Composure of Ancient Offensives

[vmxa1]

Deception is good or was that greed?

[peterfharris]

Greed.

[WackenOpenAir]

1. Your empire is the largest, but not MUCH larger than your neighbors. You have access to iron and horses.

2. Your empire is smaller than the others. You have access to access to iron and horses.

3. Your empire is neither large, nor small; you have access to horses

4. Your empire is neither large, nor small; you have access to iron.

-5. Your empire is smaller. You have acces to nothing.
(that was the situation in my current game)

I dont play often, and when i play it takes man weeks to finish a game. so i just comment about my current game.

i was in situation 5.

i started building a bunch of archers to capture iron. i initiated war by capturing a settler. I captured 2 cities with 8 archers and a few warriors. back to peace.

I produced 30 warriors while building a road to the iron.

I upgraded the warriors to swordsmen.

I wanted to attack Babylon so that i could get their horses, luxury and upgrade horsemen to samurais later.

With my arrogance i do not pay tribute to the romans, they declare war. i send 10 swords to them, 20 to babylon. i take only 1 city from the romans before going to peace again.

My 20 swordsmen have taken 2 babylonian cities, at least 2 more have to be taken (including the capital) and some have to be destroyed for their cultural influence. This is the situation as it is now. (500BC or so)



The games before this, where i did have acces to iron, i would generally just upgrade 20 warriors and attack a bit earlier. Time is important here, if you are early, they are not yet using their iron/horses and you are fightig archers/spearmen only.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Lots of them non-industrious fools don't even hook up their iron well into the middle ages! I used my leftover troops from ancient-era wars against Spain and England to put the smack down on Rome, which could easily have blocked with with tons o' Legionaries, but didn't make the effort to put a road on a mountain with iron!

Now the iron is mine, as is Rome!

I've been finding that the AI in general DOESN'T do such a hot job upgrading their defensive units, even when they have acccess to the hottest resources (iron or gunpowder), at least on Monarch level... It's not necessarily such a bad idea to keep pushing and pushing your original swordsmen/horsemen to exhaustion, and then make peace with whomever for whatever you can get... in other words, don't fear a technologically advanced, resource laden civ for those reasons alone. Only stop attacking when you're actually coming up against units that can repel you.

That is, if you're a warmonger... and aren't we all?

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
I've been finding that the AI in general DOESN'T do such a hot job upgrading their defensive units, even when they have acccess to the hottest resources (iron or gunpowder), at least on Monarch level... It's not necessarily such a bad idea to keep pushing and pushing your original swordsmen/horsemen to exhaustion, and then make peace with whomever for whatever you can get... in other words, don't fear a technologically advanced, resource laden civ for those reasons alone. Only stop attacking when you're actually coming up against units that can repel you.

The problem with the AI upgrading its units is, that it rarely has money before, say, the industrial age, and practically never has money in the ancient age (for the swordsman upgrade). Especially saltpeter units are very costly to upgrade and come in a time, when most of the AIs (save the tech leaders) have only some 100 or 200 gold. Note, that the AI will not reduce research for a couple of turns to 0% and then raise it again in order to make upgrade money.

That is, if you're a warmonger... and aren't we all?

No.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by peterfharris
....Me thinks my garrisons may be too large after reading this... {snip}

If you're talking about attacking your enemies, definitely. If you want to sit at home and build stuff, then good defensive walls and generous mobile supplements are fine - but don't cripple the economy with them. Your inner cities still sound a tad over-staffed though, even with RoPs (I use these heavily). I'd start going on about the joys of defensive warfare, but this is an offensive thread.

- and no, YS, we're not all warmongers. At least, not all the time .

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, SirRalph (and everyone), I'd sure appreciate it if you'd take a gander at my game in the "Civ Specific Strategy: French" thread, and tell me whether you think them Celts, Egyptians and Carthaginians are going to be doing much upgrading to, or building of, nice defensive units, or whether I should start spilling over the horsemen and elite swordsmen to ravage their borders, thanks.

[nuther]

I play large maps on emporer and sometimes monarch. I build one or two warriors per city for MP duty. I build 3 or 4 spearmen for point defense at my borders and in a few border cities. Sometimes spearmen escort my settlers, sometimes warriors escort them. I build walls in border cities. Then I hook up horses and build as many as I can in cities with barracks. In cities with out barracks, I build catapults in between city improvements, I usually get 5 or 6 catapults. I usually get 10 to 15 warriors. Then I like to get about 10 cav. I save the warriors unitl I get out of despotism and into a republic, then they are "free" to upgrade and roam about. I usually rex right through the first age so there is no need for war. But my optimal strategy would be to pick a fight with a neighbor 3/4 to 80% of the way through the rex, just to be efficient. I dont see the need to wait for overwhelming force. I am happy to start a fight with 6 to 8 horse and one or two spearmen, usually between 750BC and 500BC. I just make sure I have 3 or 4 cities making more horsemen and a few defenders as needed as the war goes on. The first war is usually early medieval, pre-knights. I just think it is important to get an ai civ in war mode instead of expand mode, not necessarily wipe them out fast. If all goes well, I take light losses and my horde grows in size, while the victim weakens.

[vmxa1]

nuther, I have to wonder if the civ is not going to be very large by the time you are 75-80% done rexing. I am starting an Emperor game on a large map now, but I don't even remember if I ever played on a large map before. I have done some huge, but nearly all on std maps.
So if you use the default number of civ (8), they will tend to have lots of land to grow into (continents low water).
I woudl expect them to send a ton of units my way before they are going to be ready for peace. As it happens, it is Germany and they were annoyed, the moment I met them. They were my first contact, so no bad rep preceded me. I imagine, I will not have to wait long for them to come see me. I am hoping to get iron and have some before that happens, but we will see.

Since you play on large maps, would you not expect them to have lots of cities and of course lots of troops?

[nuther]

Hi,

A large map gets 12 civs, including you. They might have lots of cities, but so do I. I can rex as good or better than the ai. The problem for the poor ai is that they always space their cities 5 spaces apart. Lately I have been putting mine at three spaces. That gives me many more cities per area than them. I can get as much if not more land than them too.

As for their units, the more the better! Thats because they send them at you in dribs and drabs, never a coordinated effort. As long as you have an attack force and/or a nice spot of defensive trerrain, you can exact a pretty high death tole on the enemy compared to your own troop losses. A cataplut or two helps on defense.

I didn't always play on large maps, I started on standard maps. Standard maps are more crowded with less room for error. I think large maps are a little easier.

And all those units headed your way are nothing but chances for GL creation

For you, not them.

[vmxa1]

I have only 8 civs in my game, I did nothing to select or not select, that is just the way it came out. I don't know if this is the defalt or because the prevous game had 8, but the other 4 slots had none set and I never touched it.
Anyway that does not mater, except to increase the amount of land you will have before getting crowed.
What I was trying to say is that you are very likely to have a long war on your hands as they send units to do battle. This will cause WW or worse, unless you have lots of lux hooled up and that is not the case so early very often. It is not a question of winning, but that you may not have any say in how long the war goes on. 6-8 horses, will not do all that much damage.

[Arrian]

I was playing around with Japan recently, and I actually out-built myself militarily.

I started on a vaguely barbell shaped continent with (easily) room for 3 civs, but it was only me and the Mongols. I was in the far north, they were in the far south. In between was a huge section of empty land. Very early on (I think after I'd built 4-5 cities around Kyoto), I sent a settler team down to a chokepoint and totally blocked them off with a hill city there. Thus, while my "core" area and theirs are roughly equal in size, I was much bigger because I claimed all of the no-man's land.

Meanwhile, I was also building vet chariots & vet warriors inbetween settler builds and other things, while researching toward republic (standard procedure for me now). I was waiting to finish my road down to my chockepoint city, however, before upgrading and attacking.

The trouble is that my roadbuilding team (2 native workers) had to road their way down a looooong mountain range (I guess I could have roaded the jungle, but I just can't bear to road first, chop later) and by the time they got down there, I was a republic...

A republic with 20 chariots, 15 vet warriors, gobs of workers, ~10 spearmen, and 2 luxuries. Suffice it to say that 30% science resulted in a deficit. I finished my FP (close to Kyoto, preparing to leader-rush a palace down in Mongolia) and some marketplaces, which gave me a big boost, but I'm still behind the other civs (thanks to the ****ing Germans and their Great Lighthouse, everybody knows everybody else in the ancient age) in tech.

The good news is the 20 horsemen, 15 swordsmen, 3 catapults and ~5 spearmen I have massed at the Mongolian border.

Dunno if I'll play it out, though. I did it all wrong. I built the chariot force FIRST, before the vet warriors. The reason for that was my attempt at "efficiency." A 7-8 shield/turn town builds chariots more efficiently than it builds warriors. I waited until I had 2 cities producing 10 shields/turn to build the warriors. Fact is, however, if I'd built the warriors first and upgraded ~10 of them & fired them off to fight the big bad Khan while I built the chariots, I'd probably be in better shape.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

I'm wondering whether the best way to field a large army going into republic is to get currency, marketplaces and a large core pop going first. Something would have to give to achieve this, and I guess it'd be the size of the Rex.

I like having loads of cities during depositism if building a large army, so as to keep the science rate up, but this setup doesn't transfer well into republic. So I'm thinking : fewer but bigger, cash-spouting cities with Marketplaces - and then build the army.

[Theseus]

Great thread.

I send out both more and fewer forces than I used too...

Early game: Fewer. I'll whack Ai civs softer and more often than I used to. I'll send out a 4 Archer aggression team in a heartbeat, whereas I used to follow SR's original Archer Rush formula pretty slavishly.

Mid game: Somewhat more. I used to be happy with say 20-25 Knights. Now I want 50.

Late game: A LOT MORE. Theseus Want Tank!! Especially since this past spring, I've gotten a lot better at managing corruption... so by late Industrial or early Modern, I've got many more cities than I used to capable of 3 or 4-turn Tanks. So, where earlier the size of the force was limited by production, now it really isn't... building 100 or more Tanks REALLY fast is pretty easy (Rally Points are a godsend).

[peterfharris]

If you want fighting practice try a really overcrowded map.

I started a game on the weekend with 32 civs jammed on a tiny pangea map at Regent level. I captured Babylon with archers. I acquired iron working and was connecting my newly discovered iron when the Korean border expanded to take over my iron deposit so I promptly captured Koreas second city, lost it recaptured it, made peace for several techs. I then used my stack of new fangled swordsmen to capture Thebes thus wiping out Egypt. As soon as I had medieval infantry I captured the Celtic capital (and finished off the Babylonians).

By this time everyone hated me and then the fighting really started. I was at war with all 28 remaining civs from just before getting feudalism until about 1960 (apart from the odd peace treaty to extort tech and sometimes I paid someone for peace when there were just too many enemy units on my borders. I have done very little research, desperately needed the gold to rush units). I really have learnt a lot about Civ3 warfare and extortion from this, particularly the value of cannons and artillery. I really thought they would take me down for a long time (fortunately I got the tech to build my UU and sank something to trigger my golden age which helped enormously to replace my losses).

I also built two armies of cavalry (When I eventually finished up with 8 cities) and sent them out pillaging when I eventually had enough troops at home to be able to send my armies away. This seemed to eventually start the AI really fighting amongst themselves a lot (previously they were not fighting one another that much). I think the disruption to their trade caused by me pillaging luxuries and resources and cutting road connections damaged reputations and lead to a lot of ill will. I thus learnt something about economic warfare I had not thought of before.

BTW I got so many leaders I used them IIRC to build 5 stock exchanges, 4 small wonders, a granary, 4 universities, a cathedral and 3 armies (when I eventually got 12 cities).

(I set the map with heaps of resources, almost enough iron, horses and saltpetre for everyone, plenty of coal and rubber).

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth

That is, if you're a warmonger... and aren't we all?

No. I'm not. Even my short wars are just military police operations, including AU206.

[Arrian]

I'm wondering whether the best way to field a large army going into republic is to get currency, marketplaces and a large core pop going first. Something would have to give to achieve this, and I guess it'd be the size of the Rex.

I like having loads of cities during depositism if building a large army, so as to keep the science rate up, but this setup doesn't transfer well into republic. So I'm thinking : fewer but bigger, cash-spouting cities with Marketplaces - and then build the army.

A tactic I often use, actually. Build a solid core of developed cities, and worry about filling in/conquering the rest of the land later. This works best, however, when you have several neighbors busily building cities for you. In my example above, it was just me and the Mongols, and I'd deliberately cut them off, meaning that I had to fill up 2/3 of the continent myself. Like I said, I went about it the wrong way.

-Arrian

[zorbop]

In the ancient age i usually concentrate on improvements and settlers.
I guess i will build a few spearmen for settlers and vulnerable cities (may be 1 spermen for every 2 or 3 cities). i will then build about 6-10 swordsmen or horsemen and simply go and conquer 1 city at a time... sometimes at emperor or diety i will add a few cat's for support

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth

2. Your empire is smaller than the others. You have access to access to iron and horses.

Hi all, just getting back to the the game for my annual fall and winter gaming season. Need to refresh and learn new stuff here.

I'll just relate to my recent game with Zulu. I had access to horses and iron, but horses were very close, so I used them and sent some impis to reserve the numerous deposits of iron and some more horses on my peninsula, preventing the Russians from building swordsman (exploit that I learned from Aeson).

Built probably 1:1 horses to Impis, with half of the Impis staying home as a mobile defense force, while the other half left with my horsemen to wage war with the Russians. Maybe 8 horses and 4 impis in first attack, replenishing and building up along the way from there. It's really a mobile, rugged combo, lots of fun in the Ancient era, that's what I like. Impis with the redraw capability work out well as a backup to the horse attack. I actually think they withdraw more often than horses, but I'm not really sure.

After the Russians were down to last few cities, I sued for peace and connected all the iron for myself and built a few swordsmen, but by then, it was time to move on and learn about about chivalry. So my territory was smaller, now it's larger.

I've just started trying deity, so it is hard and I haven't really tried the REXing to the degree that it may be required. In any case, my tech is always behind and doesn't catch up until the modern era. Makes me want to go back to emperor, unless I learn some new tricks. So, I will poke in and try to learn from the experts. In the end, it may be that Emperor is really the more fun level for me.

Regarding exploits, I wonder if there is a thread that discusses this subject. I prefer to not use exploits, but it is not a clear cut subject. Bombardment units allowed me to reach parity and beyond at Deity playing as the Persians in two previous games, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Those pesky ships that destroy my infrastructure. I just protect my coastal cities with a roving group of cannons and later artillery, until I can fight back. Yes, I use artillery to break down city defenses and in defense mode as well. Exploits, maybe? Where to draw the line? Is palace jumping an exploit? I used a GL to build my FP, never actually tried palace jumping or this OCN corruption exploit.

Two Persian games were just immortals, no need for spearmen after iron IMO. This is great fun as well. At least with the Persian, there is some hope of catching up in tech.

BTW, I don't know about that comment about the AI attacking in dribs and drabs. In 1st Persian game, I watched the Zulu cruise through my territory with at least a 100 knights and maybe another 50 mixed forces (impis, longbowmen, swordsmen, pikemen) on a normal map. Thought I was all done for and then realized that they might not be after me, so I allied with them and it saved me from a fate worse then death. Shaka said to me, "if you offer it, I will take it."