Wartime strategy help

[tranmerefan]

I'm the Celts on Cheftain difficult (never played a Turn based game before) and the Greeks have invaded. I have cavalry and rifleman; they dont even have musketmen. Despite this, I'm struggling. I've lost around the same number of units as they have and they've been blatently planning this for a while. I did successfully defend my city and I'm thinking it might be best to go on the offensive to make Alexander less likely to attack my city before its defences have been rebuilt. Can anyone provide me with tips please?


Peace is not an option. The Aposotle Palace (sorry, forgotten the spelling) voted against ending the war. I was the sole civilisation to vote against it (thanks Ghandi!) and he won't talk to me.


Thanks for any help. It's a great game but a really steep learning curve.

 

[unclethrill]

Welcome to the Forum and the great game that is Civ 4.

You are right in your assumption that you should go on the offensive. When the AI rolls a large stack on you, if you hold off the attack and destroy his stack, most of his cities will be lightly defended. Take a mixed stack in on him and roll all of his cities. Use barrage to get collateral damage on his units.

If you are rolling Infantry on his riflemen then you should slice through his easily.

Good luck!

 

[Hellman109]

If they have poorer troops they will be beating you one of two ways:
Siege weapons
or more numbers

Siege weapons are the threat here, when they attack, they damage the unit they attack AND upto another 6 in the same square. So they attack your riflemen with 3 trebuchets and suddenly they are all under half health and easy targets.

I also bet your moving your units independently, which is bad, it allows them to attack you on those units weaknesses. Move in SoDs (stacks of doom) or all your forces under one stack, it gives you the best odds, especially when you out tech them.

On the attack, bring siege weapons, allot. Use them to bombard their cities then attack their units so they are a walk over for your infantry. Even lower strength units can become super human with defenses given by cities.

 

[Supr49er]

Read the excellent strategy threads here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=156

Welcome to the Forums tranmerefan.

 

[tranmerefan]

Thanks for the help and for the link.

I managed to take one city using these methods; he offered peace. I accepted knowing that I'm only a few turns away from infantry and I'm happy creating loads to go with my new cannons. Building a machine gun in every city for defence I'm thinking should help against knights etc trying to get in.

 

[thadian]

if the AI is using all of one unit type,promote your units against it - and build the "counter-unit". You can also block their stacks by placing "pawn" units around them - normally they don't attack pawns in a forest/jungle tile and the AI stupidly breaks apart making its stack very vulnerable. you can also use this to manipulate how the AI moves.

Marines are good because you can run them into enemy territory several squares and fortify a hill. You can also bring a stack of 3 workers to build forts where you need them.

Lastly, before you go charging into his cities - make sure you have siege weapons. first bombard the defenses, then sacrifice them in a suicide strike before your other units attack (for collateral damage).

Welcome to the forums, and good luck! you can learn a lot here. I know i did.

 

[MrG]

If you're attacking musketmen with infantry, you "probably" won't need cannons but its best to get into good habits at Chieftain, then you wont have to relearn a load of stuff at noble and prince.

Build a stinking great stack of infantry and cannon, march to where alexander's capital is =, bombard down to 0 per cent defence, roll in the cannon, then role in the infantry, leave a couple of infantry behind to defend it, rinse and repeat.

Its also worth having at least a couple of infantry with the medic promotion so your injured units heal quicker.

The quicker you wipe him out the quicker you can focus on Gandhi. Oh and if you have to make peace, use the cease fire option, you don''t need to wait 10 turns before declaring work again.

Good luck!

 

[tranmerefan]

Another war question I'm afraid. Ragnor has a huge stack of cavalry, so much it goes off the screen. Naturally I'm concerned because although I have marines etc, he'll win by numbers alone.

I can build a tactical nuke in two turns, would it be possible to nuke the stack in times of warfare cutting off his main threat? (I'm presuming that nukes wipe out everything) And what would actually happen?

 

[SJN]

I have always stayed away from nukes... mostly because I like land conquests... never throw cake on the ground you plan to eat.

It sounds like you aren't putting enough defenders in your cities. I think you said you were going to put *a* machine gun in every city.

Well, I suggest lightly defending your cities deep in your borders. Remember, enemies can't use your roads. If you have out-of-date soldiers deep behind your own lines, that's fine. But you MUST defend your border cities with a good number of defenders.

Remember that your "power" rating as a defender is multiplied by your hit point fraction, so big stacks can wear even one powerful defender pretty quickly.

Cannons actually make great defensive weapons. Wait for your enemy to come up next to your city walls, and then blast him.