Drill promotion Redcoats?

[drlake]

So, on the NC Bullpen thread dalamb was salivating at the thought of Drill 4 Redcoats in the upcoming Churchill game he's planning on posting Friday. First, can you promote down the Drill line for gunpowder troops when you have a protective leader? I've never played one, but it seems like I could promote Oromo Warriors to Drill 3+ when I had them, so now I'm confused.

Second, is the Drill promotion a good alternative to Combat for assault troops? I usually either use the Combat line or the CG line for my gunpowder infantry, depending on their task (and whether they are CR Maces I upgraded, of course).

 

[mrdoe]

First, can you promote down the Drill line for gunpowder troops when you have a protective leader?
Second, is the Drill promotion a good alternative to Combat for assault troops? I usually either use the Combat line or the CG line for my gunpowder infantry, depending on their task (and whether they are CR Maces I upgraded, of course).

Yes you can promote down the drill line.
As to the second one, with 2 first strikes you gain a 16.66% advantage over an equivalent unit without the first strikes.
Ex. Rifleman (without combat line/etc) with 2 first strikes = 66.66% against Rifleman with no first strikes, if I recall correctly. Rifleman with 2 combat promotions would be 73%. Make your own decision.

 

[Fei Kelei]

Units with drill promotions aren't quite as strong as the same units with the same number of combat promotions, and they're especially weaker against mounted units that ignore first strikes. Their main advantage is that in battles where they're already favored to win, they'll take less damage due to their first strikes, and sometimes won't take any damage at all. As a result, drill-promoted riflemen (or in this case redcoats) make great attackers to use along with cannons thanks to all the collateral damage your cannons should do. The less damage you take, the quicker you'll heal and be able to move to the next city. Drill promotions are also arguably more helpful than combat promotions when facing large numbers of older units, such as when Tokugawa is in your game.

Churchill is particularly well suited to get Drill IV units because he's both Protective (giving a free Drill I promotion) and Charismatic (giving discounts on promotions).

 

[drlake]

Units with drill promotions aren't quite as strong as the same units with the same number of combat promotions, and they're especially weaker against mounted units that ignore first strikes. Their main advantage is that in battles where they're already favored to win, they'll take less damage due to their first strikes, and sometimes won't take any damage at all. As a result, drill-promoted riflemen (or in this case redcoats) make great attackers to use along with cannons thanks to all the collateral damage your cannons should do. The less damage you take, the quicker you'll heal and be able to move to the next city. Drill promotions are also arguably more helpful than combat promotions when facing large numbers of older units, such as when Tokugawa is in your game.

Churchill is particularly well suited to get Drill IV units because he's both Protective (giving a free Drill I promotion) and Charismatic (giving discounts on promotions).

Ah, cool. Thanks for the breakdown. I've never played a protective leader, and didn't see much benefit from Oromo warriors and the Rifles they were upgraded into when I played MM.

 

[Kid R]

The good news: drill 4 redcoats are possibly the sickest unit in the game.

The bad news : achieving drill 4 anything on a single unit, let alone several, or an army, is impractical.

Unless you make a lot of war right from the start to get them promoted and then continuously upgrade, in which case you should have been going down the cityraider or combat lines to start with. (My opinion - there are other threads espousing the drill strategy but I disagree).

Churchill is the leader most suited to playing round with the drill promotion and when I draw him my immediate goal, before even moving the warrior, or revealing stone or floodplains or anything, is "this game is henceforth all about trying to achieve a badass drill 4 redcoat army". It has never happened

 

[TCMIV]

You can reliably make 7 xp redcoats with vassalage/theo/barracks, which as CHM is 1 xp away from DrillIV.

On the other hand, rifles are most effectively produced by drafting IMO, which cuts down their xp by a lot

If you war during the iron/medieval age and get swords/maces to CRIII, they make much better redcoats too.

 

[Ghpstage]

The bad news : achieving drill 4 anything on a single unit, let alone several, or an army, is impractical.

You'd be suprised, Drill units tend to pick up XP very quickly.
The reason being that Drill promos don't affect the strength of units in any way, and XP gained for a win is based entirely on the ratio of strengths. The result is that the XP a Drill 4 unit gets is exactly the same as an unpromoted unit would, despite having significantly better odds. Ingame this often means your nice 99% odds mop up fights that would normally get you 1XP will get you 2 or 3XP instead

 

[Udey1]

Achieving drill 4 is not out of the question at all, and an army of drill 3/4 units is quite easy for Churchill to do later game. If you can get redcoats when they are relevant and are the first to infantry nothing will stop your steamroll. (beeline it after rifles) Several games I have turned the world English starting at super redcoats and keeping them through infantry/mech inf. If you can maintain that lead your units keep living and living, your HE city will easily pump them out the gate end game. Just keep making siege in a couple hammer cities.

Gotta love Renaissance war, which is where I usually go, being diplomatically inept compared to some other fine players here. I started on deity with Churchill, nothings more fun than an invincible army march only interrupted by you stopping to promote your units... over and over again. (as stated above the XP does work that way.)

His drill Redcoats can get crazy to the point where I have started wars with rifle treb stacks and kept the trebs till infantry. (just a little collateral and its game over) Although infantry/treb stacks do look odd.

Final note though if I am not protective I will almost never dabble in drill. Combat serves better in many case.

 

[oranje willem]

Churchill is the leader most suited to playing round with the drill promotion and when I draw him my immediate goal, before even moving the warrior, or revealing stone or floodplains or anything, is "this game is henceforth all about trying to achieve a badass drill 4 redcoat army". It has never happened

Sounds familiar

 

[drlake]

Cool, lots of good info here. I'm a bit perplexed that I can train drill on my rifles in my current Pericles game, since according to my charts it isn't an option for gunpowder units.

 

[dalamb]

BtS Civilopedia says Drill is available to Archery, Siege, Gunpowder, Armored, Helicopter, and Naval units. And, yes, my salivating was specific to Churchill with his Cha/Pro.

I hadn't thought about mounted units immune to first strikes. In that case Pro doesn't help; I suppose you'd have some Combat II/Formation units, too? Those are also 3 promotions, which only takes 8XP for a Cha leader. I note that cavalry aren't immune to first strikes, but cuirassier are.

 

[UWHabs]

BtS Civilopedia says Drill is available to Archery, Siege, Gunpowder, Armored, Helicopter, and Naval units. And, yes, my salivating was specific to Churchill with his Cha/Pro.

I hadn't thought about mounted units immune to first strikes. In that case Pro doesn't help; I suppose you'd have some Combat II/Formation units, too? Those are also 3 promotions, which only takes 8XP for a Cha leader. I note that cavalry aren't immune to first strikes, but cuirassier are.

I wouldn't worry about cuirassiers, though. Even a base rifleman/redcoat is 14+25% vs 12 for cuirassiers. The rifles win hands down. It's only if you're up against mass F2 cavalry, but even then, 14+25% > 15. Bring along a couple C2/Formation (or even D2/formation to save a promotion) units and you're more than fine. Even without the counter, if you can get to D4, the 10% bonus against mounted units is a decent bonus.

 

[drlake]

BtS Civilopedia says Drill is available to Archery, Siege, Gunpowder, Armored, Helicopter, and Naval units. And, yes, my salivating was specific to Churchill with his Cha/Pro.

I hadn't thought about mounted units immune to first strikes. In that case Pro doesn't help; I suppose you'd have some Combat II/Formation units, too? Those are also 3 promotions, which only takes 8XP for a Cha leader. I note that cavalry aren't immune to first strikes, but cuirassier are.

Interesting, they must have added the Drill line to Gunpowder with BTS (or Warlords?) but that isn't reflected on the Civ 4 Promotions page for this website (must list Vanilla promotions only?) or on the chart I got with Civ 4 Complete (also must not include BTS or Warlords). That's my new thing learned for yesterday (I trained a couple of Rifles/Infantry with Drill 1/2 last night to play around, since I'm womping on the obsolete troops of Monty).

 

[georgjorge]

Sitting Bull is another leader with possibilities - when I play him, I always make some Longbows during the Medieval era to upgrade to Rifles later, Totem Pole + Barracks + Vassalage + Theocracy = Drill IV.


Don't forget Drill IV reduces the collateral damage received, which is not always relevant, but if you invade in the modern era after railroads and your stack gets hit by fifteen Artillery on the first turn of the war, you'll be glad about it.

 

[budweiser]

I can never get much mileage out of Redcoats because, if I have rifles, I also have cavalry and they are much better.

 

[Udey1]

I can never get much mileage out of Redcoats because, if I have rifles, I also have cavalry and they are much better.

true words.

in general rifles<cavalry. With but UU redcoats: redcoats>cavalry.

I usually go with cavalry as well instead of rifles, but it has its situations. A rifle/siege stack does not force you to stop research/invest in EP, cavalry does. Its easier to wage war with rifles but faster with cavalry. No one is clearly always better.

 

[Udey1]

I wouldn't worry about cuirassiers, though. Even a base rifleman/redcoat is 14+25% vs 12 for cuirassiers. The rifles win hands down. It's only if you're up against mass F2 cavalry, but even then, 14+25% > 15. Bring along a couple C2/Formation (or even D2/formation to save a promotion) units and you're more than fine. Even without the counter, if you can get to D4, the 10% bonus against mounted units is a decent bonus.

ewww, who made a stack of F2 cavalry?

 

[mirthadir]

ewww, who made a stack of F2 cavalry?

Any AI who spams mounted units. Any human facing lots of drill units. Any Human facing MGs (flanking cav being the most efficient period counter to MGs hilariously).


Really getting a mess of DIV redcoats with Churchill is easy. Settle a GG (or two) in your HE city and run rax/theo/vassal; you can either settle new GGs in the IW or other military pumps for DIV out of the box or burn one to open up West Point. As another fun option you can often take The Pentagon as Churchill, runny around with arty, airships, mgs, and redcoats vs infantry is perfectly viable.

 

[Dr.Null]

ewww, who made a stack of F2 cavalry?

Someone who upgraded a stack of F2 elephants.

 

[catfish99]

true words.

in general rifles<cavalry. With but UU redcoats: redcoats>cavalry.

I usually go with cavalry as well instead of rifles, but it has its situations. A rifle/siege stack does not force you to stop research/invest in EP, cavalry does. Its easier to wage war with rifles but faster with cavalry. No one is clearly always better.

Drafting rifles > building cav, especially in a food-filled Globe city.