Babylon vs Numidian Mercs

[GeniX]

Just coming out of a 3 hour long game, I'm desperate for suggestions. I had the unfortunate luck of having the Carthaginians on my land.

Playing Babylonian, I primarily armed myself with Bowmen & Spearmen. The issue was as such - my opponent had more cities than I did, however I'm pretty sure mine were all larger on average than his (and by the end, mine had many times the improvements his had).

Once a state of war had been established, I tried the offensive. I found the 2/3/1 of the Numidian Mercs extremely difficult - even if I had veteran bowmen vs his regulars.

In short, I was losing a good 2 or 3 bowmen if going on the offensive vs the mercs. Even with barracks in each city, I couldnt get the sheer number of lesser units to equal his army.

Thus I sat tight in cities fortified with walls. He wasted units as fast as he was pumping them out on my cities. Still, by the time the middle ages rolled around (tech-wise), I was in the position of almost a standstill in research. While being quite a bit more advanced than my foe, all techs and city upgrades proved useless if I could not get a military unit to counter his mercs.

Given how far away such a unit is, I was wondering if anyone has suggestions or strategies. Eventually he quit out of frustration since he couldnt get into my cities.

(There was one block of iron I could locate on our continent, and I had a spearmen fortified on that mountain. It was within his borders by his largest city - one which I could definately not take given the units he had).



My opinion is that I did all I could. No iron, sees him walk all over my land and nothing I can do

 

[widdowmaker]

Damn...... Hmm......make peace and then try to get EVERUYONE to go kill him.DEvolp heavy cultre and cultre flip his citiys. Then he starts paying for hsi units once he loses half his cities. Then later take gurrilas to him. Take tanks. Bomb them. Those mercs kinda suck IMO. I mena jsut hit him with aa swords man! Wait. No iron. THen get soem iron. Buy it off him or soemone else.

 

[Angmar]

His mercs require iron. Take away his iron and you take away his ability to replace the mercs.

 

[GeniX]

hmm... I didnt know mercs required iron (havent played with the Carth. before).

Im farily sure I had explored the landmass. Perhaps there was some I hadn't re-explored after getting the ability to see iron deposits.

In hind sight, I should have built a harbour as soon as I could, and traded iron with the greeks who were proud to mention they had iron when we (Carth. & I) did not.

 

[[GoD]Toxic]

Get some iron and fortify a LOT of units on his iron. If you let him use it you will get in trouble.

You could also wait until his mercs are out of date and then crush him...

 

[Coorae]

mercs dont require iron, they replace spearmen

whats with your nick GeniX? not a blitz programmer are you?

 

[GeniX]

I am not sure what you mean by 'blitz programmer'.

My nick was an evolution of sorts... started off as Cryogenics, stylized to Cryogenix, and shortened to Genix to fit into some games name entry box (dont recall which game). Further changed to GeniX with capital X.

Has stayed this way for a number of years now.

 

[JMK]

I would suggest to buy iron from another Civ, and build some Medieval Infantry (Attack 4) against Numibian (Defense 3) you may need 2 Medieval Infantry per Numibian. Also another possibility is to wait for knight, but again you will have to deal with Iron hopefully you will be able to buy it from another Civ, hoping you have horses.

 

[Shabbaman]

You're royally screwed. Numidian mercenaries should be treated as pikemen. That means that you should either build knights, or medieval infantry with pikemen back up.

On the other hand, since these mercenaries are quite expensive, you don't have to fear much for a counter attack. Sit it out until you've got enough knights.

 

[phizuol]

Numidians aren't really that expensive. They're the same as Swordsmen and Horsemen and don't require iron. Your best bet is to attack with a large number of horsemen to keep your losses down.

 

[JMK]

Forgot another possibility, that should even work better than any other, it is to attack with a batch of catapult defended by a few spearmen and archer to finish the work of the catapults.

 

[Coorae]

I am not sure what you mean by 'blitz programmer'.

I was wondering because the nick is like one from blitzcoder.com

 

[farting bob]

declare peace, and only build whatever the best attacking unit you can at the time. after 20 or so turns you should have enough to launch a good offensive on the town with iron. aim all your units at that city and attack on the same turn.once you ge tthe city move as many defensive untis as you can into it and you can use it as a base for future attacks.