Camel archers and Numidian cavalry

[dankok8]

Both will be great for attacking. With high withdraw odds it sometimes does not matter a city has hill defences as you know the first few attackers might withdraw.How often do Ai not have metal defenders? Once they get metal units archers are produced a lot less. You will always pick your target in any way. Chances of protective Ai are unlikely.

As Mylene suggest the sooner you declare the easier the war should be. With cha NC can get 3-4 promotions easily. Only 1-2 attacks if you have stables and barracks. Barb units really help too.

Withdraw is nice if you have a lot of attackers. But say you're trying to take a heavily fortified city with 3 defenders and you have 6 Numidians. You may fail in that case but a group of stock 6 HA's will probably take the city. If you have 10 attackers then it doesn't matter but then you have overwhelming force anyways. I agree with Fippy that on Deity Numidians are probably better because AI hook up metal so fast but on lower levels, stock HA's are better. And this data kind of corroborates that. Numidians are marginally better against Spears and significantly worse against Archers. On Emperor/Immortal rushing with HA's I rarely ran across that many Spears and I'm not so efficient like a lot of players on here so I probably rush a little later. Like you said though I pick my targets and wouldn't go after Zulu or Maya for example.

 

[Windsor]

How to use Numidians correctly:
1. Build a nice handful of Numidians.
2. Research Curassiers
3. Upgrade!

 

[elitetroops]

I put 100 fortified spearmen each in two hill cities with 40% cultural defense and threw HAs on them until the cities were taken.

City 1 was attacked by flanking I & II HAs. I needed 323 HAs to take the city, 98 HAs died in the process.

City 2 was attacked by C2 HAs. I needed 237 HAs to take the city, 104 HAs died in the process.

Better survivability of flanking HAs turns out to be an illusion. You attack with a weak HA who either dies or retreats, with high likelihood to leave behind a strong defender that kills your next attacker. Combat promoted HAs do more damage and when they die the defender is left weak and easy to take out by the next guy. And note that this was C1 and C2 for the combat promoted HAs. Normally I'd have a few with shock instead of C2 to deal with the spearmen, which should yield even better results.

Losing on average 1 HA / unpromoted spear in a 40% hill city is pretty consistent with my experience of HA rushes.

 

[sampsa]

Better survivability of flanking HAs turns out to be an illusion.

This. Also, at this point you normally don't have a healer-GG, so the troops that retreated are not worth that much. My experience is that the combat line is better and it's not very close. One chariot upgraded to vision (what is it called, sentry?), one chariot to become healer, all HAs combat.

 

[elitetroops]

Yes. Surviving combat stack was in much better shape than surviving flanking stack.

I've always gone combat line. Not even considering flanking.

 

[dankok8]

I put 100 fortified spearmen each in two hill cities with 40% cultural defense and threw HAs on them until the cities were taken.

City 1 was attacked by flanking I & II HAs. I needed 323 HAs to take the city, 98 HAs died in the process.

City 2 was attacked by C2 HAs. I needed 237 HAs to take the city, 104 HAs died in the process.

Better survivability of flanking HAs turns out to be an illusion. You attack with a weak HA who either dies or retreats, with high likelihood to leave behind a strong defender that kills your next attacker. Combat promoted HAs do more damage and when they die the defender is left weak and easy to take out by the next guy. And note that this was C1 and C2 for the combat promoted HAs. Normally I'd have a few with shock instead of C2 to deal with the spearmen, which should yield even better results.

Losing on average 1 HA / unpromoted spear in a 40% hill city is pretty consistent with my experience of HA rushes.

Well this result doesn't surprise me. Flanking will always rely on having more numbers because retreating saves the unit but doesn't win the battle. You need the next unit to actually take the city. Still fewer Flanking HA's died than Combat HA's. In a more plausible game scenario facing 3 Spears with 6 HA's, I would probably rather give them flanking than combat. Or of course the best way would be to give the first wave flanking and the second wave which need to win (retreat is no good...) combat promos.

 

[Fippy]

It's funny cos that was a huge topic / discussion back then,
but yup ultimately combat also increases odds, and mounted have good base strength.
Flanking on Cavs can still be good against Rifles thou if they have first strikes (upgraded, protective), Cavs have no FS immunity.

 

[lymond]

I remember long ago when obsolete completely nixed flanking as a viable promo...totally changed my view on it.

I still like using it on Numidians though...I'd be interested to see what a test with them looks like, but I've always had a lot of success with it myself(on Numids). Works well with a super medic.

But yeah I go almost all combat on mounted...unless I need a shock guy or two now and then for better odds or defense.

Also think Hanny's CHAR makes the flanking Numidians a little more workable too.

 

[elitetroops]

Well this result doesn't surprise me. Flanking will always rely on having more numbers because retreating saves the unit but doesn't win the battle. You need the next unit to actually take the city. Still fewer Flanking HA's died than Combat HA's. In a more plausible game scenario facing 3 Spears with 6 HA's, I would probably rather give them flanking than combat. Or of course the best way would be to give the first wave flanking and the second wave which need to win (retreat is no good...) combat promos.

The large amounts were only to even out RNG. You'd see similar results on average also with smaller numbers. If you use flanking you need more units, suffer almost the same amount of losses and the surviving units are mostly useless as they need a long time to heal. To attack with more units you need more time to prepare, making it likely you face even more defenders. Then the war is further slowed down as you have to wait for your brave flanking HAs to heal and suddenly you find yourself facing an AI with longbows that could already have been crippled if you instead used combat promos. HA rushing is all about speed, every turn counts.

 

[pi-r8]

Not quite. Camel Archers get 15% Withdraw Chance base, Flanking I adds 10%, Flanking II adds 20%, and Tactics adds 30% = 75% Withdraw chance. Not sure where I got 65% from earlier, must have been looking at another unit. The highest you're going to get is a Cavalry (base 30%) with 90% Withdraw Chance. I'm actually not sure if that's higher than the game's hard cap on Withdraw Chance, I know it has one but I'm not sure how high it is. And yes, Withdraw Chance builds really need a strong Medic unit to go with them, otherwise they're out of the fight for far too long.

You can actually get over 100% withdraw chance with a submarine (base 50% chance to withdraw), which is pretty funny. But it's also mostly useless. Like other people said, the big problem with relying on retreating units is that you end up relying on other, stronger units to actually win the fight. Hard to build enough numbers that you can afford wasting an entire round of throway units who just run away.

 

[dankok8]

The large amounts were only to even out RNG. You'd see similar results on average also with smaller numbers. If you use flanking you need more units, suffer almost the same amount of losses and the surviving units are mostly useless as they need a long time to heal. To attack with more units you need more time to prepare, making it likely you face even more defenders. Then the war is further slowed down as you have to wait for your brave flanking HAs to heal and suddenly you find yourself facing an AI with longbows that could already have been crippled if you instead used combat promos. HA rushing is all about speed, every turn counts.

I completely agree. I am a proponent of combat over flanking; don't get me wrong. But I think when facing difficult opposition it can make sense to promote the first wave with flanking to soften the defenders. And like Fippy said about cavalry which don't have FS immunity, flanking becomes even more viable.

Agree that the huge overlooked problem with flanking is that retreat is only activated when a unit is about to die meaning it's almost always redlined. So if you don't have enough units and like you said you rarely ever have enough then the invasion could bog down later on. A lot of things can't be captured though single dice roll combat.

 

[lymond]

But I think when facing difficult opposition.

I understand what you are saying, and used to think that way as well.. However, the counter-logic here imo is that say you are resigned to losing a couple or so units on the first hits. Combat vs. flanking has a) a better chance fof actually winning the contest outright b) better chance of doing said "softening" if it dies..a better chance at doing more damage so that subsequent units have higher success odds. Flanking units are going to die just as much as retreat.

 

[dankok8]

I understand what you are saying, and used to think that way as well.. However, the counter-logic here imo is that say you are resigned to losing a couple or so units on the first hits. Combat vs. flanking has a) a better chance fof actually winning the contest outright b) better chance of doing said "softening" if it dies..a better chance at doing more damage so that subsequent units have higher success odds. Flanking units are going to die just as much as retreat.

I hear you. I was always inclined to reason like this as well because choosing flanking over combat is making a dangerous assumption that you have plenty more units to finish the job. In a real life situation you build the minimum number of units needed to finish the job and you'll take losing an extra HA any day if it means a higher probability of taking that city. I think I'm a bit too caught up in what the test shows. A show of odds paints a one-dimensional picture of a multi-dimensional problem. Sometimes it's not about units lost at all. It's about the objective.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Love me some Numidians. I'd rather go with the Flanking and stronger promos. Adding mobility isn't really helping much since you already have two moves.

Maybe I sound like a stubborn confused n00b but I have strong opinions about this.

The war begins with infantry and siege. Reinforcements have to be horse archers to, well, reinforce in time. Numidian cavalry with mobility are totally awesome with this.

Similarly, what's the point of the Impi? Axemen and swordsmen are better right? Yes, for the initial assault. Then you need the impi to reinforce the frontlines, and they can get city raider promotions.

 

[elitetroops]

For completeness I also tried your suggested strategy of flanking first, then follow up with combat. Same 100 spearmen in hill city, this time attack first with 100 flanking II HAs, then C2 until city taken. I needed 304 HAs to take the city, lost 95 HAs in the process.

Losses are practically identical in all scenarios. I don't really care if I lose 0.95 or 1.04 HAs / spear. In a typical HA rush you would rarely face much more than 10 spears and a lot of them can be baited out of the cities to attack your HAs at close to even odds. Of course, there are other tough units as well, such as any highly promoted units in a 60% hill capital. Still, 10% difference in losses on these tough cities does not add up to very much.

When looking at the amount of units needed, 2.4 vs 3 HAs / defender is a significant difference. If I can do the war (or take that hill capital) with 20% less units I will for sure pick that strategy even if it loses me one or two more units over time. And as mentioned, this difference gets magnified over time. The faster you get the job done, the less units you need.

Another thing to consider is promotions. The surviving combat HAs mostly earned 3 or more XP from the battle while retreating flanking HAs only earn 1. Not only was the surviving combat stack on average on much higher health, but most of them also have promotions available to speed up healing and make them even stronger for the next fight.

 

[Fippy]

The war begins with infantry and siege.

Nope, the war begins with Numidians and ends with Numidians if done right

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Nope, the war begins with Numidians and ends with Numidians if done right

My apologies. You are correct. I should speak more carefully. The war begins with Numidians with combat promotions. During the war, I reinforce with Numidians with flanking II and mobility.

My point is, comparing "strength I" and "flanking I" purely based on how well they take down spearmen and archers in cities doesn't capture the whole picture. If you have to wait one more turn for reinforcements to reach the enemy city, now you have to fight against more spearmen!

Free promotions are very strong in general.

 

[dankok8]

For completeness I also tried your suggested strategy of flanking first, then follow up with combat. Same 100 spearmen in hill city, this time attack first with 100 flanking II HAs, then C2 until city taken. I needed 304 HAs to take the city, lost 95 HAs in the process.

Losses are practically identical in all scenarios. I don't really care if I lose 0.95 or 1.04 HAs / spear. In a typical HA rush you would rarely face much more than 10 spears and a lot of them can be baited out of the cities to attack your HAs at close to even odds. Of course, there are other tough units as well, such as any highly promoted units in a 60% hill capital. Still, 10% difference in losses on these tough cities does not add up to very much.

When looking at the amount of units needed, 2.4 vs 3 HAs / defender is a significant difference. If I can do the war (or take that hill capital) with 20% less units I will for sure pick that strategy even if it loses me one or two more units over time. And as mentioned, this difference gets magnified over time. The faster you get the job done, the less units you need.

Another thing to consider is promotions. The surviving combat HAs mostly earned 3 or more XP from the battle while retreating flanking HAs only earn 1. Not only was the surviving combat stack on average on much higher health, but most of them also have promotions available to speed up healing and make them even stronger for the next fight.

Agree with this logic.

The only fallacy with your test itself would be that a realistic fight doesn't involve 100 fresh defenders. Maybe 100 cities each with 1 Spears attacked by 3 HA's would represent a more realistic situation (rarely more than one Spear per city...) and have enough sample size but that's just too time consuming to perform that test.

But I think it's fair to say that combat promos are simply more practical given the constraints of the game (3 HA's per defender is tough..). But say you did have a huge army (ex. Marathon Huge Pangaea) then a combo of flanking and combat would be most optimal. In that case you have more than enough units to take the cities so having fewer of them die is worth something.

 

[elitetroops]

Doesn't matter if it's 100 cities with 1 spear each or 1 city with 100 spears. Stacking them only changes the order. Basically the same as if you spread them across 100 cities, attacked each of them once, then proceed attacking cities in order of highest health defender. Results are the same, every spear has to be attacked individually until it's dead.

I don't think huge or marathon would change much either. If I have more than enough units for the current war, I'm probably using the excess to take out another target.

 

[dankok8]

Doesn't matter if it's 100 cities with 1 spear each or 1 city with 100 spears. Stacking them only changes the order. Basically the same as if you spread them across 100 cities, attacked each of them once, then proceed attacking cities in order of highest health defender. Results are the same, every spear has to be attacked individually until it's dead.

I don't think huge or marathon would change much either. If I have more than enough units for the current war, I'm probably using the excess to take out another target.

I matters because some Spears will be unscathed in the fight and so may come up again before virgin Spears are attacked. Thus it isn't true that the first 100 flankers will each face a different Spear. You said you used 100 flankers and then all the others were combat which means some of your combat guys were attacking virgins Spears that weren't attacked before. I doubt it affects the results much either way.

With optimal promos you'll have more leftover for the next guy. So I think in Huge Marathon games, it makes sense to use flanking and combat in combination where armies are much larger, take longer to obsolete and take longer to produce. I may do more tests myself. This is an intriguing discussion.