Better use of Great Generals (BNW)

C

Carassius

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
63
I would like to know how other players use their Great Generals.

I am asking this because they seem (to me) to be the most useless great person. They seem to be on the wrong side of the world whenever war breaks out. They have a maintenance cost associated with keeping them - but I would rather have a fighting unit when the gold is in short supply. Building a fortress often produces little or no benefit (have been playing on archipelago lately).

Am I missing something?
 
Well if you war early enough and/or pick Honor as starting tree, you will have your first Great General by the time you're still kicking your first neighbor. Another use is forward scouting, this is particularly useful when your siege weapons need a spotter, but don't forget to pull him back to stack on a unit otherwise he'll just get killed.

With enough wars, you can have many generals. I usually use a few to grab a distant (unworkable) resource, sometimes even a lux from a bordering city state. Or make a conga line of citadels towards the AI which has the Great Wall built
 
I use GGs when i have cities faraway connected with a road that doesnt have any cultural borders sometimes too. Covering the roads with cultural borders can often prevent plundering by other unfriendly units or any other cultural borders that you dont want to do open borders with or city state borders that you have no alliances with.
 
In one of my last games the AIs placed 4 citadels near my borders and I had good relations with them.
You have to keep an eye on neighbours who finished the Honor tree and start spamming GGs.
I wonder if there are more options to destroy a citadel besides razing a nearby foreign city or making a different improvement on the tile after capturing an enemy city.
 
@ Tatran I think nothing short of war will get rid of the citadel. You don't need to raze the city - puppeting would be enough - assuming you can capture the offending city.

Any other way to get rid of nasty citadels?
 
Using him as a spotter -- this is exactly the sort of idea that I was looking for - thanks!
 
You can also use them to snag nearby citystate luxuries. It will piss them off though so dont do it if they're an ally.
 
johnny_rudeboy said:
I use the great generals to grab strategic resources like coal and uranium.
Click to expand...

This is super handy, particularly if you're going into Ideologies by bulbing into Industrialization and need coal and 3 Factories ASAP. The General is fantastic at getting coal as fast as possible if you don't luck out and get some on an already mined tile, or expanding territory to grab someone else's.

Also, I've craftily stolen a NW and a lux from a CS with a GG to create a juicy 4th city. I think I started a thread about that a little while ago. If early scouting I see this scenario (and see Lake Victoria or Solomon's mines, particularly), and a CS has it in their 2nd or 3rd ring, I will often worker-steal into flat-out war with a CS (usually closest non-Cultural one) to get a GG ASAP, and then go to work.

This was a fun example in a nice Diety Greece Game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356414396

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356414735

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356415238
 
Nick31 said:
This is super handy, particularly if you're going into Ideologies by bulbing into Industrialization and need coal and 3 Factories ASAP. The General is fantastic at getting coal as fast as possible if you don't luck out and get some on an already mined tile, or expanding territory to grab someone else's.

Also, I've craftily stolen a NW and a lux from a CS with a GG to create a juicy 4th city. I think I started a thread about that a little while ago. If early scouting I see this scenario (and see Lake Victoria or Solomon's mines, particularly), and a CS has it in their 2nd or 3rd ring, I will often worker-steal into flat-out war with a CS (usually closest non-Cultural one) to get a GG ASAP, and then go to work.

This was a fun example in a nice Diety Greece Game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356414396

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356414735

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356415238
Click to expand...

I wouldve put the citadel where the white city state artillery on the road between your cities is to keep the trade route if the cities were separated a lot farther. However, the way you put the citadel was fine.
 
As was said, using them to grab luxuries or strategic resources that are just outside of your borders is always a plus. Nothing worse than finally having a big deposit of Coal or Aluminum pop up just outside of your borders. March ol' Timur down there and have him snag it up for you.
 
I use them depending on the situation. Having them spawn on the other side of my empire was never a problem if i have roads. Usually i build fort in a strategic defending point and then put inside a ranged unit, there are few occasions i used it to steal some land and i keep it stacked with a unit when im trying to capture some hard city (lots of mountains/big army defending/great wall built) so i can get some more power if i cant sneak large army to there
 
I don't think Great Generals are useless at all and can be used for many different things. The most obvious one is the boost to your unit's stats when fighting and then there is the citadel improvement - trust me, this thing has saved my bacon plenty of times. When I have an aggressive neighbour whom I know will eventually DoW on me, I tend to build one or two citadels along my nearest border with them and station melee units in them - Behind these I would place a few ranged units for cover. As others have mentioned, you can use them to get to a resource you need but I also use them to provoke somebody that I want to fight by stealing their land!!!!
 
reddishrecue said:
I wouldve put the citadel where the white city state artillery on the road between your cities is to keep the trade route if the cities were separated a lot farther. However, the way you put the citadel was fine.
Click to expand...

That makes no sense at all. The whole point was to grab the cotton from the CS. Who cares about the road between you cities.
If you started war on CB, you'll have so many general that I can't even find a use for them. So just delete if there are too many. At some point, you wont get any additional lux or resources since you got all you need. It's much easier and better to use workers as spotters since you'll also get so many you wont know what to do with them. They also serve as bait so that the garrison will leave the city so that you can kill it.
 
Sclb said:
That makes no sense at all. The whole point was to grab the cotton from the CS. Who cares about the road between you cities.
If you started war on CB, you'll have so many general that I can't even find a use for them. So just delete if there are too many. At some point, you wont get any additional lux or resources since you got all you need. It's much easier and better to use workers as spotters since you'll also get so many you wont know what to do with them. They also serve as bait so that the garrison will leave the city so that you can kill it.
Click to expand...

It does make sense because youre keeping a trade route, sir. As for your citadel placements, theyre fine.
 
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