How conduct an ancient era war?

[MiloMilo]

More general advice: be timely. Use your earliest units to stake out hills and mountains for iron. Use swordsmen and knights to stake out some desert for saltpeter. Use cavalry to grab some jungle for rubber. Jungle is useless in the ancient and middle ages; let someone else deal with it then.

[planetfall]

Hi all, initial concern was how to survive and game geography was described in
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=50420


Now my questions are not about survival but about how to get the best out of play.

Basic layout on known continent:
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
www---Ger--www--Persia--wwww
wwww----Egypt-------wwwwwwww
wwwwwww------China--wwwwwwww
wwww---Rome--w---Russia--www
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Key: w=water
-=land

EGYPT
In first game play Egypt gave ROP to Russia, Rome and China who all declared war on me. I could not get to them as did not have navy transporting vessels. I did not want to give Egypt ROP as I had some holes I thought they would fill with cities and did not want to try to fight 4 civs with one.


SURPRISE
I did not realize warriors, swords, and horse would heal in ancient era without being in barracks city or having battlefield med. Very interesting.

GREAT LEADER QUEST
A primary quest here was to generate GL's and thought 1) elite have higher probability of creating GL's, and 2) higher probability of creating GL's if units are about equal or attacking is lower. Both of these concepts could be civ3 legends as I have not seen documentation from firaxis about this.

RETREAT
I thought only horsemen this era could retreat.


TOO MANY WARRIORS
Could be. Since I had 9 cities, and always leave at least one military in city, warrior seemed cheapest method of doing this. Do you have some cities with no military?

UPGRADING MILITARY
I might have edited and turned off upgrade from warrior to swordsman, can't remember. But regardless, what is the value of building a cheaper unit and then upgrading?

warrior cost = 10
spear cost = 20
sword cost = 30

Now won't the upgrade cost from warrior to sword be 20 and upgrade cost from spear to sword be 10. If this is true, then the only value is empiring of resources. Generating shields in one locale and spending in another. This is my understanding of Arrians argument.


ELIMINATION VS VASSAL
I am leaning toward keeping China around as a vassal buffer between me and Rome and me and persia until I get more military. I did make a mistake in taking 2 of China's cities. They were only pop1, so they disappeared. Opps.

Game3 should be interesting as it seems like the common suggestion is to replace land grab strategy with a mobile miltary force.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by planetfall
SURPRISE
I did not realize warriors, swords, and horse would heal in ancient era without being in barracks city or having battlefield med. Very interesting.

They will heal as long as they are not in enemy territory.

GREAT LEADER QUEST
A primary quest here was to generate GL's and thought 1) elite have higher probability of creating GL's, and 2) higher probability of creating GL's if units are about equal or attacking is lower. Both of these concepts could be civ3 legends as I have not seen documentation from firaxis about this.

Elite units are the only ones that have a chance of spawning a Great Leader, and it makes no difference who they defeat. I've spawned Great Leaders from Elite Modern Armour taking out regular Longbowmen.

RETREAT
I thought only horsemen this era could retreat.

Any unit with a movement greater than its opponent has a chance of retreating prior to destruction.

TOO MANY WARRIORS
Could be. Since I had 9 cities, and always leave at least one military in city, warrior seemed cheapest method of doing this. Do you have some cities with no military?

No military in some cities!!!??? NO! NEVER! And I only use cheap units in my interior cities, well away from enemy borders and/or oceans.

UPGRADING MILITARY
I might have edited and turned off upgrade from warrior to swordsman, can't remember. But regardless, what is the value of building a cheaper unit and then upgrading?

Primary benefit in my opinion: I have 10 warriors. BAM! Now I have 10 swordsmen. Actually I never bother upgrading to swordsmen. I try to stick with units that can upgrade all the way to the Modern Era (Spearman --> Pikeman --> Musketman --> Rifleman --> Infantry --> Mech Infantry).

ELIMINATION VS VASSAL
I am leaning toward keeping China around as a vassal buffer between me and Rome and me and persia until I get more military.

Only keep them as long as they are useful to your needs; then cream 'em.

[Theseus]

planetfall,

I'm starting to get a sense of your style. A couple of thoughts:

* Garrisoning under despotism is good. You are smart to do so with obsolete units, and you are correct not to waste money upgrading them. I would suggest, however, that any Warriors that are vets be upgraded to Swordsmen, and used offensively. BTW, once you get to Republic / Democracy, garrisoning is not useful... at that point, you can leave central cities undefended (I know, it feels weird, but it's the right thing to do).

* Your analysis of Arrian's upgrading theory is correct... gold is easy to generate early, while shields are not. Stuie is correct as well... using Warriors as an example, you can build a military force, collect it in a forward city with a barracks, and, upon Iron Working, instantly create a Swords division... very powerful.

* Don't worry about 1) the landgrab, and 2) elimination. Damage the civs around you, that's enough. Focus on great city sites, as you can always capture / raze the others later.

* I'm a little confused... you are Germany? (sic semper fidelis Roma?) As far as I can tell, your total focus should be eliminating / vassalizing Rome and Persia. It wouldn't hurt to marginalize China as well.

* Last point (nodding to Arrian): get the strategic and luxury resources.

[planetfall]

Well, well, well. It does pay to ask questions of the group. My sons have been playing all versions of civ but I only got interested when civ3 came out. {PTW sounds interesting}. Now because of all your help my game skills are equal to one of them and above the other.

Figured out the mystery about why couldn't build chariots--too early research. Got wacked good by jaguars and war chariots in an earlier game so beeline to horse riding. Opps, not good for Arrian's strategy. So had to go back before 2000bc to undo early research of riding. The strategy of building about 10 chariots and then upgrading the lot works very well, but feels strange to see chain of cities marching towards positions while build up military.

IS IT PROBABILITY OR BAD TACTICS?
For some reason it seems like I was getting more GL when used warrior/horse stacks than last night when using sword/horse. I have been using this attack order:
1. reg sword
2. vet sword
3. elite sword
4. ibid with horse

Since other civs have warriors/horse/spear, it is not too difficult to take city with good stack, but disappointed no leaders. {Didn't refresh, missed Stuie reply. Answer seems to be war wasn't long enough and only had a few elite units.}

GARRISONING UNDER REPUBLIC
Doesn't garrisoning help? It seems like if I don't garrison, when WW starts cities will turn unproductive without garrisoning? It also seems like garrisoning increases the count of military units and thus decreases the odds of the AI thinking you are ripe for conquest.

LANDGRAB
Primary reasons have been 1)resource control, and 2) productivity gains. In my replay I am concentrating in getting a cluster of productive cities rather than covering all tiles near area of influence. Feels wrong, but seems to work better so far than protect each tile.

ELIMINATION
Very interesting how many techs will be given away just for peace. Take 3-5 cities, and here take 2-4 techs and leave me alone. Let's see at peace for 20 years, take some of the newly spanned cities, 2-4 techs, repeat, repeat. Might well be better than researching techs. Yet another option of playing styles.

CIV PLAYING
ich bin deutschland nunc but initially semper fidelis Roma. I didn 't like playing Rome because the legionary was too strong in ancient era. German AI just layed down and cried uncle. So I thought it would harder and more interesting to play Germany who has a very late UU.

My focus is neither Persia or Rome, but Russia. In all three games, Russia has about the same land mass. The AI feels protected by buffers of Egypt-China, so gets ROP and uses warfare to delay my development. Because the other civs are inbetween and Russia is too far away by sea, there is no easy way to force an end to the war. Rome is possible via sea to skip over Egypt-China, but more than 8 units are needed. I tried this in first play and did not work. Instead set up border cities with good stacks. Rome and Russia will attack and attack and lose at least 3 to my 1. Persia is not a problem as protected by sea. Second game stopped before AD so don't know if they ever became a problem. They like to expand south to eliminate China rather than face me. In first game used flipped Persia city to get foothold on pennisula continent and waiting until Persian UU was bypassed by technology before engaging.

RESOURCES
I split strategic and luxury resources. I always beeline for sistine so I can survive with just 2 luxuries and concentrate on the strategic resources. I don't pass up more than 2 luxuries, but the since the AI tends to split attention between protecting both resources, just having to focus on strategic resouces seems like a good plus. Oh, you want to not renew the trade of X luxury. You expect me to bribe you more, fat chance.

STUIE and SPEARMAN
Huh, since I have been using warriors/swords for garrisoning/police action, I have tended to only use spears at border choke points. I like the idea of a full upgrade path. Going to have to build more of those units. Thanks for pointing this out.

Well that's enought for now, well not quite.

Final question, since warfare is so effective in ancient and modern eras. Do you tend to continue in middle and industrial ages, or switch to builder mode in those era and returning to military in modern?

[Arrian]

IS IT PROBABILITY OR BAD TACTICS?
For some reason it seems like I was getting more GL when used warrior/horse stacks than last night when using sword/horse. I have been using this attack order:
1. reg sword
2. vet sword
3. elite sword
4. ibid with horse

Since other civs have warriors/horse/spear, it is not too difficult to take city with good stack, but disappointed no leaders. {Didn't refresh, missed Stuie reply. Answer seems to be war wasn't long enough and only had a few elite units.

I do it differently. I hit with horsies first. Then, if need be, I finish off wounded defenders with swordsmen. But most of the time (nearly all, actually), I capture cities with horsemen alone. The swordsmen are mostly there to march along with the horsemen, protecting them (2 defense), and sometimes garrisoning cities... but I like having that 3 attack around if it's needed. That's why I use swords instead of spears.

GL generation involves luck, so the key is having a lot of elites, and winning as many battles as possible with those elites.

-Arrian

[planetfall]

Ok, I'll try it both ways and keep track of results. Bet horses first will lose more horses but also generate more elite horse and thus increase GL chances. I have noticed using swords first I preserve more horsies but also don't have very many getting elite troops.

[jshelr]

Arrian's plan is a bit irritating for a player who normally plays Bab, since it eliminates the admirably flexible bowman. That doesn't mean it's not a great idea to try. What Civ does this work best with?

Issues: It sounds like you are toast if another Civ attacks early, since you have no spears or bowmen for defense. Do you play with raging barbarians -- it would not be fun to see a stack of 22 barbarian horse approaching an outlying city with the gold hoard to upgrade around $1000. Imagine how many times you would have to read "and took $100 gold -- We have to build our military!"

[planetfall]

Not a problem with 8 civs, don't know about with 16 civs. The AI is so focused on land grab, they don't have a strong military early. Arrian's strategy kicks in about 350BC. Spears can be built if see another civ starting to gain ground. Remember he uses some swords for defense, but basic defense is offense which restricts movement and allows horsies to attack exposed units.

[Jamski]

Another little trick worth trying is to build a good handful of warriors at the very start and go and harrass your nearest neighbours. Hopefully you can catch them while they still have only one city, or maybe two. Just pillage all the roads and kill any settlers they send out. This has a huge number of benefits

(A list... so professional)

1.) After your initial warrior building frenzy (warriors are good enough for the job, Jags or Impis even better !) you can go for just settlers for a few thousand years The AI will have nearly no possibility of expanding, and without roads practically no trade, so don't worry about being overhauled in tech.

2.) With the AI sending out no settlers you can build anywhere you want, whenever you want. This is like playing Civ1 again !

3.)All those settlers you kill every few turns will give you two slave workers. Do this for long enough, or with enough neighbours, and you will never have to waste population and resources building you own.

4.) When you get the tech for a decent attack unit, Knights for instance, you can kill their one spearman anytime you like or leave them their pathetic one city civs as an apology for your treatment for 4000 years (If you're a real nice guy)

Just a few ideas for ya

-Jam

[Denday]

I try and use my elites first in attack to get leaders
I always attack in the beggining and in the last 10 games have won before i got to the modern age ( play monarh )
for me it always seems right to attack early otherwise i normally lose.
( a good game = an aggresive game )
kill the passive

[Denday]

Originally posted by jshelr
Do you play with raging barbarians -- it would not be fun to see a stack of 22 barbarian horse approaching an outlying city with the gold hoard to upgrade around $1000. Imagine how many times you would have to read "and took $100 gold -- We have to build our military!"

I had 12,000 god and 20 odd barbarines game

that was a sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad day lost over half my money annnnd ( i was saving it up to upgrade)
IT HURTS WHEN YOU GET
600 was captured
550 was captured
500 was captured
450 was captured
440 430 420 410 400 390 380 370 360

i nearly cried

[Denday]

and what made it worse was that i couldn't load it
soo i stopped playing for a week
waawaawaa

[jshelr]

Declare Victory and Get Out

Arrian has released us to get outdoors and back in decent physical shape before summer!!!

Employing his suggestions on this thread emphasizing chariots and warriors, followed by early and comprehensive upgrades, will result in amazingly efficient early power. (Try with Persia.) By going this route, you will be virtually assured of owning your own continent nearly every time despite bad starting positions well before riflemen make their appearance. It works too well!!!

When the game opens up into three or more continents and tech trading, it doesn't matter if you find out that you are on the retro continent that is behind on tech. The lead AIs, or more precisely the AI's just behind the leader, will sell you tech at half price. Buying steadily from them every third turn will push you and the tech selling AIs toward the leader before the entry into the modern age.

Owning your own continent then gives you the winning edge. You can maintain a relatively small military force focused on mobile homeland defense and keep out of wars unless you need an expeditionary force to get a needed resource. The AI civs will nearly always start late wars with each other and you can focus on being number one in GDP with a light burden in unit costs. This nearly always lets you slide by into the tech lead.

It's boring but it works. The fact that it's boring will lead you to try for more complicated victories than the SS, or it will give you freedom from CivIII, at least for awhile. Enjoy. There is a real life out there somewhere.

[planetfall]

Yeah, ready to explore the real world again.

Replay has morphed into sim city, see what you can build to maximize score, just to see finish comparison of no ancient war and ancient war. This part of the game gets very boring. Normally just take last city and not complete modern era, but want to see the effect in score so will slowly plug along.

Jshelr--interesting theory about owning a backward continent. Will give it a try but don't see how would work if land was similar to my game:
biggest continent-- Ger, Rus, Rm, Egypt, Persia, China
large continent island-- Iroquois
small continent island-- Zulu
Until biggest continent had only 2 civs, the Iroquois had second highest score, but being 2-3 turns away from biggest continent. thats with expanded sea movement of 7/turn, means no way to compete. Large continent island approximately 1/3 land mass of big continent. Even cherry picking resources at some point it will come down to continent vs continent island.

Please explain how your theory would work with that type of geo-political environment.




Report----Discoveries this weekend:
1. same game, same year; with ancient war score is 550 higher in 1725ad.
2. armies increased from 1 to 12
3. non leathal bombardment makes sense finally, it helps generate leaders
4. air is totally irrevelant. Airports are useful but not bombers or fighters.
5. navy is only needed for transport of armies and a few destroyers/BS for defense
6. if ratio of workers to military is too high, others civs will declare war. Game crashed and had to replay 100 years. Did not change strategy and naturally started from last saved game. Increase workers from 4X to 5X instead of increasing military. I was still "strong" in F3 screen, but this time Rome declared war. I lost 1 unit, they lost 20 before sueing for peace. Basically I just ignored them in build order.
7. I thought I understood culture flipping but now not sure how changed with 1.21. Would not have noticed without replaying the same game. In first game, one Persian city flipped. Did not flip in replay. After crash still could not get city in middle to flip, but a northern city which had never flipped before, flipped. What a surprise. Very strange as positive my city to north was in exactly the same position. I think the city in the middle may have had the city across the water one tile further away, but had a city on the same land mass with 14 cult/turn only 4 tiles away. No flip even though Persia had no supporting cities by it. Huh, now I wonder if the Persian capital moved. Did not check that. If Persian capital was closer that would explain both lack of southern flip and northern flip.
8. Can't airlift army with only leader/general and no other units. Haven't checked to see if can airlift leader. If can, then would have to airlift leader and units and combine into army on other land mass.

Now out for garden, garage work....sim city style for playing civ3 definitely reduces magnetism of game.

[jshelr]

What I mean is that you don't need to do research yourself, if you are behind on tech. In fact, put the slider on zero. By pumping the resulting gold into the civs that are just behind the tech leader, you can be sure that they use the gold to augment their own tech research to catch the leader. So, the leader does not gain on the whole pack. Meantime, by buying tech on a three turn cycle, you catch up to the leader, and to the others, very quickly. If the AI were strategically smart at that point, tech leaders would do anything to stay out of war and the need to change governments. Inevitably, they do fight, however, and at that point, an isolated civ that refuses to do more than defend its coastline will forge a lead. The lack of government change alone will allow a lead. But, on top of that, you get to stay a democracy, so your GDP is miles ahead of the commies. Switch to doing your own research and move toward the SS.

The only flaw I can see is if you don't have a key strategic resource or lack woefully in lux. If you have a decent sized continent, it probably won't be a problem that trading can't fix. But, playing the world map, I was even able to catch and pass the others on tech recently when stuck on Australia.

To summarize, I think Civ III is all about war in the beginning and all about peace-through-strength in the end. Vote Republican!

[Stuie]

Originally posted by planetfall
....sim city style for playing civ3 definitely reduces magnetism of game.

Funny. I was wondering why anyone would play the game this way in the first place. I'd rather have a new map to explore every time I play. In fact, I took some suggestions from another thread to slow down how fast the map is revealed, just to leave that sense of wonder a bit longer. I wouldn't want to know who my neighbors are and where they are every time (in fact, I do not play with culturally linked starts....)

[planetfall]

Stuie-- I also don't like to use culture links or a know world geography. Part of the fun is finding out where you are and who are your neighbors. Only reasons to finish simcity type of game are 1) to be able to measure the impact at year 2040 of ancient war vs no ancient era war and 2) see if can get higher than 5000 points in faulty scoring system and then decide if want to try for game of month HOF.

Jshelr-- Ok, now understand. Your strategy would work under your play environment but not under mine. I turn off SS because 1) too boring and 2) don't buy the idea that this is a win. It is just a restart. If civ hasn't changed, how will expanding civ to another world help. USA "won" the race to the moon. Other than bankrupting Russia, how does that translate today in influence with OPEC, or European Politics, or Middle East, or Asia?
Since I need either 2040 or conquest, your strategy would have to be modified to work in my play environment.

BTW, if you are going to "vote republican" why isn't your default government Republic? Other than tribal villages, are there any democracies today? Today's "Representative Democracies" seem not too different than "Special interest government". If you edit republic to change worker productity to match democratic government you will find the default government of most AI civs will be republic.

[jshelr]

I don't like the spaceship either. The SS is, however, the only reason that peace is rewarded and that Civ is not a pure war game at the end. Since my experience suggests the AI doen't rush for modern armor with the SS turned off, the human player can do so, and then can easily kick butt. Rolling over everyone with modern armor lacks glamour as well. And the result is often the same as if the SS were turned on.

The game would be improved if there were a more realistic way to establish enough military strength to assure defense and then engage in a "struggle" to be the best civ on other ground. One half-baked thought is that the histogram could be changed to reward qualilty more than quantity. You should get more credit when do all the civic improvements, bring in all the lux, and then juice up the entertainment slider.

[planetfall]

Ok, finally "finished" sample game. Actually quit because of boredom at 1976 in both game with no ancient war and game with ancient era war. Score in 1976:
no ancient war-- 2100
ancient war----- 3800

An 80% improvement just by conducting an ancient era campaign. Definitely more interesting with chariots and horsemen and warriors and spearman than modern era. Much faster to conquer cities.

Now there are still some things about ancient warfare I don't understand:
My readings of forum seem to suggest it is better to reduce other civs to vassals rather than eliminate. Thus,
1. Is this the advantage of a vassal civ:
quicker source of techs & gold than if I developed land?
1.a. If so, how do you set up a vassal civ? min size? max size?

2. When do you start the ancient war?

The problem I have is settler explosion has other civs at many 1 pop cities and a few 2 pop. In current game, waited until France & England had at least 10 cities each and 4 2 pop cities. I was only able to get 2 of the 2 pop cities as the AI would rush soldier and give up citizen. I think the idea is to let the other civs build cities and some improvements and then take the benefit of their development. I seems like you want to start the war just before the other civs get literature so they don't all gang up on you, or does that matter?

3. What size do you prune the other civ to?
2 cities?
3 cities?
4 cities?
5 cities?

I pruned to 1 and 2 cities and think that may have been too much as they don't have much to offer at that size.

4. Is the basic idea to prune civ and then leave an open area for them to settle and then about every 22 turns, capture that city, sue for peace, get goodies, abandon city, leave area open for next cycle?


Again thank you for your ideas.