The fun is how close to victory are you when you have a well formulated grand strategy, especially in usually very adverse conditions. Singapore, Taiwan, Japan are three countries in the world that are starved of natural resources. Singapore particularly was the country that nobody in the 1960's believed would ever achieve any rapid economic development. Yet, through a formulation of a grandstrategy, and disciplined focus and execution, Singapore defied everyone's expectation, and became the first world country today with a very high standard of living that puts her neighbor to shame. So try to play the game with grand strategies in mind. I think you guys will find the game very rewarding this way.
. I'm just pleased he's not banging on the doors of my city...
) alliance broke down, it was britain who had the most to lose.
