Basil problems: when the AI has no troops

[venus_genetrix]

I've found the AI basically gives up on a military after the medieval. Even Shaka was gunning for a culture win, spamming rock bands and having 100 spare great writers/artists when I invaded him.

This is a problem when I play Basil, since having no enemy units to kill nullifies his kit. Counters to this are:

1. Finish the game before the AI gets 20 pop cities with renaissance walls and 2000 religious pressure (I'm not good enough to do this on immortal/deity 8 player continent maps).
2. Use apostles and missionaries to convert the cities as you siege them (arguably worse than using siege weapons since religious overlay looks awful and bombards are faster than missionaries on large cities)
3. Build siege weapons (why am I playing Basil then?)
4. Play Theodora instead.

Tagma rushes have also been indirectly nerfed by the AI's lack of military. Many patches ago I could kill countless units and convert countless cities with tagma. Now I find myself using horsemen to rush before the AI inevitably mysteriously lose all their military and have giant cities with massive religious pressure. The only use I get out of Taxis is now horsemen and archers on small classical era cities.

Thoughts? Help? Mods? When did the AI stop building units?

 

[nextairjordan]

I know this is a bit of an old thread at this point; I'm new to the forum and this was particularly fortuitous timing as I actually just won a game a couple days ago as Basil (Deity, 8-man shuffle randomised, Religious Victory).

TL;DR Option 2 was the way to go for me.

This was my first playthrough with Basil so I'm sure there are more optimised ways to go about it; with some self-reflection I should have been able to win at least 20-30 turns prior as I had a ton of excess faith banked up at the end.

To start, I focused on getting my first few cities up and running with strong Holy Sites to get religion founded - picked Work Ethic, Crusade, and joined the Voidsingers SS. I accumulated enough faith to get a couple of Missionaries to convert my other cities and immediate city-states, taking advantage of Work Ethic. I built a couple of Heavy Chariots to stave off pesky Barbs and deter any nefarious considerations of my neighbours, obviously planning to convert to Tagma when available. Once getting some Commercial Hubs down to solidify my internal trade network, I began planting Hippos and beelining Divine Rights Civic. I was fortunate enough to grab Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Mosques allowing me to keep up (relatively) in science without Campus districts, simply hammering CH/Harbour, Hippos and Holy Sites etc.

Once DR discovered, upgraded all units to Tagmas, spent my banked faith on Apostles + 2 Gurus and set off to my nearest rival. Essentially fighting a two-front war on one front, I found the same as you - military units alone were not enough to convert every city, but killing religious units with Apostles as well was more than sufficient. This snowballed to the point where I had my military force with a couple Apostles off conquering rival religious civs and an army of Apostles and missionaries sweeping the globe converting the others.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I've found the AI basically gives up on a military after the medieval. Even Shaka was gunning for a culture win, spamming rock bands and having 100 spare great writers/artists when I invaded him.

This is a problem when I play Basil, since having no enemy units to kill nullifies his kit. Counters to this are:

1. Finish the game before the AI gets 20 pop cities with renaissance walls and 2000 religious pressure (I'm not good enough to do this on immortal/deity 8 player continent maps).
2. Use apostles and missionaries to convert the cities as you siege them (arguably worse than using siege weapons since religious overlay looks awful and bombards are faster than missionaries on large cities)
3. Build siege weapons (why am I playing Basil then?)
4. Play Theodora instead.

Tagma rushes have also been indirectly nerfed by the AI's lack of military. Many patches ago I could kill countless units and convert countless cities with tagma. Now I find myself using horsemen to rush before the AI inevitably mysteriously lose all their military and have giant cities with massive religious pressure. The only use I get out of Taxis is now horsemen and archers on small classical era cities.

Thoughts? Help? Mods? When did the AI stop building units?

This is a known problem after Firaxis made an update that has the AI prioritize science over everything else, including military (it goes bankrupt and units disappear).
That being said, I think they reverted that one, but I wouldnt know since I use a mod that manually reverted that change because of how bad it was for balance.

Regardless though, always carry a few apostles around for those hard to convert cities (especially proselytizer and translator apostles), since cities with several thousands of native pressure are really hard to convert without anyway.

Horseman rush is you doing it right though, "rushing" Tagma is quite inferior because you are delaying your power spike, which hits the second you get your religion up (late ancient/early classical era).
I personally never bother rushing Tagma, and just go straight for Heavy Chariots and Horsemen, and upgrade from there.
You can always resort to buying Tagma later with faith (grand master's chapel) since you will be swimming in faith anyway from pillaging improvements with your light cavalry, and any cold costs you save on are dwarfed by the enormous momentum you gain from starting your domination train in the early classical era.

 

[GMVORTEX1044]

I know this is a bit of an old thread at this point; I'm new to the forum and this was particularly fortuitous timing as I actually just won a game a couple days ago as Basil (Deity, 8-man shuffle randomised, Religious Victory).

TL;DR Option 2 was the way to go for me.

This was my first playthrough with Basil so I'm sure there are more optimised ways to go about it; with some self-reflection I should have been able to win at least 20-30 turns prior as I had a ton of excess faith banked up at the end.

To start, I focused on getting my first few cities up and running with strong Holy Sites to get religion founded - picked Work Ethic, Crusade, and joined the Voidsingers SS. I accumulated enough faith to get a couple of Missionaries to convert my other cities and immediate city-states, taking advantage of Work Ethic. I built a couple of Heavy Chariots to stave off pesky Barbs and deter any nefarious considerations of my neighbours, obviously planning to convert to Tagma when available. Once getting some Commercial Hubs down to solidify my internal trade network, I began planting Hippos and beelining Divine Rights Civic. I was fortunate enough to grab Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Mosques allowing me to keep up (relatively) in science without Campus districts, simply hammering CH/Harbour, Hippos and Holy Sites etc.

Once DR discovered, upgraded all units to Tagmas, spent my banked faith on Apostles + 2 Gurus and set off to my nearest rival. Essentially fighting a two-front war on one front, I found the same as you - military units alone were not enough to convert every city, but killing religious units with Apostles as well was more than sufficient. This snowballed to the point where I had my military force with a couple Apostles off conquering rival religious civs and an army of Apostles and missionaries sweeping the globe converting the others.

Nice strategy, focusing on Holy Sites and Work Ethic was a great start. Using Apostles to convert cities was a game-changer!

Good job, and nice to see you reflecting on your game!