Hi. Well I was about to put this into the post about forts, but its more than that.
Im playing this damn game with mechanos. It was wrong from begining. Im in middle of the continent, a bit to the north. The amurites destroyed the doviello in a lightning strike with a force of 43 wizards, 38 assassins (or whatever name) and like 40 hunters plus catapults and other units. Well thats what remained from the conquest. Then declared war on me and came right to my north city. By that time I have many high promoted champions and good archers (they start with 3 promotions as I have the titan, and I put those 3 to city defense). Soon I had handgunners (marksmen).
So they stationed in a forested hill across the river to the left of my city. There are mountains and I put also some champions in a hill south of the city so they cannot pass. They just stay there casting all they have. Even later, when having access to spellswords (sorcerers) they stayed there instead of retreating to upgrade. They have lots of skeletons which do nothing and cast many spectres which only scout into my lands. At least they shoot catapults and some fireballs into my city, but they dont use them to lower my 100% defenses so they accomplish nothing. If I were they I would 1) lower city defenses with catas and fireballs and 2) shoot them and then attack with all my spectres and skeletons and then with the rest of forces and surely that city would have been mine long ago...
View attachment 252450
Almost at the same time, the cualli attacked with some minor forces by south. I had poor troops, but my famous line of forts (citadels by then) kept them in bay. The point with all you said about this strategy is you suposed I leave the citadels with only the commanders, but no: I put champions plus handgunners on them and as soon as they pass by I bombard them with the commanders and handgunners and some catas also and then finish them with the champions. This repeated until I had a minor force of 4 champions with attack city promo plus 4 more with 100% strenght promo plus 2 mortars plus 4 handgunners to defend the 2 cities that I conquered form them.
Then I forced peace with them and they never bothered again because frozen appeared in the far south and started war on them.
View attachment 252451
All of this, with some nice 3 steped (fast) trolls or whatever which attacked me from east and took 2 of my forts but I took them back in a blink.
By the time I made peace with cualli, calabim + Mercurians, the strongest force in the game, reached my SE border and started war on me. They had all the SE peninsula of the continent and soon they started colonizing what I looked with greed but I was late: the east zone of the map. They had to do a long deviation because water was in middle, so they passed by my zone, but their zone was huge, with at least 12 cities.
Soon Basium and a legion were heading straight to my capital (I did what I never do on this game: I traded maps with somebody). So with the blockade in the north and west menace from amurites (but they seemed to have not noticed the posibility of a dual attack), and the new legion invading me, what could I do? I have almost no troops as I were constructing the master buildings (because of the clock towers I was able to get lots of engineers). At least I have many hammers on each city. So I built walls and started producing troops at 1 or 2 turns per unit on each city, and still managed to construct money changers and the bazar when war economy put me on 50%...
What I did is this: I put many handgunners on the cities, like 7 or 8 on the red zone and only 1 or 2 on the others. plus some adeptus (healing) wandering. (But amurites had chanters -sins- and I had to put the healers on some nearby fort and have a cicle of handgunners going in and out of the city to heal them or the amurites would kill my healers). The key of this strategy was the fact that ranged units and siege units have the ability to shoot from distance. So Basium and his troops were systematically attacked by my guns which ranged attacked and retreated until when by side of my cities, the handgunners ranged attacked (without loosing the fortification). So when finally there, they had half life or so. I had some grenadiers (berserkers) by then with force 11. With one of those, highly promoted, I killed basium. the rest was easy.
View attachment 252452
Ok that was useful, but I opened world builder and saw thousands of angels and thousands of vampires and stigian guards. I have killed dozens of those by now, all with the same strategy (forgot to mention I have like 12 great commanders all around, giving nice bonuses to my units); but seeing THAT I decided to withdraw. I could never go beyond my borders.
I must say I had never played a game like this one. But what I see is this: The war centers around the ability of ranged units. This was not present on the original Civilization game, and now I can see why. I remember long ago, one of the first strategy games I played or saw a friend playing -dont remember the name-: He simply shooted with the archer then retreated back. All the way until he put the archer into the castle where he had more archers then he simply destroyed the enemy forces.
This is like that: siege and archer units have the advantage, at least on a defending position, because they dont engage on combat and so they dont take risks. What I said in the other post about forts was that fort commanders with this ability to shoot enemies -and I have seen 60% damage plus the colateral damage- is unbalancing. Now I can see that all the war system with ranged warfare is unbalanced towards the ranged units. I may be wrong because I rarely played a game until win by conquest -I prefer to win by altar and play diplomatically-. So please tell me what you think about this.
Im playing this damn game with mechanos. It was wrong from begining. Im in middle of the continent, a bit to the north. The amurites destroyed the doviello in a lightning strike with a force of 43 wizards, 38 assassins (or whatever name) and like 40 hunters plus catapults and other units. Well thats what remained from the conquest. Then declared war on me and came right to my north city. By that time I have many high promoted champions and good archers (they start with 3 promotions as I have the titan, and I put those 3 to city defense). Soon I had handgunners (marksmen).
So they stationed in a forested hill across the river to the left of my city. There are mountains and I put also some champions in a hill south of the city so they cannot pass. They just stay there casting all they have. Even later, when having access to spellswords (sorcerers) they stayed there instead of retreating to upgrade. They have lots of skeletons which do nothing and cast many spectres which only scout into my lands. At least they shoot catapults and some fireballs into my city, but they dont use them to lower my 100% defenses so they accomplish nothing. If I were they I would 1) lower city defenses with catas and fireballs and 2) shoot them and then attack with all my spectres and skeletons and then with the rest of forces and surely that city would have been mine long ago...
View attachment 252450
Almost at the same time, the cualli attacked with some minor forces by south. I had poor troops, but my famous line of forts (citadels by then) kept them in bay. The point with all you said about this strategy is you suposed I leave the citadels with only the commanders, but no: I put champions plus handgunners on them and as soon as they pass by I bombard them with the commanders and handgunners and some catas also and then finish them with the champions. This repeated until I had a minor force of 4 champions with attack city promo plus 4 more with 100% strenght promo plus 2 mortars plus 4 handgunners to defend the 2 cities that I conquered form them.
Then I forced peace with them and they never bothered again because frozen appeared in the far south and started war on them.
View attachment 252451
All of this, with some nice 3 steped (fast) trolls or whatever which attacked me from east and took 2 of my forts but I took them back in a blink.
By the time I made peace with cualli, calabim + Mercurians, the strongest force in the game, reached my SE border and started war on me. They had all the SE peninsula of the continent and soon they started colonizing what I looked with greed but I was late: the east zone of the map. They had to do a long deviation because water was in middle, so they passed by my zone, but their zone was huge, with at least 12 cities.
Soon Basium and a legion were heading straight to my capital (I did what I never do on this game: I traded maps with somebody). So with the blockade in the north and west menace from amurites (but they seemed to have not noticed the posibility of a dual attack), and the new legion invading me, what could I do? I have almost no troops as I were constructing the master buildings (because of the clock towers I was able to get lots of engineers). At least I have many hammers on each city. So I built walls and started producing troops at 1 or 2 turns per unit on each city, and still managed to construct money changers and the bazar when war economy put me on 50%...
What I did is this: I put many handgunners on the cities, like 7 or 8 on the red zone and only 1 or 2 on the others. plus some adeptus (healing) wandering. (But amurites had chanters -sins- and I had to put the healers on some nearby fort and have a cicle of handgunners going in and out of the city to heal them or the amurites would kill my healers). The key of this strategy was the fact that ranged units and siege units have the ability to shoot from distance. So Basium and his troops were systematically attacked by my guns which ranged attacked and retreated until when by side of my cities, the handgunners ranged attacked (without loosing the fortification). So when finally there, they had half life or so. I had some grenadiers (berserkers) by then with force 11. With one of those, highly promoted, I killed basium. the rest was easy.
View attachment 252452
Ok that was useful, but I opened world builder and saw thousands of angels and thousands of vampires and stigian guards. I have killed dozens of those by now, all with the same strategy (forgot to mention I have like 12 great commanders all around, giving nice bonuses to my units); but seeing THAT I decided to withdraw. I could never go beyond my borders.
I must say I had never played a game like this one. But what I see is this: The war centers around the ability of ranged units. This was not present on the original Civilization game, and now I can see why. I remember long ago, one of the first strategy games I played or saw a friend playing -dont remember the name-: He simply shooted with the archer then retreated back. All the way until he put the archer into the castle where he had more archers then he simply destroyed the enemy forces.
This is like that: siege and archer units have the advantage, at least on a defending position, because they dont engage on combat and so they dont take risks. What I said in the other post about forts was that fort commanders with this ability to shoot enemies -and I have seen 60% damage plus the colateral damage- is unbalancing. Now I can see that all the war system with ranged warfare is unbalanced towards the ranged units. I may be wrong because I rarely played a game until win by conquest -I prefer to win by altar and play diplomatically-. So please tell me what you think about this.
