Hippus

[TravellingHat]

I agree, it's valid to destroy your own roads. After all, throughout history defenders have blown up their own bridges etc purely to deny passage to an invader. However, I can live with it

 

[onedreamer]

It is a perfectly valid strategical move to pillage your own roads to prevent the enemy taking advantage of them (aka 'scorched earth'). I can see no logical reason why you shouldn't be able to do it.

I'm not saying it would't, in real life, but in the game...:

It would make one of the most hardest promotions to achieve in Civ4 (Commando) and a not too easy promotion to achieve in FFH2 (Commando) useless, if you could pillage your own roads.

If the promotion was a level 1 promo then I would agree to a certain extent though.

 

[CyberChrist]

I'm not saying it would't, in real life, but in the game...:

Sorry, but I fail to spot any logical argument in this (or even an argument at all).

 

[skallben]

Not sure what to suggest to cut down on the micromanagement. Ideally, you'd want to halt your borders at convenient choke points, but that depends entirely on the map you get. Without natural choke points, you could perhaps build forts at suitable points along your borders (e.g. defensible hills, on roads) to at least slow them down. This requires some micromanagement, but unless borders shift dramatically, it should be something you can just set up and forget.

The thing is, the entire point of commando is that they are damned quick and therefore hard to intercept. I'm aware my forts suggestion is far from a solution, but I think the situation is this: you CAN'T stop them, so putting some speed bumps in is the best compromise.

By the way, if you do go with border forts, expect to lose them. Their task is not to keep the invader out, but to give you sufficient warning to mobilise your defenders.

What you really need is your own rapid reaction force, promoted anti-cavalry. But even if you have such a force (easier with some civs than others), you still need to be able to deploy it before the buggers have pillaged you back to the stone age!

Yeah I agree with that and also I'm aware my lack of horses in all but recently of this game have fueled me in this cause. I could see going allout on Cavalry be a counter move, in fact the only way to stop them if they go deep into your empire. Still this requires horses and is situational, no resource should be "required" IMO, they should add a significant bonus as they do in most situations.

It takes a big stack of horse units to take a city defended by archers or melee units of equivalent level. One strategy would be to put decent defenses in all your cities (not just the border ones), ignore his pillaging, and send your own big stacks to attack his cities. Another would be to build some mobile units of your own (recon or horse, or even mobility I melee), and attempt to engage him in your territory (where you don't need the commando promotion to match him). After all, he still has to come near your cities to do any harm, no matter how many move he has !

Of course, playing Lanun, you are about the worst possible civ to stop him on land. Why not use your ships to land a big stack of units inside his empire and do some havoc of your own ?

Yeah especially as I lacked horses most of the game. Having defenders all around is a really expansive move aswell, which I am doing and therefor severly crippling my offensive capabilities. Notice how Hippus does that only by being my neighbors and us havin chilly relations, in MP this would be a requirement to do unless you know and trust the guy. What you suggest works, also probably as a deterrant too as the AI can't get a easy city in a 1 turn attack (AI seem to like that in my games). However, again I feel having to put your whole Civ in defensive stance just because you got a militaristic and ultra-mobile neighbor is kinda heavy.

Remember that now you can pillage your pirate cove and have a water tile. So put some efforts, build Great Chinease Wa... Channel and you are safe.

I think that is pretty much a bug and I don't like exploits. Fun suggestion though

It would make one of the most hardest promotions to achieve in Civ4 (Commando) and a not too easy promotion to achieve in FFH2 (Commando) useless, if you could pillage your own roads.

Har to acheive as raider? Even if a trait needs to give some advantages that doesnt mean there should be no possible way to counter it if it's a strong advantage.

 

[onedreamer]

Har to acheive as raider? Even if a trait needs to give some advantages that doesnt mean there should be no possible way to counter it if it's a strong advantage.

Obvously not, heh -_-"
Like someone else said Commando is too strong to give right away. Perfectly fine. But giving players the ability to pillage their own roads wouldn't fix it, it would break it. The best way is to do like in Vanilla, make it very hard to achieve. Maybe it could need Combat IV and Drill IV. And obviously none should start with it, the Raiders trait can retain the +1xp and more gold from pillage, and something else to compensate for Commando.

 

[skallben]

Skallben;
Your point is being addressed with band-aid advice, but the problem really doesn’t feel like a mechanics issue to me and most of the folks here would seem to agree.

The Mounted line are slightly weaker than the melee line of the same tier (and metals). This means that against melee or archery units defending they should be at a disadvantage when attempting to crack cities. No bombardment and no collateral damage, so they should simply have to outnumber the defenders, probably by a fair number. Now with a high withdraw rate that huge stack can keep running for a while, but mounted units don't get march, and I don't think they can have medic. Some spell effects could help but they have to stop eventually. So, now we have a huge stack of mounted units with move five or six, they can get in 15 or 20 moves, but then they are stuck in your territory; or they can move in 7 or 10, attack and flee home. After attacking a city they should have some wounded, and now they have no defense bonus and the weaker defense str to boot. A small stack of from another city, or some defensive cavalry (always try to have a cavalry to "send in") or some fireballs should mince up that stack of mounted units. So the movement rate doesn't sound very unbalanced to me. They can act best as "raiders" really, go in, kill some workers, destroy a couple farms, or maybe sack a poorly defended border town, and then run to safety in their own lands.

But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.

I don't see alot of people stating they either agree or disagree with me here, just constructive discussion.

Gonna quote a dude posting before you

When you use the Hippus Stable you also get a free Horselord promotion (+1 movement). This means you seriously cover some ground (a pangaea continent of a normal size map in less than 3 moves.
With friendly neighbouring civs that grant open borders you can just about invade from all directions at once.

Also, this guy doesn't mention most Hippus horsemen get Mobility also, that's 4 movement.

You miss the fact that if you got a hole in your fronts, Hippus horsemen can, depending on your map-size, empire-size and their location and number of Open Border agreements access the most of your cities. It's not unusual that in my setting (Big and Small/Large/Emperor or Immortal) that they often access about 15 cities of mine, often more. Now say they got a stack of 5 well-trained horsemen at your borders and you need to defend against that in every of your city they can access...Say you don't have Longbowmen or Iron yet either...Say they got instead 30 Horsemen. In worst scenario, say they converted to Ashen Veil and like destruction and decide to raze your cities. Fireballs btw is not something everyone has and even so, I would imagine most Arcane units not being in your inlands.

And no, I do not think you are necessarily "wrong". We both state subjective opinions based on our experiences and we both got some valid points

 

[skallben]

Obvously not, heh -_-"
Like someone else said Commando is too strong to give right away. Perfectly fine. But giving players the ability to pillage their own roads wouldn't fix it, it would break it. The best way is to do like in Vanilla, make it very hard to achieve. Maybe it could need Combat IV and Drill IV. And obviously none should start with it, the Raiders trait can retain the +1xp and more gold from pillage, and something else to compensate for Commando.

Nah I don't agree it would break Raider promotion. Perhaps if you play Single Play vs. AI and is completely obsessed about it and spend half play-time micro-managing roads...But well most things could be broken with that effort. Spam some boats and...OMG Lanun's Black Wind hero is useless

Thing is, Tasunke ( I learned to spell his name yay ) probably have alot of different directions to approach you and it's not easy to cover all that.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't think that being able to pillage your own roads (and maybe also other improvements) would break anything. It would be quite appropriate, and would itself include the penalties of losing some commerce and your connection to resources. Of course, pillaging your own land would give you no gold, and would use up a unit's movement. I also think that it would be appropriate for pillaging in your own lands caused unhappiness in your cities (at least in the nearest city)

 

[galahadba]

I agree that comando is much strong to give for free to every unit of a civ...
not just to the hipus, if you confront the dark elves with their recon units you get the same problem... 2 moviment, with roads is 4 or 6 moviments... 6 moviments on your land is Veeerryyy much, impedes you from use workers, and depending on the form of your land they have acess to many of your cities making impossible to get a good defense...

So if you are a warmonger that expands your territory, no problem you will probably get a bigger enoth territory to get your main cities you of range, and in a war will alread have enoth units to make a ofensive war... if you are a builder... well to have a decent defense you will have to defend EVERY of your cities as if it is a frontier one and pay tons of gold per turn for it, as you cannot guess when they will atack (being a buildr you are always in the chance of being sneaked as you almost always is "weak" compared to the ai) ,and if they atack they can choose any of you cities to it...

 

[skallben]

I agree that comando is much strong to give for free to every unit of a civ...
not just to the hipus, if you confront the dark elves with their recon units you get the same problem... 2 moviment, with roads is 4 or 6 moviments... 6 moviments on your land is Veeerryyy much, impedes you from use workers, and depending on the form of your land they have acess to many of your cities making impossible to get a good defense...

So if you are a warmonger that expands your territory, no problem you will probably get a bigger enoth territory to get your main cities you of range, and in a war will alread have enoth units to make a ofensive war... if you are a builder... well to have a decent defense you will have to defend EVERY of your cities as if it is a frontier one and pay tons of gold per turn for it, as you cannot guess when they will atack (being a buildr you are always in the chance of being sneaked as you almost always is "weak" compared to the ai) ,and if they atack they can choose any of you cities to it...

I agree partly, Raider trait is strong with all feats. combined. The reason why it applies more to Hippus is the gey free Horses from Palace, Hippus stables grant +1 Movement and since Hippus thus aim for mounted units it's also easy to smack on a Mobility promotion. In theory you can add Mobility II and Haste aswell but that is more rare.

 

[CyberChrist]

... since Hippus thus aim for mounted units it's also easy to smack on a Mobility promotion.

Perhaps part of the solution would be to move the Mobility promotion to Stirrups? Imho then the promotion would also make more sense if located there.

 

[NeoParn]

You miss the fact that if you got a hole in your fronts, Hippus horsemen can, depending on your map-size, empire-size and their location and number of Open Border agreements access the most of your cities. It's not unusual that in my setting (Big and Small/Large/Emperor or Immortal) that they often access about 15 cities of mine, often more. Now say they got a stack of 5 well-trained horsemen at your borders and you need to defend against that in every of your city they can access...Say you don't have Longbowmen or Iron yet either...Say they got instead 30 Horsemen. In worst scenario, say they converted to Ashen Veil and like destruction and decide to raze your cities. Fireballs btw is not something everyone has and even so, I would imagine most Arcane units not being in your inlands.

Valid points, all. I realize I may be a more defensive player than most, (I like to have mages with FB, or firebows, in each city and try to keep a few stacks of cavalry in forts near my borders), particularly when I see that I'm facing the Hippus, or the elven leader with raider (Alamancher?). I also realize that it is possible to get rolled out of nowhere by a shrewd Hippus opponent, because what they can do is brutal, but it's what the Roman cavalry (without stirrups), Arabian mamluks, the Mongolian horse archers, the French knights, or the US Cavalry did. Fast mounted units are supposed to be dangerous in that way.

As far as worst case scenarios go, having the Devalo start right next to you, with easy access to copper, and some goodie huts to give them extra Beast men can make for a much worse scenario than the one you described, (its happened to me a few times) but I don't feel that Chardaron should not have Aggressive or a bonus to city attack, that’s his "schtick", just like the Hippus run all around your base killing your doosz.

Now, having said all that I think that a free Commando promo is a little overly strong on a cavalry centered civ, +1 FS and enhanced movement is a big advantage on units that already have high movement and some first strikes. I'd honestly prefer to see the Horse lord promotion give (some or all) of these benefits instead of the trait. I also think Commando is somewhat poorly names, as it seems to me that a Command would rather move through un-developed lands and avoid detection (ignore terrain movement costs), rather than march double time down someone else's road network, but that's not the point.

And no, I do not think you are necessarily "wrong". We both state subjective opinions based on our experiences and we both got some valid points

Sometimes I can't help sounding like an ass on message boards, thanks for not taking it that way.

 

[skallben]

Perhaps part of the solution would be to move the Mobility promotion to Stirrups? Imho then the promotion would also make more sense if located there.

Moving it could be a solution but I don't know where to tbh. It's pretty good currently as it is since most players will want Trade to trade techs so most will get Mobility quite early on. I don't think moving it further into the Cavalry line should be a good idea since it means you hurt melee-players even more.

Valid points, all. I realize I may be a more defensive player than most, (I like to have mages with FB, or firebows, in each city and try to keep a few stacks of cavalry in forts near my borders), particularly when I see that I'm facing the Hippus, or the elven leader with raider (Alamancher?). I also realize that it is possible to get rolled out of nowhere by a shrewd Hippus opponent, because what they can do is brutal, but it's what the Roman cavalry (without stirrups), Arabian mamluks, the Mongolian horse archers, the French knights, or the US Cavalry did. Fast mounted units are supposed to be dangerous in that way.

As far as worst case scenarios go, having the Devalo start right next to you, with easy access to copper, and some goodie huts to give them extra Beast men can make for a much worse scenario than the one you described, (its happened to me a few times) but I don't feel that Chardaron should not have Aggressive or a bonus to city attack, that’s his "schtick", just like the Hippus run all around your base killing your doosz.

Now, having said all that I think that a free Commando promo is a little overly strong on a cavalry centered civ, +1 FS and enhanced movement is a big advantage on units that already have high movement and some first strikes. I'd honestly prefer to see the Horse lord promotion give (some or all) of these benefits instead of the trait. I also think Commando is somewhat poorly names, as it seems to me that a Command would rather move through un-developed lands and avoid detection (ignore terrain movement costs), rather than march double time down someone else's road network, but that's not the point.



Sometimes I can't help sounding like an ass on message boards, thanks for not taking it that way.

I agree on most what you say except the current strength of Hippus

Addendum:
I have now got further into my battles with Hippus and I only get even more frustrated. One movement 6, Combat quite-alot Horse Archer tried to get my capital (waaaaay away from the borders), now the AI sucks at these opportunities because they often send single units and they often use up half their movement in their own lands...Imagine when the Dev's improve the AI

Also, the biggest source of frustration by far. "X unit has fled from combat with your Inquisitor". Apparantly this is tied to withdrawal rate and attacking units inside my borders moves them to the borders, else they just get moved one square away from my attacker. Some units flees several times per turn making them next to impossible to kill and next time they come back, they are even more promoted

 

[xienwolf]

Commando trait is meant to show that they can move quickly through "unknown" terrain. And I am no history buff, but I imagine that it is typical for them to follow roads, even if they do not stay on them, in hopes of making some more ambushes on supply trains, and to have the road show them the next town instead of aimlessly wandering the forests hoping to pop out on the right location.

 

[Basil II]

That new Sun II spell will lock all those horsemen down, making them very easy to massacre. I thought it was kinda a crappy spell until I actually used it in combat... Its even better when you have your own horse...Paralyze the invading stack, then chip away at it with your own horse with withdrawal ability and you can eliminate even very large stacks with minimal casualties.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Use Druids or Nature Archmages to create a couple of rows of forests on your borders. Don't build roads throught the forest, just use internal trade. Use forest stealth to ambush the Hippus. With the elves you have the advantage of movement.

 

[Mesix]

I don't think that the problem is Commando promotion itself, or eevn that units can start with it. I think that the problem is that mounted units are getting the Commando promotion. To me, a commando unit is a highly trained squad of troops that can move through difficult or unknown terrain, and keep up with mounted units on foot. In a fantasy motif, I picture commando units being highly trained recon units like rangers.

If the Raiders trait is overpowered, maybe the free Commando promotion should be limited to recon units (and maybe melee units too).

If the Commando promotion is so valuable, maybe it should be available through a different promotion path as well. Having Commando require Guerilla I and Woodsman I (and maybe Combat III as well) promotions would be thematic and also limit the promotion to specialized units.

 

[CyberChrist]

Moving it could be a solution but I don't know where to tbh. It's pretty good currently as it is since most players will want Trade to trade techs so most will get Mobility quite early on. I don't think moving it further into the Cavalry line should be a good idea since it means you hurt melee-players even more.

Although I am using a heavily altered tech tree of my own design myself(Horseback Riding is not required for Trade among others) then I see your point.

A different solution could be to reduce the initial movement of the Horseman, Chariot, War Chariot and War Elephant classtype units by 1 - but leaving all other mounted units with their current speed. I always found these to be too fast to begin with anyway.

Alternately then Mobility I could be made unavailable to Mounted units and a new Mounted units only promotion (Equestrianism - or whatever) giving +1 movement could be added to Stirrups - and then make Mobility II require either Mobility I or Equestrianism. Melee units would loose nothing and Mounted units would regain the same movement options as before - after Stirrups had been researched.

I don't think that the problem is Commando promotion itself, or eevn that units can start with it. I think that the problem is that mounted units are getting the Commando promotion.
...maybe the free Commando promotion should be limited to recon units (and maybe melee units too).
...maybe it should be available through a different promotion path as well. Having Commando require Guerilla I and Woodsman I (and maybe Combat III as well) promotions would be thematic and also limit the promotion to specialized units.

Removing the free Commando promotion for Mounted units from the Raider trait and adding a "and (Guerilla I or Woodsman I)" requirement to it as well makes sense to me.
However, other than that I don't think the Commando promotion need any further restrictions/modifications.

 

[onedreamer]

Nah I don't agree it would break Raider promotion. Perhaps if you play Single Play vs. AI and is completely obsessed about it and spend half play-time micro-managing roads...But well most things could be broken with that effort. Spam some boats and...OMG Lanun's Black Wind hero is useless

Thing is, Tasunke ( I learned to spell his name yay ) probably have alot of different directions to approach you and it's not easy to cover all that.

?

All you have to do is cut all roads in the tile next to his borders. So that he loses 1 ore more movements. After that... Cavalry = weak defense. The problem in Civ4 is always initiative.

 

[skallben]

?

All you have to do is cut all roads in the tile next to his borders. So that he loses 1 ore more movements. After that... Cavalry = weak defense.

That can be quite the project. First off you need to be at war, thus they will have advantage until you are. You need to enter Hippus terrioty each time you capture a city to get the roads under your control and when you enter Hippus territory you get swarmed badly in most cases because the massive movement they got. Add all the other Civs bordering you they got Open Borders with and where yo ucannot pillage without declaring war. So unless you want to sacrifice units for each time you pillage something you need to move small stacks in. This might work on smaller maps but on Large+ it is just not a good solution, it takes soooo much time to keep microing the roads all the time. And when you forget one tiny little road, the consequences are insane, Movement 6 Cavalry runs off to pillage/take some weakly defended city on the other side of your empire.

I think personally that mounted units should not be able to get Commando, it is just too damn good and I think you would realize if you played against a human player. Maybe give mounted units decreased movement cost so that Hills/Forest/Jungle is only 1 Movement to compensate. Or the old "treat all tiles as road", keep them movin two squares per movement even after Engineering and drop Initial movement from 3 to 2 instead.

The problem in Civ4 is always initiative.

Lost you there.