[Guide] The Art of War

I've watched a battle after todays update and I'm highly annoyed.
Despite having 5x to 10x more strength only 1 enemy unit, at normal stance, is killed every fight.
 
By the way, troops can definitely kill unopposed types. I heroic my mobile units, and they got slaughtered, though the animation didn't show from where. It's rare, especially if you have a huge lead, but the possibility exists.
 
The moving animation of the stack outline for attacking doesn't show if the attacking and defending stacks are on different pages of the same battle. The largest battlefields have 3 pages of slots.
 
When cards fight across pages of the battlefield, the shadow over the defender will still give you an idea what unit is attacking.

Also, I claimed earlier that units always attack units of the same type (melee/range/mobile/navy) whenever possible. I take back that claim. I have seen a couple times navy attack non-navy when there was still navy to attack. I have not yet (in over a hundred battle turns) seen any other unit type violate the rule, though. Maybe navy are special?
 
In all my battles I've NEVER seen units attack other type of units when one of more defender slots are filled with the same type.
If this would be possible than the whole combat system makes no sense at all.
But is already close to that, so it could be possible though.
 
No, in my case it was a mobile unit getting hit by a ranged unit. Kind of hurt too, because it was on heroic, assuming it wouldn't get hit..
 
Yes, and because it can have such dramatic effect on a battle, you have to at least try to consider it. I think it keeps you on your toes more than anything, such that even if you have a slight strength advantage, excrement (censor blocked that other word) could happen -- or you could just have double the units your opponent has and get a guaranteed win. :D

The problem is also in the later eras, my civ has a little tech edge (gunpowder vs no gunpowder) and with the auto upgrade, it does a few things with regards to our offensive viability:

  • Now they're all fogs, so no more diversifying away some weather risk by having a few different units.
  • Because of the auto-upgrade, the man at wars and such got changed into rifleman, which cost more.
  • This reduced our immediate attack, and affects our ability to make more.


Unless gunpowder units have bonuses against non-gunpowder units (which would make sense) and because we can't build the obsolete stuff, you can say our offense got a major downgrade.

This appears to be an issue with later techs too. Now instead of having an offensive unit and a defensive unit, we have both on one unit. While this is good on some level (saves production) it is poor for multiple wars, as you cannot attack and defend at the same time. We attack and get attacked quite a bit.

Also the offense per production is roughly the same with the newer techs, meaning you can either get a catapult at 5 attack for 125 hammers, or 8 attack artillery at 200 hammers. It's an upgrade on defense, but on offense it's at best a push despite the technology advances. It's actually a little worse because you can't lose fractional units, so if someone dings 1 catapult or 1 artillery, the latter is worse.

Yes, I hate mid-to-late game battle. :lol:

Edit: attached rage screenshot. I actually just used secret weapon in this picture, so imagine the melee of the rainy guys are double..
 

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The strength of military units shifts heavily towards an emphasis on defence and less variety from the time riflemen appear until around the time submarines and gunships appear.

  • all foot soldiers no matter attackers or defenders turn to riflemen
  • cannons change from an attack to a defence emphasis
  • all horse units turn into tanks which are a balanced type

I wonder if this is a deliberate design decision or just something the designers missed. Anyway my game never got to the point where submarines became widespread. I was trying to taunt my opponents into attacking me on chat to make use of the defence advantage, only to realise that I had the Great Wall and they can't.
 
Todays update has revived the last zero-unit stack nonsense, so the battle only ends when the meter has one colour. :(
 
Todays update has revived the last zero-unit stack nonsense, so the battle only ends when the meter has one colour. :(

Ah, I was defending against barbarians and thought maybe that was why.. at least it's much faster now..
 
I've encountered another fame whoring bastard.
And I helped him a day earlier.

As DM he retreated all my units from battle to be sure to get the promotion + military medal. :thumbsdown:
The guy was already the top player and I was no threat.

No wonder the real world has a crisis with these kind of abominations at top positions.
 
I've encountered another fame whoring bastard.
And I helped him a day earlier.

As DM he retreated all my units from battle to be sure to get the promotion + military medal. :thumbsdown:
The guy was already the top player and I was no threat.

No wonder the real world has a crisis with these kind of abominations at top positions.

When did you enter your troops? I was DM during a battle, and the battle was almost over - then towards the end, another person tried to dump their troops in to have the most forces.... after I had already spent the last hour commanding the war and almost winning the war. (I'm pretty sure the top guy position was already determined earlier in the war... but I wasn't sure.) There was no point to this persons troops other then to try to steal the top guy position away from me, so I removed their troops.

In other battles, they were there at the start of the battle... and I kept them in, I commanded the war, and they got the top position. Good for them. I just didn't like the idea of someone trying to get in as the battle is winding down to steal the top position.

The only other time I will remove someones elses troops as a DM is if I have a bigger stack to replace it with.

Myself - if I had my GOOD troops in at the start, and someone else removed them just so they could get the top position - I would call them out in the global chat so everyone knew what they did... and hopefully avoid playing with them. (Of course if the battle was almost over and you were just trying to steal the position yourself for no work done... then well, I agree with the DM)
 
if I had my GOOD troops in at the start, and someone else removed them just so they could get the top position
That's what happened!
The last thing I saw when my troops were still slotted, they earned a medal.
So, despite enough open slots and simply filling them with his own units,
the top player wanted to be 100% sure to get the medal + promotion and removed my troops.
 
Yeah, we've got one of these asshats in our team at the moment. He joined the game late, and every single one of the things he has suggested for our civ has resulted in him getting the most possible fame. I have gone from #2 to #7 since he started being in our team, because I am always the lucky one who is asked to do the thing that costs the most resources and gets the least fame.

PM me if you want to play in a team.
 
Didn't you leave another civ already for that same problem? Maybe you're attracting people like that.

Warning! No one play with Glinda! You'll end up having to play with the asshats that she attracts.
 
I'm just the only one calling people out on it. You're hilarious, Creepy.
 
I'm just the only one calling people out on it. You're hilarious, Creepy.

But seriously, folks, it's an issue with the game, and it's clear from 2KGreg's posts today that the official line is "yeah, it's not really a team game, you are competing with your civ members". This raises an interesting gameplay question for me. If everyone plays the "I'll help my team, but only if it maximizes my personal fame gain", does that move the game forward, or are there situations in which you end up preventing your civ from getting an era victory, because you are not in an optimal position to get fame points at that time?

I've said, and I will continue to say, I am not interested in playing with people who play like that. I'd love to be in a game with a team of famewhores vs a team of team players, and see who comes out on top.
 
And if that's the official line, it's stupid. It is fun as a team game. As an individual game, it sucks.
 
I don't understand the battle screen still. We as defenders had 1492, the attacks had 1936 when the battle started. Attacker went first, put us below 1936. We've only attacked once since then and they've just been slowly beating on us.

It's 10 attacks to our 1 attack. So my army 95% of their army (101% at the start) just gets slaughtered and I don't get to cause damages to them?
 
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