Offencive strategy...

[Kitana]

Well, I'm becoming an advanced Civ 2 player. I've got technology down pat. I can defend myself VERY well. I can build and launch my space ship but the one thing I'm having a problem with is warfare.

If anybody could suggest a tip or two I would really appreciate it.

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Shogun of the Japanese
Kitana

[The Mad Viking]

Go to the strategy guides section here at ACS. Download them. Read them.

In the meantime, here are 10 basic kwiktips. (I hope not TOO basic.)

1. Don't attack walled cities with ground troops. (exc: Howtzer) You can see the walls on the city icon on the map.

2. When attacking a city, have enough strong troops to win every battle and destroy every unit in that turn.

3. Get espionage, then alway know what you're fighting. Even before espionage, the same goes for any city you could reasonably expect to be well defended - its well worth using a dip to know what you're up against.

4. Pay close attention to Hit Points and Firepower, they are as important as Attack and Defense values.

5. Veterans are WAY better than regular troops.

6. Use terrain in your favour, always evaluate before you attack. A city on a river has a built in 50% defensive bonus.

7. Anticipate partisans - occupy all good defensive terrain and forts before entering an empty city. You know a city is empty if the flag is down. When you defeat the last unit, the flag drops.

8. When you get technological superiority, attack. Gunpowder, metallurgy, advanced flight and robotics are particularly powerful military advances that will let you pound your opponents until they catch up.

9. Stack your cats / cans / arts / howies with an excelletnt defensive unit on a hill or forest etc next to a small city, and you can usually pound away with immunity. Of course, you will lose both units if he successfully counterattacks - but that in my experience is rare at small or isolated cities. Don't try this in the heart of enemy territory!

10. Attack your enemy at two fronts at once, if you have enough units. But avoid attacking multiple civs unless you are really dominant, or pulling needed defensive units out of other fronts even if they are all quiet.

Good luck!

[Ming]

First rule: Be prepared to lose units.
If you play the game trying to not lose units, you limit your offensive opportunities.

Second rule: Build enough units so you can afford to lose them.

Yes, you can always wait to attack until later in the game, where hordes of armour and howies, supported by air cover, a strong navy and cruise missiles will take out ANYTHING the AI puts up against you... BUT WHAT FUN IS THAT!

Many people claim that you can only attack early or late in the game. Early, you can catch them before they build walls and better defensive units. Later, nothing can stop the best weapons.

But to succeed in MP, you have to learn to attack at any time.

A good army to put in the field is one that consists of a good mix of MANY units. The more units the better. An army should include:
Enough diplos/spies to provide city information and to take down those nasty walls.
Enough offensive units to survive losses. I don't care if it is horses, knights, catapults, crusaders... whatever... Bring tons of them, and be prepared to lose most of them.
Enough defensive units to cover your weakly defended offensive units so that they can get to their target. Plus, you want to be able to hold what you take, or hold key battlefield positions.
And bring some settlers/engineers along to help complete a needed road/rail, or to build a fortress in a key spot.

I watched my brother cram about 15 vet crusaders down my throat against a position that I thought couldn't be taken. Yeah, he lost most of them, but he took the city and flooded more troops behind my line. Game over!

So, build an army, and don't be afraid to use and lose them. You can always build more

Since you dont have trouble getting to AC, you obviously stay ahead of AI tech like me. So, you should play the 'get to key techs first strategy' like I do. The best offensive strategy for small maps is to get to elephants before anybody else and then strike hard. Against walled cities fortify a phalanx on the best defensive terrain outside and move catapults under the phalanx. Have around four cats on attack. Then once the flag drops move the phalanx in. If you have not conquered the world by the time other civs get to pikemen, wait until gunpowder. Fortify musketeers on hills in the outskirts of their city. They will attack these like crazy. Then get to metallurgy BEFORE they get to gunpowder. Then have the musketeers cover for the cannons like what you did with the cats. If you didn't get metallurgy in time, just wait until conscription and machine tools. Then you fortify riflemen outside their cities. Then keep artillery under the riflemen, and attack in the same way as you did with the muskets. Then just use calvary, and later armor, to search for remnants of the AI civs.

On large map, I just go for AC. Too much trouble to search for size 3 cities halfway across the map. So, I'm pretty peaceful on large maps. But if an AI gets in the way of my expansion...

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Long live the Communists!
-- SilverDragon

[SmartFart]

Small map...Deity:

1. Build your capital near Whale,Buffalo,Pheasant,Peat,Silk or Iron
2. Pick Pottery as your 1st tech.
3. Let your capital finish 3 warriors. Explore with them awhile,but be sure you got them back one by one as your capital grows.
4. After your 2nd city finish 1st warrior,switch to settlers and produce 3-4 of them.
5. After Pottery,pick Cer Bur,Alpha,Code,Monarchy,Horseback,Warrior Code,Feudalism,Chivalry.
6. Your 3rd and 4th city needs one warrior for military law,one horsemen for exploring and one settlers for further expansion.
7. Start Hanging Gardens as soon as your capital finish 3rd Warrior.
8. Switch Hanging Gardens to Sun-Tzu when you got Feudalism and max your tax rate. By the time you have enough money to rush Sun-Tzu,you'll get Chivalry even with 30% science.
9. Let each of your cities (you don't need more than 6-7) finish 3 units to keep order. With your horsemen,non-units and defenders you'll probably have about 30 weak units. That's far more than enough to get alot of tribute from every civ you find.
10. Don't bother with improvements. Use entertainers. You want to crush your enemies,not to reach AC.
11. Keep buying knights and you'll have no problem to conquer small world about 100AD,+-200 years.
[This message has been edited by SmartFart (edited April 26, 2000).]

[geofelt]

You must normally destroy city walls to take a city by force. This is unfortunate because if it is well defended, you are left with a city that has lost most of it's population and improvements. I prefer to try to take cities with walls.
The easiest is to bribe cities. Build up your economics and trade, and accumulate gold by demanding tribute. This also lessens the bribe cost of a rival. Go fundamentalism and 80% gold and watch the gold roll in.
If the city is a democracy(or republic), then you can try a starvation siege. Put a military unit on every shield producing square. This will reduce shields to the usual one on the home square.( this won't work if the city has a whale square) In most cases, it will cause the disbandment of all but one supported unit. That single defender will fall to a determined assault, even behind city walls. I have yet to see the city attack these siegers from within the city. In one unforgettable case, it bribed an alpine troop fortified on a mountain. What the AI forgot, was that the lone defender was disbanded to support the alpine, leaving the city defenseless!
ALWAYS build vet units. The 50% increase in power is worth the extra time to build barracks first.
Vet artillery will usually beat riflemen behind city walls.
There is a small window where vet ironclads will beat any coastal defenders. Once coastal fortresses are available, don't bother.

[general_charles]

Since you know how to defend and get the techs, here's the rest:
When you get to the modern age (you have factory, solar plant and manufactoring plant as well as mass transit), build a barrack (usually 1 turn), then build howitzers, and when I say build, build, up to 100 of them. What you can do when your city production getes a little low, use a city that is building military units and move a few howitzers in and click support from this city, this helps. Anyway, build about 20 tanks and maybe a few stealth fighters, make sure your enemy has had railroad for a long time in order for his cities to be linked then follow this:
use the howitzers to blast the city defences (works even in king mode) and do not take the cities, only destroy all of the units in it then just move past. Try to do this to up to 9 or 10 cities in a turn, then move in with your tanks, destroy the partisans with your armor when they are on grassland on plains, and hit the ones on hills and mountains with your remaining howitzers.
The only problem(s):
- takes a long time to have the howitzers and tanks ready
- peace is difficult to acheive afterwards
- on the second turn, most of your units only attack once, but this can be fixed by building a barrack into one of the cities and getting all of your units in it to repair, but this is assuming that they do not break the peace and take the undefended cities or that they do not launch a nuclear missile on this city. (it is really annoying when you spend over 20 turns building this kind of army and when 50 of your howitzers get blown up so fast).