Need help with waging war (early game)

[Sufian01]

I have to admit, I am not doing so well in this game. I am enjoying it, but every new game I start, I somehow fall well behind the competition. I am playing on Prince, with the intent of slowly inching my way toward harder difficulties as I get better.

The problem is getting better...

In my most recent playthrough, I decided to go aggressive. I quickly put down three cities, and churned out archer after archer. Japan declared war on me, and I was quick to the offensive. I took two of his cities. However, by the time I got to his third city and was within reach of his capital, he started to move out Samurai units and quickly destroyed my archers one by one. I could no longer hurt him in the slightest bit. I had no choice but to accept his peace terms (which were favorable to me).

At this point, I was behind in tech and culture with England and Poland. Their military was stronger than mine. In a few more turns, England waged war on me. I felt I could not win, and realized that my strategy was no good. I focused on military at the expense of science and culture. They all had more cities than me at this point, and that included the two cities Japan ceded to me.

TL;DR

I suck. I need a new strategy. I hope to get good in using a military before getting better on other strategies, because I noticed the AI is more aggressive than in Civ 5. I have read other players say to be super aggressive and take out your neighbor completely, and use their cities as expansion. I'm not sure if that's a good idea, and I'm inclined to say it is not due to my failures in my latest playthrough.

Any advice would be appreciated, espcially early game.

As an aside, can I also ask which wonders you all feel are the ones a player should focus on?

[katzenkrimis]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Sufian01:

Their military was stronger than mine.

You can never allow this to happen.

EVER.

Instead of advancing on Japan you should have played defensive and focused on science.

Science gives you a modern military.

Modern military lets you win any victory condition you wish.

It's really that simple.

Just watch out for barbarians at the start.

Use them for target practice, and free XP to level up your units.

[badger_ken]

Also: combined arms. Don't just churn archers. Have some cavalry units to clear the way, a catapult or two, and maybe a melee unit for two. this way those samurai will never get to your vulnerable archers.

[Farit Al-Jungali]

Even with the new update, a offensive early game is easy if you take advantage of the mechanics.

1) Don't build a scout at the start. Your military units will do the scouting.

2) Set your tech tree for archery and your other tree to the stuff for early empire and philosophy; You want that combat civ type.

3) Build either a warrior or slinger at the start of the game. You want like 2 warriors and 2 slingers, your third slinger should change to a archer because of technology. Send your first warrior to auto explore.

4) When you have 1-2 warriors and 2 slingers, declare war on a city-state or a non-capital civ city; This should be like turn 10ish, idr but a really early war. Always position your ranged units on top of hills, in forest, or behind rivers; You can also do the same with your melee units. Remmeber that rivers do not give you the zone of control penalty so you can retreat when a melee unit comes close. Use your melee unit to block other melee units. You don't want to go strait for the city at the start, instead you want to dwindle down thier forces. After killing a couple of units, you want your ranged units to prioritize your ranged units and place them in forest/hills and melee units in front; If there is a hill/forest for your melee then that's even better.

5) By now your third ranged unit, a archer, should be built so bring it to the front and with the other two slingers start beating up the city. If a melee unit pops and if it pops next to a slinger, swap spots with a melee and if a unit pops next to a melee unit, just let it run into it while you fortify.

6) Take advantage of the fact that leveling up restores unit hp. Calculate in your head how much xp you need for level up. You can often use this mechanic to kill a melee unit using a ranged unit or at least force them to retreat. I always go for more damage for ranged and bonus to defending for melee at the start of the game.

7) Build like one or two more archers and maybe a spearman/warrior. Don't bother building workers; No improvements = no need to bother with barbarians. Send them up to the front lines. Maybe get yourself another archer and melee combo to defend your own base. Set your next tech for crossbowman and then the trebuchet.

8) By now you should of have captured your first city. Upgrade your slingers to bowman. Just repair any buildings, use the worker to improve your capital or get a luxury. Heal your units; Remmeber that the capital gives bonus to healing and you can also heal faster if you are in the borders of your civilization. Any units that are not damage, set them to auto-explore for your next possible targets. If you took a city-state then the war weariness should dissapear by the time you have recovered. You can save a promotion on a melee unit to draw out a enemy on the next city that you will attack.

9) You want to take down a civ city or capital as your next target but if there are city-states in the way, you can also take them down and use it as a defensive base but most of the time you can just outplay the enemy civ.

10) Use the same mechanics to defeat enemy civ. Build entertainment districts to combat war weariness. Can also delcare war on civ that are sending religious units.

11) Once you have taken down all the civs on your continent, you can just chill back and go for a cultrual/science victory. If the enemy is on another continent, it is rather hard to sail to the other continent unless you have a civ that can sail by default. You don't have to take down too many civs but enough good cities to support a winning civ.

[bluetooth]

My early strategy is to build Slinger, Slinger, Slinger, Builder, Slinger, Slinger and perhaps a second Warrior. ASAP I upgrade my Slingers to Archers. Then I usually build a couple of Archers to protect my Capital.

With such a strong Army, I can usually take two or three of my Neighbors Cities and I can usually get a City in the Peace Negotiations. With this strategy, you end up with four or five Cities without building a single Settler.

So, my advice, don’t waste time building Settlers build Slingers. This strategy usually works even on harder difficulty levels. Now you can build Campus and other Districts.

[Twelvefield]

I disagree about not building scouts, since scouts get to goody huts faster, and levelled up scouts will help you a lot in the mid game when you need a lot of scouting to uncover the rest of the world. The more map you uncover, the wealther you will be and the fewer barbarians will surprise you. I don't bother making builders until I need horses, on account of the barbarians. With a strong enough opening push, you can just take what you need rather than building it.

Remember: early war is powerful in Civ 6. In Civ V an early war could bankrupt you, but in VI go nuts with the pointed sticks.

You might want to use a Civ that specializes in early war, like the Aztecs or the Romans.

At the very beginning, I build 2:1 melee:ranged units. If you are facing any opposition, build more ranged units for city defense. If you can get to horses quickly, get horsemen going. If you can go on the offensive and not worry about defense, then just build enough archers to take out defenses, normally 2-3 will do. They will level up fast and be valuable.

All of this goes for early war. Once city walls and catapults come into play, you'll have to switch prioritioes and start tow worry about warmongering.

Finally, if you are bing crushed by the AI, sue for peace if you can. Live to fight another day! Many early war civs can be strangled with trade and economics in the mid game (as the AI plays them), so if you have to play defensive, keep that in mind.

[hopsblues]

You don't have to take every city. Leave the opp civ with a couple lousy cities. You take the capitol and any others in the way or valuable. Also consider stealing settlers from opp civs. My current game, I declared war and stole a settler from germany-he was out with a wounded warrior. Then later did the same thing to spain. Both times they offered peace about 15-20 turns later. Get those x-bow units. if you don't have iron, consider taking it. Get 4-6 cities up before turn 100. Maybe take a couple cities. Rather than building a fifth settler. Use the civics to your advantage. If you want to build 2 or 3 settlers, wait until you can swith to that policy. Want archers cheap? use that civic. Don't always change your civics because you can.

[Sufian01]

I'm reading through all your replies and will implement. Thanks for the advice. This is good!
I feel that this should be on the front page for combat training.