yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
Over the last few weeks I've been growingly bored with the trusted same ol' deity domination tactics. We've all tried the Liberty Composite Bow rush, we've all tried peddroelms insanely powerful Honor plus Commerce warfare, which usually starts with Crossbows. Beeline Flight, beeline Artillery, this, that. Revising my patterns I have found that no matter what Civilization I choose, I more or less go the same path with my army consisting of mainly Archer-Line units and a few melees to soak up damage and abuse zone-of-control. This is, without a doubt, the single most effective strategy for a domination victory on deity. Browsing through the internet, watching peddroelms Let's Plays and reading up on Carlsguides, analyzing the Unique Units of each Civilization, I've come up with some ideas. I'd love to make this a thread where new approaches to warfare are being proposed, encouraged, critisized. I think the Civilization promotion and upgrade system allows for decent variety, I'm certain there are a lot of niche tactics that are being "underused". I will post some ideas of my own. I would be really grateful if people commented on their viability, try them out and especially leave feedback if they already have experience with said strategies and tactics. I'll go ahead and propose a few:
Shoshone~
The Comanche is a Unique Unit that I have never liked all that much. For me, it just simply doesn't cut it, it pales in comparison to other Cavalry upgrades, but there is one perk that people have not been making proper use of, atleast in my opinion: The fact that the added movement is a promotion and does not fade upon upgrading.
Think about it this way: Chariot Archers are great for early game invasions. They're even better at it than Archers and Composites, atleast I think they are. The problem with them is that they upgrade into Knights, making all of their promotions useless. Well, not all of them. This is a way to make the Chariot line actually worthwhile, even when you aren't playing Attilla, Harun, or as the Mongol Hordes.
Logistics will still work when Chariots are upgraded to Knights. What this means is that you can have Knights stacking Blitz and Logistics, making for a whopping three attacks per turn, which is pretty insane considering Knights destroy most ranged units with one or two attacks anyway. Yes, you have to get all three terrain promotions again, which is a big turnoff. Promotion Saving makes this a lot easier, but then again it sort of feels like cheating. I like to use it to experiment is all. Upon upgrading your Knights to Cavalry they will get an additional movement point. By this time you might even have gotten another movement point through the Mobility promotion. This would make for a total of six moves and three attacks, which in and of itself is absolutely insane. Think about the options this gives you. Your first attack will always trigger the Charge promotion, too, giving you yet another damage increase. On Landships, this would be absolutely brutal. If anyone has tested this I would love to hear some of your results!
Zulu~
This particular strategy will require going Honor plus Commerce. You will need the Ikanda plus as many promotions as possible for your units being built in your capital. All the credit goes to peddroelm for this, it was not my idea nor did I help develop it. As soon as you have Lancers available, buy an unhealthy amount of Landsknechts and give them only the Buffalos Chest promotion. This is the only way to get these promotions on a Lancer and probably the only way to get them on a mounted unit in general, seeing as Impi upgrade to Rifles. There are a bunch of great perks to acquiring Lancers this way: They will get the additional move from Buffalos Chest, meaning your Lancers will have five movement points. Pillaging will not cost a movement point anymore, meaning you can pillage up to five tiles with a freshly bought and upgraded Landsknecht. Buying and upgrading Landsknechts is also alot cheaper than straight-up buying Lancers, plus they can move (that also means upgrade) the turn they are bought. Those units will not be the forefront of your army, that's where Impi or Impi Rifles come in, they are only there to accumulate masses of gold and weaken the enemies economy. The synergy with Commerce, Pillage-Repairing and the Honor-Finisher is undeniable, if you get really lucky one single Lancer can make between one hundred and two hundred gold per turn, which might be more than your current gold-per-turn. That is a great tradeoff, only leading to you rush-buying more units, et cetera. I have tested this and it works wonders.
On getting promotions in general:
What I really like doing if I cannot afford early game warfare is to train against a city state. This is nothing new for experienced players, but I developed a "special" way of doing it. If this is commonplace just ignore it, but I haven't really seen it being used. I will usually make two Scouts at the beginning of the game. Their main concern is popping huts, stealing a worker from a City State at around turn 20, discovering Natural Wonders, meeting the other Civilizations as fast as possible and lurking for Caravans near the capital of the Civilization my Warrior stole a worker from. When I delay Archery I really like getting a third, a late Scout, which I use exclusively to protect Workers, Settlers and to do close-scouting. This way he'll likely take a lot of damage, but he won't die. This means he'll get promotions and I propose the following: Take Survivalism I, Survivalism II and the Medic, in that order. When farming experience from a city state you want your Scout nearby, because the AI will always focus your "weak" units, meaning your Scout will be the one taking the damage. His promotions on the other hand will mean he can take quite the beating, especially if you lure Archers or Composites build by the city states with a worker. Not having a Scout nearby the City State can even be dangerous, as sometimes they will build a composite and oneshot one of your highly promoted Archers the same turn said Composite spawned because they get a lucky damage roll. There is not much you can do about that aside from keeping a weaker unit nearby, atleast as far as I know. Not upgrading your Archers to Composite is also elementary when fighting the City State, as Composite will bring the City to zero health really quickly, which means less experience is being gained.
I have also beein toying around with the Swedish, the Ottoman, the Aztec and the Iroquis Unique Units, so there is more to come and this thread will be expanded. Note that I really don't want to limit the discussion to unit and upgrade lines, anything can be posted.
Shoshone~
The Comanche is a Unique Unit that I have never liked all that much. For me, it just simply doesn't cut it, it pales in comparison to other Cavalry upgrades, but there is one perk that people have not been making proper use of, atleast in my opinion: The fact that the added movement is a promotion and does not fade upon upgrading.
Think about it this way: Chariot Archers are great for early game invasions. They're even better at it than Archers and Composites, atleast I think they are. The problem with them is that they upgrade into Knights, making all of their promotions useless. Well, not all of them. This is a way to make the Chariot line actually worthwhile, even when you aren't playing Attilla, Harun, or as the Mongol Hordes.
Logistics will still work when Chariots are upgraded to Knights. What this means is that you can have Knights stacking Blitz and Logistics, making for a whopping three attacks per turn, which is pretty insane considering Knights destroy most ranged units with one or two attacks anyway. Yes, you have to get all three terrain promotions again, which is a big turnoff. Promotion Saving makes this a lot easier, but then again it sort of feels like cheating. I like to use it to experiment is all. Upon upgrading your Knights to Cavalry they will get an additional movement point. By this time you might even have gotten another movement point through the Mobility promotion. This would make for a total of six moves and three attacks, which in and of itself is absolutely insane. Think about the options this gives you. Your first attack will always trigger the Charge promotion, too, giving you yet another damage increase. On Landships, this would be absolutely brutal. If anyone has tested this I would love to hear some of your results!
Zulu~
This particular strategy will require going Honor plus Commerce. You will need the Ikanda plus as many promotions as possible for your units being built in your capital. All the credit goes to peddroelm for this, it was not my idea nor did I help develop it. As soon as you have Lancers available, buy an unhealthy amount of Landsknechts and give them only the Buffalos Chest promotion. This is the only way to get these promotions on a Lancer and probably the only way to get them on a mounted unit in general, seeing as Impi upgrade to Rifles. There are a bunch of great perks to acquiring Lancers this way: They will get the additional move from Buffalos Chest, meaning your Lancers will have five movement points. Pillaging will not cost a movement point anymore, meaning you can pillage up to five tiles with a freshly bought and upgraded Landsknecht. Buying and upgrading Landsknechts is also alot cheaper than straight-up buying Lancers, plus they can move (that also means upgrade) the turn they are bought. Those units will not be the forefront of your army, that's where Impi or Impi Rifles come in, they are only there to accumulate masses of gold and weaken the enemies economy. The synergy with Commerce, Pillage-Repairing and the Honor-Finisher is undeniable, if you get really lucky one single Lancer can make between one hundred and two hundred gold per turn, which might be more than your current gold-per-turn. That is a great tradeoff, only leading to you rush-buying more units, et cetera. I have tested this and it works wonders.
On getting promotions in general:
What I really like doing if I cannot afford early game warfare is to train against a city state. This is nothing new for experienced players, but I developed a "special" way of doing it. If this is commonplace just ignore it, but I haven't really seen it being used. I will usually make two Scouts at the beginning of the game. Their main concern is popping huts, stealing a worker from a City State at around turn 20, discovering Natural Wonders, meeting the other Civilizations as fast as possible and lurking for Caravans near the capital of the Civilization my Warrior stole a worker from. When I delay Archery I really like getting a third, a late Scout, which I use exclusively to protect Workers, Settlers and to do close-scouting. This way he'll likely take a lot of damage, but he won't die. This means he'll get promotions and I propose the following: Take Survivalism I, Survivalism II and the Medic, in that order. When farming experience from a city state you want your Scout nearby, because the AI will always focus your "weak" units, meaning your Scout will be the one taking the damage. His promotions on the other hand will mean he can take quite the beating, especially if you lure Archers or Composites build by the city states with a worker. Not having a Scout nearby the City State can even be dangerous, as sometimes they will build a composite and oneshot one of your highly promoted Archers the same turn said Composite spawned because they get a lucky damage roll. There is not much you can do about that aside from keeping a weaker unit nearby, atleast as far as I know. Not upgrading your Archers to Composite is also elementary when fighting the City State, as Composite will bring the City to zero health really quickly, which means less experience is being gained.
I have also beein toying around with the Swedish, the Ottoman, the Aztec and the Iroquis Unique Units, so there is more to come and this thread will be expanded. Note that I really don't want to limit the discussion to unit and upgrade lines, anything can be posted.
(naval units included)
?) science victory
