Heres alot of stuff ive been noting and thinking about while playing, hopefully some of its of interest/use to a few of you. Ive been playing regent mainly.
**Spoils of war**
The obvious spoils of war are land (resources, luxuries, strategic positions, and space to expand your empire), leaders, population, key wonders (if you dont raze) and slave workers (you get them wether you raze or not) Slave workers, are possibly the best spoil of war, when you get a big pile of them protect them,keep them. The difference they will make for the rest of the game issignificant. They cost nothing and have so many uses.
-A huge boost to your own workforce, slave workers are the key to getting your land irragated/railroaded without impacting to heavy on your budget.
-Free polution cleaners for late game.
-Add to stagnent cities that can support more people, but just dont grow.
-Save them up to instant grow cities to size 20 on discovery of hospitals.
-Trade them back.
-Use them as bait, the AI seems to take workers over attacking units, if you find yourself on the backfoot and need just a turn or two to regroup and get some units to the front, put out some slave workers for the enemy to take to slow them down a little. Of course when doing this dont stack them, split them up.
-If your despot or commy and something is only a few shields away from completion but you dont want to pop-rush, disband a worker or two to finish it off.
-The size of your workforce seems to be factored into your military strength
-Say throughout an average game you go into a repulic or democracy and have a workforce of 60 workers, 60 workers over 200 turns is $12,000. Now say 30 of these are slave workers, youve just saved yourself 6k, which means more for science/luxuries. All 60 slaves = 12k saved... those are just very rough figures but you get the idea
**Not quelling resistance until war is over**
On war take cities and leave them undefended if you want to continue 'steam rolling'. Placing many units in and quelling resistance as you fight slows it down too much, slow wars have too much of a disadvantage, leave those cities with 8-10 resistors empty and continue on with your war efforts, especially if close to wiping them out. For some reason i have never had a resiting city empty of units turn back over... Then once wiped out go back and safely quell resistors with no chance of turning back This works especially well if your attacking an enemy along a penenisula and dont have to maintain a huge front to stop them pushing back through to take over their cities.
Also of course it doesn't work if you have many enemies in the area.
**Channeling past arty fortress**
An arty fortress been 5 or 6 arty units, 1 or 2 defenders and a fortress all on the one tile. Use these in bottlenecks, set a few up with 1 tile space between them, so there are only single tile paths in the bottleneck, declare war with AI on other side, now wisely they dont normally attack really strong defensive positions, but they will try to get past your fortresses. now EVERY arty piece shoots at EVERY passing unit.. it doesn't matter how larget the army is, an enemy attack force of 50 elites can be reduced to 50 1hp units waiting just on the edge of your borders, waiting of course for your prepared elites to make short work of them and produce leaders.
**Get the job done and get out**
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns"
"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
-SunTzu
Finish the war ASAP! There too many disadvantages to being in war, culture loss unhappy people and all the effects of unhappyness. However, while at war, use your wartime to its best, while fighting the mighty egyptians if youve got the military spare use those units finish off the last few greek cities that are hampering your expansion at the same time.
Maximize effectivness of your wartime.
Minimize the length of the war.
This comes through always being prepared for war, and starting the war when you want. The first turn advantage in war is huge.
Something else ive noticed with the turns, when watching the AI moves jot down the order in which the enemy civs have thier turns. Now when you have just declared war and are after some AI buddies to help take out the pesky zulus, use your money and bribery to target the AI's that have their turns before the zulus, This will give your allies that one extra important turn to prepare and get in position. Putting the zulus on the defense without even really having a chance for offense.
**Planning war**
Of course when planning a war, look at the wonders, any really high happyness adding wonders the enemy has, take that city first, it will make the rest of the war so much easier as the AI civs will be tetering on civil disorder. And also youve just got the wonder helping your people out greatly.
Spy out their forbidden palace! you can zero in on it by spying citys and checking their corruption rate to see if your warm or cold. On a large map you can imagine how many cities will be rendered nearly useless for all purposes except conscription and any resources by taking out the FP. Roughly half their empires income lost, half their production lost, half their science lost. This results in less units, less rushing (buying) of units, almost drawns science to a halt, as they still have all the maintance costs of all their cities to cover, but none of the income, resulting in even less science My favourite way to start a war.
**cheesy tactic**
A variation on the Right Of Passage cheese. Setup ROP, place stacks of your best defending units on all the resource/luxury tiles, and have just enough units near their capital to take it out if you want, wait 19 turns, on the 19th turn 'privateer block' any cities they are getting luxuries from remotely, and dont re-neg ROP, (you get the option to say 'yeah wait ill move my troops in a second, just training yadda') for the first turn before them being auto ejected, on this turn most their cities should go into civil disorder (your blocking all their luxuries) , allowing you to completly buy up the ones you want alot cheaper than normal, and your still not at war next turn if you want you can take out their capital, or remove your units, save up some cash and do it again. For a large civ you just need a heap of money but not much military at all to pull this off.
Its also usefull if youve got a peaceful neighbour who is at war, but you dont really want to declare war on them, putting them into civil disorder (with the possibility of a forced revolution) and buying of a few of their border towns that you want helps their enemies wipe them out.
**Spoils of war**
The obvious spoils of war are land (resources, luxuries, strategic positions, and space to expand your empire), leaders, population, key wonders (if you dont raze) and slave workers (you get them wether you raze or not) Slave workers, are possibly the best spoil of war, when you get a big pile of them protect them,keep them. The difference they will make for the rest of the game issignificant. They cost nothing and have so many uses.
-A huge boost to your own workforce, slave workers are the key to getting your land irragated/railroaded without impacting to heavy on your budget.
-Free polution cleaners for late game.
-Add to stagnent cities that can support more people, but just dont grow.
-Save them up to instant grow cities to size 20 on discovery of hospitals.
-Trade them back.
-Use them as bait, the AI seems to take workers over attacking units, if you find yourself on the backfoot and need just a turn or two to regroup and get some units to the front, put out some slave workers for the enemy to take to slow them down a little. Of course when doing this dont stack them, split them up.
-If your despot or commy and something is only a few shields away from completion but you dont want to pop-rush, disband a worker or two to finish it off.
-The size of your workforce seems to be factored into your military strength
-Say throughout an average game you go into a repulic or democracy and have a workforce of 60 workers, 60 workers over 200 turns is $12,000. Now say 30 of these are slave workers, youve just saved yourself 6k, which means more for science/luxuries. All 60 slaves = 12k saved... those are just very rough figures but you get the idea
**Not quelling resistance until war is over**
On war take cities and leave them undefended if you want to continue 'steam rolling'. Placing many units in and quelling resistance as you fight slows it down too much, slow wars have too much of a disadvantage, leave those cities with 8-10 resistors empty and continue on with your war efforts, especially if close to wiping them out. For some reason i have never had a resiting city empty of units turn back over... Then once wiped out go back and safely quell resistors with no chance of turning back
This works especially well if your attacking an enemy along a penenisula and dont have to maintain a huge front to stop them pushing back through to take over their cities.Also of course it doesn't work if you have many enemies in the area.
**Channeling past arty fortress**
An arty fortress been 5 or 6 arty units, 1 or 2 defenders and a fortress all on the one tile. Use these in bottlenecks, set a few up with 1 tile space between them, so there are only single tile paths in the bottleneck, declare war with AI on other side, now wisely they dont normally attack really strong defensive positions, but they will try to get past your fortresses. now EVERY arty piece shoots at EVERY passing unit.. it doesn't matter how larget the army is, an enemy attack force of 50 elites can be reduced to 50 1hp units waiting just on the edge of your borders, waiting of course for your prepared elites to make short work of them and produce leaders.
**Get the job done and get out**
"In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns"
"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
-SunTzu
Finish the war ASAP! There too many disadvantages to being in war, culture loss unhappy people and all the effects of unhappyness. However, while at war, use your wartime to its best, while fighting the mighty egyptians if youve got the military spare use those units finish off the last few greek cities that are hampering your expansion at the same time.
Maximize effectivness of your wartime.
Minimize the length of the war.
This comes through always being prepared for war, and starting the war when you want. The first turn advantage in war is huge.
Something else ive noticed with the turns, when watching the AI moves jot down the order in which the enemy civs have thier turns. Now when you have just declared war and are after some AI buddies to help take out the pesky zulus, use your money and bribery to target the AI's that have their turns before the zulus, This will give your allies that one extra important turn to prepare and get in position. Putting the zulus on the defense without even really having a chance for offense.
**Planning war**
Of course when planning a war, look at the wonders, any really high happyness adding wonders the enemy has, take that city first, it will make the rest of the war so much easier as the AI civs will be tetering on civil disorder. And also youve just got the wonder helping your people out greatly.
Spy out their forbidden palace! you can zero in on it by spying citys and checking their corruption rate to see if your warm or cold. On a large map you can imagine how many cities will be rendered nearly useless for all purposes except conscription and any resources by taking out the FP. Roughly half their empires income lost, half their production lost, half their science lost. This results in less units, less rushing (buying) of units, almost drawns science to a halt, as they still have all the maintance costs of all their cities to cover, but none of the income, resulting in even less science
My favourite way to start a war.**cheesy tactic**
A variation on the Right Of Passage cheese. Setup ROP, place stacks of your best defending units on all the resource/luxury tiles, and have just enough units near their capital to take it out if you want, wait 19 turns, on the 19th turn 'privateer block' any cities they are getting luxuries from remotely, and dont re-neg ROP, (you get the option to say 'yeah wait ill move my troops in a second, just training yadda') for the first turn before them being auto ejected, on this turn most their cities should go into civil disorder (your blocking all their luxuries) , allowing you to completly buy up the ones you want alot cheaper than normal, and your still not at war
next turn if you want you can take out their capital, or remove your units, save up some cash and do it again. For a large civ you just need a heap of money but not much military at all to pull this off.Its also usefull if youve got a peaceful neighbour who is at war, but you dont really want to declare war on them, putting them into civil disorder (with the possibility of a forced revolution) and buying of a few of their border towns that you want helps their enemies wipe them out.
