deity aw 3

[Snaaty]

concerning the quech rush:

you have 25-30 turns to execute a quech rush, leaving you without a worker and improvements if you fail. getting an ai worker isnt a guaranteed thing, only if you take their capital you can be sure to get the workers (ai usually hides them there).
and 5 unpromoted quechs aren´t enough to take a hillside capital with 3 archers. around the mentioned time your enemy will usually get bronze or horses hooked if the have it in the bfc of their first cities unless they start with a religion (then you have 8-10 turns more).
so assuming 5 turns per quech and 5 turns to walk towards your target, that leaves you with an innitial force of said 5 quechs to start with. that will be enough for 1 city, maybe 2 if you bring reinforcements and are able to block bronze/horses, but it will delay your own expansion for the first 50 turns at minimum.
doing the math, expanding peacefully isnt much worse and much, much saver since it works at odds of 100%...

so no, i also dont think they are overpowerded (dont get me wrong, they are a very strong uu, and you eat barbarchers like nothing and you HAVE the additional option of doing a superearly rush, so quechs rock, but overpowered... ...no)

 

[ben-jammin]

The problem with Qrushing (and any other form of rushing) in AW is that you attack ONE enemy - all the others don't suffer at all.
On the contrary, rushing one enemy increases the risk of another AI settling all the land your victim couldn't claim, thus becoming far more dangerous than two smaller enemies would have been.

I guess there should be situations in which Qrushing is a great option. E.g., your capital blocks off a big peninsula with exactly one AI on it - crush that poor bastard, claim his land and yours, win.
But even in this case, it feels dangerous. You can't protect your capital with Quechuas, you need archers for that - but when the other AI's come knocking at the door with a few axes and swords, you will be wishing for some skirmishers instead.
Of course, if the size of your empire gives you early longbows and your archers can survive this long, everything's fine...

I agree that this doesnt work at all in always war. Normal immortal or deity is another story, though.

 

[Snaaty]

The problem with Qrushing (and any other form of rushing) in AW is that you attack ONE enemy - all the others don't suffer at all.
On the contrary, rushing one enemy increases the risk of another AI settling all the land your victim couldn't claim, thus becoming far more dangerous than two smaller enemies would have been.

I guess there should be situations in which Qrushing is a great option. E.g., your capital blocks off a big peninsula with exactly one AI on it - crush that poor bastard, claim his land and yours, win.
But even in this case, it feels dangerous. You can't protect your capital with Quechuas, you need archers for that - but when the other AI's come knocking at the door with a few axes and swords, you will be wishing for some skirmishers instead.
Of course, if the size of your empire gives you early longbows and your archers can survive this long, everything's fine...

yup, what i said above goes for a normal game, not an aw game. as long as i dont see someone surviving up to something like 1000 AD (or even better, winning), an aw game without skirms i have doubts about that beeing a viable strategy... ...just for fun, i want to throw in wang kong of rome... ...you have praets instead of skirms, a strength 8 units that comes really early... ...for us (obs, auron, me) it also was impossible to win that way under normal circumstances, but i also would be interested in seeing an xy of rome in an aw game, since, in theory, it also seems very strong...

the only way we found out we really had a chance of surviving (even winning in some cases) was with protective skirms. i dont say this is the only way, but it´s the only way i know of and which i have seen working so far

 

[Cusanus]

Just watched AZ's video.
It does look quite good for a while, even though he goes for a rather quick and dirty rush instead of trying to do any optimization there.
(Why would you wait for 6 Q's before you even start scouting at all?)

I think this might actually work if you get to longbows fast enough... maybe I will have some time this weekend to try a few times.

 

[ben-jammin]

I definitely can't see praets being much use. No defensive bonuses, takes quite a while to get to iron working, the nthe fact that you actually need to get and mine and road the iron which i assume the AI would pillage immediately even if you managed to do it. Protective bowmen wouldnt be as good either.

 

[Snaaty]

Just watched AZ's video.
It does look quite good for a while, even though he goes for a rather quick and dirty rush instead of trying to do any optimization there.
(Why would you wait for 6 Q's before you even start scouting at all?)

I think this might actually work if you get to longbows fast enough... maybe I will have some time this weekend to try a few times.

sounds good. that´s exactly the bottleneck you have to eliminate... ...not getting lbs in time and not having skirms usually was the reason that got us killed around 200-600 AD (no way to stop maces, trebs, catas, phants + knights with regular archers was our main problem. not even numbers and superachers did help...). a viable strategy to get lbs in time would be great, since it would eliminate the need of playing xy-of mali

 

[Snaaty]

I definitely can't see praets being much use. No defensive bonuses, takes quite a while to get to iron working, the nthe fact that you actually need to get and mine and road the iron which i assume the AI would pillage immediately even if you managed to do it. Protective bowmen wouldnt be as good either.

our thinking was along this lines:

str. 8 is 2xstr4, so you need lots of boni to overcome this with a skirm. another great thing about praets is that you can promote them the guerilla line. and guerilla 3 (50% retreat), backed with a lot of str. pomos and a few cr ones makes great killers when going on the offence.

the problem we faced was the collateral damage... ...without fs, we simply took to much hits there and once the top defender took a hit, the city defenders where usually heavily decimated, leading to downfall a few turns later

60% less collateral is very, very mighty, since you keep your helper skirms above 3hp and with all the promos and boni, they still have defence strenght around 10, even after the top defender is down. a praet goes donw to 4 hp, without many boni, so he ends up with str. 6-7, consistently loosing to attacking axes with cr promos

 

[Habitus]

Did you try Protective Bowmen? I don't think 50% Melee will be stronger than 1 Strength + a first strike chance but i'd say 2/3 of the units that attack you are Melee up until probably after you steal Feudalism.
Current game (lol even thou i said i wouldn't try again except a bebug game to see the scripts AI were running for different behaviours) I have 3 Cities, just teched Currency, have just settled my Great Spy from TGW, and have scientists in my 3rd City running since before the Great Spy to get a GS asap after the GSpy.

 

[Snaaty]

Did you try Protective Bowmen? I don't think 50% Melee will be stronger than 1 Strength + a first strike chance but i'd say 2/3 of the units that attack you are Melee up until probably after you steal Feudalism.
Current game (lol even thou i said i wouldn't try again except a bebug game to see the scripts AI were running for different behaviours) I have 3 Cities, just teched Currency, have just settled my Great Spy from TGW, and have scientists in my 3rd City running since before the Great Spy to get a GS asap after the GSpy.

yes... ...and we learned to bow to stacks of horse archers of death (uh, even worse if egypt is in the game, then you get also stacks of war chars of death)

 

[ben-jammin]

Did you try Protective Bowmen? I don't think 50% Melee will be stronger than 1 Strength + a first strike chance but i'd say 2/3 of the units that attack you are Melee up until probably after you steal Feudalism.
Current game (lol even thou i said i wouldn't try again except a bebug game to see the scripts AI were running for different behaviours) I have 3 Cities, just teched Currency, have just settled my Great Spy from TGW, and have scientists in my 3rd City running since before the Great Spy to get a GS asap after the GSpy.

Spoiler :

for me it wasnt the melee units that gave me the most trouble. drill iv skirmishers with a super medic were decimating axe/sword/catapult stacks. But then elepult stacks started showing up and really ruined my day. I don't know why that made such a big difference, maybe because the strength 8 unit makes the AIs more willing to all suicide at the same time. Up till then they seemed to be suiciding individually separated by just enough turns for complete healing.

 

[Snaaty]

@ ben-j:

Spoiler :

and now imagine this without a str. 4 archers... ...str 3 archers with 1 less fs are in big trouble against phants (we usually manage to survive elepults, but once the ai reached maces, we went down.)

skirms do fine against phants if promoted right:

fs 4 + cg 1 (20%) + city (25%) + hill (50%) + fortifiy (25%) makes them str. 9 + fs4 alone. now add some more pomos (which you will have around the time elepults show up on your top defenders) and you should hold with something like 8 skirms in your blocking city.

it´s the way fs is coded:
you get safe hits and with great odds if you are significantly stronger then the attacker, resulting in your top skirm usually not taking any damage against units without immunity to fs (with cg3, guerilla2 your top skirm has something like str 15 gainst the attacking phant, together with 4-6 fs, so each fs might be a hit and the phant is already almost dead after the fs are done)

very important rule:
-> dont promote your skrims the cg line, ALWAYS promote them the fs line first

all skirms must be promoted the fs line right from the start, or one skrim promoted wrong will take away ex from the others and later fall to phants/HAs

give them cg after you have fs4

 

[obsolete]

They're cheap and you can build them immediately

I don't see this valid for an arguement. Of course the civopedia may make it LOOK cheap, since it requires the least total hammers of all units.

The reality is, they are the most expensive unit in the game, because when you base them on the era, and how much they will cripple your start when you go gun-ho for your super-duper-early-rush, there is never any time in a later game where you will see such a penalty on your entire ecconomy/growth/empire/etc... with any other unit.

 

[ben-jammin]

I don't see this valid for an arguement. Of course the civopedia may make it LOOK cheap, since it requires the least total hammers of all units.

The reality is, they are the most expensive unit in the game, because when you base them on the era, and how much they will cripple your start when you go gun-ho for your super-duper-early-rush, there is never any time in a later game where you will see such a penalty on your entire ecconomy/growth/empire/etc... with any other unit.

You're gonna have to explain how this cripples you so badly. You will be building units anyway, no? Some of them warriors. You will be capturing workers instead of building them, which saves you hammers from production and from whipping because you grew faster. Same for every city you capture instead of building a settler. If you start particularly close to an AI, which is not uncommon, the maintenance costs of those cities is little more than it would normally be and this is offset by the fact that capitals almost always have the best tiles.

And theres no reason you need to build dozens of quechas right away and cripple yourself with those costs. It only takes one or two to prevent an AI from getting bronze and even working a single improved tile. I've never had this 'cripple' me. If the AI is close it's so foolproof it's not really fun. You can allow them to send out their settlers and capture the cities before the escorts are even fortified. Or you can kill them and get two workers out of it. There are a number of ways to take advantage of the way the AI deals with quechas to get them to move archers out of cities.

 

[Kid R]

760 AD defeat. Lesson learned with CG promos I guess, they just seemed so effective early on.

Will skip the detail, basically just whipped longbows non-stop since the last save. Quite funny to see these guys all marching in on the last turn though - the circus comes to town!

Spoiler :

Interesting that the different routes chosen by blue and brown makde such a nice orderly pair of columns.

Good luck to the real pros anyway!

Incidentally with the promos what do people think about putting a couple of CG units with formation in there to handle horse archers?

 

[obsolete]

When I've had my best Que rushes, it's been with Boudica. Her AGG seems like a waste on the uu, since the combat I goes to pure waste. But you get that barracks up in just a few turns. So now all your QUE's have 25% bonus regardless.

The Charistmatic means you can get to the next level in just a single battle or two, and the next shortly follows.

Using HC's regular Que's are just horrible though... Attacking a capital on a hill? Forget it..

 

[JammerUno]

What about CKNs? They open up a nice window for attacking at machinery. Churchill of china?

As for Que's, it's a gambit, not a strategy. If you run up against an AI with a hilled cap with either prot archers, or a 40% bonus from culture, que's won't do anything. Any non-archery unit will end your game.

 

[obsolete]

Umm.. by the time you get your rush to an enemy capital, it will always have at lest 40% culture bonus, so there is no question (what if it has 40% culture).

Furthermore, IIRC a standard Que against a fortified archer in a capital on a hill only has a 3% chance, or something around there (I think it could be less in fact!). And no, this is not even against a protective archer, just non-promoted IIRC.

It's definitely a gambit, not a winning strategy. At least, not with a regular Que.

 

[Cusanus]

As for Que's, it's a gambit, not a strategy. If you run up against an AI with a hilled cap with either prot archers, or a 40% bonus from culture, que's won't do anything. Any non-archery unit will end your game.

That may be so, but I don't thing that's the real problem.
The problem is not so much if the rush can work - it definitely can-, it's if you can survive and recover afterwards.


On my first try, the Qrush was actually quite successful, but I crashed my economy so hard I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna reach feudalism.

- - -
Why are we even discussing this? Of course it is a gambit - there are no "winning strategies" in deity AW.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Umm.. by the time you get your rush to an enemy capital, it will always have at lest 40% culture bonus, so there is no question (what if it has 40% culture).

Not sure if you're talking about a Quecha rush here, but if you are, unless they are creative or founded a religion I never face more then 20% culture for my first attack.

Furthermore, IIRC a standard Que against a fortified archer in a capital on a hill only has a 3% chance, or something around there (I think it could be less in fact!). And no, this is not even against a protective archer, just non-promoted IIRC.

Given 20% culture defense ( which is what you should be facing if you do it right ):

On average it takes 2 Quecha's per ( non pro ) archer in a non hilled city.

If the archer is on a hill then it takes about 3 Q's per archer on average.

If the archer is protective then it's probably around 3 Q's per archer.

This is why I attack with 6 total to start, and attack before turn 30. Usually by that turn the enemy has only 2 archers in their capitol on deity ( normal speed ).

If the archer is protective and on a hill then you look for another city because it takes about 4-5 Q's per archer. You can still take that city but the first city you take should be an easier target.

The idea is to take 1 city then use that city to produce more Q's, then take the next city and so on. If you can take 1 strong city ( usually their capitol ) then you can deal with hilled protective archers with massed Q's from the first captured city.

It's definitely a gambit, not a winning strategy. At least, not with a regular Que.

In my experience ( were talking a ton of Quecha rushes here ), it's about a 75% chance you can pull it off on a Pangea map. If it does work you will own the rest of the game like you wouldn't believe.

 

[ben-jammin]

What about CKNs? They open up a nice window for attacking at machinery. Churchill of china?

As for Que's, it's a gambit, not a strategy. If you run up against an AI with a hilled cap with either prot archers, or a 40% bonus from culture, que's won't do anything. Any non-archery unit will end your game.

The target AI never gets a non-archery unit. The AI will not use it's archers to prevent you from destroying it's improvements. AZ did a video demonstrating how powerful the quecha choke/rush/do whatever is. He called it "the case against hyuana cupac,"
as in "this is why he's a little too easy."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m333QAVtPaY