I've rushed the Zulu with Immortals before it's pretty easy if you deny the Zulu any metal, the difficult ones are the Mayans, with the resourceless spearman UU
How do you beat Babylonian Bowmen on a hill in a city?
- Thread starter Bast
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I've rushed the Zulu with Immortals before it's pretty easy if you deny the Zulu any metal, the difficult ones are the Mayans, with the resourceless spearman UU
sylvanllewelyn
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4 bowmen in my holy capital on a hill... held off a HUMAN PLAYER assult.
I rest my case. They're like having the protective trait on crack.
I rest my case. They're like having the protective trait on crack.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Yeah, Hammurabi is the Civ IV equivalent of a freakin' barnacle. At least early on in the game.
I like travathian's suggestion: forget an early conquering rush, just pillage him back to the stone age, then come back when you have a tech lead an a unit that will murder his stubborn Bowmen. Catapults are a must, and if you can throw in some of the units listed above (Crossbowmen, War Elephants), so much the better.
I like travathian's suggestion: forget an early conquering rush, just pillage him back to the stone age, then come back when you have a tech lead an a unit that will murder his stubborn Bowmen. Catapults are a must, and if you can throw in some of the units listed above (Crossbowmen, War Elephants), so much the better.
petey
Prince
I agree that you should try pillaging. If you can't take his cities, take everything else. Reduce his empire to rubble and take the profit while leaving him with the maintenance costs and nothing to support them with.
Then when you have City Raider Macemen and Catapults, come back and wipe out all those useless little Bowmen that he couldn't upgrade due to lack of research and money.
Then when you have City Raider Macemen and Catapults, come back and wipe out all those useless little Bowmen that he couldn't upgrade due to lack of research and money.
Leventis
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On the other side of things, when playing as the Babylonians, is there any point in rushing to bowmen? I mean, the only real situation where I think this is necessary is when there is no early copper nearby--in which case I'd just go after horses or bee-line Iron anyway. To me they seem like a bit of a dud UU in the hands of human players, but anyone care to enlighten me otherwise?
Well Offensively they're near useless, but what they're meant for "defense" they do extremely well vs melee units, they're definitely better then Protective archers vs melee units.
I mean defending vs a Mace/Prat for Example both unpromoted
Note: 50% natural City Garrison, 50% vs Melee, 25% Fortify bonus
3*2.25 = 6.75 str vs 8 str
Bowmen with CG1
3*2.45 = 7.35 str vs 8 str
Bowmen on a hill (unpromoted)
3* 2.75 = 8.25 str vs 8 str
Just a few examples of a bowmen's defensive strength vs melee units Impressive for such a dirt cheap unit ain't it?
Note: this still doesn't include first strike and cultural defense
An Unpromoted bowmen on a hill are at even odds against an Unpromoted Mace or Prat when defending a city, any normal archer would probably be free XP to those kind of high strength units.
Compare the cost of hammers between units
bowmen = 25 Hammers
Prat = 45 Hammers
Mace = 70 Hammers
This is just a generalization but you could more or less build 2 bowmen for every Prat and 3 bowmen for every Mace.
How I'd use them with an Agg/Org Leader would be to bring a few with my stack and leave them to defend recently captured cities, The Opponent will have a really hard time trying to reclaim their old territory back from you, I'd also keep a spear with the stack of defending bowmen just in case they send Mounted units up against them.
I'd more likely delay Feudalism and use Bowmen instead in the middle ages to defend against Maces because their cheaper and I could use those beakers for other worth while techs or trades.
The down side is that you'll have to pay more unit cost/expenses to maintain them but you're Organized trait should cut other expenses so you should be able to keep them.
If you decide to use them that long they will probably obsolete around the time of Knight or Muskets where their strength is higher and the melee bonus won't effect them.
But that's just theory but it is a different way to leverage their bonuses. I haven't tried them yet... but it's a nice idea.
Leventis
Warlord
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Cheers nightowl, i like the idea of delaying Feudalism (which I usually end up doing anyway, and letting the AIs trade it to me). I guess they could also be cheap protection from barbs, especially if horses are around for chariots. But yeah, this is definitely a UU made for the AI.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
I see that in several of the UUs, not to mention the Protective trait itself. All are attempts by the game designers to balance some of the more common tactics such as an early Axe/Sword rush.
Frankly, I appreciate their efforts to make the game more challenging. As continuing discussions have revealed, programming an AI that comes anywhere near the sophistication of a player is difficult, so closing windows on exploits or near-exploits is good as well.
You could paradoxically use bowmen as excellent early pillagers of your own, paired with spears later on if necessary (probably not, as you'd have pillaged their horses by then).
gettingfat
Emperor
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The opponents can simply build combat I archers to counter, although I doubt if the AIs will do that.
IMHO I don't find bowmen better than Skirmishers, even facing melee units. A vanilla bowman defending city has strength = 3+ 3 x (50 melee + 25 fortification + 50 city defence) = 6.75; A vanilla skirmisher = 4 + 4 x (25 + 50) = 7. And skirmisher has 1-2 FS instead only 1. I'd take a 33% higher base strength than a 50% bonus vs only one class of units.
First off - Greek UU is very solid. If opponent is using mounted units to pillage/annoy - you can always count on great odds when you need to take them down. Spearmen only get 70-ish percent win, but phalanx lasts longer. Which means they will get more promotions. Which means they will last even longer.
You also need to keep one or two in any offensive stack to guard against mounted units. They are so strong that your AI foe will not counterattack. With mounted units.
However they are only good versus mounted units. Never attack a city with them. Unless it only contains mounted units.
About Bowmen, they sure are an annoyance in the hands of the city-garrison-happy AI. If you face many on a hill, probably skip if you only have swordsmen. But then again, you can have the city if you really need it, just bring MORE swordsmen.
Imagine 3 on a hill. You attack with 3 swordsmen, all expecting to lose. (You might get lucky, but lets imagine not). After that round, you have 3 weakened archers. One of them is probably so strong that it can kill another sword. Of course it does. Now you are getting close to 50% odds. So you attack. And lose. But NOW you should have 3 archers so weak that not even a hostile RNG can make you lose. So you of course lose one of them 98% battles.
Rotten luck, but you killed those 3 archers with loss of 6 swordmen. Net loss of 165 hammers. But you gained an important city, with in the near future will make up for the hammers lost. Something like 20 turns, if you can make 5 hammers from it. (Divide loss by 2, since you got the hammers and he lost 'em, add 4 turns anarchy) And mabye some of the surviving swordsmen got the CR2 promotion. And mabye you actually won one of them 25% battles.
Whenever I outnumber a city defender and just decide to attack and take a hit for the team, I always get pleasantly surprised by the actual result. I expect to lose every solder of the first wave, but often one lucky bugger makes it. And then the second wave almost always wins. I tend to end up with net wins.
If you do not have enough troops to take advantage of reduced defenders, next round you'll be looking at a shiny row of well-healed CG2+ troops. And then you wait for the catapult to be invented and mass-produced.
CIV IV, as opposed to real historical battles, lets you get away with "once more into the breach"-tactics.
EDIT: Just to be clear, all those attacks I described should take place in one single combat round. Yeah. Good point.
EDIT: I mean game turn.
EDIT: And Phalanx vs. Spearmen debate, you see the difference against Horse Archers. Even the weakling Spearmen slay chariots easily. But against Horse Archers Phalanx start to show their mettle.
You also need to keep one or two in any offensive stack to guard against mounted units. They are so strong that your AI foe will not counterattack. With mounted units.
However they are only good versus mounted units. Never attack a city with them. Unless it only contains mounted units.
About Bowmen, they sure are an annoyance in the hands of the city-garrison-happy AI. If you face many on a hill, probably skip if you only have swordsmen. But then again, you can have the city if you really need it, just bring MORE swordsmen.
Imagine 3 on a hill. You attack with 3 swordsmen, all expecting to lose. (You might get lucky, but lets imagine not). After that round, you have 3 weakened archers. One of them is probably so strong that it can kill another sword. Of course it does. Now you are getting close to 50% odds. So you attack. And lose. But NOW you should have 3 archers so weak that not even a hostile RNG can make you lose. So you of course lose one of them 98% battles.
Rotten luck, but you killed those 3 archers with loss of 6 swordmen. Net loss of 165 hammers. But you gained an important city, with in the near future will make up for the hammers lost. Something like 20 turns, if you can make 5 hammers from it. (Divide loss by 2, since you got the hammers and he lost 'em, add 4 turns anarchy) And mabye some of the surviving swordsmen got the CR2 promotion. And mabye you actually won one of them 25% battles.
Whenever I outnumber a city defender and just decide to attack and take a hit for the team, I always get pleasantly surprised by the actual result. I expect to lose every solder of the first wave, but often one lucky bugger makes it. And then the second wave almost always wins. I tend to end up with net wins.
If you do not have enough troops to take advantage of reduced defenders, next round you'll be looking at a shiny row of well-healed CG2+ troops. And then you wait for the catapult to be invented and mass-produced.
CIV IV, as opposed to real historical battles, lets you get away with "once more into the breach"-tactics.
EDIT: Just to be clear, all those attacks I described should take place in one single combat round. Yeah. Good point.
EDIT: I mean game turn.
EDIT: And Phalanx vs. Spearmen debate, you see the difference against Horse Archers. Even the weakling Spearmen slay chariots easily. But against Horse Archers Phalanx start to show their mettle.
Skirms also make for good pillagers that are a pain to dislodge from forests/hills once they are done pillaging.
You're right they are pretty weak compared to Skirmishers who replace the same unit, maybe the bowmen need a buff, maybe +100 vs melee ? or free Shock Promo? lol.
Babylon is IMO one of the best civs for multiplayer because of the crazy UU. Most tactics online seem to be based on an early axe rush so a Babylonian player dedicated to building has a good chance of surviving especially against axes/swords. They can even defend against praets at good odds. The Bowman is too defensive though so that limits its overall usefulness, especially for singleplayer where you rarely get attacked before at least middle ages by which time you should have longbows anyways.
