Dismiss units?

[gavenkoa]

Units besides free limits (which slightly increased with total population count?) eat budget.

After unit is obsoleted or you gained lots of useless workers I think they should be dismissed.

Simple way is to delete them.

What about effective way to utilize them? I think of:

* upgrading (looks like cheaper to build new one if it is Warrior without upgrades)
* gifting to vassal (on Deity/Immortal they have great handicap so they easily pay for unit upgrade and can keep support costs)

Gifting extra workers to rival may cripple their economy if AI do not dismiss units... Is this viable?

 

[gavenkoa]

I saw strategy when Isolated city (no access to Iron/Copper) was used to mass-produce Warriors and they were gifted to AI for mass-upgrade ))

Also there is combo with some early pre-built horse units + gold for upgrading from Great Merchant to build army of Cuirassier/Cavalry.

Both relay on fast building crap but cheap units for upgrade (by you or AI). Never exploited it.

 

[AcaMetis]

AIs will not accept units if they're not able to support them, so I don't think gifting units can be used to bankrupt AIs. The trick of sending Warriors (or other cheap units) to a Deity vassal to have them cheaply upgrade them into a modern doomstack to take over the world definitely works, though.

As for what to do with obsoleted units, usually they're worth keeping around to garrison conquered cities, either to suppress revolts or just as a garrison so that a more useful unit doesn't have to be wasted on sitting on a city. Workers, likewise, keep them around. Sooner or later you'll need a bunch of them to build improvements, and if you don't you can always use them as disposable scouts. Just dismissing them is wasteful.

 

[gavenkoa]

use them as disposable scouts

I've read so many "advanced strategies" (Great Spy) about scouting that forget about idle workers.

As I know if AI attacks workers they disappear. So hostile AI can't take advantage of unprotected wandering Worker.

What I'm afraid of is that Worker outside of you cultural area can take extra 1C of cost. But that same can be true for Great Spy too...

 

[rah]

Use extra workers to bait units out of cities to be killed easier. Obsolete units can do the same and do a little pillaging of unneeded improvements for extra cash at the same time.

 

[Gumbolt]

Really don't think this is worth it. I really don't have all these hammers to spare in most games. If you want to cause the Ai to run out of surplus gold per turn trade resources for gold. Much more efficient.Plus gains you 3-6 gold per resource.

Workers are great for exploring or as bait. Pends how much work is required. When building workshops later on you do need plenty of workers for this.

 

[gavenkoa]

or as bait

I don't see cases for using Workers as baits in case if you want to weaken city. You can't control which unit would be taken to capture your Worker.

You can spare Chariot to lure out single Spearman from a city or a stack (in a way control which unit will be selected) to simplify task for the rest of the stack if there is a single Spearman in enemy stack.

I can imaging rare case of using Worker as lure to distract enemy stack outside of the city as AI have tendency to move full stack instead of splitting it. But it looks like some emergency case...

I just forget that workers has 2 moves per turn. They are great at exploring with Open Borders!

 

[sampsa]

I don't see cases for using Workers as baits in case if you want to weaken city. You can't control which unit would be taken to capture your Worker.

Due to the way "AI-intelligence" works, it will often use a stack to capture that worker. In cases where you have captured a lot of workers, they can be more expendable than a chariot, which has the ability to capture siege-weakened cities and catch stray units like axes or archers.

 

[Gumbolt]

I remember a SGOTM game where baiting the Ai with a unit against a city worked a treat. The other trick we used was to leave an undefended cities. Toku sent units out to try and take it and lost his capital which had 100% bonus defence.

 

[Fippy]

Was that the game with our iconic final battle against his hill city defended by longbows?
Best finish ever, when i look back at our sgotm games

 

[Whisker]

Marginal use at best, but here's a fun story.
I remember this one game is was playing with Celts. Me and two Ai's on our island, Mehmed on somebody else. I had just finished wiping out the other AI and was trying to limb way to alphabet to recover from the war effort, whem Mehmed raised his red fist. I had far too many Celtic warriors to build any more, didn't have any building to do and could not build research or gold. So what I did was toI prebuild fresh set of swordmen followed by a ton of scouts.

With their two moves the scouts would all reach Mehmed's land in two turns and I would immediately gift them, thus costing me very little in upkeep. At some point gifting one of the scout's raised mehmed power rating against me from 0.7 to 0.6. I think I had at this point gifted something like 11 scouts. Next turn Mehmed declared, possibly before he was quite ready. I beat off his initial stack of maby 7 axe's and few other units and proceeded to invade his land. My freshly builded Celtic swodmen sniped his scouts running here and there gaining that crucical 1 xp that would land them on third level and guerilla III. I threw bunch on these guys against Mehmed capital, guerilla saving bit less than half of them and woundind defenders so that my veterans with city raider specials from that previous war had easy time cleaning up after them.

 

[Snowbird]

I don't see cases for using Workers as baits

Not sure about city weakening, but they can do wonders vs aggresivish (I think unit attack courage is involved) AI's ih full hand mode. Put an unprotected worker next to border and quite often full hands suddenly progresses into declaration. As AI never built proper stack all you have to deal with is some stray units.

Worked really well for me few times on immortal, but I'm not sure it would be worth doing it on Deity (too much loose AI units, production bonuses, earlier declarations, etc.).

 

[Gumbolt]

Was that the game with our iconic final battle against his hill city defended by longbows?
Best finish ever, when i look back at our sgotm games

Which game are you thinking of? I had the Toku game in mind. Top be fair we had used so much tactics over that series it could of counted as anyone of our games.

 

[6K Man]

Obviously if you have Hereditary Rule, obsolete units = happiness. If that’s not needed, I’ll delete units with fewer than about 5XP if they’re an era or 2 behind – no point keeping Workers if everyone has Crossbows/Longbows, or Archers in the gunpowder era.

Units with more than 5XP will sometimes get upgraded. City Raider 3 units are a good example of this. Having a lot of cash on hand when you discover an enabling tech for a better unit can be a game changer; mass upgrades of Horsemen/Knights>Cuirassiers or Trebuchet>Cannon let you take advantage of the new tech without having to wait for units to be built/whipped.

I seldom delete Workers – if you are playing conquest games, Workers are forever busy fixing the dumbass land use decisions the AI made in your newly conquered lands. And you need a bunch of them if you get to Railroad, too.

Gifting units works to help your friends, but I’ve never seen it cripple an enemy AI financially.

 

[gavenkoa]

I had just finished wiping out the other AI and was trying to limb way to alphabet to recover from the war effort

What was the difficulty of game?

It sounds interesting gifting yet not built Scouts. Someone may argue it is inefficient. You'd already had crippled economy and Scouts' hammers might be failgold or beakers... much valuable than +2 EXP for defeating gifted Scouts. But you had no Alphabet and probably all Wonders were gone while you was busy at a war. So you had free hummer but no gold/beaters and zero income to support live army (( Make sense to apply unusual strategy.

 

[gavenkoa]

I think I had at this point gifted something like 11 scouts. Next turn Mehmed declared, possibly before he was quite ready.

You can gift bunch of Scouts in one stack and keep army next to them and declare war on same step and kill stack of Scouts in a convenient place. It is conversion tool hammers => exp ))

 

[Whisker]

What was the difficulty of game?

It sounds interesting gifting yet not built Scouts. Someone may argue it is inefficient. You'd already had crippled economy and Scouts' hammers might be failgold or beakers... much valuable than +2 EXP for defeating gifted Scouts. But you had no Alphabet and probably all Wonders were gone while you was busy at a war. So you had free hummer but no gold/beaters and zero income to support live army (( Make sense to apply unusual strategy.

It was immortal game, and like stated I was in horrible state economically after that previous war. My tech path had been less than optimal, researching iron working before alphabet, but I really wanted to try out that Celtic Warrior rush. My core cities had already build/whipped all available buildings and could only build units at that point. But I was making negative gold 0% slider setting and could not keep any units I would build. I had good production, and building scouts I would gain just enough overflow gold to keep my army from disbanding, providing I either immediately disbanded or gifted those scouts.I won the war against Mehmed, but lost the game. When I was finally done conguering my island, the AIs at other continent were two eras ahead of me in tech.

As for actually using gifting scouts and then slaughtering them as an intetional strategy, you would probably be better off just building more units. Maybe if you are anyway planning only a limited war to capture a few key cities, slaughtering the scouts might gain you enough war success to sue for peace quickly. Or if you have useless enemy that is reduced to one city or so, you could repeat gifting scouts, declaring and slaughtering several times to train your army. Hmm, it's probably bad idea, but I need to try it out sometime if opportunity presents itself.

 

[Anysense]

You can gift bunch of Scouts in one stack and keep army next to them and declare war on same step and kill stack of Scouts in a convenient place. It is conversion tool hammers => exp ))

It does not seem to be very cost-effective, not to mention diplomatic consequences. Just build more barracks. The only real use for gifting scouts which occurs to me is to have some easy war success to make AI capitulate. Still, this is a rather marginal use, and gifting cities for the same purpose is cheaper even for non-imperialistic leader.

 

[Gumbolt]

Why would you even have a stack of scouts? I rarely ever build them.

You would not build lots of units on deity. The cost of units on deity is much higher. AI get much bigger bonuses too. Even on immortal after 10-12 units you start paying 1-2 gold a turn per unit. So building a stack of scouts would kill your economy. Plus cities having to run builds which ultimately could of been converted into wealth/science.

Gifting workers late game would also have little effect. On Deity the AI can have stacks of 50-60+ units. Plus 4-5+ defenders per city. If you are worried an AI is going to attack you prepare for war and stop building scouts. That or bribe the AI to attack eachother.Or work on diplomacy so the AI is pleased or friendly.

Gifting captured cities for war success is better way to quickly gain war success. 4 cities takes you to 40 points. If you have the land and population and lose no combats then the AI will usually vassal or make peace. Some AI like Toku could take 2-3 turns to talk. Others will capitulate the next turn.

 

[Fippy]

I like the idea tbh
Say you are CHA and do an Axe rush, with barracks (and no other ways besides barbs for more xp so early) you will sit at 3/4 with most units.
CR1 or CR2 on many units, not unimportant. All those scouts would give 4/4.

If you ask me it's not unit cost for a scout stack that stops me from doing that, but hammers.
On deity (sadly i play nothing else), it's difficult enuf to form your Axe stack.