Ok, here'z da queftion: Wha'z da bezt promotion fur our favorite Shaitan-tube and lobba-trowaz?
All we know 'bout Mobstomp Barrage(+20-50% mobz damage) and Drill(+first strike/chance) promz but need repliez of uzage and effectivnez.
Example:
Mobstack of n+1 unitz, most wif meelee:
1. Lobba-trowa wif Shock(+25% vz meelee) - iz lobba-trowaz recieve mobstomp bonus along wif Shock vz whole damaged mob or vz one first fighta only? (normal lobba attack damage two swordboyz, leavin 'em wif 7.5/10 7.5/10 but wif Shock dey are left wif 5/10 5/10 or it'll be 5/10 and sum oder from mobstomp but without Shock bonuz like 7.5/10?)
2. Lobba wif Drill vz mobstack - in theory dey muzt 'amage more boyz dur to firzt strike('dey alwayz DO DEAL damage triggerin mobstomin of whole stack)
3. Lobba vz city wif entrenched shootaz. Dey 'ave firzt strike so Shaitan-tube took damage fur sure unlef dey 'ave drill too. What's more profitable - to storm wif standart mobstomp or other variationz like Drill? Any resultz from city raider prom fur lobbaz in action?
Most interestin iz Drill II+ wich iz providin mob damage fur sure ratha dan chancez to deal dat neat mobstomp bonus...or not to deal if dat lobba would be blasted by boyz.
And main queftion: Iz lobba-trowaz deal mob damage when dey DEAL damage or when deir ATTACK initiated?
Edit: Accordin to tezt lobbaz got higher chancez vs garrisoned longbow shootaz wif city raider dan wif Drill IV

For our educated members: http://www.joel.net/EBONICS/translator.asp

no hablo french.

That's not French, that's Ignorese, but your confusion is understandable as they have much in common.

That is truly annoying to read.

I couldn't get past the first sentence.

Learn to speak english, or at least the cute pigeon english that non-english speakers post in.

That is truly annoying to read.
Judging by the fact he has a Warhammer 40k picture as his avatar (Fabius Bile I believe), and the grammar I believe he's attempting to speak "Ork".

Which would be somewhat interesting if this were a 40k board. As it is its just a very difficult question to distect.

Thank you to Blunt for the translator link! :)

Ok Phyr! Apologies if I missed yo' point. But I tried ta pretend I goddit anyhow. I don' know about anyone else, but I love ta upgrade muh mad mudda lobbaz ta use Barrage I & II. I just love collateral damage! In fact, I love it so much I rename muh mad mudda Catapults as Collaterpults. :) But then I enjoy making loads o' lobbaz an' smashing dem against da enemy. I be sure uh few Shaitan-tubez wiff Accuracy or City Raider would he`p out, but I haven't bothered wiff dem yet. Good luck ta ya! w0rd!

There's something incredibly sad and desperate about using street slang to discuss the subtlties of Civ4.

I usually run Barrage I, then Accuracy to siege cities, then Barrage II. Never had one get higher than that. I use my melee units once the defences are eliminated...

That's not French, that's Ignorese, but your confusion is understandable as they have much in common.

I speak French and i find that comparison insulting.

Hey how about answering his question - probably took him over an hour to craft all that garble speak.;)

Anyway to his question, a while back there was a really good post called something like "Tank warfare explained". Can't seem to find it, but if anyone knows how please post it.

It was written for tanks, but I found it to be a very sound strategy for all artillary and tanks. All you need are two promotions - City Raider and Drill, but I like to add Collateral Damage to go with some of my City Raider units.

The strat is when you attack a heavily protected city you bombard unitl defence is zero (not too complicated so far). You start your attack with 3-4 City Raider Units. You do not expect these to survive, but if they do keep giving them City Raider promotions and save these veteran units until you have chewed up you green units.

After your City Raider units have caused major collateral damage to the defending stack attack with you drill promoted units. With Drill 3-4 the defenders rarely get a shot off. You can then use whatever infantry units you brought along for mop up. :goodjob:

My army stacks are mostly cats/artillary and pikemen/infantry etc. are there to protect against calvary until I get tanks. Then its mostly tanks.

Hope that helps

I can't answer the question because i can't read the question, and i'm not going to waste 10 minutes trying. If he wants the question answered, he should write it in an intelligible manner.

After your City Raider units have caused major collateral damage to the defending stack attack with you drill promoted units. With Drill 3-4 the defenders rarely get a shot off.

Drill is useless for siege units. You'd suffer less damage using city raider, so there's really no point.

You should have barrage units to do as much collateral damage as possible right off the bat, and then finish them up with city raider units.

Drill is useless for siege units. You'd suffer less damage using city raider, so there's really no point.

You should have barrage units to do as much collateral damage as possible right off the bat, and then finish them up with city raider units.

I used to like barrage, but now I favor City Raider (for attacking cities), Combat and Drill (for dealing with counterattacking stacks). There is a thread you might find interesting, although it is mostly about cats. It still applies. As I found, it can depend on how close you are in military tech to the Civ you are fighting. If you are attacking longbowmen with artillery, by all means use Barrage. If you are attacking longbowmen with city garrison II on a hill, and you are using cats, you may wish to reconsider.

I haven't posted a link before, my apologies if it doesn't work:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=172083

I only glanced through it, but that thread seems full of people who don't know what they're talking about. The fact is that no promotion helps you deal collateral damage except for barrage. City raider, combat and the very useless drill may help against the first unit of the stack, but it does absolutely nothing to the other units. When computing collateral damage, the game only takes into account the basic strengths of the attacker and the collateral victim without any promotions.

Since a suicide siege unit's only goal should be to inflict as much collateral damage as possible before dying, barrage is a great choice. That is, unless you intend it to win rather than suicide, in which case city raider becomes your best bet.

So like i said, soften them up with barrage suiciders, then mop them up with city raiders.

Since a suicide siege unit's only goal should be to inflict as much collateral damage as possible before dying, barrage is a great choice. That is, unless you intend it to win rather than suicide, in which case city raider becomes your best bet.

So like i said, soften them up with barrage suiciders, then mop them up with city raiders.

Unless you intend it to win rather than suicide. That's the key. Soften them up with city raiders, then mop them up with city raiders. The only goal of any unit should be to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible over the course of the game. City raider is much more cost-effective. Rather than having to constantly replace lost units, you can instead produce more, and more, and more while your older units are gaining XP. The size of your military keeps growing instead of staying stagnant. In the later game I go romping around the map with stacks of city raider artillery guarded by a few defensive units.

Try it for just one game and you'll never go back.

In the later game I go romping around the map with stacks of city raider artillery guarded by a few defensive units.
Do you really?

The only artillery unit capable of cracking open city fights are Cannon, if you get them early enough to use against Longbows. Catapults will lose to Archers and above, while I figure Artillery I think would lose to Riflemen and above, though I've only used them in one game.

I have to assume you're talking about using city raider siege weapons against already damaged and easily beatable units, since those are the only fights they can viably win. In which case you could be giving easy experience to the best city attacker of the era, be they axemen, swordmen, macemen, grenadiers, riflemen, infantry, or tanks. These attackers, with the equivalent amounts of experience as your siege weapons, will be able to beat tough city defenders more often, thus saving you shields.

I assume I've missed some part of your strategy, because at this moment it looks like
Step 1: Seige weapons with city raider
Step 2:
Step 3: Victory

City raider artillery with two or three promotions are devastatingly effective. You might lose the first one (maybe two) but after that it is a slaughter. The collateral damage means that by the time the third attacks, the defending infantry will lose (more XP for that artillery unit) while the ones waiting get damaged even more. Then the next infantry loses (more XP for that artillery unit) while the others get damaged even more. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's crazy. You can chew through a stack of strong city defenders like nothing.

I use three accuracy-promoted artillery to reduce city defenses to zero, then wreak havoc with city raider artillery. Seriously, try it for one game.

EDIT: City raider promotions are more effective than other promotions even for catapults and cannon, but by the time you've got artillery you're operating on a base 18 strength. Tack on two or three city raider promotions and add in the effects of collateral damage, and the effect of a stack of artillery is amazing. I send enough defensive units to absorb the enemy's artillery attacks (they almost never use more than six artillery against my stack) but the majority of my stack is city raider artillery. For reducing city defense to zero in one turn, it will take four accuracy-promoted catapults or cannons, but only three with artillery.

If the first one or two die, like you said, wouldn't it be better to use barrage units?

If the first one or two die, like you said, wouldn't it be better to use barrage units?
I thought the same, until I tried it. The survivability rate is so much higher with city raider that it makes a world of difference. If you set up a test in WB and try it out you'll see what I mean. You'll save a lot of turns of wasted city production because you won't lose nearly as many seige units as before.

Barrage units are good on the VERY LARGE stacks, such as the Capital, but I won't send more than 2 in on any stack. Usually one suicide unit is enough to knock Infantry down to the point where CR II/III artillery has >60% chance of winning. Really, though, the only place where it's worth it to suicide a unit is the capital, because generally there are going to be more units in the city than a single siege unit can damage. (Then again, this is where Bombers come in handy. Soften up the toughest defenders with a Bomber or two, and then all you should really need is City Raider artillery.)

i'm with the tyrant on this

your cats/cannons/arts have innate collateral damage. It's not useless to give them barrage, but it's not necessary either.
the point is to get promoted cats/cannons/arts rolling all over the place, not to capture one city.

My usual siege are somewhat mixed, but none has barrage.
the mix is between
- 1) city raider (1,2,3 then drills)
- 2) combat 1, medic (then nothing, this one isn't fighting much)
- 3) drills (1,2,3,4)

1) is pretty straightforward. If i only have a few, they're city raiders. see the tyrant's explainations.
Some more thought inducing facts :
* the best defender is attacked by the first stack crusher. So the best defender doesn't get collateral damage. You need to hurt him directly = city raider!!!
* if a city raider gets lucky and kills a good defender, he gets loads of usefull xps = city raider 3, then drills. If a barrager gets lucky he gets even more xps, but totally wasted (barrage II leads nowhere).

2) you need to heal those survivors, don' you? even more so if you raze cities. one medic is enough for the whole stack.

3) i sometimes (not always, but it happens) have pure siege stacks. For instance, while your melee heals in the captured city. Siege don't get defensive bonus, and city raider gives no bonus when you're attacked. That's why i use some drill cats/cannons/art = stronger than combat.

Can anybody explain what the point is in doing suicide attacks with siege units? Do they inflict that much more damage compared to my modus operandi, which is placing them on a cozy hill next to the city & bombarding, protected by a defensive unit? I always thought a direct attack a waste of siege units.

* the best defender is attacked by the first stack crusher. So the best defender doesn't get collateral damage. You need to hurt him directly = city raider!!!

For me, this is the key. Let me give you an example. This happened to me recently. I had a stack of 6 knights, 3 grenadiers, and 10 cats. I was attacking a city on a hill. It had two unpromoted longbowmen, a couple of cats, a macemen, and *one* grenadier with two promotions - woodsmen, I think.

Now, I wanted to deal collateral damage to the macemen, longbowmen and cats, but my real problem was the grenadier. Cats with barrage had almost no chance of denting him. Even cats with city raider II have a hard time. Question: How many knights and/or grenadiers does it take to bring down one grenadier fortified on a hill? Wouldn't you rather dent him with a couple of city raider cats and then take him more easily? In the process you deal collateral damage to the rest of his defenders - maybe not as much as you would if your cat had Barrage II, but so what? The longbowmen aren't the freakin' problem here.

If you think about it, that's the way most city defender stacks look - a couple of defenders that are tough, and the rest not so tough. The rest get collateral damage dealt to them anyway while you are in the process of denting the top defenders, so they simply are not a problem.

Can anybody explain what the point is in doing suicide attacks with siege units? Do they inflict that much more damage compared to my modus operandi, which is placing them on a cozy hill next to the city & bombarding, protected by a defensive unit? I always thought a direct attack a waste of siege units.

Bombarding brings down the cultural defense. Direct attack weakens the city defenders, ie. brings down their strength rating. Since cats have the ability to inflict collateral damage, they inflict damage on up to 6 units in the city with one direct attack. Try it, you'll like it. :lol:

It's also good for use against stacks that are attacking you. Attack with a couple of seige units, weaken every unit in the stack, and mop up with your stronger military units.

Unless you intend it to win rather than suicide. That's the key. Soften them up with city raiders, then mop them up with city raiders. The only goal of any unit should be to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible over the course of the game. City raider is much more cost-effective. Rather than having to constantly replace lost units, you can instead produce more, and more, and more while your older units are gaining XP. The size of your military keeps growing instead of staying stagnant. In the later game I go romping around the map with stacks of city raider artillery guarded by a few defensive units.

Try it for just one game and you'll never go back.

But since your first siege unit will die even if it has city raider 3, it will cause a lot more damage over its short lifetime if it has barrage. Try it, you'll see.

I'm not saying city raider cats are not good, i love them too, but you need both to be truly effective.

But since your first siege unit will die even if it has city raider 3, it will cause a lot more damage over its short lifetime if it has barrage. Try it, you'll see.

Barrage will cause more collateral damage, agreed. But if the best defender is tough enough, you won't damage him at all. So, if I'm attacking a city with 6 archers (promotions or not), maybe Barrage is best. If I'm attacking a city with 6 longbowen on a hill, and one of them has city garrison II, and the strongest unit in my stack is a maceman, then I most definitely prefer city raider for my cats.

When I first build siege units like catapults, I often use city raider and then give those few that survive to get that 5th point accuracy. So I can bring a city's defense down to zero quickly with a few accurate catapults, often in one turn. I also create one per attacking stack that is combat I --> medic. Siege units (besides machine guns) are ideal for medic because they can bombard with no risk.... it's better than putting some otherwise useless medic explorer in the stack.

If you send a catapult against a longbow with barrage instead of city raider promotions, there's a chance that you may not damage that longbowman (who happens to be the strongest defender) much at all... which may cause you to lose another unit whether it be another catapult or one of your attackers... that's not very effective.

By the time I have artillery I can build units with 10 xp through my west point city and civics. So I upgrade my old accuracy and medic cannons, and build new artillery at city raider III. Against riflemen, these puppies will generally win and cause collateral damage. Edit: Not to mention the fact that artillery are EXCELLENT against machine guns... not so for your gunpowder units.

Once they hit 17 xp, I start giving them barrage bonuses. Artillery with city raider III and barrage = death to defending stacks. My highest level units are often artillery, and I've had a few get to level 9 by the end of the game.

If I build any defensive artillery, I'll give them barrage bonuses to use against a fresh stack of attackers so that I can use basically whatever units I want to mop the weakened attackers off. The AI rarely pays much attention to putting a medic with their stacks, so the collateral damage has a lasting effect even if you need a few turns to bring more defenders to the besieged city. BTW enemies will gain 5% health in your lands if they don't move... would be 15 if they had a medic.

Barrage units are good on the VERY LARGE stacks

There's a limit to how many units can receive collateral damage (think it might be 7 for artillery, but I'm not sure), and how much collateral damage can be done, i.e. you can't bring severely wounded units much lower. So there's no additional advantage to attacking stacks larger than 8, but smaller than 8 or with severely weakened units you'd be losing some potential collateral.

I also don't give siege units drill promotions. Drill promotions are good for tanks (after you give them city raider) because tanks can attack more than once. If your tank gets damage by the first battle then it cannot kill two units, but with drill it may only get slightly damaged and will be able to kill another unit.

Barrage will cause more collateral damage, agreed. But if the best defender is tough enough, you won't damage him at all. So, if I'm attacking a city with 6 archers (promotions or not), maybe Barrage is best. If I'm attacking a city with 6 longbowen on a hill, and one of them has city garrison II, and the strongest unit in my stack is a maceman, then I most definitely prefer city raider for my cats.

On the contrary. The more of an underdog you are, the more you should use barrage. Because in a situation like this, your first 2-3 city raider catapults at least would die. But by sending in 1 barrage catapult, to soften up all but one unit, and then a city raider catapult, to soften up the first one, then you'll stand a better chance of preserving your other catapults.

Like i said, sure you need city raider, but for most effect and best survivability, you need barrage as well.

If you're going to use barrage at all, it should be *after* your city raiders have taken out the top defender. Otherwise:
First barrage unit attacks, doesn't dent top defender: guaranteed suicide loss
2nd barrage unit attacks, doesn't dent top defender: guaranteed suicide loss
First city raider unit attacks, either kills top defender or severely wounds it
Second city raider attacks, from this point on you chew through them

That means two guaranteed losses, maybe a third before you start getting really good odds. If you used city raider from the beginning, you would have one, maybe two losses instead.

I used to belong to the "maximize barrage" camp, but after trying city raider I never looked back. You take out the top defender while weakening the others. Barrage simply cannot do that.

EDIT: Oh, and BTW, has anyone figured out the OP enough to know if we've answered the questions or not? :)

So how many would you need for Bombarding if you don't have Accuracy? IIRC, it requires Barrage I to get it...

So how many would you need for Bombarding if you don't have Accuracy? IIRC, it requires Barrage I to get it...

Barrage I, Combat I, and City Raider I all lead to Accuracy.

If you're going to use barrage at all, it should be *after* your city raiders have taken out the top defender. Otherwise:
First barrage unit attacks, doesn't dent top defender: guaranteed suicide loss
2nd barrage unit attacks, doesn't dent top defender: guaranteed suicide loss
First city raider unit attacks, either kills top defender or severely wounds it
Second city raider attacks, from this point on you chew through the

How about this?

1. barrage, dies (injures all but first defender)
2. city raider, dies (injures first defender)
3. all others city raiders, win

Compared to :

1. city raider, dies (seriously injures 1st defender, barely touches the others)
2. city raider, dies against second defender (still tons of good defenders either not injured or slightly so)
3. city raider, dies against 3rd defender

You get the picture.

Against many tough defenders, you'll lose fewer units by using barrage first. Of course, against few, easy to beat defenders, city raider is better. But against many, tough ones, you'd be much better off throwing in a barrage unit or two beforehand.

At very high difficulty levels (say Immortal or Deity), you'll often be fighting against technogically and numerically superior opponents. That's where barrage really shines. If you're playing on noble, then i agree go with city raiders. But at levels where it really counts, you need both types to be successful.

Also, think about it this way. You have three choices when attacking :

1. barrage siege unit, which will injure all but the first defender
2. city raider siege unit, which will mainly injure the first defender
3. city raider normal attacker, which has a better chance of actually killing the defender

If your city raider siege unit can be expected to survive the battle, then your normal attacker has even better chances of doing so, and should be employed instead.

If your city raider unit has few chances of surviving the battle, then it's often better to suicide a barrage one, because either one will die, but the barrage one will do more damage to the defenders, assuming that there are at least 3 of them who can kill your units.

Once there are only one or two defenders who are still strong enough to kill your units, then it's time to use city raider siege units, because they'll do more to bring those down.

Dere'z option dat 'oseraida-boyz will be garrisoned to maximize 'amage to lobba-trowaz, thus preventin singnificant 'arm to main 'efendaz in case of mobstompa attack. So we 'ave situation wif main shootaz avoid lobba+mobstomp 'amage, takin only mobstomp.

I'm not even going to attempt tot read that.

Den ya shouldn't botha ta write a reply, cuz once ya told it already.

Why to you put effort into making your posts unreadable?

If you don't want to communicate effectivaly then there is no point in being part of a forum.

OK then... if you keep gifting gold, tech, and cities to the AI, eventually your artillery will become highly promoted.

Based on what I've read so far and my limited experience it seems that you need a mixture of barrage and city raider seige units; if you're faced with a homogenous defence (i.e. all roughly same strength) then start with barrage,followed by city raider seige,finished with cityraider melee/gunpowder. If faced with a heterogenous defence (some much stronger than others) then city raider before barrage. If the defender uses seige against attackstack then that improves combat ratios in their favour and there ain't much you can do about that.
The only thing I'd add is a few seige units tasked solely with reducing city defences to 0 in one round (4 cats with accuracy or 3 artillery with accuracy) which attack first before any other unit gets involved.

Hey how about answering his question - probably took him over an hour to craft all that garble speak.;)

It may have taken him over an hour to craft it, but it's pretty inconsiderate to the people he's presumably hoping to answer his question. I'm joining in this discussion *only* because I'm interested in some of the comments other people have made (in plain English).

Unless you intend it to win rather than suicide. That's the key. Soften them up with city raiders, then mop them up with city raiders. The only goal of any unit should be to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible over the course of the game. City raider is much more cost-effective.

I think that depends on the relative strengths. Very often in the mid game I'm attacking a city defended by 3-4 longbows, perhaps on a hill. The first catapult that attacks has perhaps 0.5% chance of success at best, maybe even 0.0%. And giving the cat a city raider promotion isn't is going to have almost no effect on the 0-ish % success chance. So, barring withdrawal from combat, I'm going to lose that cat anyway. IMO (not done the maths, so this is more an educated guess), at that stage I'm better off using barrage to up the collateral damage. After maybe 3 suicide attacks, the success rate starts to look better - perhaps 25%, but CR changes it to 40%, or 40% raw, up to 60% with CR. At that point I'll start giving the cats CR instead, to try and keep them alive for the next city.

Now later in the game when you're using artillery, you tend not to be starting with such low odds, so perhaps at that point, CR is more effective at an earlier stage.

So with Barracks and Vassalage and/or Theocracy, you would suggesst CR I then Accuracy, and beyond that get CR II and III then play with Barrage if they last that long...

I think that depends on the relative strengths. Very often in the mid game I'm attacking a city defended by 3-4 longbows, perhaps on a hill. The first catapult that attacks has perhaps 0.5% chance of success at best, maybe even 0.0%. And giving the cat a city raider promotion isn't is going to have almost no effect on the 0-ish % success chance. So, barring withdrawal from combat, I'm going to lose that cat anyway. IMO (not done the maths, so this is more an educated guess), at that stage I'm better off using barrage to up the collateral damage. After maybe 3 suicide attacks, the success rate starts to look better

In my last game, I had many situations very similar to what you are describing above. It may be that I was unlucky, but I found that using cats with barrage never (and I mean never) scratched the top defender. Using a cat with CR II almost always did. Evidently, the difference between 0.0% and 0.5% is enough to make a difference in this respect.

In my last game, I had many situations very similar to what you are describing above. It may be that I was unlucky, but I found that using cats with barrage never (and I mean never) scratched the top defender. Using a cat with CR II almost always did. Evidently, the difference between 0.0% and 0.5% is enough to make a difference in this respect.

Interesting. Normally when it's 0.0-0.5% cats against something like longbows, I find that it's not uncommon that the first cat does nothing to one of the longbows (the one it's attacking?), but that by the 3rd cat or so, the strongest longbow is down to something like strength 4 or 4.5 out of 6 - low enough for my main attacking unit to stand a chance of beating it. Until I read on the forums that the defending unit never suffers collateral damage, I always assumed that that was because any of the units, including the defending one, stood a chance of being randomly picked for the collateral damage - it seemed to fit with my experience.

Now I'm guessing the explanation is that even with a 0.0% chance of winning, there's still a good (~30%?) chance of causing significant weakening of the defender).

Another good point IMO about barrage is that often in this situation there is no single leading defender: Instead there are perhaps 3 longbows with city defence 1, all on equal strength, and each of them alone strong enough to wipe out your strongest attacking unit. With barrage and even using only one cat, you know that at least two of those will likely suffer more collateral damage and hence be more likely to be beaten by your main attackers. In effect there's only one strong defender left, not three. But like I say, my experience is that after ~3 suicide attacks by cats, there's *nothing* in the city able to withstand your top attacks. And cats are cheap to replace. Only problem is that replacements can be slow to get to the battle - so you need to be building a good supply in advance, and they need to be escorted en route as by themselves they are very vulnerable, esp. to horse archers. And losing all those cats is I'm guessing the reason why I often suffer so badly from war weariness.

Sorry I seem to have turned the discussion from artillery to cats (don't use artillery that much - I've usually either won the game or got bored and left it before artillery can see much use ;) )

Simon
http://www.simonrobinson.com

I think it is safe to say that both barrage and CR has its moments. My best bet would be to first attack with a CR unit and then a barrage one. The CR will most likely damage the top defender and at the same time hurt the rest of the stack. The barrage promote unit then stands a good chance of damaging and perhaps even beating the strongest unit that the CR attacked while doing good damage to the other defenders.

Another question, whaz doez lobba meanz?? Most of the strange words in the opening post could be guesed but i am perplexed by lobba.....

I think it is safe to say that both barrage and CR has its moments. My best bet would be to first attack with a CR unit and then a barrage one. The CR will most likely damage the top defender and at the same time hurt the rest of the stack. The barrage promote unit then stands a good chance of damaging and perhaps even beating the strongest unit that the CR attacked while doing good damage to the other defenders.

If you do that, the barrage unit won't attack the same unit that the city raider unit did, because it won't be the strongest defender anymore. So your barrage unit will die anyway. That's why it's usually better to attack with barrage first.

Another question, whaz doez lobba meanz?? Most of the strange words in the opening post could be guesed but i am perplexed by lobba.....

To lob = to throw in a high arc. Warhammer orc talk, like the other guy said.

If you want to hurt the first defender, you should use drill.

If you want to hurt the first defender, you should use drill.

In my last game, I was experimenting with different combinations of promotions. I was running Theocracy, so they started with 2 promotions. I had a couple of Drill II cats, and more CR II cats. When attacking a city defender, it seemed like a CR II cat always had better odds than a Drill II cat. Does the battle odds calculator still have a problem with first strike calculations? Maybe the odds work out in favor of Drill vs. CR in other situations?

Hm... though it would be time-consuming I'm sure it'd be possible to do a world builder test on the relative effectiveness of attacking with barrage or city raider in different situations. Thing is it would take many, many battles of various kinds to prove one way or the other. I might do it later.

I promote a few to accuracy because I'm usually technologically far superior to my adversaries, and it speeds up my advance to not have to wait outside the city gates while my siege units take down the defenses. But it's not critical, just what I usually do. It's also possible to have a couple of your units heal while your cats take down the defenses (assuming you have a medic). That'd be good if you had a relatively large force taking on small city after small city.

I also don't sacrifice many catapults. One per city max, and usually not even one. If my first doesn't dent the top defender, that's the only situation where I'll reluctantly use a second. And I usually don't sacrifice my accuracy or medic catapults. (:

If my foe had comparable tech, I might not use accuracy so much and make sure I have city raider/barrage speced cats.

Edit: Also, I don't encounter many cities that have equal defenders. There's usually one top defender and a few that are significantly weaker than that one. Like one longbowman with garrison III, another with garrison II, and others with garrison I.

If you do that, the barrage unit won't attack the same unit that the city raider unit did, because it won't be the strongest defender anymore. So your barrage unit will die anyway. That's why it's usually better to attack with barrage first.

Let me see if i can convince you....

If the defender has one top guy and the rest pretty lousy stuff: One longbowman and a few spears/axes.
Best choice is to use one CR and then if needed and depending on how much damage the longbow got another CR or barrage. If you only use barrage here it is pretty obvious that the longbowman will survive longer and the other defenders can easily be killed of buy your catapults or axemen.

If the defender has got more than one longbowman, say 3 of them.
Best choice is still CR as a barrage wouldnt be able to damage the first longbowman enough. Barrage will for sure do more damage to the others but will still leave the first longbowman almost unhurt. You will have to use many more barrage than CR to bring the first longbowman down enough in healt to be able to attack him without to big a risk. With CR catapults you will most likely have to use 2-3 anyway and their combined collateral damage will for sure take the other longbowmen down far enough to kill them of with regular troops (or more catapults)

So my conclusion is to always attack with a CR first, then it is up to you and the situation how to proceed. With more CR, barrage or normal troops.

How about this?

1. barrage, dies (injures all but first defender)
2. city raider, dies (injures first defender)
3. all others city raiders, win

Compared to :

1. city raider, dies (seriously injures 1st defender, barely touches the others)
2. city raider, dies against second defender (still tons of good defenders either not injured or slightly so)
3. city raider, dies against 3rd defender

You get the picture.

Against many tough defenders, you'll lose fewer units by using barrage first. Of course, against few, easy to beat defenders, city raider is better. But against many, tough ones, you'd be much better off throwing in a barrage unit or two beforehand.

At very high difficulty levels (say Immortal or Deity), you'll often be fighting against technogically and numerically superior opponents. That's where barrage really shines. If you're playing on noble, then i agree go with city raiders. But at levels where it really counts, you need both types to be successful.
Hmm... I see your point. I'm currently playing Monarch games and city raider artillery does a bang-up job against infantry, but I'll have to give your method a shot. Suiciding a barrage unit very well could mean an even better survival rate for the following CR units, and would definitely be worth it -- higher survival rate, quicker healing times due to less damage, etc.

Although I haven't done the math, I intuitively feel that CR first is best if for no other reason than to damage that top defender. Still, I would rather test it and know for certain, one way or the other, than to just theorize and maybe miss out on a good tactic. Okay, you've convinced me to try further refining the system I use. I'll report back here once I've done some testing.

If the defender has one top guy and the rest pretty lousy stuff: One longbowman and a few spears/axes.

In that case you shouldn't use barrage at all. I already said that he needs at least 3 good defenders to make barrage worth using.

If the defender has got more than one longbowman, say 3 of them.
Best choice is still CR as a barrage wouldnt be able to damage the first longbowman enough. Barrage will for sure do more damage to the others but will still leave the first longbowman almost unhurt. You will have to use many more barrage than CR to bring the first longbowman down enough in healt to be able to attack him without to big a risk. With CR catapults you will most likely have to use 2-3 anyway and their combined collateral damage will for sure take the other longbowmen down far enough to kill them of with regular troops (or more catapults)

With 3 longbows, like i said, you should suicide a barrage cat, then suicide a CR cat, then everything else gets in easy. Using only CR cats, the first 3 might lose (instead of just 2), if the first 2 don't do enough damage to the 3rd one, which is very likely.

So my conclusion is to always attack with a CR first, then it is up to you and the situation how to proceed. With more CR, barrage or normal troops.

Your conclusion is wrong, and becomes more wrong the more defenders there are. Against 10 good defenders, the first 4 or 5 cats you throw in there should have barrage for maximum efficiency.

First strike (drill) has been very productive for me, I think for 3 reasons.

1. I am always thinking about the upgrades down the road, and artillery with 2-3 drill promotions mow through machine guns.

2. Drill is usefull for stacks that are not in a city. If I catch a 4 unit stack not in the the city, I have a higher chance of winning.

3. (idiosyncratic) I get tired of losing 4 of 5 battles when the odds are 65%-85% in my favor. The drill promotions dont show in the odds calculator, and I "feel" like i am winning more battles that I should. (I know this is all mental games, but keeps me moving forward)

My rule of thumb is to use barrage on siege that is expected to die (cats vs longbows), and city raider on siege that is expected to live (artillery vs infantry.)

I also like to promote cats that successfully retreated to Accuracy so they continue to be useful without having to heal up. I often have some Accuracy cats still hanging around in the modern age taking down city defences...

i was one to bring up the "top defender" question, and i'm definetely sure that city raider or drill or the most effective against a 2/3 top defender, not regarding the rest of the stack.

what situations do you have to face?
1) a few (less than 5) defenders, one is really strong, the rest is so so.
2) a lot of defenders (more than 10), some (2 or 3) are good defenders, the rest is so so (unpromoted)
3) a lot of relatively equal defenders, plus a few useless fellows

What do you have in hand?
usually, you'll have a lot of siege (meaning 4 or more) even against situation 1 and against 2 or 3 you'll need even more.

situation 1:
if you're willing to send your 4 siege against 5 defenders, for each attack, all will get collateral damages except the defender(whether you have barrage or not), and after 4 rounds of collateral damage, every single one (except the top defender maybe) will be severely injured. And that's without any promotion.
So what's the better combination here? it's the one where your siege units kill most of the defenders, since the collateral damage isn't an issue.
Leaves as the main problem to hurt the top defender.
Here you have 2 options : CR or drill.
City raider gives you better chances for each combat round, and drill gives you more combat rounds.
If you face a real serious situation (where even with CR, you still have 0,5 % odds), you should go for drills, they have a few more combat rounds to hurt the top guy.
Else, just compare the odds. If you start with 20% with a barrage or no promotion unit, you'll have a pretty significant raise through CR, and it's an almost sure thing the top guy will be hurt. That's the way to go.

ASAP i'll make some tests with this situation (rather common, AFAIK up to monarch at least). From my experience, CR siege always hurts the top defender. Have yet to see it fail.

situation 2)
Well, if you only have the 4 siege units, they need to pack through some good collateral damage, since after one suicide run, there will be half the defenders without a scratch.
After the second run, you're still not sure to have hut every body, and after the 4, you should have hurt everybody at least a little. Except the best defender or the second best (since you're not sure the first run has done any collateral damage to him).
My personnal choice here is still CR, because you need to bring down those top defenders. But I understand the need of big collateral damage here.
well, my guess would be to just bring one more cat, and give them all CR ;)

this situation is pretty tricky, since you need to both bring the special top ones down, and give every other one some treat.

What does barrage I do ? +20% Collateral Damage
fine
But you don't deal it to more units, do you? it's just 20% more damage to those who would have gotten some anyway.
It's not worth it, from my point of view.
Barrage II gives you +30% Collateral Damage and +10% vs. Melee Units.
Well, here it's worthwhile. Because a unit hurt through collateral +50% has had enough collateral damage to be crushed by anyone including your siege units.
Problem is your barrage I don't live up to barrage II :lol:

So if you can bring up barrage II siege units in situation 2, i think it's worth it throwing them into battle first. Then you need CR (or drill if he is a real tough one, see above) to bring the top defender down somewhat.

situation 3)
no top defender issue.
Loads of units to bring down.
Barrage units are best here. At least for the first 2 rounds. After that, you can try to win with CR siege units.

At very high difficulty levels, situation 3 is the most common, because the AI normally is better than you both in numbers and in technology.

At very high difficulty levels, situation 3 is the most common, because the AI normally is better than you both in numbers and in technology.

that's what i thought after reading all those posts going nowhere:lol:
obviously, you and I don't play the same game.

On prince (or monarch like i do for my few last games), situation 1 or 2 are the most likely. Situation 1 when you manage a surprise attack, situation 2 for the rest.

Like i already said, it's very situationnal, but i feel it a lot easier to bring out one or 2 more CR I cats than to bring lots of barrage II cats.
I'm almost never under theocracy nor under vassalage (those are far away techs!) for the first real big war, and after that, i have promoted CR 3 cats ;)

If you're having such an easy time that you can quickly get CR 3 cats, i suggest you move up in difficulty level to give the AI a fairer chance. I suggest Emperor or Immortal. Remember to pack some barrage catapults.

If you're having such an easy time that you can quickly get CR 3 cats, i suggest you move up in difficulty level to give the AI a fairer chance. I suggest Emperor or Immortal. Remember to pack some barrage catapults.

:lol: thank you, but you're too kind
i mostly lose on monarch, even though i've got my hands full of CR 3 cats

I know my weaknesses, but cannot work towards making it better :
* i have no time to circle through my cities on every turn (when i get to play 1 hour straight, i'm lucky):mischief:
* i tend to be overconfident and leave undefended (well, one warrior isn't defense, is it?) cities in the back, while warring on the other side :cry: (here i must say i can do something)
* i tend to be very relectant at building workers/settlers = i get little empires, with little improvements :sad: (well, something can be done here, but it's a full time job for my shrink).

and about CR 3 : every winning (4XP) CR 1 cat will be CR 3 (winning with 20% odds gives you a big boost)!
you have lost 4 out of 5 CR 1 cats, but you gained those neat city stack killers.
It's even easier for artillery, starting at CR 2 or even CR 3 with west point, with very high odds right from the start.

What about CR I first, ASccuracy, then Barrage I when you get to 10 exp (not much of a stretch with Feudalism and Theocracy. West Point or the Pentagon will give it to you...)

Then alternate with Drill, CR and Barrage if you do see them gaining enough exp...

Just an idea...

What about CR I first, ASccuracy, then Barrage I when you get to 10 exp (not much of a stretch with Feudalism and Theocracy. West Point or the Pentagon will give it to you...)

Then alternate with Drill, CR and Barrage if you do see them gaining enough exp...

Just an idea...

accuracy, just as barrage, can be avoided.
Just bring in some more units, gives you the same result.

Accuracy could be given to the medic siege unit, (if it is promoted to level 3 !), since you won't use it to attack too often.

About "mixed" promotions, give a good look at the effects.
Going further into a promotion branch gives you more benefits than going all around.
I mean CR 2>CR 1+barrage
and Barrage 2 > CR1 + barrage.

I try to choose a path and follow through as far as i can.
If a siege unit is designed to hurt/kill the top defender, it's no use giving it the barrage prom.
I give it CR 1, then CR 2, then CR 3, then Drill 1, then drill 2, (don't laugh, i had a level 8 artillery, and when you face a level 8 artillery, you don't laugh:hammer: ...)
If you have the luck to keep a barrager alive, you don't give it CR, you give it barrage 2.
If you have the luck to keep it alive for more promotion, i recommend spending half your wages to the church, and give the bugger whatever you want. With such luck, nothing can happen to you anyway:lol:

I'm going for barrage and it usually works out just fine :)

I'm going for barrage and it usually works out just fine :)

try CR, for a change, and tell me how it works;)

it's mostly a different style, though

I will try CR and tell you how it went. Since my arts get 2 to 3 promos right from the assembly line (synergy rocks) that should'nt pose any problems. If I just had as much time to play as I want...

I will try CR and tell you how it went. Since my arts get 2 to 3 promos right from the assembly line (synergy rocks) that should'nt pose any problems. If I just had as much time to play as I want...

well, artillery is specific.
they have a rather high strength to begin with, so they're not fighting the 20% or less odds suicide runs that catapults have to do.
CR 3 artillery are killers. They are tougher than combat 3 or combat 2 + pinch infantry that you can have in the same time.


try CR cats instead of barrage cats for early wars, it's a completely different feel.

I meant trebuches, sorry. I play Sevomod most of the time, and I never managed to go to war b4 I got those.

Okay, I didn't set up a WB test scenario but tried out several combinations during my last game. Granted, this removes the "control" aspect of a test, but the results were clear enough that I didn't feel a need to do a rigorous analysis. Each seige unit started with two of the same promotions (either CR or barrage) and if it gained a third promotion it was given a third CR. No barrage unit ever lived to get a third promotion.

I tried:
1) Barrage, CR, CR...
2) CR, Barrage, Barrage, CR, CR...
3) CR, CR, Barrage, Barrage, Barrage...

I didn't do a detailed cost analysis of hammers/damage. After all, the RNG would make a small test have a wide margin of error where decimal places are concerned. What the RNG shouldn't have too much of an effect on is when one system is obviously more efficient than another. In my tests none of those options listed above worked as well as straight CR. CR is the way to go.

I don't understand what all the debate is about. None of the siege units are winners. They are all underpowered for the eras in which they fight. They aren't meant to win. The exception is if you're able to get Cannon early enough to fight some Macemen and Longbowmen.

So then, why all the discussion? They're going to lose their fights one way or the other. The exception is if you're just doing cleanup on units that aren't meant for city defense. In other words, the exceptions are easy wins.

As I said before, if you give these easy wins to the best attacker of your era, you will have stronger raiders that win fights more often than weaker raiders. Your city raider siege units will never have the ability to win that real attackers will, so why groom them that way?

Shields? You want to lose as few to combat losses as possible, and when you do lose them, you want them to facilitate wins for your other units. Well, a siege unit will almost always do more damage in a loss than your city attackers. You can enhance this damage by giving it barage promotions. If you're going to lose a unit, a siege unit is the one you want to lose.

Lets look at those shield costs
Catapults 40
Axes 35
Swords 40
Macemen 70

Cannon 100
Musketmen 80
Grenadiers 100
Riflemen 110
Calvary 120
Infantry 140

The siege units aren't exactly deserving of the fodder reputation people give them, but it remains that when you're going to lose, you'll want to lose a siege unit, because they cause the most damage in death and are the same cost or cheaper than your attackers. Barrage is the promotion that increases their damage in death.

This doesn't take into account the second function of siege units, which is to reduce the cultural defense. That's why I'll give citiy raider promotions to some of my catapults, so they survive to earn the accuracy promotion. Four catapults with accuracy can reduce any city to 0% in a single turn.

Then, I'll have one or two siege units of the era with barrage for sacrifice, if I find my units could use a boost in odds. It depends largely on the structure of the city defenses. Sometimes there are many moderate defenders (say, city defense 2 Longbows). They are ripe for suiciding a siege unit. It will increase the odds for all my other units (say macemen) reducing the odds of losing them, and gaining them experience which by the third city raider promotion will reduce the need to throw shields (40, for a catapult) down the drain. Another possiblity is one strong defender (city defense 3 Longbow)and several weak ones (city defense 1 Longbows). In this situation I would spend my weakest city attacker (city raider 1 Maceman) in order to damage the strong defender, since presumably even my best city attacker (combat 2, city raider 3 Maceman) would have poor odds against him. Because, remember, collateral damage does not land on the unit involved in a siege weapon attack. If you have a very strong defender you need to send in a unit that will actually win a few rounds of combat. City raider siege units could do that, which is what some of you are advocating. But only after they've had several promotions. A city attacker with less experience will be much more likely to criple the strong defender although at a greater cost. Here's the key though: If you'd given that same experience to a city attacker (Maceman) that you're using to create these 4th level siege units (catapults), you'll have units that will destroy the competition with fewer loses.

Siege units weren't meant to win. They were meant to bring down defenses and cause collateral damage. Don't waste experience on trying to make them win, when each era has much more capable units of doing so, and thus benefit more from promotions.

[QUOTE=Lord Chambers]I don't understand what all the debate is about. None of the siege units are winners. They are all underpowered for the eras in which they fight. They aren't meant to win. QUOTE]

but they do win!
and get highly promoted:cool:

In my experience, it's far easier to get a level 5 cat than a level 5 axe/sword/mace (because you fight with low odds with cats and don't fight them with melee, usually and because retreating gives you one xp)

Do read again the tyrant's post. Better results with CR.
It's pretty clear, isn't it?

Okay, I didn't set up a WB test scenario but tried out several combinations during my last game. Granted, this removes the "control" aspect of a test, but the results were clear enough that I didn't feel a need to do a rigorous analysis. Each seige unit started with two of the same promotions (either CR or barrage) and if it gained a third promotion it was given a third CR. No barrage unit ever lived to get a third promotion.

I tried:
1) Barrage, CR, CR...
2) CR, Barrage, Barrage, CR, CR...
3) CR, CR, Barrage, Barrage, Barrage...

I didn't do a detailed cost analysis of hammers/damage. After all, the RNG would make a small test have a wide margin of error where decimal places are concerned. What the RNG shouldn't have too much of an effect on is when one system is obviously more efficient than another. In my tests none of those options listed above worked as well as straight CR. CR is the way to go.

Interesting, but you'd need to at least give us some idea of the odds they were facing for the results to be meaningful. You see - assuming a city where there are several roughly equally strong defenders - my contention would be that:

* If the initial odds for an unpromoted cat are in the 30% + range, then you're best off with CR all the way
* If the initial odds are in the 0.0-1.0% range, then you're better off with something like barrage-barrage-barrage, then change to CR.
* Somewhere between 1% and 30% odds there'll be a crossover point but I don't know where that is.

Also, my units rarely have two promotions. They have one promotion from barracks (plus another one if they've survived a combat round, which obviously is more likely for CR than for barrage, since in my games I'm using barrage when the odds are hopeless).

Without knowing the odds you tested the siege units with, it's hard to say whether your experience runs against or in favour of my belief.

Also, my units rarely have two promotions. They have one promotion from barracks (plus another one if they've survived a combat round, which obviously is more likely for CR than for barrage, since in my games I'm using barrage when the odds are hopeless).
Barracks, Vassalage, Theology -- I don't usually bother using cats for direct attack (as opposed to reducing city defense) until I can get them two promotions out of the gate. The loss rate is so high with only one or no promotions that before I prefer to use regular units to attack with until I can get them two promotions.

Without knowing the odds you tested the siege units with, it's hard to say whether your experience runs against or in favour of my belief.
Yes, I fully agree. I knew that was the weakness in my "test" -- I wasn't doing a direct comparison but an intuitive comparison. I'm so used to using pure CR cats that I have a very good feel for how a combat "should" go. The results I got by mixing in barrage units just didn't give me the results I would have expected with pure CR.

I admit that my testing falls flat on its face as far as trying to convince someone else because there are no hard numbers. Its just that I can't bring myself to do a tedious WB test and go through hundreds of attacks, writing down the odds, strengths, damage to units, etc. for each attack and then compiling all that data into a meaningful few ratios. That would bore me to tears. So, for my own benefit I tested several combinations and they didn't get the results I would have expected with CR. I know that can't even presume to be convincing to anyone who isn't already convinced. :) It lacks hard numbers to back it up and is based on a very small sample of test runs. All I can say is that I tried mixing in Barrage and wasn't satisfied with the results, so I'll stick to straight CR.

Barracks, Vassalage, Theology -- I don't usually bother using cats for direct attack (as opposed to reducing city defense) until I can get them two promotions out of the gate. The loss rate is so high with only one or no promotions that before I prefer to use regular units to attack with until I can get them two promotions.

i do!
even unpromoted (no barracks!) cats deal collateral damage.
most suicide runners die, but the living get CR 2 (if they win, they gain 2 promotions :) ) or CR if they retreat twice (well, also happens sometimes that i kill a barbarian with a cat).

to be true, CR 1 isn't a big deal, but you need it to come to CR 2.
With CR 2, you get good odds (over 50%) in early wars.

How so? because you'll always have one or 2 "just built" cats coming along.
Those are the suicide runners.
After that, even a longbow isn't impossible to kill with a cat.

The CR strat is based on the fact that some siege will survive, and is relying on the high promotions capacity they get.
The barrage way just ignores the survivors, "they're not supposed to win".
Sure, a barrage 2 cat is dealing a lot of damage. But you also need something to take the city, don't you? My cats often take cities without any sword/axe/mace/dog/melon/cheese/potatoe involved in the fight.
Sometimes, the top defender gives my already high promoted cats a too hard time (CG III longbowman at 70% health is still a threat!). I then prefer risking a CR sword/mace, than risking my wanabee level 5 unit.

to be true, CR 1 isn't a big deal, but you need it to come to CR 2.
With CR 2, you get good odds (over 50%) in early wars.

How so? because you'll always have one or 2 "just built" cats coming along.
Those are the suicide runners.
After that, even a longbow isn't impossible to kill with a cat.

The CR strat is based on the fact that some siege will survive, and is relying on the high promotions capacity they get.
The barrage way just ignores the survivors, "they're not supposed to win".
Sure, a barrage 2 cat is dealing a lot of damage.

OK that is a good argument. Even if CR I doesn't help compared to barrage I in the first instance, it's long term more beneficial as it;s more likely to give you cats with CRII or more, which are thus extremely powerful.

That's an angle that hadn't occurred to me.

Simon
http://www.simonrobinson.com

Barracks, Vassalage, Theology -- I don't usually bother using cats for direct attack (as opposed to reducing city defense) until I can get them two promotions out of the gate. The loss rate is so high with only one or no promotions that before I prefer to use regular units to attack with until I can get them two promotions.


As an aside, that's a great example of why Civ is such a great game - the subtleties of how different tactics interplay. I very rarely use vassalage or theology because other non-military aspects of my strategy almost always make it look more beneficial for me to use other civics (notably bureaucracy). The fact that I've chosen other civics for economic or building reasons impacts on the promotions my military have, which in turn impacts the tactics I need to use in my battles. Someone else like you who's chosen different civics (eg. vassalage) ends up doing different things on the battlefield.

The compromises you have to make when playing Civ can be very intricate at times :crazyeye:

Indeed, and sometimes they can be really vexing...

My barrage cats take accuracy a lot as second promotion, especially on promotions gained after a retreat in the field. The reason for this is speed. I want the city defences taken out in one turn giving the enemy less time to produce more troops, bring up reinforcements, attack my own stack with catapults, etc. Since the number of cats I have generally goes down as the war progresses, promoting some to accuracy lets me keep the bombard -> collateral sacrifice -> assault sequence down to one turn.

I often have some of these accuracy cats still around in Modern age filling the bombard role.

My barrage cats take accuracy a lot as second promotion, especially on promotions gained after a retreat in the field. The reason for this is speed. I want the city defences taken out in one turn giving the enemy less time to produce more troops, bring up reinforcements, attack my own stack with catapults, etc. Since the number of cats I have generally goes down as the war progresses, promoting some to accuracy lets me keep the bombard -> collateral sacrifice -> assault sequence down to one turn.

I often have some of these accuracy cats still around in Modern age filling the bombard role.

When I first started, I tended to use accuracy promotion (as the second promotion) too much. Generally speaking, I don't need or want more than 4 of these guys per stack. Since I use them to bombard down cultural defense, and I often take a city in one turn once my stack arrives outside the target city, cats with accuracy are almost never used for direct attacks, and I hardly ever lose one.

In terms of seige being underpowered for its era as far as I know cannons are the only napoleonic units (i.e. between maces and tanks) that get City Raider promotions.

You can (and should) upgrade city raider axeman, swordsmen and macemen to city raider grenadiers, riflemen and infantry.

A few notes:

CR (and all other offensive promotions) acts to decrease the defensive boni of the units you face, it doesn't make your unit more powerful. So a CR vs a Longbowman in a city will drop it's base strength of 6, while a CR Cat vs an Archer in a city will only weaken it's base 3 strength. At higher difficulty levels, attack promotions like City Raider are relatively more powerful, because you will be facing off against more powerful adversaries. At lower difficulty levels, your units will be stronger than theirs, so combat boni like City Raider aren't as powerful.

The goal of CR (or Drill) is to maximize the damage the best defender takes. That means that it may only take 2 CR cats (one suicide) to kill one best defender, instead of three barrage cats (2 suicide). You get less collateral damage to the other units, but more damage to the most powerful and dangerous defender. And you take half as many losses.

I think several people are missing the "maximize damage to best defender" part of the City Raider Cat argument. Who cares if you do a little extra damage to the archers in the city, if you don't do any damage to the longbowman? The goal in many cases is to maximize damage to the best defender, not to damage the second best.

I also think that +50% collateral damage is 50% above base. If that is correct, 2 Cats with Barrage II will do the same collateral damage as 3 cats without it. 3 CR II cats will survive more assaults and do just as much collateral damage as 2 Barrage II cats, and you will likely only lose 1 CR suicide cat while losing both suicide Barrage cats. Meantime, you surviving CR cats are gaining experience.

This of course depends on what kind of opponents you are facing, and if you are facing them in the field or in a city.

Finally, I was wondering if any of you could give me a best guess as to how the new Protective trait will effect these analysis. If all siege units start with Drill I & II, which becomes more useful - CR I & II, Barrage I & II, or Drill III and IV?

Drill IV will be better in open field battles than CR II, but I wonder if Drill IV cats are better than CR II / Drill II in urban assaults.

I think several people are missing the "maximize damage to best defender" part of the City Raider Cat argument. Who cares if you do a little extra damage to the archers in the city, if you don't do any damage to the longbowman? The goal in many cases is to maximize damage to the best defender, not to damage the second best.

At high difficulty levels, all those archers will be longbowmen as well, upgraded using money from the super bonuses the AI gets. Also, there will be a lot more units per city for the same reason. Who cares about damaging the first longbowman, when there are 10 more just like him? Barrage will deal a lot more damage total and you'll end up losing fewer units before you can take the city.

3 CR II cats will survive more assaults and do just as much collateral damage as 2 Barrage II cats, and you will likely only lose 1 CR suicide cat while losing both suicide Barrage cats.

At high difficulty level, the CR cat won't survive either because you'll be facing stronger and more numerous units than what you have.

Meantime, you surviving CR cats are gaining experience.

Meanwhile, you had 3 or 4 city raider cats that survived and gained experience, and lost 10 of them, while i had 3 or 4 barrage cat that survived and gained experience, and lost 6 of them.

Once again, like i said, this comes down to difficulty level. Sure, at noble, city raider may be better in most cases. But at immortal, city raider is vastly inefficient and barrage can do a much better job, in most cases.

I think several people are missing the "maximize damage to best defender" part of the City Raider Cat argument.
I think people are missing the part of this argument which doesn't make sense. You're spending experience to augment an underpowered unit to damage a tough city defender. If you used that same experience on a city attacker, the city attacker would do more damage, and have a greater chance of winning the battle instead of just serving to deal damage.

It's deceptively simple. Don't use siege units, which are generally underpowered for their eras, to try and do the job other units of the era do better. Use them to bring down defenses and cause collateral damage.

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Now, I understand that many people are proceeding on the assumption that you're going to lose any unit that attacks the best city defender, and so you're saying "well, make it a city raider siege unit so it causes some collateral on the side while damaging the best city defender." That's fair. There might be situations that call for it. I simply claim, based on experience which makes me play on emperor, that in the bigger picture, you lose less shields in conquest by using city attackers to try and take the city, and siege units to make that easier. Assuming you have adequate manpower, you should always try to give experience to city attackers and not siege units. It turns into a steamrolling situation where your city attackers get stronger and more numerous, able to take stacks of decent defenders without any barrage support. Granted, you will lose the memorabl level 6 units but you will waste less shields than promoting siege units up, only to risk them in battles they are underpowered for.

It's seriously a case of using the right tool for the job. City attackers will do a better job of wounding the best defender, and siege units will do the job of wounding everything underneath it.

uh he was not speaking street slang because I have never heard of this kind of terminology

At high difficulty levels, all those archers will be longbowmen as well, upgraded using money from the super bonuses the AI gets. Also, there will be a lot more units per city for the same reason. Who cares about damaging the first longbowman, when there are 10 more just like him? Barrage will deal a lot more damage total and you'll end up losing fewer units before you can take the city.
Once again, like i said, this comes down to difficulty level. Sure, at noble, city raider may be better in most cases. But at immortal, city raider is vastly inefficient and barrage can do a much better job, in most cases.
I think that's it. I play on Monarch and seem to get better odds with CR, but you and Lord Chambers are playing on higher levels. I've found the differences between Monarch and Emperor to be a bit shocking. I can regularly win on Monarch but haven't won a single Emperor game, out of about ten tries. That little bit extra that the AI gets on Emperor (as opposed to Monarch) doesn't seem like it should make that much of a difference, but it does.

Like you said, on higher levels the number and strength of the AI units is much different, and this requires different strategies. If I ever am able to make the move to Emperor, I'll have to try barrage seige units again.

While I can and do upgrade melee units with city raider to gunpowder units (axe-mace-grenadier-inf-mechinf) that doesn't alter the argument in principle.
Checking out other posts it does seem that there are optimal tactics for each difficulty level and while tactics that are optimal at noble fail on emperor I'd imagine it also applies the other way.
So as a general note we should all preface our posts 'at x level I find'. I'm currently playing at prince.

I think several people are missing the "maximize damage to best defender" part of the City Raider Cat argument.

I no longer miss that point. I had a cannon live to get CR 3 and Drill 2. That was nasty...

I find that numbers make up for skimping on Accuracy and Barrage, and the rest of my fighting units last longer now...

Zombie69, exactly how much more damage does the Barrage I promotion grant? I know exactly how much benefit the city raider promotions give, but barrage seems murky.

20% more than whatever amount of collateral you'd do without it. If you would take 0.5 health off of 6 longbowmen, then instead you'll now take 0.6 health off of each. This may not seem like much, but 0.1 x 6 longbowmen = 0.6 health, which may be more difference than CR would make if you expect to lose your catapult anyway.

Also keep in mind that i'd always rather take off 0.1 health from 6 longbowmen than take off 0.6 health from just one. This is because every fight started against those longbowmen will now be much easier. A little bit less strength at the beginning of a fight makes a huge difference, because every round is calculated from the strength before combat began.

But the big bonus comes when you get to barrage 2 (e.g. after gaining 1 XP from a retreat, or because you produce units with more than 4 XP). With barrage 1 and 2, you'll make 50% more collateral damage than you would otherwise. Next time you attack a city with a CR 2 catapult, look at the collateral damage it did. Add up the total health taken away, and do 50% of that. That's how much more damage you would have made with barrage 2 instead of CR 2, which may not even have made that much damage total against the first unit (and keep in mind that the barrage cat might have done some damage to the first unit too, just maybe not as much).

Barrage also has the added bonus that it's useful all the time, including when attacking stacks out on the field, where both CR and accuracy are useless.

Basically, like i said, if there are many good defenders, and you would expect to lose the CR cat anyway, use a barrage cat instead and get better results. When there are few good defenders, use CR cats or normal units. When you expect to win the fight, use a normal unit instead.

Today I was using catapults on occasion that would go up against units which gave the predicted result as 0.00%. At least 75% of those cat attacks put damage on that unit, whether that unit was in a city or not. I think there's something that one has to consider here. Normally, I'd say alot of us look at what's in a city, decide what it will take to conquer it, and send those units over. Then when you start whatever sort of cat attack you use, it might be easy to assume that the top unit wasn't damaged, because the second best defender against cats was the same type of unit. If we think that 'zero' attacks don't do any damage 100% of the time, that's just flat out wrong. Now maybe a longbowman on a hill entrenched makes the odds much longer, such that the 'zero' has a more difficult time, but I was attacking cossacks for example and getting damage, so do longbowman on a hill with entrenchment and a city defense promotion or two (standard AI fare) really add up to beyond 18pts?

I'm an attack-with-barrage fanboy myself.

BTW, from what I saw today, it looks to me as though the barrage damages the top unit 95% of the time. Most of the time that wasn't with zero odds, but it is at least putting some whoop on them. The key thing may be how many units there are, such that the cat will only damage so many, and if there are a lot it may be more prone to ignore the top one.

Collateral damage never affects the unit you're directly attacking (aka top unit). However, since you're attacking it, you can of course do normal, non-collateral damage to that unit.

Collateral damage never affects the unit you're directly attacking (aka top unit). However, since you're attacking it, you can of course do normal, non-collateral damage to that unit.

Yes, technically you are correct, but I seem to recall someone on here believing that somehow our longbowman sample was always getting by unscathed when a barraging cat attacks.

Yes, technically you are correct, but I seem to recall someone on here believing that somehow our longbowman sample was always getting by unscathed when a barraging cat attacks.

Depends. My experience is that if the top defender is a longbowman with city defence II, with the city on a hill, it hardly ever gets scratched by a catapult with barrage. If the catapult has city raider II, then it usually does.

Basically, like i said, if there are many good defenders, and you would expect to lose the CR cat anyway, use a barrage cat instead and get better results. When there are few good defenders, use CR cats or normal units. When you expect to win the fight, use a normal unit instead.

I agree. Thanks for bringing this into clearer focus.

Against top defender syndrome where you attack twice with catapults and damaged everything else but left the top unit untouched, I will send in a real unit to kill or at least weaken the top defender before sending more catapults in.

Against top defender syndrome where you attack twice with catapults and damaged everything else but left the top unit untouched, I will send in a real unit to kill or at least weaken the top defender before sending more catapults in.

Depends. Say I have a stack with 10 cats, 4 macemen, a spearman, and a couple of axes or swords. I'm not quite sure what the odds of a CD II longbowman is against a CR II maceman, but I'll bet it isn't inspiring. (< 50%) Ain't no way I'm sending one of my precious macemen against that longbowman. You might even find after losing the maceman that the next maceman still has fairly crappy odds. I might consider sending a sword or axe against him, and then suicide another cat (preferably barrage). This is a real grey area for me.

Depends. Say I have a stack with 10 cats, 4 macemen, a spearman, and a couple of axes or swords. I'm not quite sure what the odds of a CD II longbowman is against a CR II maceman, but I'll bet it isn't inspiring. (< 50%) Ain't no way I'm sending one of my precious macemen against that longbowman. You might even find after losing the maceman that the next maceman still has fairly crappy odds. I might consider sending a sword or axe against him, and then suicide another cat (preferably barrage). This is a real grey area for me.

Yeah but the point is you lose that one maceman, then the top defender is sufficiently weakened that the next cat can do a fair bit of damage to it (it might not even be the top defender any more). The next cat might even win -I find it's not too unusual that after lots of collateral damage I can start using my CR cats, or even barrage cats, to actually kill defenders, even longbowmen.

Against top defender syndrome where you attack twice with catapults and damaged everything else but left the top unit untouched, I will send in a real unit to kill or at least weaken the top defender before sending more catapults in.

i do this too, but only if i have an upper hand, meaning odds>75%, or at least 60% if i have "overwhelming" (2 units vs 1) numbers

Just to add some more thoughts, i had my CR 3 cat against a maceman defender (fresh border city), and i had about 75% odds. :)
Of course, against a longbow, it's not that good (you'll have to bring down his own bonuses before you get yours to play), but i had numerous cats vs longbow wins (20% odds is not 0).

What a pleasure, when my first CR 1 cat retreats after bringing the best longbow to 1/3 strength and doing collateral damage to the pikes and crossbowan inside this city.
The 2 next cats were CR 2 or more (i also had a barrage 2, just for the test, but it had 0% odds against the longbow, and still wasn't going to win even after the first attack so i didn't send him in) and did a nasty job, giving my knights/mace an easy job.

edit : that was monarch, but vs an "easy prey" saladin (already killed romans and germans, leaving me against indians, chinese, french and arabs), dead last in score before the fight, and now just dead.

i do this too, but only if i have an upper hand, meaning odds>75%, or at least 60% if i have "overwhelming" (2 units vs 1) numbers

That's what I do, unless I'm particularly attached to the unit in question. A praetorian with 5 promotions, for instance.

What a pleasure, when my first CR 1 cat retreats after bringing the best longbow to 1/3 strength and doing collateral damage to the pikes and crossbowan inside this city.

Cats sometimes withdraw when they're losing, which makes me more likely to use them than a "real" unit, like a maceman - if I don't like the odds. A 60% chance for my strongest attacker doesn't inspire me. 80% sounds good, 70% is if-ish. I'm also more likely to use a cat if the other defending units could use a bit more collateral damage.

The 2 next cats were CR 2 or more (i also had a barrage 2, just for the test, but it had 0% odds against the longbow, and still wasn't going to win even after the first attack so i didn't send him in) and did a nasty job, giving my knights/mace an easy job.

I seem to find myself in similar situations quite a lot.

Another question, whaz doez lobba meanz?? Most of the strange words in the opening post could be guesed but i am perplexed by lobba.....

I've wondered about that. I have found in forums that many of the participants actually speak or read English as a second language. Certain intentionally misspelled words (to make them sound like slang of one kind or another, mostly) won't show up on an online dictionary and they would then have to rely on how other posters are responding to guess the what the incomprehensible part of the posts are, or ask for clarification. Check "Lob", for those who haven't seen the explanation posts about the language (they are quite a few pages back in the thread now).

I haven't played this game enough to get two upgrades on a Cat or Artillery, though I admit I am still learning my Civics and their advantages. Choosing the civics with an experience bonuses would automatically give two upgrades (almost three, actually) with the barracks... Hmm, I should try that.

I've wondered about that. I have found in forums that many of the participants actually speak or read English as a second language. Certain intentionally misspelled words (to make them sound like slang of one kind or another, mostly) won't show up on an online dictionary and they would then have to rely on how other posters are responding to guess the what the incomprehensible part of the posts are, or ask for clarification. Check "Lob", for those who haven't seen the explanation posts about the language (they are quite a few pages back in the thread now).

I haven't played this game enough to get two upgrades on a Cat or Artillery, though I admit I am still learning my Civics and their advantages. Choosing the civics with an experience bonuses would automatically give two upgrades (almost three, actually) with the barracks... Hmm, I should try that.

with barracks, west point and either vassalage, theocracy or pentagon somewhere, (without west point you need barracks, vassalage, theocracy and pentagon) you can get 3 promotions "out of the box".

CR 3 artilleries are killer. Much more powerful than combat 3 infantries.
You have 75% vs cities and 10% vs gunpowder units :)
85% bonus isn't a joke, is it?

So my big unit producer churns out CR3 artillery, while other cities produce (draft!) the grunts.

Just finished dissecting the first post. It seems that people are answering the intended question. What good are Cats and artillery for other posters and how are they used, and which promotions help most? Some of the phrases didn't really make sense so there may have been more to it than that, but considering is was in a Orcish slang of some sort (Warhammer40K-based slang isn't my specialty) that may actually have been intended.

West point, vassalage, theocracy and barracks... Thanks, I'll try it and see how much it helps military-wise.

I can't wait to get to the game after work and try an experience enhanced military...

S. Rutters,
My $0.02

I've wondered about that. I have found in forums that many of the participants actually speak or read English as a second language. Certain intentionally misspelled words (to make them sound like slang of one kind or another, mostly) won't show up on an online dictionary and they would then have to rely on how other posters are responding to guess the what the incomprehensible part of the posts are, or ask for clarification. Check "Lob", for those who haven't seen the explanation posts about the language (they are quite a few pages back in the thread now).

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lob

I guess someone who didn't have English as a first language might not be aware of this word. I can see why; I personally have not used it for years and years, if ever at all. I think it is mostly defunct due to "throw" but also "chuck" which is kinda more American, kinda like kinda. ;)

Ok, here'z da queftion: Wha'z da bezt promotion fur our favorite Shaitan-tube and lobba-trowaz?
All we know 'bout Mobstomp Barrage(+20-50% mobz damage) and Drill(+first strike/chance) promz but need repliez of uzage and effectivnez.
Example:
Mobstack of n+1 unitz, most wif meelee:
1. Lobba-trowa wif Shock(+25% vz meelee) - iz lobba-trowaz recieve mobstomp bonus along wif Shock vz whole damaged mob or vz one first fighta only? (normal lobba attack damage two swordboyz, leavin 'em wif 7.5/10 7.5/10 but wif Shock dey are left wif 5/10 5/10 or it'll be 5/10 and sum oder from mobstomp but without Shock bonuz like 7.5/10?)
2. Lobba wif Drill vz mobstack - in theory dey muzt 'amage more boyz dur to firzt strike('dey alwayz DO DEAL damage triggerin mobstomin of whole stack)
3. Lobba vz city wif entrenched shootaz. Dey 'ave firzt strike so Shaitan-tube took damage fur sure unlef dey 'ave drill too. What's more profitable - to storm wif standart mobstomp or other variationz like Drill? Any resultz from city raider prom fur lobbaz in action?
Most interestin iz Drill II+ wich iz providin mob damage fur sure ratha dan chancez to deal dat neat mobstomp bonus...or not to deal if dat lobba would be blasted by boyz.
And main queftion: Iz lobba-trowaz deal mob damage when dey DEAL damage or when deir ATTACK initiated?
Edit: Accordin to tezt lobbaz got higher chancez vs garrisoned longbow shootaz wif city raider dan wif Drill IV


Someone's been playing a bit too much Warhammer 40K. In case any of you are interested this is how Orkz talk in that game. It is supposed to represent an English 'cockney' accent.

Which has only been pointed out 3 times in this thread.