Need help with Promotions

phizuol

Warlord
Joined
Apr 2, 2002
Messages
165
Location
Florida
Promoting my units has always been a rather weak point of mine. It seems there is a grand strategy with no "right" answers on how to promote your troops, but I feel like I'm missing out on that level of thought by assigning promotions rather haphazardly and having no real idea of which exact unit I am sending into battle. In FFH getting experience for your units seems much more important, what with some unit types only available via experience. Therefor I've decided to ask for some help to see if I can correct this weakness! Any advice is appreciated.

Ok, so I know that promotions are good and I try to use/abuse the civics and buildings that give me more xp on new units. Beyond this my strategy is pretty weak. Lately I just do Drill for archers and Combat (+ Mobility if available) for melee. It always seems like my Shock troops end up fighting horses or archers, etc; so I've begun to avoid those specific promotions due to my inability to leverage them.

On top of that I don't know what to do with my experienced units. Save them in the capital for some mysterious upgrading purpose? Keep them at the front lines to make use of their superior power?

Then is the topic of upgrading. I very often operate on the green side of the coin, so I usually have a good amount of spare cash over time. However those amounts feel like nothing at all once a new tech comes out and I can upgrade my units... it costs a lot of gold and even with careful spending I never have enough to modernize my forces all at once. How do you decide which units to upgrade and which to rebuild? Or should I not rebuild at all and just drop the sliders for a few turns to afford the upgrades? I'm sure there are many answers, but this is always a big dilemma for me.
 
I might not be an expert but I can back my choices with arguments.

First of all, I do not promote all my units asap. Promoting a unit also heals it, so with a unit at full health I only promote *after* I attack. This is not a hard rule of course.

To me, the point of having a Stack of Doom is to have enough units to soak up counterattacks without losing hitting power. If my stack gets attacked, I want the defensive units to take the hits rather than my offensive units. Therefore, I try to specialize my promotions rather than generalize.
  • Offensive city taking units get City Raider because CR doesn't increase the unit's :strength:, so that it is less likely to defend the stack. Also, the AI likes to use archer types to garrison its cities so going Combat I and then Cover is a safe bet. If I'm depending on Catapults / Cannons to deal with city walls, there's no point in taking Mobility. If I've got a legion of fireball-slinging mages to bring down the walls, having Mobility on all my units in the stack is useful.
  • Offensive mobile types (cavalry) usually are up against melee, so Shock is a common promotion.
  • Stack defenders go for the Combat line and Shock or Formation depending on what I'm up against. They typically don't see enough combat to get much more than that.
  • Heroes go with Combat III to get March, which lowers their downtime and allows them to skill up much quicker. After that they get Mobility if they don't have Movement 2, and if it's not a spell caster they go with the Drill line to get Blitz. Spell casters are another story altogether...
I don't need multiple units with the same buff spells (another reason not to generalize): Bless, Morale, Dance of Blades, etc. Some spells are worth taking in bulk though: Fireballs and summon *. In one stack, I only need one unit with Sentry (which I try to keep out of fights).

About upgrading:
I rarely do it because I feel that heroes aside, a dozen fresh high tier units will beat a few veteran units (if the cost is the same). I also have less qualms about losing new units in combat.
 
Combat for melee is good. For archers, i go 50/50 on drill and combat (or city protection if available). For melee, march is very nice.
Do keep them at the front lines, but make sure you're guarding them at all times. Expecially on the field (maybe less so when taking cities) you'll almost always have 90% odds or higher on your experienced units. Thanks to march, they'll heal back quickly, but directly after the attack, they'll be vulnerable to counterattack.
Remember: they may be experienced, but usually, they're far from empire-crushing monsters at that time. Make sure they grab easy exp whenever possible. Your goal (for melee anyway) should be combat 5 + drill 4 + march. For the other types, it's the same but without march. Also: for undead, canabalise is a killer.
Early game, shock is still very valuable, as hardly anyone is at tier 2 yet. Once that happens though (with hunters, archers and horsemen) you can usually forego shock for combat and drill.

About upgrading: only upgrade your very experienced units (say, 15-20+ exp), rebuild the rest. Your lower tier low-exp units can serve either garrison or cannon flodder.
 
I send archers and mounted units up the Drill line for either Blitz or the defensive strike promotions. Melee usually go up the Combat line. In the early game, I take the Shock promotion ASAP since my opponents are likely to only have melee units. Later I go down the Combat line exclusively, then diverge into Drill. Heroes generally go up the combat line as well, either to grab Heroic Strength or Twincast. The exception is mounded and raged heroes, which go down Drill.
 
I usually try to give every unit Mobility, although not always first. I tend to go Drill first on faster units (mostly Mounted, but Duin more than anyone.), so as to get Blitz sooner. Melee units get mostly Combat promotions. Archers usually get Shock, Melee usually get Cover. (In FF Archers focus more on Drill so they can get promotions that boost their ranged attack.) Some melee get City Raiders, and always go on to get CR III as it provides a Melee bonus instead of just a city attack bonus. Before any upgrades that change unitcombats I tend to try to get promotions that the unit could not get after upgrading. CR III Paladins are nice.
 
Great tips, guys. I definitely appreciate it. Last night I tried out the new patch and for the first time I was using a civ besides the easy-teching Lanun. Barbs were everywhere and I had to rely on the humble warrior to drive them back. I used many of these tips and the alt key for success percentages (which I rarely ever used in the past) to get a few powered up units to really put the hurt on.

Unfortunately my tech path needs work so I still haven't started a game I'd want to play till the end, but I was happy that I could put this stuff to the test right away.
 
I've got a question myself. Currently playing as Ljosalfar / Monarch, I thought I'd get around the no catapult restriction by getting the Hill Giants for their city bombardment ability. The first promotion I got for them was Mobility, but how should I develop them further? I'm thinking Combat 3 for March. I like March.
 
that depends on how far in your game you are. Early game, the hill giants' str. 7 is enough to keep warriors and barbs at bay, so march, then drill would make sense. Later on, as other civs get hunters, you need every bit of str. to stay alive, so focus on combat 5.
 
I'm running around with Swordelves, Horsemen (Horseelves?) and Gilden (with Orthus's Axe, yay) while my friendly neighbours have Paramanders and Vampires. My not-so friendly neighbours have mostly javelineers, axedorfs and Soldiers of Kilmorph. They're pushovers so far but my main concern is when my friendly neighbours turn on me.

I stuck the giants in a stack of 15 or so units, but I'd rather not have them defend the stack when attacked - I'd rather keep them out of combat if at all possible? At the moment I'm training a corps of fireball mages to take care of city walls, but that will take time. This means that in the mean time I should indeed try to keep the giants alive.
 
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