How Strong are Cuirassier Attacks?

[earthy]

Honestly my starts are so inconsistent that I find it hard to remember exactly what I did. I went back and tried it again to try to refresh my memory before responding, but I think I'm already doing things differently. I believe that after the first worker popped, I started on a settler while improving the cow. After the cow was improved, I switched to a warrior while growing to size 2, worker improves the rice. At size 2, I switched back to settler. After the rice was improved, I still had I think 8 turns left for BW, so I improved a farm below the rice that Utrecht could use. This left me in an awkward spot with my worker, because he had 3 turns to spare and only needed 1.Today I noticed that if I work the lake tiles for a few turns on settler #1, I can immediately start chopping after the farm. Not sure if it's worthwhile since it delays the first settler a few turns.

After the settler popped, I believe I built a second worker in 6 turns, Utrecht grew to size 2 on the farm while the worker chopped out a workboat and then improved the cow. I think Utrecht put a few hammers into a barracks while growing to size 3, and then the worker chopped Utrecht's last forest into a settler for the cow/clams city near khmer. Worker then went ahead of the settler to begin chopping for a workboat there .Looking at this again today I'm not quite sure how it worked out, because the settler takes 4 turns after the chop to finish.. edit: maybe I actually chopped the workboat from the capital with worker#2? I remember it being delayed..

In the meantime Amsterdam put hammers into a barracks while worker2 chopped, and I switched back into a settler whenever the chop was done. After I think two chops, I began improving farms for the horse city.

 

[Gumbolt]

I would grow capital to size 2 after worker. Then work cow and rice. You want to grow your capital. Working settler at size 1 does not sound good. Once you start the settler you usually complete it unless you have some hammer overflow planned.
So worker 15T
Warrior to size 2.
Then settler. Or 2 in a row.
3rd option is to farm the marble. It's worth 2 hammers a turn. Is that worth 1 extra pop? Not so sure. Growth to size 3 would be too slow? I prefer the lakes for commerce here.

Worker should be built in second city. Capital pumps out 2 settlers. You could even start the workboat while growing to size 2.

In terms of techs. You could go sailing before HBR? This proves 3 commerce from trade routes a bit earlier.

There are so many combinations here.

If you can get Amsterdam to size 5 with 3 lakes that is 9 extra commerce a turn. This is where you start to make a real dent in HBR. Same for your second city. At size 3 it can work lakes too.

In any case I would probably start a new game.

I am sure others will micro this much better than me. I do enough in civ 4 to beat immortal. Not really tried Deity properly.

 

[pigswill]

Earthy it's also worth remembering that RNG varies with every restart, sometimes you'll get forest growth, Alex could found a religion (happened to me) or build a wonder (also happened to me) or none of those could happen. Even if you play the same moves you'll get a slightly different game.

 

[ArchGhost]

First of all, Isn't the idea that you want to really abuse the 2 movement on the cuirassiers to attack valuable cities before they can be reinforced? If that's the case, how do you deal with cultural defense + fortified units? Longbows on hills with city defense + fortified bonus, pikemen, etc, all mess me up if I don't have siege units.

Spoiler :

Cuirs strongest advantage is they ignore walls (as "kinda" gunpowder units) and are also immune to first strikes. This allows them to completely overpower the most common defender they'll be up against, the Longbow, when you get them out fast enough. Ignoring walls + castles also help them against Pikes, robbing a big +100% modifier away from them, and the high base power of Cuirs compared to Pikes or Muskets makes their promotions "count" more. Combat 2 or even Formation on a Pike is multiplying only 6 base power, while Combat 2 or Shock for Cuirs is multiplying 12. In numbers, this means once Cuirs punch through a few top defenders they tend to cascade the whole rest of the stack. This can make it worthwhile to make a few retreat-orientated Flanking 2 cuirs just for the purpose of injuring the top defenders.

Honestly, they don't have much problem dealing with defenders below Muskets unless the leader is PRO or their culture is very high (+80%). In these cases, a couple GGs to triple to promote several cuirs or Spy revolts are an option to help punch through; once you break an AI's strongest defense point they tend to collapse though.
Promote Shock against Pikes without a lot of defense, but for ultra strong PRO longbows on hills or heavily entrenched Pikes with tons of culture, mix in a few Flanking 2 + any-Combat-you-can get Cuirs to soften things up.

It's this strength to blow through combined with the mobility of any mounted unit that allow them to roll over an opponent so fast they can't stabilize even if they have a big scary stack or nearly 20 cities.

Also how do you deal with the tech path to music? I often find that even if I'm ahead in tech when I grab lib and take nationalism, by the time I get to music/military tradition and build up an army my target will already ave engineering, gunpowder, and sometimes even be close to replaceable parts.. This is especially true if I have to slow tech that path so I can save up some money for upgrading horse archers. I could trade for some of those techs maybe, but it's rare that anyone has teched past aesthetics at that point.

Spoiler :

On maps that I generally just want to go Cuirs (non-astro map, have found horse, iron is available one way or another, lack of close opponents/copper/not playing leader with good UU) I tend to go for the Aes>Alpha trade, go next to Currency, and then the tech path is kind of open as your needs are mostly taken care of, having come out of the initial phase of the game and being able to recover your economy from REX and/or early war. So at this point I commonly go Literature and try to win the Music race anyway, as it sets up a nice golden age to farm scientists later. You can also get a lot of trade value out of Aes+Literature now that you can trade for gold and most Ais don't priotize those techs, and Music likewise is good trade fodder even if you don't win the race for the Artist and you NEED it anyway for Cuirs. If you have Marble, you can build fail-gold into GreatLib/Sistine too, and Literature is required for both Epics, so yeah, I like to go fairly early to the Music path overall for cuirs personally.

Then how onto Liberalism and all that? Great Scientist bulbs. Behind all this I will be farming, or setting up to farm (all at once in the GA golden age possibly with National Epic) enough scientists to bulb Philo, and put at least one bulb into Education and Lib each. If I get more in time, typically I'll double bulb Education to disincentivize AIs from trying to tech it as early anyway. Still more extra GS? Save them for Chemistry, SciMeth, etc.

Something I picked up from watching other players is that you may not want to Lib Nationalism if you don't have to even though it's roughly as expensive as MilTrad. Self-teching it early (even before Music path, if you want), trading back for other things (mostly the things you need to unblock the Lib bulb, like Metal Casting/Compass) and using Lib for Military Trad seems to work better for an attack; Lib Nationalism seems to be a play for catching up to more advanced AI fields by trading the highly valued Nationalism around. You can set yourself up to do this with some of that fail-gold or trade gold from earlier (or even a GM after Caste) trade/self-tech CoL, get ahold of Philo (bulb it) and then tech through CS and Nationalism. Start early enough and even a tech time into the teens of turns for Nationalism won't matter much, as you are setting up the run through Education/Lib with scientists behind this.

So a shorter version of this, my tech path may typically be this on a Cuir map:
-worker techs
-BW
-Writing
-Aes
-Alpha
-trade-backs for Poly, Monarchy, Meditation
-Currency
-Lit
-Music
-CoL to unlock Philo bulb and CS; can also trade Drama around for gold/help to get CoL instead
-Philo (bulb)
-CS
-Nationalism
-Paper. Trade maps for gold.
-Edu (1 or 2 bulb)
-1 bulb into Lib. Start infrastructure, can now trade for Machinery.
-complete trade-backs for Metal Casting, Compass, Calendar if not done already
-finish Lib, take Military Trad
-Gunpowder. Whip infrastructure and Cuirs non-stop. Kill a fool or two.
-moving forward, pick up Feudalism/Guilds and Engineering through trade, can then work up the Rifling/Communism/Economics paths as you see fit.

I'm also curious how many promotions I should be getting. I probably over-value bureaucracy so I never really want to switch into vassalage, and I rarely tech the religious path all the way to theocracy. That leaves me with barracks and stables, and generally I'll only build stables in a handful of cities(barracks in all production cities). Would the extra 2-4XP really change the odds that much though?

Spoiler :

2 promo cuirs are fine for most applications, and they'll quickly promote to 3rd level after some use anyway. I do Stable and Barracks in any city that will repeatedly churn Cuirs as I'm usually sitting in Nationhood and don't care to spread religion enough to bother with Theo; cites that will just whip 1-3 cuirs (islands or crappy food spots) don't bother. Stables also whip overflow into Barracks/Cuirs pretty well. That lets you take Combat 2, Medic 1, Shock, Pinch, Flanking 2, even Sentry as you see fit, on a mass scale.

Running up against tougher defenders (PRO targets, AI with lots of Muskets or Grens/Cuirs of their own) being able to muster at least a handful 3 promo Cuirs works a lot better until the rest start winning fights and getting their 3rd promo. This lets you take Combat 1 + Flanking 2, Combat 2 + Pinch, Combat 2 + Formation, etc. Formation Cuirs help a ton against other Cuirs and even a small boost like Combat 1 helps when counter promoting against anything.

Getting those 3 promo Cuirs can be done with a GG in the field (attach to a group of 4), a few settled GGs in a strong city, West Point gets you really close and pairs nicely with the HE in a strong city, etc. 3rd promos can also be earned naturally in the field by taking care to kill easy picking units, shredding stacks outside of cities, keeping your veterans alive, etc.

 

[Gumbolt]

Just to be clear you need Calendar, MC and compass before you can bulb lib.

I think ideally you want to start capitulating AI as quickly as possible and way before anyone has grenadiers/cuirs. Then it is a case of fully capitulate all AI or go for 62% or so of land. All AI land captured counts as half to land you own. So grabbing land from an AI you can fully roll over may mean you can leave a strong AI with 4-5 cities.

Some Ai if your power and land is suitably high enough could peace vassal to you.. Pends on the AI and if you are pleased or friendly towards them. I find this only easily works when you have no vassals. Albeit I have seen some players manage this on more than one AI. I never worked out how.

If I am facing grenadiers early on something has gone wrong. They will be much harder to take down.

 

[Deathcrush]

I have several games when Mansa peace vassaled to me. That little moron.
I am happy cause he is always better to be vassaled peaceful or not, but on the other hand he is so likely to vassal to anybody else. Aand in most cases i just want to kill him to stop that crazy trading, to stop him from trading with everybody! but oh well.
I was so surprised when that happened for a first time.

 

[pigswill]

Had another go from 4000bc.

Spoiler :

Tech path went AH>Min>BW>wheel>HbR>Hun>Arch (1360bc).

Settled cow/clams (2480) and horses (1800).

Initial builds: worker> war> war> WB >settler(2pop whip)> war> part-rax> settler, second city built another worker. Two workers and wheel meant a road network and major chopping, once horses were connected built a couple of chariots while waiting for stables.

Declared on Alex 1000bc (6HA,2 cha with a couple more HA queued), captured three cities and annihilated Greece 875bc (lost 3HAs at Athens but chariots finished off injured archers).

.

 

[Gumbolt]

Looking good Pigswill. Downside is you have to fight for the site SW of your land. Chances are a barb city will have spawned.

Actually The wheel is much cheaper than sailing and allows for HA to reach front line a bit quicker. Of course if you settle the distant land then sailing pays off more as you would never road that far. Getting Stoennhenge has less value for Willem.

Starting the war earlier means you avoid an AI with iron/copper. I don't think you ever needed 13 HA on your previous attempt. The value of 1-2 chariots should never be under estimated as you get them much sooner.

 

[pigswill]

Barb cities aren't a big problem if you have some leftover (promoted) HAs. In my save there were two obvious sites to be claimed: cow/clam/rice and eastern gold. By coincidence I played on up to 1ad to see how it would pan out.

Spoiler :

Not that badly but always room for improvement, grabbed both these sites, researched alph, currency, CoL, bulbed Philo, got monarchy, maths and IW in trade and done some exploration.

 

[Gumbolt]

I would of rolled over 1-2 more AI with such an early HA rush.

Perhaps you should of kept pumping out HA before Khmer reached 9 cities.

 

[pigswill]

You're probably right.

Slightly ironic that a thread about cuir rush ends up show-casing HA rush.

 

[earthy]

Thanks for all the tips guys, this is great stuff.

I never knew when to start bulbing and when to save the GS for later. Knowing Philo is a good first bulb helps a lot. Also it looks like I should probably stop self teching compass, calendar, and MC.The happiness from calendar feels too good to pass up, but I guess with good diplo I can just make some better trades. The failgold thing I'm slowly learning. Would you say that in most cases failgold is only better than wealth if you have the production multiplier for that wonder? Would IND leaders also gain more from failgold than wealth?

Also for teching, is trading back for poly/med really worth it? I always find I can only ever get 1 of those techs in a trade, and when I do I only have techs worth 400+ to trade. I don't mind doing it if it's a distant warmonger who's far behind in tech, but that's usually not the case and instead I end up self teching to priesthood(usually when they're down to 1 turn each) so I can trade for monarchy. There's also the whole WFYABTA thing, which especially makes me hesitant to trade for those techs.

WRT great people, how many GS are ideal to get to lib/cuirs? Should two be enough? I played a few short games through to the early AD's yesterday and kept running into problems getting them early enough. Often I would pop GM's from the great lighthouse or GP's from a conquered shrine/wonder. The cities I was running scientists in just couldn't keep up with the GPP those wonder cities produced(especially since GLH normally requires a good city to build, which will usually mean it has lots of food and I'll want to run scientists there later). Is Caste system the solution to this?

For whipping cuirs, do I want to whip my good production cities as well? If I have a city that's stagnated and has lets say 2 decent food resources and 25 hammers at level 9-10, would it still be worth whipping it or should it just slowbuild?

Another thing I was wondering is how much value observatories and universities have. Should they also be built in all decent commerce cities eventually? Is it worth taking a city off of building wealth to build these?

Regarding capitulation, that one I'm slowly getting the hang of although sometimes I still don't understand why AI's refuse to cap. My new favorite method of winning the game is to conquer cities, cap the AI, gift back all their cities + a few military techs, and move on with the war. Holding those cities just seems like such a bad use of troops, and culture flipping is a PITA not worth dealing with. Also I've noticed how this can have such a snowball effect. You piss someone off when capping their worst enemy so they start plotting, their neighbour gets scared and peace vassals to you, etc.

@pigswill I definitely noticed that RNG effect. One game I even had gems pop near Utrecht. Must have had some really good luck there lol. Also one game Alexander settled the barb city, once he settled on the hill near me, etc. I wouldn't have expected it to change that much. That HA rush you pulled off is also very impressive. I'm always so focused on what I have, but it seems like I should be focused more on what I have in relation to what they have. It's easy to think about how much stronger you'll be if you wait X turns, but it's a lot harder to think about how much stronger the AI will be in X turns.

Again, thanks for all the advice everyone. I've got a lot to think about once again.

 

[Deathcrush]

I never found HA much effective. yes if the ai is close and has only archers its ok. but usually they have at least bronze working and a source. I scout and when i see there is no bronze then attack. That's the secured way. otherwise it's not worth it, you loose a lot against spearmen and axes , you loose happiness and screw your cities - it's not worth it .

 

[Gumbolt]

@ Pigswill. Much better. Capturing mids and great wall is nice. When you have a big advantage always go for the kill. Especially if AI only have 3-4 cities. Why wait for them to have 9-10 with elephants wondering around. Especially if protective or creative AI.

Not ironic really. The minute Earthy uploaded his save it was clear the main reason he struggled at cuirs was due to the start. Improving an HA rush date could mean taking 10-20 turns off a cuirs start date. Especially if you avoid Ai with metal.

Bulbing with a GS is worth 1500 beakers plus 3x pop.If you had 100 pop that could be a 1800 beakers. So philosophy is actually losing you beakers. Albeit if it speeds up a golden age and helps speed up next great person then you consider the opportunity cost.

Same for early maths bulb to increase chops and speed up a construction rush with catapults. Philosophical trait does give options. First GS is normally for an academy in capital.

Poly/med etc. Sometimes you can 1 turn tech these. Most AI have a trade limit on number of techs they are willing to trade. When you reach that limit it becomes harder to trade techs with them.

If you give back all the cities it will means you will have to pretty much capitulate every AI on the map. Sometimes I may wipe out an emtire AI so I can avoid attacking the final AI. Normally I will aim to take down an Ai capital and teh surrounding cities. You only get revolts where the Ai culture hits a captured city. Remember you can also whip these captured cities for cuirs too.

Whipping is up to you. I would say 4 turns maybe not. Pends how quickly it can regrow. If it takes 7-8 turns to regrow the answer is no. If your whipping away unimproved tiles then maybe yes.

Try an emperor game on a different thread and see how you do. Or play more monarch games privately using what you have learnt here. Monarch level is not difficult once you master the basics.

 

[pigswill]

Failgold generates more cash per hammer if you've got multipliers (industrious, stone, marble etc) but has the disadvantage of delayed payback , you have to wait for an AI to build the wonder before you get anything. Building wealth is less profitable but the return is immediate. Chances are that failgold works better on higher difficulties because stronger AIs will complete wonders earlier. Having said that iirc you can also get failgold for national wonders (Moia, NE, HE etc) which are under your control.

Poly is pre-req for literature and med for philosophy so you will need them. Usually good time to acquire them is after currency when you can trade them around for a bit of gold.

This was an unusual map in that none of the AIs had easy access to copper (though there was iron around) so HA rush worked better than it normally would.

 

[Fish Man]

Had a little bit of fun with this.

Spoiler :

Who needs to build workers when you can farm them off Alex all day?

Spoiler :

Poor dude got so behind, Athens was only defended by 2 archers when he attacked. Easy pickings for about half a dozen HAs.

Spoiler :

From then on the rest of the continent met the same fate. Captured Mids, GW, and Henge from Qin...guess that's why his entire army was like 7 archers. My 1AD situation is looking good - the only challenge here is now seeing if I can pull a sub-t250 space win despite being quite a bit behind on tech milestones (normally at around 1AD I'd be finishing education and on my way to libbing communism if that's my goal).

Spoiler :

And some cuir-rushing milestones/tips so my post is at least a bit relevant: aim for no later than 1000AD attack date with about 2 dozen units and you'll easily crush any monarch-emperor AI, yes even Monty with his big stack - regardless of pikes (which are pretty easily dealt with shock anyways).

Once you have cuir tech, whip, mercilessly. Stacking up whip anger is a good thing; in fact I encourage you to 2-3 pop whip once every 3-4 turns everywhere except your cap and HE city (though exceptions apply as always, for example a high-food cap but low-commerce cap where the whipping yield is multiplied by bureau and a decent food spot for HE so you can overflow and 2 pop whip 2 cuirs a time basically). It's the only way you'll build up an overwhelming force in such short notice without twiddling your fingers while the rest of the world catches up.

 

[earthy]

Try an emperor game on a different thread and see how you do. Or play more monarch games privately using what you have learnt here. Monarch level is not difficult once you master the basics.

I'm all for a new challenge, but I still can't get a good stack of cuirs by 1000AD even with all these tips. I don't really want to move up until I can pull it off on monarch. My current save I have enough land for 5-6 good cities, 3 of which have gold, and 3 more islands with a food resource each. I don't think starts get much better than this, and yet I'm replaying it over and over and just can't get them in time =/

My last try I thought I was going to pull it off. I researched very minimal techs and was making lots of good trades, but my neighbor didn't take kindly to that fact and quickly ruined the attempt.

 

[Gumbolt]

Don't take the 1000ad date too seriously. It pends on map. Remember on Monarch level the Ai tech much slower. So trading for techs it's harder to backfill.

That being said the player techs slightly faster on Monarch level.

Maybe do a game where you play 15 turn sessions and get advice. At start make it clear you want to attempt a Cuirs rush. Maybe start thread as help me reach cuirs by 1000ad.

Gold can be useful but I often find having a hammer/commerce/no food tiles forces me to choose between growth or running the gold.

Diplomacy is quite important on Civ 4. So gifting resources for diplomacy is useful. Same for open boarder. Adopting religions is another good way to upset AI. If an Ai is pleased with you you can often beg 40-50 gold. Works each 20 + turns. Not an exact science. If they refuse once you can't ask again.

Other than that focus on your capital when you have a river/grassland capital and don't be afraid to settle helper cities to help run cottages for the capital.

I am sure you will get there.

Have you got that save on the attempt?

 

[dankok]

To answer the OP's question...

Cuirassiers are pretty great because if you make an easy beeline for them, you can create a stack of them before the AI has any effective counters. Cuirassiers do really well against Longbowmen which are AI's favorite defensive units because of high strength (12), immunity to first strikes, and ability to ignore defenses from Walls and Castles because they are a Gunpowder unit. Even if the opponent (AI is too stupid...) masses Pikemen which are technically counter units, you can still make headway. By the way, Conquistadors which you can build as Spain are pretty damn overpowered because they are Cuirassiers with +50% melee bonus which means they waste Pikemen too. Definitely one of the strongest UU's that doesn't get mentioned enough I guess because people don't play Spain.

 

[earthy]

I do have the save but im just at work right now Gumbolt. I think I realized my mistake after making that reply though. Instead of undervalueing grans and libraries like before, I went fully in the opposite direction and began focusing on them too much at the cost of expansion. Last night I tried the save once more with focus on settling all the good spots before worrying about granaries/libraries, and i managed to grab military tradition and gunpowder around 700ad. This one is looking a lot more promising. I even gifted a city to my neighbor that blocked him from working 4 of his best tiles which should delay his pikes a bit.