MarigoldRan
WARLORD
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2011
- Messages
- 2,349
They're one of the ultimate zerg rush units, and they're probably the only unit that can easily take out an established Ragnar or Monty in the medieval ages pre-Engineering.
Take your large stack and place it on a forest next to their main army. Then laugh as they suicide their units attacking your forested praets. The AI never gets enough catapults, and praets are one of the best units at soaking siege damage.
However, at Standard Deity there are certain sacrifices with using them:
1. You can forget about getting liberalism.
2. You will fall badly behind in tech.
3. Feudalism, not Civil Service, becomes your tech of choice, for vassaling targets and the +2 experience bonus.
4. Unlike Marathon/Huge, you cannot pick your targets as easily. If you're on a Peninsula and Ragnar is your only close neighbor, then Ragnar it will be.
5. It's pretty difficult to 2-pop rush a praet at normal speeds. There will be happiness issues.
6. Your tech target of choice becomes steel for cannons. If you can get them before the AI gets rifling, you win. This is one of your options. The other is espionage.
7. In the late-medieval era you need a covering unit. Like an elephant. A couple of elephants with a massive stack of praets and catas make a pretty killer combo.
8. Once your targets get castles, switch to an espionage economy. Use spies and city revolts. Thankfully as the Romans, this is not too hard to do as you're Org. Actually, once you get CoL and Construction, one options is to switch to espionage completely. Research? What's that? Who needs it? You've got praets, catapults, and spies! Even castles will fall before your devilish might.
9. The AP becomes a pain in the butt. It might not be a good idea to spread religion to all your cities if you think that will become the AP religion. The reason is because the world WILL consider you a villain. Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it.
The game basically boils down to if you can vassal a tech-er like Hannibal or Mansa Musa before they run away.
Praets also work better if you START next to Hannibal or Mansa Musa.
However, even at Standard speeds, they're one of the best medieval fighting units in the game. The praets are game-changing in the sense that they allow you to wage medieval war in situations where you otherwise cannot wage medieval war. In this sense they're like Cho-Ko-Nus, but more cost-effective.
EDIT: In terms of playstyle, praets are most similar to Cataphracts. Except your starting techs are better, and ORG is better than SPI, and you can start the wars much, much earlier.
The way to leverage them is all-out, non-stop war and war planning for the next 1000 or so years. Since it takes the AI such a long time to get rifling, you've got a nice window there.
Take your large stack and place it on a forest next to their main army. Then laugh as they suicide their units attacking your forested praets. The AI never gets enough catapults, and praets are one of the best units at soaking siege damage.
However, at Standard Deity there are certain sacrifices with using them:
1. You can forget about getting liberalism.
2. You will fall badly behind in tech.
3. Feudalism, not Civil Service, becomes your tech of choice, for vassaling targets and the +2 experience bonus.
4. Unlike Marathon/Huge, you cannot pick your targets as easily. If you're on a Peninsula and Ragnar is your only close neighbor, then Ragnar it will be.
5. It's pretty difficult to 2-pop rush a praet at normal speeds. There will be happiness issues.
6. Your tech target of choice becomes steel for cannons. If you can get them before the AI gets rifling, you win. This is one of your options. The other is espionage.
7. In the late-medieval era you need a covering unit. Like an elephant. A couple of elephants with a massive stack of praets and catas make a pretty killer combo.
8. Once your targets get castles, switch to an espionage economy. Use spies and city revolts. Thankfully as the Romans, this is not too hard to do as you're Org. Actually, once you get CoL and Construction, one options is to switch to espionage completely. Research? What's that? Who needs it? You've got praets, catapults, and spies! Even castles will fall before your devilish might.
9. The AP becomes a pain in the butt. It might not be a good idea to spread religion to all your cities if you think that will become the AP religion. The reason is because the world WILL consider you a villain. Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it.
The game basically boils down to if you can vassal a tech-er like Hannibal or Mansa Musa before they run away.
Praets also work better if you START next to Hannibal or Mansa Musa.
However, even at Standard speeds, they're one of the best medieval fighting units in the game. The praets are game-changing in the sense that they allow you to wage medieval war in situations where you otherwise cannot wage medieval war. In this sense they're like Cho-Ko-Nus, but more cost-effective.
EDIT: In terms of playstyle, praets are most similar to Cataphracts. Except your starting techs are better, and ORG is better than SPI, and you can start the wars much, much earlier.
The way to leverage them is all-out, non-stop war and war planning for the next 1000 or so years. Since it takes the AI such a long time to get rifling, you've got a nice window there.
However, doing so on higher levels, ..........im eagerly awaiting a youtube or detailed walkthrough, im always looking for ways to improve my meager skillz. 
.
