Elepults vs Axapults when you have both copper and ivory

[Fippy]

Yep some Axes are always welcome in a noobiephant rush (for TmiT).
Even Archers for city defense. You have your offensive stack that wants to move on with few delays, and you will like your defenders that can stay where needed.

Plus Axes, Swords and so on are sometimes good units to mix in between Ele whips, if you work with overflow. I think this was not mentioned yet, Eles cost more hammers but they can be easier 2 pop whipped than let's say Axes. Combos work best.

(different topic, but it's also one reason why HAs are so popular. 50h (normal speed) = very ideal whipping unit)

 

[rah]

I need to master more of the overflow specialty tricks. I'm getting better but reading the posts here reminds me that I need to be more anal about it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I didn't get too far into the whip discussion because I recall some interesting timing variance compared to what I was used to when running marathon games. A quick looks suggest the relative ease of 2 pop whip elephants is even more important though.

 

[Chase_2_Rabbits]

Hmmm. Well the axemen are mostly just there to defend the stack and for cleanup, not to attack serious defenders. Are elephants really that much better attackers than CR II or CR III catapults? esp since they lack collateral damage...

i'm not 100% sure how combat odds works

but combat promotions add to unit strength, and CR promotions subtract from defensive strength first, right?

lets compare hypothetically:

say you suicide 2 catapults first regardless, then attack with your strongest unit 3rd...

a combat 3 war elephant is 10.4 str... vs a 5 str (weakened) longbow with, say 70% defense bonuses. its 10.4 vs 8.5. The elephant probably wins, but not really guaranteed, and it doesn't do collateral damage to the next defender in line.

a CR III catapult is 5 str, but subtract the 70% bonus defense from the longbow (the other 5% city raider rolls over to the cat, right? i might be wrong...)... so 5.1 str vs 5 str... but, to survive, the catapult only has to get the longbow down to 1.5 hp rather than zero. I'm not sure how the math works here. But even if the cat loses, it still did collateral damage, which the elephant didn't do, so whatever attacks next is going to have much higher odds.

doesn't seem like that huge of a difference. You might lose 1 extra catapult with axapults, vs one extra war elephant with elepults.

At what percentage odds do you start attacking with elephants rather than catapults? With axapults, I usually attack with all of the catapults first even if they aren't necessary, to try to get them exp (pretty important for catapults). The axes are only for cleanup.

Do you have some kind of magic trick for creating CRIII catapults? You don't have Theocracy, you don't have Vassalage. You'll probably only have a barracks in your first 2 cities.

 

[nate46]

Do you have some kind of magic trick for creating CRIII catapults? You don't have Theocracy, you don't have Vassalage. You'll probably only have a barracks in your first 2 cities.

I build barracks in 4 or 5 cities usually... so the catapults start with 3 exp...

Each city I attack gives each catapult 1 exp....

great general = 4 exp each for 5 different catapults.

so 3 cities attacked + 1 great general = 5 CR III catapults.

although sometimes i use the great general to create ~10 CR II catapults, along with the ones i already have. Some of them will survive long enough to become CR III.

It helps that i usually play imperialistic civs.

 

[Takesitez]

I think there's alot of variables here.

Main one being map layout and difficulty level.

If I'm on Immortal, before I feel forced to commit to an axepult/elepult rush things have to be really bad I mean like i'm boxed in sandwhiched by nuts and warmongers and not getting 5 cities bad. Which is extremely rare on that difficulty.
There are situation where getting your elepult on in a non threatening situation will lead to an earlier victory date rather than say, libbing Steel (supposing it was bad enough that you had no horses and couldn't trade for em) but it 's rare. Stealing a worker then choking low-cost and developing to the max, then whiping up your victim and the continent is generally way less costly than an axe/elepult war on Immortal. I actually used to do that as a standard opening : pick on my neighbour, keep him down and claim his land at minimal cost -and in fact I 'm pretty sure my best victory dates on panggea on that level used that approach-.

On Deity, from limited experience the dynamic is entirely different. You are way more likely to be boxed in, and barring extremely advantageous cirucmstances, axe rushes are just not viable. so claiming and going for elephants is way more often your only out (because of those few extra pc points on attack especially vs longbows) than on lower difficulties. Don't quote me on it, I have very few Deity wins, and generally used to be/still am too lazy to play it But I do think the awe for Elepult comes from that crowd : in a bad situation, on that level, Elepult rather than Axepult is a potential out to a lost game. On Immortal, who cares

 

[cseanny]

Marathon is broken imho and makes Deity games play like a very easy Immortal game; Immortal games play like Monarch, etc etc. In perfect conditions you can easily get 15+ cities by 2000 BC in a Marathon game which is silly ^^.

On Standard speed in a typical Pangaea Deity map I find Axe/Cata more than enough for my 1st war. With a modest start and 5 cities it's extremely easy to whip (only slight chopping needed) 30+ units consisting of 10 Cata's and 20 Axe in 12 turns. This lets you declare war before 500 BC and grab lot's of land. Whip overflow and the speed of production for 35H units is really powerful.

You'll probably only have a barracks in your first 2 cities

In most cases I have 0-1 Barracks. Imo anything more severely slows down the speed of your attack and the number of units for your attack. Good planning and streamlining a build to make things happen as quickly as possible is paramount.

 

[nate46]

In perfect conditions you can easily get 15+ cities by 2000 BC in a Marathon game which is silly ^^.

hahahahah what. no you can't!

... workers and military units are better/cheaper, settlers move faster but they build the same speed, nothing else really changes. You save like 200-300 years from faster workers but you're not getting 15 cities by 2000 bc.

 

[cseanny]

hahahahah what. no you can't!

You absolutely 100% can. I see you have lot's of new post and like to ask a lot of questions which is the best way to learn. Try to keep an open mind eh? I've been around this site (on and off) for a while now and I realize every day how very little I still know about this game.

Here's a link http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=563566&page=11 to WastinTime stating that he had 17 cities at turn 151 after razing 2, gifting 2 away, and still had some Settler left over.


edit: re-read his post and WastinTime says his potential was actually 21 cities at Turn 151.

 

[nate46]

can you troll somewhere else? lol. Its a cooked map with the biggest cheese strat in the game (quecha rush) and absurdly lucky combat odds, and he doesn't even provide evidence AFAI can see. "easily", right, whatever.

 

[cseanny]

My 1st post states imo about game speed followed by telling how I like to proceed with a first attack with 35H units and catapults. I follow up that post with another opinion in regards to a barracks comment from another user.

You post a remark to my perfect conditions statement pertaining to Marathon speed and I provide a link with an answer from one of the most known and respected players (person and achievements in regards to this game and forum) WastinTime.

How exactly have I trolled anyone?

 

[ston]

Elephants really only have one (pre-gunpowder) enemy - pikemen. They don't appear until the enemy has engineering; they are very likely to have Feudalism before this (i.e. longbows, negating axes &/or decimating cats). All it takes to stop an axeman based army is the odd chariot. Or longbows, or archers, or ... well pretty much anything. Getting early HBR and Construction is not that hard. Also, you can easily whip stables which gives you 2x promoted Elephants out of the gate. Elephants will counter any horse based troops the enemy have and also do very well against any other defenders. Axes are fine for a very early rush, but by the time you have cats then you really need better city attackers (swords, macemen, elephants) and the odd axe to defend against enemy melée attacks against your stack. Also, Elephants later on upgrade quite cheaply to Cuirassiers, much more cheaply than horse archers (who, unlike elephants, are countered quite hard by spearmen). Lastly, elephants are still of great use when the enemy has e.g. Knights.

 

[pigswill]

'Perfect conditions' statement is true but then again 'perfect conditions' is synonymous with 'cooked map with biggest cheese strat'. Seriael and WastingTime have both posted demo games for super high scores which may not be representative of typical games (though you still have to be a good player to convert perfect conditions into a massive score).

Regarding elephants and axes you can of course build axes while researching construction, build cats while researching HbR, start with axepult and replace dead axes with elephants once HbR is in.

 

[elitetroops]

'Perfect conditions' statement is true but then again 'perfect conditions' is synonymous with 'cooked map with biggest cheese strat'.

Not at all synonymous. Cooked implies cheating by editing the map. HoF maps are never cooked.

Besides, what cseanny says is true even without checkers or a super strong HoF start. My best on immortal is capturing/razing 11 cities by 2290BC with War Chariots and a very standard double cow, no luxuries start. Capturing a couple more cities in the next 29 turns wouldn't have been a problem, if there had been any cities left in the world to conquer.

Marathon is broken, because it calls for completely different gameplay and the AI does not adapt to this at all.

 

[pigswill]

It's an old argument but re-rolling a map until you get a strong start may not be 'cooked' but it isn't the same as taking the first start you get.

Capturing/razing 11-13 cities on immortal is very good but its not the same as keeping 20 cities.

 

[Fippy]

Yep it's an old argument, and i hope we are all smarter by now than to mix HoF gameplay with standard games. "Cooked" maps are usually even weaker than HoF maps, there's really no point in ever comparing one of those with content of threads like Nate's.

 

[Izuul]

The fallacy is that some try to diminish the accomplishments of the HOF players because of the quality of the maps. That's just silly because those guys still play incredible games and are some of the best Civ 4 players to have graced the forums.

However the truth is that you just can't compare dates, benchmarks, or even many strategies because things are vastly different on a normal quality map than they are on a HOF map. We are probably talking about something like the top .1% of all maps.

 

[rah]

Yeah, while I do chuckle sometimes at the maps posted, I have learned so much from them that I have to give them the proper props.

I may reroll a few times to avoid awful maps but don't have the patience/time to wait for some of the ones they use.

 

[Fippy]

I disagree that some try to diminish HoF achievements, who here does not respect WastinTime for example? I never played a HoF game, but am always interested in how he (and others) plays and what he does..

What started this was mixing things used in HoF games, with threads that are clearly not about perfect conditions. If i "provoke" players who are not using them with super mapfinder maps, it's no surprise there will be arguments.
There's an extra forum for those topics, and WT for example is smart enuf to not cross post his stuff.

 

[Rusten]

What started this was mixing things used in HoF games, with threads that are clearly not about perfect conditions. If i "provoke" players who are not using them with super mapfinder maps, it's no surprise there will be arguments.
There's an extra forum for those topics, and WT for example is smart enuf to not cross post his stuff.

Bingo!