Hoplite underrated?

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buck mulligan

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Jun 4, 2014
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I recently played a deity game and was able to clear my continent (celts, assyria, venice) using mostly hoplites and going honor (opener > warrior code > discipline) to get 15% production of melee and 30% combat bonus (incl great general). Later I supported them with a few chariot archers. I ended up winning a diplo victory since Ethiopia on the other continent was a huge tech runaway. The hoplites are pretty powerful in the early game and just a few can take a city in 2-3 turns.
 
The issue with early military units, including the hoplite is that in BNW and on standard maps early war just isn't that attractive in most cases. The AI has little tendency to DoW you in the early game in particular so it is easy to play it peaceful and focus on building your empire/cities for a easy steamroll effect to get you caught up, including prolific use of caravans and the new warmonger penalty system really is designed to favour later game warfare rather than early game warfare.

In simple terms they tend to be strong but are useful at what tends to be a non-opportune time.
 
The problem I have with Hoplites is that they are a Melee unit and thus take damage from every fight. Sure, they are powerful, but they can easily be dealt with by a few Composite Bowmen (and a City on a Hill with a Composite Bowman inside should be almost impossible to take with just Hoplites, because after attacking the city, the Hoplite should be low enough on health so that city bombardment and the Composite Bow should be able to kill them on the next turn). Even if you are able to take cities with them, you will then have to wait until they heal to move onto the next target, which you generally don't have to do with ranged units as you can often avoid damage altogether.

Don't get me wrong, they can be powerful, but regular Composite Bows are more powerful when used properly in my opinion.

Also, they are a unit that gets outdated relatively quickly (AIs on Deity get Pikemen fairly quickly, and then your Hoplites won't be so great anymore).
 
What were cities defense ? On Deity, caps used to reach 22-25 before T75 and have armies. So, I wonder how you can clear a continents with only melee units.
 
The other problem with Hoplites (IMO) is that an important tech (Civil Service) moots them, and you don't want to delay Civil Service. Compare that to the Legion, which can come early if you beeline Iron Working, and becomes obsolete after Steel, which is nice but doesn't mind shuffling back a bit if you like.
 
I realize early war is not always the most desirable but they are strong if you are doing that approach. Hoplites are extremely cheap for their power (56:c5production: for 13 :strength:) compared to the pikeman for example (90:c5production: for 16 :strength:). The hoplites can crush any ranged unit until xbows quite effectively.

I did this to see if melee was as bad as everyone seems to think for taking cities. Using just ranged and one or two melee to take cities was getting boring so I wanted to try something new. I will try to do it again next time I have a chance to play and take some screenshots. I may have better results using something besides honor.
 
Very situational. It requires the right neighbours and terrain and what if the plan fails? Economy is now most likely in a terrible state. The risk reward for this kind of play is usually not that great on deity. As others have mentioned the diplomatic repercussions is also much more severe unless you ignore capitals and take cities through capitualtion deals but that requires a lot of time spent grinding down enemy troops and devastating the land you want to conquer while taking continous damage from city attacks. You also have to take the capitals sooner or later if you're going domination.

If you compare hoplites to immortals or pictish warriors both of the latter can be stronger at rushing and have very useful promotions that carry over for later era warfare. The strength issue can be debated for immortals since they unlike the pictish warrior need a golden age to reach an effective strength of 13.2 but healing at double rate more than makes up for a 12 to 13 power disparity regardless.
 
good job making it work ..

If I build any at all is for barb squashing / CS quests ... Alexander's units can heal in any CS territory so this makes hoplites excellent barb hunters that never need to return to base for repairs...
 
I like how hoplites time right. Barb hunt on behalf of CS's, and pretty soon your 4 CS neighbors are forever your pals.
 
For extra cheese on your Hoplite, declare war on an early CS and take a pounding each turn from the city defenses until 1AD or so.
 
clearing a contient on deity with only hoplites seems incredible, would love to see some screenshots
 
I believe the game is balanced so if you can coincide the Honor tree with your UU, then you can win domination.
 
Nothing wrong with several hoplites accompanied by a few ICBM's as support units.
 
klaskeren said:
clearing a contient on deity with only hoplites seems incredible, would love to see some screenshots
Click to expand...

Maybe he has a mining lux, went straight to bronze working and start pumping out those hoplites like no tomorrow.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
 
Would rather have Immortals. Especially post-civil service :). Actually I'd rather have pictish warriors as well.

From a purely aesthetic view though, both hoplites and immortals are some of the best looking units in the game imo.
 
Pictish warriors are better than immortals, I think. The foreign lands bonus is better than extra attack and movement in a GA, free pillaging is better than double rate healing and the faith per kill is gravy.
 
anthropophage said:
Pictish warriors are better than immortals, I think. The foreign lands bonus is better than extra attack and movement in a GA, free pillaging is better than double rate healing and the faith per kill is gravy.
Click to expand...

Doing an honor/piety/holy warrior domination game with Celts right now. Knocked down two caps so far with 5 picts and a scout archer. What makes Celts so good is you don't need pottery and you can beeline bronze working and start pumping out those Picts and start farming barbs.
 
anthropophage said:
Pictish warriors are better than immortals, I think. The foreign lands bonus is better than extra attack and movement in a GA, free pillaging is better than double rate healing and the faith per kill is gravy.
Click to expand...

I'd rather have the movement than foreign lands bonus, and the healing over pillage(you can only pillage once per tile without an army of workers, and for spears, many tiles are not improved, and you can't pillage your own tiles).
The faith is moderated by the lack of bonus versus mounted. Also don't forget the extra CS of the immortal.
I think the immortal outstrips the PW when they become pikes and get march, while the PW switches back the faith for the mounted bonus.

However, the point is I like both more than the hoplite.
 
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