Great General Uses (patch 2.08)

[carl corey]

Charismatic Civs

You might be interested in synergies (playstyles/traits/civics).

Charismatic just screams for MInstructors :
With 2 instructors+ a barracks, you have 7 xp
+ vassalage or theocracy (depending if your capital is your military factory or not and depending on your religious status), you have 9xp which is enough for level 4.

With 4 instructors+barracks, you have 11 xp. With vassalage, theocracy or simply stables for mounted, you have level 5 units out of the gates
This is even more true if you run representation.
Those 4 MI will offer you 12 beakers

Military academies come late anyway, so maybe it's worth the bother when they are available. But i get most GG before they are

Good point about Military Academies now coming late. And yeah, it seems pretty clear that with a Charismatic leader you wouldn't want to save the Great Generals for MAs, and instead have Military Instructors or highly promoted units to help with all those early attacks. The thing is, with the amounts of wars I usually fight when Charismatic I end up relying on lots of catapults to destroy city defenses. I'd rather have Accuracy promoted catapults, so they're usually built in the city that has a settled MI (2 promotions). That also means it's unlikely that I stack other MIs in that same city, which leaves them for settling elsewhere or promoting existing units right away.

The leadership promotion with a charismatic leader is a nice thing. I like to hold onto my GG's with a civ with mounted UU. Beeline for military tradition, upgrade your best mounted units to cavalry (at this point of the game you should have a few 13 xp level 5 units). Drop a warlord on these units (1 per) adding leadership and blitz and then mop up cities with a couple of them after softening defenders with siege. 2 or 3 combat IV/leadership/blitz cavalry pack an insane punch. If you can get another level out of these guys (which you should), you can add commando. Then, they can cripple cities with pillaging.

That's one INSANE strategy! In the good sense. By the way, only Hannibal and Cyrus are both Charismatic AND have a mounted UU. I'm not a big fan of the Numidian Cavalry, but Immortals are pretty sweet. Combined with the Imperialistic trait, you'll probably get quite a few GGs from the early wars and this could turn into a really powerful Cavalry force.

Everything (aside from the random chance in battle) boils down to math. Just use the leader traits as a variable in whatever formula you end up with. With a few hours and an excel spreadsheet, you could plug in the leader, and have a table that adjusts the relative starting impact of a unit based off of:

Unit type
Improvements XP bonus
GG Instructor XP bonus
Wonder XP bonus

And then have the chart modify itself for if the leader is CHA.

Well, as you can see there are a lot of strategies that are hard to quantify. Also early, late or no war really depends on your position and your neighbors and it's impossible to put that in an excel sheet. I'm only trying to find more uses that the "Medic 3 for West Point, MI-MI-MI etc, MA in HE & WP city" way. And with a Charismatic leader those strategies can be very different one from another. You could take time to build Stonehenge and take advantage of the increased happiness to have only a few huge cities and beeline to get military superior troops and then attack, or go for early attacks relying on Charismatic's happiness for War Weariness protection and for early promotions/GGs.

 

[johnny_rico]

That's one INSANE strategy! In the good sense. By the way, only Hannibal and Cyrus are both Charismatic AND have a mounted UU. I'm not a big fan of the Numidian Cavalry, but Immortals are pretty sweet. Combined with the Imperialistic trait, you'll probably get quite a few GGs from the early wars and this could turn into a really powerful Cavalry force.

Those are the two I'm talking about, and yes, Cyrus is the optimal choice with the GG's coming faster. Recently, I had a pair of these powerhouse cavalry aided with a medic 3 cavalry. Pillage mines, starve cities, deny resources, and destroy reinforcements headed for the front line.

 

[carl corey]

Other topics

Flanking on transports will not save them. Flanking should be reserved for offensive units (it doesn't aid in defense).

Indeed. But I often use Flanking & Navigation on Transports & Carriers to get them faster to their destination, at the same pace as Battleships. I rely on having enough Destroyers and Battleships to fight naval battles instead of worrying about losing Transports. Also, I usually prepare a naval invasion in one go. My forces are outside his borders, I declare war then move in on several coastal cities at once.

Back to the academies, carl_corey I think pointed out, the AI really favors them. What I'm wondering is what happens to a military instructor when you capture an enemy city. I've never captured a city with a military instructor so I'm wondering if they croak when you take the city. Anyway, with AI academies, you can save your GG for instructors in those cities.

Any GG in the captured city disappears if it's still unattached/unsettled. Same as with any Great Person. Anyway, one time I went as far as not to take the city because the AI got a GG and I wanted him to build a MA. He did it, which was kind of stupid since spending it for instant XPs would have been much better.

I wonder why they chose not to give planes xp? Anyone who's ever watched a movie knows that one single ace pilot can change the whole course of a war. And Hollywood doesn't lie. Ever.

I was also pretty amazed to see it. Maybe it would have been a bit difficult to factor them in?! Imagine a bomber: would you let it have unit specific promotions? Doesn't make much sense. I mean, what does it matter if I'm bombing an Infantry or an Archer or an Axeman. Other than the fact the the Infantry would actually know what hit it. First strike could actually make sense in a way - your plane strikes from farther/higher than the ground to air counter can attack for example. Hmm... Maybe there are some mods there that include experienced planes.

 

[carl corey]

Those are the two I'm talking about, and yes, Cyrus is the optimal choice with the GG's coming faster. Recently, I had a pair of these powerhouse cavalry aided with a medic 3 cavalry. Pillage mines, starve cities, deny resources, and destroy reinforcements headed for the front line.

I haven't tried him after the patch as I wanted to try out some of the leaders I haven't played with, but this makes me want to take another shot at him. I've never been a "pillager" myself though. I wonder if you have some tips for effective pillaging (how many pillaging stacks, how big, where do you pillage - far or near the front -, what do you pillage).

 

[johnny_rico]

I haven't tried him after the patch as I wanted to try out some of the leaders I haven't played with, but this makes me want to take another shot at him. I've never been a "pillager" myself though. I wonder if you have some tips for effective pillaging (how many pillaging stacks, how big, where do you pillage - far or near the front -, what do you pillage).

Funny, I never played as cyrus before warlords. So I know what you mean in trying out new people. I'vd had the game for about a year and took a five month hiatus prior to the release of warlords. So, in those seven months, I've started a new game every couple of weeks.

Anyway, since domination/conquest games take so long, I've become more apt to space race, domination, and culture victories. Because of this, I usually can get by with much smaller empires and have found I am able to tech just as fast. Most of the time, satellite cities from wars wind up being more of an economic drain than an asset, simply a means to more real estate at a high cost.

However, settling for a smaller empire doesn't keep you free from war. You may need to start one against a strong competitor or, someone may declare on you. If you're not looking to acquire any more territory, then you hurt the opponent with pillaging. The key to a good pillaging stack is knowing what your opponent has for a military and then filling your stack with a counter for each. Also, hold off on applying promotions to these until they're needed is a good thing. If the enemy is in hilly territory or wooded territory, then the woodsman or guerilla promotions can be quite nice for a pillaging stack. The thing to remember with a pillaging stack is not to go on the offensive. These guys are there to pillage, not attack. The temptation can often be too great to go after a unit who is left with a little health after defeating one of your units. The real thing to do here is keep the stack pillaging moving forward. Let the enemy unit return to a city to heal, it's not worth going after.

The number of pillaging stacks is a good question. Let's leave the 'crazy cyrus pillaging stack' out of it right now. That said, I'd say two solid pillaging stacks are needed to make a good dent. If the enemy has coastline and you can surprise in a well protected pillaging stack from the sea (four units in two galleys with ample trireme, etc. protection), all the better. If the pillaging stacks are spread out, they can do more damage because the AI will have to split their military three ways (attacking you, dealing with pillaging stack 1, and dealing with pillaging stack 2). The AI's military is usually pretty evenly spaced unlike how I play (where my military is usually very concentrated in a particular area with several cities having 1 unit for defense. Thus, your pillaging stacks will always have opposition but not much of it and if they defeat a couple of units, they might have free reign to pillage a city to nothing. Another bonus of spreading out pillaging stacks is that the AI will have a more difficult of grouping workers together to rebuild that which you've destroyed. The goal is to keep him down for as long as possible.

IDEAS FOR A PILLAGING STACK

For the record, I think someone here (Sisiutil) has a write up in the academy regarding combat and pillaging stacks as well. Some of this probably echoes that, perhaps some of it differs. I haven't read through that for quite a while but I will edit in a link if I find it.

As I said earlier, each pillaging stack should have a counter for each unit the military is making. I do not prefer to use the medic promotion for my pillaging stacks. It takes too long to heal in enemy turf to bother with sitting still and waiting. Keep the stack pressing forward, keep a mounted unit on hand so every turn results in something getting punished.

Promotions to stick to include drill, guerilla, woodsman, and the anti-promos (cover, shock, etc..). I realize some of these require combat 2. If your pillaging stacks are considering combat 2 for a promotion, then they have done well.

Another unit to consider for a pillaging stack is a barrage catapult. This is an emergency unit should a pack of AI units wind up adjacent to you at the start of a turn. They will probably attack next turn and enough collateral damage may send those units back to a city buying you a few more turns of pillaging. This is not very likely but figured I'd inlcude it because I've done it.

PILLAGING TACTICS

What to pillage? I'd start with the best food squares. Or at least, move towards them pillaging along the way. If you can include two mounted units in your pillaging stack, you can remove roads as well. Very nice since you can't use them(commando exception). If you starve the city, some of the better improved tiles will not be able to be worked on account of starvation. Why pillage the mines before the bananas and rice when pillaging the latter will force the AI to stop working the former just to keep from starving the city. Now, this is of course dependent on the AI's top priority is to prevent starvation. I don't know the answer to this but I think starvation would be a high AI priority. Perhaps more important than food are copper, iron, ivory, and horses. If you can get to all of a single type, go for it. If not, stick with high food tiles. If you've taken out an AIs only military resource, you might want to park the stack on it to keep workers from rebuilding the improvement. After food and military resources, I'd look to cottages but only if you're not aspiring to control the turf someday. Pillaging villages and towns isn't smart if you hope to one day control the city yourself. It is a great source of coin however, and there's nothing like raising hell in the suburbs.

One last thing regarding how to pull it off. My preference is to wait a few turns after war is declared. See where the AI unit concentration is coming from and send in the pillaging groups elsewhere. Odds are there will be less resistance on a different front (if the front is small, then your options are limited) meaning your pillagers are to get pretty far, the ultimate goal being the capital, especially if the enemy is running bureaucracy.

As your pillaging stack is close to the end, be prepared to move in another stack. Keep the original stack going until there is nobody left or the war is over. Odds are you won't save them and you'll probably waste other units trying. If you've got a pillaging stack that acquired a sick number of XPs, perhaps you could fortify them on a forested hill until the end of the war if you felt compelled to save them.

Well, this got much longer than expected and has little to do with GG's in general. I hope this is helpful. Pillaging has become my new fun to do because I get bored with a 20+ city empire.

 

[carl corey]

Wow, pretty good post. I'll look into Sisiutil's Stack of Doom article but your own post was pretty clear. I wonder if Numidian Cavalry can be used for this. For example make a main force out of Axes & Swords and make the Numidian pillagers. I've finished one game with Hannibal but barely used his UU due to having to attack Shaka first (other neighbors were either too far away or surrounded by jungle). Numidian Cavalry pillagers can work pretty well on their own, can't they? The advantage of using only mounted pillagers would be that I could skip any useless tiles and go for the juicy ones.

 

[johnny_rico]

The NC of hannibal, as you'll see from ALC 11, are a dual edged sword. Horse archers are tough to come by and require the learning of two dead end techs. It's sad that horse archers aren't more useful. Even when they're the UU, it's no bonus to have them.

Anyway, they do quite well on their own but regular horse archers will give them fits. They can handle spearman quite well with a shock promotion (close to 50/50). They make excellent pillagers and can be their own stack. 3 or 4 of them can really bring a civ down, just with pillaging. They won't take cities on their own though. Hannibal, with the cothon, is one of those civs I'm real fond of going coastal, Great Lighthouse and colossus. You don't need a huge empire to tech like crazy, you can be well defended, and use your navy to drop NCs on their back door, away from the front to pillage.

 

[carl corey]

Ok, I've started a test game using Churchill on a Pangaea map. I plan on playing it while getting advice from you (general you ), so feel free to stop by and give your opinion.

 

[carl corey]

I'm still playing the Churchill game but I wanted to share some observations from other games.

I'm currently playing a game with Tokugawa and tried to see what a super-attacker Warlord would do. I attached my first Great General to an Axeman later turned Samurai, but it still isn't much of a benefit. I can use him to kill the first big attacker in a city, but then again, using a couple of catapults can yield the same result on that first unit, plus they'll do some collateral damage. Two catapults cost 80 hammers but I think that's way under the value you can get from wisely using a Great General. So Great Attacker is pretty much written off as a choice for me.

What about the Medic III? I have one in the Toku game, and two in the Churchill one. I must say, they're doing a pretty good job keeping my attacks going. They have only one drawback: you'll never upgrade a Medic III unit as you don't want to lose it. So one of the benefits of a Warlord unit is out the window. And of course there aren't many wars in which you'll have more than two attack lines, so two Medics is the most you'll need. Medic III remains very viable for the first GG, but is there better?

In another game with the Romans I got my first Great General after I conquered my first nation with Praetorians. The others may have longbows, but what do I care? Praetorians are just as good as Macemen against them. I'll try to promote a bunch of Praets and give Leadership to the Warlord unit. Having the only very promoted units (no other wars so far) will probably make future wars quite easy. Mass promotion here I come!

 

[futurehermit]

Looking forward to what you can do with mass promotion.

I always use my great generals like this:

1st 1-2 Great medics (you eventually can upgrade them once you have a strong enough military force!!!)

next ones: military academies. i'm all about pumping out as many troops as possible because i'm not great in this department. i'm still amazed when i see succession games with 50-60 units!!!

I've seen a lot of people settling MIs in HE city. I think this is a good idea as well although I prefer the masses...

definitely would like to see you doing the mass upgrades. basically, you can upgrade 10 units an additional promotion. could make a big difference in your 2nd war (1st war to generate the GG, peace to rebuild, then come out again).

what i don't like about this use of the GG is that i would prefer to go for theocracy if i want to use 2-promotion units.

anyways, that's my 2 cents...

 

[cabert]

I like units starting with 11 XP . More so if I'm charismatic
11 is 3 from barracks, 2 from theocracy, 6 from GG.
I don't even use a GG on the "great medic" thing, since West point comes really late most of the time, and investing in 200 BC a GG for West Point in 1600AD seems wrong.

+ those 3 settled GG give science under representation

 

[carl corey]

I finished the Tokugawa game. I was lucky enough to get a Pangaea like map while playing Fractal, so everybody was reachable without navy - which I totally ignored. The war diaries show:

- killed Rome (two attacks)
- Monty declares war; took one city, the rest were too far
- let Ragnar with three cities; he vassalized to Monty
- declared on Monty, finished Ragnar in the process with the help of Mansa; vassalized Monty
- two turns later declared on Wang Kon; vassalized Wang Kon
- a few turns later (regrouping, healing, upgrading a few units to Infantry) declared on Mansa; vassalized Mansa
- a couple of turns later (regrouping & healing) caught Hannibal with two huge stacks in open terrain; declared on him, took most of the units out; reached Domination limit.


And the distribution of Great Generals:

- my super-city-attacker met his end in a 90+% battle. Never again. It did get promoted from Axeman to Samurai to Rifleman, but that's just one more Rifleman in the end. Better to have had an earlier Medic.

- I ended up having two super Medics anyway. Given the number of wars it really helped.

- once I couldn't run Theocracy anymore (too many angry neighbors as I had my own religion) I decided to go with MIs; HE city and another one closer to the new fronts got MIs. The last GG was born too late to matter.

- I got the Fascism GG, I was first and (not counting the last few turns) the only one to get to Assembly Line, despite being way behind Mansa in other techs. Infantry against Riflemen/Cavalry don't need the extra promotions to win. MAs would have probably been a bit better, but in the end it was me and three vassals against Hannibal, so it really didn't matter what I built.

I also never built WP (nobody traded Military Tradition to me until late, and I was too busy going for Infantry); didn't finish Pentagon either.

Conclusions:

- when having lots of close opponents Medic III seems better than super-attacker; early MI doesn't yield too much if you're powerful enough to have a state religion and run Theocracy; still have to test mass promotion in the Romans game

- if I manage to get military superiority (and with Toku's crazy units, that's easy) I'd rather have enough units to continue the attack than heavily promoted ones. The latter eventually die anyway. So MAs > MIs.

- also, lots of attacks = lots of cities = lots of units not coming from your HE city. That means that even if I put all MIs in it, the percentage of highly promoted troops will still be very low. Comparing that to three-four more heavy production cities with MAs and I think the latter win hands down.

 

[carl corey]

cabert, the Medic III isn't so much about going for West Point as really speeding your attacks. In my Toku game it was an easy decision to forget about Military Tradition and go for Rifles & Infantry, since Monty and later Mansa and Hannibal had lots of War Elephants/Knights/Cavalry units so West Point was never really an option.

 

[cabert]

cabert, the Medic III isn't so much about going for West Point as really speeding your attacks. In my Toku game it was an easy decision to forget about Military Tradition and go for Rifles & Infantry, since Monty and later Mansa and Hannibal had lots of War Elephants/Knights/Cavalry units so West Point was never really an option.

I always found a medic1 to be enough.
The super medic is nice, but I'm not sold on it.

I tried once, but it made no real difference : I had too many stacks running around, so most of the units didn't benefit from the super medic anyway.

 

[carl corey]

Well, apart from early wars I always try to have only one or two main stacks. Then the wounded units get in the newly conquered city with the Medic and a city defender while the rest march on. By the time I take the next city, the units from the previous one are healed and now have the path to move to the new one. Also, if I get the +1 movement for the super Medic, he'll almost always make the jump between two cities in one turn.

In this game I even considered having three Medic III units, but it was too late to build another stack so I just settled it in the HE city. It seems you can get too many GGs.

 

[cabert]

IMHO you cannot settle too many GG
I so enjoyed churning out level 5 protective redcoats

 

[carl corey]

And speaking of Redcoats, I'll try to finish my Churchill test game too before moving to the Romans. I'll probably post the Romans game as an online one too, even though I've already played a bit and didn't make much effort to "optimize".

 

[carl corey]

Just for fun, here are three screenshots from the Toku game.

First, the power rating. You can easily see where I went to war since the corresponding AI's power immediately dropped. Also, notice what happened to Hannibal's power rating when he faced four armies! I told each of them to attack a certain target but by the end of the war they hadn't done much, just kept him at bay here and there.

Here's a look at the territory, with different conquests marked on it:

And now for the frightening production graph. I had a huge territory of my own (initial three cities + Romans + Ragnar + some of Monty + some of Wang Kon) and as I said was the only one to get to Assembly Line (apart from Mansa who got it from me very late).