Notes on Attacking Cities

FIRST, the basics of combat.

There are principally three types of units in Civ Rev - attacking units, defensive units, and ranged/artillery units.

Attacking units are Warriors, Legions, Horsemen, Knights, Tanks. These have higher Attack than Defence scores, and will move into a square after successfully attacking it.

Ranged units are Catapults, Cannon, Artillery. These are also strong in attack and weak in defence, but the key difference is that they will not usually move into a space that they have attacked. They sit in their space, and do damage to a unit in another square (who will also damage them back). If they win, they heal up to full strength, but do not move forward, except in the case of conquering a city when they will roll into the city after eliminating the last defender.

Defensive units are Archers, Pikemen, Riflemen, Modern Infantry. These have a higher defence stats, but are poor in the attack. (At the start of the game, Warriors are also by default defensive, as are Rangers, but realistically they are both so weak that they will be destroyed or over-run by more technically advanced attacking units.)

(Some civs have special names for their units, e.g. German "Panzers" = tanks; Japanese "Ashigaru" = pikemen. As far as I can tell, having a special name gives no special advantage. Only in a few cases do units have real advantages - e.g. the English Longbow archer defence, and the French Cannon attack. Look at the stats, not the names.)

As a final note, whenever you attack into a square, your unit's attack strength is calculated, and the best defensive score in the target square is paired up with you: you always attack the toughest defender first. If your target is in the open, you'll see their scores, so can decide whether to attack or not. If they're in a city then you will only see their stats if you have a unit with the Scout attribute adjacent to that city. (Note, the Scout need not be the unit attacking, nor even in the same square as the unit attacking - a Ranger unit on a ship next to the city, for example, should work perfectly well!)

SECOND, preparing for an attack.

If your attacking unit can only move one square, then you will end one turn outside the city the turn before you get the chance to attack. (That means that the AI will have the chance to react, and a human player may also do so, before you can actually launch the attack). You need a strategy to deal with this.

The safe strategy is to pair up a defensive army with your attacking units. E.g. if you are using catapults, then you can have a catapult army - or 2, or 3, or 4, or any number - in the same space as a single Archer army. If the enemy has ranged or attacking units in his city, then any pre-emptive strike he makes from the city will be intercepted by your defenders in that square. Having attacking armies travelling in a "stack" with a defensive unit is your main way to make sure your units survive long enough to make an attack.

The risky strategy is to rely on speed. Knights move 2 squares, for example - so they don't have to wait adjacent to a city before attacking it. They can wait one square further away at the end of the turn, and then move in and attack the next turn. (Beware enemies who see you coming - e.g. cities on hills, which can see 2 squares, as you may find enemy Horsemen/Knights/Tanks coming out to meet you.)

There are also other tricks to keep in mind. If you attack from a hill you will get both a bonus to the attack, and also a bonus to defence if you are attacked there - so try to attack a city from an adjacent hill. The second best option is to attack from a wood - it doesn't help your attack, but if your armies are attacked from the city they'll get a boost to defence. Equally, try not to attack across a river, as this benefits the defender, and remember that troops defending a capital have a bonus.

Two other things to note are roads and coasts.

Roads are important because your enemy will use these to reinforce his city. The AI is prodigious with its ability to rush armies, and will do so - moving rushed armies into threatened cities. So, if there is only one road into a city, you might want to use this as the square you launch your attack from. Your army, preparing to attack, will also be blocking access to the city for reinforcements, and if the attack takes multiple turns you won't have to keep eliminating fresh reinforcements.

Coasts are vital later in the game, because of the naval support rule. Cruisers and Battleships can supply assistance to units fighting in adjacent squares - a Battleship Fleet gives a bonus of around 27, if I recall, which is a huge bonus. So watch for enemy ships in support, and use your own fleets to assist attacks.

THIRD, making the attack.

This is easy. Use the most up-to-date troops, attack with your best unit first, and (unless something very odd is happening!) only use armies, never single units. The AI will be defending with armies, not (usually) single units.

Select target (city) square, and order the attack.

One point: if the defender has tougher units than you expected and you aren't likely to win, don't be afraid to hit "Retreat" immediately. Sure, the defender gets an upgrade for that, but your army survived and you can always go off and find a less advanced civilisation to invade.

Once your attacking or ranged unit has captured the city, then you want to move your defensive unit in immediately to "hold" the city. How dumb would you look if you marched across the map to take a city, only to have the city retaken the next turn because all that was holding it was a pitiful catapult?

FOURTH, after the attack.

If there is a road leading into the city you've taken, you can expect an immediate counter-attack. You have to decide whether you sue for peace or keep steam-rollering forward - it depends how many troops you have, and how strong your defensive troops now in the city are. If you took the high-risk approach of attacking swiftly with, say, Knights, who were not moving with a defensive shield, then they will be very vulnerable to attack.

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Capitals:

Arabs: Tripoli
Americans: Washington
Aztecs: Tenochtitlan
Chinese: Beijing
Egyptians: Thebes
English: London
French: Paris
Germans: Berlin
Greeks: Athens
Indians: Delhi
Japanese: Kyoto
Mongols: Karakorum
Romans: Rome
Russians: Moscow
Spanish: Madrid
Zulu: Zimbabwe

Specialise. Don't try to get all your cities doing everything. A good basic tactic (assuming you're keeping your options open between victory types) is to go with 3 cities: the largest specialises in science (build a library as soon as you can); of the other two, the one most set amongst woods and hills and mountains becomes your "production" hub (build a barracks there, and use it to make troops), while the other (with more sea spaces) specialises in gold. That way you'll get good tech advancement but still produce some money and decent troops.

Try not to build settlers unless you are a republic. Losing 2 population each settler built will cripple your cities. So, take advantage of the "free settler at 100 gold" and the ability to build them for 1 population each with Republic.

Explore. A couple of warriors wandering the lands looting barbarian camps and finding villages will get you some handy gold and tech - maybe even enough gold to get to the 100 gold for a settler without even having to switch your main city to gold. The warriors will become outdated fast but don't worry. You don't need armies for this - solo warriors are fine.

Avoid the lure of switvching workers to Production. You may want to do this in a single "production focused city" once it has reached a worthwhile size, but you really want to avoid switching your main cities - especially your main Science city - onto production. It'll slow your tech advancement and population growth - and for what, a few military units that will be out of date in half an hour?

Unless you're going for a particular cheesy strategy (e.g. "mega-city", which stinks of cheese!), a good starting approach is: first four productions = Warrior/Warrior/Galley/Library; first techs = Pottery/Masonry/Alphabet - but swap techs with other civs as soon as possible to get Alphabet and Bronze Working (if you can't swap for Alphabet, then by the time you've built your Galley you'll have to select a Wonder to store up "production points" and then swap that to Library as soon as you get Alphabet). This should make you the first person to get Masonry (which gives you a wall around your city, for free) and also gets you a Library pretty fast (which is probably more imporatnt) while having a few units to go exploring with. This isn't *the* way to play - e.g. there's an arguement for going Alphabet first - but it's a solid start.

Units don't count movement along roads, but count a move as soon as they arrive at a city (any city). So, you want to bypass cities wherever you can: when you build roads you should try to build "arterial" roads that link distant cities, then build other roads to link into these - i.e. make the roads criss-cross. The advantage of this is that you can (depending on city placements) get a spider's-web of roads that allow you to move units from any one of 4-5 cities to another in a single turn: that lets you move units around much faster to help with desperate deffenses or launch counter-attacks.

Don't be affraid to dash ahead down specialised tech paths: ignore anything you don't need (unless you have to get it on the way to another tech). Example, if you're emphasising science, then you'll want Alphabet (Library), University (University), Democracy (Democracy government increases science), probably backed up with a bit of culture to attract a great scientist or two... so why on earth would you bother with Iron Working? By swapping techs with other cultures you can probably avoid having to research several techs - personally I never research Horseback Riding, and half the time I'll end up getting Modern Infantry before I've bothered with Gunpowder.

Atlantis is always in "open water" - you won't get to it with a Galley. But if you can work out where the biggest ocean is, that's a good place to aim for once you have Navigation. (Navigation first = free ship = good chance of grabbing Atlantis first.)

Other artefacts are always (it seems) on islands, not on the landmasses that the Civs start on. So, you'll need a ship (e.g. Galley) with a unit (e.g. the Ranger who comes free with the galley) to explore for these. That's the main reason for prioritising a Galley early on (otherwise galleys are of little use!)

If you're having trouble getting enough production, then reconsider your city placing. Forrests are good for production early on, and an Oak square is a godsend early on (get to Construction quickly and you'll get excellent production from this), but later in the game it's hills and mountains that you want because these can be exploited with Workshops and Iron Mines. Don't expect all cities to have great production, but don't put all your cities in high-trade/low-production areas - somewhere needs to build your troops and wonders!

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Quick hints on Wonders for new players:

Two Wonders to start on as soon as you can: Internet (unless you've completely ignored Gold production), East India Company (unless you've somehow avoided costs!).

Two Wonders to ignore: Stonehenge and Oracle. They will be out of date almost immediately.

Two Wonders that are nice to have if you have nothing more pressing, but you can live without: Oxford University, Magna Carta.

Specific suggestions:

Hanging Garden is excellent if you're going for only 1-3 cities, but don't rush into it. It adds 50% to city population at the time it's built - not worth much if the city has 4 population, but great if it has 10+

Leonardo's Workshop is another that gets better the longer you wait to build it. If you build it the turn after you get the ability to build Modern Infantry then (assuming you already have Democracy and Gunpowder) all your outdated defensive units will instantly become Modern Infantry, with all special bonuses intact. This gives a massive bolster to your defence! (Alternatively if you make sure you don't skip Metallurgy, get Artillery fairly fast and then complete Leonardo's and hey presto, catapults become awesome artillery - this, and turning cavalry/knights into tanks, are great just before you launch a major offensive.)

(When playing multiplayer, you may actually want to build Leonardo's earlier just to stop anyone else doing it, as it can have such a huge impact if not built 'til late in the game.)

Trade Fair + East India is a great combination for coastal cities aiming for economic victories.

Shakespeare's Theatre can be nice, but only worth building in a city with really strong culture (e.g. temple + cathedral + great artist).

If you get locked into a combat-heavy game where no-one has a clear advantage, then consider this: it's likely that your cities are pretty good on Production, and maybe no-one has been building many wonders...? Swapping from military production to spamming wonders can suddenly launch you towards an unexpected cultural victory. Later in the game those early, overlooked wonders will be very cheap to create. Keep an eye out for this opportunity.

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Quick suggestion for people who are having trouble with "King" difficulty....

There will come a point where the AI gets very aggressive - but for a fair few turns you'll find that they're perfectly aimiable. Using this breathing space is your chance to get ready for the fighting to come. There may be an aggressive way of exploiting this, but here's my more defensive, long-term way of using this:

The AI will walk into undefended cities if they find themselves standing next to them, but won't cross a border early on nor risk any real fight. This means that you can defend a city with a single warrior, or even not defend at all for a few turns. And because they won't take a shot at your sole Warriors as you scout around, you can scout with single warriors (not armies or tougher units).

So, make peace with everyone. Then, use exploration to push your gold up to 100. While you're doing that, trade tech as much as you can. Selling Alphabet or Pottery for 10-25 may sound cheap, but if you can flog one of these to 2-3 civilisations it'll push you towards your magic 100 mark. (Hint - the AI rarely builds libraries anyway, so who cares if you give them alphabet?!)

As soon as you get to 100, spend your cash and keep spending it. Don't hoard gold - put it to work; rushing a library, and then a couple of archers, is a good use of this. If you can sell plenty of tech then buy some tech, too.

Get to Republic swiftly, and pump out a settler or two (but not from the same city!). Then, turtle up - an archer army in each city should be fine (though if one of your cities can get a barracks and produce a Veteran archer for each army then that'll also help), and Democracy will be your friend for the next few dozen turns: as soon as you've spat out 1-2 settlers, switch to Democracy.

You should be able to get 1-2 libraries, a barracks and an archer army per city before the AI starts battering you. Then, hang in there for a while, whilst you start building up a good tech lead. Later in the game you'll be able to spit out cannons or even tanks while your opponents are still waving spears around; they'll probably have riflemen by the time you're battering them with artillery. At this later stage you'll be able to drive them off your land and then sprint towards your chosen victory.

(Note, this doesn't work so well multiplayer. Other players will "try it on" more erratically than the rather predictable AI.)

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Here follows a few notes on picking a Civ to play as. Each Civilisation has its own bonuses, and not all bonuses are equal - so here are a few pointers on how to get the most out of your chosen civilisation.

AZTECS have an obvious advantage - you've probably already noticed that their units automatically heal after victory, and you may have figured that that makes them really powerful? It doesn't. It gives a defensive edge, but you have to win in order to heal - and if you're being over-run by English Knights, or facing much more advanced Chinese or Japanese units than you have, then you won't survive in order to heal. Still, they do have a nice defensive edge, and this makes them a good, comfortable choice while you're learning the game - plus they get an excellent edge on gold later, making an economic victory much more atainable. They are not, however, the strongest Civs.

CHINA and JAPAN are, far and away, the strongest Civs. China's extra population and good early free techs give such a huge early advantage that played right no-one can catch them - except Japan. Japan's main strength is its ability to get food from the sea - you can concentrate on tech and still get population growth, while later in the game a Japanese city with a harbour is getting 2 food and 2 trade from the sea - making each population unit effectively twice as productive as a normal population unit, and guaranteeing you great growth even if you focus on trade/science - the result is that late in the game your civilisation will really take off, and with defensive troops automatically getting Loyalty, you'll be really hard to stop.

(You can infer from this that I see playing as China as being a cheap shot. Playing as Japan is interesting: you tend to have cities with lousy production, and have to cling on early in the game, which makes the games quite tense. Picking China, on the other hand, is just a way of saying "give me the most boringly powerful civ, please": no fun for you, and no fun for anyone you're playing against on-line. Still, most of the best "I must win at all odds" players in the playlists have worked out the strength of China (and Japan), so playing on line you'll find yourself up against plenty of boringly proficient Chinese opponents and initially timid Japanese players. Entering a game full of Japans and Chinas is a sure sign that (a) your opponents are good, and (b) the game will be boring.)

Now, on to the more interesting Civs:

ENGLAND is the opposite of Japan - it has early advantages, and then fades away. The strategy here is to go for Horseback Riding while building your city/cities to specialise in Production. As you start with Monarchy, you'll swiftly be able to research to build Knights, and so can get your first Knight army before many of your opponents have even built Archer armies to defend themselves with. This lets you make an early dash for glory - but while you're doing this everyone else will get ahead on tech, and before long your knights will grind to a halt before a heavily fortified city and get slaughtered. So, you'll find that you'll grab some early cities which you then struggle to hold on to while running to catch up on tech. Actually it's good fun if you like high-risk approaches.

The ARABS are even more extreme than the English, and are the civ most likely to establish a very quick Domination lead. They are, simply, the only civ with Warrior armies powerful enough to take an enemy capital. You start with as a Fundamentalism, which gives a good plus to your attack. Pump out Warriors, explore aggressively, find an enemy capital early on, and immediately combine warriors into an army to go straight on the attack: you have a good chance of seizing 1-2 enemy capitals quite fast; the key is to make your attacks before your opponents can get archers (especially archer armies) fortified in their cities. If you can get Iron Working or Horseback Riding then your Legion or Horseman armies will be even more powerful - though you still won't overcome Pikemen or English Longbows. This makes the Arabs the best civilisation to play if you want to be aggressive from the outset, but don't be surprised if a more science-focused civilisation starts to run away from you after a while.

The MONGOLS are another "interesting high-risk" civ, though these are a slow starter. The key points are that you start off able to "convert" barbarians to your cause, and you get better production later in the game. The "converted" barbarians sound great - free cities! - but they aren't: they always start where a "special tile" (resource) would have been, so rarely have access to any special resources; they start at size 1 only so take a while to get going (and sometimes have no food resources within range when they start, so can't grow until you build them a Courthouse or Harbour); and as well as rarely being where you'd choose to put a city, converting barbarians means that you will not get the goodies that you usually would have looted (caravans, spies, money, etc.) So, you get a load of dodgy cities that you probably don't have the people to defend. But if you can hold on, specialise in tech, and build up and defend your cities, you'll end up with lots of cities that tend to have good production, which you can use for a push towards Domination or Cultural victory later.

GERMANY is another interesting military option. They get Warriors who start as veterans, yes? And their Elite units always upgrade, yes? So, what happens if you build a Barracks, and then switch to producing Warriors? Well, two times "veteran" equals "elite!" Yes, you'll get elite warriors, which then upgrade (Legions, Knights, Tanks) and retain their elite powers throughout the game. Settle yourself a Great Leader in your Barracks-housing city, and your defensive units will also be elites. Now, this sounds great, but it isn't necessarily a game-winner. While you're focusing on researching Bronze Working, building a Barracks, and pumping out Warriors-who-will-rock-in-1000-years, everyone else is building Libraries and defending them with archers - i.e. dashing ahead on tech immediately and digging in. So, you will start to lag behind, but have some interesting units to play with. Good fun, but hopeless if China or Japan are running away from you.

ROME is an unexpected one. You'd think they'd be good with military expansion and empire-building early on? No, their advantages are defensive early on (half price roads make it easy to move troops around to bolster defences!) and cultural later (half price wonders are excellent). In general it isn't as strong as China and Japan, but Rome can be gratifying to play - and certainly I've managed my only ever cultural victory on-line with them, so they can be pretty good.

Other Civs have their moments. SPAIN starting with Navigation gives you an early edge in exploring (and should guarantee that you find Atlantis first). FRANCE starts with Pottery and a Cathedral, so if you go for Masonry early you can pretty well guarantee a free City Wall, and you get a good head-start on Culture - but long term the Romans will do better on culture. And AMERICA gets great Production later on, plus some cultural advantages, so can give you the option of producing your way to military or cultural victory later in the game if you're still in the running.

All of the Civs are at least different from each other, so it's worth experimenting with each of them, but the examples above should give you a few pointers on how to get the most out of the more interesting ones.