Scorched Earth Policy: good or bad?

[weejonnie]

This is only a hypothesis and would appreciate comments.

Suppose you have captured a large town in a hostile area (or built up one over the years) and a large faction army has taken umbrage and started a siege. Worse still, your reinforcements are not going to get there for a few turns and the 'wall' is a palisade/ log wall, your garrison is heavily outnumbered and you can see no hope of surviving the onslaught. You have no diplomats available to try and bribe the attacker.

Well what you do is destroy everything you can before going out for death and glory:

1) You get all that money back in your account to spend on the war.
2) The opposing faction loses the capability to generate quality troops in the town.
3) The opposing faction loses the port facility to build ships.
4) There will be a collapse in public order (and possibly health)
5) The army that captures the town is going to have its foot nailed there to try and keep the garrison effect at 80%
6) The faction will probably have to devote resources to rebuild the town - meaning it is spending money on poor replacements

A word of warning: when I tried this, my forces managed to win!

[Ludens]

This is only a hypothesis and would appreciate comments.

It's absolutely true that a smash-and-burn raid is a very effective way of crippling a city. So effective, in fact, that I consider it cheesy. There is no way the A.I. can respond effectively to it. The only downside, as you already mentioned, is:

A word of warning: when I tried this, my forces managed to win!

It's likely that you will get more use out of the city than the A.I. does. If your reinforcements are strong enough, you may want to keep everything intact so that you can use the city when you retake it. So I'd only consider this if there is really no chance for me to retake the city within a reasonable time-frame, i.e. if I am fighting on several fronts and am in danger of being crushed by sheer numbers.

Welcome to the .Org, BTW .

[Vincent Butler]

It also depends on what you did when you took over the town. If you exterminated (not a good idea on small towns), then there will be very little population to riot. Even if you did not, there is no guarantee that they will get upset, especially if they were happy when you took them over.

For me personally, I won't attack a town unless the force that takes it is capable of acting as a garrison, especially if there is much chance of getting attacked. The only time I do not is if it is an island or a rebel town in my territory. If a town is advanced, I may hit with a small army detached from my main army, because I know I can retrain and train my garrison quickly. The main area I do this is Egypt, Alexandria to Memphis, if Egypt has no large armies around.

If you are a phalanx faction such as Greece, Macedon, or Seleucia, defense is easy. Even Militia Hoplites and Levy Pikemen can barricade the streets effectively, which is the way to fight using a phalanx in a town, unless they attack a wooden-walled town, such as in your example, with two or three rams. Then some phalanx units at the walls is the way to fight. And Roman units are good enough to hold in melee combat as well, so I almost never write a city off as Rome. As Barbarian, yes.

[ReluctantSamurai]

The only time I ever practice "scorched-earth" is when I need to create a buffer zone. As an example, playing Armenia, once I begin moving westward into Greece and beyond, the starting settlements of Artaxarta and Kotais become a real pain as distance-to-capital becomes greater. It's almost impossible to get those two cities to 24k in population, so I destroy any vanilla units and every structure possible in the city. Any units I retain, jump onto a fleet waiting offshore, and head to wherever they're needed. I do the same with the city of Seleucia, as I don't need the Hanging Gardens creating population growth problems.

The resulting rebel stacks are enough to keep Parthia and/or Scythia busy for a long, long time

Works well when you don't want to expand in a particular direction anymore, and there is still a faction or two that aren't quite powerful enough to challenge you, but large enough to be a pain in the a$$ if given an opportunity.

[weejonnie]

This is my first (Julii) campaign: so far I have taken Spain, Gaul and am about to remove the Brits (they have two provinces left in Germania - Great Britain is mine): however my popularity with the senate is starting to drop. (I am a few turns in from the Marius reforms - I find the historical information quite illuminating). The Scipii have Africa, the Brutii Macedonia/ Greek cities - which I suspect is doing very well with Mediterranean trade.

When the s**t hits the fan and the civil wars start would you go after the Blues or the Greens? I have a lot of ships plowing the Med, so can probably blockade one faction (when looking at fleets on the map they all seem to be one bireme at the moment - I did have problems with the Spanish, they had lots of ships).

[ReluctantSamurai]

Take Rome first! Then Capua, then kick the Brutii off the boot. Sicily should be next. If your navy is strong enough, keep the Scipii bottled up in Africa until you've conquered Greece and Macedonia. If you don't eliminate the Brutii first, you'll face endless stacks of green winding their way up the Adriatic coast heading for Patavium.

[Vincent Butler]

would you go after the Blues or the Greens? I have a lot of ships plowing the Med, so can probably blockade one faction (when looking at fleets on the map they all seem to be one bireme at the moment - I did have problems with the Spanish, they had lots of ships).

Go after the Brutii. They are in Greece, and Greece will provide virtually unlimited funds. I have seen campaigns (granted, on E/E), where after my building I was pulling in 30000 denarii a turn, especially after taking Turkey. Sicily is nice, good mercs, and if you take over a town that has a Temple of Neptune from Scipii, if it is Awesome Temple, you can train Corvus Quinquireme, and if Pantheion, CQ and Decere. Also, any one of their Pantheions will give you, with foundry, gold sword and shield (missile units excepted, find Gallic temples to Abnoba or Macedonian ones to Artemis, or Pantheion to Zeus). Caralis will also help.

[weejonnie]

I have done - sent 4 armies into southern greece to take out athens, sparta, corinth and another one. All sea trading is now blocked so income for the greens and blues is zilch (remember they need to pay their army). Obviously my name is now mud - but I had to take out the Brutii before they got too far ahead of me. (The game is in the balance - I am weaker than they are militarily but I can recruit and they can't.

Probably going to send my assassin to take out forums, which will further hit trade. It's a pity you can't see exactly how badly they are doing (income is down to virtually nil while mine is at 10K.)

One interesting event - The Blues were sieging a town, so I joined in and then attacked first. At the end of the day the blues had all sorts of casualties and I had the town. Does this always happen or does it depend who gets the central square?

One thought - the Scipii are now stuck in Africa (no ships and they'll have to fight all the way round the black sea to get home.) Has anyone tried letting a ship be created in a Mediterranean port e.g. Sicily, let it go and pick up an army and then sink it on the way back?

Final note - re re-training. I can re-train troops to make them stronger, but not recover their numbers - am I doing something wrong that can obviously be corrected?

Further to the scorched-earth policy : probably be a good idea to leave in the port since you can always blockade it if you lose the city.