Civ for mid game war.

Hey all

Ive played and won 2 games now, king and emperor difficulty, and not had a single fight in either games other than barbarians.

Im going to play another emperor game before moving up, but want to go for domination this time.

I am looking for recommendations for a civ for domination, im not really keen on the idea of early war since that seems to be the period i have happiness problems.

Renaissance is when i have the happiness to take on other cities really.

Who is good or great for mid game domination? Englands longbows looked good on paper but i would like to try someone else now.

Thanks

 

Land:
Mongolia - Keshiks plus Khans
Arabia - Camel Archers

Sea:
England - just concentrate on the Ship Of The Line rather than the Longbowmen
Venice - I've never tried it, but a Great Galleas naval domination game might be a bit of a fun challenge.
The Netherlands - build some Sea Beggars and steal a navy.

 

Thanks shaglio, i have been told the computer doesnt 'do' sea maps so i play pangea/donut/inland sea

ill give arabia a try

edit

just curious about arabia tech path?

i usually go for education asap...but with desert bias i will want currency, and chivalry quickly ..i dont want to miss a chance at petra or miss the time of knights?

I think i will go for philosophy, then currency, then guilds/chivalry and start building my army, then education, but not sure how far behind that will leave me?

 

Minutemen are great of the target has a bunch of rough ground. if not then nah.

 

winged hussars+ social policies sounds great as well?

 

Winged Hussars are lancers, so I'd rather not. If you really want them though, the best trick is to get Commerce, Mercenary Army, and Mercantilism, then create Winged Hussars by purchasing Landsknechts and upgrading them to Winged Hussars that can now also pillage freely and earn gold from attacking cities thanks to Landsknecht promotions.

Granted, the AI is so poor at tactical decisions that all civs would technically be suited for midgame war, so whether to midgame war or not would come down more to city starts and Tradition vs. Liberty than to civs in singleplayer. Things also depend on the map: England's Ships-of-the-Line and Denmark's embarkation stuff works best in a map where everyone is coastal.

That said, there are definitely some civs who are more suited for midgame war than others. Civs that can succeed with Liberty are definitely a good place to start, since Liberty strategies usually tend to capitalize on good early hammers for more unit production, while Tradition only really catches up (and passes Liberty) in hammers around Modern Era.

Keeping these things in mind (Liberty affinity, start-dependance), the civs suited for midgame wars include: Persia (Liberty-suited UB, +1 movement in GAs that are longer too), China (Liberty-suited UB, Great General bonuses, Chu-ko-nus), Mongolia (Keshiks, UU Great General), Arabia (Liberty-suited UB, Camel Archers), Denmark (embarkation and pillage bonuses, Berserker), Egypt (Liberty-suited UB, possible late War Chariots, UA helps with wonders that can help militarily), England (naval movement, both UU's, extra tech helps you keep up with everyone else with spy steals), Japan (Samurais aren't that good, but their UA still helps quite a bit), Poland (Liberty-suited UB and UA, Ducal Stables, incredible UA), Siam (elephants are incredible), and Zulu (Impis! Ikandas! Faster Promotions!).
Honorable mentions: Korea if you can get their Hwach'as to work offensively, Venice if you can pump out Great Galleases early enough.

 

I'm sorry these people are steering you wrong. Arabia? It's ok for mid war, but hello???...

Shaka!

For crying out loud, man. Pick the Zulu and click civil service as soon as you can.

Have fun!

 

Mongols, no doubt it's the best IMO. That's assuming it's land based and not a bunch of small islands.

 

Shake is more early game then mid IMO

 

I'd actually consider Arabia to be strictly better. For one, Camels are flatout more powerful than Keshiks: the 5 extra combat strength and 2 extra melee combat strength more than makes up for not having that extra movement, the faster promotion generation, or the faster Great General generation; the extra combat strength mean that Camels are essentially faster, stronger Crossbowmen. Khans are nice, but only really provide benefits for units with March, since their adjacency healing bonus only applies to units who are eligible for healing. Mongolia's UA is fairly subpar, especially because neither Keshiks, nor Chariot Archers receive the +1 movement (they are archery units, not mounted units), and the power of mounted units for combat really tapers off afterwards. By contrast, Bazaars are always useful in some way, from the 1 extra flat gold they generate to the extra gold from oases and oil to the doubled luxury count allowing you to always trade luxuries with AIs (human players will never accept because they know how strong Camels are and do not want to give Arabia any happiness advantages). Arabia's UA is a non-player in most cases (oil isn't as important and all the other bonuses are negligible), but Camels + Bazaar are still better than Mongolia's Keshiks + Khans + mounted unit movement bonus UA.

That's the wonderful thing about Shaka: he's good early, good midgame, and good lategame, though for different reasons. The earlygame advantage comes from being able to get Impis out incredibly fast, and Impis being incredibly strong anyway due to their first strike ability (Impis perform a lower-strength ranged attack against units they attack before entering melee combat). The midgame advantage comes from a combination of Ikanda promotions, Impis' bonus against gunpowder units, and lower unit maintenance allowing them to afford larger armies; the fact that Impis upgrade into useful Riflemen instead of useless Lancers also helps. The endgame advantage comes purely from the lower XP requirement on promotions: Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy are enough to produce Zulu units with 3 promotions, while other civs also require either Brandenburg Gate or the Total War tenet in Autocracy. 3 promotions are almost always required for efficient Info Era wars, since it lets you build Stealth Bombers with Air Repair right out of the gate (4 promotions or 3 + Alhambra let you build Blitz XCOM right out of the gate). Furthermore, if Shaka somehow gets Brandenburg Gate and the Total War tenet, new units can be produced with 4 promotions (5 effective promotions with Alhambra).

 

Minutemen are fantastic! They also keep their movement bonus when upgrading which makes for some wicked mech infantry later in the game.

 

Winged hussars are great!

Do a bee-line to the tech, get Barracks & Armory & HE in cap. Get 4 trebs/cannons ready, use Oxford, spam UU and enjoy the slaughter. Note, they work better if they have promos, not just vanilla WH.

 

Er, Keshiks, at least, have the +1 movement built right into them (hence why they have 5 movement).

Yeah, like how you can move up onto a hill, fire twice with logistics, and then retreat. Oh wait, you can't with a Camel Archer.

Or how you can move two tiles in open terrain, fire, and retreat back to your starting position. Oh wait, you can't do that either with a Camel Archer.

Or how you can move into a forested hill (3 movement), fire, and then retreat. Oh wait, a third thing you can't do with a Camel Archer.

Or how you can move through 3 tiles of hills or forest per turn. Oh wait, that's another thing you can't do with a Camel Archer.

Oh, and this isn't even getting into the Great Wall aspect either (again, Keshiks are much better in that situation).

You're also not giving the Khans the credit they deserve. Keshiks are effectively 17.25 melee/18.4 ranged units (compared to 17/21 for Camel Archers) because they will *always* have Khans with them. The entire Mongol army can move at 5 speed and blitz through cities. Meanwhile, trying to have Great Generals with your Camel Archers means greatly slowing down your army overall.

Camel Archers are certainly amazing, no question, but Keshiks/Khans are better. Which is why Arabia has the Bazaar and other stuff.

 

I meant that they don't get the extra +1 movement from the UA in addition to their unique +1 movement. My argument was that the +1 mounted movement UA is a good bonus on paper, but a non-bonus in practice.
The only units that get a movement bonus are Horsemen, Lancers, and Cavalry. You won't want to build Horsemen because their promotions become useless once they are upgraded to Keshiks and their strength compared to their hammer cost is abysmal. Lancers are bad for a multitude of reasons. Cavalry would be fine, except their tech path is quite wonky (unless you're going for an artillery push, you'll have Infantry before you can build Cavalry) and Keshiks upgraded to Cavalry waste their promotions.

This is assuming you get Logistics. If you're looking for midgame war with Keshiks, you'll probably have a barracks up at most, and even with the faster promotions, you will only usually get logistics on Keshiks after you've defeated your first or second opponent, depending on how many Keshiks you have compared to how many units they defeated.

I'll take getting to move 1 less for the 15% more dealt damage, 15% less incoming ranged damage, and 12% less incoming melee damage. This increases to 28% more dealt damage, 28% less incoming ranged damage, and 20% less incoming melee damage once Gatling Guns are out and cities have Industrial city strength (or Renaissance with Castle). For comparison, crossbows deal 47% more ranged damage than compbows against Medieval, walled cities, so the difference between two camels' damage and two keshiks' damage in late Renaissance is roughly the same as the damage difference between a crossbow and a compbow in Medieval. The 1 less movement will usually mean you'll need 1-2 more turns to get to proper positions, which isn't enough to make up for the damage differences.

Great Wall is a bit of a niche scenario: if you're doing well and want midgame war, you'll probably want to build Great Wall yourself to deny it to your opponents. After all, you'll still need capture units even with Keshiks.
I can also bring up another niche scenario in which Camels fare better than Keshiks: simultaneous turns multiplayer. People usually have the chance to fire back at your Keshiks before they can retreat, so the fact that they are more fragile makes them much worse than Camels.

It'll take 1-3 turns for Great Generals to catch up with Camels, depending on how good your war roads are. When they do, Camels become 24.15/18.4 units. The way that strength ratios factor into damage calculations means that d(damage)/d(strength) is not constant and always positive. If we consider walled Renaissance cities' set strength value of about 20, the difference in outgoing damage between Keshiks and Camels becomes even greater once you factor in Great Generals.
For reference, strength ratios turn into damage multipliers the following way: if attacker has higher strength than defender, the multiplier is
((([attacker strength]/[defender strength] + 3)/4)^4 + 1)/2.
If attacker has lower strength than defender, the multiplier is
2/((([defender strength]/[attacker strength] + 3)/4)^4 + 1).

You need to have roughly 3-6 more Keshiks than Camels at least (depending on the amount and strengths of your targets) before Khans+Keshiks deal more damage than Camels+Generals. I admit, it's not really a tall order, which brings me to Bazaars...

... Bazaars are about as powerful of a war bonus for Arabia as Khans are for Mongolia. Liberty will usually build Markets before Libraries anyway, so assuming you have 6-10 cities to start with and that you will start your midgame wars about 50 turns after your Bazaars are built, you're looking at 300 to 500 extra gold from the Bazaars' +1 flat gold. With at least 1 oasis in your empire, you're looking at another +50 gold. The extra gold increases with each turn, so if you're 30 turns into your midgame warring, that's another 180 to 300 extra gold with an extra 30 from one oasis. The reason Bazaars are so vital for war is because they let Arabia sustain their assault a lot better than Mongolia. As the conquered cities start rolling and your maintenance climbs higher and higher, the extra gold from Bazaars becomes more important than ever. Plus, puppets are set to Gold Focus, which means they will almost always build Bazaars before anything else, letting you take advantage of its extra gold quite quickly.
The doubled luxury thing lets you pretty much trade for everyone's luxuries early on, but once the warmonger penalties hit, nobody will want your luxuries anyway.

Also, I realized that we forgot to factor start bias into the Arabia vs. Mongolia debate. Mongolia has no start bias, Arabia has a desert start bias. Desert start bias can be a blessing or a curse: it can mean floodplains or a powerhouse Petra capitol, but it can also mean lots of flat desert. Desert start also means a very quick religion if you can get Desert Folklore, and a good religion is vital to most successful Liberty games.

I guess it comes down to maps: in certain maps with certain starts, Arabia will be better (good desert starts, flatter terrain, closer opponents, more gold-starved locations, enemy cities built on hills), while on others, Mongolia will be better.

If you rush Winged Hussars, you'll probably get to Metallurgy before you can get Oxford out. It might be a better idea to work on Alhambra or Big Ben (for the Landsknecht -> Winged Hussars strategy) and save Oxford for something later (eg. Industrialization, Dynamite, Radio, or Flight).
Do note that Winged Hussars still have a much lower strength than Riflemen and Cavalry, even with promotions, so they definitely won't be enough to finish off the remaining players once you've steamrolled over the first two or three.

 

Couldn't agree more bruh. Add that with the automatic +1 sight and you have and uber blitzkrieg machine.

 

The +1 movement to mounted melee units gives more efficiency when it comes to capturing cities. Mounted melee units are the best units in the early and mid game for capturing cities because they can wait 3 tiles away then swoop in and capture in a single turn. However, if you're dealing with a city that is surrounded by rough terrain or is inside the Great Wall then a normal horseman cannot move more than 2 tiles of rough terrain. A Mongolian horseman can move 3 tiles of rough terrain and even inside the Great Wall can move 3 tiles of open terrain ensuring that the Mongolian horseman is more effective when it comes to capturing cities in difficult situations. More options in difficult situations = versatility.

You always want a horseman to accompany Keshiks (and Camel Archers even). While you are conquering with Keshiks you should always keep a few horsemen around. The reason why becomes quite apparent with repeated experience playing Mongolia. The synergy of 5 movement Keshiks to deal damage, 5 movement Khans to boost damage (and heal if necessary), 5 movement Horsemen to capture cities should be easily apparent. However, horsemen tend to be flimsy and can go down in a single turn to double fire from an enemy city and the ranged unit inside, which makes the +1 movement very nice at times because as Arabia or Mongolia you won't be able to make more of those horsemen once you've unlocked Keshiks/Camels.

Then once you have unlocked cavalry much later (when the outcome of the game should already be decided thanks to Keshiks and Khans) all you need to do is upgrade the horsemen twice so that he can continue to use his melee promotions. The +1 movement to cavalry is useful in the same regard (to capture cities) when used alongside artillery, and to provide more versatility when it comes to pillaging, and double-attack then retreating. It's a relatively small bonus, but it's still useful and should not be trashed as irrelevant. As a frequent Mongolia player there are many instances when I find the +1 movement to melee mounted units useful.

I'm going to assume that you play Quick speed most of the time. In all of my Mongolia games, most of my Keshiks will have Logistics, Range, March and even more (note: I always get Military Tradition when playing Mongolia because I get better results with it). And by that time, the game is already over (standard map size). I play on Standard speed exclusively, but admittedly I can see how Quick speed players may see less promotions for Keshiks. Also, building a barracks is unnecessary and a waste of production and maintenance money in my opinion.

Incoming damage isn't very relevant for me in single-player. As for outgoing damage, I find the guaranteed instances of double-shooting with Keshiks to be more useful, because it also means more experience. Although the camel archer will eventually outclass Keshiks with enough promotions, during my experiences of playing both civs, I have found Mongolia to be more effective and much faster when it comes to domination victories because Keshiks get promotions so quickly (especially with Military Tradition). Overall Mongolia is much quicker and more versatile when it comes to battle tactics for a blitzkrieg-like sweep of the globe (assuming it's pangaea ), while Arabia is slower but steadier and has stronger economic support and a better long-term backup plan.

I find the Great Wall to be risky to attempt building on Immortal and Deity. Might be my playing style, because I don't wait to unlock Keshiks/Camels to begin conquering, I start once I unlock chariot archers.

You already mentioned above that you don't use horsemen, but I think you should use them alongside Keshiks/camels. Mongolian horsemen are more efficient when capturing enemy cities inside the Great Wall than Arabian horsemen. And for Arabia and Mongolia (the only 2 civs without a medieval-era mounted melee unit), those 1-3 horsemen you have saved up are precious as heck which is why being able to capture an enemy city from 3 tiles away in more types of difficult situations can be quite useful (and certainly adds to Mongolia's versatility). When it comes to multiplayer, I'll take your word because I play exclusively on singleplayer.

First of all, Khans are great because they don't require roads to tag-alongside Keshiks. When it comes to Camel Archers and normal Great Generals, as you mentioned you'll need roads leading to enemy cities to keep up which can be a problem on a wide map. The great thing about Mongolia is that you don't need to prepare stuff like that, you just move onto the next target.

Yes, I'll take your word for all your calculations and such, but when it comes to my actual experience playing both civs many, many times (as Domination is my preferred style of play) Mongolia is more effective when it comes to pure blitzkrieg domination with no consideration for any other alternative. However, obviously, Arabia is much better for pacifist victory types.

Bazaars are one of the best unique buildings in the game, I agree. But when it comes to going for a straight-up domination victory, its use decreases the more you conquer which ends up being sort of counter-intuitive. However, the benefits that you get even before you start conquering (assuming you start with Camel Archers and not too much before that) are great indeed.

But I find Khans tremendously useful for the early game as well. They are excellent to have when conquering a neighboring capital city or two before you even get Keshiks. Although the healing bonus isn't really applicable to Keshiks because they tend not to get hit, the Khan's healing bonus is VERY VERY applicable in the early game when you have to rely on chariot archers and melee units to capture cities. And later on, the Khan guarantees that Keshiks will always have 18.4 ranged damage. People keep saying that Khans and Keshiks have no synergy, but providing 15% combat strength 24-7 seems quite synergistic to me.

Both bazaars and khans are great. Bazaars allow you to purchase more units and give more strategic options. While Khans provide more tactical options and allow you to keep your early-game units alive longer, allowing for higher-promoted units. In my Mongolia games I'll usually have 2 or 3 logistics chariot archers just in time to upgrade them into Keshiks (and many more level 3-4 chariots), and a couple Cover I/II melee veterans who did an excellent job soaking up damage while healing 25 HP per turn.

Mongolia has a plains starting bias. Desert bias can be great, but I personally love the plains starting bias because of its likelihood of seeing salt and horses. When it comes to pure domination victories I think plains is a great starting bias.

I can agree with that. The game speed and map size will be influential too. I can see how Quick speed would benefit camel archers (and Arabia) because of faster teching by all civs to the next era and not as much time for units to gain promotions before becoming out-dated (which allows higher-combat camels to stay relevant longer than keshiks). And smaller map sizes would benefit Arabia as well (for domination). While I think slower speeds and larger maps benefit Mongolia when it comes to domination: longer ancient and classical era to get a lot of use out of Khans, longer medieval/renaissance to get the most out of Keshiks; and larger map sizes would allow Mongolia's 5 movement trio to roam free.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys, i have decided to go poland, pangea- and have moved up to immortal. The extra social policies i think will help me keep up tech wise (rationalism hugely pushed my tech in last game). I doubt game will be won by the age of lancers and knights so want to have at least close to tech parity if it moves to modern warfare

I suspect immortal will be too difficult for my 3rd game, but want to feel pressured by the AI and wasnt pressured at all on emperor, the AI was incredibly passive, and i think losing is a good way to learn.

One last question if i may?

I tend to go tradition-> a couple of commerce -> rationalism asap ->freedom, but i will have extra policies this game

I am thinking i can afford to at least open up honour to get the barbarian bonus and some culture from them? barbarians tend to be a thorn in my side. But i read that on immortal/deity barbarians get killed off more quickly so im not sure if its worth it.

 

Yeah by the time you get to mech inf you should be having all sorts of promotions.

 

You don't really need to wait to mech infantry: infantry are unlocked fairly early into Modern Era and have a high enough strength compared to their era to do some wicked damage. You can often get XCOMs before Mechanized Infantry anyway, and no matter how good Minutemen-promoted Mech. Infantry are, nothing beats global paradrop.

Alright, I'll give you Horsemen, but as you described, you don't use Horsemen for combat, you use them as capture units. Even if you need two turns to reach a city with your capture unit, it's not that big of a deal: worst scenario, your horseman takes a shot from the city and a shot from a garrisoned crossbowman, which should not be enough to kill a full strength horseman (by my calculations, roughly 85-90 damage for Renaissance).
It's definitely not irrelevant, but compared to other movement bonus UA's, eg. Persia's, England's, Inca's, or Denmark's, it's just not that ubiquitously useful.

Blast, I forgot that XP doesn't scale with game speed. Guess that's one more thing to keep in mind. And yes, with Keshiks with Logistics are more or less as powerful as Camels with Logistics (again, depends on terrain).
I agree with you on Barracks, I just thought I'd mention it just in case someone really wants those quick promotions. Barracks should only be built after Military Academies unlock IMO, or if you need the Autocracy happiness quickly.

Yup, so do I, and then upgrade chariots into Keshiks/Camels. You do eventually run into severe maintenance problems though, and picking up Great Wall as a wonder between Chariots and Keshiks/Camels is not a bad idea, if only to deny it to opponents.

Well, given how bad the AI is at killing camels and keshiks, I find that neither Khans nor Great Generals are vital to warfare: they're effectively just one attack promotion's worth of bonus strength. They do speed things up for sure, letting you take cities quite a few turns sooner, but they're definitely not vital.
I argue that if you have a unit that can take Parthian shots like Keshiks or Camels, having Bazaars and regular generals is more useful than having Markets and Khans.

I'd say its use increases the more you conquer because of how quickly building maintenance and unit maintenance will end up weighing down your treasury. Bazaars give at least the rough bonus of a free Granary: you'll be building them anyway, and that +1 flat gold is a much greater bonus when you have 18 cities than when you have 8. The bonus gold from oases is situational in conquered cities (the AI won't necessarily be founding its cities near oases), the bonus gold from oil comes too late, which is why I didn't mention either.

Chariots are cheap enough that it's not necessary to heal them all the time. Plus, healing with a chariot means you're not taking shots with it. The Khan healing bonus is only really applicable to the few turns of downtime between taking cities

Ah right, keep forgetting about the unmodded AI's poor targeting.
Bazaars aren't necessarily for unit purchasing: as Liberty, you tend to run into gold problems fairly quickly just from unit and building maintenance, so I tend to find that Bazaars are more about not running out of money. This is why I find Bazaars to be so powerful: they're not only extra gold later on, but they're basically extra science too when your deficit is causing you to lose science per turn.

I tend to play with strategic balance, so horses are guaranteed. Plains salt, plains wheat, and civil service plains farms in general are pretty useful, I'll give you that. Still, if you want to rely on religion (which you pretty much need to as Liberty if you want to have legs), it's much less likely that you'll be eligible for a good faith pantheon as a plains start than as a desert start.

Oh, you underestimate the power of Camels and Keshiks...

First of all, Tradition vs. Liberty. There are a lot of videos, topics, comments, etc. on the matter, but I'll try to give you the short version. Due to Civ5's mechanics, Tradition tends to favor a solid early- to mid-game builder followed by the possibility of lategame builder or war, while Liberty is all about snowballing from early advantages to make up for lategame deficiencies. Liberty's biggest advantage is overall production: it might not have a good enough centralized production to compete for lategame wonders without engineers, but the larger, empire-wide production lets Liberty pump out military units like it's nobody's business. However, Liberty's biggest disadvantages come from the fact that its bonuses barely scale at all, so if you go Liberty, the only thing that you will have going for you in the lategame is whatever you can snatch up early on with your hammer and faith advantages. People who fail with Liberty do so because they cannot capitalize well enough on their early advantages to stay in the game.
Since you're planning on early- to mid-game war, Liberty's larger overall production might work better than Tradition's boom-and-lategame-doom.

For fillers, it really depends. If you went Liberty and founded a good religion, Piety: Reformation gives you access to Jesuit Education and Glory to God, the two best ways a wide Liberty empire can keep up science-wise to Tradition players (Glory to God is basically a Rationalism finisher and also removes the penalty of not being able to purchase GE's due to not going Tradition). If you have poor culture and therefore can only afford one filler policy before Rationalism unlocks, Patronage opener: the slower decay helps no matter what, and Forbidden Palace is always useful. If you're Persia, Aesthetics: you'll want to essentially be in a constant GA, and faster Great Artists combined with a free Great Artist goes a long way. If you need Generals, Honor: the only policy that matters is Warrior Code, which can thankfully be picked up for 2 policy points. Otherwise, especially if you're Liberty and/or Poland, Commerce: Wagon Trains if it looks like you'll only be able to afford 2 policy points, Mercantilism if you can afford 3 policy points.

Ideology-wise, you'll probably want Autocracy. Between Mobilization, Industrial Espionage, Militarism, and Total War, Autocracy has some of the best tenets in the game, even if you're not planning to go to war before Info Era. Prora is also amazing for happiness, and you'll need happiness for all the conquering you're going to do. Freedom is nice for the 6 free foreign legions, but otherwise it works better for lategame capitol sniping than for maintaining an empire built from mid-game warring.

 

You would be wrong. People have beaten the game on the hardest difficulty (Deity) with the special Chariot Archers the Huns get (Horse Archers). Think it was somewhere around turn 125-150? Obviously Mongolia/Arabia have a later "big push" with their special units being later but you can conquer either the entire world or at least like 50-75% of it (meaning you're so out of control the AI has no chance) by the Industrial Era.

Robaker sniped most of this, but I'll respond anyway...

Er, no, you actually will want to build a Horseman or two and potentially even a Lancer -- this is solely for the sake of capturing cities. And since they'll never get hit by a city bombard they can keep capturing cities while at 1 HP. And...the 5 movement bonus means they can cross two sets of hills to reach a city in one turn. Or a forested hill and then flat ground. Or two open ground tiles inside of the Great Wall. You'd need several sets of melee units (aka pikemen or the "infantry" line) to do the job of that one mounted unit...both because the melee units are much slower and because they'll need to heal (even with cover 2 they're going to take a lot of damage from attacking a city given the defense they have on higher difficulties).

Even with no barracks it takes 34 unit shots or 25 city shots (or a mix, obviously) to reach logistics without even assuming +50% XP (in which case it becomes 25 unit shots or 17 city shots). On my very first attempt at Domination with Mongolia (and where I screwed many things up, wasn't nearly as aggressive as I should have been, etc) I managed to get Barrage 3, Accuracy 3, Logistics, Range, and March...and then earned even more promotions on top of that but none were even left to take. Which was kind of funny. And this was simply on Standard, not Epic or Marathon.

Except that extra damage doesn't help if you don't have the move to fire and retreat given the terrain or in a slightly better case scenario not enough move to fire twice and retreat. And, of course, Keshiks are going to *reach* Logistics more quickly which means the snowball starts sooner.

1-2 more turns? Maybe on pure open terrain, but not in forested/hilly/jungle regions where Keshiks can move 50%+ faster.

People shouldn't have the chance to do so, not if you move quickly. It is extremely difficult to retaliate without actually moving your force closer to the Keshiks. They might get a few lucky shots if they are very quick but those will be few and far between.

Also, might I point out multiplayer was never mentioned in this thread, let alone simultaneous? I mean, in a multiplayer environment if people see you trying to conquer like this *everyone* is going to DoW you and move to stop you. Unless it's a 1v1 or something, I guess, which in and of itself is a very different scenario (and where you're not trading luxes with your opponent while at war).

I assume, unless stated otherwise, that we're talking something close to Standard size, Standard speed, and Pangaea/Continents/primarily land map in single player.

At which point the city should be ready to capture anyway, so the General is useless. And you don't NEED the roads with Khans.

I say "blah blah blah" because this while thing started when you said "For one, Camels are flatout more powerful than Keshiks" and that's what we've been discussing. If we want to turn this into a holistic Civ debate (aka, does the superiority of Keshik/Khan for pure military wind up mattering less than the extra happiness/gold from Arabia) then that's another story, but we've been talking pure military so far.

Mongols have plains which is excellent for horses and salt.

No, worst case scenario is the Horsemen takes those shots and then gets hit by another unit (melee or ranged) that finished building in that city on that turn and dies. Or it's a coastal city that has both a crossbowman and a galleass/frigate which definitely one turn the horseman.

But assuming neither of those and even if he survives (and if the AI has Tradition with their high city strength and the garrisoned unit I'd suspect the Horseman would die...are you factoring in Tradition bonus or the AI getting two free promotions?), he's still at 1 HP and needs to heal back to full (unless you're sure you have the terrain to pillage at the next city). And then without the movement bonus he'd take longer to catch up to the main army.

Speed speed speed speed speed.

Speed is the key. You need to be able to conquer as much as possible before you go obsolete. And being able to move 25-50% faster than Arabia is a big deal. Even if you "only" save 2 turns per city due to movement, when you have to conquer 20+ cities that's an extra 40 turns saved, which means either that you can conquer MORE than you otherwise could with those extra 40+ turns or that it's easier since cities will have less defense, there will be less (and/or weaker) defensive units, etc.

And Keshiks will get those Logistics faster, which then they'll then get the range even faster.

To get three range AND logistics...

Keshiks (units): 34 turns to hit logistics, 9 more turns to hit range, 43 turns total.
Keshiks (units, +50% XP): 25 turns to hit logistics, 7 more turns to hit range, 32 turns total.
Keshiks (cities): 25 turns to hit logistics, 7 more turns to hit range, 32 turns total.
Keshiks (cities, +50% XP): 17 turns to hit logistics, 4 more turns to hit range, 21 turns total.

CAs (units): 50 turns to hit logistics, 13 more turns to hit range, 63 turns total.
CAs (units, +50% XP): 34 turns to hit logistics, 9 more turns to hit range, 43 turns total.
CAs (cities): 34 turns to hit logistics, 9 more turns to hit range, 43 turns total.
CAs (cities, +50% XP): 25 turns to hit logistics, 7 more turns to hit range, 32 turns total.

And that's the best case scenario for CAs, as we've already shown how Keshiks are able to get off more shots in more terrain types than CAs.

Even if we ignore the "quite" (which implies it's more than just "a few turns")...even just "a few turns" *IS* vital. Saving even 2-3 turns per city is amazing because that means the other cities are easier too and it just snowballs.

It really sounds like you're looking at this from the perspective of "Oh, I'm Arabia, I'll get some Camel Archers and conquer another nearby Civ or two" and we're talking about this from the perspective of "Oh, I'm Mongolia, I'll get some Keshiks and sweep the whole goddamn *MAP.*"

Not when you're trying to clear the map ASAP and razing many/most cities anyway.

Except when you lose the chariot you lose the XP, which is one of the whole points to starting early.

And...those few turns is the difference between the AI having another unit or two at the next city. It's the difference between fighting 1 unit and 2 units at the second city and then the difference between fighting 3 units and 6 units at the third city (because you took longer to heal after the first which meant more at the second, which means taking the second took even longer due to that unit which means, coupled with the longer healing, that you fight even more at the third). Again, speed snowballs.

Which is definitely an assumption. Even if guaranteed you're only guaranteed to have 4-6, I think, so you'll really need to seek out more anyway.

Good luck getting a religion on Deity -- sometimes you fail even WITH desert folklore. And, of course, if you miss Desert Folklore (due to someone else taking it (either in single player OR multiplayer)) then you basically just have a worse start.

This is incorrect, at least in single player (multiplayer Tradition vs Liberty is its own whole bag of issues which is another topic). The problem is not that Liberty is bad late game -- in fact, Liberty winds up being BETTER than Tradition late game. The problem is that you usually don't HIT late game.

Going on standard speed (and these numbers aren't exact, just estimates, so don't nit pick too much):

Turns 1 to 100ish: Liberty is better. Can easily fit in a wonder or more military prior to settlers, faster settler building, more hammers.

Turns 100ish to 250-300ish: Tradition is better due to growth bonus, free aqueducts, and Monarchy.

Turns 250-300ish+: Liberty becomes better at some point.

Basically, you get enough growth bonuses, free aqueducts, and amazing capital that Liberty cannot keep up in the mid-game compared to Tradition. But eventually even the Liberty cities are at a good population (since population growth slows down), you have more science (since each city easily outstrips the 5% science penalty), and you have more production (since those cities have their buildings built and you have far more of them).

But if you're winning with Science by turn 250-300...then Liberty never really has a chance to come into its own.

For example, here's an example of an excellent Liberty empire:

Spoiler :

The catch is that's way too late to consistently win on Deity, obviously. If you're wondering how my tech level is that bad with science that high it's because it was a team game with a friend new to Civ (who was Arabia) and his science was completely terrible. But show me a 4 city Tradition empire that can compete with a 2700+ Science Liberty Civ (that had 13 cities, I think) -- though obviously BOTH Tradition and Liberty should be finishing the tech tree by that turn anyway, so the science is moot. The production/strategic resources sure are nice, though.

That would be a *lot* of fillers (4 total, I believe). Unless you're Poland I'd never expect to get more than 1-2 fillers unless your science is bad. Also note that it's a gamble as the AI loves piety and may take those beliefs.

Two points in Patronage can be good in general, lot of more efficient for gold to city states. Forbidden Palace is more iffy as either the AI needs to not take Patronage or you need to get Banking first (which usually would mean giving up Sistine Chapel to an AI). Don't get me wrong, Forbidden Palace is wonderful -- 10 happiness on a 100 population empire, for example, but iffy.

Except the Great Artist isn't actually free, it pushes up your Great Artist counter. Taking that should be the LAST Great Artist you get unless you think you need it for a timing push. 25% more Great Artist generation only works out to maybe 1 extra over the course of the game, too -- you get just them slightly faster.

Er, Warrior Code is not what matters, it's Military Tradition for 50% more XP. You'll get a Great General fairly quickly as is.

Most people (basically unless you're going Honor for Domination (which actually often isn't a good idea), Aesthetics for Culture, or Patronage for Diplomatic) go Commerce and pick up Mercenary Army. Not because it's better than Wagon Trains, but because it means as soon as you have a spare Social Policy you can grab Mercantilism. Then you finish the tree if you have spare policies after finishing Rationalism/Ideology.

Autocracy works no matter the size of your empire and focuses on mostly highly trained units. Note that if you want to maintain happiness over a large empire you'll need the Militarism (2 happiness from Barracks/Armories/Military Academies) in your conquered cities...which means you'll need to annex them (puppets won't build those)...which means getting the +3 happiness from Courthouses (Police State) is excellent. You can also focus less on science because you plan to steal your techs anyway.

Order works if you're in the tech lead and wanting to maintain your position as you conquer the world. You get free Courthouses when annexing, get happiness from basic/essential buildings (monuments, workshops/factories/hydroplants/nuclear plants/solar plants, public schools/observatories/research labs), and spies with an 80% chance to catch enemy spies (versus 40% -- so literally 1/3 the techs stolen) to maintain your tech lead.

Freedom, as mentioned, isn't good at just constant domination -- though it can get involved in very late game war (or small conquering earlier on).