unlucky or just dumb?

[kdodge]

So, I see how Hippus AI always dominates the maps in my long games and I see all the "how to deal with hippus" threads, so I decided to get off my builder / turtle butt, leave the khazad and elohim behind & try em out.

ouch.

Understand I typically play on 'emperor' difficulty....

if I beeline horsemen and start raiding my neighbors for cash to keep my economy going to grow cities, they pop axemen or hunters and wipe out my raiders then come for my cities in big enough stacks that I can't whittle em down fast enough to let my warriors defend... or I end up with a stifled economy due to no SP/cottages (5/4 population happy cap is rough)

If I sidetrack a little to get fishing and education then coinage to get an economy jump started, they have archers or longbowman and axemen or champions, so I end up having to wait for knights and war chariots to make raiding worthwhile and then its a knuckle-down slug-fest, clearly not how the AI hippus works that I've seen and others complain about.


Thoughts on what I"m doing wrong?

 

[Demus]

i don't usually play on emperor (comfort level is monarch for everything but specific set-ups), but horsemen should be able to take down opposing axemen. To truly get a grip on the hippus, play tasunke on a great plains map. Grab animal husbandry -> horseback riding early, then head for education for the exp bonus and cottages. Mysticism could work as well, if you're trying to found a religion yourself instead of conquering the holy city (RoK for example). The first few horsemen you build should be used to level on barbarians, assuming the AI is near axemen at this stage. Shock 1 horsemen should be able to win most battles at this point, and should be your main "stack/city breakers". Keep a few horsemen around with flanking 1 and 2 to whittle down tougher enemy units. Building up your veteran units, making use of raider to heal outside enemy territory, you should be able to take down the first 2 opposing civs with relative ease. After your first rushes, get to building your economy, and work to eighter chariots/horse archers, or currency for mounted mercs. Then get back to blitz conquest (not to be confused with blitz krieg, you want to beeline cities, not infrastructure)

 

[Arctic Circle]

Remember that Apprenticeship + Conquest -> Horsemen with -really- high retreat chance. That retreat chance is for me more worth then shock. That allows for a 10 stack of Horsemen attack with only ~20% chance to win - and you survive with ~8 of them. Not to mention that you can actually succed in taking down heavily fortified cities just by throwing Horsemen at them, and -keeping- them. Send along a prophet or similar unit with Medic I.

 

[heisenberg]

Well.... as the hippus I'd still suggest getting your horsemen early. Horsemen are very strong against uncoppered warriors (which are all you should see that early on).
Once you see them get copper, check if their capital is on a hilltop. If they are, find another target--be flexible.
Early on though you wouldn't need flanking so much. Against warriors and axemen defenders (w/o copper) just use pure combat+shock and amass your units.
You should actually be happy to see Archers--horsemen get such a huge bonus against them you actually have a pretty easy time against them.

However, if you waited so long unit you see longbowmen and champions and you're still at horsemen, you're waiting far too long to attack.

At least in my opinion, horsemen are good against warriors/axemen (w/o copper), archers and hunters.
Once you meet coppered up warriors/axemen you might have to start baiting them out of their cities--ie leave lone horsemen out on the field where the defenders could easily kill yet not return to the safety of their cities, then you trade units 1:1 with them, while levelling up your strongest horsemen.
Sometimes though I'd be happy to actually see a second city--since it usually doesn't have the kind of defensive bonuses the capital has. Then you could slowly attack it to draw defenders out of the capital to defend it, weakening them.

Any defending units on a higher tier than those i mentioned, you would need chariots or horse archers.
Copper chariots are pretty decent attacking units compared to horsemen since they are str 6, and horse archers have very high withdrawal--that is really when your flanking+horselord withdrawal rates hit very high.
And as Arctic Circle mentioned, that would be usually around the same time you'd be able to hit conquest+apprenticeship and maybe have the titan to pop out flanking II units right out of the stables.
I'd beg to differ from Arctic's opinion on waiting till getting conquest before you churn out enough horsemen to attack though--by the time you hit edu > warfare and then start pushing horsemen out (while being 1 XP short from the 2nd flanking promo w/o the titan), and need to farm barbs for the 2nd promo, its actually pretty late where u start to see much heavier defences.

 

[Blakmane]

I agree with all of heisenburg's points.

Here's a few extra notes for earlygame rush with tasunke:

a) be adaptable. Tasunke has the strongest basic military units of any type right out of the barracks, so if you get gold resources in your fat cross, and then hit a copper, go for an axeman rush instead- you can always cross back over to horseriding at a later point.

b) While rushing towards horsemen, don't forget to start building warriors! Tasunke's warriors are still way stronger than almost any other warrior level unit in the game.

c) you should be attacking your first opponent with warriors even before you have a decent horseman army. This is what is meant by the term rush. Use your raider trait for all it is worth. Declare war on a nearby/weak opponent when you have 5-6 warriors, and just use them to capture his workers/burn down each and every improvement. Use the money generated from this to keep your research burning high. When push comes to shove and you go in for the conquest, you'll find it much easier if they have already been stunted. Even if you are unsuccessful you'll find your opponent weaker and your tech stronger.

d) If things are going well, don't forget to pick up feudalism early. Domination is a great way to win as a rusher and for that you'll need vassals. In addition, the extra dogpiling vassalisation causes will greatly bolster your forces with the (typically melee) forces the computer produces. Don't forget you can tell your vassals which cities to attack!

e) Don't be afraid to adopt someone else's religion. You can always capture the holy city later. However, the current AI rarely techs religions so nabbing one later isn't an issue.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Tasunke's Warriors are incredibly powerful, and can be given the War Cry early on to take out people nearby.

If you are close to someone, simply build about 8 warriors and attack them. If they are a bit aways, grow a bit the normal way until you get horesmen, and then pound those bad boys out.

 

[slowcar]

tasunke is my favorite leader and i played some dozen deity wins with him. with the recent free promotions all AIs are a lot stronger so i switched down to immortal.
opposed to most other people (as it seems) i am not a fan of horsemen though.

my first build is a worker, hippus start with agriculture so you can farm things up. research targets are:
-crafting (especially if wine is nearby), mining: to get the production rolling
- festivals: markets are the one thing that keeps you going
- cartography: city states

as blakmane said: 5-8 warriors should be sufficient to declare on your neighbour, especially if he does not have hunting. be sure to train your warriors on barbarians as much as possible. the first promotion is shock, target is shock2+march.

next target is bronze working followed by warfare. your elite axement can learn city raider 3 and are, until beastmasters come up, quite unstoppable against cities. chariots are one of the next targets, they are a lot better then horsemen.

my favorite middlegame is to go for empyrion and chalid, i don't have to micro all the adepts and mages this way. backdraw is that there is only a single offensive stack, advantage is that rathas are increadible as the AI is not able to split its stacks with a single unit blinded.

crown of brilliance, pillar of fire and a couple of blitz rathas (7 attacks/turn) make conquering easy as a walk in the park. stronger units can be killed by the elite champions (former axemen, former warriors).

while horsemen with retreat-chances of 90% are increadible you need a lot (lot) of them to achieve the same. and the higher the difficulty the more important is your troop upkeep.
on immortal or deity you have a very small timeframe where you can war against warriors, against axemen and hunters the horsemen are not strong enough - and they don't have an upgrade to something comparable to axemen. and they have no weapons (which is solved when you get chariots, but they take some time to reach and build).

 

[heisenberg]

Yea I agree with you slow that horsemen have a very small window where they are very strong, and I do try to hit mining early too to check for nearby copper--and if I find any i'll throw horsemen out and focus on getting axemen fast. (though still retaining some horsemen for pillaging)

And yep, Empy is very strong on the Hippus, especially with raider, since your rathas (or eventual upgrades from it) would be able to move very far within even enemy territory to bind their stacks while you raid.
Though actually, sometimes when I cannot find any source of nearby copper with mining, I occasionally use RoK and rush Gal-Dur fast without bothering about smelting > iron working.
Then you'd be able to field 7/5 iron chariots which are very decent at their age with very good mobility too.

I usually play with Tasunke as well, the Raider trait is especially strong with the Hippus, and Aggressive lets you simply pick up shock I for your warriors/horsemen right at the start if you run apprenticeship.
But Rhoanna sometimes can be decent too (when I do play Hippus on FF where Raider is nerfed), being able to run a decently strong mounted merc warfare in the midgame when you reach Go9.

 

[slowcar]

a few k gold and guild of the nine go a long way, that's right
you can play as if you were an AI, then. click on your 50 mercs and attack, sort out the survivors and go to the next city

 

[heisenberg]

lol I do that sometimes in MP when I don't want to give time to my opponent to react.
Click on mounted merc swarm > click on enemy stack. Leave stragglers behind, move on.

And lets not forget mounted mercs can use bronze/iron too!
Ironed mercs go a long long way...