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Conscript
 
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This guide is intended to give some insight to the nature of war strategy in Civ 4.
Before we get started, some general rules for any civilization, warlike or not:
- Do NOT neglect your military. You can not build an effective military in the time between a declaration of war and the enemy's advance towards your city. Always devote some production power to your arsenal.
- Have roads accessing important points in your territory. Hills/forest are especially useful to be able to access, for the defense bonus (+75%).
- Each city needs at least one (up-to-date) defender. Cities near your borders need more; a general rule is four defenders for any city which can be accessed in 4 or less turns by an advancing army.
- Have at least some semblance of a navy; amphibious landings can lose you cities. That being said, you should build at least one city on a coastal square, to allow yourself to build a navy.
Ancient era
In the earliest stages of the game, it may be possible to gain some advantage through conquest. However, a few things get in your way:
- Early military production will stagnate your civ's development.
It's important that you do not neglect your civ's development. There are ways to keep up with your neighbors technologically (demand tribute, trade) even if you devote too much resource to your military. Recall that the faster you build cities, the faster your production increases, and the slower your economy and technology develops. As you expand, building cottages and developing resources and your cities will offset the costs of maintenance.
- Long distances to enemy cities may make war more time consuming. Of course, if you start nearby your enemy this isn't a problem.
- Lack of siege weapons gives the defenders a considerable advantage for holding cities. An archer, fortified behind a city with the smallest cultural defense gains +50% city defense + 25% fortify + 20% cultural defense = +95% bonus. This make a cheap unit into a buff 5.75 strength defender.
Here's a review of the ancient era units:
Warrior - a surprisingly useful unit for early defense, the warrior holds up your cities until the axemen come along, at which point the warrior becomes absolutely useless.
Archer - as the civilopedia reads, this is the unit to garrison your cities with. It remains useful (and cheap) until the development of the longbowman.
Swordsman - I'll have a few of these in my invading force for the obvious city raiding bonus. These are the somewhat costly archer counter.
Axemen - what I consider to be the meat-and-potatoes army constituent, simply because it outdoes the warrior and spearman and its only foil in this era is itself. The best way to defend against axemen is more axemen.
Chariot - I seldom use chariot due to the massive counter (spearman) which is available at an earlier tech. However, these are useful for a quick assault on an unexpecting city or worker, or for nimbly taking out an exposed, weakened unit.
Horse Archer - The bonus against catapults seldom comes into play, but the usefulness of the speed and strength is great on the battlefield. This is also the strongest unit you can build without copper or iron.
Catapult - An obvious must for any city attack. If I'm on the offensive, Construction becomes top-priority.
Production
It's important to always have some production going into your military. This becomes easier with more cities. While you should have some long-term growth infrastructure going, if you do not keep your military up to shape, barbarians will cause you hassle and other civilizations will be more likely to declare war and invade you.
Conversely, if you do not develop your economy, you will technologically fall behind and your army will be gimped anyway. Pottery is an exceedingly useful early tech for getting your tech development rolling, but nothing beats a sound, gradual empire expansion.
When choosing a tech to research first, consider whether you'll be concentrating much on offense or defense. I usually like to research bronze working before archery, because I like to know where the copper is before it's all taken. However, I would recommend early archery for a civ who is only concerned with defense, since archer provide cheap, effective, early defense.
Similarly with barracks, if you are only defending, a single barracks may do fine, and you'll end up producing most of your defenders in that city. If you intend on overrunning your enemy, you may want to have a barracks in every fairly production city, to enable quick production of effective units later.
Finally, I can't emphasize enough how important is a good road network. It need not cover every square of your territory. In fact, you're probably better off building just a few key roads, and using your worker(s) to develop other areas of your cities. The important thing is that you can access key defensive points (forests, hills, forest/hills), transfer units between and near cities, and, if you're attacking, reinforce your army. Just as a reminder, your units cannot use enemy roads, vice versa: it's always a (huge) defensive advantage to have roads in your territory.
Attacking
Beware the cultural defense! Your hordes of axemen will crumple to a handful of archers in a +60% capital.
Also, defend your attackers. Whenever possible, advance through hills and/or forest, in order to give you some protection against a counter-attack. It's often a good idea to bring along a couple guerilla archers to help defend. +45% hill defense will bring an archer near-par with any attacking unit.
Catapults will ease your assault greatly. As with all artillery, the bombard is almost essential for any city raiding, and collateral damage with several catapults are very very useful for softening up a defending stack. Here's how it works: when a catapult attacks, one unit will defend (as with all fights). These two units will duke it out, and the catapult may win, lose, or withdraw. Regardless what the outcome of combat was, if there were other units in the defender's stack, they will take at least some collateral damage just for being in the square. Sacrifice a few catapults and you can turn a tough city into a pushover.
Defense
In the ancient era, you'll rarely find a civilization will attack you unprovoked. However, the threat is there. There's also the constant threat of barbarian attack, which you need to be ever-vigilant about; there's nothing more frustrating than losing improvements, workers, and cities to a handful of savages. 
Barbarians
The key to defending against barbarians effectively is your troops' placement. Fortunately, barbarians' actions are very predictable. In this order of priority, they will select one action:
1) Attack an adjacent, unprotected worker or settler.
2) Attack an adjacent military unit, paying no heed to defensive values.
3) Pillage an improvement they are standing on.
4) Invade an adjacent city.
If none of those actions are available, they will take some other action. At this point it's not clear exactly what their motive is, most times... they may move into your territory, or they may move away, but always prepare for their invasion.
Moving your workers away, and garrisoning your cities are the most obvious defenses against the most damaging barbarian offenses. However, a pillaged floodplains hamlet or farm can also be a pain. There are a few easy steps to protect your improvements:
- Identify areas where barbarians could appear. They will only generate in areas where NO civilization can see. Your borders which are nearby neighbouring civs are not subject to barbarian attack.
- Build roads to your improvements and between cities, in order to enable an emergy movement of troops.
- If you're feeling particularly defensive, post a few archers or warriors near your perimeter, on hills or in forest. Barbarians entering your land will not pass up an opportunity to have themselves massacred in a brutally pitched battle (archer: 3 + 1.5 forest or hill + 0.75 fortify = 5.25; even better, archer: 3 + 3 hills/forest + 0.75 fortify = 6.75).
Enemy Civilizations
Civs which do become aggressive will tend to invade with larger forces. Here it's necessary to use whatever defensive advantage you can get. Here's the most important:
- Situate defenders on hills/forest where ever possible. There's always the chance that the defending civ will take the bait. Even if they don't, if you can successfully defend an outer point, the enemy will be forced to move past you, and you can use that hill as a staging ground for a counter-assault.
- Garrison with archers... put them everywhere. On hills, in your cities. The more the enemy has to clash with archers bearing a defensive advantage, the better.
- Have counter-assailing forces ready. Sacrificing a couple of catapults onto a stack can greatly decrease your casualties and improve your defense. Also having axemen or horse archers to finish the job is nice.
- Tailor your army to the attacker's forces. Metal-rich civs will tend to build melee units (use axemen), horse-capable civs will have chariots or horse archers (use spearmen). If you don't have metal, yourself, your best option is to load up with archers, and hopefully have some form of cavalry ready.
Edit 23/01/06: added ancient defense topic; BTW, if you weren't able to acquire copper, go for iron working, on the chance that you'll be able to secure some of that.
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You are frozen by the floating eye's gaze.
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Game slut
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Even when I'm not playing a warmonger (which so far I've only had success at as Qin Shi Huang on a huge, very slow speed map on Warlord or maybe it was Noble difficulty), I like to be a bit less defensive and bit more "preemptively offensive" with my troops. I find four defensive units in virtually ANY town to be exorbitantly expensive and time-consuming. Two is the more usual number for me in border towns, and 1 in towns that are less vulnerable. Unless I have Monarchy (the civic that gives +1 happ per soldier in town) I tend to marshal my forces OUTSIDE my cities to PREVENT sneak attacks and facilitate pillaging wars. I find that unless you are a cultural behemoth, or you take a city very early in the game, it is almost never worth taking an enemy city, but better just to pillage all its infrastucture and occupy it for booty, _IF_ it is defended by units that are at least an era older than your attackers.
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tones (9/1/2009)
I was minded to compare this site to a sort-of-private Facebook, but, on reflection, that's not right . . . Nope. Here is a forum to exchange views and discuss topics and maybe have some literary fun; post some interesting pics (not Megabits of family krap); flag up some internet sites of Interest; pass on the occasional joke. To me, (struggling for analogy here) it's bit more like a quiet and cosy pub with locals you know and the occasional visitor from "outside"; thick stone walls and a cellar full of well-kept ale. Facebook, on the other hand, is some awful massive city-centre club that serves Fosters lager. And, you know what? I am not unhappy with that analogy. I prefer the pub.
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Conscript
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Posts: 47
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Game slut
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Your Excellency
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Veteran Sceptic
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