Barbarian Horde

[Trantor]

firstly thanks to all developers who have improved the game speed. i am able to have army stack of 500 without speed issues


using this barbarian hoarde of 500 lower power units i am able to invade far more powerful cities. typically 3-5 of my weaker power 4 troops are killed per 1 power 7 defender but the hoarde of 500 captures enemy cities easily with loss of only 200-250 casulty

 

[Trantor]

the horde took over Germany but as the focus is on cranking out troops culture was low. so zulu owns the countryside ... zulu is protected by babylon

what would u do?

 

[Trantor]

lost 3 cities to culture.... most of my newly captured german cities like zululand

wonder if the mongol hoarde faced this issue

 

[Thunderbrd]

lost 3 cities to culture.... most of my newly captured german cities like zululand

wonder if the mongol hoarde faced this issue

Make sure to staff enough LE units in new cities to help resist the uprisings.

 

[Maltazard]

Storytellers/entertainers with cultural protection promotions and buildups should also help against cultural revolts. From the in game tooltips they seem to work, but I'm not sure in they're more effective than soldiers. From what I saw from city revolt chance in some occupations, LE doesn't appear to reduce revolt risk any more than standard military units instead.

In general if I'm using hidden nationality units I find it easier to just keep taking a city back and forth until it drops to 1pop and then someone razes it. Contested borders will expand, and then I would resettle later on when the cultural % is more favorable. It's funny that the AIs will recognize your mercenaries as yours with modifiers like "the war is going bad for us" but you don't get the relationship hit from a formal war declaration. They will also be angry at you if you raze the city, so often I'll just leave it undefended after capture and wait for some random third party automated unit to take it and do it for me. Takes some time but you effectively get to ruin your neighbors and expand your borders with barely any diplomatic repercussion... lovely.

 

[Yudishtira]

Storytellers/entertainers with cultural protection promotions and buildups should also help against cultural revolts. From the in game tooltips they seem to work, but I'm not sure in they're more effective than soldiers. From what I saw from city revolt chance in some occupations, LE doesn't appear to reduce revolt risk any more than standard military units instead.

I don't think Entertainers are working properly. Inspire VII says it gives 70 revolt protection, but in fact gives 4. I promoted an entertainer from iirc Inspire I to II, and its revolt protection went down by 11.

This being the case, LEs are a better bet. They give (relatively) huge reductions up to 19ish (that I've seen).

I also suggest it's a problem that revolt protection is strictly a percentage. I have had cities reporting 500% revolt chance, but whether they have 500% or 50%, you need 100 revolt protection to make that go away. I'd suggest revolt protection should be a subtraction from revolt chance, not a %age reduction.

 

[Maltazard]

Interesting. I have only used storytellers with rank 1 promotions so far, so I haven't had a chance to verify how the promotions work.

I also get a little confused since I play with revolutions on, and it's not clear how the two things behave together. I remember LE used to give massive stability bonus, now they apparently have none, also even when occupying a completely foreign culture city and being at war with the respective culture homeland you have cultural revolt risk but not instability from revolutions, or anyway way too little to have any effect. Maybe these two systems could be merged someday, if and when revolutions becomes fully supported.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I also get a little confused since I play with revolutions on, and it's not clear how the two things behave together. I remember LE used to give massive stability bonus, now they apparently have none, also even when occupying a completely foreign culture city and being at war with the respective culture homeland you have cultural revolt risk but not instability from revolutions, or anyway way too little to have any effect. Maybe these two systems could be merged someday, if and when revolutions becomes fully supported.

Revolutions has no relationship to the usual cultural revolt system from vanilla and the protection against it afforded by LE and Entertainer units is purely related to the core culture revolt mechanism. Therefore, that protection doesn't help in the slightest with anything the Rev option may bring about.

Interesting to hear that the math involved might be a little skewy. I'll make sure to review that coding when I get into the coding side of the unit review I'm doing. Interestingly enough, this thread reminded me to plan for an entire Unit AI type specifically for this role.

 

[Trantor]

that could be it as unit trading is allowed so most of my allies were regularly selling me units and buying LE units... still with most countryside with the other side, those good cities were on constant starvation.

 

[Trantor]

like the real hoarde, i entered inside the high culture civilization and captured 3 cities
still the countryside was his so troop progress was very slow

 

[Trantor]

 

[Trantor]

1135 unit stack................unthinkable before the update. the game turns would have taken 1 hour plus. now still under 1 minute

amazing!!!!

 

[Thunderbrd]

View attachment 566091

1135 unit stack................unthinkable before the update. the game turns would have taken 1 hour plus. now still under 1 minute

amazing!!!!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure it isn't an aspect of a bug processing things incorrectly... But after some AI work to come we'll find out.

 

[Trantor]

the game speed has increased drastically .... earlier if i had such large stacks, game would slow down ...like 30-40mins per turn
now it goes very fast

but the AI seems little weaker

 

[Trantor]

are all AI really that weak? with a stack of 300 artillery i am able to clear 1 city a turn. the artilery is backed by 500 grenadiers and assorted troops

 

[Thunderbrd]

You have a truly massive force... I'm improving the AI with some big plans here but I'm not sure anyone would be quite ready for all that. Maybe...

 

[Esfera]

Can you tell me in which difficulty level you're playing right now?
After seeing your screenshots I've been thinking that perhaps spamming bombardement units like the grenadier may be an excellent strategy against a deity AI or even deity+nightmare AI, if you have vital space to stand a chance until you can get a range unit that can bombard other tiles, that is.

 

[raxo2222]

or even deity+nightmare AI, if you have vital space to stand a chance until you can get a range unit that can bombard other tiles, that is.

deity+nightmare isn't a thing for half of year - nightmare as option was removed now its full fledged handicap.

 

[JosEPh_II]

deity+nightmare isn't a thing for half of year - nightmare as option was removed now its full fledged handicap.

Yeah I had forgotten that SO's Nightmare was no longer an option to use.