How Strong are Cuirassier Attacks?

[earthy]

So I don't really understand how cuirassier attacks are as strong as everyone says they are. Every time I try I fail miserably, which makes me think I'm approaching it incorrectly. 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.

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.

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?

It just seems like whenever I'm ahead in tech and try to Cuir rush I always just end up throwing my tech lead away, which has led me lately into a repetitive and kind of boring rifleman/cannon infantry/cannon or infantry/artillery push.

 

[lymond]

earthy - I have an injured paw so typing is hard at the moment, but i requested your post be moved to S&T. I think you will get a lot of help there. Ha..this is not the quickest of answers, but I will say that there is much more to the equation than just the curs themselves.

 

[Donald Duck1]

So I don't really understand how cuirassier attacks are as strong as everyone says they are. Every time I try I fail miserably, which makes me think I'm approaching it incorrectly. 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.

I use spies to revolt tough cities, although that is not very reliable as spies can be captured and revolt cost can go up, and/or sacrifice a few suicide cuirs. I'm experimenting on monarch, small pangea maps, and usually the AI is only at or around macemen when the rush starts. I'm whipping the cuirs, mostly.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Broke out this discussion from Quick Questions and Answers.

 

[Gumbolt]

Earthy. Firstly what level are you playing at?

For immortal. You ideally want to be at cuirs circa 1000ad. Any later and the Ai will have pikes. I tend to find they get gunpowder 1250ad or so. On a good game I normally have edu,lib,nationalism and MT before the AI. This will mean skipping some techs. For instance I normally trade for engineering after I have cuirs. I think your problems are with your early game. As it seems you are getting to cuirs too late. That or you have too few cities by the time you reach cuirs. I will often start a game with an HA rush and then do cuirs later. I might use a great merchant gold to upgrade these units.

For promotions I normally do combat for 10% strength. You can add 25% against melee to help against pike.

If you plan things well your key cities will have forges and barracks. Maybe stables if you have time. Other than that libraries and granaries? Then whip away. If your whipping cities you want barracks/stables in food cities. The idea is to whip most cities 2-3 pop every 4-5 turns pending on growth. The exceptions to this are your capital and HE city. With a decent Heroic Epic city you can build cuirs in 1-2 turns.

I normally keep bureaucracy. Theocracy is good if you have the right religion. +2xp is nice. You can also settle 1-2 great generals after you have a medic unit. You want a level 4 unit out of the blocks. So +40% strength.

In terms of Replacement parts. Always think which Ai is best to take out first, If I can see an AI is a big threat I might take down the fast teching AI first. You could also try bribing Ai to war with each other. You should not need artilery for a good Cuirs rush.

Look at your great people generation. You should be running an 8 turn golden age with the focus to run 6-8 scientists in your best food cities. Ideally creating 3 scientists and maybe a GM. 2 to bulb edu, 1 to bulb lib, GM to upgrade units from trade route.

Build 15-20 cuirs and attack an AI. Then just keep whipping everywhere till you over run map and Ai capitulate.

 

[Deathcrush]

well in my games usually at least one or two of the ai have pikes - they just love to tech that.
My strategy though is attack first the nearest neighbour to not loose time. Grab more land , grab a holy city and /or a city with wonders -> take the capitulation. It depends of course, but in many games it happens to me that the best techer in the other side of the map and I absolutely don't want to travel 10-15 whatever turns to reach to them! So take the first victim vassal him/her. Then attack the next - create chokepoints so the vassal can help you with the next ai and you dont have to defend every city. so yeah, even though the second or third victim have pikes it is not big deal when you have big army.
Also i like to build horse arches or phants to upgrade with the money from GM.
I have had a very interesting and hard game in my first monarch attempt. I vassaled Hannibal to use his citites to get closer to Elizabeth- then i DoWed to Isabella who was also close, used him to attack the best defended cities i just killed random reinforsments and pillaged and prepared my army for the next attack. and after a few turns she was willing to capitulate. Then quick I declared to Elizabeth who was wonder whoring and teching quietly the whole game. Should i say it didn't end well for her. And after taking 2 of her cities - here it is - bam - domination win.
It may not be the best date nor the best score but i am happy with my win and it was fun and interesting game. So maybe not everything is dates and scores and constantly competing with this person or that youtuber - ooh man, give me a break - it's not good. Not for me. And its not fun! And if it's not fun it's not worth it.

 

[lymond]

One point I would make here is that we need to understand more about earthy's game. What difficulty and settings played? How comfortable or experienced? Part of being successful in any attack late or early is understanding many basic mechanics that don't necessarily deal directly with war.

For example, since we don't have much info on you or the game, you may be asking about curs but playing a mid to low difficulty and around 1900AD or something...ha. Everything is relative. You may not understand whipping or how to build an economy or how to generate and use great people.

Ideally, if I'm going to Lib something it would be MT itself and Music is something I often go for early for the free Great Artist for a golden age...not always but it is a good approach.


Anyway, earthy may have a lot to learn - more than just slamming curs into cities.

 

[pigswill]

Cuir rush does depend on how early you can get a decent stack of them. As lymond said its more about the early game and getting yourself into a position where you can get miltrad and gunpowder before the AIs hit engineering for pikes. A minor point is that you seem to be going for music after lib>nat, maybe going for music a bit earlier might help, maybe after CS, gives a bit more time to get Great Scientists for bulbing education, and a better chance of free GA for your first GA.

 

[Fippy]

Pikes are not stopping Cuirs cold thou, actually they are very popular for deity breakouts and AIs (almost) always have Pikes.
But as with most things, AIs rarely build enuf of them

 

[drewisfat]

Yeah Fippy beat me to it. So what if the AI has pikes? The AI is not programmed to think, oh my he's building 3 dozen cuirs, I should respond with 3 dozen pikes. It just builds a balanced amount of pikes. They're comparable to something the AI already likely has access to: promoted longbows in hill cities. So I'm more than fine with the AI getting engineering because this means it will also be cranking out trebs (cuir fodder) and castles (obsolete).

You're going to take some losses on initial attacks, whether it's against longbows, pikes or maces. That's the nature of defender's advantage.The thing is it's quite rare that any of those units win their second battles while hurt, so if you brought enough cuirs, the end result isn't terribly hammer inefficient. Mustketmen aren't a huge upgrade to longbows. Cuirs aren't shut down til rifles which are a long ways off. That combined with their speed is why they're super popular. You can often win more than 1 war with them.

 

[earthy]

so after reading through the comments(which were very helpful btw) I think my problem is more in the early-mid game, and especially great people generation. I've never really been able to time great people with specific techs or points in the game to use them to their full potential. I just kind of get them when I get them without really planning. most of the time I don't even think about them honestly. also based on the 1000AD date Gumbolt mentioned, I can safely say I'm getting Cuirs way too late.

as for difficulty, i'm playing on monarch so I'm definitely not the best player. Usually I play Fractal or Pangaea with NHNE at normal speed. I just moved up to monarch as well, but I've had pretty decent success in my first four or five games.

If anyone is bored and wants to look at a few saves I can upload some from my current game. This one was pretty rough for me as I only had 3 cities to start and I was boxed in by Alexander. I had to replay it three times before I could successfully break out and kill him because that's something I'm really not used to. I can't remember exactly my thought process at certain points as I haven't had much time to play since last weekend, but I'll try my best to describe what was going on. I also wasn't really planning a Cuir attack in this game until around the time of my last save.

@425BC: I believe my tech path was AH->Mining->HBR->Hunting->Archery. About to head to war after whipping out 11 HA's. I think I have a decent amount for the time being, so I'm trying to work a few good commerce tiles and take turns with the food for regrowth. after I take Sparta + Athens, I will call a ceasefire to give reinforcements time to arrive and my wounded HA's time to heal.I'm pretty behind right now because I was working the lake tiles quite a bit to make sure I could get the necessary techs at a reasonable date.

@100AD: I've taken all but one of Alexander's cities and my slider is down to 10% I start cottaging every river tile that I can. I have a lot of coastal cities and some nice trade routes I've already scouted, so I tech towards currency. I also notice no one has grabbed the GLH and I have some forest around Sparta(or at least I thought I did) so I go for that hoping it can help my economy bounce back. I grab lighthouses where I can so I can switch to some better commerce tiles and eventually up my slider. Athens is building a swordsman because I'm too greedy to let Survayarman get a triple food city at Cuman. Ultimately that swordsman will be useless because I forgot Athens doesn't have a barracks. my first GG becomes a medic even though I don't really need one.

@350AD: I can't recall the exact trades, but I traded up to Monotheism, and I think I traded Survayarman currency for monarchy. I also switched into Judaism for happiness and relations.. I traded for math, and will soon make a double switch into HR/OR and self tech calendar. I'm whipping/chopping out markets where I can to help my economy, and heading towards CoL so I can build courthouses and make some trades. I should probably be building way more workers here, and I'm already regretting not razing Argos. my stack heals up on the hill near Cuman so I can make sure Survayarman doesn't sneak in and take it.

@840AD I get my first great scientist that I can use to bulb philosophy. not planned at all, but handy. I was pretty tired on the last 10-15 turns and not making great decisions, so I believe I was teching towards lib when I should have been going MC. after courthouses my cities will have nothing to do. I'm also building an aqueduct in Utrecht that I don't really need, and some questionable courthouses. I'm using my extra HA's to fogbust the eastern part of my land, and planning to eventually settle 1W of the horse for a double food/production city. I went for compass thinking that I would grab some harbors and really up my economy, but I haven't built any so I suppose that was a poor move. it also looks like I could renegotiate trades with Survayarman for more GPT. This is where I stopped on Sunday, and over the week I've been thinking about how I might be in a good position for a Cuir attack since I have a decent tech lead and some veteran HA's.


Incase anyone is interested, I also uploaded the original save. I realize it'll be hard to give specific pointers since my entire game will probably look pretty bad to the experienced players here, but any tips would be appreciated. Apologies for this essay of a post.

 

[pigswill]

Decent job of building a HA stack but where it seems to be going adrift is you're not building libraries early enough. Not only do they boost research they also provide GS pts for later bulbs. You hadn't started any in your AD100 save.
Your cities always have something to build: building wealth can do more for your economy than building markets or courthouses

 

[Gumbolt]

425bc. With so much commerce on those lakes 425bc seems late here for HA rush. Biggest issue seems to be a lack of food. With a lighthouse those lakes provide 3f3C each. Also lack of happiness.

I really don't like self teching IW. All the Ai will eventually go for this and trade it. Alphabet was a better gamble. With marble maybe beeline Aesth route. Mids would of been really useful here for happiness. That or monarchy.

Nothing wrong with an HA rush. The land nearby was not great. Not sure you needed the 3 stables.

Maybe you could of grabbed the Sparta or barb spot before the AI? Utrecht could of been settled further south.

You did very limited scouting early on here too.

100ad - As Pigswill says. For 100ad you have no libraries at all. Some cities lincluding your capital lack granaries. Always try to get the basic buildings up. When whipping HA if overflow is over 20 and won't get near to completing a build use it for granaries and libraries.

350ad. I generally don't build markets. Only really useful for happiness. In this instance you wanted Granaries and libraries. Main builds for cities are Granary, library and maybe forge. Barracks for military production cities.

850ad - Courthouses are not worth it unless costs are 8-10+ a turn. Same advice before about markets. Build wealth if you have no useful builds. Note AI trade gold for resources per turn. This is worth 7 GPT. Plus Aztecs would of traded for a health resource too.

Also use binary research. E.g 100% science or 100% tax.

Overall more focus and cut out builds you don't need.

 

[earthy]

I'm not sure how I could have got them any earlier. Maybe I'm going a bit light on the whipping or working the wrong tiles? I worked the lake until the first worker was out + the cow was improved. Maybe I should have worked the food on the first border pop and improved the rice first? It would have been 3 less beakers per turn but faster growth. I was kind of under the impression that tech rate would be the big limiting factor for HA rush, but I'm not really an expert on them.

re:Sparta, my first try I did this. I settled my second city 1SW of the rice I believe. The issue I encountered there was my first target was now Athens, and to get there I had to go through two forest tiles. I also had less productions tiles to share with the capital, so it made it harder to put a few hammers into the HA's before whipping. On that try I got destroyed trying to attack into spearmen at Athens.

About the libraries, when do I want them by ideally? And am I getting them to hire scientists, or just for the boost in science? It sounds like maybe I should be working scientists instead of coast tiles?

Pyramids unfortunately got taken pretty early. I could have probably taken them on 3-4 cities, but I don't think I could have taken them and still pulled off a HA rush. Not sure if I should have just grabbed them and gone for a construction attack or something else instead maybe.

Regarding wealth/markets/courthouses, is it a short term vs long term thing or is building wealth just better in general? I feel like building wealth to keep my economy afloat puts me into a corner, because as soon as I want to start whipping down the road(lets say for cuirassiers), my economy will tank when I stop building wealth. Would I not still fare better in the long run if I build market/courthouse and then start on wealth?

Also I've heard that there's a rounding error that favors the binary research, but is it really big enough to make a difference?

thank you for the tips btw everyone. I've got a lot to think about here, and might even start this one over from T0 to see what differences these suggestions could make.

 

[AcaMetis]

About the libraries, when do I want them by ideally? And am I getting them to hire scientists, or just for the boost in science? It sounds like maybe I should be working scientists instead of coast tiles?

Ideally two turns after you discover Writing (one to invest hammers, one to whip), but realistically it's a question of how quickly you can afford to build them (do you need more settlers/workers first, for instance) and how well a city can actually use one. Production cities, cities that don't have enough food to work many tiles/specialists, can skip libraries.

Kind of both. Your capitol benefits most from the +25% , since the Palace gives 8 on top of whatever your tiles generate, but other cities can easily benefit from it as well. Hiring scientists is a way for cities to do something useful without needing a worker to build more improvements or waste food/money growing into unhappiness. And of course Great Scientists can be used to bulb techs or build an Academy, or even settle them in some situations.

Depends on whether you need your cities to grow. Coast can be a cheap, relatively worthwhile tile to work if you've got nothing better to grow on (especially if FIN), but it's not ideal. +3/+2 can easily be worth more than +4 from a plains hill, though. Even if it's a bit of an investment to get something out of the GPP.

Regarding wealth/markets/courthouses, is it a short term vs long term thing or is building wealth just better in general? I feel like building wealth to keep my economy afloat puts me into a corner, because as soon as I want to start whipping down the road(lets say for cuirassiers), my economy will tank when I stop building wealth. Would I not still fare better in the long run if I build market/courthouse and then start on wealth?

Short/long term thing. Long story less long: It takes too long for Markets/Courthouses to pay back for themselves, especially when you take into account the fact that Wealth gets you gold now as opposed to in however many turns, over the next 100+ turns, by which point the gold you got from Wealth will already be paying dividends. Something else to keep in mind is that cities that have been whipped into the ground can't work many tiles (produces little , so markets don't do much) and will be very small, resulting in naturally low maintenance costs (courthouses don't do much). Also, once you have your breakout tech you don't need any more techs at that point, so if you have to turn down your research slider, so be it. You can make a comeback with the cities you conquer once they come online, if necessary.

If you're really concerned about going completely bankrupt I'd suggest dedicating one city to the task of being an "economic spine", as I call it - take your richest city, and instead of whipping units out of it whip a Bank/Market/Grocer, and afterwards only have it slowly hammer out cheap city defenders, units which can relieve your actual army units left behind to guard conquered cities that probably stopped being at the front of the war long ago. It's not something you can necessarily afford to do, especially on higher difficulties where a few extra turns (or units) can make a big difference, but one healthy city set up like that should prevent you from running into a financial deficit at 100% unless you're rapidly taking over a gigantic, massive overseas colony. And in that case you can use the trick of whipping courthouses and building Forbidden Palace in your established cities, and relocating your (relatively very cheap) Palace to your colony to negate the colonial maintenance, since both continents will have a palace on them.

Also I've heard that there's a rounding error that favors the binary research, but is it really big enough to make a difference?

Binary research itself, not necessarily, but beyond the rounding error it has it's own benefits that make it a good habit to have. For instance, if you bank gold after you research Writing and run your slider again after you build libraries you can convert the banked gold into more beakers than if you just ran your slider at ~80% the entire time. Another benefit is that it gives you more time to consider what to go for, since any turn you're not running 100% slider is a turn you're not committing to a tech. Having gold on hand can also buy you out of a few unfortunate random events, if you play with events on.

 

[Deathcrush]

I'm n

About the libraries, when do I want them by ideally? And am I getting them to hire scientists, or just for the boost in science? It sounds like maybe I should be working scientists instead of coast tiles?

As soon as you tech writing. In the capitol first there is no need even to build them everywhere but in one or 2 more cities is a good idea. of course if you have the time and have something to chop you can build them everywhere. Grow the capitol to the happy cap and run two great scientists. As for the second question - well, both - to boost and to hire.

Later you can do some funky stuff with pacifism and caste system that will boost you pretty well. but lets not go there at this point- just worth mentioning.
First you just need to get used to the idea that libraries are the most important building after granaries.

 

[Gumbolt]

I did a quick run through to HA. I had a stack ready to attack by 825bc. Second city clams/cows. My third city was the cow/clams closer to Khmer.. Too good to pass up. Which meant I needed sailing on top of HBR/Archery and hunting, As all cities were coastal they all had horse. Thankfully Alex did not settle the hill. My stack caught his 2x settlers just before I declared. He has one city left that will likely will be razed. Too close to Khmer.

I was ready to start whipping at 1120bc.
3rd city settled 1960bc.
Settled a 4th city for horse. (Literally when all techs were ready.)
One city had a stable.

Need to whip granaries now. Then libraries. Also hook up the gold with a new city..

To build stack I would whip cities at size 4 under 20 hammers. I prechopped forest near our capital. I had 2 workers. Some cities I whipped if over 20 hammers. Pending on time for regrowth.

Overall war should be wrapped up by 650bc. I built 9 HA. He had no spears. The longer you leave a war the higher chance they could have copper/iron.

At this stage I could build 4-5 more HA and attack another AI. If Chinese build mids that would be great! That or get granaries and libraries up for economy.

 

[pigswill]

I also had a go at this, built second city to the west and third city on horses. Built/whipped granary/LH/rax and stables in all three before starting on HAs in 875bc. Got a stack of 13 HAs by 525bc and wiped out Alex by 200bc. Went for alphabet and picked up IW in trade. Played up to 1ad recovering economy.

 

[earthy]

So I retried last night, was ready about 100 years earliers, and ended up facing off against 2 swordsman, 2 spearman, a phalanx, and two archers in his capital with 60% cultural def. Very rough. I retried once more and was lucky that he split his defenses, but my timing still wasn't that great and I took heavy losses. Afterwards building wealth + running scientists felt amazing though. The tech rate was something I'm not used to for that point in the game. I was gearing up towards lib, but I ran into some problems when the shrine Alexander had in his capital popped me a GP instead of a GS. When I finally did get my GS, he wanted to bulb compass .

After seeing Gumbolt's times I had to give it another go today, and I really focused on growth instead of commerce. I also nabbed the clam/cow city near khmer as my 3rd city and did horses for fourth., but I got greedy and went for the rice in the BFC @ khmer city, leaving me with 7 jungle tiles. probably a mistake. I must say I would never have considered settling there before.. I would have thought the distance would wreak havoc on my economy, but it's really not bad.

This time I was ready to start whipping around 960BC, I had a stack of 10 with mostly double upgrades ready around 650BC(I wanted to go only 1 stable, but I didn't tech fast enough this time and so stables seemed like the only thing worth building in 2 more cities), and I even had two archers following along to relieve the HA's of defensive duties. I'm about to wipe out the banana city near khmer @450BC.

I'm still consistently about 200 years behind Gumbolt right from the get go, so I think I might need to start taking a harder look at my early tile management and build order. I definitely found my worker having nothing to do for a turn a few times, and didn't get a workboat to my 2nd city clams nearly fast enough.

Overall though I'm feeling a lot better about how this one turned out. This war is ending when my last was just starting, so that's a pretty big improvement in my books. Also I only had to fight archers this time, which really helped mitigate losses. Now if I could just figure out how these bulb paths work!

 

[Gumbolt]

From what you have written above it sounds like you have made big improvements already. The rest is about tweaking play. Are you building the 2 settlers in a row?

To bulb liberalism you do need to tech compass first and avoid machinery.

I focused on food then ran some commerce lake tiles if I was using unimproved tiles. 2f3c lakes are nice.

960bc is a big improvement. I never really build archers. I would prefer an extra HA. The idea is to kill off the HA. So archers should not be needed.

For workboat you either want a chop or a whip? Or overflow from a whip.I can't remember my exact build process for these.

200 years is only 5 turns.