Early Game War: City Attack vs...Cover?

[Eternalhachi]

Primarily this is concerning early-game war, most likely before the BCs are over, or even slightly past. Anyway.

Stacking archers to defend a city is an obvious enough tactic. However, is it so obvious enough that in the process of upgrading units for the purpose of taking a city, that I should spring for the +25% against archers instead of the +20% city attack?

 

[oyzar]

well it is all math. As aggressive it is sometimes better to take cover first then go down the city rider line. With 1 promotion cover is obviously better with 2 promotions they are the same, with 3 promotions city rider is equal and with 4 promotions and up they are equal again. So basically it comes down to what you do much. If you find that you attack more often with 3 promotions than with 1 promotions(past combat 1 anyways) then city rider is the way to go. If you are attacking more with 1 promotion than with 3 you should go with cover first. Basically with high mortality(attacking at bad ods) cover is better. If only attacking at high ods(loads of siege weapons?) city rider is better(since you spend longer at level 4 than at level 2 because of more experience required to level up). Or translated: with siege weapons city rider, without cover first is better(for aggressive leaders anyways).

 

[madscientist]

The best advice is to NOT promote the units until you arrive at the city, then play it as it goes.

Example: If the city has all archers that can be taken with 1 axe each, the cover promotion makes sense. IF the city has a mixed stack, then CR I is a more general promotion.

Also consider what to do with the unit if it survives, perhaps for another promotion. CR II and CR III are very valuable and can last all the way through the modern era, while cover is obsolete onc ethe AI has gunpoder units.

Personally I go with CR promotions unless the unit palns to go barbarian hunting and fight more in the open than versus cities.

 

[madscientist]

Also another point, cover is available as the first promotion only for agressive leaders as it requires combat I. Non-agressive leaders whould be starting with CR promotions.

 

[oyzar]

I assumed not promoting before arriving at the city to be a given... This is so automatic for me nowdays that i hardly think about it... If that apply read what i said above...

 

[xanadux]

And if you are using macemen, don't use the cover promotion. A key strategy for strong mid-game city raiders is to get a lot of CR3 macemen and later promote them to riflemen which can't get take CR promotions.

 

[johncross21]

if you intend to ikeep and upgrade highly promoted units - you will find that cover becomes redundant but city raider remains useful in all periods - that might not be the critical factor - but if the odds are not that different worth considering

 

[oyzar]

Basically what all of this leads to is cover is useful if doing suicide attack with axes but not very useful if doing sieges with mace men.

 

[johncross21]

Basically what all of this leads to is cover is useful if doing suicide attack with axes but not very useful if doing sieges with mace men.

very true indeed

 

[InFlux5]

I would only use Cover with an Aggressive leader. It's not worth going Combat I -> Cover with a non-Aggressive leader.

However, if you are Aggressive, and you are attacking a city, Cover is best if the unit is likely to die. These units are just to soften up the defenders, and will likely never get to see another promotion, so the +25% is the best option.

But for any units you expect to live, CR is better because on the next promotion you can work toward the next level of CR.

Of course now that I think about it, even staying on the CR path won't net you as much bonus as Cover would. That is, any level of CR + Cover is going to be 5% more than if you had just taken the CR path. So if you are confident you'll only be facing Archers I think Cover should always be the best choice.

Again, I would only use Cover with an Aggressive leader, since the cost of taking Combat I as a prereq makes it much less useful in my view.

 

[Diamondeye]

Basically what all of this leads to is cover is useful if doing suicide attack with axes but not very useful if doing sieges with mace men.

Basically, what this leads to is that cover isn't useful. Pronto.

 

[Pantastic]

That is, any level of CR + Cover is going to be 5% more than if you had just taken the CR path. So if you are confident you'll only be facing Archers I think Cover should always be the best choice.

Nope, cover is ahead at 1 promotion but drops to equal at 2 and worse at 3. You're forgetting that the no-cover unit gets access to the better City raider promotions first.

1: CRI: 20%, Cover: 25%
2: CRI + CRII: 45%, Cover + CRI = 45%
3: CRI + CRII + CR III: 75%, Cover + CRI + CRII: 70%

At 4, they could be equal, but a CR3 unit is one that I'll try to preserve to upgrade to rifleman/infantry later, so I wouldn't waste a promotion on cover.

The tradeoff for an aggressive civ is whether +5% against archer-only defenses at 1 promotion is worth being stuck with an obsolete upgrade later and being -5% against archers at 3 promotions, and being worse against other defenders at all times. I can't see any real reason to use cover for city attackers, the miniscule bonus from cover just isn't worth gimping the unit later.

The only time I've really used cover was when I was fighting the chinese (cho-ko-nu festival) and didn't have knights, so I made cheap longbows with cover to help kill the pillagers.

 

[McGoo]

Also another point, cover is available as the first promotion only for agressive leaders as it requires combat I. Non-agressive leaders whould be starting with CR promotions.

Actually, it is also available as a first promo to protective leaders. If I can pull off the fuedalism slingshot I will sometimes do a longbow rush. Cover is usually the best promo to give them because by this time (800BC or so) most AI's have archers as city defenders. If I get to the city and it is defended by axes, they get shock.

The alternative here (since CR is not available) is to go up the drill promo line.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Cover is also useful in defending a stack and in battles in the field. And its quite likely the AI will have archers that it sends against you that will need to be killed. An axe with CR is not a good bet against an archer on a hill or forest - with cover its a much stronger bet.

I think for axes cover has a very long shelf life. You are miles away from archers being obsolete and if you are mainly fighting archers why wouldn't you go cover?

But I think the best advice given above is to hold onto your promotions until you fight (except for defenders). Just doing this helped my game a lot.

 

[InFlux5]

Thanks for the correction Pantastic. I was thinking each level of CR was only 20%.

The tradeoff for an aggressive civ is whether +5% against archer-only defenses at 1 promotion is worth being stuck with an obsolete upgrade later

Well, I go back to my original argument that Cover is pretty much only good for kamikaze units. I wouldn't use it for a unit I expected to be around for a while.