colonization
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2012
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This article is intended to be a one-stop shop for anyone interested in playing Hannibal on Emperor and lower difficulty levels. Read this article if:
1) You think Hannibal is the GREATEST GENERAL EVER, and
2a) You want to improve your gameplay up to emperor, or
2b) You're a deity player that wants to impart their wealth of knowledge on this humble thread
About the author:
This article will assume you have a handle of several basic winning strategies, like lightbulbing key techs, the axe rush, and CE. It will delve into how Hannibal can augment many of these strategies to really create a force to behold.
This article is not intended to be a substitute for good basic gameplay. No leader is so overwhelmingly unbalanced that by simply concentrating on their unique gifts, you can thus ignore many of the basic aspects of the game. Not even Hannibal.
To begin, this is Hannibal:
Carthage
UU: Numidian Cavalry (NC)
UB: Cothon
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Financial - +1 commerce on plots with at least 2 commerce.
Charismatic - +1 happiness per city, -25% XP needed for unit promotions, +1 happiness from Monument and Broadcast Tower.
Let's start with the leader traits.
Financial heavily favors a cottage economy. This is probably the most intuitive style of economic development, so Hannibal is certainly newbie friendly. The trait is so powerful that it holds its own on higher difficultly levels as well, and will allow you to compete in tech utilizing a wide variety of strategies.
Charismatic on the surface looks like a combination of different things, but this article will favor this trait as a primarily warmonger ability. It's kind of funny how being a nice guy essentially allows you to inflict terrible, unspeakable horror on your own populace, but that is what Charismatic allows you to do.
The happiness bonus means two things:
1) You can support larger cities with more cottages, which lessens the need to build tertiary cities due to happy cap (good for lower maintenance costs),
2) You can whip more often,
3) You can draft more often.
+2 happiness in early game is a huge bonus, essentially allowing all of your cities to grow 25-30% larger size than otherwise.
Although later on this bonus may seem to become less significant due to monarchy and calendar resources, the extra +2 happiness also equates to a free round of drafting in each of your cities. If you have 8 cities by the time you discover Nationalism, this equates to 8 free macemen or 8 free musketeers for the cost of just -1 pop in each city (-3 happiness, +2 charismatic and +1 smaller city size). This frees your cities to produce nothing but trebs to dominate mid game if you so choose, or to create a drafted army twice the size you would otherwise have if you were not charismatic. The experience level of these drafted forces is not nearly as important as having sufficient numbers of them for defense of newly conquered cities - the trebs make taking mid-game cities extremely efficient in BtS.
When looking at the UU, it will become even clearer why I favor this warmonger approach. The Numidian Cavalry...
Unique unit for Carthage; Replaces Horse Archer
Requires Horseback Riding and Archery
Strength 5 instead of 6
Immune to first strikes
Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
Can withdraw from combat (20% chance)
Flank attack against Catapults and Trebuchets
Starts with Flanking I
+50% attack vs. Catapults and Trebuchets
+50% vs. Melee Units
...has a lot of synergy with a charismatic leader. With just a barracks, you are guaranteed a NC that will have Flanking II, giving every new unit a 50% withdrawal chance whenever on the offense. Withdrawing gives a unit experience, which because Hannibal is charismatic, leads to surviving NCs to become highly experienced units rather quickly. NCs survive (much) more often because of the high withdraw chance.
NCs also are viable as a stand-alone unit all the way up to Feudalism. This frees you from having to drag along catapults, spears, or what not to wage war. This ensures you maintain a distinct mobility advantage against your foes, forcing them to either adopt horse archers of their own, or beeline for war elephants or Feudalism. This mobility advantage is huge, as it allows you to pillage with reckless abandon, or to quickly change targets to poorly defended cities - all the while the opponent dares not approach you unless under heavily favorable terrain and with a lot of spears, thus slowing them down even further. Feel free to attack even well-fortified hill capitols - the flanking promotions allow you to take these cities with minimal losses (given you bring enough NCs) - all surviving units will also become even deadlier. You will not have the 5-10 dead axemen from an equivalent axeman rush on your conscience.
With a stable, the NC also gets the opportunity to attain the Mobility promotion. This negates terrain penalties to your movement, further adding to the mobility advantage.
You may ask, what makes this any different than a horse archer with two promotions? This is where the 50% vs melee comes in. NCs can hold their own against any unmounted, pre-Feudalism unit. Horse archers are still quite vulnerable to spears, but NCs are not. Furthermore, if the opponent gets horse archers, your NCs still have the 50% withdraw chance against them, and if need be you can utilize spears effectively whereas your opponent cannot.
You may say, HBR is expensive tech, and I never research archery. Would you change your mind if you knew the only real counter to NCs is Feudalism, or for your opponents to research HBR as well, or be lucky enough to have ivory, in which case they still need to research masonry and construction? Keep in mind that Hannibal is also Financial, so research is generally less of a problem for you than for your opponents.
NCs are also very effective even against a praetorian stack. Praetorians typically have either CR or Shock promotions, neither of which will help against NCs. Formation promotions are rather difficult for praetorians to attain. Apply hit-and run techniques, and you will be able to quickly whittle down evenly matched praetorians in battle, with minimal losses sustained on your end. Your units will also gain much more experience, even if you did not kill many units in their stack due to the flanking promotions.
NCs also effectively counter any pre-Feudalism SoD sent against you. Stacks with catapults will melt away due to the horse archer's flanking ability (different from the flanking promotion). Anything outside of hill-forest spears (or praetorian) will either die or become severely injured from your hit-and run tactics.
There are very few pre-Feudalism counters to the NC, but they bear noting. First is the already mentioned horse archer counter, which you can easily counter with your own spears. The Mongol Keshik unfortunately exacerbates this aspect. It is probably a very bad idea to attempt to gain a mobility advantage with NCs against Keshiks.
War elephants essentially shut down this strategy. Worse still is the Khmer's Ballista elephant, which turn your NCs into punching bags. Do your absolute best to deny ivory from your intended target, or just get to macemen as soon as you can.
The good news is that these counters require your opponents to deviate from a more optimal tech strategy. Construction is generally less of a priority than civil service, and making your opponents have to research HBR plays into your hand, as it helps to solidify the tech lead you achieve through being Financial. If anyone thinks HBR is expensive, Feudalism is much more of a pain to research than HBR, and by itself also confers very little economic advantage.
Bottom line, NCs are a terror on the battlefield unless your opponent fields their own horse archers, elephants, or beelines towards Feudalism (and away from civil service). Because you are Charismatic, your high-survivability NCs will become quite deadly indeed. You can use NCs offensively to take cities without any accompanying forces, whereas your opponent with horse archers cannot. Without large mounted forces of their own, the only thing that may prevent you from taking a city are hill-fortified spears in a high-culture city. Anything short of this will make the cities vulnerable.
The Cothon...
Unique building for Carthage; Replaces Harbor
Requires Compass
Can only be built in a coastal city
+1 trade route
+1 from Fish, Crab, Clams
+50% commerce from trade routes
Requires 100 hammers instead of 80 on standard speed
...is nice in that it's not useless. +1 trade route can easily pay for a city's maintenance, especially if the city is not on the main continent. Getting compass is not that difficult after Liberalism, and building cothons can help to pay for whatever your drafted army conquers. Trade routes do not directly synergize with Financial, but they do with Charismatic, in that Hannibal's larger cities produce higher yielding trade routes.
STRATEGY BY ERA
(spoiler, this strat is not necessarily unique to Hannibal)
Bottom line, this strategy works for just about any leader at least on emperor and below. What makes it easier for Hannibal is that his Financial trait allows you to maintain a comfortable tech lead against most civs, and Charismatic allows you to (further) abuse Nationhood and whipping. Whatever drafted units survive will gain promotions very quickly.
NCs allow for a BC->AD lightning conquest with speed and superiority unmatched until you get tanks and gunships, or cuirassiers if you choose to go that path (just be aware you will actually have to build them instead of drafting them). Good if you have a lot of elite NCs lying around i guess, but keep in mind that with Flanking II their withdrawal chance is only 30% instead of 50%, so be mindful of the odds.
You can save GGs for either CR 3 macemen you want to promote to rifles and infantry (preferred), or for elite NCs to promote to ridiculously overpowered gunships. Park one in your future ironworks city so that it can at least crank out CR 2 siege units, which you will probably need plenty of with this strat. Because you're charismatic, it's actually not that difficult to get some CR 3, Woodsman 3, Combat 3, March GG infantry running around late game. The drafted musketmen provide the maces cover so that they can get some good early level advantages until you get rifling.
That's it! Lavish praise
, comments and constructive criticism are welcome!
1) You think Hannibal is the GREATEST GENERAL EVER, and
2a) You want to improve your gameplay up to emperor, or
2b) You're a deity player that wants to impart their wealth of knowledge on this humble thread
About the author:
Spoiler :
This article will assume you have a handle of several basic winning strategies, like lightbulbing key techs, the axe rush, and CE. It will delve into how Hannibal can augment many of these strategies to really create a force to behold.
This article is not intended to be a substitute for good basic gameplay. No leader is so overwhelmingly unbalanced that by simply concentrating on their unique gifts, you can thus ignore many of the basic aspects of the game. Not even Hannibal.
To begin, this is Hannibal:
Carthage
UU: Numidian Cavalry (NC)
UB: Cothon
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Financial - +1 commerce on plots with at least 2 commerce.
Charismatic - +1 happiness per city, -25% XP needed for unit promotions, +1 happiness from Monument and Broadcast Tower.
Let's start with the leader traits.
Financial heavily favors a cottage economy. This is probably the most intuitive style of economic development, so Hannibal is certainly newbie friendly. The trait is so powerful that it holds its own on higher difficultly levels as well, and will allow you to compete in tech utilizing a wide variety of strategies.
Charismatic on the surface looks like a combination of different things, but this article will favor this trait as a primarily warmonger ability. It's kind of funny how being a nice guy essentially allows you to inflict terrible, unspeakable horror on your own populace, but that is what Charismatic allows you to do.
The happiness bonus means two things:
1) You can support larger cities with more cottages, which lessens the need to build tertiary cities due to happy cap (good for lower maintenance costs),
2) You can whip more often,
3) You can draft more often.
+2 happiness in early game is a huge bonus, essentially allowing all of your cities to grow 25-30% larger size than otherwise.
Although later on this bonus may seem to become less significant due to monarchy and calendar resources, the extra +2 happiness also equates to a free round of drafting in each of your cities. If you have 8 cities by the time you discover Nationalism, this equates to 8 free macemen or 8 free musketeers for the cost of just -1 pop in each city (-3 happiness, +2 charismatic and +1 smaller city size). This frees your cities to produce nothing but trebs to dominate mid game if you so choose, or to create a drafted army twice the size you would otherwise have if you were not charismatic. The experience level of these drafted forces is not nearly as important as having sufficient numbers of them for defense of newly conquered cities - the trebs make taking mid-game cities extremely efficient in BtS.
When looking at the UU, it will become even clearer why I favor this warmonger approach. The Numidian Cavalry...
Unique unit for Carthage; Replaces Horse Archer
Requires Horseback Riding and Archery
Strength 5 instead of 6
Immune to first strikes
Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
Can withdraw from combat (20% chance)
Flank attack against Catapults and Trebuchets
Starts with Flanking I
+50% attack vs. Catapults and Trebuchets
+50% vs. Melee Units
...has a lot of synergy with a charismatic leader. With just a barracks, you are guaranteed a NC that will have Flanking II, giving every new unit a 50% withdrawal chance whenever on the offense. Withdrawing gives a unit experience, which because Hannibal is charismatic, leads to surviving NCs to become highly experienced units rather quickly. NCs survive (much) more often because of the high withdraw chance.
NCs also are viable as a stand-alone unit all the way up to Feudalism. This frees you from having to drag along catapults, spears, or what not to wage war. This ensures you maintain a distinct mobility advantage against your foes, forcing them to either adopt horse archers of their own, or beeline for war elephants or Feudalism. This mobility advantage is huge, as it allows you to pillage with reckless abandon, or to quickly change targets to poorly defended cities - all the while the opponent dares not approach you unless under heavily favorable terrain and with a lot of spears, thus slowing them down even further. Feel free to attack even well-fortified hill capitols - the flanking promotions allow you to take these cities with minimal losses (given you bring enough NCs) - all surviving units will also become even deadlier. You will not have the 5-10 dead axemen from an equivalent axeman rush on your conscience.
With a stable, the NC also gets the opportunity to attain the Mobility promotion. This negates terrain penalties to your movement, further adding to the mobility advantage.
You may ask, what makes this any different than a horse archer with two promotions? This is where the 50% vs melee comes in. NCs can hold their own against any unmounted, pre-Feudalism unit. Horse archers are still quite vulnerable to spears, but NCs are not. Furthermore, if the opponent gets horse archers, your NCs still have the 50% withdraw chance against them, and if need be you can utilize spears effectively whereas your opponent cannot.
You may say, HBR is expensive tech, and I never research archery. Would you change your mind if you knew the only real counter to NCs is Feudalism, or for your opponents to research HBR as well, or be lucky enough to have ivory, in which case they still need to research masonry and construction? Keep in mind that Hannibal is also Financial, so research is generally less of a problem for you than for your opponents.
NCs are also very effective even against a praetorian stack. Praetorians typically have either CR or Shock promotions, neither of which will help against NCs. Formation promotions are rather difficult for praetorians to attain. Apply hit-and run techniques, and you will be able to quickly whittle down evenly matched praetorians in battle, with minimal losses sustained on your end. Your units will also gain much more experience, even if you did not kill many units in their stack due to the flanking promotions.
NCs also effectively counter any pre-Feudalism SoD sent against you. Stacks with catapults will melt away due to the horse archer's flanking ability (different from the flanking promotion). Anything outside of hill-forest spears (or praetorian) will either die or become severely injured from your hit-and run tactics.
There are very few pre-Feudalism counters to the NC, but they bear noting. First is the already mentioned horse archer counter, which you can easily counter with your own spears. The Mongol Keshik unfortunately exacerbates this aspect. It is probably a very bad idea to attempt to gain a mobility advantage with NCs against Keshiks.
War elephants essentially shut down this strategy. Worse still is the Khmer's Ballista elephant, which turn your NCs into punching bags. Do your absolute best to deny ivory from your intended target, or just get to macemen as soon as you can.
The good news is that these counters require your opponents to deviate from a more optimal tech strategy. Construction is generally less of a priority than civil service, and making your opponents have to research HBR plays into your hand, as it helps to solidify the tech lead you achieve through being Financial. If anyone thinks HBR is expensive, Feudalism is much more of a pain to research than HBR, and by itself also confers very little economic advantage.
Bottom line, NCs are a terror on the battlefield unless your opponent fields their own horse archers, elephants, or beelines towards Feudalism (and away from civil service). Because you are Charismatic, your high-survivability NCs will become quite deadly indeed. You can use NCs offensively to take cities without any accompanying forces, whereas your opponent with horse archers cannot. Without large mounted forces of their own, the only thing that may prevent you from taking a city are hill-fortified spears in a high-culture city. Anything short of this will make the cities vulnerable.
The Cothon...
Unique building for Carthage; Replaces Harbor
Requires Compass
Can only be built in a coastal city
+1 trade route
+1 from Fish, Crab, Clams
+50% commerce from trade routes
Requires 100 hammers instead of 80 on standard speed
...is nice in that it's not useless. +1 trade route can easily pay for a city's maintenance, especially if the city is not on the main continent. Getting compass is not that difficult after Liberalism, and building cothons can help to pay for whatever your drafted army conquers. Trade routes do not directly synergize with Financial, but they do with Charismatic, in that Hannibal's larger cities produce higher yielding trade routes.
STRATEGY BY ERA
(spoiler, this strat is not necessarily unique to Hannibal)
Spoiler :
Bottom line, this strategy works for just about any leader at least on emperor and below. What makes it easier for Hannibal is that his Financial trait allows you to maintain a comfortable tech lead against most civs, and Charismatic allows you to (further) abuse Nationhood and whipping. Whatever drafted units survive will gain promotions very quickly.
NCs allow for a BC->AD lightning conquest with speed and superiority unmatched until you get tanks and gunships, or cuirassiers if you choose to go that path (just be aware you will actually have to build them instead of drafting them). Good if you have a lot of elite NCs lying around i guess, but keep in mind that with Flanking II their withdrawal chance is only 30% instead of 50%, so be mindful of the odds.
You can save GGs for either CR 3 macemen you want to promote to rifles and infantry (preferred), or for elite NCs to promote to ridiculously overpowered gunships. Park one in your future ironworks city so that it can at least crank out CR 2 siege units, which you will probably need plenty of with this strat. Because you're charismatic, it's actually not that difficult to get some CR 3, Woodsman 3, Combat 3, March GG infantry running around late game. The drafted musketmen provide the maces cover so that they can get some good early level advantages until you get rifling.
That's it! Lavish praise
, comments and constructive criticism are welcome!
) but for now the main purpose is to generate discussion and to give people something to read first. Many of the "university threads" tend to be a long list of hidden spoilers, which may be very nice for people participating in the thread, but not necessarily for people just wanting to read a guide. That was what I was looking for initially before I tried Hannibal out, and decided to just post my own. I guess just think of this thread as a "game manual" for Hannibal, while the "university" is a comprehensive "tutorial" feature. Apples and oranges from my experience, but like you say nonetheless both are very useful.
