Roads, Best Offensive For Ancient

Strakorfsky · August 17, 2002, 20:31

Good day. First, I want to thank you for reading my thread, and I hope you learn something from it, and I hope to as well.

*DISCLAIMER*: By reading this your are inherintly given your own oppinion of what you think is right or wrong. You have the right to claim anyone statement if you have alreayd wrote it, inferred it, or in any other way thought of the subjects written here. If you wish for me to add quotes of ownership of a certain thought, simply ask me.

OKay, so, lets say you are the Chinese, it is 4000 BC and you are wonder when to make your attack, well, before you even contemplate what you're going to attack with you have to make preperations. First, you must make an educated guess as to where the Enemy Civs might b, on man-made maps, this is a lot simpler, because, you can look in the editor and see where the Civs are at. So, you say they migth be to the north, and lets pretend they are. Lets also say that on an Average map, the average distance between two civs on point A and B is 15-25 tiles. Now, the first thing to do it map out the shortest route to your enemy using your immediat surroundings. When building the first road to your enemy, pick grasslands if they are not too inconvenient. If you decide mountains and hills are, you might want to start and make a worker before your barracks, or right after. So, you are building the firts road, getting another worker is king in this stratagy, one work simply is not enough in most cases. With TWO workers, you can lay down roads very fast, or even use a leap frog technique on grasslands, but keep in mind, leap frog is only useful with two workers per tile, and keep them one tile apart. So, by the time you are just on the outskirts of the enemy civ withn yur new road, you should ahve a decent force of archers ready, when you do, travling at three tiles per turn, your archers should be able to get there very quickly, sometimes, if you are real quick at it, you can get there befor they have several spearman in place*.(Though when you are one the boarder, and onyl see a warrior, the AI will pop-rush a spearman just after you declare war, so, you will face on either way, BUT, that spearman will not have a fortification bonus, and that will make it much easier for your archers.) Keep in mind that you should make a city towards your foes, so that that city can make a worker to start improving the key tiles in the capital and then it. Also, an influxe of workers you shoudl caputre form their capital, these can be used to make a road to your next foe. You should always make a scout, and if you did, you will have found at least three civilizations by now*. (This may be different for individual cases, you might be alone on a semi-landmass area.) THis same idea can be used over and over with swordsman, horsemen, knights.

Also, keep in mind that without roads to your foe, you will not really be able to get a quick strategical war because your reinforcment lines will be too slow, and in order to get and win wars before 2000BC on a Huge-medium map, roadw ill be required so that you can make haste to the enemy, the AI will not be in very good defence capabilities, because, it is still expanding.

So, roads are your greatest asset on offensive attacks in the ancient age, which you all knwo is the most important age of securing your dominance over yuor immediat area.

Well, that is my thought, for what it is worth. Please send me feed-back from this with any objections, comments, or about the disclaimer.

PS:roads in historical terms have been the most important factors in what armies have been victorious.

Objectivist · August 17, 2002, 21:03

Good Points, espically when you consider how much roads contributed to the success of the Roman and Incan Empires.

NeoStar · August 17, 2002, 22:08

What you've written about is definately an important factor if ancient age wars are part of your strategy - most people would agree with you

Roads work especially well with UUs that have better movement (eg Impi) and great attack for their time (eg Immortal). One can easily unite a large landmass with these. You shouldn't pillage enemy roads (unless connected to iron/horses) if you want to take over them for their own routes become essential.

Quote:

So, roads are your greatest asset on offensive attacks in the ancient age, which you all know is the most important age of securing your dominance over yuor immediat area.

On all but the smaller maps, this is usually the case.

Bambul · August 17, 2002, 23:39

The strategic considerations you have to make in the age of roads is one of the most fun things I've found in the game. I love preparing my defences to rapidly prepare for an AI sneak attack (I tend to play a little less aggressively because I love the feeling of that 1-2 turn period right after war is declared against me and I scramble to fight off the invasion and make a counter attack).

Unfortunately this all goes out the window after RR. Your only threat is that first turn sneak attack or if your empire is split in two (esp: islands), after that first turn you can zip your entire army from one end of your empire to the other. It's those time I wish RR gave a 1/5 bonus (as roads give 1/3) rather than infinite.

Strakorfsky · August 17, 2002, 23:53

Yes, this stratagy is worthless after the rail road, because, with rail road, I can send people from one part of the world to another, almsot an exploit, but not very interesting. I consider early age combate the most ingenuitive and interesting combate in the game, because so amny factors are in play, speed, defence bonus, corruption, lack of worker, ect...

So, ounce I can dominate on ancient, the rest of the game is just fun in games, look at "winning early" made by Theseus.