I tried, just for something different, an all Alpine Troop military in my last game. I had
every city but my three best build Vet Alpine Troops, and used nothing else but spies, to
conquer the world. Government , of course, was Fundamentalism. I rush built as much as
possible.

My tactic was simply to surround the target cites, one at a time, with Alpine Troops. I
had the Alpine Horde destroy whatever terrain improvements they could, while waiting
for the spies to come in and tear down the city walls. Once the walls were down, the Vet
Alpines were very effective in taking out the AI defenders, since I always waited until I
had a three to one ratio before attacking. 9 Veteran Alpine troops attacking 3 Alpine
defenders is a win every time, once the walls are down.

Alpine Troops make GREAT pillagers when they attack in mass. You can position some
on hills or mountains as protection , while others destroy irrigation and roads and such..

I found it was most effective for the spies to just destroy whatever random city
improvement they could. That way they often survived and became veterans. It would
take about five or six spies attacking at once to bring the walls down this way. It really
tore up the infrastructure, but for this strategy all I needed was a barracks , so no big deal.

After taking each city, I had it rush build two engineers, a barracks, and then of course
more Vet Alpine Troops. This creates a steadily advancing “Alpine Horde”, which will
conquer the world with increasing speed as you go. The Horde gets REALLY huge in no
time.

This of course works best on a small map, mostly land, with lots of hilly and mountain
squares.

I'm already sold on the Alpine Horde Attack. I have printed out this post and will give it a try this weekend. Thanks for the idea!!!