best promotions for cats?

[CivCorpse]

I have always used barrage promotions for my cats in city assaults. Until I saw Sis's ALC as Izzy. He had CR# trebs. Is this just for trebs? Or should I also promote my cats that way? Assuming I am playing as someone other than izzy as well. I tend to have 4-5 accuracy cats then another mob of cats for limited life expectancy use.

 

[Firewind]

Trebs get a natural bonus for city raiding, and improving this can be quite helpful in my opinion, but for your bombardments you need Barrage/Accuracy. Always take enough to bomb a 120% defense city - they don't exist to my knowledge, but that way you're guaranteed to be able to demolish any city defenses. I tend to make all the rest of my siege full out Barrage, since if I'm attacking a city with siege I want to do maximum possible collateral damage. In Warlords or Vanilla, I can see how City Raider would be highly beneficial to trebs, since they can actually kill units, but in BTS they can't kill, so the most it does is help guarantee survival.

Of course, I'm hardly an expert.

 

[CivCorpse]

I think the key here is to insure survival. It takes a while to walk your little replacement cats to the frontlines, plus you have to build more troops just to defend them as you go. I seem to have a problem with invasions petering out as i run out of cats.

 

[Meister]

I would say that for suicidal troops,barrage is better and they should always attack FIRST

But City Raider is not that bad for all siege units (I think the only exception is Cats vs Longbows ... CR would not help much) Fighting against units of the same age with siege unit which has CR promotions could have at least 5x% odd,that is not bad for disposable troops.

However,some siege units with Accuracy promotion should be kept well in your SoD and should not attack (especially during the time of Trebs vs Castles)...since it take a holy long time to reduce the defence to 0%...

So,I would say...If you want Accuracy Promotions,it is better to go this route -- CR I-->Acc ,since they will be well preserved and not to be used as suicidal troops.

Hopefully I can help you.

 

[KMadCandy]

Trebs get a natural bonus for city raiding, and improving this can be quite helpful in my opinion, but for your bombardments you need Barrage/Accuracy.

you qualify for the accuracy promo with either Barrage 1 or CR 1.

However,some siege units with Accuracy promotion should be kept well in your SoD and should not attack (especially during the time of Trebs vs Castles)...since it take a holy long time to reduce the defence to 0%...

So,I would say...If you want Accuracy Promotions,it is better to go this route -- CR I-->Acc ,since they will be well preserved and not to be used as suicidal troops.

so that's how i do it. hard to get them exp now, so if mine are coming off the line at 3 exp i put CR on and hope that they'll get to 5, one point at a time, someday.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I tend to make all the rest of my siege full out Barrage, since if I'm attacking a city with siege I want to do maximum possible collateral damage.

You may want to rethink that. The amount of extra damage you get from the Barrage promotion is a small fraction of the amount of collateral damage produced by an unpromoted catapult.

The problem is integer math. Collateral damage uses collateral strength, rather than combat strength, in its calculations. Collateral strength is base strength plus collateral bonuses.

The promotions of the barrage description lie (at least the english versions do). What really happens is that the collateral "damage" number listed in the description is a percentage bonus added to your collateral strength.

So a Barrage I catapult goes from strength 5 to ( 5 * 120% = ) strength 6. A Barrage I treb goes to 4.8 collateral strength... which of course gets rounded right back down to 4 (no effect!)

A Barrage II treb is strength 6 (150% * 4), so that's all right. A Barrage II catapult gets screwed (7 instead of 7.5).

Once the collateral strength of the attacker and defender are known, the game then figures out the damage done - and this process includes another integer rounding (aka a jump point).

So in an example like "catapults vs longbows", if you set up the experiment in world builder, you'll find that an unpromoted catapult inflicts 9 collateral damage to each longbow, and that a Barrage I catapult inflicts 10 damage.

Improving the survival odds of the catapult are a much better investment.

 

[Big Boss Man]

I favor CR now . You'll need more of them to destroy defences quickly . They splash damage less but targets will still get hurt if not destroyed .
The ones that survive and get closer to CR III , Upgraded to cannon later
thats quite nasty !

 

[slobberinbear]

I like to give my Cats the hairball promotion. Immobilizes the enemy in disgust.

 

[Gocho]

Always CR for me, cats and trebs are just being trained for CR3 cannons anyways.

 

[Archaelicos]

I have always used barrage promotions for my cats in city assaults. Until I saw Sis's ALC as Izzy. He had CR# trebs. Is this just for trebs? Or should I also promote my cats that way? Assuming I am playing as someone other than izzy as well. I tend to have 4-5 accuracy cats then another mob of cats for limited life expectancy use.

I tend to do CR -> Accuracy now. If I'm going to suicide it, I do Barrage I/II (III under some circumstances).

 

[UncleJJ]

My recipe for cat promotions is simple. Before trebuchets most cats are used to soften the defenders and get CR promotions. Once trebs are available they take over city softening and always get CR promotions, then my cats get Combat promotions and are usually used to soften stacks outside cities although they sometimes follow my trebs if there are still targets needing collateral damage. I often upgrade trebs to cannons since the upgrade is cheap, but cats are too expensive and outdated cats just get used as garrison troops or deleted.

 

[DarkFyre99]

I have always used barrage promotions for my cats in city assaults. Until I saw Sis's ALC as Izzy. He had CR# trebs. Is this just for trebs? Or should I also promote my cats that way? Assuming I am playing as someone other than izzy as well. I tend to have 4-5 accuracy cats then another mob of cats for limited life expectancy use.

It really depends upon the purpose of the seige engine.

I usually give the first two or three seige engines to attack a city city raider promotions. Their purpose is to not only do collateral damage, but to damage the best defenders as well. Dropping the rest of the defenders to half hit points doesn't help if the CDIII longbowmen isn't scratched.

If I'm attacking a stack in the field, I'll usually give them combat promotions, usually for the same reason: they need to damage the best defenders in the stack as well as do collateral damage. If I have a considerable tech edge over my opponent, I'd consider giving them drill promotions instead.

After the best defenders have been neutralized, barrage seige engines can be sent in to further weaken the defenders. Doing more collateral damage is now more important than doing more damage to the unit they're facing off against.

Always keep in mind that Trebs are for attacking cities only. If you need to attack a stack in the field, use catapults.

 

[Archaelicos]

I generally bring in enough stuff to drop the city to 0% defense in one turn. Since I generally don't like using those same units to attack, I often bring even MORE stuff to attack the city with. For trebs, I go with CR because the treb already has +100% in city attacks. If I can get 3 promos, I'll do CR1/CR2 and Barrage.

It's critical to get past that first defender, which is why I often do CR1/2 for 2-3 trebs, and Barrage if there's a promo leftover (by the time I have trebs, I can usually start with 3 promos in my military city, or I will be able to soon). For my stack busters, I use CR1/Barrage 1-2. For culture buster usually CR1/Accuracy since those units are for attacking cities. For a pure stackbuster out in the wide open wild, all barrage.

But bear in mind that I've never won a game at Monarch or higher, so I might not know what I'm talking about. And I rarely win at Price level in BTS.

 

[vicawoo]

The integer math is very interesting.

My reasoning was much simpler: treb have less base strength, and collateral is unaffected by their bonus. Not to mention their cost, and if they ever attack, you want them to survive. Catapults have higher base strength, so if you are ever going to suicide a seige unit, use a catapult.

I guess this means it's not worth using your great general city to make promoted catapults.

 

[DarkFyre99]

I guess this means it's not worth using your great general city to make promoted catapults.

On the contrary, regular units can get more than one XP in a battle, while seige engines can only get one per battle. That makes every XP they start with more precious, especially since they often take the most risks in battle.

Since starting XP are more valuable to seige engines, it makes more sense to make them in your best XP city.

It's also the reason why I usually attach my 3rd Great General to my best city raider Treb. Having leadership, plus hopefully tactics, will result in an highly promoted seige engine, capable of cracking most stubborn defender while living to fight another day while racking up more XP.

 

[Phrederick]

After the best defenders have been neutralized, barrage seige engines can be sent in to further weaken the defenders. Doing more collateral damage is now more important than doing more damage to the unit they're facing off against.

I would do things in the opposite order. After you've sent a few siege units in, it's highly likely that any unit you attack is going to be slightly damaged, so now it's more likely that your units will be able to survive - that means emphasizing City Raider is more likely to pay off. Sending in Barrage units first won't do significant damage to the defending best defender, but it's possible that they'll do a little damage. That means that when you send in the CR units, they'll be more likely to do enough damage to the unit to significantly weaken it.

VoiceOfUnreason: That's very interesting. In light of that, do you think there are any situations where barrage will be more useful than Combat/CR/Drill? What would you do if you had a single siege unit with a stack attacking a city? What about if the odds are 0.1% with Barrage and 0.2% with CR? The difference is so low that it seems like it would make sense to go with Barrage, if you knew that the roundoff wouldn't mean it made zero difference (Like a treb with Barrage I)

 

[dozenlong]

I used to use barrage for catapults until recently. The value of City Raider all of a sudden clicked, so I started building all siege weapons with city raider; after all, the purpose of war was to take or raze cities for me.

My game has improved considerably since this. Using City Raider has increased my per catapul value, which has motivated me to make more of them...I am typically using catapult armies that are about half catapults and half everything else. I now crush stacks and cities with little effort (Thanks stack attack!).

 

[Archaelicos]

Yeah my stack is generally about 2/3 siege weapons. 1/3 of them drop cultural defense, 1/3 attack to soften the defenders, and the third that isn't siege engines mop up whoever survived.

 

[xanadux]

City Raider, definitely. If you have enough cats, who cares if you do a little more damage with barrage. More survive to the next battle, and since the best defending unit is generally damaged more, the battle gets easier with each cat.

Accuracy is ok, but lately, I've been using spies for the key cities most of the time, and cities without walls don't take long to drop the defenses. But I play small maps, and this probably isn't going to work as well on a bigger map without a lot more espionage spending. I generally find myself only building a half a dozen or less trebs, and often no cats, as by the time I can make trebs, I am usually not far from getting steel.

 

[vicawoo]

If you're pumping suicide cats for collateral, it seems the damage doesn't matter so much. Pumping CR2 macemen gets you more bang for the buck, if this integer math is correct. Let your lesser cities make catapults.