A treatise on the advantages of proactive defending, or "why archers suck".

Last game I played I researched archery. What's so special avout it? I did it after mithril working. Crazy, right? Wrong.

What's the thing you hope to see the most when attacking the enemy's territory? All his archers spread between his cities allowing you to soften them up with mages and siege and take them one by one. And if you lose? Those CD3 archers still ain't good for nothing other than garrison. The solution - proactive defending with melee. The idea is very simple. You want a single stack of units to get to the invading force and attack it. The AI will always give his axemen combat and CR, never mobility. Even with a small city, you have 3 turns to react to an enemy stack before attack. That means your stack has to be 17 tiles away at engineering, 11 before that. That's plenty of room, you basically need one big stack per government center. How to build the stack? First promotion is mobility 1, then combat and shock. After engineering you can postpone mob 1 to 3rd promo, if you can be 8 tiles away from any city. If the AI has CR promos he's toast. If he got combat 3 you still have 50% with just level 3 troops, and you can add some horsemen with withdrawal promotion to soften him up. Mix in adepts/priests if you feel like it. The method is easy to execute, what people don't understand are the advantages:

1. By attacking and not defending, you chooose the terms. Your adepts get the fireballs off, your units do the collateral damage, etc.

1 -> 2. All the enemy's catapults, fire mages, air mages and medic priests that you're so afraid of are worth jack.

3. As well as all the CR and Drill promos everybody (especially the AI) likes so much.

4. Even before engineering, an 11 tile radius (4 move per turn on roads * 3 turns - 1 tile to attack) is at least 5-6 cities. What's cheaper, 3-4 archers each (20 archers) or 10 axemen? Both in the short run (production) and in the long (upkeep). You can lose two out of three units in active defense and it will still be worth it cash-wise. Plus, those that survive will be xp monsters.

4 - advanced. Now let's do the math for a slightly large empire. Let's say 10 cities with some culture. All you need is a couple of hawks to have at least 4 turns warning for any invasion attempt. That's a 15 tile reaction radius (23 with engineering), for an area of around 400-800 tiles ((15+15)^2=900). At 20 tiles per fat cross, that means you easily cover any city. If you don't believe the math, load a game and count the squares. Most people will keep at least 5-6 archers in every city plus the beakers for walls + palisade. A conservative estimate of 3 cities with 3 archers (inland), 7 cities with 5 archers and walls (border) means 44 archers + 7 walls = 3480 hammers + 44 upkeep. Now let's do it my way: 10 warriors to avoid the unhappiness = 250 hammers. That leaves 3230 hammers for the big stack. You think 54 axemen/horsemen/hunters can't do a better job than 5 archers?

5. Attacking gives more xp, so your stack will just grow stronger. It's easier to get your troops to combat 3 shock 2 (+140%) than CD3 (+100%) for your archers, since attacking at 50% odds gives 5-7 xp and defending at 99% gives 1.

6. Let's say you beat off an attack with archers. Now you have some CD3 guys who are stuck in one city and are good for nothing else. Now let's say you did it with melee. Get the next combat promo and you're on your way for a killer counter-attack with a huge promoted stack before the enemy knows what hit him.

7. Pyre zombies? Diseased corpses? Just keep your stack two tiles away and they're worthless.

8. You're going for the metal line anyway, right? Why waste a single beaker on archery, not to mention bowyers?

9. Let your recon units join the party! A hunter with shock 1 (4+60% = 6.4) beats a bronzed axemen with combat 1 and a bunch of CRs. A ranger with shock 2 (7+140% = 16.8) beats an iron champion with combat 5 even (6+2+100%=16), and no one has anti recon promos.

10. The AI took a city with archers? He just got stronger for the next one on all the crazy xp. Often once the first city falls the others soon follow. Took a city because you didn't react in time? Your melee troops will take it right back, or at least make sure it's the only one.

11. Hate how your archers have to sit behind their walls and watch a lousy unpromoted axemen pillage that village? Me too.

12. You built those 30 axemen with mobility and no one is attacking? You don't need me to tell you what your next move is.

13. What's the weakness? Commando promos are rare, but you can just avoid building roads towards your borders or pillage them in time. Mobility promos for raiders? Even rarer, and the AI will usually have the entire stack move at catapult pace, which is 1 tile per turn with no way to get commando. Archers defending the stack? It just means your opponent wasted hammers, plus if not on a hill they're quite useless. Really, only the Hippus can beat you, and they do OK against archers as well with the bonus horses get against archers.

Proactive defending was my basic strategy in all games unless I had Tasunke as a neighbor, and it never failed. The moment I started keeping a single warrior in every city was the moment I jumped from playing monarch-emperor to deity. In a game that values high xp troops, transition from defense to offense and preparadeness for anything, nothing else makes any sense.

P.S.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, I expect some lovely debates.

I posted this already in the hints thread on the main board, but it really belongs here.

What's the best defense against proactive defense? A tough stack guarder with defensive strikes.

A few drill archers are a good part of an offensive force.

And even if you don't like the archer unit, archery is still a high priority tech, since lumbermills let you have a hill-less production city. A lumbermilled plains forest is as good as a grassland mine.

I think you will find very few people who will advocate for archers, even with the defensive strike upgrades.

In general 'not losing' isn't the same as 'winning' in almost all cases. A philosophy of attack > defense will generally end up giving you a stronger, more experiences military that is more capable of a variety of strategies. The only exception is in defending a true stack of doom that you can't attack or defend against.

Even when I do end up with Archers, I still promote them with combat promotions most of the time. If I'm going to take them with me on a raid or so, it's better to have them able to attack as well as defend.

The real problem in general is that an archer on defense is only better than an equivalent melee unit in a minority of the times.

Hmm, now I think about it, the real problem is that they are relegated to city defense instead of general defense. I wonder if archers were defense 6, but without city defense +25%, if they would be more generally useful.

A few drill archers are a good part of an offensive force.

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Yes, but how many? Unless on a forested hill, an archer will easily be downed by 2 axemen/horsemen. You need at least half of the conquering stack to consist of archers to stand up to PADing stack. With the catapults you need to bring along that doesn't leave you hammers for the axemen that do the actual conquering. A stack with 50% archers, 25% catapults and medics, 25% axemen is immune to PAD, but isn't conquering much of anything either.

Without siege, even a bronze warrior in a city with 40%-60% culture defense, 25% fortify and a 25% bonus is 8 strength, versus a strength 5 axeman. You can rush at least 2 or 3 warriors in a city with 4 turns forewarning. If you have guild of the 9, you can just buy an exponentially growing number of mercs for defense, and with any civic like arete you can buy a warrior per turn even in a city with no production.

A stack with 50% archers, 25% catapults and medics, 25% axemen is immune to PAD, but isn't conquering much of anything either.

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Throw Chalid/ritualists/cultists/firegolems into that stack and see how little they conquer.

Units like that are the focal point of my offensive wars, and their main drawback is roaming stacks using roads to harass them before they can be hit with a spell. Archers and guardsmen are thus what I send them off with. Why do I give a damn if those units can't fight healthy defenders? That's not what they're going to be facing.

I need a few traditional CR melee units to handle those pesky longbowmen who don't take the damage cap from spells. Once the enemy stack is down to champions, rangers, assassins, siege and the like, all with 25% HP, well, drill longbowmen work just fine as attackers. Sometimes I'm using archers and they're using archers, axemen, and hunters instead, but little changes here.

I reiterate: If you don't buy any of that it's still ******ed to pass up lumbermills.

What happens to active defense when 2-3 stacks are closing in on different cities? What if they have more than 2-3 stacks? If you're relying on a few large stacks to defend a larger number of cities, you are going to run into real problems when the opponent starts fielding massive stacks and/or multiple stacks and/or multiple opponents fielding massive stacks. On the other hand, a small number of units fortified on a hill city combined with a few assassins for those pesky catapults can hold out against an army many times their size. The problem with active defense is that you forfeit the inherent city defense bonuses that can be very, very large depending on location/buildings/culture.

Edit: One more interesting fact: I find that the AI dislikes attacking cities defended by archers. From my experience, given a city with 3 archers and a comparably situated city with 10 axemen, the AI will prefer the 10 axeman city as opposed to the 3 archer city.

quick question, do mounted units (horsemen) still get +20% or +40% natural bonus vs archers ?

or was this removed ?
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the problem with the debate of metal vs archery:

first of all, most people who discuss this are familiar with the metal units (axemen) having lots of exp/promotions since they actively try to get the metal units (axemen) experience/promotions.

rarely do people actively try to get their archery units with exp/promotions

so their/this discussion is mute.

yes, it IS slightly harder to get the archery units exp/promotions, but at worst it only takes 2-3 archers to get the first few wins (one or 2 archers dies and the last one gets the win and exp/promotions) compared to an axemen. so there's no excuss, archery units can have just as much exp/promotions as axemen. it's jut that people jsut don't do it. than foolishly come and think that metal line rules and the archery line is awful.

*actually, i forgot about barbs, which is how warriors/axemen get exp/promotions too. how do u start getting exp/promotion for warriors/axemen? first u kill barbarian goblins. than when u have combat 1 and shock 1/forest 1 (forgot the name of the forest bonus promotion), u can kill other barbarian warriors easy. this exact same method works JUST as well for archery units. archery units have no problem with goblins. than they get exp/promotions (combat 1, shock 1, forest 1, or drill 1) and they can deal with barb warriors. than a few more fights/exp/promotions and they should be able to handle axeman. so why does hardly anyone use archers ? people just don't....

the ljosalfar archery units get +1 str, making them completely on par with the metal line. and tehy also get the gildan hero too with archery tech...*grins*

before we can compare a metal line force vs an archery line first, we must have them both having the same exp/promotions. of course a few axemen with CR 3/drill 3, cover 2, combat 5 will beat archers in a city with CG 1 or archers in the field with only combat 1. but what if u actually seeked and gained exp/promotions for your archers and now your archers have combat 5, shock 2, drill 3 now which force is better? how about a few archers in the city with CG3, combat 5, shock 2 ?

okay okay, metal gets an advantage from copper (iron, mithril), well archers CAN get enchanted/flaming arrows promotion (though i think it is a lvl 2=mage spell where chanted blade for melee is a lvl 1=adapt spell). though u can also get rust spell too (not sure if it's lvl 1 or 2 spell). also the archers can use other spells as well for advantages jsut like axemen getting copper or enchanted blade.

seriously though:

axemen=4 str
archers=4 att, 5 def or 3 att 5 def (i can't remember if they ahve 3 or 4 att)

so there's really NO difference from archers and axemen. even if the archers have 3 att str, 1 str difference in FFH2 doesn't mean much because of the strong promotional bonuses. usually it's the promotions that make the difference not the str of units if they are within a few points.

Throw Chalid/ritualists/cultists/firegolems into that stack and see how little they conquer.

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Sure, but the strength of all those units is the mass damage. Chalid will burn those archers off the walls as well just as easily. By attacking, you have a chance to fight the spell casters before they can cast. Again, 5 archers in every city is better than 5 axemen, but you should easily have superior numbers in your PAD stack from all those hammers you saved (the guys attacking you wasted their hammers on some archers as well).

hegemonkhan, archers have 3 attack, and so are quite useless in that regard. Only Ljosalfar have 4 attack archers, and they're the only civ geared towards archers anyway (Gilden etc.) An archer with combat 3, shock 1 (17 xp) is the same strength (6) as a bronze axemen with just combat 1 (2 xp) and that's an archer specifically designed to beat axemen. I'm not saying you should never build archers, and you can still get them some promos by attacking goblins and orcs if you're so inclined. Axemen are just superior and easier to level up.

Longbowmen are more on par with champions, but they both come much later. If you don't fight anyone until tier 3 my strategy isn't as useful, but if you do most of your champions will be upgraded from high level axemen, while the longbowmen will be low-level whether upgraded or built. You can check the XP gain based on combat odds and attacking vs. defending.

I'm not talking about fighting AGAINST those spellcasters, I'm talking about using them myself.

Great discussion, and great ideas and points on both sides. This discussion illustrates what a great game FfH is. I've always been a believer in a toned-down version of "proactive defending", as Civ is definitely a game that rewards the person who seizes the initiative. But I am going to try a game down the archer path as described by hegemonkhan.

I'm a big believer in combined arms, however. Put a couple archers in your invading axeman stack and you might find yourself surprised as those two archers save your hump when you get the whole enemy army assaulting you on a barren hilltop. I know I had just such an experience in my recent game. I took a bunch of casualties but averted disaster due to "Archer 5", who started the battle with no experience and ended it at level 4.

I'm not talking about fighting AGAINST those spellcasters, I'm talking about using them myself.

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Ahh, why not a mithril golem or two then? Just kidding, I know what you mean. Anyway, my strategy concerns mainly the early game (tier 2) when most of the battles are catapults and axemen vs. archers and priestlings. Going into tier 3 and up (mages, priests, heroes etc) most strategies become civ-specific both on offense and defense, and can depend for example whether you have fire mana or iron, not to mention religion.

As for me, I don't like waiting 400 turns to pick a fight. Last game I declared war on turn 7 just to block a sheaim scout from walking through my tile into a goody hut. The hut popped me exploration, and I was pretty happy with my choice. When Tebryn showed up with 10 pyre zombies at my door on turn 180, I was ready with 20 bronze-shock warriors. Actually, this already has me writing the next chapter in the series, on the strategy of declaring early war on someone (stealing his worker on turn 10 for example), waiting 200 turns, PADing, and then counter-attacking him to dust. If I beat Tebryn this would make me 3 out of 3 with this strat, and you'll get to hear all about it.

Anyway, my strategy concerns mainly the early game (tier 2) when most of the battles are catapults and axemen vs. archers and priestlings. Going into tier 3 and up (mages, priests, heroes etc) most strategies become civ-specific both on offense and defense, and can depend for example whether you have fire mana or iron, not to mention religion.

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During that part of the game, if you're playing deity, yeah, all your fighting will be defense and skirmishing, so archers kind of blow. Once you start attacking on that level (and by this I mean actively seeking to take cities and maybe completely wipe a civ), archers/longbowmen are a good part of invasion forces for most civs, because powerful spellcasters are the key to any such successful invasions and guarding them well is more important than traditional brute offensive strength.

Archers don't have a place on empire defense, but they do have a place. Kind of weird, that.

As for me, I don't like waiting 400 turns to pick a fight.

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Assuming normal speed, if it takes you 400 turns to tech to say religious law on any setting, well, I don't even know what to say to that. 200 is much closer to the truth. Priesthood + message from the deep comes even quicker. Much more sane, isn't it?

As for the rest... what if you get dogpiled after starting your early war? I almost always get declared on before turn 100 on any level. It even happened to me on settler. Like hell I'm going to take the risk of being at war with 2 immortal or deity AIs instead of 1 while I still only have traditional civ4 style troops to protect myself.

I have a tactic against PAD. When attacking, just send a couple of horsemen to pillage the roads near your invasion point. PAD will fail horribly, especially if the attacking stack has a couple of fireball mages with them. But, since the AI is not using this stuff, PAD is a good tactic against the, currently weak, AI, while the Archers are a good static defence. PAD combined with a couple of archers in the cities are a good combination IMO.

I don't think most of this is anything new or special at all - it's not even unique to FfH but has been around since the very beginning of civIV and collateral damage... For how you should defend your empire, of course it is better to attack the AI's stack than to sit and try to defend your cities one at a time; I would hope this is obvious to everyone.

As for archers, I agree they don't have as much of a role for the human as the AI, who tends to spam them. It seems that forts don't (or no longer, but I don't know if they ever did) act as cities so even garrisoning at chokepoints them isn't as useful. However, the elves of course make excellent use of archers - if the enemy has city raider promos these are useless against your high strength archers in the forests. Also, by the later game I'd think crossbowmen and their replacements are very important for stack composition. Basic archers don't benefit from copper/iron but the higher tier ones do.

Finally, to the OP I would caution to still be very, very wary against civs with commando units (and in MP I of course humans will take mobility and the like, but the AI aren't so smart). It's not just Hippus - I really hate Decius, of whatever civ, because of this, - in fact in one game of my Decius (of Calabim) got a ton of flanking promos and had nigh-unkillable horses for a while...Simply put, if you're also not taking the battle to your enemy you can get pillaged/harassed or worse very easily

PAD combined with a couple of archers in the cities are a good combination IMO

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Actually I don't believe that's your best bet. If your enemy survives your PAD stack with sizeable numbers, they will just upgrade from the XP and take your lightly defended cities. Unless you got assassins, the units he will hav eleft in his stack are those axemen with nothing but CR promotions and of course all the mages and catapults. The way I see it, your PAD should either completely wipe the stack or just sit behind walls.

archers/longbowmen are a good part of invasion forces for most civs, because powerful spellcasters are the key to any such successful invasions and guarding them well is more important than traditional brute offensive strength.

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Right, but you don't need those longbowman to be promoted, just to soak up some heavy damage. You can always build them later on in the game when your axemen have been around for a long while gaining XP.

Yashkaf said:

Actually I don't believe that's your best bet. If your enemy survives your PAD stack with sizeable numbers, they will just upgrade from the XP and take your lightly defended cities. Unless you got assassins, the units he will hav eleft in his stack are those axemen with nothing but CR promotions and of course all the mages and catapults. The way I see it, your PAD should either completely wipe the stack or just sit behind walls.

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Well, if my enemy survives my PAD in sizeable numbers, then, propably, I have a lost game .
I should revise my strategy so far, become comfortable with the thought that current city is lost, and review my diplomacy options

In my experience, any strategy taken to extremes has an easy counter that makes it fail in a big way. Garrisoning your cities with a single warrior is a big invitation to lose multiple cities in a single turn to commando marauders. Who cares if you fight back the invaders eventually? If you've lost 4 giant cities for multiple turns, you are losing the war.

I find it's better to provide just enough of a garrison to discourage the quick strikes, in addition to having a mobile force that can actively defend where I need them. One archer with CG 1 is a much, much bigger deterrent than one bronze warrior with Combat 1, and it doesn't take much more production. The archer has a good chance to fight off the commando horse archer, the warrior does not. Sure, you have to research archery and build an archery range, but you were going to get archery anyway for the lumbermills, and an archery range is a wise investment for offensive stack defense, as well as for city defense.

Anyway, I agree that you don't want to invest too heavily in garrisoning your cities, but I think some moderation is generally a better strategy than all-or-nothing.

Right. You need a garrison so you don't get caught with your pants around your ankles, but wars are won by armies fighting armies.

The end.

I would like to hear about how the PAD handles coastal cities. Do you just resign yourself to losing your sweet coastal city when the AI fleet sneaks up on you?

I would like to hear about how the PAD handles coastal cities. Do you just resign yourself to losing your sweet coastal city when the AI fleet sneaks up on you?

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I think the answer is obvious: if they have enough time to build 10 galleons, you have enough time to build the frigates to sink 'em.

I should revise my strategy so far, become comfortable with the thought that current city is lost, and review my diplomacy options

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I just had a bunch of pyre zombies walk all over my PAD stack. I had time to build 5 more warriors before they reached my city. Instead, I popped a settler, ran him to a horrible location near the Sheaim, and gifted the new city to Tebryn for peace 1 turn before he wiped me out. Ain't it fun that computers are still dumber than us?

Errr... Actually, the AI is notorious for suddenly back-stabbing you with a massive fleet that somehow seems to materialize from nowhere. After that massive first wave, however, AI does nothing so therefore, your frigates are next to useless except for perhaps sinking one or two stray ships and if a war gets long enough, which I doubt, another little stack. So building ships seems a little pointless to me except for troop transport and their escorts