Struggling with the HA rush on Deity, I got a few questions

DrCron

DrCron

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Dec 25, 2012
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What the title says. On Immortal I can kick ass with the HA rush but I'm struggling to get it right on Deity.

I'm playing Kublai now (never won with him, and seems appropriate for this) and I'm getting roughly 10 HAs around 600 BC, which seems very slow. It's barely enough to take one city, then I never have enough left to get the enemy's capital. If I wait more turns the AI will get longbows (around 200 BC) so it looks like I just need more HAs by 600 BC (or earlier). I play on normal speed.

Questions:

1) Should I build the 3rd city or is it better to go with only 2? I'm talking Pangea map standard size, so there's pretty much never enough room for a 4th one, and depending on the food situation the 3rd city might be far from great.

2) I'm regenerating the map going for as much forest as possible, to chop HAs and get them faster. Is this ok or better to go for wet corn and/or gold as in any other game?

3) Tech order (Kublai starts with hunting + the wheel) is usually: Agr - AH - Mining - Writing - BW - HBR - Alpha (a few turns to trade it for HBR). Then Math if I couldn't trade for it and then Currency. Should I self-tech Pottery before writing? I tried a few time because it looks like I have nothing to build in my cities between BW and HBR but it doesn't seem to work. Also, what about bulbing math instead of building an academy? It gets me a few turns if the AI won't trade math, but not having an academy seems to ruin my tech rate afterwards (Kublai is not philosophical so the 2nd GS takes forever).

4) Should I always get the ger (stable) before building HAs? I'm doing it at the time.


Those are the questions I have for now. Are there enough Deity players who play HA rush active at the time to take a look at a game if I upload one?
 
DrCron said:
What the title says. On Immortal I can kick ass with the HA rush but I'm struggling to get it right on Deity.

I'm playing Kublai now (never won with him, and seems appropriate for this) and I'm getting roughly 10 HAs around 600 BC, which seems very slow. It's barely enough to take one city, then I never have enough left to get the enemy's capital. If I wait more turns the AI will get longbows (around 200 BC) so it looks like I just need more HAs by 600 BC (or earlier). I play on normal speed.

Questions:

1) Should I build the 3rd city or is it better to go with only 2? I'm talking Pangea map standard size, so there's pretty much never enough room for a 4th one, and depending on the food situation the 3rd city might be far from great.

Well, I often have 4 cities for T80 with 12HAs. You might need to micro better. Three should not cripple your HA rush date in any way. You might get HBR couple of turns later with 4 cities, but you also get more cities to whip/chop so in the end you end up being faster.

2) I'm regenerating the map going for as much forest as possible, to chop HAs and get them faster. Is this ok or better to go for wet corn and/or gold as in any other game?

Gold is better for early rush, I'd say. You don't need too much food for 2 pop whip and you get higher happy cap with gold. With gold, I am almost certain rush would work.

3) Tech order (Kublai starts with hunting + the wheel) is usually: Agr - AH - Mining - Writing - BW - HBR - Alpha (a few turns to trade it for HBR). Then Math if I couldn't trade for it and then Currency. Should I self-tech Pottery before writing? I tried a few time because it looks like I have nothing to build in my cities between BW and HBR but it doesn't seem to work. Also, what about bulbing math instead of building an academy? It gets me a few turns if the AI won't trade math, but not having an academy seems to ruin my tech rate afterwards (Kublai is not philosophical so the 2nd GS takes forever).

Build order is situational, depends on your bpt. If you are poor, you only want minimum tech for HA rush to be early enough to work. If you have gold start, you can afford more. Maths bulb is superior to the Academy (if you have forests to chop). Often I don't get any great person before/during HA rush but rather generate one after the war. It is actually quite good as I use it for GA for something like 14 cities, and generate 2 additional GPeople. I've seen everything work.

4) Should I always get the ger (stable) before building HAs? I'm doing it at the time.

You should almost never get the stable if city is not super mega productive and even then I will chop stables after initial breach.

Those are the questions I have for now. Are there enough Deity players who play HA rush active at the time to take a look at a game if I upload one?
Click to expand...

I'll try to find some time or even shadow your game. There should be enough time until Monday.
Remember to scout your targets as soon as possible. If you see many hill cities, you would do better waiting for Construction. Most important thing is to really commit to what you want to do. So, if you need to work 1:food:2:commerce: tile to make rush work, do it.
 
oh boy i'm probably not qualified to reply to this topic, but 2 cities would be good and you wanna invade before 1000BC.

With that being said, i don't think i can handle deity for very long time
 
I usually look, could my 3rd city still contribute well towards my rush.
It's a mix between comparing settler cost, and how many Keshiks / HAs could i expect from there :)

With Kublai, building a library and using 2 scientists works well (but you knew that), so your Cap might not have resources for another settler. Workers also needed for chopping.

After the library, barracks are good and depending on food also maybe growing a bit more.
On mines, or pop for whipping. So has to be a pretty nice spot for a 3rd city.

Bulbing maths is imo good if you expect tough fighting, easier to get more Keshiks.

Gers are imo worth it, in your good Keshik prod cities.
Well the few you have ;)
If there's plenty forests around, would be wasteful to not invest 60h into better units.

But if cities are late and barely can get barracks or ~3 Keshiks before you start, i would say skip the Ger here. Mix of 7xp and 3xp units also works, important part is that you have some that can win at worse odds when attacking cities. And some that can reach 5xp as support.

Pottery for granaries and cottages, yep can be worth it.
I look if my 2 cities could benefit well from a granary (happy res? food?), and if cottages can be used (river?).
Surely helps getting some early, cos the game goes on after rushing.

I think you would get plenty shadow games :)
Been some time that we last saw Keshiks in action.
 
Thanks everyone. Looking at shakabrade's answer it looks like my micro needs some work. Also, I guess one ger in the capital is all I really need then (it's usually the only one with really good prod so early).

I'll try to upload my game this weekend to see how it goes. Another question:

- My build order is usually worker - warrior till pop 3 (some times I get pop 3 before finishing the warrior, but still get it because the initial scout tends to die early) - settler. And then I'm never sure whether to go for 2nd settler immediately, getting a worker, maybe another warrior? Also, how about chariots? Sometimes it looks like I have time to get a couple before HBR (since I start with the wheel) but they cost maintenance, so I'm not sure. Sometimes one is needed for dealing with barbs though.
 
Aside from micromanagement, decisions on if/where to settle, tech path:

Attacking at the right moment can make a big difference. If you can take out a settler being escorted the turn you declare war you can chop so much faster and avoid losing any attackers to take a city too new to really help as anything but a place to heal quickly.

If the AI has metal you want to have at least 2 units positioned to pillage it as quickly as possible. One unit if it can move onto the metal and pillage the turn you declare, which would be very lucky. 2+ otherwise because you have to assume a spearman will attack you on the way. This is a good use of Chariots if you expect it to be a suicide mission. If you have units to spare (which you generally won't, but it happens) a 3 unit stack can get the metal pillaged, absorb a spearman attack, and kill the wounded spearman. Saves you losing as many as 3 HAs attacking that same spear in a city.

Tactics become pretty important on Deity because of the number of units you face, and the time pressure of removing their access to metal and not getting stopped by LBs. It's no longer just about smashing the correct number of HAs into each city along the way. You'll want to skip the most heavily defended cities at first if there are other targets you can hit. If you get slowed down too much the whole rush can fall apart, you need to be able to take cities at a certain rate or the Deity AI will just out-produce you. Bypassing cities can also cause the AI to move defenders around so you can take them out in the open or at least not have to face their full 5-turn fortification bonus.
 
MegaLurker said:
If the AI has metal you want to have at least 2 units positioned to pillage it as quickly as possible. One unit if it can move onto the metal and pillage the turn you declare, which would be very lucky. 2+ otherwise because you have to assume a spearman will attack you on the way. This is a good use of Chariots if you expect it to be a suicide mission. If you have units to spare (which you generally won't, but it happens) a 3 unit stack can get the metal pillaged, absorb a spearman attack, and kill the wounded spearman. Saves you losing as many as 3 HAs attacking that same spear in a city.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I tried this a few times but found that it isn't always possible. If the metal is well within the enemy territory I sometimes need too many turns. Also, the AI will usually have IW by the time I can attack, and if they have 2 metal resources it's very unlikely I can smash both of them immediately. But anyway, I am checking this for those occasions in which I can destroy their metal when I start the war.
 
Ok, I have a map that looks appropriate for an HA rush. Not great (no gold or wet corn) but acceptable because there's a good amount of forest to chop. In case you want to help me with it, this is the starting position:



So lots of food and lots of forest around the capital. I played until 1720 BC to make sure the game was acceptable for an HA rush. Here's the situation:

Spoiler :



Boudica took my southern horses with her 2nd city, so I had to settle Beshbalik to the north. I just settled Turfan 2 turns ago, and it will get that corn in a couple of turns, that's why my worker is heading that way (remember Kublai is CRE). Karakorum just got the library and is getting the first GS, who will probably be used to bulb math. It looks like I'll have production issues in the long run, since there aren't many hills (hopefully the Celtic land will fix that, and/or I'll have metal on a tile with no hill).

My tech path was Agri - AH - Mining - Wri - HBR

The target is clearly Boudica. Not only she's right next to me, but the only other neighbor is Mansa and I want to trade techs with him for as long as I can, obviously. AGG target means promoted spearmen, so I guess finding her metal is a bigger priority now. Well, at least she's not PRO.

I'm guessing I'll leave that western barb city alone. It'll have 4 archers and I don't want to waste time producing 8 chariots to take it. I lost my first scout and a warrior to barbs very soon. Now I'll sign open borders with my neighbors and send my chariot to explore the map (especially the Celtic land).

Karakorum might produce another chariot after the worker, Beshbalik might get another worker after the library. I'm not sure what will Turfan do after the barracks (maybe a library?).


I attached both save files. Any tips from experienced Deity players will be much appreciated! :)
 

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@ Cron:
Spoiler :
I suppose Mining is a useless tech on this start. Worker turns should have been used to road between your cities and road toward your neighbours (instead of desert mine and FP farm) Lose some :hammers:, earn some :science: instead. Get to HBR and Math quicker.
Later on with Math in the bag you would be able to trade for mining / bronze / pottery...
 
This map is horrible for HA rush. :D

No commerce, therefore you must all-in before you even know what you are facing, and then you have decent unit spammer with hill city in your face and Guerilla 2 Archers, Also Boudica has 3-4 metal resources and decent start. On the other side there is Mansa with Skirmishers.

However, I just tried reaching 10 Keshiks. I attacked Boudica at T84 with 10 Keshiks and 2 Chariots. I took her second city, my economy is non-existent and Boudica bribed Mansa against me. Anyway, I would never HA rush on a map without commerce. I would grow patiently until Catas as you can still get 4-5 cities on this map and do have riverside for cottages to make an economy.

To get T84 attack date, I settled my second city on riverside wine and worked on wine (to get +1:commerce: from trade route to the capital +1:commerce: for settling on wine and +2:commerce: for working the wines (I farmed wine). Any other second city would drown your economy too much for HA rush. Third city was Northern horses.

I also went for Oracle and got it luckily around 1300BC. Even with that luck it was awful. Anyway, I rarely all-in with HAs, I use them when I know they will work. Like when you have Washington as a neighbour and such. And when you have enough commerce to have some economy to also get Writing. When you have Writing, you can always recover.
 
Yeah, just not enough commerce here with so many techs needed. You can't do much here without BW. Even if you try to delay it you will need it eventually to chop and whip Keshiks. I would try to clear the forests here for some cottages and go for Construction or something like Shakabrade suggested.

If you really insist on trying a HA rush here, your best bet might be Ag > AH > Writing and then build creative libraries in the capitol and a city settled to the west to share some of the food resources. Creative libraries are only 45H so you can probably build them without whipping or chopping. With 2 of them you can work 4 scientists to pick up Mining > BW > HBR. I doubt you would get a very good HA date though.

Edit: Settling 2nd city on the wines to the east looks pretty legit too. Nice idea Shaka.
 
Yup pottery and wine cottages i guess?
Or maybe farms, but there's some commerce ;)
Also 1 fp for a cottage, i think i would try pottery after Agri already. Or maybe after AH.
 
I played this quickly, though it's obvious as soon as you see your neighbours and the surrounding land that an HA rush isn't appropriate.

I actually got some luck leading up to it that made it more promising. Strangely enough Boudica built the Oracle, the GLighthouse, and the ToA. Fewer units than normal with a lot more to gain.

Found her Iron, had some chariots in place to take it out...then Churchill's culture steals it before I attack :crazyeye: Her bronze is on the other side of my territory, so I close borders and only one insignificant city has access. I declare around 1000BC with 7 or 8 Keshiks and 3 chariots, ready to take the capital which was only a few turns earlier garrisoned by a couple archers and chariots. Suddenly spear. Spears everywhere. Boudica has ANOTHER source of Iron that didn't get mined until I stopped checking.

Because of the lack of commerce I actually decided to skip Pottery to go straight for writing, even before BW. Super quick library, being creative, then running 2 scientists gets through BW and HBR the fastest, I think. Also opened up the option to bulb Math well before attacking. Not a strategy I'd normally use because I wouldn't go for an HA rush with this little commerce, normally. Sure gets it done, though.
 
I played a little ways in. I tried the early Writing/Library strat, but used Shaka's 2nd city idea. It's still not a good HA rush map, but i was fairly pleased with the early economy. I think i got up to 50 BPT at the end.

I went Ag > AH > Writing > Mining > BW > Pottery > HBR. You could certainly make a good argument for skipping Pottery all together, but i wanted the option of building granaries and cottages. I think Pottery was 5T at the time. I was going back and forth on Math or Academy with the GS, but Mansa started to tech Math so i was pretty confident i could build the Academy and trade for Math later which did indeed work out.

As for the rush.. things have worked out better than expected so far. I got some really nice trades (Archery, IW, Alpha, Math), and i didn't get burned for trading HBR to Boudica when she had 3 ivory tiles that i didn't know about. I though letting her build HAs would be a good idea, but phants certainly would've been a disaster. I pillaged her iron and her NW copper was cut off due to roads running through my culture. After turn 2 of the war she could only build metal units in 1 or 2 small cities up there that i wasn't too concerned about. Never saw a single phant, fortunately.

Her units were spread really thin everywhere due to expansion so i only faced 3 units in her 2nd city and capitol. I've captured those two and the iron city so far. She has one more city to the east that's completely cut off and then 4 more i think to the west. I'd probably be happy taking peace for some techs as my research sucks right now. Need to get some cottages down to recover soon.
 
Oh crap, I really didn't think about the commerce, being so foccused about close non-protective neighbors and having horses and forest to chop. This is the problem of trying to play a very specific type of game, I end up regenerating the map so much that in the end I settle for one that always has something missing.

This was still helpful though, thanks everyone, I might give a map another go with a different strategy, though I'm not sure. After my economy sucked (obviously) I opened the world builder and...

Spoiler :

Zara has a ridiculous amount of land for himself in the east. Hammy is too far and probably will get attacked by Monty, so Ethiopia is bound to become an unstoppable giant. I struggle to deal with Zara on a normal game, this one would almost certainly be too much.
 
You shouldn't worry as much about PRO as the overall leader traits and tendencies. Skirmishers are tougher to deal with than PRO archers. Boudica is a unit spammer that can start with triple promoted swords/axes and guerilla II archers. There are several PRO leaders that i would rather attack than those two.
 
Well on Deity you just face a higher % of metal units than on lower difficulties - even Immortal. PRO archers are annoying, but they aren't really a threat to counter you and pick off your wounded units. They aren't harder to kill than spears, particularly AGG spears which are likely to be double promoted.

Yeah Churchill isn't very scary. Neither are Saladin or Wang. The worst thing about Wang is that he expands slowly so he doesn't spread his units out as thin as some other leaders.
 
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