"Die Slowly" (team games)

Often in team games, the game is decided by which player defeats his opponent first. If you defeat your opponent, the remaining opponent then faces a very difficult 2 on 1 battle. Because of this, it's often beneficial to the team if you take a long time delaying your opponent if you know you're losing the battle. Using these same tactics in a 1v1 game can easily be considered rude, as stretching out a game whose outcome is already decided is seen as a waste of time by many players. Therefore, it's only advisable to use these strategies in a team game, where dying slowly may actually determine the outcome of the game.

Dying slowly means taking advantage of each of the defensive tools available to you and using them in the most efficient way possible while working with a worse economy than your opponent. Generally the point where a player decides to switch to "Die Slowly" mode is right after the loss of a major forward city that was the brunt of their military power. Often after losing such a city, you have very little hope of making a comeback without allied intervention (and if your ally was finished with his opponent, there isn't much need to die slowly, is there?). If you keep trying to play as normal, there's usually a total breaking point where you are no longer able to do anything and your remaining cities fall very quickly. However, if you choose to die slowly, you'll have brutal defenses prepared at each city your opponent attacks. This makes his job much harder and makes it take much longer to finish you off.

Forts/Castles/Towers

The first step to dying slowly is knowledge of the most defensive usage of forts. Forts provide excellent defense from a hitpoints per cost perspective, but they must be placed properly to be of the most use. The most obvious location for a fort is right out in front of the city where it can block incoming attackers, but experienced players will inform you that it's actually best to build forts behind existing cities. When placed directly behind a city, enemy siege units often have to come within range of the city's attack radius in order to attack it. The object is to force your opponent's siege units into a vulnerable place where they can be killed easily by a city or other means - for without siege it's much more difficult to tear down all of the buildings you are creating.

Towers can be constructed in much the same way - a mass of 4-6 of them often takes just about as long to destroy as a castle!

Using buildings as walls

While there are no "wall" buildings in Rise of Nations, buildings like barracks or stables can perform much of the same task. When constructed right next to each other on the front part of a city, they form a natural barrier that must be torn down before melee units like heavy infantry can effectively attack the city. Usually 3-4 buildings will work fine - entirely surrounding your city usually isn't cost effective. The added benefit of course, is that these buildings are able to create military units for use in that city's defense and can be used to garrison and heal units that are low on hitpoints. Barracks can also create ranged units to garrison into the city to ensure it fires at the maximum rate.

Siege factories can also be used as walls if you have extra metal and are low on timber - but it's inadvisable to build any units out of these buildings, as the only useful siege factory unit when dying slowly are anti-aircraft guns in post-industrial ages.

Attrition

Without much of an army, attrition is often the best way you can deal damage to your opponent's army. Always make sure to research at least the first attrition upgrade during the course of a game, and later upgrades if you find you are being pressed hard by the enemy. Once you're in a "die slowly" situation, further upgrades are probably not worth the expense of wealth and metal, so you'll want to start training fast moving units that can attack from an enemy's flanks or rear and destroy supply wagons and other valuable targets such as siege weapons.

Light Cavalry

When dying slowly, light cavalry is the single most useful unit available to you. They are cheap, only cost timber and food (your wealth and metal incomes are usually the first to suffer once your nation begins losing), and are effective at destroying your worst enemies - siege and supply wagons. Add to this the ability to kill a number of other lighter infantry units and you have the perfect Die Slowly unit.

Horse Archers

Raiding an opponent while he's attacking you can be risky. A skilled player can often end your raid before even a single citizen is killed. However, it's still advisable to create 1-2 horse archers and spend a little time micromanaging them to wreak as much havoc upon the opponent's economy as possible while you're dying. The key here is to be efficient. If you feel you have a better ability to control multiple raids simultaneously than your opponent has to defend against those raids, it can still be a smart move to invest much of your waning economy into raids. If your opponent quickly handles your raids, it's probably best not to waste any more resources on horse archers.

Generals

If you manage to have some extra income, it make be a good idea to make generals. They can assist light cavalry in assassinating supply wagons with their ambush ability and will provide +1 range to any fort, tower, or city they are garrisoned into. Unfortunately, the relatively high cost of generals often makes them difficult to use while dying slowly.

Spies

Another unit type that's well suited to a die slowly strategy is the spy. Spies are excellent harassers and can be extremely cost efficient if they manage to bribe enemy units (particularly if they bribe a unit and then manage to escape with their life). When bribing, be sure you bribe the unit type that your opponent is least able to counter. If his force is composed of heavy cavalry and archers, for example, bribe the heavy cavalry and immediately slaughter as many nearby archers as you can. Bribing siege units is also highly advisable. Once they're bribed, the enemy army will quickly kill them, but at least they will stop hitting your fort so you can repair it.

As with horse archers, it's often a bad idea to continue producing this unit type once your opponent has the counter unit on the field. In this case, a single scout in the opponent's army can make large numbers of your spies very dead, very quickly.

Militia

Your last viable military unit is militia. Converting what remains of your shattered economy into military units is often a last-ditch desperate measure to inch out a few extra unit kills. Militia also do great against siege units, though it is often difficult to maneuver them close enough to the siege to make use of this bonus.

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