War Tips.

[Lansky]

The AI has one large SoD - Stack of Doom. They will reinforce as they can with mini stacks, but they definitely tend to throw all their power into you in one fell swoop. If you win the first big fight things tend to only get easier...

if you brought enough troops yourself. If you have to wait 3-4 turns after every fight because you don't have enough units to rotate in and out to heal then you'll start to encounter lots of mini reinforcement stacks that can quickly eat away at your initial momentum.

 

[vicawoo]

If two enemies are still competing for land, don't attack one unless you can handle a super sized version of the other.

Bribing to war is a great for wasting troops of two powers. An enemy with a lot of neighbors also has to spread their forces thin.

Know what will kill your attack window. Horse archers slow down considerably once they have longbows. Axes/swords slow to lots of fortified axes.
On a similar vein, attack before they can boom. You don't win wars of attrition against a larger production empire.

Keep your troops away from their borders before you declare. And get roads to the heart of their empire.

If you want to axe/chariot rush, get a 2nd city (except for marathon), have two workers improve then chop each city while a 3rd builds roads to your target. Don't waste time with granaries (unless your expansive), buildings, additional workers.

 

[yanner39]

If you have open borders... scout! See what they have already, lots of horse/ele's? Bring more spear/ele's to counter. Lots of xbows? Bring more mounted. You can also see what they can possibly build by looking for bronze/iron/horse/ele's on the map. If they only have one and its close to your borders go pillage it and camp the square for easy war of attrition win.

The thing i'm trying to do is war more. I only seem to do it when I want to invade all of the land, but early wars to steal workers, pillage a few tiles for gold (and to hurt the development of the other civ) which makes later wars easier. I think sometimes a civ's UU is more suited to pillaging/defense type roles, attacking units that are protecting resources or moving to attack your invasion stack. I plan to do it more to get more use from UU's that arn't city busters.

Quality vs Quantity? I use GG's for XP rather than +50% production. Units have upkeep/supply costs, quality does not.

Finally, whilst not a "war tip" I would like to point out that a good economy/building plan really helps. I used to rarely use the "Build Gold" or "Build Research" options and just stuck to buildings but now I see how much specialisation right down to Gold or Research helps. Even 10 hammers becomes 10 gold/beakers, a 10% building would only give more if it currently has 100 gold/beakers, nevermind the time to see the return for the multiple building turns lost. Linked to this is building gold in military cities, rather than pump out units that will soon be obsolete or you don't need yet, you can get quite a bit of gold by building it, this can then be used to upgrade units (or up the research if you want).

I've read this a number of times, but how is it done exactly? How do you assume control of these workers?

 

[Ai Shizuka]

You attack a worker just like a standard unit. He doesn't die, but becomes yours.

 

[champ82]

I can’t believe this hasn’t been mentioned yet (if it has, sorry for being unobservant.)

Use medics! They make a HUGE difference.

Promote one unit to medic II or III to keep in your SOD. You can pick away at an AI’s SOD even if it outnumbers yours this way. They can attack, heal, wait a turn or 2, and repeat. Without medics you'll be waiting an obsenly long time (I know because I used to do this.) Obviously you need siege, UU bonus, promotion bonus or a tech bonus to win this way.

I first heard about this from reading these forums. The idea is to use a great general to promote a scout (I used chariots or horse archers, you probably want a unit with a movement of 2) to medic 3. This unit doesn’t attack, it’s only a medic (I would attack with my mounted medics sometimes if the odds were above 95% but some would probably say this is inadvisable.)

Lately I’ve been using medic 2 units without great generals (medic 3 requires a GG). Medic 1 becomes available after combat 1 or drill 1. So getting a medic 2 unit is not that hard if you have settled great generals or running theorcracy or vassalage or if you are PRO or AGG. CHM can obviously help as well. I have been finding medic 2 does the job well enough so I have been settling my GGs lately (and having fun doing it.)

Medics will save you time in enemy lands (which means saving money and war weariness) and in general will help you improvise and cope with the unexpected – 2 busted up small stacks can unite and with a medic be a formidable SOD.

 

[CivIVMonger]

Oh yeah medic is good.

 

[muxec]

Know who controls the AP/UN and think twice before attacking him.

 

[StrategeryBush]

Medics are important. There are whole threads on which units to us and how to promote them, so I won't go into much depth here. Often a very good healer is a Woodsman promoted melee unit. Woodsman 3 gives better healing than healer 2, though it does not work in adjacent tiles. This is a large part of the reason that alot of players plant an early warrior on a wooded/jungle hill and let him absorb barbarian archer attacks while promoting him up the Woodsman line. That unit can later get a GG to make a really strong healer unit.

 

[Birdman6]

Bribe you target into a war then wait a few turns. His stack will be off in another land and will almost never come back. Nothing beats a good backstab.

Even if you don't plan to backstab anytime soon, bribing the AI into war does wonders for setting them back. An AI at war will shift resources away from research and really lag behind.

Gunships are STELLAR pillagers. It's great watching your SOD march through enemy territory while your gunships buzz around like bees leaving a broad swath of destruction. Bombers and fighters also pillage well if the enemy lacks flight, but you don't get gold.

When pillaging, go for:
- single strategic resources first...single meaning they only have one of them (i.e. if they have a backup horse, then pillaging the 2nd horse obviously makes no immediate difference.)
- food tiles second. knocking out farms sends a large city into a ridiculous tailspin including starvation, rapid population loss, inability to work / tiles, inabiliy to produce military units, decline in research and gold.

If your goal is to damage the enemy, pillaging mines and cottages is NOT priority.

 

[mboettcher]

I have maybe 1 in 15 games end up with much of a modern war that actually means anything in terms of winning the game. The latest a major war usually occurs for me is the industrial bomber/tank combo.

This is a much better time to move on the offensive as tanks are more powerful relative to their era and anti-tanks are a weak counter unit in terms of unit to unit (not hammer to hammer). They can be dealt with by bringing along a few pinch calvary and a healer calvary for a fast moving SoD support by bombers. AT's are also slower than tanks, something that gunships are not and therefore far less likely to come careening out of nowhere. Plus the comp (or any enemy really) even if they were militaristic is weakest in this era because they probably have vast hordes of mounted units which are irrelevent. So you are striking in an era where so many of the enemies units have become useless to them and are therefore somewhat easy pickings.

This is one of the best times to strike along with the axe rush and the steel/rifle beeline. Plus its easily the most fun era of warfare along with axes in my opinion.