Great Generals mostly useless?

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Rohili

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Mar 7, 2005
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I find Great Generals to be the most useless Great Person* in the game.

Unlike other GPs where it is the more the merrier, I rarely have need for more than 1-2 GGs. Even if I am playing a warmongering game, my units are generally focused at one or two points in the enemy's defences, and I don't need more than 1-2 GGs to provide the 15% bonus to all my units.

I have yet to find a genuine military need for the GG's ability to built Citadels. Generally, when I am conquering cities, my borders keep getting pushed outwards, so a Citadel built where the front-line used to be will become obsolete very quickly. IMO, the real use of Citadels is to steal land containing resources you want - no doubt a powerful tool, but not a true military application (in fact, you only need it when you want to avoid having to declare war and capture that city). It feels wrong that the true benefit of the GG is non-military in nature.

So, is there some tactical use of the GG that I am missing? Should it be tweaked to become more useful? I think the Citadel power should be changed into something else - for example, maybe allow players to exchange a GG for a large amount of XP that can be applied to units of your choice (just like how you can exchange GS for beakers, GW for culture, GM for gold, etc).



*Note: I am not a heavy navy user and have never acquired a Great Admiral before. I can only imagine it is even less useful, since it is basically a naval version of the GG.
 
If you use two Great Generals, you can guarantee a city conquest in a single turn if you already have adjacent borders to the city. Just double bomb the citadels until you you can set up siege units within range of that city, declare war, bombard five times and then just finish the 0hp city with a 4speed unit

the great Admiral indeed is useless, as it usually can't keep up with the faster naval units. It's a purely defensive support.
 
Quineloe said:
If you use two Great Generals, you can guarantee a city conquest in a single turn if you already have adjacent borders to the city. Just double bomb the citadels until you you can set up siege units within range of that city, declare war, bombard five times and then just finish the 0hp city with a 4speed unit
Click to expand...
The thing about Citadels is that their utility is so temporary. Once you conquer that city, your Citadels are basically wasted. And the fact that the main reason you used them was to steal land and not their defensive bonus also makes it less "authentic", if you know what I mean. It's like the game developers couldn't think of a way to make Citadels more useful militarily, so they added this steal land bonus which is not really related.

IMO, it would be more realistic and useful to have the GG's secondary ability to be providing free XP to your units. It makes sense that a Great General would have deep military experience that he could impart to his soldiers. And the XP would also stay useful as long as you keep those upgraded units alive.
 
Rohili said:
I find Great Generals to be the most useless Great Person* in the game.

Unlike other GPs where it is the more the merrier, I rarely have need for more than 1-2 GGs. Even if I am playing a warmongering game, my units are generally focused at one or two points in the enemy's defences, and I don't need more than 1-2 GGs to provide the 15% bonus to all my units.

I have yet to find a genuine military need for the GG's ability to built Citadels. Generally, when I am conquering cities, my borders keep getting pushed outwards, so a Citadel built where the front-line used to be will become obsolete very quickly. IMO, the real use of Citadels is to steal land containing resources you want - no doubt a powerful tool, but not a true military application (in fact, you only need it when you want to avoid having to declare war and capture that city). It feels wrong that the true benefit of the GG is non-military in nature.

So, is there some tactical use of the GG that I am missing? Should it be tweaked to become more useful? I think the Citadel power should be changed into something else - for example, maybe allow players to exchange a GG for a large amount of XP that can be applied to units of your choice (just like how you can exchange GS for beakers, GW for culture, GM for gold, etc).



*Note: I am not a heavy navy user and have never acquired a Great Admiral before. I can only imagine it is even less useful, since it is basically a naval version of the GG.
Click to expand...

Play on deity. Use admirals to explore.
 
Rohili said:
I have yet to find a genuine military need for the GG's ability to built Citadels.
Click to expand...

One use for citadels is to provoke another civ you want to conquer into declaring war: plopping a citadel right on their doorstep will often goad them into a DoW so that you don't have to, possibly avoiding the warmonger penalty.
 
I've been using citadels a fair bit more in BNW actually. Now that there's hefty diplomatic
penalties for counter-attacking and taking the AI's cities I'll try to get a city in the peace deal then use a citadel to steal some more of their resources as a bonus.

I've also always used multiple GGs when going for a domination win. Later on in the game the GPT gets so insane that you can field two or three armies to war against multiple civs, so the more the merrier. I'll still also burn them frequently, if one of my highly leveled soldiers is in danger of dying then burning a GG is a fantastic use of one in my eyes.
 
StrideColossus said:
One use for citadels is to provoke another civ you want to conquer into declaring war: plopping a citadel right on their doorstep will often goad them into a DoW so that you don't have to, possibly avoiding the warmonger penalty.
Click to expand...
I have done it before but the other civ refused to declare war on me, possibly because it saw the troops I had amassed on its border just waiting for an excuse to attack :lol:

But again, that is not really a military benefit but a diplomatic benefit.
 
Sometimes, although it may be hard for a mighty warmonger such as yourself (or you might play on fiendishly easy difficulty :lol:, i on't know) to imagine sometimes you may need to defend your civilization. Maybe its just me and my 'imperialistic' strategy (conquering but not for the purpose nor extent of domination victory, but for bigger empire for moar science :crazyeye:!) But I often find multiple front under assault and great genreals to spare. I find citadels extremely useful for keeping out that one hyper-aggressive neighbor (ahem... Monty) I'm never gonna conquer, so just have to endure cycle after cycle of 'my people require more living space, WAR!' - 10 turns fighting - 10 turns peace -back to the beginning.

In short, if you can't be bothered reading my arbitrary rant, I like citadels:lol:
 
One use for citadels is to provoke another civ you want to conquer into declaring war: plopping a citadel right on their doorstep will often goad them into a DoW so that you don't have to, possibly avoiding the warmonger penalty.
Click to expand...

I never had someone declare war on me yet when I did that. I trolled Alexander on his last city for fun once by taking his city from 7 workable tiles down to 4. He didn't declare, but that was obvious.

However, on my last domination game the last enemy remaining was Shaka, we already had warred twice and he still had 6 cities and a massive army. I double citadelled Ulundi so I could set up 5 Artillery within firing range and he did not DoW against that.

It's quite silly you can't let a worker run through their territory without that being grounds for war, but stealing tiles permanently somehow isn't automatic DoW.
 
SicklyAlbatross said:
I've been using citadels a fair bit more in BNW actually. Now that there's hefty diplomatic
penalties for counter-attacking and taking the AI's cities I'll try to get a city in the peace deal then use a citadel to steal some more of their resources as a bonus.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying Citadels are not useful, I'm saying that they are only useful for the land-stealing effect, which has little to do with warmongering (and is in fact used to avoid war), thereby betraying the nature and purpose of the GG.
I would like to see the GG more useful for genuine war-related purposes.

It's also very situational - those couple of extra land plots are really only useful when you have some resource near your border that you want. This is unlike the bonuses provided by other GPs - extra gold/science/culture/GAs is always beneficial.
 
It helps that the AI has no idea how to deal with Citadels

I've seen the AI swarm a single samurai fortified in a Citadel - with him not weakening, and them losing HP and up against that defensive penalty, the enemy lost a bunch of units

Economic powerhouses that have a lot of gold stockpiled can easily be goaded into poking a smaller army on some citadels and bleeding themselves dry, since the AI loves to cash-buy units to shore up its military, and the units used for this will get a ton of promotions, making them nice spear-heads for the offensive once you've exhausted the other guy. It's slower, but if you're a civ with GG production bonuses, you can use this to grind foes down without needing to invest as many hammers or as much gold into unit upkeep.
 
Also if you happen to be defending, citadels in my experience seem to really confuse the AI and can stop a very large invasion force with minimal defending units allowing the majority of your forces to counter
 
The statement that it is the most useless Great Person is a little bit exaggerated I think. I my opinion it's straight wrong :)
We can maybe argue about him being a truly military-related great person, but honestly - does the game say it anywhere? It's a great general, that doesn't have to strictly mean that he's good only for battles, does it?
His battle use is the strength bonus. That is good IMHO and it really helps. Of course, you don't need many great general for this, usually one or two.
His second use, the citadel, was useless in the earlier versions, because it's mostly pure luck if you manage to use the citadel in battle. But as now it expands borders, the great general suddently is one of the most usefull great persons! Being able to reach a resource or even to steal territory from somebody who is too close to you is so great. I think it was a good decision to move this ability from great artist to great general, that makes a little bit more sense.
 
Rohili said:
*Note: I am not a heavy navy user and have never acquired a Great Admiral before. I can only imagine it is even less useful, since it is basically a naval version of the GG.
Click to expand...

No, it's even less useful because it doesn't have the equivalent of the Citadel.

About Great Generals, it's true that sometimes you have more than you need. You don't need too many for combat and you don't always need citadels. I don't mind it that much, but it would be nice if they had an additional function that is always useful, even if weak.
 
The QC said:
No, it's even less useful because it doesn't have the equivalent of the Citadel.

About Great Generals, it's true that sometimes you have more than you need. You don't need too many for combat and you don't always need citadels. I don't mind it that much, but it would be nice if they had an additional function that is always useful, even if weak.
Click to expand...

I would say that you almost never need citadel (for the citadel). The usefull effect is the territory grab. But you probably meant it this way.
Maybe the additional use could be giving XPs to a unit sharing the tile with the general? That's how they worked in CivIV (and Civ:Colonisation) if I remember correctly.
Or course it would spend the great general on use.
 
TomKQT said:
I would say that you almost never need citadel (for the citadel). The usefull effect is the territory grab. But you probably meant it this way.
Maybe the additional use could be giving XPs to a unit sharing the tile with the general? That's how they worked in CivIV (and Civ:Colonisation) if I remember correctly.
Or course it would spend the great general on use.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea, although promotions are, I feel, more impactful in Civ V than before (March is an enormous benefit, so getting closer to that and some of the other powerful promotions faster is a huge boon)

Of course, a Great General is now going to affect fewer units with such an ability thanks to 1UPT, since I doubt it would affect more than his tile ring, so it may balance out in that regard.
 
Yes, I meant for the land grab. It can be absolutely brilliant sometimes, allowing you to steal a natural wonder from a CS or to gain an additional luxury... But sometimes you just don't need that.
 
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