Gifting units to be slaughtered

[bazola]

Well not sure what I think about this strategy but I would think it would be critical to have a stack of warriors ready to get slaughtered, so you would have to work building them into the overall strategy. I mean I always end up building some; maybe this strategy would work better if you had to build lots of warriors before hooking up bronze or copper. This would mean war was delayed anyway while you got things connected etc. So then you pull warriors from city garrison all over the empire and kill em with axes.

Okay, so how could this help you? Well if you sacrificed say 8 warriors and had a stack of say 20 axemen, you could promote 12 of them to CR2 and the other 8 to medic one, and maybe medic 2 after the second fight? Assuming 5xp out the gate. So if you marched the army straight onto a city full of defenders, you use the CR guys first to soften up a few, finish with the medic units, and then you'll have a city full of half CR2 axes and half Medic 2 axes.

Yeah that's a little ambitious. You'd have to have 5 xp coming to make this work and if you don't have early metal you won't have the great general to install to get to 5xp right when you start building axes. So what, Vassalage for 5xp? This strat won't work with axemen/macemen without wrecking your army, and you need maces for longbows. Maybe lightbulbing theology for theocracy (I think?) This is a whole lot of work for 8-16xp. Any more warriors built before this time is going to destroy your economy to get that xp number any higher.

Here's an idea. You have horses and elephants. You research HR and then construction. Make sure to have barracks and stables in main cities fast. Whip a group of horse archers. Declare war and pillage away while you have the advantage but avoid fighting. Or maybe give the units flanking two. Then get peace and get open borders again while building a huge army of elephants and catapults. Gift him the horse archers with flanking two and kill them with the elephants promoted combat 2 or combat 1/medic. Then you just might have a super promoted elephant army with healers and catapults and could quickly conquer 2 people... I wonder if you get more xp for killing higher lvl units? And flanking 2 wouldn't hurt your attack force at all.

Despite all this, really, it's ironic to be thinking of a way to give the enemy a huge army right before attacking him...

 

[tempuraki]

This is an interesting idea, and I don't think you necessarily NEED warriors to pull this off. I am actually thinking chariots. These are 4str units that you can keep on building as long as you never researched horseriding. Later in the game, you can build one in 1-2 turns easy.

I also got to thinking about coming up with an elaborate plan to gift all that chariots to the AI and keep them in my border so I can kill them and get GG point and less WW. This is what I've came up with:

1. find a spot where you can attack the enemy city in one turn (city next to your culture border).
2. gift the stack of chariots in a square next to that city.
3. delcare war, capture that city, stack should now be in neutral land.
4. surround the stack you just gifted with defenders, so the chariots can't move (and can't be upgraded by the AI).
5. wait a couple of turns for your culture to expand and cover the stack.

actually, in 4, if you just use the defenders to block the stack from escaping into the AI's territory while leaving a path open into your territory, the AI might move the stack into your territory, so you might not need to wait.

this is situational and a lot of work, but probably a lot of fun.

 

[Larklight]

1. find a spot where you can attack the enemy city in one turn (city next to your culture border).
2. gift the stack of chariots in a square next to that city.
3. delcare war, capture that city, stack should now be in neutral land.

Firstly, Chariots are availble even after HBR! Good news there.

Secondly, if this enemy city is right on the boarder, when yuou take it, the surrounding tiles should become yours (check and gift the chariots on a square which has a % yours and is only their from that city) so you can strike right away with axes (Chariots only get bonuses attacking them) and spears.

In fact, you could even weaken the chariots before against barbs! (possibly even a long time before, and keep 'em moving so they don't heal!