Great general CR3 gunpowder unit tip

[DaveMcW]

^presumably you're not accounting for the massive investment in infra that makes up the gold modifiers. If you already have them upgrading is fine, but unless I have the Kremlin and tons of cottages, I'm not putting down the gold modifier buildings en masse until late in the game, if ever.

Even the Kremlin doesn't help.

The only way to get cheaper upgrades is let an AI do it.

 

[stopstopp]

SS:

1. Who cares? CRIII is good enough and the goal is to quickly take land, not to get the highest promo unit you want.

2. You need one medic per stack it is best to give him drill (so he defends less often). Amphib is entirely situational and getting amphib the hard way is WORSE than taking CR promos instead. Shock becomes worthless with gunpowder, charge rarely is an issue (save maybe a few MG busters), cover dies at RR/MilSci/Rifling. Pinch lasts, but CI/Pinch is weaker than CRII for a lot of situations. The counter promos are extremely problematic anyways, often it will just result in the game swapping defenders for very marginal improvement in odds; CR hits everyone.

3. Depends. I've fought wars where my CR stack kills the AI civ off before the AI stack gets done bombarding my castle. Against truly insane AIs I want to flank their siege and then let them bang my their heads against my CG troops, in which case forget anything except mounted and CG troops.

4. Is valid, however if you are going to fight. All those in the maces or whatever are sunk costs; further the promos acquired won't be had by anything new. Lastly remember at the time it is FAR easier to maximize tile yield off of cottages than mines. Barring the draft, you can actually normally come out with more production using cottages and upgrades than with anything else.

1. The goal isn't to get the highest promotions, it's for units that are good overall.
2.amphib is a good promotion that can save turns in a war and save units, although I do admit I don't use it nearly enough. Yes you only need one medic, but that doesn't make medic not a valid discussion in CR vs combat, and you don't want to give it drill, as it would be chosen to defend even at much worse odds compared to other units. Shock may become useless at gunpowder but is useful the game before that, same with cover. Charge is rare but can be useful. I don't believe you said anything about formation, the AI loves mounted, so its good. Combat hits everyone too, and in more situations, with very similar odds.
3.Good point, but wouldn't you want to destroy the Stack so you can benefit with the extra GG points? Those extra points plus the better combat promoted troops out of it is a lot better than using defenders.
4. I'm more of a run pacifism get a lot of GP player instead of war in Medieval, as I hate castles, so I don't have the units to use the money to upgrade ground troops, I have to build a lot of trebs and upgrade them, then using the draft to get out a good chunk of my ground troops. I'd rather take my time running those mines optimally most of the time as cottages are worse than them. I'm not too good at it yet though

I don't support the Schutzstaffel

 

[mirthadir]

1. The goal isn't to get the highest promotions, it's for units that are good overall.
2.amphib is a good promotion that can save turns in a war and save units, although I do admit I don't use it nearly enough. Yes you only need one medic, but that doesn't make medic not a valid discussion in CR vs combat, and you don't want to give it drill, as it would be chosen to defend even at much worse odds compared to other units. Shock may become useless at gunpowder but is useful the game before that, same with cover. Charge is rare but can be useful. I don't believe you said anything about formation, the AI loves mounted, so its good. Combat hits everyone too, and in more situations, with very similar odds.
3.Good point, but wouldn't you want to destroy the Stack so you can benefit with the extra GG points? Those extra points plus the better combat promoted troops out of it is a lot better than using defenders.
4. I'm more of a run pacifism get a lot of GP player instead of war in Medieval, as I hate castles, so I don't have the units to use the money to upgrade ground troops, I have to build a lot of trebs and upgrade them, then using the draft to get out a good chunk of my ground troops. I'd rather take my time running those mines optimally most of the time as cottages are worse than them. I'm not too good at it yet though

I don't support the Schutzstaffel

1. No, amphib is not a good promotion, even when it comes for free (marines), you get better odds with CRIII troops (tanks). When it doesn't, three promos are much better spent on CRIII. CRIII is 85% mods (+10% vs gunpoweder defenders is going to be extremely likely if you are skipping a mace/treb war), CII/Amphib is +20% for combat and perhaps +50, which is less than than CRIII outright and if top defender is a gunpowder unit (pretty much always the case from rifling to the end of the game barring a brief lull between RR and AL) it is exceedingly rare for amphib to come out ahead even when both units attack from a naval vessel. CRI is not that hot true, but CRII and certainly CRIII are extremely powerful; for three promos I just don't see how you can mathematically expect to get more from CII/Amphib than from CRIII; perhaps you are thinking about amphib elephants

Medic is a worthless arguement, unless you intend to eventually make an ubermash (WIII/MIII; in which case an ancient medic needs to be melee in order to get W promos) you make a chariot in the ancient era and either win enough fights for CI/MI or get it straight from a rax/stable/theo/vassal/settled GG as generally you want your medic to be more mobile; in either case it is one freaking unit and is less than 5% of your promo choices it is indeed irrelevant. When you have a choice, put drill on a musket, he can get medic and quickly fall behind the rifles, grenadiers, and MGs. 9.9 is going to get picked more often than 9 with a first strike.

Formation is a garbage arguement. At most you should need 1 unit in 10 to be formation (and at pike that should drop down to 1 in 20). At the time frame where mounted require the most stack protecters (axe rush) you don't have three promos so it is moot. In general stack protectors are a red herring. Efficient play dictates that you have perhaps 4-8 counter units (total) getting shock/formation/pinch. In the case of formation, it is exceedingly better to go drill; the big danger is getting hit with a bunch of suicide siege first; DII keeps them healthier and increases the odds that your defensive units will escape unscathed. If the enemy has enough mounted to be a nuisance, let them come into your territory and bang their heads against some well placed CG stacks.

In reality counter units are defensive units. They are an exceedingly small portion of the stack. You should promote them first and ignore them, using them to kill redlined and outdated units after your main combatant troops mop up the strong defenders. In most wars the will fight only handful of times (<5% of your total battles) and as such are not a significant strategic concern. Your city attacking units, on the other hand) will fight multiple times (normally 1-2 times per city) and are where the bulk of your promotion decisions are made.


3. No. GG points is, at most, +25% to the troop strength (either via increased numbers or better promos out the door) from having one bonus GG to use. Moving on to the next AI, getting an additional turn to work my new land, etc. is much more important. Hitting a second AI with a tech lead is FAR more important than getting more GG points. Further, the more you war the lower the return on GG points. Let's not even consider the risk that your AI will cap to some other AI and either spark an unwinnable war or deprive you of those key last 1-2 cities. The goal is land, not shiny troops and GGs. Shiny troops and ggs are useful ... to take land, nothing more.

4. So you are opting for a long term weaker economy in order to leverage a short term gain. Fine, run with it. That, however, is not optimizing long term payout; cottages pay more than mines if you do a full optimization (and for you a full optimization would screw the mines and opt for farms). Just remember that if you do choose to maximize tile yield, particularly long term per tile economic yield, cottages beat the utter crap out of mines.

The numbers don't lie. For the majority of your attacking troops CRII and CRIII are better than CII and CIII. As the game goes on, CR becomes stronger compared to combat; the units that get both become relatively weaker and for a while disappear. That is what you are seeing, not CR itself becoming weaker.

 

[Artichoker]

Usually people settle GGs or make super units, but there's another useful option (tho not all the time) I didn't see much mentioning.

When playing CHA leader, you only need 8xp to get to CR3. A barrack gives you 3xp, a GG can provide 20xp, which can be evenly distributed to 4 units, or 5xp each. Say you've been playing a CE peaceful early game, and have a dedicated unit city pumping out melee units, at 3xp each, so you have a whole lot of these 3xp units standing around. When you get riflemen or grenadiers, and started attacking and getting some GGs, each GG can make 4 CR3 riflemen or grenadiers. Or infantries.

Of course, this is probably only useful in this specific scenario (CHA leader, with lots of 3xp melee units around), but it's good to keep this in mind.

I've used this idea before, but it's not limited to CHA leaders.

Your basic idea is to split XP between different units. CHA just means that your starting XP needs to be 3, instead of 5, to reach the target XP of 4th level (8 or 10 XP).

A nice twist on this idea is to add a Medic unit to your mix. Some players insist on having M3 medic units, but after a while you'll realize that W3 is good enough. But with CHA + AGG, or CHA + PRO, you can stil get your M3 unit with only 8 XP total. Without AGG or PRO, you can still get a W3 unit as one of the 4 units you are improving.

Assuming you don't go for the M3 unit, you can still have a W3 unit in addition to 3 strong units. I like to give Leadership + Tactics to a siege unit. Both of these are only available to GG units, and the Tactics gives you a +30% withdrawal bonus that easily makes up for the loss of CR promotions for your siege unit.

 

[tempuraki]

Yeah, CR3 is pretty much only good for CR, but they are also the best at it than other promotions. and the point is that you can easily get regular riflemen by whipping/drafting to complement your stack, to get CR3 units to do the heavy lifting, you have to upgrade.

Yes, you can still build maces, give them CR, and then upgrade, but sometimes you play peaceful early game that you just don't get enough GGs to settle and pump out 8 or 10 xp units. And sometimes you don't want to mess with the civics you are running. If you have the cash and the units and the GG ready, you can get 4 CR3 riflemen the next turn, ready to go.

There are a few "sometimes" mentioned, because this is, well, as I said, just an option to keep in mind. I agree that settling GG is probably the best overall, but when you (CHA leader) needed the extra firepower to take down a city right away, and happen to have have lots of maces standing around, attaching a GG is a quick way to make 4 CR3 riflemen. It's not something I usually do, but I found it useful in my last game.