Chinese AI defence?

[Bungle]

AI + Great Wall + Cho-Ko-nu spam =

I decided to try a game on Immortal today. It's going fairly well, but eventually I decided to conquer China. Not as easy as I thought it would be. I have a slight tech lead in this game and my army is very up to date. I have several longswords and cannons. China has mostly 'Nus and one or two swords and a couple of muskets.

The problem is, they have buttloads of those annoying little crossbows, and I can only move one hex at a time due to the wall. I tried luring them to me, and it worked - I killed lots of them.. but Wu just keeps spamming more of them! So far I haven't really made any progress whatsoever(except for the XP I guess..)

I'm only a few turns away from getting rifles, so that might help.. but I have my doubts.

Anyway, I was wondering if any of you had any experience breaching such a defence? Any strategies? Does cavalry work? Do I need artillery? :S

 

[Deau]

My general approach to defensive UU civs when playing domination is to delay my invasion on a given civ "once their UU is outdated". England can be just as awful as CKNs. Iroquois can be even worse since their forest=road movement is a UA and lasts the whole game so if they have say a double forest line, even once you have mech infs they can be really hard to push when they spam artillery.

So anyway if I were you, I would've delayed china push to rifles+artillery (given you have a tech lead and they dont have artillery) or to infantry+artillery if you don't have a significant tech lead. LSs are much too vulnerable to Chus imho.

The above holds even w/o factoring GW. Obviously GW is an additionnal incentive to wait for mech infs (or a few tanks just to zerg their defenses that are not inside cities)

 

[snarzberry]

I'm with you on that one. I've been seriously frustrated by Wu a number of times with those repeating crossbows. If there's one in a city and one fortified next to it then that's 5 attacks on one unit that you have to survive as you approach, 2 CKNs outside and that's 7 attacks. Makes for a fun invasion though, at least it's a challenge.

I have taken her cities defended like this with longswords and trebs, but having reserves and maybe a medic is advisable so you can fortify heal the one that's being picked on while the others do the damage. And another thing I've done is to focus on taking out the CKNs that are ranging around the city ASAP, if you do have horse units they'll come in handy for that, but then they get pelted and killed so I do this with melee. She's a tough nut to crack and you may lose a unit or two, but that's war.

Rifles and Cannons is a definite go if you can upgrade soon.

 

[Deau]

Odd enough I think I hate longbows more than chu's when trying to push with longswords. The 9:18 dmg ratio makes it so chu's generally do 1dmg per hit to longswords, sometimes 2 which is why i suggested delaying the push to outdated CKNs above. On the other hand, the 12:18 ratio of longbows allow them for decent odds on 2-3 and even sometimes 4dmg per hit. That's a total killer when they can stagger units behind each other and get as many hits as CKNs (sure with more units) but also from further range.

 

[SureYouCan]

There's nothing like having 6 longswords with blitz and 2 trebuchets standing on the borders of chinas capital with 8-9 CKNs. Can you take the capital? Yes. Are you going to lose a unit you absolutely do not want to lose? Yes.

I now follow this one simple rule. Meritocracy --> GE --> Great Wall. It deads any early rush against you and prevents overly defensive footholds from immortal AIs.

 

[Arilian]

Discover Metallurgy and the GW becomes obsolate.

Anyway I hate longbows more too...

 

[KevinMiles90000]

If you are going for a conquest victory/doing a lot of warmongering just steer clear of them until you have gained enough momentum or researched metallurgy.

 

[Bungle]

Right, it turned out that they also had the Kremlin.. 60 defense cities, woo!

I tried conquering them with artillery and rifles/infantry. It didn't work. China had tons of gold and bought a new 'Nu every turn in every city. I got really mad and decided to just keep up the pressure and spam rifles/infantry. After 20-30 turns of doing this, the Wall was finally made obsolete so I could win. Really expensive war, but I guess it was worth it in the end.

It's not correct that discovering Metallurgy makes the Wall obsolete. Apparently it only became obsolete when CHINA researched it. And that didn't happen until 1560 AD - maybe China was doing it on purpose to keep up the cheesy defense

I think it's really dumb anyway. Why should a puny wall have any effect against artillery? GW should become obsolete as soon as another civ has researched Metallurgy.

 

[Bungle]

There's nothing like having 6 longswords with blitz and 2 trebuchets standing on the borders of chinas capital with 8-9 CKNs. Can you take the capital? Yes. Are you going to lose a unit you absolutely do not want to lose? Yes.

I now follow this one simple rule. Meritocracy --> GE --> Great Wall. It deads any early rush against you and prevents overly defensive footholds from immortal AIs.

Nice, I might do that in my next game.

 

[snarzberry]

I don't know if I'd take the GW with the engineer, that a bit of a stretch on how badly you want to deny the AIs this wonder. It's one of the cheapest wonders so you get less hammers for your trouble and you can often just win it from an AI in a war anyway. It might make that AI a major pain to invade but I just don't think it stands up to settling for all those extra hammers for the rest of the game, or taking something like GL or SH.

 

[Deau]

Yeah I'm not a big fan of GE->GW either. I would rather simply consider attacking this particular civ at a later point in time. Maybe with mech infs or earlier as a counter-attack after I decimated their units in my own territory because they DoWed me.

There are so much other uses one can do of meritocracy or even of an alternative early SP path. I have been going more and more into professional army lately for warmongering and keep being amazed at how strong it is for warmongering. bubbling steel instead of RAing it up can get you LSs by turn ~60-65 which is a solid 10 turns earlier than absolutely perfect RA timing and can give you a strong edge very early in the game.

Just settling the GE to bolster unit production or to lineup HE+armory before building units can also give a much bigger edge over time than rushing a defensive wonder that really only alleviates your warmongering against one civ. There are always ways around wonders, namely waiting later in the game to attack a particular civ.

 

[SureYouCan]

I cant... I just cant do it. I cant declare war on china just for building the great wall. That would be like declaring war on washington for having lady liberty and the pentagon. Better to steal it from her with GE. I view it as a worth while investment because it gets you free defensive wins during war and gives you a free GE later on.

Completely off topic. Do tile improvements like pastures/farms/mines cost gold to maintain?

 

[Deau]

Completely off topic. Do tile improvements like pastures/farms/mines cost gold to maintain?

Nope, only roads...least as far as I know/have experienced

 

[Eat_My_Brains]

Got into a war with China in my emperor game yesterday, they had the great wall and lots of repeating crossbows, I had highly promoted rifles and canons. Wasnt worth it, even when I was producing a rifleman every 3 turns, took me ages to wear them down, lost and retook 2 cities and managed to wipe them out by the end. I lost so much research and hammers however that the runaway civ, the Iroquois, just steamrolled me with infantry and artillery once I had beat her. Very well played.

I should have left her as a buffer and tried to knock the Iroquois down a few pegs instead. Oh well, exciting game, even if I did lose!