Kesshi; I did this because I had a very northern starting location (lots of tundra and plains). After a extensive scouting I found a nice patch of grassland with the only source of horses and a river running right through it. This also happened to be right in the way of the natural expansion of Egypt past 4 or 5 cities. Based on that I decided to drop my 3rd city there and build it up into a large, cultural city with many cottages. Afterwords I would expand to fill the gaps. I think if you saw the map you would agree that settling locations were pretty sparse (my second city had 5 tundra squares-mitigated somewhat by a river and access to copper) also the city that would box Egypt in was an good launching point for other cities (giving access to Ivory and Iron).
Trying to make this a learning experience...
- Thread starter John117
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FriendoftheDork
Keiser
I don't think this was a problem really, the greater problem was that you tried to rush a civ that really was too far away to rush effectively in the beginning. Instead of building up those cities you already had you focused too much on trying to take out Egypt through a long war of attrition... something you lost because of poor tactics.
BTW one thing I noticed about the map was that despite running slavery you didn't use it correctly (I.E to remove angry faces) and you had large patches of grassland and plains forest that you could have chopped to increase much needed production. Chopping+whipping+cheap forges should have made you a good producer. Even forests outside BFCs of your cities should be chopped unless you plan to build cities there. And make sure there is no forest or jungle adjacent to a city, it gives attackers a defensive position to siege your city from.
Cool, that would be very helpful in helping us to help you.
Oh, and try to use screenies for those of us who can't open your saves for various reasons; it'll open up the floor to alot more input.
Regarding stack and military production, let me chip in my two cents (at the behest of LM). I generally designate one or more cities as solely for production of military units (I call these cities "Gun Pumps"). These are usually second tier hammer cities. If a city is too good, you're going to want to build wonders or space parts there; there will always be something. A good candidate for a Gun Pump is a city that has good production availible, but maybe not alot of food, or overlaps with a more important city and doesn't have a full 20 tiles to work, to where it will probably end up capping out early on pop. This city gets a barracks, stable, granary, courthouse, forge, factory, HE, settled MIs, and only the health and happiness buildings necessary to keep it going (unless the computer makes it the Holy City for the most popular religion - like in my current game - necessitating Market / Grocer / Bank / WS /
). It keeps spamming units non-stop.Here's an example from my current game. I'm Hannibal. Carthage and Utica are OUTSTANDING hammer cities; I'll be building Wonders in them. Hum-drum-town (or whatever the Carthaginians call it) I found on a river (good for future levee), surrounded by plains, and plains hills. Even with the plains farmed and the hills later windmilled it grew slowly pre-Biology. Initially, it built garrisons for my cities. My standard garrisons are 2 Archers (or later equivalents) and 2 Horseback Units - the Archers for immediate defense and the horsemen for flanking and offensive ops - that's also why I value Horseback Riding more than most, as it's a key element of my defense. In between, I work on constructing offensive stacks.
I build my stacks around the concept of combined arms army groups. Generally, they consist of 9 siege units, 9 attack units (swords/maces/rifles, etc), 4 mobile units (HAs/Knights/Cavs, etc), 4 stack defenders (Drill promoted, usually starting as Crossbows), and 1 medic (usually a spear/pike, and later an Explorer). Some folks will advocate more Siege and less Attack, and I won't argue with them - this set up just works for me. And I just keep building, organizing, and updating them around this concept. These Army Groups are the offensive formations for attacking the enemies cities. During wartime ALL my cities will change to unit production and these units will be organized as city garrisons around the concept of 2 defenders and 2 mobile units and fed to the front as such. In a non-warmongering game I'll have about 4 such Army Groups by Rifles and about 20+ by the time Tanks come in (and the organization changes significantly then, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it).
The important thing is to A) Have dedicated Gun Pumps that won't be distracted into producing other things, B) Organize the troops into combined arms formations so that you can acheive favorable matchups and minimize losses, and C) Tech well enough to maintain an edge on your opponents. C requires the most important aspects of playing the game, and that's in managing and maintaining a thriving economy - without which all is lost.
Hope this helps.
FriendoftheDork
Keiser
Cool, that would be very helpful in helping us to help you.
Oh, and try to use screenies for those of us who can't open your saves for various reasons; it'll open up the floor to alot more input.
Regarding stack and military production, let me chip in my two cents (at the behest of LM). I generally designate one or more cities as solely for production of military units (I call these cities "Gun Pumps"). These are usually second tier hammer cities. If a city is too good, you're going to want to build wonders or space parts there; there will always be something. A good candidate for a Gun Pump is a city that has good production availible, but maybe not alot of food, or overlaps with a more important city and doesn't have a full 20 tiles to work, to where it will probably end up capping out early on pop. This city gets a barracks, stable, granary, courthouse, forge, factory, HE, settled MIs, and only the health and happiness buildings necessary to keep it going (unless the computer makes it the Holy City for the most popular religion - like in my current game - necessitating Market / Grocer / Bank / WS /
Here's an example from my current game. I'm Hannibal. Carthage and Utica are OUTSTANDING hammer cities; I'll be building Wonders in them. Hum-drum-town (or whatever the Carthaginians call it) I found on a river (good for future levee), surrounded by plains, and plains hills. Even with the plains farmed and the hills later windmilled it grew slowly pre-Biology. Initially, it built garrisons for my cities. My standard garrisons are 2 Archers (or later equivalents) and 2 Horseback Units - the Archers for immediate defense and the horsemen for flanking and offensive ops - that's also why I value Horseback Riding more than most, as it's a key element of my defense. In between, I work on constructing offensive stacks.
I build my stacks around the concept of combined arms army groups. Generally, they consist of 9 siege units, 9 attack units (swords/maces/rifles, etc), 4 mobile units (HAs/Knights/Cavs, etc), 4 stack defenders (Drill promoted, usually starting as Crossbows), and 1 medic (usually a spear/pike, and later an Explorer). Some folks will advocate more Siege and less Attack, and I won't argue with them - this set up just works for me. And I just keep building, organizing, and updating them around this concept. These Army Groups are the offensive formations for attacking the enemies cities. During wartime ALL my cities will change to unit production and these units will be organized as city garrisons around the concept of 2 defenders and 2 mobile units and fed to the front as such. In a non-warmongering game I'll have about 4 such Army Groups by Rifles and about 20+ by the time Tanks come in (and the organization changes significantly then, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it).
The important thing is to A) Have dedicated Gun Pumps that won't be distracted into producing other things, B) Organize the troops into combined arms formations so that you can acheive favorable matchups and minimize losses, and C) Tech well enough to maintain an edge on your opponents. C requires the most important aspects of playing the game, and that's in managing and maintaining a thriving economy - without which all is lost.
Hope this helps.
I just want to chime in that although Brian's advice is good, using that many units is not always necessary on Monarch difficulty. I seldom have much more than 100 units at the time of tanks, but the fact that I have tanks while my enemies have rifles more than makes up for it. You need a very good ecomomy for having that many offensive units (4-500?) and it will cost you.
In my current game (Emperor) I have 122 combat units total arond 1440s, currently in industrial age (soon get physics). Now this is a bit few for fighting 3 AIs at once, but at least my empire is not threatened and I win city by city (25 current). I also just have 1 defender for non-front cities because they are never attacked. I compensate this by having a nice navy, good espionage and diplomacy that prevents sudden strikes into my exposed rear (80% of my cities).
I'm not saying this is ideal (this is my first Emperor game), but it works for me so far and should work on Monarch if you don't need to get a fast domination victory.
Yeah, I do tend to overdue things a bit, but I used to have a very bad habit of being caught short (what I call "That's Enough Syndrome"; it can be fatal).
Also, I play Marathon / Huge / Monarch (next game I'll move up to Emperor) / 18 Civs - the AI will come at you with some HUGE stacks. And, naturally, as borders expand garrisons can be pushed out, but only so long as the rear is totally secure (as on a "flat" map like Great Plains or Oasis). Otherwise, Monty's galleons dropping off knights and macemen while your tanks are off on the other side of the world can be more damaging than a mere annoyance.
FriendoftheDork
Keiser
Yeah I also play huge marathon games with 18 civs, but map of the world instead of continents or pangea. In my game I play England, control mainland europe, have Monty across the "pond" as a vassal who loves me (and struggles against barbs, lol), Rome, Greece and Arabia are also vassals... so you see not many fronts to protect! The only cities I need some garrison are the newly conquered russian ones (and even then a Machinegun and maybe one Redcoat is sufficient) and the ones in Persia (Iraq/Iran) require more than one defender.
If someone were to launch a naval invasion of England they would have to cross my vassal's territories, giving me early warning (and only China is powerful and angry enough to think about it).
To the OP: Lots of units are good but make sure you can afford it, paying for 100 units when you only need 20 early game really makes a difference tech-wise. I'd rather have 20 riflemen than 80 longbows....
