Stables: How many should you get?

[MarigoldRan]

To maximize efficiency, the less stables cities the better.

One or two barracks-cities with no stables produce things like archers for city garrison, post capture. Frees up the HAs to push forward.

Your thoughts?

[Keilah]

3-city HA rush, third city makes archers etc. Skip the barracks if you don't expect counterattacks and just want to leave a 1-unit garrison.
2-city HA rush, make stables in both cities and build archers in captured cities. Use one of your early game warriors to garrison the first city or 2 that you capture.

[MarigoldRan]

What if you have nine cities?

[Zechnophobe]

Hm, my last game I was in a pretty tight spot, only strategic resource was horses, and I had to expand through a jungle to attack anyone. I ended up building 3 or 4 chariots while researching horesback riding. Did a two pop whip on stables in I think 3 cities, while researching archery (took one turn). I had 5ish cities at the time, it was not a RUSH by any means, but rather a war of necessity at about 500 BC.

I find that Shock promotion on HA's can be very much worth it, especially since the stables cost about the same as an HA. You will have to overcome spearmen, and being able to promote that way when necessary is big.

Oh, just to note, I'm not a big HA rusher, so if we really were just exploring that specific case, you should probably ask someone else.

[Keilah]

When you have 9 cities HAs are massively out of date, or at least they should be.

If you have 9 cities, just use your head a little. Obviously some of your cities will have very low production and/or need infrastructure badly. Produce garrison archers here once crucial infrastructure is complete. Don't bother with barracks in these spots.
Alternative is to have your low-production cities build zero units, and let one of your 'meh, decent' production spots do the archer building, in which case you can consider a barracks.

[MarigoldRan]

It's 1060 BC. BTW, the AIs have on average, 12 cities. I have to war, or else. And there is no ivory.

[Keilah]

I don't understand how you can hope to afford the maintenance cost on > 9 cities in 1060 BC... err, grain of salt here, I never play on maps bigger than standard or on speeds slower than normal. So depending on your settings I suppose your situation could be totally normal.

BTW, don't panic that the AI has more cities than you. Quickly tech to an effective unit, whip out a big army of them, and kill an AI in one swipe. Then you have 21 cities instead of 12 for the AIs (or whatever, you get the idea).

[MarigoldRan]

Darius + Gold Mines + Coast tiles + Some captured cottages. Early commerce is very important at Marathon/Huge/Diety.

[Zechnophobe]

So, this sounds less like a generic question, and more like "I have a specific empire, and need advice on how to run it?" question? Are you looking for the general case, or a specific one? bankrupting oneself by 1k BC isn't normally where people are coming from with this! (You can generally only do that if you've had a pretty significant war by that time, which is rare on ... most game settings).

[Keilah]

Originally Posted by MarigoldRan

Darius + Gold Mines + Coast tiles + Some captured cottages. Early commerce is very important at Marathon/Huge/Diety.

yah ok i have no clue about those settings. The bit about using low prod/no rax cities for archers, or one medium prod city with a rax should stand though.

[coanda]

I'd say typically 1 hammer of garrison troops is enough to hold what it will take 6+ hammers of mounted troops take. 1 archer holds after 3+ HAs are lost taking a city; 1 longbow holds when 3+ cuirassiers are lost. So I would think any city contributing more than ~20% of your total military production should get a stables or at least be building mounted units (sometimes you skip a stables just to get more mounted units if you've got a very tight deadline before your army becomes obsolete).

That stops applying when you're roflstomping the computer - if you're taking very low casualties and your army is just coasting from city to city taking them with ease, you'll obviously need more hammers on garrison troops and fewer hammers on mounted units. But in that case little optimizations like skipping a stables here or there to get an extra unit out aren't necessary anyways.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

So, this sounds less like a generic question, and more like "I have a specific empire, and need advice on how to run it?" question? Are you looking for the general case, or a specific one? bankrupting oneself by 1k BC isn't normally where people are coming from with this! (You can generally only do that if you've had a pretty significant war by that time, which is rare on ... most game settings).

A bit of both.

[Dirk1302]

Don't know if you go HA rush. If you go phant/cata 2 stables on 5-6 cities is usually enough. I tend to build one in capital to produce phants, need some more so build one other somewhere.

[MarigoldRan]

No ivory. I have to use HAs to get my ivory.