Hi and welcome to another one of my waffles.
The grand title above comes from a personal quest to find viable alternatives to the monopoly (and monotony) of the metal line, particularly when applied to multi-player. Not that I have a problem with orthodoxy, it's just it can get a little boring. Similarly, I'm not seeking to exclude metal/melee, but any progression on that line should be as a compliment to the strat rather than a requirement.
As regards a successful strategy, the criteria I use are:-
1)- It must work. Obviously. But at deeper level it must provide an effective, efficient method to achieve the end result. In this case, as this is a military strategy, that result would be judged as a conquest or domination victory.
2)- The strat must be effective both SP and MP. I think we'd all agree that the AI is not reactive enough to counter a different style of threat, so the primary test is MP. By all means play test and refine it in SP, but it can only really be measured as successful against a human opponent who is aware of it's mechanics, and still can't effectively counter.
3)- It must, given fair circumstance, be achievable at all skill levels. What's achievable at Prince/Monarch is very often impractical or wasteful at Immortal/Diety. Whatever you develop must, when stripped back to the bare bones, still intrinsicly work, even if only in a more limited capacity or specific situation.
Blitzkrieg
It's at this point that I searched the Wiki and other places for a suitable definition that didn't involve the words "Tanks", "Mechanised infantry" and "Stuka dive bombers". All of which to me describe mechanism rather than concept, and don't really feel right for FFH. Should anybody else find one, pm me and I'll insert it. In the absense, I'll go out on a limb and attempt my own.
Blitzkrieg:- The effective and sustainable projection of military power, utilising speed rather than sheer force of arms.
I included the word sustainable as I think it is the most important concept, on the basis that any idiot can charge off behind enemy lines, the hard bit is remaining a viable threat. One quote I did find when I was searching was by a Major General J.F.C Fuller, a British general, and surprisingly, one of the original proponents of the tactic, commenting on the German invasion of France and the Low Countries.
"Speed, still more speed, and always more speed was the secret.....and that demanded audacity, more audacity and always more audacity."
I like the sound of that.... and I think Tasunke would too!
Anyways, enough waffle, on with the thread and how does this translate into FFH?
Concept
Most of us, at some point, have suffered at the hands of an AI Tasunke Hippus. When you let them get going they can be frightening. The purpose of this thread, and the challenge to anyone who chooses to take it up, is to develop methods, tactics and strategies that in the hands of a human player can be truly terrifying.
In the past week, I've started along these lines, and I thought rather than develop alone and in isolation, throw it out to the community, and see what they can come up with. On the basis that a combination of ideas can be stronger than those of an individual.
I find that in most games, it's the mid game wars that tend to be the more decisive ones, as the outcomes of these tend to dictate what and when the end game will be. By this time, most civs have settled, barbs are less, if non-existant, economies have grown to comfortably support larger armies and the politics are starting to break into clear factions. Generally, around this time the first tier 3 units start to appear. This, I would suggest, is the time where we need to be looking, before the widespread use of advanced magic, yet developed enough to sustain large numbers of troops on foreign soil.
Edit Feb20
Just like comedy, timing is the secret, there's no point in blitzing a 3 city civ in the first 200 turns:- They don't have the land space to justify the cost and their cottages are not abundant or developed enough to be worth the effort. Similarly, if you leave it too late, their options to counter an offensive increase, and you now have to spend more resources and techs developing measures to their counter-measures. Blitzkreig will take up lots of units. You are after all, capturing land rather than cities, which means you will need more units, not just as replacements, but also to fill and hold the spaces. It's the sort of thing that you ramp your economy and production upto, so once you've started, it's problably better to continue. Though this, of course, is situational.
There would seem to be 2 basic choices for hippus;-
1) Pure horse;- which, as the first line in Slowcar's post below points out, I believe, is impractical. You are limiting yourself for the sake of a concept, which can lose you a war.
2) Combined arms;- It can be said, and has been proven, that it is the fusion of tanks, mechanised infantry, and yes, Stuka dive bombers, that make blitz possible. I'm not gonna disagree. What I'm seeking to do, in FFH terms, is to substitute these roles, or develop tactics and methods when I can't.
The first glaring problem we need to address, particularly with a raider, but to a lesser extent any civ, is the ability for horses to out-run their covering defenders. If we charge in, hit and pillage, we are dead the next turn. If we resort to pop-out tactics, we limit our range, and our speed of advance to the speed of the slowest unit, which is simply too slow.
Secondly, when talking about high mobility stacks, we are also limited in the options for supporting troops, as Slowcar points out, there are no high mobility catapults, and the options for mage and priest support are limited to very few. If it is the case, and I do agree here, that a high mobility stack cannot drop a 100% culture city, then we should re-define the objectives of that stack.
Thirdly, and with regard to the second point, Blitzkreig eats supply.... fuel, ammo, parts, people. If that supply fails, so does your war. Supply in FFH terms could mean healing. If we use the withdrawl tactic, we may survive the attack but are now the weakest unit in the stack, and easy pickings for their assasins. This means we do need to keep the area clear between our forward and rear lines, to allow for the almost deads to be evacuated, and replacements to be brought forward. It does therefore simulate the mechanics of supply, and without it, I feel the momentum will quickly stall.
As you can see, just from these 3 examples, there are some quite fundamental problems that need to be addressed, before the strat can be considered "effective and sustainable". We could just simply mod in the bits we want, ie make our infantry faster. There's no shortage of people around here who can do that. The point is, to use the standard FFH2 game with it's current mechanics to achieve what we want to do. Also, this is not just a simple re-hash of what we already know, there's enough threads for that. This should be an evolution, FROM what we know, into something, that when given the right cicumstances and skill, becomes very much more powerful. Without that as a goal, there's no point in doing it. It's a challenge..
As regards the multi-player aspect of concurrent turns. There will be a lot of units, and order of attack will also be very important. I think this will have to involve consecutive turns, and, personally, I wouldn't want my battle plan to be akin to drawing a large square around my units, and giving them a point in my opponents territory to go to. It maybe real-time, but call me a snob, that's not strategy.
For a test bench, my normal huge/marathon is totally useless, as it takes 3 days to get to the start point. I've been running standard/normal using arid maps, as these make large areas of open plain that cavalry thrives on. Also use "no special buildings required" as this tends to match AI troops with their current tech. My "comfort" level is emperor so I played a couple of standard runs at monarch, just to familiarise myself with Hippus mechanics, and will probably stick at Emperor to refine the strat, before I start chopping stuff out for Immortal/Diety.
For simplicity, I'll keep this thread for concepts and the next one for actual mechanics. Please feel free to PM me if you wish to have something included. Basicaly, think of a synergy between Hippus and a certain aspect of the game, and/or a method/tactic and see if it can be turned into a usable strat for blitzing. It doesn't even have to be Hippus, one other that springs to mind is Infernals.... which could be interesting.
As always feel free to agree/comment/flame.
The grand title above comes from a personal quest to find viable alternatives to the monopoly (and monotony) of the metal line, particularly when applied to multi-player. Not that I have a problem with orthodoxy, it's just it can get a little boring. Similarly, I'm not seeking to exclude metal/melee, but any progression on that line should be as a compliment to the strat rather than a requirement.
As regards a successful strategy, the criteria I use are:-
1)- It must work. Obviously. But at deeper level it must provide an effective, efficient method to achieve the end result. In this case, as this is a military strategy, that result would be judged as a conquest or domination victory.
2)- The strat must be effective both SP and MP. I think we'd all agree that the AI is not reactive enough to counter a different style of threat, so the primary test is MP. By all means play test and refine it in SP, but it can only really be measured as successful against a human opponent who is aware of it's mechanics, and still can't effectively counter.
3)- It must, given fair circumstance, be achievable at all skill levels. What's achievable at Prince/Monarch is very often impractical or wasteful at Immortal/Diety. Whatever you develop must, when stripped back to the bare bones, still intrinsicly work, even if only in a more limited capacity or specific situation.
Blitzkrieg
It's at this point that I searched the Wiki and other places for a suitable definition that didn't involve the words "Tanks", "Mechanised infantry" and "Stuka dive bombers". All of which to me describe mechanism rather than concept, and don't really feel right for FFH. Should anybody else find one, pm me and I'll insert it. In the absense, I'll go out on a limb and attempt my own.
Blitzkrieg:- The effective and sustainable projection of military power, utilising speed rather than sheer force of arms.
I included the word sustainable as I think it is the most important concept, on the basis that any idiot can charge off behind enemy lines, the hard bit is remaining a viable threat. One quote I did find when I was searching was by a Major General J.F.C Fuller, a British general, and surprisingly, one of the original proponents of the tactic, commenting on the German invasion of France and the Low Countries.
"Speed, still more speed, and always more speed was the secret.....and that demanded audacity, more audacity and always more audacity."
I like the sound of that.... and I think Tasunke would too!
Anyways, enough waffle, on with the thread and how does this translate into FFH?
Concept
Most of us, at some point, have suffered at the hands of an AI Tasunke Hippus. When you let them get going they can be frightening. The purpose of this thread, and the challenge to anyone who chooses to take it up, is to develop methods, tactics and strategies that in the hands of a human player can be truly terrifying.
In the past week, I've started along these lines, and I thought rather than develop alone and in isolation, throw it out to the community, and see what they can come up with. On the basis that a combination of ideas can be stronger than those of an individual.
I find that in most games, it's the mid game wars that tend to be the more decisive ones, as the outcomes of these tend to dictate what and when the end game will be. By this time, most civs have settled, barbs are less, if non-existant, economies have grown to comfortably support larger armies and the politics are starting to break into clear factions. Generally, around this time the first tier 3 units start to appear. This, I would suggest, is the time where we need to be looking, before the widespread use of advanced magic, yet developed enough to sustain large numbers of troops on foreign soil.
Edit Feb20
Just like comedy, timing is the secret, there's no point in blitzing a 3 city civ in the first 200 turns:- They don't have the land space to justify the cost and their cottages are not abundant or developed enough to be worth the effort. Similarly, if you leave it too late, their options to counter an offensive increase, and you now have to spend more resources and techs developing measures to their counter-measures. Blitzkreig will take up lots of units. You are after all, capturing land rather than cities, which means you will need more units, not just as replacements, but also to fill and hold the spaces. It's the sort of thing that you ramp your economy and production upto, so once you've started, it's problably better to continue. Though this, of course, is situational.
There would seem to be 2 basic choices for hippus;-
1) Pure horse;- which, as the first line in Slowcar's post below points out, I believe, is impractical. You are limiting yourself for the sake of a concept, which can lose you a war.
2) Combined arms;- It can be said, and has been proven, that it is the fusion of tanks, mechanised infantry, and yes, Stuka dive bombers, that make blitz possible. I'm not gonna disagree. What I'm seeking to do, in FFH terms, is to substitute these roles, or develop tactics and methods when I can't.
The first glaring problem we need to address, particularly with a raider, but to a lesser extent any civ, is the ability for horses to out-run their covering defenders. If we charge in, hit and pillage, we are dead the next turn. If we resort to pop-out tactics, we limit our range, and our speed of advance to the speed of the slowest unit, which is simply too slow.
Secondly, when talking about high mobility stacks, we are also limited in the options for supporting troops, as Slowcar points out, there are no high mobility catapults, and the options for mage and priest support are limited to very few. If it is the case, and I do agree here, that a high mobility stack cannot drop a 100% culture city, then we should re-define the objectives of that stack.
Thirdly, and with regard to the second point, Blitzkreig eats supply.... fuel, ammo, parts, people. If that supply fails, so does your war. Supply in FFH terms could mean healing. If we use the withdrawl tactic, we may survive the attack but are now the weakest unit in the stack, and easy pickings for their assasins. This means we do need to keep the area clear between our forward and rear lines, to allow for the almost deads to be evacuated, and replacements to be brought forward. It does therefore simulate the mechanics of supply, and without it, I feel the momentum will quickly stall.
As you can see, just from these 3 examples, there are some quite fundamental problems that need to be addressed, before the strat can be considered "effective and sustainable". We could just simply mod in the bits we want, ie make our infantry faster. There's no shortage of people around here who can do that. The point is, to use the standard FFH2 game with it's current mechanics to achieve what we want to do. Also, this is not just a simple re-hash of what we already know, there's enough threads for that. This should be an evolution, FROM what we know, into something, that when given the right cicumstances and skill, becomes very much more powerful. Without that as a goal, there's no point in doing it. It's a challenge..
As regards the multi-player aspect of concurrent turns. There will be a lot of units, and order of attack will also be very important. I think this will have to involve consecutive turns, and, personally, I wouldn't want my battle plan to be akin to drawing a large square around my units, and giving them a point in my opponents territory to go to. It maybe real-time, but call me a snob, that's not strategy.
For a test bench, my normal huge/marathon is totally useless, as it takes 3 days to get to the start point. I've been running standard/normal using arid maps, as these make large areas of open plain that cavalry thrives on. Also use "no special buildings required" as this tends to match AI troops with their current tech. My "comfort" level is emperor so I played a couple of standard runs at monarch, just to familiarise myself with Hippus mechanics, and will probably stick at Emperor to refine the strat, before I start chopping stuff out for Immortal/Diety.
For simplicity, I'll keep this thread for concepts and the next one for actual mechanics. Please feel free to PM me if you wish to have something included. Basicaly, think of a synergy between Hippus and a certain aspect of the game, and/or a method/tactic and see if it can be turned into a usable strat for blitzing. It doesn't even have to be Hippus, one other that springs to mind is Infernals.... which could be interesting.
As always feel free to agree/comment/flame.
3 
can use metal and their death doesn't cost WW. The 2 techs are cheaper than archer/stirrups, provide an equivalent unit and open the path to Taxation and eventually Engineering. Also I think you're gonna need all the gold you can get, hence festivals.
. This made it then really difficult to know where the threats were and caused me quite significant problems later.....so protect your radar.
