Amurites: Defending against ships

Hi All,

I'm about mid-way through a very warlike game playing the Amurites. Starting settings were Big and Small, normal size, standard speed, with ~4-5 extra civs (a total of 12, I find one or two always get trounced early by the barbs and I try to balance that by making the world crowded). Of the 5 civs on my continent that survived the barbs, I was sandwiched between Clan Embers and the Doviello. Needless to say, the first ~150 turns was constant war with these two until I finally prevailed. After that, I had a big army and firebows (took bowyers from an Iron object event so got them very early) so I decided to go ahead and take out Cassiel and Beeri Brawl as well to consolidate my continent.

So only about 5 turns after I finish off Beeri, the other continent declares war on me. I mean, the _entire_ continent ! Over there, the Malakim have managed to vassalize the Elohim, Losfjar, and Hippus as well as build the Mercurian gate. They've got a tech lead on me and have created lots of heroes (Baron Duin, etc..), and I've got ~8 wizards around 50 xp with lots of open promotions available (and a big variety of mana nodes), a poopload of Fire2/Mobility Firebows and about 30 cities. My continent extends from the north to south poles, with ice blocking any possible passage, meaning I have to defend two long, separate coastlines.

Now I am trying to come up with strategies to defend against an intercontinental invasion. I know there is one recent thread that says it will never come, but I'm still interested in ideas for making use of my unique Amurite units.

My basic plan is to set up picket lines of ships to provide early warning, and spacing stacks of wizard+mobility firebows between cities for a shifting land defense. My real question is what sort of pain can I inflict on an incoming fleet? I don't think I can spam enough navy to actually take out stack defenders (currently researching astro, but my opponents have had it for a while) so I am hoping to see if I can magic a fleet to down until my frigates have decent odds. Two possibilities are waterwalking+fireball or waterwalking+maelstrom for some collateral damage from my wizards. Any thoughts on which may work better? Also, can you cast spells from ships? Specifically, can I load ships with firebows and have them launch fireballs? (maybe a fun little worldbuilder project for someone to test).

Any other fun ideas out there for naval action?

thanks!

truth is, the AI doesn't know naval warfare that well. So, considering the malakim was a human player:

Arcane barges. Fireball casting ships can really supplement your naval forces.
Why waterwalking? May seem nice, but will almost always be slower than units loaded on ships. With maelstrom, you've also got fair winds, further supplementing your naval mobility.
I don't know what religion you're using, but i'd recommend OO. Makes coastal warfare (both offence and defence) a lot easier.

Most importantly: the best defence is a good offence. When you allow the malakim to attack you, you've got the entire coastline to protect, while they can concentrate their forces on the location(s) of attack. If you go on the offensive, it's the other way around. The Malakim will have to shift his/her attention to defending your naval attack, while you've got a concentrated force on a location of your chosing. AI faults ignored for now, no single human player will willingly let you gain a foothold on his/her continent, they'll shift forces to REACT to your moves, giving you the innitiative, and thus the upper hand.

yes, invest in getting OO priests for their epic spell tsunami. In its recent nerf, was its average damage redicedd or its cap? i dont rememebr. Maelstrom/Tsunami (maelstrom then tsunami if they have more units than you) -> Fireball -> stygians/firebows attack (stygians have waterwalking which contains the amphibious promotion, so they can attack out of ships w/o penalty)

Demus said:

truth is, the AI doesn't know naval warfare that well. So, considering the malakim was a human player:

Arcane barges. Fireball casting ships can really supplement your naval forces.
Why waterwalking? May seem nice, but will almost always be slower than units loaded on ships. With maelstrom, you've also got fair winds, further supplementing your naval mobility.
I don't know what religion you're using, but i'd recommend OO. Makes coastal warfare (both offence and defence) a lot easier.

Most importantly: the best defence is a good offence. When you allow the malakim to attack you, you've got the entire coastline to protect, while they can concentrate their forces on the location(s) of attack. If you go on the offensive, it's the other way around. The Malakim will have to shift his/her attention to defending your naval attack, while you've got a concentrated force on a location of your chosing. AI faults ignored for now, no single human player will willingly let you gain a foothold on his/her continent, they'll shift forces to REACT to your moves, giving you the innitiative, and thus the upper hand.

Click to expand...

Yes, once I finish teching Astronomy I can build arcane barges, but I was hoping to come up with ideas to work with what I have. That's why I was thinking waterwalking or finding out if I can cast a fireball from onboard a ship.

As for OO, that's a great suggestion. I haven't messed with religion much, but it seems like a perfect fit. Right now I am founder/follower of RoK, but seeing as I fireballed Bambur into oblivion recently, maybe it is time for a change.

Yes, units can throw fireballs from onboard ships. Once you get Arcane Barges with skeleton crews, you can load multiple mages/firebows onto each AB and rule the waves with fireballs.

Also, do not unterestimate the need for reconnecanse. Floating eyes should be sent each turn to see which way the enemy is coming from(Air elementals are also quite effective and also pose a threat to the enemy, but you don't have any Archmages yet)
without endagering your ships.(And, more importand the troops you have loaded on them).

Mix percentage AoE damage spells with Fireballs.
Maelstrom/Tsunami's to weaken enemy ship stacks before using fireballs for the finish (or maybe attack manually using your ships when they are weakened).
With recon (takes some micro though using floating eyes) you don't really need to have to tech all the way to Astro for the high-end ships since you should easily have stacks of Fireball casting mages/firebows/priests using Govannon.
Fireballs can be pretty weak against higher tiered ships due to their high strength, so you'd need percentage damage spells like Maelstrom to damage the stack first. Tsunami has one of the lowest damage caps for AoE spells (ie you can lower their str very low with enough Cultists), and your fireballing units would make short work of the remainder.

No need for Arcane barges, just use any random cargo ship and load up your mages etc

Thanks for the advice everyone. I've played things out over the weekend and thought I would post the results of what I tried, what worked, and what did not.

Arcane barges: Turned out not to be worth the time. More expensive than galleons (250H vs 150 I think), lower cargo capacity, and lower movement rate. I found that combined with effective recon, high move rate was very important at setting up an ambush of the incoming fleet. So skeleton crew galleons filled with Firebows was the way to go.

Waterwalking mages: Were also too slow to be effective against big stacks (mobility for 2 moves, hasted for 3 just to keep up with barges). I found they could run along the roads faster to reach the predicted contact point of a fleet, and then walk out a few tiles into the water and throw from there. What was more helpful was spell extention 2, to give fireballs that could move 4 tiles instead of 2. That range made them effective coastal defenders.

Man o' Wars: The first fleet that showed up was Malakim Man o' Wars and Queen of the lines against my frigates/galleons/fireballs. The sheer volume of fireballs I was able to throw made up for the high frequency of failing to damage the top stack defender. But after the first 2-3 fireballs, pretty much every ship in the stack was partially damaged and from there on were more suceptible to fireballs. Even so, a seriously wounded Man o' War was still a challenge for my frigates (like 50% odds), so I took some casualties there. But I managed to not lose any galleons with there firebow crews, which I thought was more important. By the time the next fleet arrived (and the next, and the next...) I had upgraded to MoW's myself and things were looking better.

Mobility and ambush: I think the thing that really saved me was the AI's use of QotL instead of galleons. Most fleets came trundling along at 3 moves/turn, with the faster MoW's slowing down to the pace of the Queens. If he had used galleons so that his whole fleet moved at 5/turn I may have seen more landings. As it was, in all the waves he only landed one chariot and one horse archer (from a lone galleon).
For the first wave of attack, I had a picket line of privateers for early warning, but found it was not quite early enough. I reorganized to use floating eyes, which have proved to be effective by miserable in terms of micromanagement, having to send out 8/turn to keep watch on the two coasts. But with that much sight range, I could just leave my whole fleet near the equator and still have time to intercept any incoming ships. My ambush strategy was simply count tiles to know how far the enemy fleet could move, place my ships 2 tiles farther away, and let them sail into a storm of fireballs. I have to say I cheered out loud when Baron von Duin was sent to Davy Jones' locker!

OO was FIADL soon after the original post, so never had a chance to try tsunami. Maelstrom had to wait for Archmages, which I have now but have been reluctant to risk on the high seas when the cheap firebows seem to have the situation under control.

I'm about half finished with the Tower of Mastery and it's looking like it will just be a grind of 50 more turns of floating eyes and fireballs until it's done. I'm seriously contemplating an intercontinental invasion just to break the monotony.

Thanks again for the advice!
Luciver

LuCiver said:

[...]

So only about 5 turns after I finish off Beeri, the other continent declares war on me. I mean, the _entire_ continent ! Over there, the Malakim have managed to vassalize the Elohim, Losfjar, and Hippus as well as build the Mercurian gate. They've got a tech lead on me and have created lots of heroes (Baron Duin, etc..), and I've got ~8 wizards around 50 xp with lots of open promotions available (and a big variety of mana nodes), a poopload of Fire2/Mobility Firebows and about 30 cities. My continent extends from the north to south poles, with ice blocking any possible passage, meaning I have to defend two long, separate coastlines.

[...]

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That's. So. Awesome!

Maelstrom's Air II iirc.
Only need mages (which you should have boatloads of)

heisenberg said:

Maelstrom's Air II iirc.
Only need mages (which you should have boatloads of)

Click to expand...

Was that pun intended?

heisenberg said:

Maelstrom's Air II iirc.
Only need mages (which you should have boatloads of)

Click to expand...

Or, y'know, research Arcane Lore, build Govannon, and teach your Firebows Maelstrom

Corlis said:

Or, y'know, research Arcane Lore, build Govannon, and teach your Firebows Maelstrom

Click to expand...

Govannon can only teach lvl 1 spells. But I guess I could see if they can use exp to advance to Air2 after he teaches them Air1. Does teaching 1st level spells like that unlock access to higher levels in non-arcane units?

Yes. Level 1 spells only have but all the other sphere promotions have