Teach me how to war

[zunther]

I am comfortable with all winning conditions but the domination one. Often times I told myself "This game I will destroy them with my mighty army", but 300 turns later I find myself without any city conquered and winning by one of the other conditions.
I never know when to go to war and which troops to use. Most of the time after I finish building my army it is already obsolete and I have to pay a lot of money on upgrades. Also, usually I find constructing a building more beneficial than training an unit.
Sometimes I manage to conquer a few cities from my neighbours but after I am finished I find myself falling behind in science while trying to manage the unhappiness and then I spend the rest of the game trying to catch up in science with the others and never going to war again.
I know if I would get into playing military this game would be fun again for me because just founding cities and constructing buildings again and again in every game starts to get boring. So can you help me with some tips for warfare ? I am playing on emperor by the way if that helps you answer my questions.

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[Khan_]

I also play on emperor, I would advise you play on an archipelago map because naval domination is in my opinion easier than domination. And I'd puppet most conquered cities

 

[IcyAngel]

Playing on a slower game speed (epic, marathon, normal if you are on quick) is advantageous for domination victories, because your military units stay relevant for longer.

You don't have to conquer everyone at once either. I often take out one of my neighbors early, then tech for a bit; when I reach the next good military tech, I take another civ or two out, rinse and repeat. Only annex/puppet the very good cities (wonders, luxuries, great strategic location).

 

[liv]

ranged units are the most important ones to focus on. You can be very focussed on war from the beginning and build many bowmen to start conquering. Before walls come up bowmen can take cities. After bowmen the next major advance in ranged is artillery. Artillery is really powerful as it can shoot from 3 squares away and ignore terrain obstacles. The AI players will not prioritize it and if you do you can a very significant advantage.
On water maps frigates are really good.
If you add roads you can get started with a just ready army but keep building and sending them out as needed so you do not wait till you get very overwhelming before starting.

I sympathize though, building your civ up can be a fun game.
On Emperor when you get a nice science advantage you can start very late wars and win those as well.

 

[Sarin]

Field battles are actually quite simple. Few basic rules:
Melee infantry are damage sponges/city capture
Ranged troops are main damage dealers
Cavalry are reserves and for attacking enemy reinforcements

Keep a way to rotate your frontline units quick when they take too much damage
Focus your damage on one unit until it's destroyed, do not try to spread out the damage. Enemy damage dealers are primary targets of course

And that's pretty much all. Apply some common sense..

 

[Mesodius]

As they say about Civ 5, science is king. Keep your science at least on par with the AI (or better) and you'll do just fine. As for when to war, I like to war when I beeline to a new siege unit that the AI doesn't currently possess or some other important military unit where I have an edge on the AI. My favourite time to war in a domination game is when I beeline to artillery. It's so powerful not only because if you reach it before the AI, their cities will fall like the wheat to the scythe, but because their range 3 will allow you to attack their cities with no reprisal except to your screening units.

Currently I am playing an archipelago game as the Ottomans on large map, going for domination victory. After getting universities I shot to Jannisaries and straight on to cannons, and immediately went on a spree of conquest. I've just knocked out 3 AI capitals with the same corps of a few jannisaries and a few cannons, with a few ranged naval support. That's it. I haven't used any more units than that, and I have little or no losses because my soldiers don't come into city range until it is time to take the city. With proper scouting, planning, and execution, that's all you need. If there is a counter attack, you simply lure AI units into a trap of ranged bombardment and pick them off one by one, since the AI is pretty much incapable of combined arms tactics. This is the same on pangea or archipelago, its just on archipelago your ships take on the role of your ranged unit. Archipelago maps are actually easier for the actual conquest, because the AI is worse at naval warfare, but conquests take a little longer because of having to ships units overseas, especially before you can travel over oceans.

If you are building your army and it is obsolete before finished, then you need to work on your production. Optimize city production and if it still isn;t enough then build the buildings that will allow you to build units faster in a couple cities. If you're using your military correctly, you shouldn't need a lot of units anyway. Remember if you are minimizing losses and just upgrading your current units you are free to keep building those science buildings in your cities to keep your science rate higher than the AI.

As for your happiness. When you capture an AI capital you should have a courthouse up ASAP. When conquering a non-capital city, I simply raze it. Having more cities than you need will shoot your happiness into negatives quick. Usually AI capitals will be surrounded by luxuries anyway, and usually ones you don;t possess, so this will help with your happiness problem.

I could keep going on and on, but I'll cut it short for now. I haven't been playing Civ 5 that long, but these are just my observations.

 

[Sclb]

As they say about Civ 5, science is king. Keep your science at least on par with the AI (or better) and you'll do just fine.

On lower difficulty it works and it also works on deity but you're looking at a industrial-modern era start if you follow this, but it is more fun to start warring with CB and you will be behind the AI all game on tech.

 

[Aea]

Pointy end forward

 

[BenitoChavez]

Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

More seriously, build a handful of units early, particularly archers and composite bowmen, and start a war. Don't take any cities early as you will likely get denounced by other civs if you do. The main goal is to get promotions for your troops so make sure they don't die. An army with a few ranged units with double attack and extra range is incredibly powerful for killing opposing armies and taking cities. Melee units with double cover and double medic make for an effective front line to protect your range units so be sure to get a few of them as well. Also an early war gets you early great generals which are obviously useful. As an added bonus, by pillaging their early improvements you can cripple a neighbor making them easier to conquer later in the game while getting an extra bit of gold.

Also a trick I like to use is to bring a worker along with my army. When attacking a city with a single garrisoned unit guarding it, you can send in the worker first and keep your army out of sight. That way the AI will move their garrisoned unit out of the city to capture your worker. Then you can kill their unit with your army, recapture your worker, and the city will be undefended making it easier to capture.

 

[Volcanon]

The AI *is often* smart enough to kill your one warrior if you have an army of CBs and just one warrior.

Also sometimes you can have cities bounce back and forth and you lose a garrisoned unit that way.

If you find that you lost all of your melee (so you can't capture a city), always keep some horsies in the back to grab defeated cities.

A good race for early aggro is the Huns and Assyria. Assyria you can steal techs like in the games of yore. Both towers and rams are sick in the early game. Catapults do chip damage against a reasonably fortified early city. Towers will deal meaty chunks of damage AND capture the city for you. And they are relevant longer than rams.

 

[lindsay40k]

The AI has a strong tendency to focus on wounded units. You can have a few limping melee units play musical chairs and give siege units a few turns of firing. Though I find Range Logistics archery far deadlier than pre-Dynamite siege units.

 

[Sclb]

Cannons are pretty good, but any siege before cannons are bad and not worth building. And of course artillery and rocket artillery are gods.

 

[tide15]

For taking coastal cities and backing up allied coastal CS I use frigates and battleships. I usually wait until I have cannon before I attack cities.

 

[isau]

Here are a couple of other tips.

- If you are okay with cheese, go with Liberty as your policy tree. Try to get Pyramids (for the increased Worker speed). When you invade a developed neighbor, bring a few Workers with you. Your units can pillage tiles, and your Workers can then fix them again in one turn. Then you can Pillage again. Due to Pyramids + Liberty policies you can repair improvements in one turn so it is very efficient healing. Yes, its possibly an exploit, but it works well. Also, Denmark (a civ most people dog on) is excellent at this due to units being able to pillage without expending move points.

- Don't anger the whole world at once. What you want to do is make everyone angry at one or two initial targets. Often its easiest to do this against a rival Warmonger. One of the best ways to do this is to bribe that person to war. The goal is to make yourself look like the good guy relative to everyone else. Sow as much animosity between rival civs as you can and flip them on each other.

- Exceptions to the above: it may be helpful to engage in "triangle diplomacy" where you are friends with two civs who are also friends with each other. The three way friendship reinforces itself and gives sources of trade agreements and science pacts. Eventually you will turn on them, but only when it is too late for them to realize you've been using them all along. In the mean time, reinforce the friendship by discretely sending other civs to attack your allies, reinforcing their idea that you are the "good guy" they can trust relative to everyone else.

- Another exception: If one civ becomes extremely militarily powerful (enough to take lots of cities for example) beware bribing them against weak neighbors. They may be extremely successful in their war and end up becoming very powerful. Always try to undermine the most powerful civ by sending them into wars of attrition.

- Anytime you see two civs make a Dec of Friendship, decide whether its worth bribing one of the to backstab the other. The backstabber eats a huge global reputation penalty for backstabbing.

- Before you declare war on someone, always see if you can bribe them to war on someone else first, even if you have to trade your entire list of resources. When you declare war yourself, the trade deal ends, but the enemy is stuck in whatever war s/he agrees to start.

- Gift some/many of your taken cities to weak civs located far away. They can't easily defend them or improve them, and it also adds conflict with other civs and (even though its ridiculous) it actually slows down their teching. Keep only the capitals (altho even these can be gifted temporarily).

- Especially in the early game, when you get a city close to falling, instead of actually invading it, see if you can get the opponent to surrender it to you in a Peace deal. There is no war monger penalty for acquiring cities this way. It may not be as worth it later on, when the war monger penalty is less of an issue.

 

[isau]

BTW my typical Policy picks for a Warmonger game are:

Liberty (whole tree)
Honor (only left side of tree, to get the double XP policy)
Rationalism (as much of tree as can get)

A lot of people don't like Honor as much but I find the Double XP to be really useful at preventing unit deaths (they get to heal more often).

In the event of a total Happiness disaster, the opening policy in Honor also helps you kill any annoying barbarian spawns (you get some extra Culture for it too).

 

[darkskies]

Unless playing Zulu I'll go down honor to get the 50% increase in experience points then concentrate on getting my archers and/or boats up to 3 range (unless playing Elizabeth on land since she gets longbow which I'll beeline for): while it's not strictly necessary it gets you those promotions easily (only time I don't do it is if I have bad culture points as sometime happens if I haven't found the right type of city state to be friends/allies with).

You can attack a city-state if there are no convenient nearby weak neighbors to run up your units in experience--as long as you don't capture it the other city-states won't care.

Don't use the heal fast upgrade: back your units off to heal and replace them with freshly healed units (rotate them)--I almost never use the heal option unless I've been ambushed (or badly underestimated an opponents strength).

As someone said try archipelago or islands I recommended playing Elizabeth for this she is quite powerful in water based games: that's how I learned combat.

Don't worry too much about being behind in tech, with a little experience this won't matter much. But do try to keep up as best as you can if you get really far behind it can be a problem.

Start small go after the weaker AI's first and work your way up (once you gain experience you may want to go for the strongest player first for more of a challenge).

Know your AI's: e.g. Germany can have a lot of units if he has been in an area where he can just keep capturing barbarians, though as he often doesn't upgrade them they can be a good way to rack up some experience just be careful he doesn't have too big an army compared to yours (and in a water based game he may be quite weak). Another example: in water based games watch for Suleiman often he'll have a lot of cheap easily defeated boats he captured.

Don't get in a rut try different tactics if the ones you are trying are not working think of something else (and don't use the AI as your guide of how to conduct warfare): experiment.

 

[The Disciple]

You need a good production base. You need to spend a bit more time early on getting your technology and production online. You need more hammers to war effectively. Don't build more units than you need, and only build them right before the attack. Those amassing units are costing you gold and doing nothing. But, when you do make units, before and during your war, go all out and don't make buildings.


Your problems could also be because you are trying to create too big a force, and delaying your attacks for too long. Get confident fighting against superior numbers of opponents. Attack sooner, with less units, and you will do better.


The trick here is to seek advantageous battlefield positioning. Only fight from advantageous positions. Never loose units. Your friend here is the high ground and forests. Read the landscape and make sure you keep the rough ground (and give your melee Drill to hold it). Rather than exchanging blows, you need to manoeuvre. Get to the high ground. Fortify it. Then use ranged units to inflict damage.

Once you master this, fighting the AI will be a piece of cake.

 

[Carl5872]

I am comfortable with all winning conditions but the domination one. Often times I told myself "This game I will destroy them with my mighty army", but 300 turns later I find myself without any city conquered and winning by one of the other conditions.
I never know when to go to war and which troops to use. Most of the time after I finish building my army it is already obsolete and I have to pay a lot of money on upgrades. Also, usually I find constructing a building more beneficial than training an unit.
Sometimes I manage to conquer a few cities from my neighbours but after I am finished I find myself falling behind in science while trying to manage the unhappiness and then I spend the rest of the game trying to catch up in science with the others and never going to war again.
I know if I would get into playing military this game would be fun again for me because just founding cities and constructing buildings again and again in every game starts to get boring. So can you help me with some tips for warfare ? I am playing on emperor by the way if that helps you answer my questions.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

This isn't so much a strategy, as to a bias for war games, but play on longer turn times. I always play marathon, for many reasons, but partly because it lets you have more time with each unit being relevant in the game. I also play on huge maps, so it lets you march your early war units great distances and they are still relevant while conquering.

 

[Athenaeum]

Workers are always important to bring to an invasion because they can do so many useful things, including chopping the opponent's defensive forest/jungle and improving their pillaged tiles so that you can pillage them again and again and benefit from the extra heals and gold.

 

[Lukelbs]

Cannons are pretty good, but any siege before cannons are bad and not worth building. And of course artillery and rocket artillery are gods.

Totally disagree.

I'm playing on Emperor and just smoked The Ottomans by sending a front line of Impis (I'm the Zulus) to fight off their guys and destroy resources followed by a 3 or 4 Trebuchets and 2 Composite Bowman to start the takeover. At the time I was the third strongest military and they were either first or second.

If you put early siege units like Catapults and Trebuchets in danger they are really vulnerable but once the land is cleared and they can settle for attack without taking damage they are very useful.