@Demus: What slowcar said.
Belive us. We have done so. (i do so on immortal rather often with 6 or seven unpromoted warriors. Works well. After the first city is taken they are no longer unpromoted. City defense at deity level is not all so much different. At normal speed at least. Quick is another matter.)
No need not to grab a promotion if the opportunity presents itself though. Which is often enough. (Even without wildlands or raging barbs its rather common to get 1 or 2 Combat 1, Shock 1 Warriors (much more with an agressive Leader) from 0 xp ones (Apprenticeship comes rather early as well usually at that level so that takes care of the combat one prerequisite or allows for instant-shockers for agressive leaders. Which should be enough to steamroll a small or even 1-landmass medium-size map if lucky.). Its just one offensive combat most of the time.
In the right terrain one Lion or Goblin might be enough.) A Shock warrior is easiely worth 2 unpromoted ones for city conquest + survives better which means its not bad to lose the odd one at a 66% or 50% fight.
Also after a "surprise" DoW on AI border (1-2 Turns to go before you can attack) 2-3 city defenders are about the rule (the rest run around elsewere / are eaten by spiders and bears
) its possible to take those down with 6-7 Warriors even if it might take more than one Turn and the odds are not all that nice for the first fights. If you are lucky and get his capital + starting worker this way he won't really recover until you can finish him off (+ some XP will be coming your way.
).
And sometimes you can even lure them out by putting a lone warrior from your stack in flatlands and kill the baited unit should it survive + get 2 Promotions for the following raid on said city (sometimes you get 2 Units killed that way with the odd lucky bait killing one defender and luring out another if 4 Units are defending for example. I don't belive the AI whould go below 2 defenders that way if a stack is next door but i might be mistaken... Which whould turn it into a total farce.).
And its painfully easy to build a stack of warriors and go on campaign. (works well for higher level scouting also to group your explorers in sets of 3.
Another tactics that works well at deity-level and is not all that important below immortal.)
+ its always possible to get copper if you are lucky or enchanted blade early if your civ starts with enchantment mana which makes the whole thing alot easier even if your oponent has (if badly hurt) survived your first onslaught.
And should he be dumb enough to have a Stack on campaign of their own its another fine source of XP. (works even on defense on a forested hill / across a river instead of offensively picking them off in the open currently. Less XP more reliable)
All in all the warrior rush requires way less many fights to get rolling in comparison to Wane. Factor 1:7 in fights is about what it boils down to. (only that the additional power-increase for high-level warriors decreases the more fights you get in direct opposite to shades where more fights mean exponentially more power up to the point were its impossible to defend against with mere Warriors. And in Survival there are much units around so the stacks needed to kill a dedicated defender for sure are really huge you just need to pick the right promotions. Borders three-digit numbers.)
Which is perhaps a good base for an idea how Deity (might be immortal as well, if to a lesser extent) could be made more harder without much / any AI-improvements:
Just like in Vanilla hand out one or two archers to AI as part of their starting package at Deity level. That would nerf that part fair and square without much hassle to code the AI (AI archers rather seldomly go on campaign.).
And without giving it an overly overpowering way to rush themselves.
The result might be more elegant than extensive AI tinkering just for that small aspect. (With 2 or 3 other defenders initially most of the time the Archer will survive even a big stack of warriors washing against the walls by hiding if piled on and wounded. After one Round of such an onslaught those Archers become impenetratable barriers with Garrison 3 attained after 4 or 5 fights at worst.
You won't crack what nets to a power 15 City defender with mere warriors. Let alone Str 17-20 on hills which the Ai actually likes to settle on + getting even stronger after each odd fight or the other. Thats just the stopper for any whould be fastrusher. No matter what number of Warriors he can sensibly bring on. And independent of a promotion or 3.)
That whould stop any rushkill at those difficulties dead in its tracks and also help AI to survive the early stages / threats from dirge / guardian of pristinus pass and Barbatmos. And even make Tier 2-Rush a much harder affair if not undoable. So deity becomes at least a bit more like it should be.
What do the other players of immortal/deity-level games say on this? Does it sound like a sensible proposal to carry over to the main forums / balancing 0.33? What are your observations in that regard / AI-Archer use? (Remember deity is supposed to be really hard so for the sake of the designers / the game / community try not to keep the AI gimped just so you can say you can win deity. Should the thought come to mind.
)
