It my first game as Justinian.

I'm wondering whether its worth it to emphasize my tech path for early cataphracts. Maybe forgo the Aesthetics line, Philosophy and the Liberalism race for early stable, vassalage, theocracy fed cataphracts.

Anyone had any good/bad experiences with cataphracts?

Bizantine UU is pretty much a cheaper cuiraseer that comes with guilds, in the same way that preatorians are a cheaper mace that comes with IW. You can get the general point from here :p

I do not alter my techpath for Cataphracts but I do delay Military Tradition alot more than normal. Typically Guilds is easy to trade for (especially education) so I stay with the liberalism beeline path as Justinian.

I'd personally emphasize them. If you can get them early enough, you can actually let them run over everyone without even spys or siege, only stopping for bigger cities that are on hills or have castles.

yes, they are ;)

Look at Ungy5 succession game, we killed everything with catas for 1500 AD domination vic.

Most definitely. Cataphracts are dominate in their time and allow you to make tremendous gains against pesky neighbors. The earlier you get them, the more window you have to take care of business.

Hammer economy bottom path ftw.

Cataphracts are amazing for the time that you have them. Research them early (and play on marathon) to extend their usefulness.

One of the better UUs and def worth the beeline. Also good because you won't have to upgrade until Rifling and MT as opposed to just MT with normal knights.

3rd best mounted UU, tied with Keshik and a good reason to vary the tech path with Justinian to get them early when they stomp everything.

Build HA's as your default city garrison/power booster then mass upgrade them to cataphracts. No counter until rifles.

Sounds like the fix is in and Cataphracts are worth the energy.

I've got a production capitol. Food resources - 2 plains cows, 3rd resource - grassland hills Cu.

I might try to grab the Oracle for MC. Build a quick forge in a different city and use the GE for Machinery. Then perhaps try for the GP second and use him on Monarchy, if I can figure out how. I'm not used to bulbing in the bottom half of tree. Early forges could also help with the proposed hammer economy.

My problem now is to decide whether to go with an early rush instead of the Wonder/bulb since I've got Pacal and Liz as my known neighbors each within 10-15 tiles of my 2nd (Horse) city. My part of the map is relatively poor with wheat/deer as food resources and lots of plains/tundra/dessert. Land is greener over towards them and I'm wondering whether one of their capitals is better than a quick MC and Machinery. In a few turns I'll get Writing and know more.

I don't know whether getting greener land at the cost of some early production will speed up or slow down the rate at which I'm able to get to Guilds.

Thanks for the feedback. One last question. I know that people make a lot of mileage from Curris and spies although I haven't done that. What I want to know is if I'm able to get some Cataphracts up to 4 or 5 promotions through early action with archers, will they be able to deal with longbows without the spies to take down cultural defences?

Hi

Cataphracts have same str as curriasurs but remember the difrences. They are not gunpowder units so they WONT ignore walls or castles like curriasurs would. And unlike other mounted units they dont have built in immunity to first strikes. All of which mean they can have a lil tuffer time than currisars would on longbows. That said you CAN get by without spies or siege. Just make sure you promote at least SOME with flanking 1 and 2. That will give em fs immunity and some withrawl chance then you can use those to try and soften up the longbows --expect most to die but hope you get lucky and some will withdraw and then let your high promoted combat ones clean up after. It could get expensive hammer wise but then so can suiciding siege and if you think it can mean taking out the ai faster than dragging siege around or waiting on spies then it might be worth it.

Kaytie

Hi

Cataphracts have same str as curriasurs but remember the difrences. They are not gunpowder units so they WONT ignore walls or castles like curriasurs would. And unlike other mounted units they dont have built in immunity to first strikes. All of which mean they can have a lil tuffer time than currisars would on longbows. That said you CAN get by without spies or siege. Just make sure you promote at least SOME with flanking 1 and 2. That will give em fs immunity and some withrawl chance then you can use those to try and soften up the longbows --expect most to die but hope you get lucky and some will withdraw and then let your high promoted combat ones clean up after. It could get expensive hammer wise but then so can suiciding siege and if you think it can mean taking out the ai faster than dragging siege around or waiting on spies then it might be worth it.

Kaytie I'm fairly certain that cuirrasiers and cavalry don't ignore walls and castles either; they're categorized as mounted, not gunpowder. Also, not all standard issue mounted units ignore first strikes, only horse archers, knights, and cuirasiers (and certain UUs) ignore first strikes without flanking 2. However...flanking 2 is a promotion that nearly all my mounted units get. Most mounted units get a certain inherent withdrawal chance before flanking anyhow and I like to prolong their survival as long as possible. Keep in mind though that the withdrawal chance doesn't apply to defending units, so it's good to have a few shock/formation/pinch units for protection.

They do ignore walls and castles, its not about being stated as Gunpowder. In the Unit XML file there is a spot where it allows the unit to ignore wall/castle defenses, and all units that use gunpowder (cannons included) have it set to '1', therefore they ignore them. Cuirassier and Cavalry are no different.

Makes a lot of sense, too. And is GREAT for balance...

No...wait...

Hi

Well Im not eaxctly sure which mounted get built in withdrawl without flanking or if all or just most mounted ignore fs or not but I am 100% certain curriassurs and cav ignore walls and castles--in fact one of fixes in the more recent unnofficial patches was to to fix conqiustadors--as knights they wouldnt ignore walls and castles but when they got moved to curiassor replacements game forgot to change em so they would ignore walls and castles like regular curiassors do and the unofficail patch now sets em so they will.

And I didnt adress stack defense just cuz I was responding to question of how might cataphracts do vs longbows compared to curriasors specifically in sitches where defenses wouldnt be dropped first. So I mentioned how flanking promos can help there.

Kaytie

I've never paid much attention to Cataphracts; but I certainly will now that I'm "branching out". It would be fitting move to go from the Romans to the Byzantines; a superficial glance seemed to suggest they were fairly expensive but if the value is there then why not? Thanks for the info.

Hmmm. Don't want to get too far off topic, but if Cuirassiers and Cavalry ignore walls and castles, what cultural defense do cities have against them?

Hmmm. Don't want to get too far off topic, but if Cuirassiers and Cavalry ignore walls and castles, what cultural defense do cities have against them?

There's still the regular culture. Several cities will have 60% by the time you get to
curassiers. If you want to reduce that, you need to drag along catapults or
trebuchets with you, or incite a city revolt with a spy.

Thanks for the advice.

Cataphracts are great

Game: Emperor, fractal, large, epic.

After action report.

The hammer economy gets you to Guilds fast and basically puts you into a position to run over everyone in unit production.

Some notes:
- civs without LBs are toast. Basically no losses.

- non protective civs with LBs but no pikes are pretty readily manageable even with 40 to 60 percent culture and 40 percent on hills. Losses at most at 20 percent.

- non protective civs with LBs and pikes still fairly manageable. AI doesn't seem to prebuild pikes. If you take out their iron sources with a pair of phracts they are back to LBs. Even when they build pikes they don't seem to use them on offense to try and hit you in the field. Generally they have been quickly built/whipped and don't have the full fortification bonus. A few shock promoted phracts have to die to deal with them. Losses still less than 25 percent.

- protective civs. Had a couple of these. They seem to have walls and of course the highly promoted LBs. They also built on hills more. In one case I was only interested in a taking a shrine city which was the second one in so I sent in a mixed stack with some trebs. Probably could have sped things up by using the phracts to pillage resources/roads but I wasn't thinking. The other protective civ had primarily coastal cities, so after vassalizing 4 civs I took a break, cranked up my hammer economy again and worked through Liberalism picking up Astromomy. With Chemistry I went in to Frigate mode. After bombarding, cataphracts against the triply promoted LB's on hills did suffer loses at a 30 to 40 percent rate.

- some spies are helpful. Particularly for dealing with capitals or hill cities. Cascading courthouses and the hammer economy (short stints at 100 percent esp slider) made this fairly practical to deal with 2 or 3 cities per civ.

- faced a few muskets but these were no problem. Stayed away from the Jans.

- I was the first to Guilds and afterwards it seemed like the other civs stayed away from it for quite a while. It could have just been the other leaders in the game, but the remaining unvassaled civs went the Nationalism to Democracy road. Eventually I traded Guilds for something (I can't remember what) and that sent the AIs down the Economics route. I got Education, Chemistry and Gunpowder first while other guys got Astronomy. On a pangea map, I might have shot for Communism out of Liberalism. SP, intelligence agencies and the Kremlin would have probably put one in a place to take out the protective civs with greater espionage and more suicide units.

Toward the end of the game the remaining two civs eventually got MT and if I'd been facing them I'm sure stacks of phracts would have started to be hit with curris, but up till then there was nothing to even touch them. By the time I had vassalized 3 civs and put in the caste/guilds workshops my production was 3 times the nearest rival and 5 times the average. I don't think anything could have effectively stopped this force short of rifles.

Notes on Justinian
- spiritual and imperialistic support early expansion to fuel your hammer economy and multiple civic changes for OR,Slavery whipping; Caste specialists for research: and Vasslage/Theocracy for 3 promos from all those cities with military instructors from the faster GGs.
- starting techs are the challenge as you get no starting food techs and are 2 techs from both BW and AH.

Thanks to posts here, in the last month I've learned the effectiveness of HAs and phracts, units that I hadn't really taken advantage of in the first 8 months I was playing Civ4. I think maybe in the next game I'll consider a shot at early MT.

Try spain then ;)

Notes on Justinian
- spiritual and imperialistic support early expansion to fuel your hammer economy and multiple civic changes for OR,Slavery whipping; Caste specialists for research: and Vasslage/Theocracy for 3 promos from all those cities with military instructors from the faster GGs.


One of the neat things you can do with Spiritual is to move to Slavery with Organized Religion, whip buildings and whatever and then whip each of a couple different kinds of units after putting a turn of production into each. Don't let your cities actually build the units - just start building the next unit at the beginning of the queue after you whip the unit and before you hit End Turn.

Whipped/Pre-built units don't cost you any money in maintenance and you get to stay in Bureaucracy/Organized Religion. When you are ready to have your units pop into existence, switch to Theocracy/Vasselage and let the units complete. Because your cities are still generating their regular production, you will end up with overflow hammers that can let you insert other units into the queue with 1 turn completion times as well.

Example:

City has 6 population and a Barracks and can build Macemen, Longbows, Catapults, Trebs and Spearmen.


Put a Maceman into the queue. Build that for a turn. End of Turn (EOT)
Whip Maceman for 1 population. Put Trebuchet into queue. EOT
Treb has a few hammers started from that turn's production. Whip the Treb for 2 pop. Put a Catapult into the queue. City now has 3 population. EOT.
City grows back to 4 population. Catapult has a couple of hammers, whip for 2 pop. City is down to 2 population and is pretty :mad:, but you're going to have a whole lot of units popping out quickly. Revolt to Vassalage and Theocracy. EOT.
blank line for clarity
On the next turn, a Catapult with 7 XP pops out. The Treb is next in queue with the Catapult's overflow hammers putting it at more hammers than it needs. EOT.
7 XP Treb pops out. Add another Treb in the front because the overflow hammers from the last Treb and the Catapult will let that unit complete in 1 turn. EOT.
Second Treb pops out with 7 XP. City grows to 3 population. EOT.
Maceman with 7XP arrives. Put another Maceman in the queue. The first :whipped: anger will disappear in 2 more turns. This Maceman will complete in 2 turns with a bunch of those hammers coming from :whipped: overflow. EOT.


That's a generic 6 population city with a food resource and a couple of hills and a couple of grassland farms. You ended 10 turns with 2 Macemen, 2 Trebs, and a Catapult for 3 :mad: and all of the units have 7 XP. Only 5 of those turns had to be spent in Slavery and only 5 of the turns had to be spent in Vassalage/Theocracy. The longer you spend in the put-different-units-in-the-queue-and-:whipped:-them, the more units you get at the end, but you still only need 5-7 turns under Vassalage/Theocracy to get the units out at max XP. Don't forget to insert extra units that you want in the beginning of the queue when overflow hammers will let you complete that unit in 1-2 turns.

At the end of all that, switch back to Bureaucracy and Organized Religion/Free Religion and get ready to crank up the culture slider for a few turns (or just accept the :mad: citizens) while you go pound your neighbor into oblivion.

Wow that's a neat trick! I'll have to try that.

One last question. I know that people make a lot of mileage from Curris and spies although I haven't done that. What I want to know is if I'm able to get some Cataphracts up to 4 or 5 promotions through early action with archers, will they be able to deal with longbows without the spies to take down cultural defences?

3-promo 'phracts do very well against lbows+40% cultural D with no seige support. Throw in a few flankers (C1F2) and you're in business. They are a LOT of fun to play, especially if you get them early. Unfortunately, the bulb path is complicated. Best is 2GEs (mach + feud) and a GM (guilds). Not impossible if you have stone and a GP farm, but takes some luck and planning. I've gotten them by 500AD this way, and I just ran over everything. Cam_h had an article on how to get them early (he did it by 0AD!)