Super stacks make strength the only good upgrade

[Higher Game]

New to Civilization 4, and some thoughts...

Against a competent player, or a high difficulty cheating AI that makes such quantity that quality is an emergent quality, is specialization ever useful? Making a melee slaughtering axeman just means he'll end up fighting the archer in a stack. Make a mount immune to first strikes and he simply gets impaled on a spearman. Make a slick archer and he gets stopped cold by a knight that ignores his strikes. What's the point?

Siege weaponry, in theory, is the answer. Loading up a diverse super-stack with no weakness should be begging for a collateral damage pounding. However, Civilization 4 doesn't have bombard the way 3 did. Besides wearing down city walls, siege weapons simply feel like normal, weaker units with no exceptional stopping power. They just don't do enough damage compared to conventional units.

War now feels like Hannibal's Roman invasion, where siege and pillaging are the rule. Defenders have an immense advantage just from the stacks; throw in fortification and walls, and it's now necessary to take 3:1 losses to take a city, like for Civilization 3 newbies who massed mounts and didn't use artillery at all.

As far as I can tell, you're supposed to pillage and gradually grind down the enemy. The super stacks can only pillage so quickly, but spreading out means exposing a unit to its counter. You just have to choke them down over dozens of turns, and have some way to survive the war weariness; even if I "win", a prolonged war often just puts the other AIs ahead of me.

It's like the US vs Japan in the last year of WWII. A blockade would take forever, be expensive, ruin the Japanese economy and starve off millions of lives. An invasion would cost over a million Americans just to take the land; the occupation would further multiply the misery. The only good answer was a nuclear super weapon to decisively demoralize the Japanese and force a quick surrender.

Civilization 4 needs something like this, or a penalty for highly mixed stacks that have no weakness. If single unit type stacks got very significant bonuses, it would make positioning, choke points, and tactics far more important. War would be more than just moving around pillage blobs.

Yes, you can win wars with betrayals, espionage, diplomacy, and other slimy tactics, but the general in me wants a game of battlefield skill, not strategic wars that are won 90% before they even begin (Sun Tzu wars are boring).

Do mods fix this, or am I missing something obvious?

 

[pi-r8]

keep playing, and build more siege...

You kind of have a point though, that there's not much benefit to using a diverse army when you're on the offensive. Better to concentrate on just one type of unit, so that after you finish all the counterunits you'll have no trouble with the rest. But in general, siege > stacks.

 

[Monsterzuma]

The specialized promotions are mostly useful for defensive battles. On the offense you are right that Combat and City Raider are just about the only two reliable promotions on Axemen.

Pillaging has it's major downsides. It's a strategy that increases the amount of time you spend in enemy territory. Normally, you try to decrease this time instead, because you pay money for units outside your borders, meaning you may not even break even by pillaging, and you incur economic damage for being at war in the first place (war weariness, focus on production instead of science, loss of units/cities to the enemy). Wars of attrition in general have the nasty habit of weakening both the invader and the invadee. By fighting one, you drag someone with you into your demise at best.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Besides wearing down city walls, siege weapons simply feel like normal, weaker units with no exceptional stopping power. They just don't do enough damage compared to conventional units.

You miss collateral damage. It's huge ; in fact I simply ignore most ennemys stacks if they have no siege weaponry, and conversely it's a marvelous weapon against big army. Just build enough of them, especially catapult that are super cheap.

 

[Elandal]

Assuming total war, on offense, intent to taking or razing cities, the attack stacks consist of:
- stack defenders (eg. shock crossbows, formation pikes, woods2 and guerilla2 units) that make sure that the stack can't be attacked on favourable terms
- siege, specialized into accuracy (take down city defenses), city raider (attacking city), and bombard (stack attacks on field)
- units suitable for cleaning up the siege-battered city defenders (eg. CR maces, but for last defenders practically any unit will do)
- mounted units with flanking promotions to flank-attack siege weapons on the field

The idea behind the stack is that it can't be attacked effectivelly without incurring huge losses (stack defenders that counter all practical offenses against the stack), although if the opponent is clever, mounted units with flanking promotions may take out your siege units without which you won't be taking cities (current AI is not that clever). That if it faces another stack on the field, barrage siege units will soften the stacks with collateral damage, and then you'll just have to clean it up with other units or let it try to mount a futile attack against your stack. That if you face a stack that has siege weapons that could cause harm to your stack, your mounted units can flank them. That when you reach a city you wish to attack, you can remove it's defenses (with accuracy catapults for example), then soften the defenders with siege weapons (CR trebs for example), and finally take the softened defenders (starting with city raider units, but last cleanups will be of almost dead units so any attacker will do).

That's the basic idea. Now go try it out, tweak it to situations as needed, and wonder the new ways of warring.

Oh yes, wars against AI are mostly won before DoW as the human player will first make sure he will be ready to reach his objectives and will DoW only after that. A failed offense is just too expensive. Rather have appropriate counterstacks to make sure any attacking AI will be rendered harmless before it reaches important targets, and whip, chop, buy, lease, or bribe up an army for offensive when you decide to go.

 

[Higher Game]

Better to concentrate on just one type of unit, so that after you finish all the counterunits you'll have no trouble with the rest. But in general, siege > stacks.

Yes, it's worth it to wipe out a tough type, and then easily kill two weaker types. This means you need to have a unit that can beat 2/3 types. You lose against the first wave, and beat the next two, and the experience gain is often enough to seize a decisive advantage. I've seen this before, but it's usually only viable with unique units. This leaves a small window of opportunity for war, for maybe 1/5 of the game, before the UU is obsolete and war begins to favor the defender far too heavily again.

You miss collateral damage. It's huge ; in fact I simply ignore most ennemys stacks if they have no siege weaponry, and conversely it's a marvelous weapon against big army. Just build enough of them, especially catapult that are super cheap.

Siege weapons against a big stack do some damage, but not enough that they truly even the odds. They're virtually guaranteed to die in their attack, and your hope is that they do enough damage that it saves more normal units than the siege units lost. I don't think they do. Once you break one of their unit types, the rest fall well (I assume an offensive war with a good UU) enough without the need for siege weapons. Collateral damage isn't so attractive when 2/3 of the units it hits, are the ones going to die anyway when their weak point is broken.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Siege weapons against a big stack do some damage, but not enough that they truly even the odds. They're virtually guaranteed to die in their attack, and your hope is that they do enough damage that it saves more normal units than the siege units lost. I don't think they do. Once you break one of their unit types, the rest fall well (I assume an offensive war with a good UU) enough without the need for siege weapons. Collateral damage isn't so attractive when 2/3 of the units it hits, are the ones going to die anyway when their weak point is broken.

I'm pretty confident your math is wrong here.

There are two important scenarios for siege units and collateral damage.

The first is the problem of a defensive counter unit buried in the stack - rock paper scissors means that your horses face spears. Collateral damage gives you a way to weaken the spears without losing horses.

The second problem is that of multiple peak defenders. When there are several longbows defending a city, it takes a lot of metal to burn them down, because you have to beat all of them heavily. However, if you are willing to burn some wood, you can throw disposapults, converting the original problem to one with a single strong defender (maybe) and many that are badly wounded.

A specific experiment to try is swords vs longbows. If you need to wipe out 6 longbows, you probably need 3 swords each (estimate) OR a bunch of catapults, 3 swords for the best archer, and 1 sword for each of the remainder.

You are correct that if what you are running into is Gulliver and a swarm of Lilliputians, then the catapults aren't going to be improving your odds so much.

 

[pi-r8]

Yes, it's worth it to wipe out a tough type, and then easily kill two weaker types. This means you need to have a unit that can beat 2/3 types. You lose against the first wave, and beat the next two, and the experience gain is often enough to seize a decisive advantage. I've seen this before, but it's usually only viable with unique units. This leaves a small window of opportunity for war, for maybe 1/5 of the game, before the UU is obsolete and war begins to favor the defender far too heavily again.

Nah it's not that hard, you don't need any UU. Like if it's the midaeval era, if they have an army of 10 macemen 10 knights and 10 pikemen, and you have an army of 50 knights. You'll lose maybe 10 knights attacking the pikemen, but then they'll all be badly weakened. You'll be even against their knights, so lose maybe 5 there. The macemen are easy, so you lose maybe 2 there. All together you lose ~17 units, compared to their 30. Whereas if you used a diverse army of crossbows, knights, and macemen, they'd all get countered and you'd lose heavily.

Siege weapons against a big stack do some damage, but not enough that they truly even the odds. They're virtually guaranteed to die in their attack, and your hope is that they do enough damage that it saves more normal units than the siege units lost. I don't think they do. Once you break one of their unit types, the rest fall well (I assume an offensive war with a good UU) enough without the need for siege weapons. Collateral damage isn't so attractive when 2/3 of the units it hits, are the ones going to die anyway when their weak point is broken.

No siege units can be devastating. 1 catapult does collateral damage to 5 units, and after that the odds are greatly in your favor, if they started off even. In the above example, you could sacrifice 6 catapults to weaken their entire army, and then mop it up without losing anything else. Attacking cities is even easier, since you can use trebuchets with the city raider promotion. I think it's actually much easier to attack cities than to defend them.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Siege weapons against a big stack do some damage, but not enough that they truly even the odds. They're virtually guaranteed to die in their attack, and your hope is that they do enough damage that it saves more normal units than the siege units lost. I don't think they do. Once you break one of their unit types, the rest fall well (I assume an offensive war with a good UU) enough without the need for siege weapons. Collateral damage isn't so attractive when 2/3 of the units it hits, are the ones going to die anyway when their weak point is broken.

Look at the price of siege weapon. Look at the damage they done. You will soon understand why they are awesome.

Yes, they will die at every attack. Too bad, they do more than their shares.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The specialized promotions are mostly useful for defensive battles. On the offense you are right that Combat and City Raider are just about the only two reliable promotions on Axemen.

Pillaging has it's major downsides. It's a strategy that increases the amount of time you spend in enemy territory. Normally, you try to decrease this time instead, because you pay money for units outside your borders, meaning you may not even break even by pillaging, and you incur economic damage for being at war in the first place (war weariness, focus on production instead of science, loss of units/cities to the enemy). Wars of attrition in general have the nasty habit of weakening both the invader and the invadee. By fighting one, you drag someone with you into your demise at best.

The exception is very early wars of attrition where you do not forfeit land to other nations as a result. Rushing/choking 2 civs on a 3 civ continent is a good example that usually ends in an easy W.

 

[Higher Game]

Look at the price of siege weapon. Look at the damage they done. You will soon understand why they are awesome.

Yes, they will die at every attack. Too bad, they do more than their shares.

They're not so special. I once had about 20 trebuchets, with about 1/3 going for the bombard bonus, and 2/3 full city attack (50%, I think, gotta love theocracy). They blew down the walls just fine, but I lost maybe a dozen just to compensate for the enemy's fortification bonus (and I lost lots of conventional soldiers in "even" matches). In total, I could have built a wonder for the cost of taking a single city. If this said city had gold or some other precious resource it might have been worth it, but trying to take over a whole civilization this way is horribly wasteful. Warfare is very, very inefficient, even at its most efficient.

The exception is very early wars of attrition where you do not forfeit land to other nations as a result. Rushing/choking 2 civs on a 3 civ continent is a good example that usually ends in an easy W.

I've taken a whole (pretty big) continent before, though I had to run 30% science to keep the empire maintained. By the time I found my overseas rivals, they were about a full era ahead of me. A catchup might have been possible but I wasn't going to do 100+ boring turns to find out. If I had kept my neighbors alive, I would have been smaller, but not as anachronistic. I haven't found out a good compromise, maybe vassalization.

Nah it's not that hard, you don't need any UU. Like if it's the midaeval era, if they have an army of 10 macemen 10 knights and 10 pikemen, and you have an army of 50 knights. You'll lose maybe 10 knights attacking the pikemen, but then they'll all be badly weakened. You'll be even against their knights, so lose maybe 5 there. The macemen are easy, so you lose maybe 2 there. All together you lose ~17 units, compared to their 30.

Knights are very expensive, and a more fair estimate is losing 2 knights per pikeman, not 1. You can't forget fortification and terrain. I also dispute how "easy" mace men are. Knights aren't tanks.

No siege units can be devastating. 1 catapult does collateral damage to 5 units, and after that the odds are greatly in your favor, if they started off even. In the above example, you could sacrifice 6 catapults to weaken their entire army, and then mop it up without losing anything else. Attacking cities is even easier, since you can use trebuchets with the city raider promotion. I think it's actually much easier to attack cities than to defend them.

Defending cities is very, very easy. Archers with drill and a few pikemen can hold off a major force long enough for a counter force to arrive. Siege weapons wouldn't be so decisive even if the AI knew how to use them properly.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Promoting siege with bombard is usually a bad idea unless you are fighting in the field as it doesn't help with their survival odds and city raider does this as well as increase damage done to units. If you were facing and losing even melee fights AFTER using siege then there is a serious problem. I seriously doubt you used 20 trebs and then had even combat odds... Also, the first serious encounter in a war in CIV is generally the last in any given war. Facing the AI's stack either int he field or in a city will result in a sacrifice of quite a bit of siege in most cases, and this is to be expected, but after the inital blow, they tend to fold very fast. Specialized promotions are extremely useful, pinch in particular shines in most games. War is probably the most efficient/fastest way to win the game. Based on your anecdote about taking your continent and struggling to win, it sounds like you have more empire management issues in general. Were you building wealth in hammer cities, did you have Currency/COL/Monarchy? What was your bpt, slider % does not really matter that much. Were you growing your cities enough? Did you have your courthouses up? And listen to TMIT and VOU they know their CIV.

 

[bestsss]

I've taken a whole (pretty big) continent before, though I had to run 30% science to keep the empire maintained.

Big is when the sliders is zero. You are losing money very steadily (say -15-20) and you have to whip units/buildings, anything to gold overflow w/ the nerfed 3.19 patch, making a special squad to clean any possible barb cities and pillage anything not interesting.
Generally speaking before zero slider the empire is very far from big. That's for emperor/immortal since on deity I'd not be able to pull anything like that.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've taken a whole (pretty big) continent before, though I had to run 30% science to keep the empire maintained. By the time I found my overseas rivals, they were about a full era ahead of me. A catchup might have been possible but I wasn't going to do 100+ boring turns to find out. If I had kept my neighbors alive, I would have been smaller, but not as anachronistic. I haven't found out a good compromise, maybe vassalization.

Not long ago, I posted an extreme example on immortal/normal where I axe rushed 2 civs using about 80 axes (not an exaggeration, I truly built at least 80) using raze + extort tactics.

I managed to kill them and control my continent. Was I backwards? Well, the AIs on the other continent completed the apollo program when I was researching paper .

But even with that horrid tech hole, the land advantage was too great in my favor. Cottages grew, and I beelined whatever tech I could possibly trade (wound up brokering refrigeration, then superconductor line). When the game ended, I was still behind but very close to caught up (long since capable of defending myself militarily!).

Of course none of that mattered. Since I was #1 in pop, I was eligible for the UN as soon as someone built it, and it was simple enough to get a couple civs to vote for me (I'm practiced with the UN, and can generally identify the civ that will build it if I don't intervene by making it myself or gifting tech, allowing me to plan for it early). But again I emphasize that that game, representing one of the most terrible tech holes I've seen posted here, ended with me relatively close in tech, and #1 in land/pop.

A better-executed rush/choke would certainly then have almost no trouble digging out of a mere 1-era gap.

But your wording here suggests a problematic issue, so look carefully:

Your slider % carries precisely no meaning at all unless other information is included. 30% of 1000 commerce is a hell of a lot more than 100% of 100 or even 200 commerce. Not only that, but once infrastructure is in place, it's not at 30% anyhow. Also, catching up from 1 era behind is very, very easy if you have more land than the AI.

Defending cities is very, very easy. Archers with drill and a few pikemen can hold off a major force long enough for a counter force to arrive. Siege weapons wouldn't be so decisive even if the AI knew how to use them properly.

Properly used, siege initiative dominates everything else in the game. Of course, there are means to prevent people from gaining that siege initiative. Though drill is nice, contemporary siege will tend to beat defenders that go down the drill line using CR given equal promotions of either. If the AI built and used its siege properly, this game would be a LOT harder. Have you ever tried to attack a GOOD human at tech parity when he has siege? It's very hard...

Knights are very expensive, and a more fair estimate is losing 2 knights per pikeman, not 1. You can't forget fortification and terrain. I also dispute how "easy" mace men are. Knights aren't tanks.

If I can put up better than a 2:1 kill to death ratio on immortal attacking with knights into enemy castles garrisoned by muskets, pikes, and longbows, I'm betting that an average warmonger can do a hell of a lot BETTER than losing 17 knights against the stack described. Without defensive terrain, a knight will BEAT a pike on the FIRST fight > 30% of the time if the knight takes SHOCK. However, even with shock the pike would still come up as a defender incidentally. So losing 2 knights/pike isn't realistic in a field battle. Losing ONE knight/pike in a field battle is pushing it...the pikes tend to take damage and it doesn't take much to give any follow-up great odds. A knight has > 80% odds vs maces in the field usually (especially with shock) so the side with knights, assuming a field battle, should expect losses closer to 10 than 17...

Anyhow if you're struggling with counter promotions, wait to promote units until you intend to use them. A lot of counter promos or even terrain promos come into their own then, giving your units the highest chance of survival.

 

[NihilZero]

Nah it's not that hard, you don't need any UU. Like if it's the midaeval era, if they have an army of 10 macemen 10 knights and 10 pikemen, and you have an army of 50 knights. You'll lose maybe 10 knights attacking the pikemen, but then they'll all be badly weakened. You'll be even against their knights, so lose maybe 5 there. The macemen are easy, so you lose maybe 2 there. All together you lose ~17 units, compared to their 30.

Just tested this in worldbuilder. Put the defenders in a walled city (so 50% defence) and attacked. No units have any promotions.

Here is the outcome:

Spoiler :

 

[Oerdin]

keep playing, and build more siege...

You kind of have a point though, that there's not much benefit to using a diverse army when you're on the offensive. Better to concentrate on just one type of unit, so that after you finish all the counterunits you'll have no trouble with the rest. But in general, siege > stacks.

In MP other then a quick rush at the beginning wars always result in super stack vs super stack.

 

[pi-r8]

Just tested this in worldbuilder. Put the defenders in a walled city (so 50% defence) and attacked. No units have any promotions.

Here is the outcome:

Spoiler :

Well I was thinking of it as taking place on open terrain, not attacking a city. Anyway it turned out pretty well, regardless. On the next turn they'd clean it up easily, and losing 20 units to kill 30 is usually fine. Of course seige would help a lot here though.

 

[pi-r8]

They're not so special. I once had about 20 trebuchets, with about 1/3 going for the bombard bonus, and 2/3 full city attack (50%, I think, gotta love theocracy). They blew down the walls just fine, but I lost maybe a dozen just to compensate for the enemy's fortification bonus (and I lost lots of conventional soldiers in "even" matches). In total, I could have built a wonder for the cost of taking a single city. If this said city had gold or some other precious resource it might have been worth it, but trying to take over a whole civilization this way is horribly wasteful. Warfare is very, very inefficient, even at its most efficient.

LOL please post a screenshot or save file of this. How many units did they have, that they were fighting at even odds after you attacked with 20 trebuchets??? 100? Losing 12 seige to kill 100 enemy units isn't a bad ratio... But more likely you are just exagerrating what happened.

 

[Higher Game]

Promoting siege with bombard is usually a bad idea unless you are fighting in the field as it doesn't help with their survival odds and city raider does this as well as increase damage done to units. If you were facing and losing even melee fights AFTER using siege then there is a serious problem. I seriously doubt you used 20 trebs and then had even combat odds...

I didn't attack with all 20. I used the bombard specialists to blast away the walls in a single turn, and attacked with the rest. I intended to take this city before the AI could put together a counter force. As I said before, the pikemen and archers on defense were able to massively decimate my offense, and I had to write off the war as a pyrric victory.

LOL please post a screenshot or save file of this. How many units did they have, that they were fighting at even odds after you attacked with 20 trebuchets??? 100? Losing 12 seige to kill 100 enemy units isn't a bad ratio... But more likely you are just exagerrating what happened.

I bombarded and attacked during the same turn. Things might have turned out differently if I had bombarded and waited a turn. The AI might have put in a few more defenders, but I would have hit him with more siege. I wish I had a savegame of this battle, heh.

I'll see how things go next time. Maybe I'll ignore bombard and go for city attack or collateral, aim for a long siege, let the AI load up the disputed city, and I'll hit another front somewhere.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Yeah that's your problem, if you had waited another turn to attack with more siege you wouldn't have lost your other units, even if they reinforce you will cut down their reinforcements too with the siege, twenty trebs are enough to take down any medieval stack the AI could come up with on any difficulty.