Conquest and Promotions

[Bushface]

My regular conquest strategy is to build hordes of attack troops and invade enemy territory from as many directions as possible, in order to avoid too much time traipsing across hostile land. But this means that each of my units engages in only a few battles, and consequently gains few XPs, so even though in my last game all my tanks started life with at least 10XP (some with 14) by the finish I had just two with 26+ and another 13 with 17+ out of a total of 93 tanks and taking 41 cities. And one of the 26+ tanks only got that far right at the end of the game, by being used to knock off some much-weakened units in an isolated city to gain 2XP per turn - far too late to be sent into the main conflict.
I should very much like to know the best way of getting even a few highly-promoted units, capable of carving their way through anything my enemies can offer. Should I change my methods and set up an elite group to thrust vigorously through the enemy heartland, leaving weaker units to mop up ? Is it worth striving for such a strike force, or am I better off with an army which is made up of slightly-improved units with a scattering of rather better ones ? If I am attacking a city with lots of defenders, is it better overall to use just one or two attackers over several turns rather than taking the city in a single turn using many attackers ?

 

[carl corey]

The absolute best way to have highly promoted units is to start wars as early as possible. I usually have a city with barracks before starting to build axemen. My first few warriors will be useless in the long run anyway. You can go up to 10 points I think against barbarians, but don't count only on that.

First promotion? Usually city raider, then going down that path CRII, CRIII. Sacrifice units to get the main attacker in a good position if you must, once he gets his promotions he'll be unstoppable. Aiming for Commando may look nice (moving on enemy roads like on your own), but it requires Combat IV. I'd much rather have the CR promotions first.

What about specific promotions? Shock or cover are pretty much useless when your axeman is met by an axeman if he has cover and an archer if he has shock... I do have some shock & cover promoted units, but only for defense and barbs.

As for having a strike force prepared to take a city, I think it's best this way. Otherwise, you might lose some of the battles and only give the defenders promotions. Certainly not what you'd want. Take it in one sweep, then heal, then move on.

Having many stacks attacking many cities at once is good for reducing the duration of the war. But... You risk overextending in your war. Or not being able to bring reinforcements to one of the stacks if the random generator plays a joke on you and kills your attackers against the odds. And this might induce the "one more unit (or stack)" mentality which only delays the war and might lead to the other guy upgrading his units, or you completing other techs and saying "now I need to upgrade", etc.

One more thing: if you have, let's say, an axeman with 15XP you might want to hold on to it to get the extra level instead of upgrading it to a maceman when that becomes possible. The number of XP drops to 10 for each upgrade, and in this case you'd just lose 5XP.

 

[calzetta]

The type of units (more or less promoted) you want to use shall depend also on the game speed and number of rivals.

With low speed (epic and marathon) you have time to go on prolonged war, i.e. less units with more experience. Also, your victim will not have time to close a technological gap.
At high speed, you need to run fast incursions, i.e. high number of units --> less experience.

If you are threatened by a third civ, then you may want to keep experienced garrison (more internal mobility at home, faster healing) to counter the threat, while the main body of your army goes abroad.