Drill promotion

[beansbeans]

Does anyone actually use this promotion on any of their offensive units? I play regularly at prince level and I've found that this promotion is more useful for city defending units.

If a unit with drill promotion is attacked does that mess up the combat odds? How would it work out?

Thanks..

 

[notagoodname]

Someone once posted an exact breakdown of the beneifits of each promotion in an even fight somewhere here, combat 1 is better than drill in an even fight.
You can see the combat log in the game for how the game breaks down battles into rounds of combat with each successful round taking 10% your total strength off the enemies hp.


In a vastly uneven fight the first strike can be devestating though, far more so than the combat promotions.

Say you have a fortified longbow on a hill in a +55% city. The longbow will have +150% in total.
So you have a longbow with 15str effectivily. That 15str longbow will take 3 rounds of successful combat to kill a 4str spearman (1.5 damage is dealt each round by a 15str unit). If you can promote the longbow with enough drill promotions than there is a good chance the spearman will be dead before he even gets a chance to damage the longbow.


So think of it this way, the standard combat promotions allow your unit to win a single battle more certainly, especially if the units are otherwise evenly matched. The drill promotions on the other hand allow your units a better chance to kill the enemy before they take too much damage themselves. So a heavily drill promoted longbow would take very little damage in each battle giving it more chance to defeat a large stack than a single combat promoted longbow would have.

 

[Elandal]

Drill - a favourite of mine

Benefits: First Strikes (Drill2 and Drill4), FS chances (Drill1 and Drill3). Takes less collateral damage. +10% bonus against mounted units (Drill3 or Drill4, don't remember which, and for most parts irrelevant).

Available for archery, siege, helicopter (gunship being the only one), and armor (tank and modern armor) units, as well as ships. As I don't play much modern warfare, I'll skip gunships and armor here. Also, I rarely give ships Drill, although I can certainly think of cases where it would be good.


So, Archery units: archer, longbow, crossbow. Archers promote to longbows and crossbows.

Longbows' basic duty is to sit in cities, never face combat. Except in the cases where a city I've just captured is attacked (I try to bring a longbow in my SoD so that the newly captured city gets a reasonable top-defender immediatelly). Basic promotion: City Garrison. If a longbow somehow faces combat and gains fourth promotion, I go for Drill line. Garrison-Drill longbow is almost invincible, able to take on many attackers with just the first strikes, but it has to be strong (therefore garrison) to do it.

Crossbows are anti-melee units. Stack defenders, and OK to handle the last spear or whatever in the city you're taking. My promotion line for crossbows is Drill, possibly shock mixed in.

UUs: Skirmisher (Mali), Cho-Ko-Nu (China).
Skirmishers I give Drill almost always, as they're strong enough as it is. Those that gain some XP will later on be upgraded to xbows.
CKN do additional collateral damage. Both Chinese leaders are protective, so starts with Drill1 (and CG1). Thus, 10XP for Drill4 - and Drill4 is the reason to go down the road. One of my favourite UUs, good in the fields, good semi-mopup for city attacks.

Protective leaders may want to go down the drill line with xbows, as 10XP will gain the prize, Drill4. Charismatic too, as the goal is only 13XP. 17XP is a bit high, so without charismatic or protective, the goal is far away and other promotions might be better.

Note that stack-defender xbow that fends off a few axes will end up with high XP easily. And if they are going up the Drill tree, they are less suspectible to collateral damage, thus being even better in their job as stack defenders.

Xbows upgrade to grens and rifles (and machineguns via grens, but I never do that), longbows to rifles. Drill4 rifle is possibly the best stack defender you can get, until Drill4 infantry. I've had an archer->ckn->rifle->infantry unit end up with Drill4 and Combat4 - highest XP it ever got in one turn was 17 (which means it fended off 17 attackers in that single turn, taking minimal damage).


Then there're the siege units.
To begin with, machineguns are different from the rest. They can't attack, do no collateral.. They're defenders, good against rifles, reasonable against infantry. Marines eat them for breakfast. Drill is good for mgs.
Then the rest of the siege units.. Cats suicide. Give them barrage or CR or whatever. They won't live long enough anyway.
Trebs are purely city attack units. CR up to top, usually maces handle mopup.
Cannons may go barrage line (if you mean to use them in the fields, not against a city), or CR line (if you specialize them for city attacks). However, cannons are quite strong against rifles, so I might consider CR cannons against top defenders, then Drill cannons against somewhat softened defenders, then mopup probably with grens. If you have cannons against pre-rifle defenders, I'm not sure if their promotions even matter.. Drill sounds good in that case though.
Artillery is quite similar to cannons.


I'm not going to exact combat mechanics here (there's a good article in war academy, recommended reading if you're thinking about different promotion lines), but in general, Combat promotion is good if that pushes you from "weaker than" to "equal strength" or "stronger than" position. In almost all other cases, first strikes are better. However, Drill1 and Drill3 provide first strike chances, not first strikes. I would say that Drill1 is most often a bit weaker than Combat1, but when you get all the way to the top - to Drill4, it's most often better than Combat4.
Drill also unlocks counter promotions (shock, cover, and so on) just like Combat, so you won't miss those either.
Specialist promotions (garrison, city raider) are useful only in their specialty, Drill is more general. Comparison is thus against Combat, which is an overall promotion as well. It's quite hard to beat the specialist promotions, as they give up to 75% bonus, but then again - when that +75% gives you 99.6% odds (instead of only 90%), I can't see how it would be more useful than generic (Drill/Combat) one - CR is best for units that will take out top defenders in the city, not for mopup units.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

If a unit with drill promotion is attacked does that mess up the combat odds? How would it work out?

It used to. It's been patched - the odds calculation now takes an average of the possible results of the first strike rounds to figure out what the probabilities are.

BUT, in 1.61 there's still a bug in the defender selection routine, because that code didn't get first strikes right. As a result, drill units get pulled into the action when there's a more suitable unit available (shock promoted elephants would draw the drill IV crossbow instead of the formation promoted pike). I believe that bug copied into the Warlords source, but corrected in a patch.

If memory serves, Blake's vanilla patch also fixed this issue.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

If Im a protective leader, yes since they start with drill I. Otherwise, usually no except for xbowmen.

 

[Exel]

I use Drill for offensive archers, but after I get better offensive units I usually go with other promotions and Drill has little use. That's until I get Machineguns. Drill is always the way I go with them, as it allows them to handle multiple enemies in stack or city defence roles while minimizes damage done to them. Drill IV is powerful.

 

[CivDude86]

If I think I can get them up to Drill3 then I do take that path but since my archers don't see much action its unlikely.

 

[khumak]

Combat X is better if you don't have a large combat advantage. Drill is better if you do have a large combat advantage. Combat increases your chance of winning any given combat. Drill increases your chance of surviving that combat without taking damage.

I generally give Drill to city defenders that already have all of the city defender promotions or to extremely high XP attackers that I'd rather not have wasting time healing. Maxed out Drill is pretty much required to maximize a unit with Blitz too.

 

[Elandal]

Combat X is better if you don't have a large combat advantage. Drill is better if you do have a large combat advantage. Combat increases your chance of winning any given combat. Drill increases your chance of surviving that combat without taking damage.

That is not exactly correct.
For combat mechanics, see Combat Explained by Arathorn in the War Academy section.

Combat consists of combat rounds. On each round, the winner does damage that depends on the strength ratio. Chance to win the round depends on strength ratio as well. Strengths used are calculated before combat, and damage taken during combat does not modify the adjusted strength during this combat.
The actual chance of winning a combat round is 2/3rds on 2:1 strength ratio, meaning it's pure mopup combat anyway. Normally you fight with strength ratios that give chance to win a single round in 45-55% range. Having 10% strength advantage (C1 axe vs. green axe for example) gives 52% chance to win a single combat round.

Damage caused is 20HP per hit on equal strengths, with undamaged unit having 100HP. This means that on equal strength, five hits are needed to kill (and thus win the combat). However, if you have ANY strength advantage at all, the opponent is going to do only 19HP per hit. This means that five hits is not enough to kill - six is needed. And this has way bigger effect on chance to win a combat than the slightly higher chance to win a given round.

So, the biggest effect in having a slight strength advantage comes from the opponent needing one more hit to kill than you do. Of course having 2% higher chance to win a given round is nice too.

First strikes give you rounds where the opponent won't do damage if he wins. A free combat round for you. This is exactly the same effect as having a very minor strength advantage. It means that if you have one first strike (longbow I think has that naturally), and the opponent has minor strength advantage, the combat chances are going to be close. Of course assuming both units are undamaged when the combat begins.

And yes, the one with slight strength advantage has slightly higher chance to win the combat, as even if both end up having exactly the same number of combat rounds required for the kill, the one with higher strength still has that 1-3% higher chance to win any given round.

Now, first strikes give you combat rounds where you can't be damaged. And they're fought first. This leads to higher potential of winning the combat without taking damage at all. Which seems to be all that people think about when they're thinking about Drill promotions...

Put simply: I had Drill4 xbow facing stronger opponent (could've been C4 mace or something, don't remember that now). A situation where you usually simply lose - the opponent has fairly significant strength advantage. But I still had some 60% chance to win the combat, as I got MINIMUM of 4, potentially even 7 first strikes.

The counter to first strike units (mainly crossbow) is of course a unit that is immune to first strikes... Mounted units may be immune naturally, or may take Flanking 1 & 2 to gain immunity. Then it comes down to raw strength values, where archery units don't really excel.

And this leads back to my original note: in a case where the combat (or counter, or whatever other strength-affecting) promotion(s) would take you from disadvantage to advantage, they're generally stronger than same number of Drill promotions. This is because Drill 1 & 3 give FS chances, not direct first strikes. If they gave direct first strikes, Drill would be too powerful. However, if this is not the case, then Drill is likely to be better. Oh yes - there's a second breakpoint, somewhere around 40% strength advantage. This is when you win with 4 hits instead of 5, and the combat becomes a pure mopup one.

 

[trundle]

Just like most everything else in Civ, your military units really benefit from specialization. Specialized drill units, in my experience, have a few very important functions. First and foremost, longbowmen, whose defensive value already far outweighs any single offensive unit when they first appear, make very good use of Drill to survive big stacks of opponents. While City Garrison would make them more likely to destroy 1 (or probably even 2 or 3) opponents, they will get worn down by each fight, whereas Drill makes them more likely to emerge unscathed.

The other function is, in my experience, often overlooked. Drill can be extraordinarily useful on Armor as part of a combined arms offensive. You need a few City Raider units (Barrage is useful here as well) to hit the toughest units in a defending city stack. But once the defenders are weakened (and the best defenders are dead), the Drill tanks can come in and clean up while taking little or no damage. This helps keep your offensive stack moving, because the bulk of your forces can continue after 1 turn of healing. This means you'll need more of the City Raider units (because they're going to die or take several turns to heal, and you don't want to wait for them), but the Drill units will ultimately see much more combat.

Using Armor with Drill is much more useful than archers/longbowman with drill (because if you're on the defensive too much, you're probably doing something wrong). I think it gets less attention, however, simply because modern warfare gets much less gameplay in civ iv.

 

[Quagga]

I just found that drill was great for holding off the onslaught of Barbarians after establishing an outpost in the New World on a Terra map. I placed drill-promoted units on resources as I improved them. As I ferried more troops over, I was able to create a barrier around my improved area using more drill-promoted units. The Barbs just kept coming... and dying.

Too bad killing Barbarians gets you only 10 xp per unit and no GG points...

 

[ViterboKnight]

I've read some threads and articles, like "Combat Explained"; besides, some people have done some statistics about the advantage of giving first strikes to units.
The result is that the benefit your unit receives is quite small, and the greatest advantage is when your unit is already stronger than your enemy; in that case, your unit just remains less damaged, but still winning the battle.

IMO, first strikes are underpowered.
They should not only advantage a unit which is stronger than his enemy, but give a relevant bonus also to the weakest units. It should become a different way of fightintg: someone fights using only strength, someone else uses first strikes instead. Two ways of fighting, to contrast in different ways.

Here are some suggestions to give more relevance to first strikes:
- first strikes always hit (maybe, too overpowering)
- higher chance to hit with first strikes
- same chance to hit, but higher damage
- same chance and damage, but the strength of the opponent is computed AFTER the first strikes (thus reducing his power during the battle)