Cuirs vs. Cannons vs. Rifles

[jorissimo]

What's the best breakout unit in which situation? Pros and cons.

Cuirs:
Fast and you can get them early. Probably best if you don't have much land, say up to 7 cities or so. Not so good against huge neighbors and unit spammers. Require 2 strategic resources. Not very durable.

Cannons: good for grinding down large stacks. However, Steel is very expensive, cannons cost a lot of hammers and if you beeline them, they will be the strongest unit in the stack and therefore quite vulnerable. Best as an outgrowth of an Engineering game.

Rifles: strong units, can be drafted. Come later than Cuirs and have only 1 move. Still the most durable, and in my experience, the easiest option. Don't require any resource.

 

[AcaMetis]

I'm partial to cuirs/cavs purely because a faster war is a better war, and 2 units that can punch through city defences reasonably enough on their own make for really fast wars. Though, as noted, not the optimal solution in all cases.

 

[Thrasybulos]

The ultimate breakout unit is the Spaceship.

Apart from that... the only answer is "it depends".

In addition to what you've listed...
If you get stuck on a peninsula with no room for a second city, warriors will have to make do.
HAs can often be put to good use (maybe less so on Deity ?).
Catapults (even without Elephants) are also pretty effective.

And later, Tanks + aircraft can beat about anything.
Let's not even mention

I'm afraid Paratroopers, on the other hand, are only useful should you literally need to break out (game spawned you locked behind a mountain range).

 

[jorissimo]

The ultimate breakout unit is the Spaceship.

Apart from that... the only answer is "it depends".

In addition to what you've listed...
If you get stuck on a peninsula with no room for a second city, warriors will have to make do.
HAs can often be put to good use (maybe less so on Deity ?).
Catapults (even without Elephants) are also pretty effective.

And later, Tanks + aircraft can beat about anything.
Let's not even mention

I'm afraid Paratroopers, on the other hand, are only useful should you literally need to break out (game spawned you locked behind a mountain range).

I guess I wasn't completely clear about my scope conditions, I should have said I was talking specifically about mid-game breakout strategies, situations where you can peacefully expand to anywhere between 6 and 12 cities more or less
Early game rushes are a really different can of beans. And yes, when I have enough cities I always prefer tanks and planes.

 

[sampsa]

Cannons: good for grinding down large stacks. However, Steel is very expensive, cannons cost a lot of hammers and if you beeline them, they will be the strongest unit in the stack and therefore quite vulnerable. Best as an outgrowth of an Engineering game.

I would nearly always take advantage of the cheap treb->cannon upgrade. Money is easy to get at that point with a GM.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Also, if you've got Steel, Grenadiers are only one tech away.
They may not be a great unit, but they're still better than the medieval trash you'll have along with your cannons, and they'll solve the "cannons as stack defenders" issue.

 

[jorissimo]

Also, if you've got Steel, Grenadiers are only one tech away.
They may not be a great unit, but they're still better than the medieval trash you'll have along with your cannons, and they'll solve the "cannons as stack defenders" issue.

True, but I feel like you're spending a lot of time researching techs that's aren't incredibly useful. At least on the way to Rifling you have Printing Press and Rep Parts which have economic use and lead to other useful techs.

 

[Thrasybulos]

At least there's Chemistry: one the workshop-enabling techs.

But yeah, as I said, the usual answer remains: "it depends".
If that "breakout" phase is actually the first phase of the "rolling over the map" endgame, I find the cannon path the most reliable. Cuirassiers are faster, but can hit a wall.
If it's only "I need more land to have a shot at a late game victory", then the Rifle path does indeed have better techs.

 

[jorissimo]

At least there's Chemistry: one the workshop-enabling techs.

But yeah, as I said, the usual answer remains: "it depends".
If that "breakout" phase is actually the first phase of the "rolling over the map" endgame, I find the cannon path the most reliable. Cuirassiers are faster, but can hit a wall.
If it's only "I need more land to have a shot at a late game victory", then the Rifle path does indeed have better techs.

Yeah I see your point. I think map type is an important variable. I agree that cannons can finish the job on a Pangea. Fractal is different, and Rifles are better suited for overseas wars because you need fewer of them to be effective. Or use them to conquer your own continent and then go modern era for the other continents.

 

[Set]

I probably play more game with cuirs but think for very serious, no reloading play cannons are better option since they limit influence of luck. Cuirs feel very strong when things go as expected but losing a string of 70% battles can be real setback.

 

[Gumbolt]

If you are playing immortal or below cuirs should over run the entire map. 1mp cannons and rifles are very slow movement wise esp in AI cultures. Unless you attack from a neighbouring AI's border? . Takes much longer to tech rifles/cannons.

By the time i get to cuirs i can have 10-15+ cities.

Luck is normally not an issue if you start with 20-30 cuirs. As long as you are not attacking rifles or grenadiers. You always try to have 1.5-2x attackers vs defenders. Nearly every city needs to be whipping cuirs.

If you go rifles/cannons you need a quick capitulation. Split stacks too once your army is big enough. Same for cuirs. 70+ cuirs can form 3 stacks of 20 or so cuirs.

 

[jorissimo]

By the time i get to cuirs i can have 10-15+ cities.

But we're talking about a situation with cuirs as a first breakout, so more like 7-8 cities rather than 10-15 . That sounds more like a game that started with an early rush followed by constant military expansion.

 

[Gumbolt]

Oh I don't wait around to 1000ad to attack.

 

[jorissimo]

Oh I don't wait around to 1000ad to attack.

Around what time do you normally attack, and is that decision influenced by the amount of land you have available?

 

[Izuul]

Cuirs are amazing in the right situations. They are fast and can often be unlocked quite a bit earlier than cannons or rifles. You just want to do as much damage as possible before the AI get rifles because that's just a hard counter to Cuirs unless you have a massive numerical advantage.

Cannons are just the safest and most reliable of the three. If you get them early enough you can take cities with almost no losses which will lead to faster capitulations. They are also still very effective attackers even at a large tech disadvantage. They can be upgraded cheaply from trebs and paired with maces initially and grens a little later. Very good for attacking large AIs with big stacks. Letting the AI capture one of your cities (or recapture one of theirs), and then hitting it with a big stack of cannons is a great way to catch a stack of doom in a city vs having to deal with it in the open.

Ive always found Rifles to be pretty weak on their own. On Deity your window to attack longbows is pretty small, and by the time you get a stack of rifles ready to go there's a very good chance the AI will have them as well. Rifles vs rifles just doesnt work so now you also need siege or airships.

The one situation I've had success with rifles is on heavy water maps. These often have alot of food and not many hammers which is a good situation for drafting, and the AI also tends to struggle some on these maps since it's not good at leveraging high food into anything other than high pop.

 

[jorissimo]

Ive always found Rifles to be pretty weak on their own.

I always pair them with trebs though

 

[notslin]

If you get stuck on a peninsula with no room for a second city, warriors will have to make do.

Are warriors a real strategy on Deity?

Say you're semi-isolated and only have room for 2 cities (without putting settlers on galleys) and lack strategic resources. That might be a loss no matter what. But even then, warriors seem too weak.

 

[AcaMetis]

It's not impossible to pull off, and I'd be surprised if I haven't seen people win from conditions within that general neighbourhood of unbelievably awful, but I wouldn't call it a real strategy. You'd never do a Deity warrior rush over Archerpult unless the latter was absolutely impossible to pull off.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I don't know, I don't play Deity.

But I wasn't putting it forth as a "strategy", rather as a "last resort option when everything else is off the table".
That said, wasn't there such a game posted here a coupla years ago? I believe Toku was involved (either you were Toku, or he was your neighbour gaoler).
There was an older, famous save where you were stuck on a tiny peninsula with Monty as a neighbour, iirc, but I have something more recent in mind.

 

[AcaMetis]

That said, wasn't there such a game posted here a coupla years ago? I believe Toku was involved (either you were Toku, or he was your neighbour gaoler).

At least one. I remember one such game where someone was challenged to rush a neighbour with Warriors on Deity, and did so (playing as Ragnar, don't recall the AI conquered). The one who posted the challenge said there was "no way" the warrior army could conquer a second neighbour in that same game. Guess what happened to (IIRC) Ramesses II next .

There was an older, famous save where you were stuck on a tiny peninsula with Monty as a neighbour, iirc, but I have something more recent in mind.

Indeed there was . And yes, that save was brutal.