axeman or swordsman?

[Bhruic]

It is the mechanics of defense in Civ4. If you have a mix of attackers, each one ends up fighting the unit best suited to defend it. If you have a concentration of attackers, you overwealm the "best suited" opposing units, then you get to chew on the soft underbelly units that are bad at defending against your unit.

The point is, the nearly-all-axe-army with spearmen to defend against chariots is an efficient way to conquor in the pre-catapult era. Play for the now, not for the then -- because after you conquor territory and double your land area, your poduction just went through the roof, and replacing your army for the next era's wars got much easier.

Of course, if you read your first paragraph and apply it to your last paragraph, it's equally valid. That is, to take out a nearly-all-axe-army, all you have to do is make a nearly-all-chariot-army. Take out the "unit best suited to defend it" (ie, the spearman), and then "chew on the soft underbelly units" (ie, the axemen).

If you are going against the AI, then yes, that's not really a worry. But I think most people would agree that an early Axe rush is effective against the AI, and there's no reason to wait for Iron or Swords to do so, so it's a bit of a moot point. However, if I am facing the AI, I'd most likely move to Swords once I had them because I can be pretty sure I won't be facing a lot of Axe defenders.

Bh

 

[axident]

Take hammers into consideration. You can get rougly 4 Axeman OR 2 Swordsman. I'll take the 4 any day.

Someone else corrected your math already, but I'd like to add that I'd hate to see your war weariness numbers.

Seriously though I think axes are better for their era, because they have no real counter except chariots, which are easy to counter with just a few spearmen. In a recent game, my combat I + shock axemen actually stood toe-to-toe with Praets.. then I pillaged Rome's iron and those fierce battles stopped, but anyway...

Swordsmen come into the game at the beginning of the classical era and by the time you get them, you probably have a crew of veteran CR II and CR III axemen already from your earlier military campaigns. Nevertheless, CR I swordsmen straight out of the barracks are just as deadly vs archers so I usually supplement my army with swords when I get iron and toss the rookie swordsmen at the archers first. But you've got to move quickly with swordsmen, as longbows are not far in the future. Of course, by the time longbows show up, you are probably running a mostly-catapult army, so who cares if it's an axeman or swordsman doing the mop-up work after your sacrifice some cats? I usually end up building war elephants to go along with my cats.. I hate that spearmen are good at countering mounted units but useless for attacking cities, but elephants are good at both and have good survivability (just don't use them against full-health spearmen) = Combat III and Combat IV elephants after a short time.

 

[Yakk]

*nod*, except chariots are really really bad against spears.

A combat II spear vs a combat II chariot: 8.8 vs 4.8.

And the spear gets terrain defensive bonuses, which can be significant.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Really strange logic you have there. Assuming you have iron, why not build at least a couple of swords? No matter what the AI loves to spam archers/longbows, and swords are much more efficient at taking them out. Do you really want to sacrifice so many catapults to deal enough collateral damage for axes to mop up?

But axes are no better at mopping up than catapults are. I'm quite happy to mop up all the defenders with catapults and earn some promotions for the next fight. At this stage you aren't sacrificing catapults though - they are winning.

What happens when you attack with catapults is each attack gets better and better odds. This doesn't happen with swords. If I switch my attack to swords when swords start getting 50% odds and catapults are still around 30%, then I stand a 50/50 chance of winning a fight that I would have probably lost - net gain 1/2 a catapult. But the next catapult after that is probably fighting at 50% now, and the following one at 70%, whereas the next sword would still be a 50/50 proposition. I doubt I end up with higher losses by using catapults rather than swords for my main attack.

The army isn't 100% catapults - I still need axes and spears for defense. And I will still build a handful of city buster swords (or better elephants) if I can. The role of these swords isn't to do the mopup though - its for those really tough CD2 longbows sitting on hills.

The problem with the CD2 longbow on a hill is that although your suicide catapults are going to weaken the remaining defenders with collateral damage, they don't do collateral damage on the primary defender who may kill the catapult taking no damage. So you may end up wasting 4-5 catapults before you even injure this defender.

In that situation I will attack the longbow with a suicide sword as the sword will have a higher chance of inflicting some damage. Typically one or two barrage catapults followed by one or two suicide swords and then CR catapults that get increasing chances of winning as the attack continues.

The other place that having swords (or elephants!) is handy is the weak cities that aren't on hills and only have a couple of longbows. Collateral isn't such a big factor and you just want the highest win chance you can get.

But the army is still 75% catapults which is what I meant by mainly one type of attacker. The other units are specialists for defense and particular attack situations.

 

[Mizar]

A swordsman with combat 1 and shock promotion has good chances against an axeman if he is in a forest or on a hill.

This is not the way to go. To get a good kill ratio (for example in an AW game) you have to increase a units strenght and not to decrease their weak point.
A swordsman has already an advantage attacking cities so they should be used for this purpose and get CR promotion.
An axeman should spezialize even more on his strenght to protect the swords in open ground, same thing for spear.

 

[cabert]

This is not the way to go. To get a good kill ratio (for example in an AW game) you have to increase a units strenght and not to decrease their weak point.
A swordsman has already an advantage attacking cities so they should be used for this purpose and get CR promotion.
An axeman should spezialize even more on his strenght to protect the swords in open ground, same thing for spear.

Right, it's better (and cheaper) to have a shock axe to defend the stack than to sacrifice a sword for a (less efficient) defensive task.
The shock axe can do some mop up fights vs a city just as good as a shock sword.

 

[Mizar]

Swordsmen come into the game at the beginning of the classical era and by the time you get them, you probably have a crew of veteran CR II and CR III axemen already from your earlier military campaigns.

Swordsmen come into the game when you get IW and that is the next tech after BW if you beeline to it.
I see your point going with an early axe-rush but this can only be done in an ideal situation (copper very close to capital).
In this situation (very early) most enemies will likely have no ressources online and the only-axes strategy is OK.
The more common situation (2 out of 3 games in my experience) is: copper not very close or even no copper visible, then you have to go for IW straight away.

 

[cabert]

Swordsmen come into the game when you get IW and that is the next tech after BW if you beeline to it.
I see your point going with an early axe-rush but this can only be done in an ideal situation (copper very close to capital).
In this situation (very early) most enemies will likely have no metal online and the only-axes strategy is OK.
The more common situation (2 out of 3 games in my experience) is: copper not very close or even no copper visible, then you have to go for IW straight away.

really?
I never do it and win consistently at monarch level.
I think the YOU HAVE TO part isn't right.
+ I find copper 2 out of 3 games.

 

[Mizar]

really?
I never do it and win consistently at monarch level.
I think the YOU HAVE TO part isn't right.
+ I find copper 2 out of 3 games.

It is probably the level you play, the AIs don't expand very fast on monarch.
On Immortal and deity, space for expansion is limited and an early war is quite inevitable. Thus, you really need metal early (for the 2nd or 3rd city) or you are dead (a chariot rush is a very risky operation).
And I should have been more clearly about getting copper. I, too, get to see copper in 2 out of 3 games but half of the time the site is located in a place the AI settles first.

 

[anglosaxon]

Early axerushes by your opponents are easily defended against with a few chariots, especially if you are Cyrus and have Immortals. There's been a number of times someone has axerushed me and they have ended up losing their capital in a few turns becuase of this flawed strategy. And even if they do bring spearmen, 1 spearman can rarely hold his own against 2 Immortals/Chariots in open ground, I find. Even better, a group of axemen accompanying the chariotsmakes for good counter against any spears they might come up against.

 

[cabert]

Immortal and deity aren't much fun IMHO : the strat usable seem to totally go down to a recipe, which isn't my idea of fun.

 

[Mizar]

Hunting down axes with chariots (if you have horses early) is another good point in combined arms startegy (attacking each unit where it is weak).

As far as playing on high levels is concerned, it's all about the challenge and it is far more than just relying on a recipe, it's just that as far as opening strategy is concerned, an early rush has proved to be necessary (for me) just to get enough productive cities/ressources.

 

[Yakk]

Interestingly, axes are bad at countering spears, if the spears are escorting axes.

The axes vs the defending axes are a wash. And the spears don't have to attack: an axeman is perfectly good at attacking a chariot.

...

The "stacks of catapult doom" are the reason why I tweaked collateral damage units. No more than 30% of target's HP, halve the combat strength of siege weapons, and boost their withdraw chance so they don't all insta-gib.

 

[aelf]

But axes are no better at mopping up than catapults are. I'm quite happy to mop up all the defenders with catapults and earn some promotions for the next fight. At this stage you aren't sacrificing catapults though - they are winning.

What happens when you attack with catapults is each attack gets better and better odds. This doesn't happen with swords. If I switch my attack to swords when swords start getting 50% odds and catapults are still around 30%, then I stand a 50/50 chance of winning a fight that I would have probably lost - net gain 1/2 a catapult. But the next catapult after that is probably fighting at 50% now, and the following one at 70%, whereas the next sword would still be a 50/50 proposition. I doubt I end up with higher losses by using catapults rather than swords for my main attack.

The army isn't 100% catapults - I still need axes and spears for defense. And I will still build a handful of city buster swords (or better elephants) if I can. The role of these swords isn't to do the mopup though - its for those really tough CD2 longbows sitting on hills.

The problem with the CD2 longbow on a hill is that although your suicide catapults are going to weaken the remaining defenders with collateral damage, they don't do collateral damage on the primary defender who may kill the catapult taking no damage. So you may end up wasting 4-5 catapults before you even injure this defender.

In that situation I will attack the longbow with a suicide sword as the sword will have a higher chance of inflicting some damage. Typically one or two barrage catapults followed by one or two suicide swords and then CR catapults that get increasing chances of winning as the attack continues.

The other place that having swords (or elephants!) is handy is the weak cities that aren't on hills and only have a couple of longbows. Collateral isn't such a big factor and you just want the highest win chance you can get.

But the army is still 75% catapults which is what I meant by mainly one type of attacker. The other units are specialists for defense and particular attack situations.

I still don't get it. Why can't you use catapults and swords, just like axes? My point is instead of having to sacrifice 4 catapults to weaken the longbows enough for your axes to mop up, why not sacrifice 3 catapults and mop up with swords? I don't see the AI stacking up on axes even on Immortal.

 

[axident]

Swordsmen come into the game when you get IW and that is the next tech after BW if you beeline to it.
I see your point going with an early axe-rush but this can only be done in an ideal situation (copper very close to capital).
In this situation (very early) most enemies will likely have no ressources online and the only-axes strategy is OK.
The more common situation (2 out of 3 games in my experience) is: copper not very close or even no copper visible, then you have to go for IW straight away.

Yes, IW is right after BW, but you sacrifice teching in a more beneficial direction (cough alphabet cough) in order to get it, plus the enemy capital is probably getting buff on culture and maybe a wall by the time you march there with enough metal-wielders to take his/her capital. I've won doing that, though, just rushing no matter what the tech cost, getting that precious copper or iron ASAP. But lately I've found an alternative solution:

Since I never bother with archery, always going for axes for both anti-barb and city-rushing, if I don't have copper decently close but have stone decently close (which happens fairly often), I immediately turn my attention to building Stonehenge + Great Wall + Pyramids in my capital, helped by some chopping, and REX to 4 cities while sealing off at least one flank by placing my cities appropriately. If you do it quickly enough, GW pops up before barb axemen show up, and Pyramids doesn't take that long, maybe 15-30 turns on Epic if you have stone, the variability depending on how many hills are in your capital's fat cross. It goes by even faster if you chop. Representation gives you unparalleled tech points because your cities can keep growing well beyond normal happiness limits and thus work lots of cottaged tiles, and then the parade of specialists from your 3 wonders just keeps adding to the fun. While cottage spamming behind the safety of my GW and not spending anything on military (I pay a LOT of attention to diplomacy and religion and always give tribute if it is even barely reasonable--and I can always whip out some chariots if someone sends axes my way), beelining to alphabet, math, currency, and CoL, and trading a lot early on (I'm usually the tech leader early on with this strat, because nobody else has alphabet and I keep it that way as long as possible so all trades have to go through me), and I usually found Taoism for a shrine later on. Pyramids + GW also tends to give you a GE which you can spend on something nice. A GP is decent just to simply settle for gold and beakers (from Representation) if you don't want to or can't shrine.

In my current game I got an early GE which I used on the Great Library, which combined with my super-science/wonderville Bureaucratic capital and Representation = I never lost the tech lead. Hell I even got another GE soon after that, thanks to the wonders and specialists working together, which I used on a Parthenon because there wasn't anything better to build. That just spammed me some more Great Scientists. I even found time to build the Uni of Sankore just for the GS GPPs and not its wonder-ability, because I couldn't safely have a religion for quite a long time, thanks to the warring religious factions around me.

After I get currency and CoL, it's time to invade my neighbor. In my current game that invasion force was just some axes and spears since I was so freaking far away from unoccupied iron. I didn't even have ivory within easy reach, but whatever, the axes were good enough to raze some cities and pillage like crazy, sustaining my tech rate to get construction quickly, and you can guess what happened after that. I also never did get my Great Prophet until pretty late into the game, so my holy city just sat there unused, but that's for the best anyway since I'd rather have an early GS or GE than an early GP.

In other games where I did the three-stone-wonders combo, I've done other things and won them all easily. In the least-easy game, I got attacked early by my supposedly Pleased neighbor Ragnar (I even gave that lousy guy tribute), but repelled it thanks to my REXing near metal, which enabled me to whip out some axemen, after which I ran over Ragnar and the guy behind him as well (whom I worker stole from early on since he was very unpopular with everyone anyway). My other games were really easy because I wasn't behind in tech as I normally would be with an early rush. Bribing a few civs to attack each other once you get a small tech lead over ANYONE with a big army (Napolean is my favorite; he usually starts wars by himself anyway; but even if he doesn't, he's usually got a huge army and is thus a bit behind in tech, making him a great candidate for bribing to attack someone) = you won, because sooner or later those "you declared war on my friend" points add up as your original war spirals out of control, especially if anyone dogpiles. Just about any war not involving you is good, because you can assume that the combatants aren't going to start a war with you while they've already got one on your hands = just cultivate good relations with those civs who aren't in the war and you can keep building and teching with abandon. I've even gifted a ton of units to my proxy-army before, just to keep a war going, my record being 34 cavalry, as many as 50 Redcoats, and an assortment of siege weapons to Hatty, whom I was using to "fight" the map leader. She lost a city and was starting to really get beaten up, so I helped out. My power rating fell by half but hers had a huge spike, and a few turns later she recaptured her city. Coincidence?

So um, no, you don't have to go for IW if you can't find close copper early on.

 

[Mizar]

if I don't have copper decently close but have stone decently close (which happens fairly often)

This seems to happen even less often than having copper nearby.

I immediately turn my attention to building Stonehenge + Great Wall + Pyramids in my capital.

On which level do you play?
On high difficult levels, trying to build wonders in the capital (which is normally your most productive city in BC-times) ís not a good strategy for 2 reasons: First, you lose a lot of hammers which should go into growth, military and expansion. Second, the AI will beat you to most of the wonders since they get a great discount on every building AND have a tech lead.

 

[axident]

This seems to happen even less often than having copper nearby.



On which level do you play?
On high difficult levels, trying to build wonders in the capital (which is normally your most productive city in BC-times) ís not a good strategy for 2 reasons: First, you lose a lot of hammers which should go into growth, military and expansion. Second, the AI will beat you to most of the wonders since they get a great discount on every building AND have a tech lead.

I play Monarch exclusively. Typically I go for fractal, standard size, normal or epic game speed. Sometimes I try inland sea, pangea, or continents, and occasionally I'll play marathon. My preference is to axe rush. Re: your capital city, I completely disagree with you, at least on Monarch. My best games have been ones where my capital quickly settles another food-heavy site, and after a couple of more builds goes to making wonders. In one particularly crazy game, my capital made all but 2 wonders. I even built the crappy Chichen Itza in that game simply because I could. Gave me some GPP. My capital city went Legendary pretty fast in that game, and by midgame nobody was anywhere close to me in terms of tech, size, etc. That doesn't happen as often in my early-rush games; in those games I have big leads but my score typically isn't more than double the next-closest guy's like it was in that game (like 3000 to 1500 or something like that).

What difficulty, speed, etc. do you play? If the same or close, I guess maybe we have different ideas of what "decently close by" means. Of course I've also had a run of games where I had no marble or stone anywhere near me, and games where copper is in my third ring, etc. But lately I've been getting no copper and plenty of stone. I hear that on the highest difficulty settings you are pretty much forced to rush early, but that sucks that you are forced to do one thing and one thing.. makes for boring games.

P.S. Never mind, you apparently enjoy Deity. Well good luck to you, I find that it gets really boring to do that early worker stealing rush thing all the time, but to each his own. (In Civ 2 I always played highest difficulty but it eventually drove me away from the game.. not that fun playing against a faulty AI that has to cheat wildly to try to be competitive, nor was it fun to found a city and have it immediately be discontent. I still won pretty much every game, but it wasn't that fun. Now I play for fun. It's just a computer game, anyway.) Of course in games where I decided to rush early, I don't build the early wonders at ALL, just basic infrastructure and units, and I capture wonders when available.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I still don't get it. Why can't you use catapults and swords, just like axes? My point is instead of having to sacrifice 4 catapults to weaken the longbows enough for your axes to mop up, why not sacrifice 3 catapults and mop up with swords? I don't see the AI stacking up on axes even on Immortal.

I think you have confused my arguments on early war with those on later war. Sorry if my post misled.

Early war (during the time of swords/axes), my argument which was also picked up by others was that you should have lots of either swords or axes but not both. And normally axes will be better since you can often get them earlier and they are better if your opponent has metals.

For later war (catapults), I never made any recommendation to use axes and not swords. For a later war I would build:

- Suicide (barrage) catapults - maybe 20%
- City raider catapults (which I would use like axes, not for suiciding although some will sometimes lose battles) - maybe 45%
- Shock Axes - maybe 10%
- Healing spears - maybe 10%
- City raider swords OR elephants if I can - maybe 15% - for suicide attacking longbows on hills or for taking small cities with only 1 or 2 longbows.

I would not build city raider axes - they are obsolete unless you have highly promoted ones from previous wars, or don't have iron or elephants.

As for mopping up with catapults rather than swords, I don't think I lose more units this way. Say I suicide 3 catapults against maybe 4 longbows and a spear and a chariot.

In wiping out the remainder with swords, I will probably still take some losses. If the odds are up to 50-60% on the longbows then I will probably lose two swords.

In wiping out the remainder with catapults, I am more likely to lose the first one. But then I do another round of collateral damage as well. By the time the next catapult attacks, the odds are at least as good as they would be with swords. After that my catapults are attacking with better odds than the swords and will wipe out all the remaining defenders with no further casualties. Usually I go in a sequence of attacking:

- A couple of suicide cats (barrage)
- A sword against the top defender if necessary
- A couple of CR 1 catapults. Probably will lose one and the other might win or withdraw hopefully.
- My highly promoted CR 2-3 catapults that should win and gain further promotions.
- Drill catapults for mopping up without taking further damage. Stack defenders can also help mop up at this point to gain some xp.

Maybe its not perfect, but its pretty effective. Having lots of catapults means the war flows quickly - city defenses are taken down in a single turn and I always seem to have enough catapults on hand - when in previous games with fewer catapults, losing them always seemed to take the steam out of my attack.

Of course if you get to maces or knights it changes again - your city raiders can beat longbows more often and a CR 3 mace is hard to stop. But I don't find swords that much better than catapults to warrant building many of them. Their greater survivability isn't much compared to the versatility of the catapults.

 

[LightSpectra]

Build both.

A diverse Stack of Death is a happy Stack of Death.

That is the greatest motto ever.

 

[aelf]

As for mopping up with catapults rather than swords, I don't think I lose more units this way.

You underestimate swords. They have the same raw strength as longbows and get that 10% city attack bonus as a little extra. CR swords are great at mopping up weakened longbows. They get, say, 80+% odds when a CR catapult would only get 60+% or less. That's a lot of difference.

And simply building more catapults to make up for it isn't always good. You would have to spend more hammers, pay more for unit costs and suffer higher WW from losing more units. When you are restricted by conditions on the higher levels, you have to be more efficient.