How about least units lost using hammers to produce them as a metric? I don't care if I am right or not here. Would be more happy to learn something than be right. I'm just putting forward an extreme example of what seems to be true in my games ... if there are 1 or 2 uber-defenders, weaken them first, then send in the siege.
Of course it depends on relative unit strengths. If you have maces and cannon, cannon first is probably always best. Maces and trebs or cats, or infantry + cannon (maybe rifles + cannon), sometimes 1 or 2 CR units before the siege is better. And I may be just wrong.
I prefer a mobile unit force (cav --> tanks/bombers) whenever possible and will tolerate more unit losses (disadvantage) for faster conquest and thus less defenders (advantage).
But if I am going to use foot soldiers and siege then I normally will suicide siege and follow up with the foot soldiers letting the weaker go first saving up the stronger. In this way I end up with more CR3 or Combat/Pinch units and less uber uber units. The suicide siege will usually remove the need for super can openers and also the pain that comes from losing one of these guys you invested heavily in.
However, that being said, if you are playing an imperialistic civ and get a number of GG-led uber dudes going then you can have a pretty deadly army.
I think that's a pretty reasonable metric for a first guess. That said, we've got to come up with some evaluation of the value of the promotion(s) - should the metric prefer 8 CR3 and 10 CR2 maces, or 9CR3 and 8CR2 maces? I normally just treat each promotion as a flat rate improvement in the hammer value, but there are other reasonable answers.
There's also the question of trade offs - can I exchange 5 trebs for 8 catapults? Can we swap in C3 maces for CR3? etc.
I don't think too much about individual units, but I do sometimes end up carrying around a stacklet of veteran CR units without using them enough, especially if I also have a lot of siege units.
I think that's a pretty reasonable metric for a first guess. That said, we've got to come up with some evaluation of the value of the promotion(s) - should the metric prefer 8 CR3 and 10 CR2 maces, or 9CR3 and 8CR2 maces? I normally just treat each promotion as a flat rate improvement in the hammer value, but there are other reasonable answers.
There's also the question of trade offs - can I exchange 5 trebs for 8 catapults? Can we swap in C3 maces for CR3? etc.
Assume we only have 'produce-able' units for the sake of the experiment: lets say all our units have 5 (Barracks+Vassalage/Theocracy) Exp points. Its up to us how we spend those Exp - this is often done right before the battle anyway.
Assume we only have 'produce-able' units for the sake of the experiment: lets say all our units have 5 (Barracks+Vassalage/Theocracy) Exp points. Its up to us how we spend those Exp - this is often done right before the battle anyway.
Unless... you mean start with that force, and then study a long sequence of battles. I think it would be easier to start by understanding individual battles with promoted troops before moving on to try and undrstand the best way to wage the entire war!
The question was what would be the efficient way to crack a well defended city. It's not established (and in fact we seen quite some votes against it) that using highly promoted units is the best.
Meanwhile the discussion deviated a bit. What i (and the quoted VoU) are talking about is the - related to cracking a city - question of dealing with the 1 or 2 toughest defenders, more precisily how to set up a experiment/measure for the efficiency of a approach.
WE can howeverer rerun the test with all units beeing level 3 or 4 as well, to see how much difference it makes.
I notice that i phrased it a bit dumb in the last post. Of course highly promoted units perform better than greenhorns. What i was going to say, is there is no unlimited supply of high level units, so using them is not a reliable strategy and there might be better uses to them than high risk meneuvers.
You are right. I was thinking about the question - which came up as well - if the Macemen is right thing to deal with the 'One Tough Defender' at all, or is it erhaps better to use Siege, Riders, ... to hurt him first.
Combat is quite a complex matter
Regarding Level 5 units for CRIII+CombatI+Cover... Odds against a Longbow - granted it's protective and the city is on the Hill, but the Cultural defenses are striped, no Walls and no Castle. Not much of can opening there...
Various people have pointed out that it's better to have several CR III maces than one CR III / Combat I / Cover. That's certainly true! but the game doesn't always play out that way.
Three things.
1) Sometimes one or two units just rack up xps while others die. Even if you're not deliberately trying for a Can Opener, you may find yourself getting one. And once you're within a few xp of the 25, it starts looking worth pursuing.
2) If you're Charismatic or Aggressive, it's much easier to reach this point. (If you're Boudica, by the midgame you can almost produce Can Openers out of the box.) If you're warring -- and if you're Charismatic or Aggressive, you probably are -- then by the late Classical period you probably have at least one unit approaching 20 xp, and that's without even considering Great Generals.
3) A subtle point: often an Aggressive civ will start with Cover instead of City Raider as the first promotion. You can get it right away, it gives you better odds, and it can help you against early barbarians. Now, down the road this messes you up because you're much slower to reach CR II and CR III. But in 1200 BC you may not be thinking that far ahead; you need an Axeman to defend against those barb archers right now, and then he's going to take out that annoying city Gandhi just built by /your/ gold.
So, pretty often I find myself with a few Combat I / Cover Axes and even Swords. Over time, these guys often evolve into Can Openers.
Regarding Level 5 units for CRIII+CombatI+Cover... Odds against a Longbow - granted it's protective and the city is on the Hill, but the Cultural defenses are striped, no Walls and no Castle. Not much of can opening there...
Defenders: Protective City, Full fortify Bonus, No Hill, No Walls/Castle, 0 Cultural Defence.
1 x Longbow CGIII+DRILLII (10Exp for Protective)
1 x Longbow CGIII+DRILLI (5Exp)
2 x Longbow CGII+DRILLI (2Exp - Plain Barraks)
2 x Mace, 2 x Axe, 2 x Sword all COMI as cannon fodder.
Spoiler:
Not too well defended, but i aimed at a average city and did not want to complicate the situation with specialized counter-units,
Attackers we can choose from:
35 Macemen and 5 of each Catapults, Trebuchets, Longbows and Horse Archers. All with 50 unspent Exp, so we can promote as we like.
I checked "New Random Seed on Reload", so repeated experiments can be made from the save. A duell size map, that should load quick for repeted trying. No mods, empty Custom Assets folder, Bts 3.13+Bhruic. The Save is attached below, if someone wants to run more tests.
---------------------
I made a series of test to try to 'qauntify' the worth of promotions in hammers. The defenders as described above. I attacked with Macemen only, all with the same promotions, and made 10 try's with each promotion combo, counting my loses to take the city every time.
The numbers in {} are the Losses from each try. After the ~ are the averaged loses, and the Hammers 'spent' to take the city - again in average.
The "Initiall Odds" are the odds of the first attack against the strongest defending Longbow.
1. Promotins <~> Hammers
Assume the Lost Hammers for Greenhorn units to be the Base Cost for taking the city.
** I ignore the 50% the maces get against melee and only count promotion bonuses. To even this out the Cover experiment also got Shock - same promotion based bonus against all defending units. I count Shock as a 'free' promotion however
CRI (+20% **) reduces the cost by 25.7%
CRII (+45%) reduces the cost by 46.5 %
CRIII (+75%) reduces the cost by 77.2 %
CRIII+CI (+85%) - same as above, telling us, that the test is perhaps not sensitive enought to measure a small increase in strenght - more than 10 runs per promotion might help here, but i think the data we have is enought for the 'big picture'
CRIII+C2 (+95%) reduces cost by 79.2%
CRIII+CI+COVER+SHOCK (+110% **) reduces cost by 89.1%
What we see here, is that the first 3 promotions account for 77% cost reduction, while additional 2 Levels only add 11% improvement. Concidering that we need 10 Exp for the first 3 and 17 confused Exp for the next 2 levels...
2. The Can Opener.
When attacking with Level 6 units - CRIII+CI+COVER we have 51.9% odds in the initial Attack. While this is significantly better than 14.9% from just CRIII, we still expect too loose out uber-unit in ever second attack. Again - concidering the effort it takes to produce such a high level unit, this result is not convincing.
Open:
I would like to experiment a bit with mixed attackers next. Things like: "Lets use a single Suicide Cat before sending in the Maces - how does this affect the costs ?". there are many possible combinations that can be tried, so if someone care to run a few test as well But keep in mind - dealing with a RNG one try is not enought. Try the same setup a couple of times...
Another issue with highly promoted can openers. Those attached to units, as they can get additional promotion especially leadership (doubles XPs).
Particularly stronge with Ghengis Kahn who starts is agressive (free combat I to melee), Imperialistic (double GG points), and the GER (extra 2 XP). Attach GGs to a unit, give it the leadership promotion and watch out. Especially if you built the GW (see GGs thread).
If well promoted they have a very good chance at survival, and you need the XPs to utilize the leadership promotion. If the odds are I will wait until better. Also if the ledership promotion lets you win a few CRITICAL battles and let's you get a another GG faster. Any war is full of risk.
The only GG attached unit I would not risk is the medic III for obvious reasons.
What about using mounted units with flanking promotions to dent the "Romulus" or "Remus" defenders? Withdrawal is most beneficial when combat odds are the lowest, and flanking I/II doesn't cost much in terms of experience. Also, flanking II confers first strike immunity, which means you're just facing a CGIII longbowman, not CGIII+Drill II.
I was thinking about Mounted units too. However, the slight problem there is, cities will often have a Spearman as well. So instead of damaging Romolus the Rider will get himself slugtered (or withdrawn) by the - otherwise meaningles - sperman.
My early can opener is a small stack of Drill III or IV catapults. Lightly promoted catapults follow to stir up the mess (and to help bulk up the cohort of Drill III cats for the next city... some of them will promote that far), and the CRIII Swordsmen are the spoon to scoop out all the mushy goodness.
I can rinse out the can if it's nice enough for me to use, or I can smash it for the recycle value.
edit - oops, the topic was one unit to break open a early city. Before Cats, yes CRIII swords are my can opener of choice. Send them raiding barbarians every year, a la Charlemagne vs Saxons, and you will always have a nice group of (10xp) CRIII Swords ready for each war.
Once I get cats, Drill III becomes my can opener, and the CRIII units just take the easy xp to prep for upgrade into gunpowder units.
I was thinking about Mounted units too. However, the slight problem there is, cities will often have a Spearman as well. So instead of damaging Romolus the Rider will get himself slugtered (or withdrawn) by the - otherwise meaningles - sperman.
If there's a CGIII longbowman and an unpromoted pikeman in the city, I think both would get +100% against an attacking mounted unit, and with a base strength of 6, either could defend -- how does the computer choose in that case? If the pikeman had CI or CI and CII, he'd come out ahead for sure and the mounted can-opener would not be that useful.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
confused
But keep in mind - dealing with a RNG one try is not enought. Try the same setup a couple of times...
