FfHotM 2pre-game discussion with screenshot

Hey all. I think we have time for one more game before the Firaxis patch, and it's October almost, so we can have a new game of the month.

Game settings:
Civilization: Hippus--Leader: Rhoanna; Traits: Financial, Organized
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Monarch (I can post other difficulty levels if anyone wants)
Map: Pangea (some modifications)
Map size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Water level: normal
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: normal
Options: default
Victory Conditions: All enabled except time


Most of the above are open to debate. I have a map in mind and played most of the way through. I don't think it needs agressive ai, I had war declared on me 3 times. But we can try it.

I picked Hippus because I think they're probably underused, but have a unique strategy for fighting--lots of high withdrawl units.





Starting position is a good place to settle, but if you like more defense, the forrested hill also gives access to cattle...

Okay, year one save is attached. Enjoy.

View attachment gotm2.Civ4SavedGame

(I think the spirit of the game of the month is everyone playing the same version, but if you would rather increase the difficulty or even play the same map from a different point of view, here's a worldbuilder save you can unzip and put in your custom maps folder.)
View attachment gotm2.zip

I'm game. I was going to wait for FfH2:BtS, but really want to play before then.

go go go!

post the save im eager to start playing a game as im currently unoccupied (halo 3 didnt arrive yet )

This is fine, but does it have to be the Hippus? I mean the last one was a neutral game, and I'd much prefer to play as either good or evil.

But hey, I'll play nonetheless.

Leaning toward moving the settler nw 2. I'll lose the river and oasis, but I'll also lose the desert modifier, and pick-up fish, cow and the tower. I just don't like the looks of that volcano down there

Neutral is good because I let my enemies decide which alignment I switch to. Rarely will I stay neutral.

Game attached in first post! You can post comments in this thread if you use spoiler tags as appropriate.

This will be a fast game.
Hopefully i can play this month, it'll be a very busy month for me. but i should get a couple of days near the end of the month. it shouldent take too long with Rhoanna, nice fast start and cary it through to the end.

Rhoanna on a parganda. Naturally early warfare is the way.

Tec path will probably be something along the lines:
Animal husbandry,
Horseback riding (horseman rush)
Ancient chants
Education (switch to city states due to my newly enlarged empire)
Writing (great sage for accadamy or elementalism)
Trade (trade for fishing, mining, mysticism, exploration etc, trade before declaring war on AI2 or 3 with chariots)
Knowledge of the eather
Elementalism
Bronze working (stronger chariots)
Smealting (stronger chariots)
Alteration
sorcery (mobility+haste+SE2 for fireball mages to keep up with rapidly moving horse army)
Archery
Stirrups
War horses
Armoured cavalry or Domesticate elephants

I should have victory in sight by then so the rest doesn’t matter. maybe i'll turn off research and just let Magnadline recruit lots of mercenary for final cleanup.

Hopefully early warfare with strong mounted units will mean that I can attack cities despite their cultural defenses. I’m reluctant to make a detour in the tec tree to get catapults or adepts, as catapults and adepts are too slow for my horses, and even adepts with mobility will take a long time to level up to mages, and then I should be well on the way to victory.

I'm actually considering totally skipping magic, I think chariots with iron weapons, CR3, and mobility will be quite effective if I get them early, probably even overpowering cultural defences. later on i whink war elephants would be able to attack cities despite the cultural defences. so i probably wouldent bother waiting for slow mages to keep up with the attack force.

i'm actually contemplating totally skipping the magic branch, or construction, allowing me to get war chariots sooner. with iron weapons and CR3 i don't think i'd need catapults or mages. who cares about +60% cultural defence when i have +100% city attack.

Yes at first glance 2NW looks promising, however fishing isn’t in my immediate tec path. And it doesn’t have much in the way of production, I’m not going to be able to use the forested hill for a while. I would prefer more production in my cities if playing rhoanna as I’d be going for early military action.

The mountain sheep in the NE look interesting, good early production. I am considering wasting a turn to check the area out, possibly going next to the lake 4E,3N. otherwise this’ll probably be the location of city2. 2SE could be a possible city3 location, however the silk won’t be useful till the forest can be cleared, and it’s fairly low production as you’d build a pasture on the sheep hill.

scout to burrow, south eastern hut, then eastern hut, warrior to tower then on from there depending on what is seen. i'll probably start building a couple of warriors to find all my targets for a early strike, hopefully also a worker steal.

I’ll wait with the revolution to agriculture till after producing the first warrior, so having the least impact, as during that time my warrior will be on his way to finding a worker to steal.

i'll let the others found religions, build wonders etc, and then my horse army will take their holy cities.

Probably 2 or 3 cities will be my limit at the start before going into war mode. Then it’s all about moving my horses as fast as possible to take the continent. Let the AI invest in hammers for my future cities.

This is a good chance to try out the ride of the nine kings wonder. It can give you Flanking 3 mounted units right out of the gate.

Nikis-Knight said:

This is a good chance to try out the ride of the nine kings wonder. It can give you Flanking 3 mounted units right out of the gate.

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I’m not a big fan of flanking, as it is most useful if your unit has a high possibility of losing a battle. And I like to promote my units, so like having a handful of highly promoted superior strength units that have little chance of losing a battle so they will get more promotions. Therefore flanking is fairly useless for me.

I’d go for something like CR3 instead of flanking3. That way you can attack cultured cities. +100% attack, +20% meelee will increase your chance of victory(and so decrease your chance of death) much more than +50% withdrawal. then follow that up with C5, march, commando, mobility, etc. actually I doubt i'd ever get around to flanking.

I don't think horses can get city raider... unless I've been missing something for awhile.
95% withdrawl is pretty sweet, a stack of 20 should only lose 1, so there isn't much need for catapults.
It probably isn't as effective as going the magic route, but I have fun with it.

Monarch? I'm a bad player but what the heck.

how do you get 95% withdrawal chance? the best horse unit starts with +35%, then you get +20% for flanking1, +20% for flanking2, +10% immune to first strikes for flanking3. that makes max 85% withdrawal chance according to my calculations.

yes horses don't get city raider, i'd probably still consider the C5, commando promotion direction, then go for first strikes when fighting inferior units.

I did a test of 10 knights with flanking3 Vs 10 knights with combat3. (note flanking only works on offence, while combat helps on offence and defense)

Flanking knights attacking, 11 Vs 14.4.
22.7% chance of victory for each flanking3 knight against cobat3 knight. With85% chance of withdraw.

End result: 2 knights died on offence, other withdrew and 8 left at 10% health, none defeated the C3 knight. Enemy stack: average strength 6.1/11=56% health. In retaliation turn the 10 c3 horsemen at 56% health destroyed the 8 flanking horsemen at 10% health.

Naturally this is scalable to other strength units

Assuming that the 2% chance of victory is correct(we know it isn’t due to combat calculations).
Then flanking2 unit has 22.7% chance of victory against equivalent C3 unit. 11.6% chance of loss, 65% withdraw.
The C3 unit has 22.7% chance of loss, 83.3% chance of victory. on average it’ll have 56% health, meaning it can attack sooner. While the flanking3 units will be on average 10% health if they are lucky enough to withdraw. They will need longer to heal, need defenders to stop a counter attack, and need twice as many units to finish off the job.

Flanking becomes more useful when fighting tougher odds (stronger opponents in cultured cities) with a chance of losing your level 3 unit. while the combat path, followed by drill path is more useful for superior units, where the chance of battle loss and need for flanking ability becomes less significant.

flanking1 is much less of an advantage then flanking 3, as it's cow close you get to 100% that counts. hence flanking is much better for horse archer and knight than horsemen, chariot, war chariot and war elephant. as the difference between 75% and 85% withdrawal chance means there is 60% more reletive chance of withdraw. hence i would only consider flanking for horse archer and knights, and not for horsemen, chariot, war chariot and war elephant.

One of the problems with using flanking units to soften the enemy is that they will be at 10% health and need time to heal before being useful again. So you’ll need a good supply of them to keep your assult moving at a rate respectable to the speed of the hippus horsemen.

Another advantage of going down the combat promotion path is that you get to commando sooner, hippus mobility + haste commando mounted units can be deadly powerful if used properly!

So I guess it really depends on the situation. I think I’d personally still go the combat5, drill2 direction for most of my horse units, maybe a healer would be useful in the backup stack with the SE mages, but healer units can’t keep up with the stack, meaning that units without march might have to wait behind to heal before joining the assault force, although i would consider some flanking cannon fodder in the short period before my adepts upgrade to mages.

although i think flanking is overpowered for Magnadine, having a base of +60% withdraw, with only flanking 1&2 you have 100% withdraw. invincible hero on offence!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hippus horse units get free 10% withdrawl and +1 movement. That gets you to 95 with flanking 3.

One of the problems with using flanking units to soften the enemy is that they will be at 10% health and need time to heal before being useful again. So you’ll need a good supply of them to keep your assult moving at a rate respectable to the speed of the hippus horsemen.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's true. That's why I wasn't really efective until I had a disciple to heal and a strong defender.

Monarch? I'm a bad player but what the heck.

Click to expand...

Too easy? well... maybe I'm out of practice.

No, I meant I struggle at, say, Noble. Reading the thread and hopefully hearing what strategies are use to win will help me because I stink.

Nikis-Knight said:

Hippus horse units get free 10% withdrawl and +1 movement. That gets you to 95 with flanking 3.

Yes, that's true. That's why I wasn't really efective until I had a disciple to heal and a strong defender.

Too easy? well... maybe I'm out of practice.

Click to expand...

interesting, i had run a test in WB, it seems like knights upgraded from scouts don't recive the Hippus bonus.

going for diciple units is a significant detour on the research path. with that effort you can get mages. you'd want to get to horse archers, war chariots, and Madaline ASAP if going down the horse path, the idea is getting there fast before cultural defences grow and before the AI get more significant units. hence a detour down the magic or diciple tree will slow the horse rush. as you said you need defenders aswell. thus your horse archers will be facing archers, and war chariot will be facing crosbow men etc(actually on monarch there'll be even bigger gap).


95% withdraw does sound mighty tempting, but C5 gives you +10% heal, it's at least a start for faster healing. and with extra strength you'll recieve it'll mean you'll suffer less damage, so less down time for healing. by rushing that path you'll be fighting units half your strength and so recieving little dammage so with C5 it should provide the healing needed to keep a decent attack rate up. naturally youll have less casualties with 95% withdraw, but the rapid attack won't be sustainable with all the healing requirements. and wounded units need tobe defended. so i tjink i'll mainlygo for the C5 promotions for the extra healing and commando, then drill, so to get a more sustainable attack force as i won't have diciple units around to heal wounded flanking units for the second and third wave of attack (i often like to destroy an entire civilization in a single high powered war).

it'd be much easier to take cities with fireball mages, but skipping them does sound very tempting, and more inline with the Hippus theme, getting to higher tier horse units long before the AI gets to that tier units, giving a significant window of opportunity for rapid invasion. well we'll see how this all pans out.

ah yeah, that's right, that's because the bonus is now added by the stable. I think it's fixed in v .25, I'll have to remember to check when that comes out.

Reading the thread and hopefully hearing what strategies are use to win will help me because I stink.

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sure. I'll post some advice later when I get a chance.

edit:
by disciple units, I meant prophets or disciple of leaves, not priests. Not too long to get there.
Another nice boon of high withdrawl is that you can risk battles with very low odds and occasionally win (more often than dying, anyway), getting lots of exp to pick up combat later.

yes i see some great advantages of flanking3 for hippus in certain situations. it really depends on what the situation is.

philosophy is only 400 beakers, you could probably pick that up in a trade. prophets are still a bit slow for the horses. so i'm guessing only the most severely damaged units will temporarily leave the attack stack for healing by a prophet. hopefully with C5 units of higher tier then the AI the dammage would be minimum, and so the attack won't be slowed. hence minimizing the time spent with WW.

Broken Hawk said:

No, I meant I struggle at, say, Noble. Reading the thread and hopefully hearing what strategies are use to win will help me because I stink.

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Hey, you are not alone there buddy. I stink too (had to degrade back to warlord at one stage)... But the last ffh2gotm was very cool , and i lost, so what the heck. Im back for another beat down. Maybe I will get extremely lucky this time...