How to deal with Cho-Ko-Nu

[6K Man]

Here's the situation. I'm Tokugawa on the Earth map, Civ4 vanilla. Doing fairly well after a brief war to incapacitate one of the Khans, and another brief war that netted me Beijing and another minor city from Qi.

I would like to continue running down Qi, because he has some nice fat cities that would look good flying my flag. And, coincidentally, I have a bunch of heavily promoted Swordsmen and Axeman from my last war, a handful of Catapults, and Samurai are just now coming online. So when Asoka offered me some loot to join him in crushing Qi, I didn't hesitate.

Trouble is, Qi now has his Chokuno up and running. I had never really liked those the time I played Qi, and I now realize the reason I had never liked them is because I was using them wrong. With their 50% bonus vs Melee and collateral damage ability, I have little faith in the ability of my Swordsmen or Samurai to knock them out (I've peeked at the odds and they are staggeringly bad).

I don't think I'm in any danger of losing cities in the near term - Beijing is well defended (captured with Chichen Itza). However, I don't want to make peace, as Beijing is culturally threatened and even if it doesn't flip, it'll wear down to nothing unless it stops losing tiles to China. So I'm trying to get an idea of how to deal with the Chokuno. Do I:

- build a mess of Catapults, and a handful of Longbows with Cover (Chokuno ARE classed as archer units, right?) to escort them. Sure, I'll lose a lot of Cats, but they're cheap.

- Build Samurai with Cover promotions and hope they hold up (8*1.25= 10 vs. 6*1.5=9).

- wait for Knights (I'm about 6 turns from Guilds), which, with Combat II, should hold up pretty well vs almost anything other than Pikes.

OR should I do something else?

Ideas, constructive comments and advice appreciated.

 

[oyzar]

horse units are the natural counter to cho-no-kus so elephants or knights would be good. Horse archers are ok too. LB-s With cover as stack defenders to escort your meele units and cats to take units would prolly work unless your playing bts or with betterai.

 

[Brota]

"Never fight a land war in Asia"









Anyways, bee-line for Gunpower and spam Musketmen?

In real history, crossbow has served China very well since the Han dynasty. The only 2 things that beat them were Genghis Khan's Horse-Archer on crack at end of the Song dynasty and The Redcoats during the 1st Opium War.

 

[6K Man]

"Never fight a land war in Asia"

That would be great advice if I wasn't playing an Asian civ!

Anyways, bee-line for Gunpower and spam Musketmen?

Gunpowder isn't too far off... but I'm hesitant to wait much longer.

 

[6K Man]

horse units are the natural counter to cho-no-kus so elephants or knights would be good. Horse archers are ok too. LB-s With cover as stack defenders to escort your meele units and cats to take units would prolly work unless your playing bts or with betterai.

Thanks. I thought Horse Archers would just be ok - 6 STR vs 6 STR? Or is there a bonus in there that I'm forgetting?

I have a couple of Medic Chariots that I could upgrade, but I don't really want to have them defending, anyway. So Knights it is (no Ivory access).

 

[thresh74]

Horse Archers is immune to first strike, which Cho-Ko-Nu has two. By giving them combat promotion, horse archer should has slight edge over Cho-Ko-Nu. Knight is also immune to first strike.

Another choice is to built the crossbow with cover promotion, served as stack defender against both meele unit and Cho-Ko-Nu.

 

[gettingfat]

"Never fight a land war in Asia"

Anyways, bee-line for Gunpower and spam Musketmen?

In real history, crossbow has served China very well since the Han dynasty. The only 2 things that beat them were Genghis Khan's Horse-Archer on crack at end of the Song dynasty and The Redcoats during the 1st Opium War.

In fact, it's not Song's army (and hence their cross-bowmen) lost, it's the highly corrupted state and the "surrenderistic" mentality of the Song gov that killed themselves.

Similar thing on the opium war. Qing's ruler used up most of the military funding for their navy to build a palace (the result is their navy were using faked cannon balls etc, what a slap in the face to the civ that invented gunpowder).

well.....

 

[Gnarfflinger]

I have to echo the Cover Crossbow that someone mentioned. AS a protective leader, your guy will get Drill I and CG I already. Add Cover and Drill II, that's 2-3 first strikes of your own.

I also like the idea of having knights, but I wouldn't wait.

A Medic II Spear or Pike at the bottom of the stack would also work for healing after the Collateral damage.

After you get Guilds, then get Gunpowder. Muskets, especially with Combat I, CG I and Drill I will be truly nasty...

 

[namliaM]

1 Medic catapult, more CR and Combat Catapults and Drill 3 Xbows for the win !

 

[kniteowl]

remember that Mounted unit can't get the Cover Promotion so it's a choice between the +25% vs archers or immune to first strikes that you could use to defend your stack from Cho-ku-nus.

I'd personally choose to use a Longbow or Croosbow to defend against Cho-ku-nus because the first strikes of both units would cancel each other out and I'd have the advantage of Cover, also remember that Toku is Protective so your only one Promo away from Cover.

 

[gettingfat]

remember that Mounted unit can't get the Cover Promotion so it's a choice between the +25% vs archers or immune to first strikes that you could use to defend your stack from Cho-ku-nus.

I'd personally choose to use a Longbow or Croosbow to defend against Cho-ku-nus because the first strikes of both units would cancel each other out and I'd have the advantage of Cover, also remember that Toku is Protective so your only one Promo away from Cover.

To be precise, you can only cancel out some of the CKN's FS. Say a drill III CKN will have 3-6 FS and an unpromoted Toku protective longbow will have 1-2 FS, so the CKN will still gain 2-4 FS vs this particular longbow.

But archery units are the way to go vs CKN, at least CKN have no substantial advantage over them. But the key is still to attack the CKN when they are not in forest or on hill tiles, and avoid them attacking your stack. I always think it's the combination of collaterals and high FS number, not these two by themselves, that make CKN truly dangerous, as a FS-based unit is only dangerous when the opponent has been weakened (in CKN's case, by the collateral). 1 CKN can be beaten by any one non-melee unit, but a stack of 8-10 CKN will beat a stack of 8-10 of any medieval units on any given day.

 

[cabert]

IMHO a stack of catapults with a few non melee units (HA are fine, LB are better, CBs even better because they also provided anti melee protection) should be enough.
disrupt his iron, and you won't see any new chokos

 

[Say_my_name]

Knights are most viable, imho. I always try to kill the Chus before they have a chance to attack my stack, to avoid their colleteral damage.

 

[JimT]

Knights and (if they are in a city) trebs for attacking them. Longbow will be best to defend. As mentioned take a medic.
If attacking a city use catapults to weaken the defenders then use trebs once they get 50% odds (which shouldn't take too long).

Gunpowder will lead to the chokos obsoletion but as you say you don't want to wait.

 

[ohjames]

Knights. If you don't have the forces right now to overwhelm those Cho-ko-nus, just swarm your army all over Qi's land and pillage like crazy; the hit to his economy and the boost to your treasury should mean that he's still on Cho-ko-nus and devoid of Pikemen when your Knights come online.

Spamming Cats/Trebs is another, albeit inefficient, possibility.

 

[6K Man]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

In the end, I did a little bit of everything - I needed time to build new units (Catapults and Longbowmen, especially) and learned Guilds in the interim. Other than losing a fortified Samurai to a Chokonu (and subsequently destroying the Chokonu), nothing much happened in the interim. I did blow some cash upgrading some Archers to Longbows.

And as it turned out, once I was prepared, everything went as advertised (Qi was perhaps a bit bloodied by his war with Asoka - Asoka naturally made peace 2 turns before I attacked ). I split my forces - a stack (about 8 units) of Swordmen, Samurai, a Longbow, and a Spearman headed to a smaller city that was on flat ground with no cultural defenses. This was an attempt to eliminate attacks from my flank. Another stack - 2 Knights, 2 Longbows, a Spear and 7 Catapults - moved onto a hill next to Chengdu, my main objective, to begin bombardment.

The first stack was almost unopposed - I think I lost one unit, possibly two, in taking out the small Chinese city (defended by a Longbow, 2 Elephants and 2 Catapults). The second stack quickly knocked Chengdu's defenses down to 0%, and fended off attacks by 2 Chokuno (thank you, Cover 1 Longbows!) and 2 Catapults. By the time the remainder of my army had arrived, additional Knights and Catapults had been built and the result, though messy (4 Catapults lost and 3 others miraculously survived by withdrawing) was a foregone conclusion. After Chengdu, Shanghai and Guangzhou (both size 16) fell comparatively easily, along with China's northern outpost, Xian. I accepted cash for peace (the unrest in those size 16 cities was going to kill me) and look to be set for the immediate future.

 

[kniteowl]

To be precise, you can only cancel out some of the CKN's FS. Say a drill III CKN will have 3-6 FS and an unpromoted Toku protective longbow will have 1-2 FS, so the CKN will still gain 2-4 FS vs this particular longbow.

I'd think it'd be more then 1-2 FS becuase Toku is also protective and will get drill I Free.

I was talking in the general sense of things, it's a bit unfair to compare a veteran unit to a fresh one. In most Cases I'd assume that both Archery Units are more or less the same level.

Although it's obvious that the veteran unit will have the advantage.

 

[gettingfat]

I'd think it'd be more then 1-2 FS becuase Toku is also protective and will get drill I Free.

I was talking in the general sense of things, it's a bit unfair to compare a veteran unit to a fresh one. In most Cases I'd assume that both Archery Units are more or less the same level.

Although it's obvious that the veteran unit will have the advantage.

When I said Toku's "protective" longbow the drill I is counted already.

This is only an example. The reason I used it is that most people don't go for the drill line if they build longbows. Say for me I will go for combat I/cover and combat I/shock most of the time, with some CG longbows thrown in. This is because the benefit of drill promotions is not obvious until you hit Drill III and IV. People go for Drill IV CKN because they are used as attackers (the collateral keep many of them survived) and by doing so experience comes in quick. By the end of first war I usually have a team of Drill III and IV veteran survivors already. It's rare to use your Drill II longbow to attack (unless I successfully pull out the feudalism slingshot and the longbows will have strength advantage over archers and axes).

In addition CKN has an additional bonus baseline FS even you compare unpromoted CKN to an unpromoted Toku's longbow.

 

[Martinus]

At least you are not playing BtS - frankly I think that in BtS China is simply impossible to conquer during the middle ages, unless for some reason they are horribly backward. Not only both of their leaders are Protective, due to siege weapon nerf you can no longer just build a horde of trebs to crack them in.

 

[6K Man]

At least you are not playing BtS - frankly I think that in BtS China is simply impossible to conquer during the middle ages, unless for some reason they are horribly backward. Not only both of their leaders are Protective, due to siege weapon nerf you can no longer just build a horde of trebs to crack them in.

The fact that I'm playing Vanilla hasn't stopped anyone from giving me advice based around the Protective trait...

In any event, I may be buying BtS soon, but I plan on keeping a vanilla version of Civ4 on my PC until I'm sure I like all the changes.