Axemen too strong too early?

[Cuteunit]

Hello.. this is more a versus issue, or a small maps issue, but...

considering how early you can acquire Axemen in the game, I am wondering if they are not too cheap/too strong for their position...

just soliciting thoughts? I play cooperatively and versus with my friends on reasonable game speeds et al, but if I don't hard tech for a strong military unit like axemen I can almost guarantee my khazad friend will show up with a stack of ten or fifteen axemen at my border while I'm studying knowledge of the ether... or worse.. Champions. He just climbs up that one tree with a detour to get Writing, and he wins...

 

[Kalimakhus]

Axemen in FfH are not as strong as they are in vanilla civ. They start with 4str and get +1str if you have copper connected. They are also 3 long tech away for most civs. Crafting -> Mining -> Bronze Working. They also require a building "Training Yard" to train them.

By all means I don't think that Axes rush in FfH is a viable option. Of course if you neglect defending your cities properly early in the game it is your own mistake! A good number of dirt cheap warriors 3str in a city with culture can hold against Axes equal in number. It requires double the number of defenders to take the city.

For your friend to build a ten or fifteen strong stack of Axemen a long time is required. One should ask what have you been doing in this time?

 

[Cuteunit]

I've been analyziing it in single player games

the unit itself isnt so bad other than it's too cheap ( takes 3 turns to build warrior in my current city, 4 to build an axeman)

BUT

The City Raider upgrades turn it into a god of city smashing, and you can have the first one simply from the Apprenticeship civic. I have a few axemen in my current game with +130% city attack.. at a point in the game ( just over 100 turns) where everybody has 20-40% AT MOST city def. Isnt that a little excessive?

 

[Humakty]

Basically, with copper, the axeman only has a 10 % advantage : warrior str 4 + 25% in city = 5 whereas axemen str 5 +10 % attacking a city = 5.5
This is not taking in account the city bonus, usually + 20/40 %.
So, with a steady production of warriors, you should be able to easily old him back, until he has catapults.
If he attacks you with units of higher level than yours, it is because you don't farm enougth on barb units. And if he uses to attack with only raider units, why don't you use shock promoted units ?

 

[Tarquelne]

I've been analyziing it in single player games

the unit itself isnt so bad other than it's too cheap ( takes 3 turns to build warrior in my current city, 4 to build an axeman)

Axemen have a base cost of 60, Warriors 25. So on average it'll take more than twice as long to build Axemen.

[quote/
The City Raider upgrades turn it into a god of city smashing, and you can have the first one simply from the Apprenticeship civic. [/QUOTE]

CR requires yet another tech. One that allows the Conquest civic, though. And Military State. If your friend switches to those he'll be making experienced Axemen and an increased rate...

In about the time it takes to research BW you could get Archery. Archers have defense 5, which would give Axemen a major headache. They cost just as much as Axemen, but they might help taking the uncertainty out of city defense. (Figuring out how many warriors you need to defend against experienced axemen can be tricky.) And once built they'd cost less to maintain (on a per-defense point basis.) I think a lot of people skip archers, but they might fit well with your play-style.

I agree with the previous poster, though, that warriors should be enough to stop axemen... if you've got enough of them. It might take quite a few if they're facing hmm... you mentioned Khazad. Facing Kandros Fir's Axemen?

Kandros has Aggressive and Financial. Aggressive will have them all start with one Combat promotion. He'll need Education to get Warfare for that City Raider promotion, which means - given the Financial trait - many of the Cottages may have an increase output. And, hey, Ingenuity, IIRC? Discount for upgrading any experienced warriors!

I think Axeman rush _is_ a viable tactic... under some circumstances. But not one that can't be countered. I generally like to play with a peaceful, builder-centric strategy. (Well, until I'm good and ready to conquer the world...) But despite that I usually find myself scrambling hard for basic military techs - and building more military units than I'd rather - early in a game if I'm up against agressive opponents.

Life early in the game can be nasty, brutish, and short. Almost as much as the Khazad.

Maybe think of Knowledge of the Ether as a luxury to be obtained after there are several Archers in each city...?

 

[oyzar]

Try starting as doviello(the agressive leader or as the agg/rai leader if you play unrestricted) then building nothing but warriors then attack him asap(don't worry about improvements). And you will see that it is not axes that are overpowered... You can tech towards education for apprenticeship but the game should be over rather fast... Since FFH early game is so ridiculous slow any sort of rush strategy is very powerful.

 

[Cuteunit]

In about the time it takes to research BW you could get Archery. Archers have defense 5, which would give Axemen a major headache

Archers can't stop him from pillaging everything outside the city and winning THAT way.

 

[Kalimakhus]

The rush strategy that I found successful almost 100% is hunters rush with Svartalfar. With the free Sinister promotion they come at 5str out of the box. You only need two techs + one building and you are set to go. Now this is really early. You take your opponents with their breaches down. Most cities have no culture yet and 2 warriors max defending. Capitals with 40% culture can still be taken with double the number of defenders (8 Hunters max).

Comparing this to Axemen. 3 Techs (2 for the dwarfs) + one building + one copper resource. (The last one can be there or not depending on your luck). To have Education for Apprenticeship and Warfare for CR promotion. You are no longer early in the game. This is not really a rush it is normal war. It can then be easily countered.

A rush is the kind of attack that is so early and so devastating that it is almost impossible to counter. If this definition is acceptable I can say that Svartalfar Hunters rush is the only one that qualifies.

 

[Cuteunit]

Maybe they should discourage rushes somehow.. higher unit maintenance early on or something..

 

[Cuteunit]

There's also the conquest civic... really, because of production rollover it IS TRUE that you can build an Axeman in three turns while a Warrior takes two, despite the higher hammer cost of the axe.

Isnt this insanely fast military build rate purely encouraging to rush play? Why build a Library over the span of 15-18 turns when you (with conquest and some farms) crank out axes in three?


The -10% military build rate from Apprenticeship doesnt balance out the free upgrade from the +2 exp. In fact it might as well not even be there. You dont notice it.


It'd work out better if Warfare wasnt so easy and quick to get... in Vanilla civ you really NEED siege engines to break a decent town.. not so with my ffh +40% city attack axemen at turn 120ish.. there's no defense here against simply massing these and charging. Even if you stack our lovely 3 str Archers with city guard ( who mysteriously cost the same number of hammers as an axe/swordsman yet due to low Attack str cannot be used to stop pillaging, which is far worse than being sieged in your town) you're left at a disadvantage due to the too-specialized nature of them.

Basically, there's no choice at all but to both attack and defend with axemen unless you're playing only against the boneskulled AI.

 

[GeeJo]

It's true that you don't notice the -10% production, but the same could be said for a number of bits tacked on to the various civics (+1 on quarries for Slavery is probably the most egregious in this respect). They're in there more for flavour than balance, I think.

 

[Grey Fox]

Dont forget, Khazad are Ingenious, so they can build warriors and upgrade them to Axeman at half price.

And Education -10% was more noticeable when you could use it together with Military State.

 

[Cuteunit]

There's no need to spend the coin to upgrade warriors to axemen when it only takes one additional turn to produce an Axe over a Warrior using Conquest.

I can screenshot it, if I must.

 

[Grey Fox]

Yes its worth it. Let's say you spend 60 turns building warriors. And 60 Turns building Axemen.

Warriors cost 25
Axeman cost 60

And let's say your production is 15 Hammers per turn. You would produce one warrior every 1.67 turns and an Axeman every 4 turns. This would mean you'd have 36 Warriors vs 15 Axeman. Upgrade the Warriors and you have 36 Axeman vs 15 Axeman.

Now let's say for arguments sake that you build warriors in 3 turns and Axeman in 4 turns, which sounds weird but I think I've remembered something similar myself. You would still have 25% more Axeman by building Warriors that way, and since Khazad has the Ingenuity trait, the upgrade is half-price and not too bad. I mean if you are gonna rush, you won't need to max research during this period anyways.

 

[Cuteunit]

Where are you getting the infinite gold to upgrade a warrior every two turns, and why are you ignoring what I keep saying about the Conquest civic's contribution, and why are you ignoring production rollover's effect on build volume?


Even setting research to 0, I'm not so sure.

 

[Grey Fox]

Well I know from experience that I've been able to do this myself. (merchants, + settled Great Merchants, Markets and Temples of Kilmorph help)

And I wasn't ignoring production rollover effect. I said 1.67 turns for every warrior, the Axeman had perfect ratio in the first example (60/15), and in the 2nd example I used your figures.

 

[Cuteunit]

I wonder if it would be feasible to make support costs for military units rise if you overused one type. It really ruins the game when the zerg rush turns out to be the most effective way of getting things done.

 

[Silverkiss]

Not really. City Raider Axemen bothering you ? Promote your Axemen (Or even warriors, they'l do too) for Shock and crush the enemy before they attack. Really, City Raider only comes into play if they attack. Don't let them.

And using a zerg-like strategy just gave them defeat. One simple promotion that is effective against all their army.

 

[Grey Fox]

Exactly what I was gonna suggest.

And also, scorch that ground if you can. p Cuteunit)

 

[Cuteunit]

The whole point of the thread, even the title of the thread, is "are axmen too strong for how early you can get them?" and you're telling me to just get axemen too? Arent you proving my case for me, to suggest such a thing?