A leader "Factory"

Ringo Kid

Prince
Joined
Oct 20, 2004
Messages
536
The attached screenshot is an example of how to make a "leader factory" in C3C.

The "recipe" in this case is to build a city surrounded by mountains (Newcastle), and behind that city an undefended city (Reading) built in such a position that the AI must send troops past the fortifications to reach the undefended town.

The AI loves to send its attackers to an empty city, so we have that there for bait. Also the silk luxury adds more bait to the trap, as the AI wants to pillage it. Ideally a worker should cut down that forest on the silk square because that would reduce the defensive value of the square for the AI, and the worker himself would be bait.

There is a roaded fort adjacent to Newcastle so the artillery, cannon or catapult can bombard enemy troops on any of the mountains or hills as they try to reach Reading. Note that the AI must cross two mountain or hill squares by any route to reach his objective, so you have two or three chances to redline him with the bombardment.

In Reading there are a number of Elite cavalry waiting to create leaders by killing the redlined enemy, and freshly arrived Veterans trying to earn promotion to Elite by doing the same. Once the Elites have created a leader, you use the leader to build an army, and then fill that army with Elite and or Veteran troops as your game situtation requires.

If your map doesnt have mountains or hills where you need them, any terrain that slows down the enemy (swamp,forest) will have the same effect, but you may need to add more defenders if the fortress or city itself is on weak defensive terrain. Its a good idea to build a cultural building to extend your border around the fortress city, as that also slows down the attackers giving you more turns in which to bombard them.
 

Attachments

  • leaderfactory.JPG
    leaderfactory.JPG
    175.4 KB · Views: 1,278
This is a good illustration of the principle, although IMO they are pretty useless in C3C. In vanilla, leader factories are great for making wonders. In one 20K game I generated about 7 leaders this way. In C3C, why bother? Especially here where you have the tech lead. I'd rather simply go to the attack.

I assume that the troops being promoted are actually in Newcastle? There is no reason for slow terrain either. In fact, it only makes it harder to ping the incoming pigeons.
 
Abegweit said:
This is a good illustration of the principle, although IMO they are pretty useless in C3C. In vanilla, leader factories are great for making wonders. In one 20K game I generated about 7 leaders this way. In C3C, why bother? Especially here where you have the tech lead. I'd rather simply go to the attack.

I assume that the troops being promoted are actually in Newcastle? There is no reason for slow terrain either. In fact, it only makes it harder to ping the incoming pigeons.

Yes , troops in the city and the fortress both. Slow terrain gives you more artillery shots at the enemy. So you can heal your attackers for a turn if you need to. I mostly built armies with the leaders, and rushed the small wonders .

And also it's just fun to slap the AI around. :)
 
I can't remember where I saw the odd's of creating a leader so I will ask this here because it is about leaders and you know your stuff.

I have gone to war against two civ's and won using my individual calvaries by the end I had close to 10 of them as Elites but none of the created any military leaders to create armies. I won several battles with each of them but nothing ever happened. As the Mayans I would have 4 or 5 scientific leaders but now with the Dutch I can't get squat.
 
I am bad with math, I have seen a post somewhere with the exact odds, in the War Academy probably.

But I can tell you that in some games you get a ton, and sometimes just a few. In my current game I have been at war almost the entire game, and I have gotten only two military leaders the entire game, and I am up to modern armor at this point. The first one I got with tanks. So none at all with cavalry or earlier.

What level are you playing at? The higher the level the more likely the leaders, I think, because the AI makes more troops so you get more chances for elite victories per game. My current game is monarch large map, I have something like 150 Modern Armor and 75 Tanks at war on four different fronts, and still just the 2 leaders by the modern era.
 
AutomatedTeller said:
Armies are pretty useful on higher levels when the AI can have 100s of units.
True. Leaders are always good. But the issue was leader factories, not leaders. Killing zones are similar to leader factories. Both generate leaders, but the difference is that the purpose of a killing zone is to drain away AI units while the purpose of a leader farm is to.... well, farm leaders. I don't see any reason for that in 3C3.
 
I can see 2 reasons to do that in CSC:

1) If you want to create a lot of armies
2) In a 20K game where you want to rush small wonders.

A leader factory won't work so well on lower level, btw, because you don't get all that many units from the AI.
 
Can be valuable to your military for the Elite military .If your troops are mostly elite and the Ai's are mostly vet or reg it's a good thing.
 
There is a difference between a scientific leader and a army leader, correct?

To create an army you have up to three of the same units on the tile as the leader and then what?
 
smoke jaguar said:
There is a difference between a scientific leader and a army leader, correct?

:yup:

SGL: hurry great wonders, small wonders and buildings in general.
MGL: hurry small wonders and buildings. Or they can creat armies!

None can hurry units. You can only get a scientific great leader by being the first to discover a new tech (and even then the chances are slim; 5% for a scientific civ, 3% if you're not).

smoke jaguar said:
To create an army you have up to three of the same units on the tile as the leader and then what?

You move the leader to a city and then use the 'create army' option given you. Move units over your newly created army and 'load' them into it.

:)
 
Was unaware that SGL existed in c3

It didn't. SGL is in C3C. IIRC if you're the first to discover a tech, you have a 3% chance of generating an SGL (hurry a wonder). Odds are 5% if you're Scientific.

For me MGL's make armies and SGL's build wonders (Golden Age is broken).

We're necroing, but I'd like to change one idea above. Don't put Elites into an army. Elites in armies can't generate more MGL's. However, the "super-elite" who creates a MGL can't create another, so he can be put into an army.

I'd suggest getting C3C. It's quite old so can be had for very little. It's an improvement to vanilla Civ3.
 
Back
Top Bottom