Just can't seem to get my Military Games going.

[~Vodka~]

Well, Iv been playing civ a while... ok about a year. And as I learned the game and progressed in my playing difficulty I always stuck with my favorite strat of sneaky diplomacy along with technology to get me either a sci victory via space ship or diplomatic via UN. I got to the point where I could consistantly do this up to monarch and could get a win out of Regent every now and then. However, im starting to see that a military style game is what i need. Mostly for a change of pace but also because I don't think I can move up to diety or ::gasp:: sid modes without first gaining some skill with a military style game.

My problem in just about every game I play with the goal of warmongering and all that good stuff, is this: I get into a huge war in ancient times, take one city, then get stuck in long troop movments and pretty soon Im forced to sue for peace, I'v played as Romans, Chineese, French, and Byzantines, all have lead to roughly the same stale-made war that drags on for a looong time, putting my hopelessly far behind in the tech against every other civ i'v yet to hurt.

Any pointers or suggestions on how to start a good military style game are much appriciated.

[vmxa1]

You have not given us much information to go on. When do you get into wars and with what troops (unit types and numbers). Against whom and at what time in the game? etc etc.

In general if at Monarch level, you do not have to worry about them starting with lots of extra units, so you can go sooner and with less. A very early war due to say a settler bop can be ended with little fuss. Just bop the setter and take your best 4-6 units to the nearest town. See where they are coming from and defend that town and pick up any you can. After losing the town and some units the AI will be willing to make peace. ive them something if you must.

That would be at the point where they have 4 or less cities. After that you have to have a bigger force and do more damage in the first war.

After you get to the end of the ancient age you have to start planning better to make the war not go too long. This means having a goal to achieve and then ending the war.

Ideally you are after a resource or a lux that will come with two or three cities annexed and maybe one or more razed.
You have to start looking out for alliances to avoid getting gang attacked.

What are the issues that concern you? General strategy or tactics or what?

[~Vodka~]

Ok, for example ill give my latest folly.

Map:
Small
Pangea
random everything else
My Civ - Romans

Natrually I wanted to use their UU so I went for builder strat early on- warrior, warrior, settler, granery.. more settlers.

Once I had 4 cities established and the source of iron linked with them as well as rax built, I commenced mass production of Legions. I grouped up 6 and headed over to the nearest civ, (The only one near enough for an attack at this time) the germans. I took 1 city with a single casualty, however, I had to garrison 1 injured unit too, that left me with 4 units left and 2 more making the hike twards the front.

I moved in for another city, the next closest one.. It just happend to be Berlin, no less, and was HEAVILY defended. So i figured i'd just go sit in my newly acquired town, mass up about 8 legion and sack it. WRONG! Meanwhile, back at my homeland, a pack of german archers chews up my iron and ends my little party. In a last ditch effort to save my war I throw my now 6 strong legion army at berlin, they are all slain by spear/archers. No more legions, my homeland is scrambling warriors/spears to fend off the archers and a few turns later the germand re-claim the town i took.

Completely disgusted with my incompetence, I quit that game.

[Cerbykins]

Typically, I'll fight a war by starting it, and then waiting.

Daft? NO! The AI, of course, begins it's attack. With a little jostling, you can get it in the slot you want, then ambush and crush the main force. Once you do that, the AI has a bit of an uphill struggle to get it's mil back. Of course, it's still no easy ride - but at least you won't have sudden big stack surprises
Of course, I don't always wait, in fact - normally I'll have a bash at a border town or two. Plus, I'll only fight wars in the early part of the game if I actually have a border - on the 'huge' maps I play, traipsing across the map just to fight when good land is already available, is asking for trouble
Use the advisor to judge whether you should begin waiting or bashing border towns. If your advisor claims you're comparatively weak, the enemy likely has a mega-stack roaming arond there somewhere, so you'll have to draw it out and shoot it down before taking any big risks. Otherwise, raid and wait for the 'surprise' before going for big meat

Most vets will tell you to have a goal in mind. I don't. More fool me, perhaps - but I know what I want, essentially. For me, the war should be ended once it looks like it'll take too much 'time and effort' to keep gaining ground. Typically, this is when it takes several turns to seize a settlement, and it's costing big losses. Obviously more acceptable in cases like major cities/capitals, and less so for minor border towns. It's a judgement call, and comes with practice.
So, I suppose, in a sense, I DO have a goal - just not a readily tangible one. In short, I want territory, ESPECIALLY territory near the capital so that corruption is less of a pain and can become more useful, quickly.

Having suffered what you're now going through (minus the defeats, I'm too cowardly ), I found I had to make a choice. Basically, throughout the game, you need to get a feel for which improvements will get you most benefit - when - and where. Then, with that in mind, be able to judge when to abandon nation-building in favour of units (EMPIRE-building )
It's not unheard of in the early game for me to have lots of towns with only barracks and whacking out the swordsmen

The simple mistake you APPEAR to have made here, was not expecting the AI to bring out it's killer stack. Solution? Nw you know, so you know to look for it
AI players your military is 'weak' against, who are putting up limited early resistance, are VERY suspect

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Dont forget that to be successful in conquest you need to back up your attack force with a good defence. Take some spears with your stack to garrison the captured towns with and always protect your vital resources adequetly. If you can, erect a fortress on your Iron and put some spears in there, but do this before you march off to glory

Always expect the AI to counter attack!

Have a goal if possible but until your really productive keep wars short! make peace asap in early wars, and keep nibbling away at a civ from time to time.

Always focus on home defence before venturing forth with your best units, and leaving your towns lightly defended.

If youve got two civs close to you dont attack one alone, get an alliance before the other two come for you! A multi front war can be very difficult in the early game.

[Thrar]

From your example, i think there are two things you can probably improve:

First, you need more units. 6 legions are usually enough for taking one city, like you did, but you'll have to leave 2 or 3 there as garrison, so the AI can't take it back too easily, which leaves you with 4 at best, not enough to take another town i'd say. The number of units needed of course depends on your objectives, if you just want to take one city, for example to secure a resource, those 6 may be enough, but still barely, imo. After all, there may be casualties, and you don't know how hard the counterattack will be, which gets me to the second point:
Defend strategically important places. Those are mostly border cities, resources/lux near the border, and chokepoints. In most ages the best defense is having units ready to attack him first, which, in this case, also happen to be the best defenders around. Let's say a spear or two in each border town, plus enough legions so you can attack any adjacent tile with more than one attacker, when necessary (with 3-spacing, for example, one per border city is often enough).

More specifically, from the description you gave, i think at first you'll need more cities. When you are stuck with just four and have no more room to expand, you'll have to take what you can get, but under normal conditions, i'd say that's not enough to fight a war longer than maybe quickly seizing two cities. Try to get more room to breathe, and use it to make more military, for another war later.

As Sun Tzu said about 2500 years ago: Know yourself, and know your enemy.
The first part means, you need to know how strong your forces are, when you will get reinforcements, how long you are able/willing to fight, and, most important, what are your goals? Try to find this out before declaring war, and position your troops so that you can reach those goals as soon as possible.
Now the second part, obviously, mostly is about what kind of opposition you have to expect. Try to figure out as much as you can about the enemy's military (mil advisor, watch his units walking by, etc.), and if you have the money, investigate cities to find out how much attackers you will need. Only after you acquired enough information, you are ready for war.

[ducki]

After you get to the end of the ancient age you have to start planning better to make the war not go too long. This means having a goal to achieve and then ending the war.

This is probably the best advice you could get. Without a goal, it's too easy to get distracted and flounder, especially after the Ancient Age. You really want to get in, do your thing, sue for favorable peace terms, and get out.
Goals can be somewhat vague - it doesn't always need to be as clear as "gain Luxury X" or "Steal the Great Library".
It can be things like "trim off two cities" or "disrupt the AI's build pattern". Even then, though, unless the goal is to eliminate the given civ, you want to (usually) have a rather quick and decisive war if you are on the offensive.

I can't even count the games I've mangled because I either got surprise attacked and then went for revenge(not a "good" goal, but sometimes it has to be done) or just decided it was time for a war and picked a victim with no thought to how long I wanted to fight or what things I wanted to concentrate on.

For me, the "it's time we had a war" wars are my worst vice. Yes it may be time for a war, but that's not a good enough goal, and neither is "I want a MGL, let's fight" - at least, not in my book. Sure, I do them, but they rarely work out as well as I'd like.

Boy, I sure can ramble. Anyway, the secondary point is, once you have a goal, it's much easier to decide what units you need, how many, and whether you can reach your goal before the variables change. Pick a goal first, then decide how to achieve it.

[vmxa1]

~Vodka~

You did not say what level the game was on and that can be key. If I play above emperor I will no longer do any rushes and at emperor I will be very hesitant as well. They just have too many units and you need to have a specific situation to attempt it or feel you have no choice.

So now lets presume it was at Regent and they have no extra units to stat. The course I mention was about going before you could have swords. If you have learned swords the game probably has gone on long enough that the AI will have lots of archers and spears or worse. Germany is one of the civs (IIRC) that gets to start with archers above monarch. Anyway they are very good at archer combat and of course are mil civ.

Anyway with 6 legions, you can take down one town as it will surely be lightly defended at this point. The capitol is out. You would need more like 12 units at this stage (just a guess).

So if I did what you did, I would be looking for the stream of archers/warriors and a few spears to come to which ever city the AI though was the best canidate.

In this scenario, I leave 4 at least in the newly conquered city.I want them to trek to my capitol, so I move my defenders out to an ambush spot. I would have my barracks city making archers or legions. Legions have the same defense as spears, but can attack. Archers can attack, spears cannot. I want to kill those stragglers, those that wil try to cut my roads or go for any workers, etc. If a unit is damaged attacking me, I want to be able to finish it off, archers can, spears can't.

In short as someone said, the AI WILL counter attack you. You must bust up a number of these attackers to get them to want peace. When they have sent 8 or 9 groups (1 to 4 each) they will be getting their heads straight. Now you can either get the peace or go for another city here. I am going with archers at this stage, so I want peace. If I am going with a UU that is superior to their stuff, I will take down another city or more. More if I am gong to raze any. I may hit that capitol now. I will have a few elites legions in your case and the capitol will be less well defended. This is just a function of the game situation. If it was nip and tuck, you may want to stop as well.

If you are in a land mass with several other civs, this foray could hurt you and of course the Germans will be hurt. The other civs will be expanding while you are fighting. So it has to be made to be profitable.

[~Vodka~]

Ooops, all my games are played in Monarch difficulty. Sry for neglecting that, its the most obvious things one forgets most.

[planetfall]

Don't forget the obvious, learn from the AI example. You should
be ok once you learn to balance quality units with discardable units.

Your legionaires are quality. Archers and spears are discards.

You have a small civ and can't afford to only go for quality. Even building legionaires and cautapults is dangerous.

Try building a force of:
3 legions + 2 archers + 1 spear
or
2 legions + 4 archers + 1 spear.
or best
1 legion + 2 horse +2 spear +1 archer

3..4 archers should take out 2 spears OR even better leave weakened
spears for your legions to get experience and then hopefully GL.

As you go up in difficulty levels, you find you need more units to take on a capital. Taking 2 cities should give you a good peace bonus. But just taking one should net you something. As you know you want oscillating wars and not constant war.

First the small rocks, and then the big ones.

Good luck.

== PF

[vulture]

You need a good-sized military to be able to beat up the AI consistently. 6 legions just isn't going to cut it unless you only want to take and hold one town. Don't attack when you only have 4 cities, unless you happen to be playing the Aztecs, when finding a pre-spear civ to whack very early can net you big advantages. Generally you want more cities, and a big army.

If you want to take a few towns, then you need to plan your attack well. You will take losses, and need units to garrison the captured towns. You need to be able to defeat the AI counterattack, heal up, and move on to the next town in a reasonable time frame. I'd recommend sticking to using overwhelming force, or else there is a tendency to end up fighting wars AI-style, which is a bad thing to do. AI style is taking a town, having 3 legions left over, and sending them on to the next town while your injured units quell resistance and heal up. One of those legions injures himself beating up a spearman on a mountain that was in the way. One gets injured by an archer inside the town you were about to attack. The third one beats a spearman in the town, and discovers one more spearman (before getting killed by an archer counterattack). Meanwhile, three more legions set out. They catch up with the two surviving ones, who are still to injured to contribute to the fight.... And so it goes on. It's quite easy to get lured into spreading your forces out piecemeal, and achieving nothing. If you think you need 6 legions to take a town, wait until you have eight, and then beat it to death. Do not send out 4 and hope to get lucky - going down that route causes surprisingly high losses. Wait until everyone is healed before moving on, and wait for a permanent garrison of spearmen to arrive if necessary to free up your attackers. Just make sure you move all your forces at once. (Although, there are times when a gamble is worth it - just make sure you understand the risks, can survive it going wrong, and don't make a regular habit of it).

And don't forget security. Declaring war and waiting for the AI to send all it's attacking troops to invade you (withouth defensive backup), and then trashing the stack, HEALING ALL YOUR TROOPS, and then going on the offensive is one way of doing it which often works well (especially against civs that tend to have huge militaries - you slow down taking the first town by being deliberately defensive first, but you gain a much easier ride in the long run). Another is to use 'obsolete' units for an active defense, such as archers, or chariots (if it is early in the game). That is the one use I have for chariots (assuming i even get to building them before getting horseback riding) - they can do damage (and hopefully retreat) vs spears or swords, and have good odds vs archers or warriors. You don't need to kill the enemy necessarily, although it's never a bad thing to do. If you injure them, they retreat to heal. This can weaken a stack enough to save your towns, and gives you time to get more troops in the area to deal with the rest of the invasion force. Catapults are also good in this role, but chariots have the advantage of mobility and upgrading to useful units in the near future, while archers have the killing power (plus bombard defense).

Endless waffle aside, it sounds as though Vodka's basic problem is not bringing enough legions to the party. You can get away with 6 for small towns, but will probably need at least 12 healthy legions arriving at the gates of an enemy captial to be pretty sure of taking it, and if you haven't taken the time to destroy the AI's attacking units, you'll probably lose several troops en route.

[Arrian]

And how do you get that larger force of troops? Mass upgrade, of course.

If you really wanna play with the "Red tide" of Legions, I suggest building ~15 veteran warriors, hooking up iron, and upgrading them all (in Conquests, this will cost you 900 gold). In order to get that much money, you will have to sacrifice some research. One way of doing that, especially as Rome, is doing the philosophy beeline at maximum science, getting Code of Laws as the freebie, and then researching Republic at 50-turn pace (10% science or 0% with 1 scientist).

I like mobility and a long upgrade path, so I tend to also use the chariot -> horseman upgrade (30g each).

Once you have your large strikeforce, put most of your guys in one group and crush anything in their path. You can station a few others near "weak spots" the AI will try and counterattack to (with a little experience, you will know where).

-Arrian

[vulture]

900 gold to upgrade 15 warriors? IIRC the cost used to be 2 gold per shield, now 4 in conquests, so each warrior would cost 40 or 80 gold to upgrade. In conquests, that makes it 1200 gold in total (which is still do-able in 50 turns, although once you start stockpiling cash you are in danger of facing demands from your neighbours to share the wealth).

[Arrian]

3g per shield in Conquests... 60 gold per warrior -> sword (legion) upgrade.

-Arrian

[vulture]

Ah, so upgradnig to conquests isn't going to be quite as painful as I thought it was...

[Arrian]

Yeah, mass upgrading has taken a hit, but it's still useful.

One thing I immediately thought about when considering the Celts - Agr/Rel (right?) is strong, and the 40-shield Gallic sounds awesome... but of course in Conquests upgrading a warrior to a Gallic will cost 90 gold per, whereas in PTW it was 80 gold per... so it really isn't much of a change.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

GS with 2 movement is very strong early in the game. I had an army made of them and the extra move with free pillage is brutal.

Just down screw up and add a MI or guerilla to the army later and lose the movement.

The first time I was told it was 120 gold to upgrade to a calv, I almost choked.

[Arrian]

An army of GS's would indeed be a terror. 4.3.3, with 3 attacks and free pillage. Yikes.

An army of med inf, by the way, is actually very effective. It takes 3 4.2.1 units and transforms them into a 6.3.2. machine of death.

120g to upgrade horses to Knights, I thought. Would be 150 to got direct to Cav, unless I'm wrong that Cav are 80 shield units.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

You could be correct, I was not sure if it was knights or calvs. Either way it made me sick.