What's the best way to win a war?

[Bushface]

While using the tactics described above, try attacking in two widely-separated places with only a turn or two between your attacks. This works particularly well if your victim has an empire of which some part is a long way from your borders or is on another continent, by reducing the distance your troops have to travel (relatively slowly) through foreign territory to reach the enemy's last city. Sometimes the enemy will bring troops to meet your first attack and away from your intended second; you'll need Spies to see this.
Taking a hypothetical example from the real world map, if Ecuador ever wanted to capture Chile using Civ4 rules it would take a very long time to fight the whole length of Chile from north to south, whereas a few invasions by sea would do the job much quicker. There would be a further advantage in that the invaded country would be broken into separate fragments, preventing troop movement from one fragment to another and cutting each fragment off from resources in the others. Or on a broader scale, given that the USA has expanded to include Mexico and wanted to capture a state occupying all of South America, it would be quicker not to fight down from Mexico alone but to land other forces in Colombia, Brazil and Chile.

 

[NovaDream]

Bring plenty of siege and sacrifice these on cities OVER sacrificing troops. Make sure your troops win their battles so that they may be promoted. Once you've built up some siege weapons that have accumulated experience and promotions, once again, favor these over weaker siege. In short, give your promoted units good odds to win their battles. You want to hold onto these.

Cut a line to your enemies capitol or core cities. But avoid getting too far into no mans land, where you're in the heart of their cultural borders and without a city to fall back in and heal. And following up on that point, use a Great General, or even two, to create a medic 3 promoted unit(s), so you can heal quickly. It will save your units on defense, and allow you to apply more pressure on the offensive.

 

[Jerrymander]

I generally try to beeline for my opponents capital. It has the most culture, usually, and is worth capturing. After that, I go for production/strategic resource cities, then holy cities, then wonder cities, then I just mop up after that.

An exception would be if the enemy has lots of land, then I'll just cut a wide swath in his land towards his capital, not beeline.

You CAN use spies to destroy all his improvements on his strategic resources. Do it all in one turn. Would thoroughly piss off a human player in multiplayer. :3
Sometimes it's better to leave metal intact, though, because some units fare better against melee units that require iron than archers (axemen, macemen, etc).

 

[Silver21]

Yeah, I always like to send in spies to destroy their resources. Get rid of the most dangerous stuff first of course. Horses, metals, ivory(for war elephants), and for late game, Oil, Aluminum, and Uranium. I'll admit i never do this as much as i would like . Sometimes get to caught up in war.

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

Overwhelming units. the more units the better. just spam these willy nilly. suicide catapults and trebs to weeken the AI stacks. then spam more units. its all about unit count.

 

[Red Dwarf Devil]

I fight wars quite a lot, and as already stated it's always good to get the first blow in, most wars you sort of know they are going to happen at some stage.

One thing which I find, which has not been touched on yet is you can take on a larger enemy with more troops overall BUT as long as you have your troops positioned were they are most needed it allows you to easily get the edge on battlegrounds of you choice. This is more true for attacking and less so for defending

 

[RasmCiv]

Also, choose the promotions that fit best against your enemy.

 

[mboettcher]

quickly and cheaply

 

[Master Magic]

spread your relgion in there cities. there cties will gain alot of unrest, so the AI will move soilders to the citites. then go into there unprotected countryside and ravage everything but the cities. by then, you should be able to smash the armies in the citites.

 

[commoner31]

"don't fight a land war in asia"

 

[CLST]

unless you're Genghis.

 

[commoner31]

he had Subtai and Jebe to do that for him

 

[Negator_UK]

Main mistake I make with wars is sending too few troops. For early rushes I send at least 6-8 axe to take a town with 3 archers, more if city is on a hill, and more again if axemen were not built in a barracks (by more I mean 1 extra per archer), more again against a protective leader.

For medieval wars and beyond I try to get 40 units in one SoD, including about 15-20 seige. I can't always achieve this, but when I don't I usually get bogged down, even against a lower tech AI, who is busy whipping and drafting his arse off to get men to the front.

Finally on normal speed you need to take multiple cities FAST, prolonged campaigns will see your enemy tech up before your eyes. hence the need for a large SoD (for attack and garrison) when you start. And don't stop producing military units until your enemy is almost gone.