Defensive Strategy as Chislev?

[Rutee]

Since Chislev seems to benefit from a City count of Ridiculous, how does one defend this spread? My strategy with Jotnar was to just have wave after wave of thrall militia on frontline cities, which serve as time wasters for attackers to kill while giants sloooowly ran in, but I don't have free peons I can keep an infinite number of.

The only thing I could come up with was Archers or other defensive units in the outermost cities; Not too many, just a smallish defense force on the border towns; Adepts with Earth Magic making Stone Walls will give the Archers the Wall Defense bonus (I think, haven't tried it with just Wall of Stone), so you just shift the defense force out concentric layers as you continue to expand. Then in next set of cities inward, you keep Recon or Horses stationed with an adept who can haste them, so they can redeploy as needed. And the capital keeps a ridiculous number of Rock Ravens so if someone has a Stack of Doom you can shift them over and whack the stack.

But this seems hideously inefficient and I'm sure someone who actually gets the Civ better then me can tell me a much better way to defend my ridiculous number of cities.

 

[Breez]

The only thing I could come up with was Archers or other defensive units in the outermost cities; Not too many, just a smallish defense force on the border towns; Adepts with Earth Magic making Stone Walls will give the Archers the Wall Defense bonus (I think, haven't tried it with just Wall of Stone), so you just shift the defense force out concentric layers as you continue to expand. Then in next set of cities inward, you keep Recon or Horses stationed with an adept who can haste them, so they can redeploy as needed.

You just described my defensive tactic for every game, every race.

And the capital keeps a ridiculous number of Rock Ravens so if someone has a Stack of Doom you can shift them over and whack the stack.

I actually do one raven per border city. No need to worry about centralizing them, rebase ignores distance, so going from one edge town to the opposite edge of your empire is the same as going from a centralized position and you will always have 2 or 3 already in position that way and don't lose a turn getting them there, not to mention you can see them coming sooner.

 

[Earthling]

Don't think you should be getting Archer wall promo just from wall of stone - it requires a regular wall, or a palisade (palisades are cheap so maybe you're building those?)

 

[Deon]

Wall Defender has this:

			<PrereqBuildingORs>
				<PrereqBuilding>BUILDING_WALLS</PrereqBuilding>
				<PrereqBuilding>BUILDING_PALISADE</PrereqBuilding>
			</PrereqBuildingORs>

so wall of stone (which is BUILDING_WALL_OF_STONE) does not count as a prerequisite for a wall defender promotion. Only walls and palisades work (which can be a feature or an oversight, I don't know).

 

[deadliver]

I think that is being changed in the next patch though that could be from another mod mod.

 

[WarKirby]

I changed the wall of stone: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=318813

Here's hoping vehem includes it in a future patch. It really is a logical change.

 

[deadliver]

Yeah! Thought I saw that change somewhere in this forum. Hows it going with the hammer pants Warkirby?

 

[WarKirby]

hammer pants

who in the what now?

 

[deadliver]

Check with Valkrionn, its a Dural special project. HAMMER TIME!

Oh yeah regarding the Chislev. As far as sprawling empires go, unless I use horsemen heavily (not always) I split up the cities into little districts responsible for their own defense. I also tend to have large stacks (armies) located at important parts, basically one for each direction (i.e. North, South, etc). I also use chokepoints with forts whenever possible just to buy time while figuring out the gist of their attack.