Analysis of utility of UUs as offensive units

[Innawerkz]

Wodan, you need to specify a difficulty level.

More important then Difficulty to the UU is map size. Smaller the map, the faster it settles and fills, the easier it is to access the opponents cities. Conversely, the larger the map the more advantageous a late UU becomes to allow time for border friction. Few things I dislike as much as invading over LONG distances to try and take advantage of my early UU!

Smaller maps - as per MP - controlling even two more cities then your closest competitor makes a huge impact.

Even on a Normal size map, most of your Continent (assuming such configuration) is filled by late Classical/early Medieval era in which case the Conquistador becomes at that point - my favorite UU, BTW. I'm assuming that you - Wodan - play on Large+ to base your preferences?

Otherwise - great thread. Interesting thoughts on how to maximize some of the lesser strategized UU's. Thanks, Wodan.

 

[incubuspawn]

More important then Difficulty to the UU is map size. Smaller the map, the faster it settles and fills, the easier it is to access the opponents cities. Conversely, the larger the map the more advantageous a late UU becomes to allow time for border friction. Few things I dislike as much as invading over LONG distances to try and take advantage of my early UU!

Smaller maps - as per MP - controlling even two more cities then your closest competitor makes a huge impact.

Even on a Normal size map, most of your Continent (assuming such configuration) is filled by late Classical/early Medieval era in which case the Conquistador becomes at that point - my favorite UU, BTW. I'm assuming that you - Wodan - play on Large+ to base your preferences?

Otherwise - great thread. Interesting thoughts on how to maximize some of the lesser strategized UU's. Thanks, Wodan.

hmm I think early game UUs are still very usefull even if you do have a large area to fill. Mainly because in those situations you get a lot of barbarian cities and waves of pillagers.
Other than that I agree with everything else you said.

 

[Sisiutil]

Paeanblack, all I have to say is...

I have SO gotta try that.

 

[Shadowsong]

If you conquer significant territory before you have the infrastructure, then you get way behind in tech and effectively lose the game. That's why many Roman players have a tough late game.

I don't know what your victory preference is, but a rush leads to complete kill (Conquest). Why would you want to wait and build up? If you finish all AIs ASAP you'll recieve both quick finish and high score. The only reasons you'd build up and recover is if you're not going for Conquest, or you're going to milk your game.

-- Difficulty level is irrelevant. I assume that players will play up to their skill. On any difficulty level, your skill will determine how optimal your economics are. If you overconquer and thus cause your economy to crash, the results will thus be similar, despite difficulty level.

Difficulty is relevant! Try Praetorian rush in Deity Standard, then Settler Standard and you'll see the difference.

This means early UU's.

Well, you don't absolutely need UUs to win, sometimes it's better to attack before your UU is available! http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=1544

More important then Difficulty to the UU is map size. Smaller the map, the faster it settles and fills, the easier it is to access the opponents cities.

Well, map type is much more important than map size! The difference between Pangaea and Islands is an example.

But the goal of that war is simply a tidy little chunk of territory. 3 cities, no more.

Then? Assuming this is Deity , how do you continue? IMO the goal is to go for Conquest ASAP. And, of course, the settings would be something like Standard, Pangaea, Marathon. You'd want to make it as easy as possible for yourself .

 

[SpriteSODA]

It took me a long time to really nail down a good way to use Musketeers....

But you didnt explained what made the musketeers more useable then plain musketmen?

 

[Joh]

Napoleons aggressive trait and the movement to act quickly. Effectively they have strength 9.9 and two moves, sorta like knights with gunpowder. And because you get to basically replace knights with musketeers, you can found christianity, because you get to go to theology rather than ironworking and guilds. So having organised religion as well will both give you the capability to view the cities of your enemies, get your infrastrcuture up quickly and piss everyone else off so going to war won't really impact on your diplomatic relations. You can also use napoloeons industrius triat to get stonehenge and hence a great prophet to build the church of the naievity as soon as you get christianity. And because you get to found christianity, you can use that for income instead of cottages and so can make good use of france's starting tech of agriculture to build farms

So it's not just the musketeers, but a combination of the leader, civ and the research path.

 

[aelf]

Most of the time, I take the "North path" to the Renaissance. I hit Alphabet to pick up my religious techs, and then plow through to Paper to scout the world. I'll then grab Liberalism, etc. If you play France, this will totally waste the Musketeer.

It's quite funny reading about your strategy. The fact that it's so single-minded in aiming to achieve death and destruction, to the dismay of both your people and your neighbours. You make French sound Mongolian.

But does it work on the higher levels, though? The AIs are much more powerful and, plus the fact that you haven't been killing them since the Ancient age, attacking longbowmen in cities w/o cats are going to be hell. It's no use just pillaging the AI to death, is there?

IMO, you can still use Musketeers to your advantage by going to usual route. Just stop at Civil Service after COL (you will need Constuction. Best if you can trade for it) and head for the Metal Casting, Machinery, and Guilds path to Gunpowder. Tech trading should fill up the gaps elsewhere. This way, Musketeers will be a quick and effective way to constantly reinforce your slow-moving macemen/swordsmen/axemen and cats army. They can be nice as extra city raiders too. No fear. You will face at most Knights and Musketman for a long time if you've played your cards right.

I've actually thought about Wodan's concept since I was playing on Prince. I remember the cavalry-rush days in Civ 3 when I suddenly double my holdings, adding lebensraum to a well-established prosperous empire. I surmised that Cossacks and Redcoats are the best at this (I get Cossacks much sooner, though, and I've applied them to great success at Emperor). However, in Civ 4 early warring seems much more important and therefore I think it's possible for certain early UUs to shine. Praetorians seem best when you want to have a huge early war to grab and raze as much territory as possible, funding your empire on plunder until you get the courthouses out. I usually do it with axemen. So I suppose, depending on the pace you set, you can make UUs like Samurai work very well w/o bankrupting yourself. Or am I mistaken?

 

[Joh]

Theology and education can be traded for an awful lot of early techs, so going the religious route does not mean you miss out on all th eusual code of laws, construction stuff.

Also, there's no stopping anyone from conducting early wars whilst rushing to musketeers. Whatever path you go, you can still get axemen.

 

[Paeanblack]

It's quite funny reading about your strategy. The fact that it's so single-minded in aiming to achieve death and destruction, to the dismay of both your people and your neighbours. You make French sound Mongolian.

But does it work on the higher levels, though? The AIs are much more powerful and, plus the fact that you haven't been killing them since the Ancient age, attacking longbowmen in cities w/o cats are going to be hell. It's no use just pillaging the AI to death, is there?

The "French Horde" works best on higher levels, because the limiting factor is having enough AI cities to keep the conquest income rolling in. It also needs a large Pangea/Great Plains map and/or a faster game speed to be worthwhile. A tiny/epic/islands map doesn't let the UU shine.

You don't need cats except for the really bad meatgrinders (hill+walls+60%). Everything else you just overrun with Combat 2/Cover Muskets and keep rolling. You can whip Muskets from your nearby conquests to build stacks for the few really tough nuts. Cats just can't be discovered, built, and moved in time for the primary onslaught. I do build a few late in the game for mop-up help.

Napoleon is the only guy I've had real success with the "conquer the world in every direction at once or die trying" strategy. Caesar's Praets are just too slow and too few to tackle more than one or two opponents at a time.

 

[aelf]

Lol. Looks like Firaxis put the Napoleonic Wars an era or two too early. OK, as Joh pointed out, I agree early techs can be traded for. But then again the AI avoids Alphabet like the plague, so that might screw up your tech trading plans.

In my current game Freddy sailed to my continent to find me willing to trade for his Optics with Alphabet, Horseback Riding and Philosophy. I have no doubt now that the AI follows the southern research path, so you are competing with their research. Risky indeed.

But, well, if it works then it works. You didn't mention axemen, but I guess you use them early on? If you don't, care to share how you survive to get Gunpowder before the AIs have huge armies of macemen knocking at your door?

 

[Paeanblack]

Lol. Looks like Firaxis put the Napoleonic Wars an era or two too early. OK, as Joh pointed out, I agree early techs can be traded for. But then again the AI avoids Alphabet like the plague, so that might screw up your tech trading plans.

In my current game Freddy sailed to my continent to find me willing to trade for his Optics with Alphabet, Horseback Riding and Philosophy. I have no doubt now that the AI follows the southern research path, so you are competing with their research. Risky indeed.

But, well, if it works then it works. You didn't mention axemen, but I guess you use them early on? If you don't, care to share how you survive to get Gunpowder before the AIs have huge armies of macemen knocking at your door?

Hmm...I haven't had a problem with the AIs being too slow to get Alphabet. Axemen for the first waves and Longbowmen for the second waves. Gunpowder arrives quicker than you expect when you don't bother with a half-dozen useless techs, like Pottery, etc :-D

 

[Joh]

I'm having an interesting game at the moment.

Took the theology path to musketeers and managed to convert every one of the 6 civs on my continent to christianity - so now I don't want to attack them because of all the gold I'm getting!

So I'm taking a quick detour to get frigates so I can find someone on another continent to invade. I will probably just knock off half the civs on my continent though, cause I don't like them much. The ability to keep my research slider always at 100% from all the religious income is working great for this.

Therefore, at least on lower difficulty levels, in my view the musketeer rush strat is good because you get to go for a religion quickly and then if it fails you're not completely stuffed since you can go to your unique unit.

 

[aelf]

Good ideas from the both of you. I'll try ignoring Currency, COL and Civil Service next time I try Napoleon. Though I wonder how I can keep all that empire up eventually. Maybe I can trade for Currency and COL with the civ I am not going to conquer.

 

[Perfect_Blue]

~sorry, mispost~

 

[Oggums]

Good ideas from the both of you. I'll try ignoring Currency, COL and Civil Service next time I try Napoleon. Though I wonder how I can keep all that empire up eventually. Maybe I can trade for Currency and COL with the civ I am not going to conquer.

On Emperor, I can usually trade Theology for Currency (after using a prophet to get Theology). As long as you have Mathematics you can easily get that as well as Construction, assuming you've maintained good relations with some of the civs (i.e. didn't convert to Christianity or attack them). Nobody will ever give me Code of Laws, though, much less Civil Service.

Not that it matters, since we're talking about even skipping Pottery to go directly to Muskets.