The Ultimate Defence

[poisener]

Make a few workers build a fortress and barricade. Make sure that:

1. The fortress/barricade is in a mountain tile.
2. The fortress/barricade is behind a river.
3. Stock the place with lots of defensive units (Spearman, Pikeman, Musketman, ect..)

If all of the above are met you got a virtually unpenetrable defense.

 

[Sashie VII]

Maginot Line eh?

Unfortunately, you won't get mountains in every tile you want to barricade.

Rivers? Ditto

Why defend when you can attack?

If you own your continent, why would you need a defense like that?

I've done it before, just that it's not worth to be used for too long or too much. Besides, offense is better than defense anyways.

 

[Quintillus]

In some situations defense is better. If a natural barricade like that does come up, it's well worth letting the AI hammer it for a few turns before launching your own attack. It can be worth defending just to draw out the AI's offensive units so you can hammer them, or keeping a resource from being pillaged by AI horse units. Obviously defense alone won't win wars, but used well a strong defense can be devastating.

 

[Sashie VII]

Looking back, Always War comes to mind.

I wasn't intending to say that it's useless. Just that in most situations that I've encountered, their practicality is questionable. In a small number of others, they've come to serve me well.

 

[Turner]

Not worth the time, IMO, unless you've got it in a chokepoint that happens to be a mountain. Otherwise it's pretty easy to sidestep them. And if you build enough to make a line, you're spending more time and resources building them than getting other things done.

 

[Aceman101]

I once barricaded my whole Island with most of my workers (the others cleaning up the pollution). Because I improved every single tile and my workers had nothing to do, so i figured barricading myself would be more useful than fortifying my entire workforce.

So I would barricade my borders if:
(1) There are other civs on my continent.
(2) No tiles need to be improved.
(3) No pollution needs to be cleaned.
(4) I haven't captured any new cities that require improving.
(5) No other Cities on different continents need my workers.
(6) I have roaded, railroaded and mined/irrigated every tile in my territory (Even the mountains, hills etc)

I get all of these done before the modern ages and yet, I still don't build the recommended 1.5-2 workers per city. It may seem that it takes too long but the reason why it takes till the late industrial ages are because I still need to rail every tile. But before steampower, I have roaded and mined/irrigated every tile.

 

[MAS]

A dead enemy can't hurt you in any way, a dead enemy is the ultimate defense!

 

[Pyrrhos]

In some situations defense is better. If a natural barricade like that does come up, it's well worth letting the AI hammer it for a few turns before launching your own attack. It can be worth defending just to draw out the AI's offensive units so you can hammer them, or keeping a resource from being pillaged by AI horse units. Obviously defense alone won't win wars, but used well a strong defense can be devastating.

Well said that man!

In real life as well as in Civ - choose your field of battle! Make sure you use the natural advantages offered by the terrain! Place or lure the enemy to a position where he is at a disadvantage, especially if his units are better than yours! Manouever so that he has to attack uphill, upmountain or across river with his superior units! Counter-attack his wounded units! Launch feints when your defensive forces need to recover! Make him wear himself out trying to storm your strong positions! Use the time gained to build a powerful "army"! THEN wipe him out!

Defense is the best offence!


(Very much off-topic, I know. Mea culpa! )

 

[eldar]

I remember a particular COTM (11, I think, the Korean one...) where I had a situation like this.

The Celts were separated from me by a mountain range, and they DoW'd me because I refused them tribute or something. My response was to let them ping their Cavs against, initially, a few Infantry fortified in the mountains. After a while, this became Infantry Armies in Barricades on those mountains. By the time I gave up the war (I got bored, started pillaging, and WW crept up), the Celts were up against 4-unit Mech Infantry armies fortified in a Barricade on a mountain. No river though I don't recall losing a single unit in that war. It was fun to watch, though, and generated 6-7 leaders, all on defence!

 

[Sashie VII]

I spoke too soon, perhaps...I'm foreseeing some of this tactic in my current game..

 

[Decebalus]

Larger choke points can be covered off with a few cities as well.
Usually late in the game, the cities at the borders of your empire shouldn't be more then 2 squares appart. CxxCxxC...

Pop a couple of baricades between each (in place of x) and build walls in the city. You can build a nice defencive line with strong defensive units and bombard units like cannon/artillery. Back these up with a nice fast mobile foce behind it so it can go to the point of attack and you're set.

I love that arrangement too because I can alway shift units to strenghten any one point that's under attack and still keep the whole line closed. Any injured units can be moved into the cities to heal faster if you go as far as building barracks in them.

Works well because enemy units need to cross into your territory before attacking, so you can have 1st shot at them. And if you pillage all roads outside, so that the only roads go through the cities, it's nearly perfect. Even hurt units won't be able to escape fast enough.

 

[PaperBeetle]

A dead enemy can't hurt you in any way, a dead enemy is the ultimate defense!

Hear hear! Despite that you can get loads of bonuses to DEF and there are no bonuses to ATT, Civ3 is heavily biased towards offensive strategies. The best defense is a strong offense. Everything else is just masochism. Even industrial age catch-up wars are best fought by your units doing the attacking (with massive artillery support) and the AI's units doing the dying.

 

[fishjie]

a couple dozen bombers and a couple dozen modern armors.

 

[Zibong]

A whole lot of reasons contributed to the decline in defense in Civ3 from Civ2, IMO.

1) Complete neutering of Zones of Control. In Civ2, enemies couldn't move from one of your units' ZOC squares to another square under your ZOC, even if it was the ZOC of a completely different unit. Each unit could basically block three squares COMPLETELY! In Civ3, your units will only take potshots as enemy units pass by a ZOC, and only when they pass by the same unit. Basically, you need more units to control the same area.

2) Civ2 engineers. All the workers in Civ3 can do is build a forest on the choke square, but the engineers in Civ2 could build hills. Combine this with the "You shall not pass" ZOCs and you could always build your own choke points.

3) Artillery. Civ2, even a Stealth Bomber would take damage from a Sperman when attacking him while fortified in a fortress on a mountain. It's the ol' attrition effect. A single fortified mountain fortress Jeep was pretty much guaranteed to take out at least SOME attackers before himself dying. Not so in Civ3. Between bombers and arty, it's quite easy to be able to assault even the most "ultimate" of defenses if you wear down the target units with enough artillery. ESPECIALLY considering the numbers of artillery used by some of the more experienced players around here.

Add all three elements together, and you end up with needing a much larger number of resources (workers, defenders, time) for a much reduced effect. Better to have spent those same resources building an offensive force (horsies/tanks, arty) and expanding your empire.


--Zibong

 

[ecuwins]

1. The fortress/barricade is in a mountain tile.
2. The fortress/barricade is behind a river.
3. Stock the place with lots of defensive units (Spearman, Pikeman, Musketman, ect..)

If all of the above are met you got a virtually unpenetrable defens

At a choke point, yes absolutely until map making. Otherwise I will just walk right past that bad boy. I would rather have a walled town with barracks on a hill behind a river than what you describe.

 

[Mao Zendog]

in my opinion, it does not take much effort to take a couple extra workers and make a couple o barricades. You want to give yourself every advantage. Just because you are building barricades doesn't mean you need to take the defencive. Attack attack and attack so you cant give your opponent a chance to attack; and build thouse barricades when you can so when your opponent does finaly get a moment, he has to make plans on getting around your virtualy impenatrable wall.
IF your opponent decides its worth killing 5 of his own archers to take down 1 hevily fortified spear, then so be it. You just earned 5 kills, and your opponent won a single mounain tile in the middle of YOUR empire.

 

[Aceman101]

Make a few workers build a fortress and barricade. Make sure that:

1. The fortress/barricade is in a mountain tile.
2. The fortress/barricade is behind a river.
3. Stock the place with lots of defensive units (Spearman, Pikeman, Musketman, ect..)

If all of the above are met you got a virtually unpenetrable defense.

I kind of missed this post...
What about artillery? And also in the late industrial age it will be very, very hard to hold on to the troops on the barricades. Because the artillery could redline the troops defending the barricade and the bombers could kill them. That is, of course, later in the game, when lots of people have already finished.

 

[ecuwins]

your opponent won a single mounain tile in the middle of YOUR empire.

Then 10 Chinese Riders run up onto that spot and it's only 10AD!!!!

 

[Kiowa]

I've used the barricade defense to keep an ally (England) "honest" while attacking on other continents or on the other side of the continent. The "honest" ally was very useful and paying big $$ for techs, so I preferred to keep them as an ally instead of wiping them out and taking their land. So, I set five infantry on each barricade, secured the border, and forgot about it.

Soon, I decided to wipe out a little neighbor for land grab. It was a simple one turn takeover, but they had a MPP with England, causing an instant war with the England. In an instant, England sent 34 calvary into the secured border, gaining the tile and entry into my country with the last calvary. I lost 5 infantrymen. Having railroad, it was no problem to reinforce the border, retake the loss tile, and swarm through England unfazed. The barricaded border saved my rear! Prior to England's suicide attack, were we "equals;" after their attack, England was considered "weak."


Seven turn later, England and their mighty army were destroyed and India and the Iroquous declared war against me. I was hoping to have a peaceful game and possibly a cultural win; now thanks to England, Iroquous and India (whom my advisors say have the military might to destroy me ) it will be by domination.