How to win The American Way

citizenalex

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
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81
Location
Montreal
Having played steadily (read: addicted) for a year or so now, I have come to appreciate the Hidden Nationality trait for its ability to remove the one major obstacle everyone faces...

XP being the biggest edge any unit can have is more XP...and you need war with actual rival nations in order to build up your XP to serious levels - but war implies all sorts of disadvantages like your land getting trampled on and pillaged and maybe a city or two up in flames, and lest we forget war weariness and your production queues clogged up for the war effort...

But not so with Hidden Nationality! Build up a shadow army composed of the three stooges or a few war elephants and maybe a nightwatch and some bears for good measure. Once you have Esus your army should have a solid core of recon XP farmers that can cast mask and go wreak havok!

The earlier you start this strategy the more effective it is. Your secretly sponsored terror tactics will go unnoticed by your people and rival nations...You can even spice things up between civs and send your HN troops on the border of two warring nations and turn the tides of battle by pre-weakening one or the other.

A few caveats: Although HN units can be stacked over one another, they cannot be managed as one. Don't let this stop you from attacking civs in a stack, as with a normal army.

Because HN can't go on board national ships, you can only use privateers to tow them from one island to another. Having a few Privateers with the cargo space promo will speed up your ferrying, at least until you get some Obsidian Gates.

Finally, it's easy to forget your HN's are still vulnerable to attacks once garrissoned in your city. Some civs may have signed Open Borders with you and will attack the city if it has an HN - to no effect on the city or diplomacy, but your HN's should always be kept in the same, well defended pile when on idle (which should be very rare)
 
Yeah, you touched on one big annoyance - moving the stack. It just takes forever on a huge map to move the different HN units around.

Also, you somehow need a HN medic in there somewhere as damaged HN units take an ungodly long time to heal. And, I don't think you could ever take/raze a city with those HN units.

Some nice, nasty ideas there, though.
 
Courage can substitute for Medics. With the axing of better healing on higher combat, Spirit I has become even more powerful / crucial than before (I found the healing part far more important than protection against fear anyways for civs starting with spirit mana. An aspect oft overlooked... Especially if combined with march. :)).

Nothing hinders you to bring along your Medics when you have open borders with terrorized civs as well.

And neatest of all. Those 2 things stack (sadly courage can't be used on all units. I believe the Stooges are possibly exempt. Not totally sure here though.). Which shouldn't leave much more than one turn to have them heal.

And that HN-Units can empty cities without capturing can actually be used to your advantage when you run CoE and want to spring on a hapless "ally" :evil: :backstab: :D. Or even more vile when you want to expose him to overrun from an AI you sent on his heels by bribing it into a war with your target. :D
Thats possibly the one reason Nightwatches / Shadowriders are really needed for instead of Assasins. Emptying cities with a reasonable chance. (easiest to do for raider-civs on border cities while having Nox-Nocturnis built. They'll never see what hit them... :D)

Mind that all three of those restrictions (no city capture, no grouping and not transport mixing) are all blocks to prevent some of the most serious issues to stability or mechanics (bad hangups / oos and misplacing AI units or leeching cities without war which the AI would never have a chance to handle...)
so don't hold your breath that those "issues" are actually being fixed. Rather be glad the team found the issues and fixed them...
 
Courage can substitute for Medics. With the axing of better healing on higher combat, Spirit I has become even more powerful / crucial than before (I found the healing part far more important than protection against fear anyways for civs starting with spirit mana. An aspect oft overlooked... Especially if combined with march. :)).

Nothing hinders you to bring along your Medics when you have open borders with terrorized civs as well.

And neatest of all. Those 2 things stack (sadly courage can't be used on all units. I believe the Stooges are possibly exempt. Not totally sure here though.). Which shouldn't leave much more than one turn to have them heal.

And that HN-Units can empty cities without capturing can actually be used to your advantage when you run CoE and want to spring on a hapless "ally" :evil: :backstab: :D. Or even more vile when you want to expose him to overrun from an AI you sent on his heels by bribing it into a war with your target. :D
Thats possibly the one reason Nightwatches / Shadowriders are really needed for instead of Assasins. Emptying cities with a reasonable chance. (easiest to do for raider-civs on border cities while having Nox-Nocturnis built. They'll never see what hit them... :D)

Mind that all three of those restrictions (no city capture, no grouping and not transport mixing) are all blocks to prevent some of the most serious issues to stability or mechanics (bad hangups / oos and misplacing AI units or leeching cities without war which the AI would never have a chance to handle...)
so don't hold your breath that those "issues" are actually being fixed. Rather be glad the team found the issues and fixed them...

Sadly, the Stooges cannot get Courage. Same as werewolves. They can get March, however, and that helps. I agree, though, if you have open borders, you should bring a Priest or even a Disciple unit along to help shorten the long healing times, especially in non-friendly territory.

BTW, one long-standing problem has been when you are using your HN units against civs with the Barbarian trait like Charadon and The Clan. Have you been able to see the Combat Odds when you attack them?
 
And, I don't think you could ever take/raze a city with those HN units.

Ya can't.... but I love stationing a Shadow near a new city.... and slaughter each and every defender built in or brought to the city.

Massive XP farming.... plus that city can do NOTHING but produce defenders for you to eat!

Eventually... a barb may come along and take the city for me.... then it's free for me to capture.... especially since an empty city can be captured by an unpromoted barb goblin! Easy pickens!! :scan:
 
Recently tried managing a barb overrun with a pre-weakening of my "ally". Or...How to conquer your friend and still be friends...let your HN units empty the city prior to a goblin or orc unit coming to attack. In some instances, conquest can be done simply by waiting a turn...the AI barb units seem set on "Raid Everything" so they leave the newly captured city completely ungarrisonned the turn after.

After that, I really felt bad for my Lurchiup neighbours. I left their capital untouched for furture farming...big cities tend to produce more meat...
 
If you have the ability to cast Mask you should be able to safely declare nationaility to heal in peace before going rogue again.

More HN fun:

If between two other civs, open borders with both and try to get the two declare war on each other. Lot's of free xp will march right through your own lands which makes healing much quicker. This is even better with Nox Notis (or however the Esus shrine is spelled) since they'll never even know what hit them and won't get a chance to counter attack.
 
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