Axe vs sword rush, monarch - immortal

[troytheface]

lol. mr elephant.

In regard to washintgon- saw some show and learned that he walked into congress with a uniform on all the time- when it came to selecting a general - there he was!
someone who got demoted in the english army. lol

(and i think that baron von train-the-troops was a homosexual that got in trouble with someone somewhere
- in other words a couple of con fraud types that ended up -the superior

the evidence is clear- swords and phants and loopy con like tactics and guides are better than a cottage.

 

[wioneo]

I recently had a game with the romans where i got the event that gives a CR promo to each praet. My praets had favourable odds against most axes and swords they were fighting against...

Even without city raider a praet will more often than not beat an axe in open field(no promos).

 

[CivIVMonger]

I'd much rather have drill, combat, shock, or any Promotion that's good all around. It's not worth the xp in my book to promote a unit to Amphbious.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I'd much rather have drill, combat, shock, or any Promotion that's good all around. It's not worth the xp in my book to promote a unit to Amphbious.

You dare to defy the SUPERIOR advise of the genius of Attacko?!!!!!!!!?!!!!!!!????!!!!!!!!!!

 

[CivIVMonger]

Attacko?!? OK.... tell me who is and I might listen to him...

 

[Lone Wolf]

Attacko?!? OK.... tell me who is and I might listen to him...

The Great Attacko is a master Civ player. The strategies he uses are narrated to us by troytheface.

 

[CivIVMonger]

So... Troytheface IS attacko... He's a MASTER.... It's an honor...

 

[SnowlyWhite]

axe or HA; at least HBR has a very decent trade value, contrary to iw. And by that time, you need speed on your units to reinforce the sod(ai already has 5 cities?). At 2/turn in your territory with penalty if you cross a river, reinforcements come at an awful speed...

 

[JTMacc99]

Okay, I have a situation for everybody. Monarch/Epic. I drew Zara. Starting spot has, well, you can see. Lots of food, hills, trees, and a river. Good stuff, really. Off to the east is some odd land, but there is a spot on the coast that will grab rice, gold, copper, and wine, but the rest is either coast, tundra, plains, and non-farmable grassland. It will also be DIRECTLY up against the Celtic (Bootylicious) border. Naturally, she founded her capital on a hill, and just to make it interesting, she founded one of the early religions. To the west is another nice spot that will grab lots of good grassland, plus horses and rice. It looks like we are alone on this continent (The settings are for 2-5 continents, and it looks like it's certainly not going to be 2.)

Got it?

The plan was, build settler, grab the border city that claims all the good stuff, chop out a bunch of axes, hope like hell we can take that stupid capital.

Then, in 1900 BC, a scout found a hut up in the DENSE jungle to the north that gave me the secret of Iron Working. This is before the settler has even finished in Aksum. The iron ends up being in the capital's BFC on that plains tile 1S of the western pigs.

So here's the question: How the heck to I go about this? I haven't even researched Agriculture yet, so the rice is currently unfarmed. I only have one worker, a scout, and I think four warriors. Both Pigs are pastured, and the two open plains hills are mined. I was about to set my worker to build a road towards the second city, use the capital to build a another worker or two and then start my axe army. Instead, I turned him around to build a road to connect the iron and then mine it.

The settler is going to complete and go claim that site before she puts a city in a crappy spot. I still think I should build a couple more workers, which won't take long, and then start chopping and whipping out the army.

Should I declare war before I'm actually ready to take the city, just to get in there and disrupt any expansion plans and possible metal mines she might have? The obvious downside is that she'll start spamming archers, which will be a real problem on that hill. On the other hand, axes on that hill will pretty much negate my swords.

So, what would be your battle plan? What combination of units would you bring? Is there any technology (other than agriculture) that I should consider at this point?

(BTW, it sure seems like this game will be mine to lose if I pull this off. With Zara's awesome traits, I should be able to settle this continent comfortably while maintaining a healthy research level. I also found both stone and marble, so Aksum will be kind of spectacular.)

 

[petey]

Get the Iron, build a couple of Axes and Swords and declare on her. Keep her holed up in her capitol building Archers and do some pillaging to get her away from any resources. Then build some City Raider Swords and take her capitol and expand across the continent at your leisure.

With two capitols and peaceful expansion available, you can make an easy run to a Culture victory.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I didn't realize people traded for IW, I usually self research it before Alphabet/Mathematics

Depends what diff level you're playing. Prince and below should have no problem self researching everything but 4 or 5 techs. Iron working is worth self researching on those levels since you can easily have a monopoly on it for a while and axe/sword combo rushing an AI is pretty easy and worth it.

Personally, on Prince, I still researched alphabet/maths first then gauged if I needed or wanted IW.

 

[DaveMcW]

JTMacc99, please turn off the date color in BUG options.

 

[ABigCivFan]

One great use for swords on Immortal+ is to use them to peacefully unlock HE. If you can not fight an early war but have a barb city near by. You can send in 3 CR swords and milk the xp from garrison barb archers. It is relatively easy to get 1 sword to CR3 to unlock HE. This is alone worth the effort to get IW early.

When fighting AIs, if you can easily pillage the AI's metal and limit the AI to Archers and mounted, then send in the swords. Otherwise send in mixed force. When you can build spies, use them to scout for defense and pillage metal.

 

[Fluxx]

Well if they have both axes and archers, your swords will get the axes and your axes will get the archers, so axe attackers won't actually help unless you have enough to completely get rid of the archers AND have some left over to kill the leftover axes, but then you'll have used more axes against the archers than you would have used swords...

Hm....

The thing is you can upgrade SM with shock. In your stack you will have only SM plus 1-2axe/chariot, and maybe 1 spearman for defensive purposes.
You will only attack with your SM no matter what is in the city.

Think about it like this. If you would upgrade all your axemen with cover f.e. to attack citiies, you would get a 5*1.35 = 6.75 against archers and against axemen/chariots you will just throw yourself against citywalls plus the upgrade the AI has chosen.
If you Axerush and a city has axemen/chariots defending you will loose in horrible odds.
Therefor rushing axemen seems most often not the right way to go, unless you got copper in your BFC and your opponent is about 6-10 tiles away from you OR if he doesnt have any metal.

With SM you would have 6*1.25 = 8 against archers and 6*1.5 = 9 against Axemen.

Now considering the fact that around that era you will complete SM 1 turn if not the same turn as Axemen it is quite obvious which is the superior.

Rushing construction is way worse then rushing IW. You can never depend on being able to trade Construction, and when you have it the AI will have it too, but then earlier.
Not only that, but before you have mustered up 5-6 cata's, the AI will most likely have Longbows

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Axe rushing can work even outside those situations. The AI will always adopt Slavery as soon as they get BW. So if your neighbor doesn't adopt Slavery, you know he still can't see copper => rush will work. That's usually how I gauge whether or not to use Axes to rush.

 

[Fluxx]

Axe rushing can work even outside those situations. The AI will always adopt Slavery as soon as they get BW. So if your neighbor doesn't adopt Slavery, you know he still can't see copper => rush will work. That's usually how I gauge whether or not to use Axes to rush.

This will NEVER happen on higher difficulties.
Absolutely never.

 

[Jet]

This is what I would do on Normal/Immortal, if I had decided to attack now. I'm assuming Monarch/Epic is close enough.

How do I go about this? I only have one worker. Both Pigs are pastured, and the two open plains hills are mined. The settler is going to complete. I think I should build a couple more workers.

One more worker is enough.

Should I declare war before I'm actually ready to take the city, just to get in there and disrupt any expansion plans and possible metal mines she might have?

No. If you were in a different position, it would be difficult to get enough scouting done enough in time, or to use one-movement units to snoop around after declaring. However, you are one tech from Writing (and can probably skip Agr for now, depending on the exact tiles in your second city, because it probably can and should get a lot of initial hammers from chopping, so it's probably not important that it grow quickly) and have a Scout. And you have AH and IW for thorough scouting. If the Scout is safe you might be able to get some practical scouting done in time to commit to a practical choking and pillaging mission. Nonetheless, her resourceless defense of hill + Duns (potentially) + Cha (potentially) is too strong to make this worth it.

So, what would be your battle plan? What combination of units would you bring?

7 Swords and one Axe. She might have more than 4 units in the capital but probably won't. There's risk but I don't see any low-risk way to attack now. The only lower-risk choice I see is to attack never or at a later tech level.

Is there any technology (other than agriculture) that I should consider at this point?

Writing to Alphabet so that you can build Libraries if needed for research, then get techs in a peace deal and/or build research. You don't appear to have a lot of commerce, but between the river and conquest money I think you can probably stay out of strike.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

This will NEVER happen on higher difficulties.
Absolutely never.

Odd how the current immortal+ players are the ones who opened my eyes to the axe rush. I almost always waited until catapults to invade a civ until a few higher level players posted about how to succeed in an axe rush.

 

[Fluxx]

Odd how the current immortal+ players are the ones who opened my eyes to the axe rush. I almost always waited until catapults to invade a civ until a few higher level players posted about how to succeed in an axe rush.

I still have to see that happen to me.

Have even seen Egyptians and Indians with BW around 2500

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

The AI doesn't always beeline to BW. Sometimes they do. I don't study teh XML so I don't know when they will or won't. I've seen AI on Monarch not get BW until 1000bc, but that's monarch.