Warring in Civ 2

[Volcanon]

Replayed Civ 2 for the first time in ages (mostly play Alpha Centauri and newer Civs). I keep having situations where I lose an entire army to a single city, or something like six tanks to a musketeer or something. Cannons etc usually also get killed when fighting same-era units. Bombers give unhappiness even when they are in the city. And the maps are usually very large for an eight civ cap. And all of the AI hate you as soon as you're large.

So how do you properly warmonger in this game?

 

[Ali Ardavan]

There is plenty of material here on how to play particularly in the "Strategy & tips" subforum. In the case of your particular question the city likely has city walls which gives a massive defensive bonus.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Replayed Civ 2 for the first time in ages (mostly play Alpha Centauri and newer Civs). I keep having situations where I lose an entire army to a single city, or something like six tanks to a musketeer or something. Cannons etc usually also get killed when fighting same-era units. Bombers give unhappiness even when they are in the city. And the maps are usually very large for an eight civ cap. And all of the AI hate you as soon as you're large.

So how do you properly warmonger in this game?

There are a lot of different questions in there. I also began paying Civ2 again after decades of not playing it since it originally came out. I assume you are playing MGE not ToT.

There is a flaw with the AI in the vanilla game. Look for the no hostility patch called attitude.exe. It makes the game playable.

There's a patch called Civ Unlimited. It acts as the boot for the game and it allows enormous maps, enormous numbers of units, money, etc. You need that too.

It is way better to download a scenario than play the vanilla game due to peculiarities. I was working on a mod for the vanilla game which replaced the basic graphics and filled up the empty unit slots. Maybe I'll finish it.

In many scenarios, there are airbases and army fortifications where the units are nearby so that they can be redeployed as needed rather than within a city. You might like some of the modern scenarios at the Scenario League wiki.

New World Order 1.2 is a lot of fun.

http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=Category:Atomic
Not only do city walls offer defenses but wonders and improvements and TERRAIN. The base tile that the city was founded upon could offer defensible attributes just as in history.

Chances are high you will end up looking at the unit stats and start tweaking them as the above sort of situation makes it ridiculous where better military units might have difficulty with inferior defenders.

On top of which, there are bonuses based upon the AI level. If you're playing at some high level,then additional defensive bonuses might be layered on top of the situation.

The most boring way to play is to start in 4,000 BC with a single settler as the pace is glacial. If starting back from that point to present day, I suggest a huge map like the Gigamap in the download section. Then create at least ten cities for each civilization. Then give each civilization 1,000 gold. Then start. Then there is enough distance between each and time to build up infrastructure and more cities and units. That game is quite fun with battles in every age.

 

[Volcanon]

I toyed around with the game since I made the post. Very early warring seems to be pretty close to Civ1 (or Civ3), but as soon as cities get bigger and there's city walls the only way to not lose entire armies to a single defender is to use diplomats to blow up city walls. When you get spies you can blow up city walls easier instead of something useless like their granary.

Is there a patch that makes the game handle stacks of units like Civ 3? It's really lame to lose 10 units because one defender died. Or maybe a patch that makes artillery actually good?

 

[Cassius Critzer]

If running Test of Time, there is a patch called ToTTP which addresses more than a hundred known issues.

If running MGE, there is not a stack kill patch that I am aware of. It's why I have discussed limited battalion sized armies of various strengths to fill this deficit and to facilitate logistics.

Without the hostility patch, the AI becomes manical and not in an evil genius way, but makes impotent pointless grindy attacks at a major cost to itself. The game is unplayable without the hostility patch.

 

[Volcanon]

Does Test of Time get rid of the stack kill issue? Can you also turn off stealing a tech by capturing a city?
Also, does the hostility patch get rid of ridiculous wars, like the guy on the other side of the planet declares war and then tries to snipe random small coastal cities?

 

[Cassius Critzer]

In MGE in the scenario editor, you can prevent tech stealing by conquest but always use diplomats to steal tech. And that of course leads to war in retribution. What I did was make the creation of diplomats occur differently, say with republics as the Romans would try to use diplomats versus outright conquest.

Someone else will have to answer about vanilla ToT as that game is so ugly in terms of graphics that unmodded there is little appeal.

The hostity patch fosters progressive improvement in attitude towards the human player based upon a lack of hostile actions...at least in MGE. You can have lasting alliances but are expected to support your ally with some military actions albeit very low expectations.

The problem with navies is actual naval bombardment of cities happened late. Rather piracy and interdicting merchant ships and blocades happened earlier. Ideally you want ship to ship combat and limited by naval technology to expand beyond hugging the coastline. Then naval invasions of armies establishing beachheads and Viking raiders pillaging towns. There is only one kind of ocean tile, thus an inability to have different kinds of ships without toggling the trieme attribute.