C2C - Tips and Tricks

[Thunderbrd]

While settling a Great Hunter gives you 5 , you should still consider going for the unit, especially if you play with the combat mod options and are still in prehistory. There are three important reasons for it:

• Sabretooths are now extremely dangerous, being almost as strong as elephants but very well hidden. For quite some time, Great Trackers / Hunters are pretty much the only unit capable of defeating them.
• Great Hunters have a rather good chance subduing great sloths, which can give you mapinguaris (sp?). These units are very powerful and very big. Train them and give them bully promotions!
• The Great Hunter unit itself is a very strong unit but consisting of few people. With a few bottleneck upgrades you have a very capable fighter.

Of course, these reasons are mostly valid only with the CM options (not counting uncut), but at least the mapinguari units might still be a good idea if you don't have powerful mounts.

Awesome strategic insights for the combat mod! Very cool to see!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

While settling a Great Hunter gives you 5 , you should still consider going for the unit, especially if you play with the combat mod options and are still in prehistory. There are three important reasons for it:

• Sabretooths are now extremely dangerous, being almost as strong as elephants but very well hidden. For quite some time, Great Trackers / Hunters are pretty much the only unit capable of defeating them.
• Great Hunters have a rather good chance subduing great sloths, which can give you mapinguaris (sp?). These units are very powerful and very big. Train them and give them bully promotions!
• The Great Hunter unit itself is a very strong unit but consisting of few people. With a few bottleneck upgrades you have a very capable fighter.

Of course, these reasons are mostly valid only with the CM options (not counting uncut), but at least the mapinguari units might still be a good idea if you don't have powerful mounts.

The Mapinguari units are supposed to be very good at defense but not so good at attack. I have not been able to figure out how to make that work properly. They are supposed to be the opposite of the Rhinos in use.

Edit oh I see why I did not do it, I have to list every unit individually for the defensive stuff, I can't do it by combat class. I wonder if that array can handle 500 entries

 

[Thunderbrd]

The Mapinguari units are supposed to be very good at defense but not so good at attack. I have not been able to figure out how to make that work properly. They are supposed to be the opposite of the Rhinos in use.

Edit oh I see why I did not do it, I have to list every unit individually for the defensive stuff, I can't do it by combat class. I wonder if that array can handle 500 entries

Why not simply use iDefenseCombatModifier? Then you can use a penalty on iAttackCombatModifier...

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Why not simply use iDefenseCombatModifier? Then you can use a penalty on iAttackCombatModifier...

Because I get my information on what is in the file from the Modiki and it does not have those tags.

edit already using iAttackCombatModifier

 

[tmv]

Unless the Mapinguaris are made defensive only, they should still be very good units - with CM on and with bully promotions! I think they are the same size as elephants (or at most one size less), and you don't always have pachyderms and even then only from the end of prehistoric.

If you're really lucky, you could have Mapinguaris from mid prehistoric. I don't think they are viable for the riding school promotion, which is pretty much the only downside to that unit (and making them somewhat better suited for defense).

 

[sunrisereader]

guard your resource mines and quarries well, the ai likes to pillage them in war and peace(with criminals), most building chains speak for themself(smelters>wares>units using them) but you also got to look out for your stone quarry, until the medieval age the only building turning grain into flour needs stone to work so losing your sole stone quarry can reduce your food production.

 

[sunrisereader]

pick one city where you don't build settlers and workers, cause you need a population 6 city for a group of production buildings, the most important being bricks needed for a number of buildings(and most of those don't require population 6) the furniture workshop needed to build libraries and the saddler needed to build stables(and you need stables to build tamed animals).

Most herbivore tamed animals can be used to build a carnival and cost a lot less then building a carnival. for this reason it can be a good idea to not only have one or more cities focusing on millitary units but also one focusing on tamed animal production(and workers/setters when you dont need more tamed animals).

 

[stachnie]

I have posted it to the Bugs thread but TB encouraged me to post it in this subforum. I think it does not deserve a separate thread, so I post it here.

Now I know how to avoid (at least in most cases) the bug with super-big strength of units after adjusting their stats in WB (it exists in Size Matters, I am not sure if it exists without it).

If you enter WB and adjust unit properties, duplicate it etc., after the first promotion (or chosing a new promo after old one is obsolete) you end with a super-strong unit. The problem is that by default the field "Base strength" shows actual strength of the unit (after effects of Quality Up and promotions increasing strength) multiplied by 100. This way e.g. an Ambusher (Str 3) with three +Str (+1, +2, +2 IIRC, so +5 base Strength) and one Quality Up (Strength * 1.5, HP * 1.5) has 12 Strength and 150 HP. If you enter WB and look at the unit's properties, you will see Base Strength 1200. If you leave it, at the next promotion (and changing base Strength causes the unit to lose +Strength promotions, so it may happen immediately after leaving WB) you get an unit with 1200 base Strength - if you include Quality Up, you get 1800 Strength!

To avoid this, it is enough to put correct number in the "Base strength" field - in this case this is 3. I checked that and it works. I am not sure if it works for weakened units which start with e.g. 0.67 Strength - maybe one would need to put 1 instead.

S.

 

[IdioticUlt1mara]

Splitting up your initial units into 3 smaller ones and giving them the promotion to move +2 -50% strength will allow you to map out your early area really well and can give you a great location for your first city - if starting on the prehistoric setting. It does not cost you any GPT to have 6 units instead of 2. And who cares if they die they did their job and mapped the area for you, and maybe even popped a few goodie huts + Natural wonders

 

[lordrune]

Anyone have tips for early ancient era warfare? (pre writing and I'm starting as minor civs) The AI has settled annoyingly close to me (ok it might have been the other way around ) and I'm trying to break down a small city on a hill. They have archers with first strikes and city defensive promotion. I've been attacking with more numbers but can't dent their first striking archers, so I've just been feeding them more promotions. My archers can't ranged bombard effectively even if I have like five of them in a group firing at once, I'm barely scratching their hides. Battering rams seem pointless as the collateral damage doesn't kick in.
I'm still on stone tech as I didn't have obsidian (they do, the bastards), best unit I have is bison riders but they're not doing much against the archers or obsidian spearmen.

I'm not using size matters. I do have the surround mod, though, and maybe I need to use that tactically?

 

[tmv]

Surrounding is certainly a good idea, Battering Rams can help you if city defenses are already up (especially if you cannot attack the city directly). Look out for good promotions: Archers can have their Range Bombard improved, melee units can get city attack improvements, and very important: get a general, and improve the general (as a field commander) before bringing that unit in for the city attack.

Do you use the other Combat Mod parts? If so, try to get stealthy units, especially cats (if you have the wonder). They can get some really good promotions.

 

[lordrune]

Don't have the other combat mod parts. I didn't bring a great general though, I go crazy with hunting in the early game, maybe that's something I need to think about strategically. There aren't city defences, it's just the promotion-fed enemy archers that are stopping me.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Don't have the other combat mod parts. I didn't bring a great general though, I go crazy with hunting in the early game, maybe that's something I need to think about strategically. There aren't city defences, it's just the promotion-fed enemy archers that are stopping me.

Find a way Before they get some city defense buildings up. It gets much harder once they do. If you have Mounted units especially Horsemen and even better if you can give them an archer defense promo, they can make a dent. But promo'ed archer (city defense and fortified) in a city on a hill is a double whammy to overcome. Then when palisades, earthen walls. lookout posts, etc. get built, then ugh!

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Javelineers are a good counter for archers too.

 

[tmv]

I go crazy with hunting in the early game

You just need one Great General, and you can even send the general with the hunters (switch off auto hunting in that case), the general can even learn something during hunting, this is "easy experience" (is that a proper term?).

Mind you, if you ever play with the Combat Mod options, you also have to remember to enable Surprise Attack with the hunters, otherwise the enemies won't see the hunter and kill the general.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Mind you, if you ever play with the Combat Mod options, you also have to remember to enable Surprise Attack with the hunters, otherwise the enemies won't see the hunter and kill the general.

I take it a layer deeper than that when I play and just turn the guarding hunter's standout status on. I believe I've seen it happen where the surprise defense takes place after the capture, which isn't exactly the intent and I may have fixed it but I'm taking no chances unless I'm wanting to go ahead and use the guarded unit (like a captive) as bait for a nice ambush.

 

[tmv]

That is certainly safer and if it is even in doubt if the hunter makes a surprise defense for the general it is much better to go this way. But you lose much of the hunter's ability who can be made into a great stealth fighter (no relation to air force units).

 

[Thunderbrd]

Which is why it's good to have a scout along to take back your captives rather than hinder the hunter. But yeah, hunters can make some really fun lethal stealth units once developed!

 

[tmv]

Sometimes the area can fill quickly with animals, at least if you play with Peace among NPC. To bring anything back to your cities you need a unit that can hack a way free, and scouts are defensive only.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Sometimes the area can fill quickly with animals, at least if you play with Peace among NPC. To bring anything back to your cities you need a unit that can hack a way free, and scouts are defensive only.

In that case, a good alternative becomes a wood spear.