Catapult Theatre

[DaveMcW]

Catapults, Globe Theatre, Hereditary Rule, and Slavery create a powerful combination for someone planning a medieval war.

The basic cycle works like this:
Turn 1: Start building Globe Theatre in a size 3 city.
Turn 2: Start building a Catapult.
Turn 3: Whip the Catapult for 2 pop.
Turn 4: Fortify the Catapult in the city, and go back to step 1.

Result
40 turns
13 Catapults
1 Globe Theatre

Not bad for a size 3 city!
Now you can march your stack out of the city and into battle with no whip unhappiness left behind.

Required Buildings
Granary
Barracks
Theatre (plus 5 more Theatres in other cities)

Ideal Terrain
5f resource
5f resource
3f farm

-or-

5f resource
4f flood plain
4f flood plain

You can get by with less productive terrain, but the cycle will take longer than 3 turns.

Optional Civ Traits
Creative - speeds up the initial Theatres.
Industrious - cuts the time to complete Globe Theatre by 33%, or 45% with Forge. Warning: you must produce exactly one hammer per turn if you want to use the Forge.

Optional Units
If 13 Catapults seem like too much, try mixing in some Swordmen or Axemen.

 

[Coast]

That's a lovely way to turn a size 26 city into a size -one- city with a globe theatre..

 

[Sir Janus]

That's a lovely way to turn a size 26 city into a size -one- city with a globe theatre..

Not tried it yet, but I think it starts as a size 3 city and ends as a size 2 city (whip when it gets to size 4).


Nice one Dave - as usual

 

[oyzar]

Definatly going to try this out. Notice in bts that you can produce more than 1 hammers(and that cats cost more of course...). Cats are useful for a long time so this strategy could work for quite some time..

 

[Indiansmoke]

Great idea....

2 problems i see...

1. If you wait for theaters by the time you finish this your units will be obsolete as it is very possible that the opponents will have knights.

2. All the hammers invested in theaters in 6 cities will give you 12 units anyway and much faster

 

[King of Town]

I like it. On marathon settings my units never go obsolete that quick, so I don't see that as a problem. Since I only play for fun on Noble, they don't get guilds even close to that quickly. The point is that now you can focus your catapult building in one city instead of six. Those other six can provide the invasion squad, or build wonders, or build archers to hold the cities you take, etc.

 

[qwertz]

.
.
.
Step 5:get the city to size 6
Step 6: Be first to liberalism, take nationalism as free tech
Step 7: Get rifling ASAP
Step 8: revolt to nationahood
Step 9: draft a rifelman each turn while working high food tiles so you can regrow in 1 turn; repeat until you win domination victory

 

[oyzar]

Great idea....

2 problems i see...

1. If you wait for theaters by the time you finish this your units will be obsolete as it is very possible that the opponents will have knights.

2. All the hammers invested in theaters in 6 cities will give you 12 units anyway and much faster

Since when didn't cats work against knights? O_o In bts 1 theater cost exactly the same as one catapult. This is a great method on how to build globe theater in a high food city without access to mines or other high hammer titles though...

 

[Refar]

At what point you get those theatres depends on the tech path. If going for the GL anyway, Drama is just one more tech to get. And if planing a somwehat prolonged war you will want those theatres anyway

+ You can keep the Globe Theater for additional Whipping/Drafting later.

 

[vicawoo]

I do this with warriors, although i get some gold overflow.

I also do this with jaguar warriors, except for the globe theatre part. The trick is you want something a little 30 < n < 30 + city production, so you get as many extra hammers as possible off a 2 pop whip.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Since when didn't cats work against knights? O_o In bts 1 theater cost exactly the same as one catapult. This is a great method on how to build globe theater in a high food city without access to mines or other high hammer titles though...

Since Bts cats are pretty useless against HA or knights with flank promo.

So I would rather be building pikes or knights against knights, a bit more expensive than cats so i don't know if this still works the same.

Don't get me wrong the idea is great and cudos to dave for comming up with it, I just think that sometimes it might be too slow when you are in need for troops.....that is tech drama, which is out of the way usually and build theaters.

Also a city with such high food can grow very fast and work hammer tiles, so in 20 turns (from size 3) it could be producing cats in 2 turns a cat anyway.

If no hammers are around then it could also run lots of specialists....so lots of options for such a nice city.

 

[CivCorpse]

Since Bts cats are pretty useless against HA or knights with flank promo.

So I would rather be building pikes or knights against knights, a bit more expensive than cats so i don't know if this still works the same.

Don't get me wrong the idea is great and cudos to dave for comming up with it, I just think that sometimes it might be too slow when you are in need for troops.....that is tech drama, which is out of the way usually and build theaters.

Also a city with such high food can grow very fast and work hammer tiles, so in 20 turns (from size 3) it could be producing cats in 2 turns a cat anyway.

If no hammers are around then it could also run lots of specialists....so lots of options for such a nice city.

The idea is to be able to build the globe theatre in a city without production tiles available. Like a city on a peninsula with lots of food buy only two land squares.

On that note. How long would the unhappiness last if you did domething like this with the maoa statues? Might be a good way to build them on that one land tile island that would take 4000000000 years to build

 

[oyzar]

Since Bts cats are pretty useless against HA or knights with flank promo.

So I would rather be building pikes or knights against knights, a bit more expensive than cats so i don't know if this still works the same.

Don't get me wrong the idea is great and cudos to dave for comming up with it, I just think that sometimes it might be too slow when you are in need for troops.....that is tech drama, which is out of the way usually and build theaters.

Also a city with such high food can grow very fast and work hammer tiles, so in 20 turns (from size 3) it could be producing cats in 2 turns a cat anyway.

If no hammers are around then it could also run lots of specialists....so lots of options for such a nice city.

The point is more that getting globe theater ready for drafting out of a city with no hammers this fast is pretty damn good...

 

[Refar]

On that note. How long would the unhappiness last if you did domething like this with the maoa statues?

I regulary do that with Moai (and a couple of other things) when playing Monthy (Edit: Use Axes tho. City with 1-4 -> ~ 26 overflow per cycle). Extend the cycle to 5 turns and you basicly do not stack any Whip- so this can even work without HR (or if you prefer to stack - it's one turn per cycle) However doing it without the Altar might be really painful ...

 

[UncleJJ]

Catapults, Globe Theatre, Hereditary Rule, and Slavery create a powerful combination for someone planning a medieval war.

The basic cycle works like this:
Turn 1: Start building Globe Theatre in a size 3 city.
Turn 2: Start building a Catapult.
Turn 3: Whip the Catapult for 2 pop.
Turn 4: Fortify the Catapult in the city, and go back to step 1.

Result
40 turns
13 Catapults
1 Globe Theatre

Not bad for a size 3 city!
Now you can march your stack out of the city and into battle with no whip unhappiness left behind.

Required Buildings
Granary
Barracks
Theatre (plus 5 more Theatres in other cities)

Ideal Terrain
5f resource
5f resource
3f farm

-or-

5f resource
4f flood plain
4f flood plain

You can get by with less productive terrain, but the cycle will take longer than 3 turns.

Optional Civ Traits
Creative - speeds up the initial Theatres.
Industrious - cuts the time to complete Globe Theatre by 33%, or 45% with Forge. Warning: you must produce exactly one hammer per turn if you want to use the Forge.

Optional Units
If 13 Catapults seem like too much, try mixing in some Swordmen or Axemen.

This idea works with Warlords but BtS is different since a catapult costs 50 hammers. You would have to substitute another 40 hammer unit for the catapult (e.g. swordsman or missionary) in BtS but who wants 13 swordsmen at that time. So in BtS I recommend using the forge to boost hammer output by 25% and then a catapult becomes viable again as do HAs if you prefer.

Deconstructing Dave's maths I get these basic calculations.
Globe Theatre costs 300 hammers
Catapult (Warlords) costs 40 hammers
Whip for 2 pop = 60 hammers
So each catapult whip has 20 hammers overflow applied to Globe Theatre
13 whips of 20 are 260 hammers
Add 40 turns of 1 hammer from city tile
You end up with 520 hammers worth of catapults and 300 hammers in Globe Theatre


A BtS version using a forge would be
Globe Theatre costs 300 hammers
Catapult (BtS) costs 50 hammers
Whip for 2 pop = 75 hammers (with forge)
So each catapult whip has 25 hammers overflow applied to Globe Theatre
11 whips of 25 are 275 hammers
Add 32 turns of 1 hammer from city tile
You end up with 550 hammers worth of catapults and 300 hammers in Globe Theatre plus a few overflow hammers (if my calculations are correct)

Note overflow hammers from a whip when using a forge are deconverted back to base hammers. So the 25 hammers excess hammers and 1 from the city tile are rounded down to 20 hammers overflow. Then next turn the 20 hammers plus 1 from city tile get the 25% boost from the forge = 26, this effectively loses 1 hammer.

Using Organised Religion would significantly boost the overflow hammers applied to the Globe Theatre, effectively adding 5 hammers per whip in both cases.

 

[Scaphism]

Thanks for the idea Dave and the further breakdown JJ.
Although OR would complete the Globe Theatre more quickly I'd be a lot more inclined to be in Theocracy at the time.

Having a Forge would be nice but maybe a luxury unless you can whip for a lot of population (industrious would definitely help).

 

[vicawoo]

Reviving this a little, what if you did this in a normal city, then gifted it? Just alternate two units, then leverage your crappy city into land.

 

[oyzar]

Don't think anyone would accept it?

Anwyays i have managed to combine this with drafting to great effect. Although the process is a bit slower you basically grow to size 6 draft a rifle whip a cat then send overflow into globe. Basically get you started on drafting earlier. Ofc you can continue with just drafting once globe is done.

 

[vicawoo]

Do it near their borders, maybe. People have tricked the AI into harder things.

 

[UncleJJ]

Reviving this a little, what if you did this in a normal city, then gifted it? Just alternate two units, then leverage your crappy city into land.

Why do you have to gift the city? Just whip it down to size 1 or 2 and ignore it. Consider it a sacrificial city. It will be massively unhappy, but if you have a courthouse and trade routes it will basically meet its costs. After the war is over (say 20 turns later) you could even bring the SoD back and regain the city's happiness and continue with the abuse A small city with say -10 unhappiness will eventually recover in 100 turns and if the global happiness threshold gets raised (due to the conquests fuelled by this technique) that will happen even sooner.

This is a good way to use one or more of the drafting or whipping cities that Invisiblestalke was using as part of his strategy. Here is what I said there:

.

It's not just drafting that can benefit from this strategy. Whipping is also more efficient. Assume you are going for a cavalry rush and want to generate cavalry quickly as soon as it is researched. Say you have a size 8 junk city (normally working grassland and plains farms) between two size 16 commerce cities. Just let the junk city borrow a pig tile from one city and a wheat from the other and it gets a big increase in food income. A cavalry costs 120 hammers and that's about 3 pop whipped with a forge. Whipping 3 pop from a size 8 city down to size 5 costs 15, 16 and 17 food (= 48 food) to regrow which means whipping once every 5 turns needs about 10 food per turn. Again the size 8 city can keep this whipping spree up for many turns since it has significant happiness headroom. Note that it is more efficient in resource terms to use the small city for whipping as a size 16 city would need 23, 24 and 25 food (= 72 food) to regrow from a 3 pop whip so loaning a good food resource is more efficent than doing the whipping itself.

I used a late game example of cavalry here, but this could be even more effective early on generating swordsmen, catapults or macemen. Effectively it is using the best tiles to generate troops efficiently with Slavery without having to worry about the consequences. Globe Theatre is not essential for this to work. and you could have several small cities used this way to generate a large army fast.