Anti-Hippus tactics?

[Yoadm]

Ok, Im playing as FOL Ljosalfar, fighting a slightly stronger Hippus civilization, which had the audacity to flood my empire with horsemen. I was utterly unable to do the following:

- Protect enough of my cities, since they could practically cross half my empire in one turn, thus attack anything at will. I had to spread out my force in defence, thus diluting any offensive capability I had.

- Capture any cities, no bloody siege weapons. Any way around this one aswell?

- Beat the horsemen themselves. I had bloody axemen and bowmen, which could barely survive defending themselves in cities from hippus stacks, but were utterly impotent in offense. I had no way to leave the city and take out a stack without losing as many or more troops than the hippus.


Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[megamanx06]

that happened to me once, except that for some reason just about everyone else in the world declared war on me at the same time. The strange thing was, I had been trying to be friends with them. What happened to me was their whole force stopped in a forest tile right outside one of my cities which just happened to have a couple radiant guard in it, so i just blinded them each turn until i could build up a force to beat them. Never happened though, because the other people rushed my cities far away from my capitol and started taking them, so my offensive force was diverted. It didn't work out in the end, so i gave up. sorry i can't help.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Had you adopted FoL and let the Ancient Forest grow? I would think that Treants would be a big part of defending against such foes. Treants have a chance to spawn on your side whenever an enemy tries to enter an unoccupied tile. Spreading your forces out too much could have prevented this.

Did you think to use your world spell? That would have given you a lot of Treants, probably enough to defend and launch a strong counter attack for a few turns.

Taking cities as the elves is hard, which is why I always give Treants siege abilities. I'd also recommend giving archery units ranged attacks. I guess that telling you to just mod the game to make defeating the Hippus easier isn't what you want though.


The Elves pretty much have to rely on magic. Sun II is great against fast enemies, as you can immobilize them. Fire II is great for lowering city defenses. Air II (you actually start with air mana, so this is easier to get) is great for weakening enemy stacks.


If you have Tasunke of the Hippus as a neighbor, don't build roads. Elves don't need them as much, since they get a movement bonus from forests, but they will be a huge advantage for Raider trait civs to quickly move through your lands. Unfortunately, you can't destroy roads in your own territory.

 

[odalrick]

If you have Tasunke of the Hippus as a neighbor, don't build roads.

Worth repeating. Twice.

But shouldn't Axemen beat Horsemen fairly easily? Woodsman I or II, str 5 vs str 4, no defence.

 

[heisenberg]

Well, since you said that the horsemen could cross practically half your empire in a turn I assume that you are fighting Tasunke instead of Rhoanna.

first thing I'd suggest, is to simply never build roads near raider civs. Any cities near those civs should possibly only have one main road leading into it, and maybe only a few more to link up resources. (I do have a tendency to spam roads around my other cities, just to get rid of the chance of that goblin waste event).

Protecting your cities: I know the Ljo's strength lies in archery, but I'd suggest you'd consider defending your cities with simple copper warriors, assuming you had copper. They are way more cost effective than archers especially when horsemen gets 40% bonus against archers.
If you know that you couldn't hold your border cities, you might want to pillage those roads you had leading to it while withdrawing. You're elven and running FoL, and those ancient forests would seriously slow those stacks of horsemen down without roads, and they don't really slow you down! (well not as much)
Then you could possibly counter-attack them while they are stranded in the forests, elven units have forest attack bonus after all, or you could use fawns too for extra forest dmg (though they are expensive). If you had copper I'd suggest just spamming warriors (str 4) to toss back at the horsemen, after all they cannot gain defensive bonuses.
Of course this assumes that you have a sufficient counterattack force (usually you'd need close to 1.5x at least to be safe, or have some highly promoted units to fortify the stack if you do not kill them off in 1 turn), else... there's always the PANIC button--March of the Trees!~
You'd better make sure you wipe out the main hippus force with that if you used it lol~

Capturing Cities: Yep I agree that the elves can be quite horrid at capturing cities early on, given their lack of siege. But then again, early on before cats, massed axemen works well too. Elven production in those mega-cities should easily outstrip most other civs, should you decide to go for a brute force method to capture cities. 3 highly promoted archers garrisoned? Just send in 10 Axemen!
Towards midgame, other alternatives open up: you could use fireballs, you could send in 10 tigers to soften defenders up (but make sure you take the city in 1 turn), or if you played as Amelanchier, his calvary is pretty impressive too!
Raider+Defensive is a pretty strong combo for a calvary heavy army. Defensive more for the 10% withdrawal. It allows you to match the Hippus in withdrawal rates, so you could essentially spam horsemen back at them, taking flanking promos to soften their garrisoned units up, and bring some combat trained ones for the kill. Not to mention you could pillage every scrap of land just like the Hippus are doing to yours Nyxkin are also pretty awesome units, since they share the elven trait, and can rampage through forests swiftly and pull back to relative safety. Allowing you to not rely on roads near border cities but still retaining good mobility.
Lategame you'd have Yvain, druids, beastmasters. Early on the Ljos aren't too good at cracking cities, but they should be able to decimate stacks in their forests with ease (assuming you aren't outnumbered badly).



edit: whoa you had 3 replies in the time I took to type this out lol~

 

[slowcar]

by the time axemen get outdated you need to wait for magic to come in.

the biggest problem about the hippus is that they tend to have huge stacks of well-promoted units. you'll need a good number to wear them down, but without roads and your whole empire covered with forests they should be quite slow.
horsemen are not really a threat against the high-defense elfen cities, it gets more complicated when the CR3 axemen show up and you have no magic to counter them.
on the other hand: not really elf-specific

elfes have it most easy to defend. offensive is a bit more complicated (FoL instead of bronze, no chariots) but you adjust quickly as you have size 20-40 cities to compensate

 

[Polobo]

I have found myself attacked by them fairly early and have found that conceding territory in order to preserve units is useful. Albeit, I was getting attacked early on before pretty much any buildings were constructed so losing the cities (captured, not razed, generally) wasn't that bad.

 

[slowcar]

they attack if you are weak - don't be weak

to get a feeling for them play as tasunke - but be prepared for other civs not giving the proper results when warrior-rushing

 

[Dumanios]

Have 5 units in your cities,especially border cities.Let your Ancient Forests come.Don't use March of the trees unless necessary.If your bordering someone like the Hippus,Doviello or Clan of Embers,Have more than 5 units in your border cities.Get your Heroes in the world.Thats what I'll tell ya.

 

[heisenberg]

they attack if you are weak - don't be weak

Looking at the issue again, this is simply the best piece of advice by far lol~

I mean, if you're bordering the Hippus, you should -definitely- be prepared for a horseman rush, and you should definitely garrison up your border cities in preparation. Keep tabs on the "Soldiers" numbers in the demographics page, try your very best not to lag too far behind in numbers to dissuade them from attacking.

Its the same thing when you are bordering the "aggressive" civs. Mahala next door simply means you stock up on Shock promoted troops early for example, since its not a matter of whether she'd attack, its merely -when-.

I think the main reason we all get this "Holy . .. .. .. .!" moments with the Hippus is that by the time you spot the invasion stack, and you are too weak, its usually too late to mount a defense. With other civs, usually they still take a few turns to march over to you, so you could still somehow patch together a somewhat haphazard defence to stem the tide.

So I'd suggest posting some "sentries" right next to their border to spot an invasion stack early on, if you could get open borders even better. Or simply send in HN animals--after all as FoL and going into the recon/archery line you should be able to tame some animals.
Not to mention, animals can wear their forces down significantly--if you get a decently promoted bear for example, find a newly built city with no defensive bonuses, and kill its defender, it would keep drawing units one by one out from its core cities to become pretty easy pickings for your animals.

In fact it is as Slowcar mentioned--as the elves, they should be one of the stronger civs to repel a Hippus horseman attack. Other civs do not have the advantage of hiding in trees, and the elves still retain very good productive potential even as their improvements are pillaged--Ancient forests are unpillagable. They might have slight problems in going on the counter-offensive, but getting the horsies stuck in a quagmire is something the elves are good at.

 

[Blakmane]

sounds like your problem is simply not enough preparation. As soon as you see a hippus/doviello/clan player near you, buff your armies so they don't come looking for a fight. With any luck, they'll declare war on a mutual neighbour and you can dogpile them ^^

 

[Yoadm]

Protecting your cities: I know the Ljo's strength lies in archery, but I'd suggest you'd consider defending your cities with simple copper warriors, assuming you had copper. They are way more cost effective than archers especially when horsemen gets 40% bonus against archers.

Err, yeah that was my original plan. Problem is, I was unlucky enough to have absolutely no copper, apart from in a small island outside my borders... which I cant get to, because building transports...demands copper.

If you know that you couldn't hold your border cities, you might want to pillage those roads you had leading to it while withdrawing. You're elven and running FoL, and those ancient forests would seriously slow those stacks of horsemen down without roads, and they don't really slow you down! (well not as much)

Yeah, thats the second problem Im having. Very few forests, and I havent advanced to priesthood tech yet so I could make the forests bloom.

Capturing Cities: Yep I agree that the elves can be quite horrid at capturing cities early on, given their lack of siege. But then again, early on before cats, massed axemen works well too. Elven production in those mega-cities should easily outstrip most other civs, should you decide to go for a brute force method to capture cities. 3 highly promoted archers garrisoned? Just send in 10 Axemen!

That's true, but my location didnt permit me to expand too much, so Im only the 3rd largest civilization. Most of the enemy's towns are allready heavily fortified with walls and palisades, resulting in 4-5 units dead per archer needed to destroy. It totally wipes out my attacking force for just one city.

Towards midgame, other alternatives open up: you could use fireballs, you could send in 10 tigers to soften defenders up (but make sure you take the city in 1 turn), or if you played as Amelanchier, his calvary is pretty impressive too!

Hmm, didnt think of tigers. Are they as effective as fireballs?

Raider+Defensive is a pretty strong combo for a calvary heavy army. Defensive more for the 10% withdrawal.

Unfortunately, Im playing thessa. Thought of trying out an arcane trait for a change. Might have been a mistake..

Under these circumstances, am I totally screwed?

 

[Skitters]

how far are you down the Arcane line? Fireball laden Mages should cause the Hippus a few problems

Or easier - if you have Sorcery but havn't got fire mana - you should upgrade any mages to have Maelstrom.

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You could perhaps try 'exposing' 2/3 Recon line units with woodsman I (better still II)on Forest/Ancient Forest tiles to see if they try to attack them? Better still, if you have a wooded tile next to a city, you may be able to move an Adept with Nature mana onto the tile, use the Treetop Defense spell to fortify the unit, and still have enough movement to get the Adept back into the city...

Not sure what the conditions have to be to spawn a treant (ie; not sure if the spawning becomes void if you a defending unit is defeated), but it may just be that not only may the Hippus weaken a few Horsemen by throwing them at the Recon unit(s), but gift you a stronger Treant too...

 

[Sarisin]

I am playing Rhoanna in my current game, but one other thing that drives me nuts in games where I am at war with the Hippus is the ungodly withdrawal rate of their mounted units. I think it is bad enough, but they also tend to over-promote in this area.

I honestly beeline Cartography and the Pact of Nilhorn in every game I play to get the Three Stooges. When playing as the elves, I think this is a must as it gives you 3 units much better than Catapaults IMO. In addition to their bombarding skill (they throw coconut custard pies at the enemy!) they are great as HN units in that it takes a long time for the AI to catch up to them and you can send them into AI territory to build up XP and pillage to get Gold.

 

[Schmoe]

I am playing Rhoanna in my current game, but one other thing that drives me nuts in games where I am at war with the Hippus is the ungodly withdrawal rate of their mounted units. I think it is bad enough, but they also tend to over-promote in this area.

I've seen this said a few times, and I find it rather funny. If the AI promotes heavily into withdrawal, and it presents such a challenge to defeat, can it really be said that the AI is over-promoting withdrawal? If cavalry are more effective with the withdrawal promotions, it seems to me that the AI is promoting correctly.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Err, yeah that was my original plan. Problem is, I was unlucky enough to have absolutely no copper, apart from in a small island outside my borders... which I cant get to, because building transports...demands copper.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but you can have transports BEFORE those ships that need copper. just use a ship that normally can't transport anyone, and choose the skeleton crew, it will get the ship 1 cargo space

 

[heisenberg]

Yep, even galleys taking skele crew can have 1 cargo space, just cannot traverse ocean tiles, and you can get that as early as sailing.

Else, you'd need optics for caravels

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Just a quick note... part of the problem is probably that you have ancient forests immediately adjacent to your cities. When the Hippus attacked me, they tended to bring one or two melee units and would rest the whole stack in the ancient forest (with the melee unit providing defense with +50% bonus). I can't remember if their horsemen get defense bonuses.

You may want to make sure that the first ring around your cities don't have any forests which should allow you to venture out and counterattack more efficiently.

 

[heisenberg]

Hmmm... not having forests right next to your border cities indeed could help.
Horsemen do not get defensive bonuses (only ones that do are centuars if I'm not mistaken, and the Clan's pseudo-mounted line of Ogres)
Actually, I wouldn't be as worried if the Hippus mixed in some melee units in their stack, it'll mean that the stack moves as slow as any other traditional army. If you're worried about them defending the stack, I sometimes do bait their horsemen out with a lone warrior in the plains, out of reach of their melee but within reach of their horsemen. Usually they'd send their strongest horseman out to hunt him, and then you could gobble him up easily before he gets him back to safety.
The Hippus usually do have some highly promoted horsemen, and those are usually the problems you get when you said that you have trouble attacking his stack. However, since they do not get defensive bonuses, once you kill off the top few, mopping up the rest of them becomes a cakewalk. Since you're FoL, if you did get any treants spawning in your ancient forests, they could easily decimate those top few horsemen early on without much trouble--then you kill the rest.

 

[Sarisin]

I've seen this said a few times, and I find it rather funny. If the AI promotes heavily into withdrawal, and it presents such a challenge to defeat, can it really be said that the AI is over-promoting withdrawal? If cavalry are more effective with the withdrawal promotions, it seems to me that the AI is promoting correctly.

You're right of course. I'm just saying that whenever you go to war with the Hippus (or the Illians with their 'fleeing ability') you need to be prepared for lots of units scurrying away. But, then again, I think when you have played this game awhile you realize what the AI does with its various civs and units and use that in your battle plan.

I just want them suckas to stay and fight rather than keep runnin' away dammit.