How do you play with the Hittites?

[DrCron]

After winning on HK several times (with only strong or ok cultures in the early game, experimenting only later when I'm already ahead), I decided to try starting with only weak cultures and see how it goes.

On my 1st try I didn't even play the classical era (I want to see how it goes with Romans or Goth) since my ancient era game with the Hittites was so bad. The terrain was bad, sure, but that happens to me every now and then since I find re-rolling the starting position a bit boring. But their ED is so bad it doesn't have any utility, and it took me forever to get to their EU (which doesn't even look very strong).

Has anyone got a good start with them? The only idea I have so far is doing some form of neolithic rush to compensate for their early weakness. And then... maybe ignore all of their unique staff and play them as some sort of vanilla culture?

 

[Cherenkov]

Their EQ is absolute garbage so I stay away from them. Their LT is good but Mycenaean is even better. The Gigir EU is useless for sieges but the suppression is powerful. The Mycenaean promochoi is better IMHO.

I don't know what the devs were thinking with the EQ. No stats at all, just a spawn point. You can do that with a garrison. Would be a much better culture if the EQ was buffed. Make it a constructible with stats.

 

[Siptah]

I don't know what the devs were thinking with the EQ. No stats at all, just a spawn point. You can do that with a garrison. Would be a much better culture if the EQ was buffed. Make it a constructible with stats.

Not saying that the Awari is good, but you can not do the same with a garrison, as an awari works as a spawn point without being attached to a city.
Here's my idea how to change it from ~ a month ago:

The idea of the awari is ok, and it is also useful in most games. But it is not enough, obviously. To stay true to the general idea but turning its power up to 11, I think it should be possible to produce units in non-attached awari. Obviously, the influence or money buyout should not work, and units should cost pop and industry just as they would in cities. This would be very strong in the ancient era, while being ok in the classical, and then rather useless due to the escalating unit cost. The strategic possibilities that would be offered by building your army in 3-4 awari at the frontline, while your cities are busy with other things are quite nice though. And it would give the additional decision of attaching the awari at some point to get better cities and safer territories in exchange for the additional unit building possibilities.

As to OP: I don't think there is a go-to-strategy that makes them really shine. I've chosen them there and then when I had horses and copper nearby and then rushed to the EU and won some battles with ease. There is no point in choosing them if you don't want to fight immediately, as their strength is in mobility and raw fighting. They are held back by the chariots being chariots that can't move through walls though, which slows everything down so much. Overall, I prefer the Assyrians for a mobile early war/plundering civ.

 

[Cherenkov]

Not saying that the Awari is good, but you can not do the same with a garrison, as an awari works as a spawn point without being attached to a city.

Yea but typically I spread my territories closer and closer to the enemy attaching as I go. Now I just lay down a garrison at an attached outpost right at their front door to spawn in a stack. Meanwhile I am building useful EQ at my attached outposts. Sure the Awari allows you to spawn at an unattached outpost but I find the use of this limited. Maybe you found a juicy territory far from a city near an enemy but now the influence costs of claiming it are going to be extremely high.

Also I am usually either creating a second city and/or stealing from independent cities inching you even closer to your enemy and making for a cheap 1st outpost attachment close to them.

Hittites like Goth need a redesign IMHO.

 

[Taefin]

Haha glad you asked

Step 1. Click end turn 5 times, you want the combat to be exciting right?

Step 2. Get to ancient era ASAP.

Step 3. Form a city of 3 territories building mostly production. You want 70-90 production to really crank out units. This is only 175 influence, so don’t start with pottery, get it when it’s a 1-turn build.

Step 4. After 1-2 makers quarters put all workers on science. Gigir require a lot of techs, but this can be achieved quickly enough.

Step 5. Before unlocking Gigir build 5-8 infantry.

Step 6. Build 4 Gigir.

Step 7. At some point while building the Gigir, declare war, start/keep skirmishing, hurry and unlock organized warfare and hit with your full force the turn you unlock it.

Step 8. Find the next AI and conquer them before classical. Even in early classical, charge and suppression let you hit swords hard enough.

Step 9. Go classical yourself and start building classical EQ in your newly conquered cities, or go Huns and keep rampaging. Their LT stack beautifully and the hordes trivialize city defenses while the +2 Gigir now hit classical units hard enough and allow hordes to mop up.

 

[Cherenkov]

I will have to give that a try, Taefin. Maybe later tonight

 

[Cherenkov]

Ok, here is my assessment after giving the Hittites a serious try yesterday. They get selected by the AI pretty fast around T10 at the latest so I used a previous save I had on a normal size HK difficulty map that met the requirements to go ancient at T7 for testing.

First off, the great thing about Hittites: Their Gigir EU is so much better than I imagined. Probably my favorite ancient unit now up there with the Egypt and Mycenaean EU. Very powerful in the open especially with a height advantage to go charging into the enemy. Their innate combat strength + LT + Suppression is very powerful. They are still useful during a city siege because the AI is dumb enough to come outside the walls to attack them . Or just park them next to the walls to protect your archers and the AI will still attack the Gigir. They are also perfect for claiming territory and bullying the enemy in the process.

But the truly awful thing about the Hittites is that their EQ is even worse than I thought. When reading the description I thought the Awari could be used as a spawn point anywhere on the map but this is not true. It can only be used as a spawn point if it is in a territory bordering a city. This was a huge disappointment for me. Since attaching your first territory is just 30 influence you can just build a garrison and spawn in units that way and meanwhile your attached outpost is contributing food and production to your city as opposed to the Awari. If this EQ was changed to be used as a spawn point from more than one territory away it would really sweeten this civ to a point of being top tier. As it stands the Mycenaean EQ is 100x better as is the Egyptians and Nubians and just about any other civ.

I had a pretty good game with the Hittites but nowhere as good as a start that I've had with Egypt, Nubia, Harappans and especially Mycenaean. A simple change to the EQ to allow spawns anywhere would really make this civ close to top tier. You could pull off some crazy stunts like that as long as you can afford the influence.

 

[Taefin]

Glad you enjoyed the Gigir! Honestly I didn’t even realize the EQ wasn’t just an automatic outpost upgrade. I find I don’t struggle with unit spawn location as Hittites since the last units I build have 6 movement and roads. Making it an outpost upgrade like Huns would at least give some marginal utility, but I haven’t though much what I’d want it to do. Never really missed having an EQ as them honestly.

 

[Siptah]

While the EQ is indeed a big problem, I’m also not a fan of the LT. +1 isn‘t very impactful, not even in antiquity. And it gets outshined by almost every other CS bonus in the game, so as the Game goes on, it becomes more and more invisible. Other cultures (not all) have LT that are either really good in their era or scale well throughout the game, so this is also something that holds the Hittites back imo.

 

[Taefin]

While the EQ is indeed a big problem, I’m also not a fan of the LT. +1 isn‘t very impactful, not even in antiquity. And it gets outshined by almost every other CS bonus in the game, so as the Game goes on, it becomes more and more invisible. Other cultures (not all) have LT that are either really good in their era or scale well throughout the game, so this is also something that holds the Hittites back imo.

I suppose, but +1 is +1, and once you find another way to get 25 XP and no longer need to buy units, this becomes better than the Mycenaean’s.

I feel this scales comparably to Phoenicians, and better than Zhou and Babylon whose LT become sufficiently negligible by Early Modern.

But mostly it plays well with their game of major conquest through Early classical where it can help you pick up +3 or +4 CS against an AI who may have only +2. And at least when fighting with equal or inferior tech later, I find I appreciate every point I can get.