So....I am a Civ peacenik. I never win domination victories. I don't play war-focused races.
I am (gasp) a non-warmonger. But war is an inevitable fact of Civ 5, and the higher up in difficulty you go, the more important it is to master.
So if you are like me and you don't enjoy Civ 5 warring as much as building beautiful cities, you may find warfare to be very difficult. I did for a long time, until I collected some good lessons learned, and they may huge differences to my gameplay.
This is not a master's guide to warfare, there are much better warring players on the boards that can teach you those. These are some quick tips that can instantly and immediately help your warring...brought to you by someone who feels the pain of not wanting to war.
1) When in doubt, pull the unit out.
The biggest issue for me with warfare was impatience. I don't want to war, so I want it over quickly! And so, I used to kill enemy units whenever I got the chance...which often resulted in trade offs. I would kill a unit, and he would kill mine. And against an AI that has more production than you....that is the wrong way to play.
The key to Civ 5 warfare is to not lose units. Focus on survival over all things. If you can kill a unit, than great. If you feel that move your units forward will result in their death...than stop. Never lose a unit. Pull it back, heal it up. Send it back in.
What's amazing about this is once you get good at preserving units....warfare becomes 5x easier. There is a magical threshold when your units get very highly promoted....and they become super units. For a player who is used to losing units, the AI often has a promotion advantage over you. This starts to change as your super units keep killing his medium experienced ones over and over again.
2) Choose Drill over Shock in most cases.
At one point I actually made a thread asking if anyone used drill, as shock just seemed so much better. I was 100% wrong. For most of the game, drill is the better promotion.
Early game, cities are the main source of big damage. Reducing that is key. Further, units in the early game with strong drill promotions are surprisingly good at taking cities, and may not even need siege to take them. Lastly, after Drill I you get access to the Cover promotion. You will find that ranged units are right after cities in terms of doing the most damage to your units. Protecting against that makes your units much more durable.
Now Shock is not bad. Later game when armies are bigger (more flanking), or if you are focusing on defensive wars (like trying to win a CV)...than shock can be very good. But when it doubt....go drill. It made a huge difference in my gameplay.
3) You must use medics.
Medics are the most important unit in your army. Having a strong front line is good. Having a strong front line with a medic behind them makes them 5x stronger. I cannot stress this enough. If you don't use a lot of medics...you are missing out on the strongest part of your army. Front line units can take significantly more punishment with medics. Further, your army recovers much faster after a fight. Meaning you can take more in a shorter period of time....and us builders love shorter wars.
So make sure to build ranged units, and when it doubt, give them medic on their second promotion. If you want to get tactical you may only need 1-2 medics....but honestly if you don't want to think too hard just give every ranged unit medic as soon as you can. You honestly won't be disappointed.
4) Build more units. Seriously.....build more units!
We builders hate building units! Every swordsman is a pretty building I am now behind on. So what happens is we tend to field small armies, and then wonder why we can't win wars.
At some point, generally early in the game, you have to commit to fielding a real army. 8 main units and 3 siege is a good start, but often a good bit more than that.
It can feel like such a waste as a builder, but the key is there is a critical mass of units in Civ 5. If your army is small, it can't do much....and you start to lose units. And when you lose units, you have to replace them....which means more pretty buildings you didn't get to build.
Once you hit the critical mass....you will be amazed how powerful it becomes. You can take cities in a quarter of the time it may have taken you before...without any losses. Suddenly you don't need to keep making units all the time, your army just goes around and wins.
In the long run you will actually make less units than you did when you fielded minimum armies. Warfare will be significantly easier, and you will take cities and feel gain from warfare.
5) Focus on units over cities.
This is that impatience thing I mentioned again. We want to take the city and go home damn it!
But Civ 5 AI is too smart for that. I can't tell you how many times I focused on the city, got it so close....and then got smashed by a followup army from the AI. It knows what its doing.
Ultimately your goal is to kill units, and if you've killed the units....you will take the cities by default. This can seem boring for a while, the AI will often have what looks to be never ending stacks. But if you keep killing them (and keep your units alive)....at some point the AI often runs out of steam (at least on Emperor). With their armies depleted, suddenly their entire land is open to you, and you can take a whole lot in a short time.
6) Don't stop a war you are winning.
Again, we hate war. We want them to be as short as possible and get back to building. So you go to war, you take a city...and the AI sues for peace. You think, "great....back to building", and you sue for peace.
DON'T!!! This is the time when its best to keep attacking. If you have been killing his units than his armies are depleted. What started as one city grabbed can easily turn into 3, as the resistance you face often goes down.
Further, if you only go for small gains against an AI....they usually come back, and you will be warring with them for the rest of the game. If you strike a mighty blow and cripple them....they will never really bother you again. This means your later game can actually be more peaceful. And even if they do go to war with you again later on, you are often too strong to really be hurt at that point.
This is a lesson I still have to remind myself, because its not where I get my biggest enjoyment. But it will change games for you. Honestly, this lesson alone will often let you go up a difficulty. The difference between hurting civs and crushing them is a night and day difference as the game stretches on.
7) If nothing else....pillage.
Generally its better to take cities in war. But if the enemy is just too tough, the defensive position too good, and you cannot engage his forces without losing your own....than pillage. It weakens them, and gives you gold. A few horseman in the backside of an enemy can deal huge economic damage, and can often be a lot easier than trying to prepare a force to take a majorly fortified area.
If you are in a defensive war, this is the best tactic to short the war. Send horses out and pillage anything you can. It will add to your warscore and get the AI to back down sooner.
I hope these tips were helpful; I can honestly say they completely changed my success in warring. So good luck!!!
I am (gasp) a non-warmonger. But war is an inevitable fact of Civ 5, and the higher up in difficulty you go, the more important it is to master.
So if you are like me and you don't enjoy Civ 5 warring as much as building beautiful cities, you may find warfare to be very difficult. I did for a long time, until I collected some good lessons learned, and they may huge differences to my gameplay.
This is not a master's guide to warfare, there are much better warring players on the boards that can teach you those. These are some quick tips that can instantly and immediately help your warring...brought to you by someone who feels the pain of not wanting to war.
1) When in doubt, pull the unit out.
The biggest issue for me with warfare was impatience. I don't want to war, so I want it over quickly! And so, I used to kill enemy units whenever I got the chance...which often resulted in trade offs. I would kill a unit, and he would kill mine. And against an AI that has more production than you....that is the wrong way to play.
The key to Civ 5 warfare is to not lose units. Focus on survival over all things. If you can kill a unit, than great. If you feel that move your units forward will result in their death...than stop. Never lose a unit. Pull it back, heal it up. Send it back in.
What's amazing about this is once you get good at preserving units....warfare becomes 5x easier. There is a magical threshold when your units get very highly promoted....and they become super units. For a player who is used to losing units, the AI often has a promotion advantage over you. This starts to change as your super units keep killing his medium experienced ones over and over again.
2) Choose Drill over Shock in most cases.
At one point I actually made a thread asking if anyone used drill, as shock just seemed so much better. I was 100% wrong. For most of the game, drill is the better promotion.
Early game, cities are the main source of big damage. Reducing that is key. Further, units in the early game with strong drill promotions are surprisingly good at taking cities, and may not even need siege to take them. Lastly, after Drill I you get access to the Cover promotion. You will find that ranged units are right after cities in terms of doing the most damage to your units. Protecting against that makes your units much more durable.
Now Shock is not bad. Later game when armies are bigger (more flanking), or if you are focusing on defensive wars (like trying to win a CV)...than shock can be very good. But when it doubt....go drill. It made a huge difference in my gameplay.
3) You must use medics.
Medics are the most important unit in your army. Having a strong front line is good. Having a strong front line with a medic behind them makes them 5x stronger. I cannot stress this enough. If you don't use a lot of medics...you are missing out on the strongest part of your army. Front line units can take significantly more punishment with medics. Further, your army recovers much faster after a fight. Meaning you can take more in a shorter period of time....and us builders love shorter wars.
So make sure to build ranged units, and when it doubt, give them medic on their second promotion. If you want to get tactical you may only need 1-2 medics....but honestly if you don't want to think too hard just give every ranged unit medic as soon as you can. You honestly won't be disappointed.
4) Build more units. Seriously.....build more units!
We builders hate building units! Every swordsman is a pretty building I am now behind on. So what happens is we tend to field small armies, and then wonder why we can't win wars.
At some point, generally early in the game, you have to commit to fielding a real army. 8 main units and 3 siege is a good start, but often a good bit more than that.
It can feel like such a waste as a builder, but the key is there is a critical mass of units in Civ 5. If your army is small, it can't do much....and you start to lose units. And when you lose units, you have to replace them....which means more pretty buildings you didn't get to build.
Once you hit the critical mass....you will be amazed how powerful it becomes. You can take cities in a quarter of the time it may have taken you before...without any losses. Suddenly you don't need to keep making units all the time, your army just goes around and wins.
In the long run you will actually make less units than you did when you fielded minimum armies. Warfare will be significantly easier, and you will take cities and feel gain from warfare.
5) Focus on units over cities.
This is that impatience thing I mentioned again. We want to take the city and go home damn it!
But Civ 5 AI is too smart for that. I can't tell you how many times I focused on the city, got it so close....and then got smashed by a followup army from the AI. It knows what its doing.
Ultimately your goal is to kill units, and if you've killed the units....you will take the cities by default. This can seem boring for a while, the AI will often have what looks to be never ending stacks. But if you keep killing them (and keep your units alive)....at some point the AI often runs out of steam (at least on Emperor). With their armies depleted, suddenly their entire land is open to you, and you can take a whole lot in a short time.
6) Don't stop a war you are winning.
Again, we hate war. We want them to be as short as possible and get back to building. So you go to war, you take a city...and the AI sues for peace. You think, "great....back to building", and you sue for peace.
DON'T!!! This is the time when its best to keep attacking. If you have been killing his units than his armies are depleted. What started as one city grabbed can easily turn into 3, as the resistance you face often goes down.
Further, if you only go for small gains against an AI....they usually come back, and you will be warring with them for the rest of the game. If you strike a mighty blow and cripple them....they will never really bother you again. This means your later game can actually be more peaceful. And even if they do go to war with you again later on, you are often too strong to really be hurt at that point.
This is a lesson I still have to remind myself, because its not where I get my biggest enjoyment. But it will change games for you. Honestly, this lesson alone will often let you go up a difficulty. The difference between hurting civs and crushing them is a night and day difference as the game stretches on.
7) If nothing else....pillage.
Generally its better to take cities in war. But if the enemy is just too tough, the defensive position too good, and you cannot engage his forces without losing your own....than pillage. It weakens them, and gives you gold. A few horseman in the backside of an enemy can deal huge economic damage, and can often be a lot easier than trying to prepare a force to take a majorly fortified area.
If you are in a defensive war, this is the best tactic to short the war. Send horses out and pillage anything you can. It will add to your warscore and get the AI to back down sooner.
I hope these tips were helpful; I can honestly say they completely changed my success in warring. So good luck!!!
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