The joy of pillaging wars..!

[Coast]

In my current game, I'm the sole force on my smallish continent, and facing off against a large continent of several other civilizations, two of which are at tech parity with me and researching fast. One of them was buddhist Isabella, and the other was a peacefully chugging along Wang Kong. Wang Kong was friendly, and Isabella, as Isabella does, hated my guts.

Several small mock wars started up between me and Isabella, and Wang Kong graciously (at a small fee) took my side, and soon there was a strong 'cold war' type atmosphere characterized by rapid teching on all sides and minor naval engagements. I thought it was quite clever of me to involve my two strongest rivals in a war between themselves, but that was before Isabella began using her massive military to pick away at the korean heartland and rise in the power graph.. and before I discovered the joys of a pillaging war.

My armies of riflemen, grenadiers, and cavalry were shipped, piecemeal, off to Spain.. not to conquer cities, but to burn towns and villages, destroy mines and farms and plantations.

Isabella, just being an AI, thinks she's winning this war. I happily opted for peace for the cost of a 400 gold bribe, after destroying perhaps 2/3rds of her towns and removing multiple health and happiness resources, and murdering several spanish workers in cold blood.

Now I have the satisfaction of knowing that..

1) she has the largest military on the planet, costing her much money
2) She's lost a huge amount of income, and her science is down to the point where steam power is going to take her nearly 40 turns to research
3) several cities of hers are visibly starving

Over my next round, on will come the spys. Already starving cities will have their granaries blown up and water poisoned. I feel there are several advantages to pillaging wars, compared to conquering wars..

One, you don't have to hold cities.
Two, you don't face rebellious spanish citizenry.
Three, you don't have to pay the cost of having an overseas 'colony'.
Four, if you're not planning to conquer or dominate - why not just wreck their economy for 50-100 years and destroy their shot at the space race?
Five, pillaging is actually pretty good income!
Six, you can afford to send over relatively fewer units.
Seven - it just feels evil!

So does anybody else have a good 'pillaging' story?

 

[Charou]

This is why I like to play with France.
Musketeers are great for pillaging. with BTS, the window is a bit bigger,
you can hold back AIs badly.

 

[Cam_H]

I'd love to tell great stories like Coast has, but my most memorable time of pillaging was when I fell deep into the 'Praetorian Trap' ... anyone with me here? Taking city after city, I could not hope to find a solution to my commercial malaise until Roosevelt's hamlets were just popping up like mushrooms. Thank you Boston ... Thank you New York! China was dead, Russia was dead, and America was on life support ... as was Rome albeit in a completely different way. The only thread to grasp to was the decimation of American improvements. Agggh ... we live and we learn and we now bee-line to CoL.

 

[Orion071]

I was in one of those games where I was the runaway leader in techs, land, power, everything, but Roosevelt would just not leave me alone. I was content to peacefully launch my spaceship, but he attacked me anyway with Longbows and Macemen vs. my Tanks and Gunships. I didn't want to take the time to capture every one of his numerous cities, so I sent over a force of about 25 Gunships. They destroyed his army and then pillaged EVERY SINGLE IMPROVEMENT in his entire empire: Towns, Mines, Farms, even Roads. It was hilarious to see his giant cities sitting in the middle of a bunch of pristine unimproved land. I destroyed every one of his garrison units too so he didn't have a single military unit left in his empire either. Finally, he left me alone to launch in peace.

 

[Cer]

During my last game, I went for a domination victory as I usually do. In this game I didn't do a lot of pillaging until I started a full-on war with Washington. Washington had about 60% of his tiles covered in cottage-type improvements, which were on average at the village level. I had by this point built an army that was about 30 units not counting city defenders (big enough to make me totally dependent on pillage/city-capture gold to keep my economy going). My army was about 70% knights, while washington's forces were mostly longbows, with a few macemen and two(!) pikemen in his empire which had about 30 military units. I sent my knights into his territory, thought about taking New York with the knights on hand, and then decided I could get more cities if I sat my knights there to pillage while the catapults got into position. By the end of the war I had taken Washington's 4 best cities (of 6) and taken his worst city off his hands as a bribe for peace. I had gained something like 2000 gold from cottage-pillaging, having destroyed literally every American cottage I could see.

The gold was enough to let me run 100% research nearly until I got liberalism, which was 4 techs away at that point. I never could have done it without knights and their speed. The fact that I was using knights against an army of mostly longbows, which are really not very good knight-killers, was a big factor too. Washington had an Iron mine but for some reason didn't build more pikemen.

 

[KMadCandy]

i was aiming for a time victory one time but i left all victory conditions on (this was for HoF). i had to be sure not to trigger domination, so i wanted the enemy cities to stay where they were, creating a culture buffer. but i didn't want them to out-tech me, that would be bad news! my pillaging patrols had a field day, and that was definitely the most fun i've ever had with gunships.

this was back in warlords. the annoying thing was that they wouldn't accept peace even when they had no cottages left. they didn't know they were hurt. it's like you said "Isabella, just being an AI, thinks she's winning this war." so i'd usually end up taking a little city when pillagefest was over for the time being, and gift it to someone.

the most pathetic case of AI-AI pillaging i've ever seen was bismarck vs. qin in a random personalities game. qin was obviously gandhi's personality tho, i'd figured that out really early (gandhi is unique so his personality really sticks out).

bismarck pillaged just about everything. towns to bare grassland, every happiness resource, etc. qin literally had no hamlets left, much less villages/towns. but his favorite civic was Universal Sufferage, so he stayed there and didn't change out. he got absolutely nothing from UniSuff, since he was totally broke, never had more than 50g total to rush-buy anything, and not a single town to get the extra hammer with. he had so many unhappy people from whipping and lack of luxuries, even tho he wasn't getting WW that much since the fighting was in his territory. he'd have been far better off with HR for happiness, maybe PS to build troops faster, or even rep (to get happiness in big cities).

 

[madscientist]

I did a similar thing in the Ghengis Kahn RPC game. Kept 4 cities (3 were holy I think) and one was very close to my capital at the beginning. Ended up razing 50 AI cities in all and limitless pillaging.