Timing of War Declaration / Troop Movement

[CharlieM]

I've noticed that if I amass my troops at a border, my neighbor will tend to react. So what's the strategy here? Hang back until you declare war?

In my specific case right now, I'm Gandhi about to attack Bismark to my east. I have two cities that are each about 8 tiles away from the German city I want to attack (by the way, I want to attack because the city will give me access to horses, which I don't have). The border is four tiles away. Is there a better way to do this than my usual way, which would be to bring my advancing troops right up to the border, as close to the German city as possible, then declare war?

 

[Mattimeo]

Keep one tile in-between your troops and the border?

 

[CharlieM]

Keep one tile in-between your troops and the border?

Is it that simple? That would be great.

 

[DaveMcW]

Build a road to the border.

 

[CharlieM]

I have roads between these cities.

With all respect, this does not answer my question.

My questions are: does the enemy notice when you amass troops by the border [BEFORE a declaration of war] and start moving troops to the city you are targeting? If so, what's the strategy to combat this? Stay in my cities until I declare war? March to one space away from the border?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I have roads between these cities.

With all respect, this does not answer my question.

My questions are: does the enemy notice when you amass troops by the border [BEFORE a declaration of war] and start moving troops to the city you are targeting? If so, what's the strategy to combat this? Stay in my cities until I declare war? March to one space away from the border?

In the same way you peek at the Power meter to see what's going on in the cities you can't see, the AI is doing that every turn.

If you begin amassing troops, and your neighbour has enough points against you, you better believe he's going to start building up defenses if he sees a stack of troops on his border. Especially in BtS, if all your neighbour sees is a surge in your power meter, he'll likely begin building up defenses just with that knowledge!

Two ways around this is to queue up production and/or whip in such a way as to finish multiple units at the same time and in rapid succession just before declaring war -- giving your enemy very few turns to react to your spike in power.

As for amassing troops, I try to guesstimate how far into my borders the enemy can see and then put my troops somewhere behind that in the enemy's fog. If you have Open Borders, then just make sure none of his units find your stack.


-- my 2

 

[CharlieM]

Cool. Very helpful and much thanks.

And how do you guess-timate how far the enemy can see into your civ? What factors do you look at?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Cool. Very helpful and much thanks.

And how do you guess-timate how far the enemy can see into your civ? What factors do you look at?

I look at how far I can see into his.

 

[Silver Marmot]

I miss the good old days when you could simply gather all your troops right outside the AI's border and the AI would be too stupid to suspect anything.

Although, the new changes certainly add more strategy to warfare.

 

[CharlieM]

Ah, was that true in Civ III? I used to play that ... and maybe that's where I got this bad habit of stacking up by the border. In fact, my first few games, I remember trying to march right up to the enemy city and declare war. I was shocked and dissapointed when my troops high-tailed it back to the border the minute I declared war. Chickens!

 

[JBossch]

Haha, yeah I forgot how the way borders work totally changed in Civ4. I just had a great memory of amassing a stack of modern armor one space outside of every ciy in a helpless enemy civ right before i declared war.