Guide me into elepult rush!

[Seraiel]

I don't write this to put you down, but killing at a 1:2 ratio is actually very bad. I know from my games, that I usually kill at a 1:5 ratio with standard-units that goes up to 1:10 when having a good UU like Praets. Losing 12 Catapults and 4 Phants, those are numbers slightly lower than the ones I had, when I fought a strong-defending-AI that had Longbows in the game prior to the one I'm playing now, in it, I lost 17 Catapults in the first war, and it were those losses, why I gave up the game later, because I realized, that I had lost so many units in the 1st war, that I wouldn't be able to get a #1 position in HoF anymore.

I don't know why you lost so much troops. Maybe it wasn't entirely your fault, because your target had a lot of hills-cities, I say "not entirely" , because lots of hills-cities are something that might want to make one choose a different target, because Walls + hills cities are the terror of CIV in all times up to Industrial. I hope you promote all your Catapults to CR1 and promote single Catapults to CR2 and the rest on Accuracy. Forget about Barrage, forget about Drill is what I learned from pob recently, CR increases the chances to make dmg and also increases dmg, it's the best promotion when attacking cities in (almost?) all situations. Also, you should have double-promoted Phants you produce in your capital, so your capital should have a Barracks and Stable. Don't produce Phants over all cities, specialize your strongest city on mounted, produce the Catapults in the others, produce single Phants with 3 XP to get the perfect numbers that lie between 1:3 (Siege : Elephants) and 1:2, it normally doesn't matter if one of the later-attacking Elephants aren't double promoted, because the unit they'll be fighting will be a weak one that already got severly damaged by collateral if you do it right. Your initial Elephants should have Shock or Combat 2, those can easily increase chances by up to 40%!
The best tricks that ever got told to me were from WastinTime, lure out defenders by leaving a city undefended and beat them open-field and maybe even gift away a non-hills-city so your target moves its troops in where you can kill them easily when they have 0% cultural standing in your own culture even.
Also, you should be the one that attacks, especially with mounted units. Siege first is the biggest advantage possible and mounted get 0% defense-bonus so not even cultural defense. The only advantage you have as a defender is the top-defender-mechanic, but that's not much compared to siege-first, and top-defender-mechanic is something that helps with AI-stack vs. Anti-stack scenarios, so Everything against XBows, Longbows and Pikes i. e.

 

[Gumbolt]

My only real mistake was too few pults at start of war. I only ever upgrade pults on cr or barrage. Could of used a stable in capital. I lost 2 pults as the ai attacked a weaker smaller stack of mine. I had no retreating pults from combat. Overall 2 pults per city is not bad. Even on rng you could easily lose more. Losses may have been lower if I fully bombarded each city. The ai was plotting to attack me before I declared.

I only had five cities to whip from. If I was attacking with modern units I would agree on your numbers. The capital did most of the whipping. My intention was never to wait outside each city for 3-4 turns.

I was playing for fun.

 

[Seraiel]

Hey, easy. I wrote that I don't want to put you down.

I had to look up in an old game I played, to see if I lied, this is what I found:





Those numbers are almost the same as the ones you had, about 30 units killed, difference though is, that I only had 6 losses! I'd need to look up the combat log, to see if I was exceptionally lucky, but I think I can garantuee you that I wasn't, because 1. if I were, I think I'd remember 2. being exceptionally lucky with RNG is as rare for me as getting Oracle, GLH and Mids together .

It's like I told, you either made one or several errors, or your target had many hills-cities, or you were exceptionally unlucky, or a combination of those three. 1:5 losses : kills is the ratio I remember for every game where I checked that ratio, unless for the ones with an exceptional UU (like Praets i. e. ) , in those my ratio was better.

I play for fun too btw..

 

[Gumbolt]

Overall I killed
7 archers, 13 Vultures, 11 swords, 8 spears, 2 pults, 1 HA and a chariot. 43 units.
Lost 12 pults, 4 phants and 3 chariots. Of which 2 of these pult losses were really avoidable. 2 chariots lost to vultures at 87% odds. One phant lost at 95%.

My biggest issue is the catapults were starting at odds of 11%-29%. Then the phants at that point still faced nearly fully strength spears. Lots of CG2 archers.

43 vs 19 So 3:1 if you take out the 2 pults i lost due to not protecting a mini stack. A stable probably would of helped the phants.

You faced no swords, protective archers, no strength 6 vultures. The HA would of been easier to kill due to phants 50% bonus. The 8 spears i faced probably caused my phant loses to be higher.

If my game had been perfect then maybe I would of had a higher mix of pults compared to phants and a stable in my capital. What mix do you normally use? 60% pults?? I had closer to 25-35%. I lacked the 4-5xp for accuracy. Lacked the right civics too. Would you of fully bombarded the wall cities? In which case accuracy pults would of helped. Having more would of helped here to get a few accuracy pults from combat after the first 1-2 cities.

I also wonder how things might of worked out if I had beelined straight for construction and not rushed Monty early on. I did have 9 or so left over chaiots from the first war.

Posted the save in case you need some late night viewing.

I was also unable to bribe another Ai into the war. Which can normally be good. I did manager to take tributes off most of the Ai before the war started. I would like to think I got a lot of things right. Perhaps a few more turns to build up more pults next turn. 1ad is a bit late for the rush but I had no gold, silver or gems to help me. Correction I had 1 gems resource that was covered in jungle till about 6-7 turns before the war. It was not really an ideal map.

In any case the point of this thread is to show phant rushes are possible even at higher levels like deity and immortal. Hopefully everyone will have taken note here.

Nice to see you signed up to SGOTM. It needed a 5th team to show how the best players do it.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Gumbolt: I'l try to look at that game during the next days, maybe I was too hard. The Stable in your capital would have been a major difference already though, as I wrote, the 2nd promo can easily increase chances by up to 40%! I'm currently having a little lack of time, 3 'o clock already again in Germany and I'm still not asleep .

 

[guspasho]

AZ did many elephant rush videos, this is just one of them, may be not the best one, but it certainly has educational value and is fun to watch.

He did terrific job showcasing decent rush, while keeping it been entertaining (for this he had to avoid heavy micro, with every turn taking more then 10 minutes).

I can't tell which others are good examples of elephant rushes, as they don't appear to be labeled like that. Can you point me to some others?

 

[Heti123]

Elepult rush is so overused. Try the Amphibious Elephants!

 

[Tristan_C]

Elepult rush is so overused. Try the Amphibious Elephants!

It's not a bad choice but I prefer to make a quick tech diversion to Composites. This allows for fitting the elephants' feet with high-tensile strength springs (so they can land safely and possibly bounce around a few times on the battlefield after being launched by the catapults).

 

[Heti123]

Rocketry is also quite useful, so you can strap the elephants on rockets and do collateral damage

 

[Gumbolt]

The main reason phants are strong is because before mace and pikes the Ai have no real answer to them. 1-2 axes in a stack and you are quite safe. On a large stack of 20+ it unlikely the Ai would even attack it. They normally go for weak stacks they can pick off.

Spears are not great against pults. Ever phants with +20% strength will normally have better odds against spears in open play.

On the right map on immortal a pre 500bc date for phants to be whipped is easily possible. There is something nice about beating down AI. Even when they have swords and spears.

 

[Tatran]

The main reason phants are strong is because before mace and pikes the Ai have no real answer to them. 1-2 axes in a stack and you are quite safe.

Even praetorians aren't a real threat.

A city with a forge can produce 2 war elephants in 2 turns at the cost of 2 population.
With the Pyramids (police state) it can be even more interesting.