How to play Leaders with Protective trait

[Ghpstage]

I guess it depends a bit on the playing style. I can imagine that hammers might be a more important consideration if you play differently than I do. Im not so much complaining about the later game anyway. I agree that protective at that point is fairly useful. However the problem is a different one. Ancient Archers are kind of pretty useless since there are a dozen better ways to fight early babarian attacks regardless if you clear the fog of war level up your attacking units or even build the great wall. ...
And thats exactly the reason why I consider Protective so utterly weak.

What difficulty do you play?
Do you just regenerate maps till you get metals?

-You do have a decent amount of free unit support before you need to start paying.
-The Great Wall is almost impossible to get on Emperor+ unless you practically start the game planning to build it. Even then its not guaranteed, not by a long shot.
-Warrior spawnbusting while effective, doesn't help if you have a particularly large open area like ice or an isolated island. I'd also argue warrior spawnbust will be less effective on difficulties where AIs expand slowly, the open areas are bound to create a few axemen...
-Getting metals isn't guaranteed.
-On higher levels, Immortal maybe Emperor, getting metals that aren't in your capitals BFC set up and getting a few axemen out before barbs become a threat is questionable.
-Even if you have horses, you still need something to stop the barb spears.

There are much better ways to deal with barbs, and I'd much rather not have to research archery early on, but PRO pretty much guarantees you can defend yourself against barbs. You don't even need huge numbers, just stick a few on hills and forests around your cultural borders and let the barbs suicide into them.

You can even promote those archers in creative ways! Drill 4 archers at 10XP are interesting (sounds like it would be very useful in MP!), promoting down the Guerilla line can be handy for any leaders archers (I know G2 archers are great at worker farming AIs! ).

Thus you are playing actually with one trait until at least Feudalism/Machinery. In comparision the other traits are benefical from virtually the beginning. And thats exactly the reason why I consider Protective so utterly weak.

What about AGG without early metals? Thats far more useless
You also have CRE that becomes pretty useless after a relatively short time.
You do get some benefits from PRO at least, even if you have metals, cheap, effective garrisons and the wall overflow are 2 examples.

I mean what stands in the way of building an overly huge army with a relativly undeveloped empire and than use every conquered city to do the wall chop trick to have enough money available so that you can pay army maintainance and conquer everything (that is if the map has only one continent)

To be able to do anything like this you would need a massive investment in workers, and lots of micro to chop most of the trees in every city on specific turns. This would need stone too!
The maintenance would build up to levels that would probably be unsustainable pretty quickly besides, if you chop all the trees, whip your pop into all those walls and spend all your worker turns chopping your trees, what are you going to use to build enough units to conquer everything?

I really doubt this is a realistic proposal.

 

[Zeiter]

Protective shines whenever I play large map/marathon/raging barb games. I can think of at least one instance where I almost certainly would have died if I didn't have protective archers, with their ability to access the counter promotions from the barracks upgrade.

The free city garrison I promotion can also help, but only if you make a specific effort to set yourself up to be able to use it. The key is to configure your early city placement so that, for your frontier cities, the really important resource tiles for that city are on the core side, rather than the frontier side of the city. That way, you can camp in your cities as long as your opponents/barbarians have no siege/not enough siege, and your important tiles will be safe from pillaging because the enemy will usually stop at the city and suicide itself upon it, rather than trek around it to pillage tiles. (Of course, they will pillage tiles along the way to the city if the tiles are on the frontier side). Often, this will give you more time to build/slave/bring up counter-siege and counter-forces to take out the enemy, meaning you need to keep around fewer troops in the meantime, saving on support costs, and possibly saving on how many units you build overall. (Spiritual has the same effect, by allowing you to switch into slavery or nationhood at an instant).

PRO is slightly helpful if you are running an espionage economy (castles).

Late game, by the time you have westpoint/some settled GG, being able to produce drill IV rifles/infantry/marines right off the bat is nice, marines especially because with them you don't want to have to wait in port for them to heal, so the more battles you can win unscathed, the faster you can move down along the coast (unless you set up your coastal invasion to target every coastal city on the first turn, in which case having unscathed marines is still nice because they can be unloaded into the newly-captured cities and, with their CG1/D4 power, absorb all sorts of ridiculous AI stack-'o-cavalry counter-attack (unless a lot of them have flanking II, meaning your first strikes will be useless).

 

[The_Dwarf]

What difficulty do you play?
Do you just regenerate maps till you get metals?

-You do have a decent amount of free unit support before you need to start paying.
-The Great Wall is almost impossible to get on Emperor+ unless you practically start the game planning to build it. Even then its not guaranteed, not by a long shot.
-Warrior spawnbusting while effective, doesn't help if you have a particularly large open area like ice or an isolated island. I'd also argue warrior spawnbust will be less effective on difficulties where AIs expand slowly, the open areas are bound to create a few axemen...
-Getting metals isn't guaranteed.
-On higher levels, Immortal maybe Emperor, getting metals that aren't in your capitals BFC set up and getting a few axemen out before barbs become a threat is questionable.
-Even if you have horses, you still need something to stop the barb spears.

There are much better ways to deal with barbs, and I'd much rather not have to research archery early on, but PRO pretty much guarantees you can defend yourself against barbs. You don't even need huge numbers, just stick a few on hills and forests around your cultural borders and let the barbs suicide into them.

Im normally playing on Emperor, fractal map and random leader standard settings beside sealevel. On this kind of map startlocations are seldom extremly silly, so I take everything since this is more fun as to wait on something supergood - so in fact I do the exact oppersite of regenrate maps until I get everything.

- If you have stone available or industries trait to get the Great wall in time is possible without to many problems. Of course if you dont have this available you dont want to go this way anyway.
- On some starting location you have lots of tundra, so you cant use the Warrior clears fog tactic but thats not that often the case.
- On Emperor you get Axeman in time even if they are build in your second city.
- On Emperor the AI doesnt build any babarian spears in my games so Horses is fine also.

While you are not guaranteed that all those methods work all the time its almost guaranteed that one of them is available (and of course there is room left for creativity for handle the problem even different) so protective still seems absolutely pointless in the early game to me (if you arent playing Deity and get boxed in superfast)

 

[Jaroth]

The "Wall-chop" (or whatever you call it) is an exploit.

It may not be a great, killer one... but it is still an exploit. You're playing in an UNINTENDED and unorthodox manner just to squeeze a little bit more of an advantage out of something. It's cheesy.

If you don't believe so, you're just kidding yourself.

You HONESTLY think the developers intended on players timing tree chops and whipping population away at the very end of producing a 1/2 cost wall to create a dramatic overflow of gold?

You HONESTLY think the reason the developers implemented the gold overflow was for doing things like this?

You HONESTLY believe the developers expect players using the Protective trait to use this tactic?

It was implemented in case you happened to overflow a building by too much, and to lessen the penalty in case you accidentally did so. I don't think it was implemented for players to spawn abnormal strategies off of, and I think the developers overlooked the potential of it during the early game and with using 1/2 cost buildings.

It may be clever (as most exploits are)... but it's an exploit. It's an unorthodox manner of playing. Walls should be built if you want more defense (and later castles)... not for a large chunk of gold to fuel your over-expansion, hasten your early tech rate, etc.

Yeah, walls are not as glorious as other buildings, and even the protective trait itself isn't as glorious as the other ones, but that doesn't justify exploiting a game mechanic to make up for both of them.

Just because it's in the game, or was put into the game at a later date, does not mean using it in any way you can think of is NOT an exploit of game mechanics.

I bet the same folks that support this strategy also supported the old exploit of gifting units to a charismatic player so they can promote them and then regift them back to you.

Hey, why would they let us gift units then? We weren't breaking any of the given rules of the game!

No... but you were "exploiting" them.

 

[PieceOfMind]

- I Consider Muskets a rather weak unit so the benefit of them being upgraded for free doenst loke too inviting for me.

IMHO Musketmen are not the strength of Protective. Longbows and riflemen are the best first-striker assets of a Protective leader. I rarely build many muskets unless playing as Ethiopia where I will spam as many Oromos as I possibly can before they go obsolete.

Longbows, unlike archers or musketmen, fair reasonably well as city attackers when used after siege, particularly if you use them to attack an enemy before they have longbows. This may be more limited at higher difficulties though because of how quickly the AIs get Monarchy.

- I disagree that captured cities are easier to defend also, if I have to choose if I want an additional attacker to make it easier to capture the city in the first place or a defending unit I will almost always go for additional attackers.

But you seem to ignore the possibility that units can do both - attack and defend. This is where drill longbows or rifles come in. A CR maceman may be an excellent city attacker (after siege) but he is a pretty crappy city defender. A drill longbow is a decent city attacker (after siege) and an excellent city defender.


*******

The cool thing about playing as PRO leaders is that finally it is worthwhile using the drill promotion in more than just a few circumstances.

A lot of the PRO leaders happen to have strong UUs or UBs, so while the trait itself is not the best, the other bits make up for it.

Free drill 1 promotion reduces collateral damage and puts you one promotion closer to drill 4, which is a very good promotion.

Agreed, except D1 is the only drill promo which does not reduce collateral damage. D2,D3 and D4 each give -20%, for a total of -60% at Drill 4.

****

An often forgotten benefit of PRO: A wall and castle combined cost less for a PRO leader than an ordinary library. The benefits of a castle are not very focused (they're a bit all over the shop!) but the free trade route and esp boost are not completely useless. Playing as a PRO leader makes the castle a worthwhile building, just like it makes Drill a worthwhile promotion line for more mainstream units (not just throwapults).

-Getting metals isn't guaranteed.

Another reason Longbows are great! When you spawn next to Tokugawa and you soon find out you have no metals (and possibly no horses as well), having drill or CG longbows will save you. Those longbows (or Flanking horse archers if you prefer) will allow you to go and actually take cities without a metal. Personally I prefer the longbows because after the war you can use them for defense again.

********

I guess Protective is really weak indeed and doesnt sweet my playstyle at all on top of that

It doesn't fit the playstyle of many people, and that's completely reasonable. Even for those whose playstyles do synergise with the trait, there are often better traits. But I find PRO leaders enjoyable to use because of how differently they play.

Playing as Tokugawa, for example, is a great challenge, but very fun. Playing as Churchill with silly longbows and rifles is a good laugh as well. Playing Gilgamesh at high levels is strong, for obvious reasons. Charlemagne... another strong leader. Chinese leaders have the cho-ko-nu - a crazy unit if used to its fullest. I'm not a big fan of playing as Sitting Bull, but 6xp (from the gate) longbows combined with catapults will chew through a lot. With the two of GGs or xp civics I guess it would be D4 straight away - sweet! Wang Kon is pretty meh, IMO, as is Saladin (in BtS).

 

[Jabarto]

AfterShafter...paging AfterShafter to this thread...

Seriously, OP do a forum search for his username; you'll find out more than you ever cared to know about how to use the protective trait.

EDIT: Here's one of the better threads on the topic - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=259940&highlight=aftershafter

 

[PieceOfMind]

Indeed, this post in particular:

Just curious.. Why do most critics of the protective trait always single out either city garrison or drill, and explain why they are inferior to other traits? Because the reality of the situation is that, protective units don't start with one or the other, they start with drill I and CG I. This means that every unit eligible for the protective benefits not only has the (arguably weak) drill, it also has the very useful city guard.

A city raider macemen on a plains may have a slight advantage versus a protective musketmen upgraded equivalently... But that same musketman, drill upgraded, stuck in a city, will be an very, very powerful defender in virtue of starting out with CG I. Not only is it an *extremely* effective cleanup unit, as has been pointed out several times, it's also a reasonable general combatant, and a very powerful defensive unit - all in virtue of the protective promotions. Not to mention that having drill one leaves it open for a bunch of neat promotions that CR won't.

Bottom line, if you're isolating protectives two upgrades and saying "Well, they aren't that wonderful on their own" you're completely ignoring the VERY significant, in gameplay terms, fact that those upgrades are not on their own, and are paired up. This can't be solved by simply number crunching one of these promotions - versatility is a difficult to quantify, but extremely valuable, asset, and protective units have a good portion of it.

Also, one other thing to consider... Drill opens up a host of good other promotions. CG is an excellent promotion for fortified units. Protective makes it very easy to have extremely diversely upgraded city guards. Frankly, I love this trait, from dozens of emperor games as experience. I can understand it really not fitting most peoples' playstyles, but for a builder at heart like me who likes to squeeze a lot out of a few units, it's tops. I don't get why everyone can't just lay off it and accept that some people use it quite well.

and

The benefit of being able to crank out those CGIII + drill 1 longbows so easily though is that you don't need to create a ton of defenders to keep your cities safe. Instead you can focus on having a counter-pillaging force, because you never had to focus much on building excellent city defenses. It's become completely matter-of-course to build more in the way of cavalry units for enemy interception than in the way of longbowmen with my protective leaders, because I realize the enemy is either A) not going to attack my city, or B) expend a ridiculous amount of resources taking it... While my horse-archer/knight/cavalry hordes are going to eat him alive in my territory. When I'm playing, let's say, Mehmed, I need to put serious effort into making sure my city is safe, because those CGI longbows I'm producing when not all geared up for war just don't do much to deter enemy stacks.

To those who believe the promotions given by Protective only provide passive defense and no active defense (assuming D1 is useless), remember units in forts use CG and so by placing forts in strategic locations (or pre-building them so you can still use improved tiles during peacetime) you can make it extremely difficult for an enemy to attack you, and make very safe positions on your enemy's border. Often, forts are better than cities too, because their +25% cannot be bombarded and can stack with a forest.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

what stands in the way of building an overly huge army with a relativly undeveloped empire and than use every conquered city to do the wall chop trick to have enough money available so that you can pay army maintainance and conquer everything

You are diverting hammers away from units and into a building that you just defined as "useless". You only get so many walls. If you really think that alone can keep you afloat (never mind the requisite extra early workers needed to chase your army), I dare you to try it on a difficulty where you struggle...go ahead. Conquer that whole pangea. If you can.

The "Wall-chop" (or whatever you call it) is an exploit.

Just about every tactic performed by the human that an AI does not perform is an exploit when applied against the AI. I suggest you check the definition of exploit. I can come up with similar statements as in this post, and it's kind of fun to make unsubstantiated claims so boldly:

- Fireaxis OBVIOUSLY intended this to balance protective, or they'd have patched it out back in warlords
- It is not cheesy.
- Since it does not make any imbalances in civ, it's clearly not an exploit.

I don't purport that these claims are valid, only that they are equally valid to the post I'm quoting .

Just because it's in the game, or was put into the game at a later date, does not mean using it in any way you can think of is NOT an exploit of game mechanics.

And where do you draw the line? Well, wherever you want to draw the line. Note again that EVERYTHING that is done in a mean or unfair fashion to the AI is exploitative, so go ahead and ban the following:

- knowledge that the ai can or can't declare @ pleased
- Sale of resources for 15+ gpt
- declaring war and letting them get siege raped in your territory before actually advancing
- bribing people into wars that put them at a disadvantage
- building national wonders in correct cities
- only creating buildings that are needed
- leaving your own tile improvements instead of swapping them illogically
- scouting and taking down naval invasions before they declare/land on the same turn
- using specialists as a primary means of research, especially strategic bulbing and trading
- aligning religiously to avoid declarations

All of those things are exploits just the same. You can make pretend lines anywhere you want in terms of what is acceptable play, but we're given rules and as gamers we are to abide by those rules. Wallchop is a valid tactic. If a game is so broken that its flaws make it unbalanced, then it's not a viable game (this is exactly the case with madden 2009). Civ IV, for its flaws, remains a viable game. What needs to be justified is not the use of wall chops, but a pretend set of arbitrary rules.

On a side note, muskets serve just fine to take cities after siege. ESPECIALLY agg or pro muskets, which gain counter promo access. More typically, they make effective covers for cannons, and can be given anything from guerrilla to woodsman to cg III with protective (not to mention formation, shock, and cover), allowing them to be a viable cannon-cover presence. Drafted PRO muskets gain access to any needed counter promo or CG II...in other words they can be damned annoying to overcome despite the easy access to them. Rifles are even better.

I'm not a big fan of drill offensive longbows, using them more for stack d (really it's the siege doing the lifting there) and garrison of cities after capture, but PRO still helps in that era.

 

[Jarlaxle13]

Some good points made here. I've been playing as Sitting Bull recently and his defensive units kick ass. I had 2 infantry and a machine gun down an entire AI stack from a fort. I am playing on chieftain but that is still pretty good considering the AI generally rips me off pretty severely when I attack.(ie consistently losing units with 2-1 ratios)

 

[AfterShafter]

AfterShafter...paging AfterShafter to this thread...

Seriously, OP do a forum search for his username; you'll find out more than you ever cared to know about how to use the protective trait.

EDIT: Here's one of the better threads on the topic - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=259940&highlight=aftershafter

Oh, I've been sitting here with steam coming out of my ears, but... But last Protective thread I got involved in, I promised myself - "this is the last time" We'll see how long that lasts though!

Thanks for the repost Piece.

Edit: Wow, looking through that old thread, my opinions have slightly changed in the past 16 months of hammering along. For one, Pro is no longer what I'd call a "good secondary trait" and it's now, bar none, my favorite military trait. Phil has been jumped in my eyes to a top tier trait - largely by my new favorite leader, Sitting Bull. I tend more towards heavy drill CG1 rather than CG3 with drill as the secondary trait these days (better attackers, huge siege resilience, better on the field, true generalist units with terrain/city based specialties) - but of course, it's good to mix it up. And... I don't like expansive as much as I used to, but it's still a good trait.

One comment I'll add in which I've stated in a few other threads which I think is the core of the negative reaction protective gets from people (well, other than the rage factor while trying to take Sitting Bull's cities)... If you're not playing a difficulty that really taxes you, protective doesn't shine. Who needs small numbers of *incredible* defenders, passable attackers, and very potent stack defenders, that you can build without having to procure any resources, when you're on a difficulty in which you can nab every tech you want, build as great an excess and variety of units as is ideal, and expand fast enough to get every resource required to build units? When the game is plugging along wonderfully, you don't really need protective because you have all the techs you need to build your bristling little porcupine of a stack - crossbows, pikes, macemen, trebs... It's when you start getting denied things that these extremely versatile single-tech resourceless units shine.

Protective longbows (as an example) - you stick them on a hill (forested hills are to them what spinach is to Popeye), and they'll match muskets and knights and maces in enemy territory, and laugh off attacking catapults with their siege resistance. You put them in a city, they'll at *least* 2-1 a full on incoming enemy SOD - probably more like 3 or 4 to 1. After that, they'll happily march out as very cheap, able, resourceless stack defenders - and then make powerful attackers too, paired with siege. A macemen unit gets all the glory because it seems like such a smashing attacking unit - but a protective longbow will be a better stack defender, a *WAY* better city defender, and a competent attacker, for fewer shields and no reliance on iron. And frankly, cats/trebs should be doing your softening up, lessening the importance of having these mega powerful attacking units. A unit that can reliably escort your siege units, attack the city, and then defend the city after it's taken, all in one - that is an era's power unit, not the unit that does nothing but attack. That's a protective longbowmen/rifleman/infantry.


(this is why I vowed to keep out of this thread - DAMN YOU Jabarto! I'm out of here! )

 

[PieceOfMind]

I still have fond memories of this near-invincible longbow. Taking down 8 units in a row is usually only possible when the defender has drill.

It was only when America sent in the horse archer that he finally took an injury and let the second less-promoted longbow stand up (and die). He didn't have C2 at the time - that was given just before the screenshot was taken.

Spoiler :

 

[AfterShafter]

Ha ha, yeah... 8 same-era units is something I've never even come close to without drill. It's even hard up for drill, but those longbows get such insane bonuses... That is one happy screenshot

 

[Belisar]

Originally Posted by AfterShafter
The benefit of being able to crank out those CGIII + drill 1 longbows so easily though is that you don't need to create a ton of defenders to keep your cities safe. Instead you can focus on having a counter-pillaging force, because you never had to focus much on building excellent city defenses. It's become completely matter-of-course to build more in the way of cavalry units for enemy interception than in the way of longbowmen with my protective leaders, because I realize the enemy is either A) not going to attack my city, or B) expend a ridiculous amount of resources taking it... While my horse-archer/knight/cavalry hordes are going to eat him alive in my territory. When I'm playing, let's say, Mehmed, I need to put serious effort into making sure my city is safe, because those CGI longbows I'm producing when not all geared up for war just don't do much to deter enemy stacks.

I highlighted the important parts for you.
All you need to win defensive wars is siege and mop-up units (and as you say, mounted are good all-around in this role).
Additionally, such a counter stack can also be the basis of your own expansion force.
If you have to stuff all your cities with CG longbows, you have problems with diplo and/or reconnasisance.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Belisar,

One doesn't stuff all one's cities with CG longbows lol. One only needs a few CG longbows (or whatever number is sufficient) in the threatened city.

It reminds me how earlier someone said (or it might have been Bhruic in the older thread) that if your CG units never get attacked then PRO was completely wasted. However, this logic completely ignores the fact that it may have been because the defenders were so strong the enemy was deterred from attacking.

How does that old Sun Tzu quote go?

"The best way to defeat your enemy is to remove his will to fight."


The problem with using only siege and mounted for your army is that you cannot adequately defend from unexpected naval invasions. Though the fair counter to this is that you would build a bigger navy and pre-emptively attack incoming fleets, I guess.

I think AfterShafter advocates making the CG pro units part of the nodal/reactionary stack. It's a bit difficult to discuss what units would best go in these stacks without the map and game in front of us. I can see situations where one is better than the other and vice versa.

 

[Ghpstage]

Having Drill 4, CG1 units in the city you just used them to take means you really don't have to worry about conterattacks

Ironically, I find the free CG promo more useful on attack than defense.
Being able to take a city and defend it with decent bonuses, long before culture bonuses appear, and on the turn you take it is a great boost to any aspiring conquerer.

All you need to win defensive wars is siege and mop-up units (and as you say, mounted are good all-around in this role).

Having Drill 3-4 units as the mop up force over a few turns can really suck up XP.
In general I value the Drill 1 far more than CG 1, I just wish it opened up all the promos that Combats did, Drill 4 Commando units would be awesome .
A Drill 4 Woodsman 3 unit would be amazing

Does the Drill line kind of sucker AIs into attacking (deceptively high victory odds) when it probably shouldn't attack?

On forts, do AIs ever bother attacking these things? They've ignored every one I've built, so I only ever use them for non-combat functions.

 

[PreLynMax]

Just simply mod the game and make the Protective trait also add:

+1 per city


That'll add a little bit more "oomph" to them.

It's like the Creative trait, which adds to cities.

Being "protective" means they're careful, distrustful, and got their eyes on everybody. (Think Tokugawa) Makes sense, right?

You could also remove the City Garrison I promotion and add Drill II instead. But I don't think that's necessary. City Garrison I is useful for defending newly conquered cities during war too.

I was thinking more of 100% Great General Emergence within cultural borders...

DON'T play as them.

Seriously, the only one worth playing is Charlemagne who surprisingly gets some sort of synergy because you can spam settlers and have fewer units defending and have Rathause everywhere to bring down the maintenance costs.

Don't listen to Bast; he obviously cannot leverage a protective character like I can.

 

[PreLynMax]

I play as Sitting Bull all the time and his UB enhances archery units. If you manage to upgrade such units, you will find a worthy defensive opponent indeed. Build 20-30 archery units and upgrade them to longbows then muskets (I upgrade mine to grenadiers) with CR II/ Drill II (at that time some of my units can go as far as CR IV, Drill III), along with walls/castles, you will find out the true meaning of "impenetrable city".

Those whom find the Protective trait "weak" cannot grasp the true defensive stategy, nor are they willing to exploit such strategy. Those whom have a tunnel vision strategy base lack the adaptable skill to deal with such a different stategy. The protective trait was designed to get the best out of your military with very little units.

So go ahead and call it weak. But know this... had we been playing against each other, it is unlikely that you will find out how to penetrate anything without my counterdefensive SoD interrupting your offensive.

 

[Belisar]

One doesn't stuff all one's cities with CG longbows lol. One only needs a few CG longbows (or whatever number is sufficient) in the threatened city.

I didn't suggest something like this, I read from his post that without PRO, he has problems to keep his cities save. This normally comes from the fact that some players (especially players with strong builder tendencies) focus on their own empire and mosty ignore the rest of the world.
Then a stack shows up and they are cought off-guard, thus the need for city defenders. I cann't remember the last time this happened to me (with the exception of a few unavoidable DoWs on deity in the very early game) and the reason is I watch powergraph, WHEOOHRN and the SoDs from potential threats (or at least their possible travel route) very closly.
Naval invasions are even easier to anticipate because you only need to observe the AI's port city (they stack nearly their entire fleet).
And Ghpstage is right, CG units are sometimes usefull on the offense while your SoD heals in the newly captured city, on my own turf I need ZERO (=nada) CG units.

 

[AfterShafter]

I highlighted the important parts for you.
All you need to win defensive wars is siege and mop-up units (and as you say, mounted are good all-around in this role).
Additionally, such a counter stack can also be the basis of your own expansion force.
If you have to stuff all your cities with CG longbows, you have problems with diplo and/or reconnasisance.

Belisar, as I pointed out, that post was over 16 months ago, and that was when I was playing on Emperor. Since them I have a new insight and an even better love for protective... Your point has come up several times in subsequent arguments on the subject - but here's the rub...

You say "All you need to win defensive wars is siege and mop-up units" - true, but the quantity of those siege units matters, and the actual defense could play out a few ways. I've heard "the best defense is a good offense" and "just attack the stack - it's cheaper than walling up in your city" so, so many times in anti-protective arguments recently, but, what if the stack is bigger than yours? A *lot* bigger than yours? Bigger than anything you could possibly build at that time? This is where the point I made in my above (current) post comes in - protective only shines when you're on really taxing difficulties, when you're getting denied things. Since my post 16 months ago, I've moved up past emperor into immortal and am now even working on deity, and I know one thing - I am utterly outmatched for resources. If I'm trying to keep an active and varied defensive/active defensive force around, it'll need to be big enough to wipe out a stack made by an opponent with more cities, a stronger economy, and substantial hammer bonuses in military production. When a stack comes, it's probably going to be a lot bigger than one that I can handle in the open field. When this happens, the "active defense" utterly fails - in general, it utterly fails unless your stack is at least almost as big as the enemy stack, and you have gads of siege just sitting around. What this means, in practice, is that active defense utterly fails a lot of the time on difficulties you're really being taxed on. It's still great situationally, but it's not the be-all better strategy so many believe.

What do I do then? Well, take a look at the really quite handy screenshot of Pieceofmind's above. That's an anomaly only in degree of capability, not in general capability When a stack that's at least twice as big as what I can muster for defensive unit strolls into my territory, actively going out and quashing it in the field takes a massive army - and frankly, I can't afford to keep that massive a standing army around, whereas the CPU can happily afford to keep a massive standing army around. What I can afford to do is keep protective longbows around - not "stuffing my cities" with them, but keeping a reasonable number. They only take one tech, they are cheap, and I don't need any resources. What's more, the drill ones, as has been pointed out, are *insane* city defenders, able stack defenders when I do want to move out and attack, and good attackers in general. As it happens drill is also an incredible cleanup trait because your units tend not to take damage when fighting with favourable odds. I'm using knights less for my in-civ cleanup crew since knights are an expensive luxury that won't save my city when the deity SOD comes calling - protective longbows will. Don't get me wrong, I'll still build my little knights stack when I can, but, such a stack is a luxury for a lot of a really competitive games - those uber protective longbows are a necessity for security and survival. The fact that they can win at 3 to 1 odds on defense one turn, and then three turns later walk out of the city and be the core of a cleanup/counterattack force makes them an absolutely amazing value.

As for diplo failing - diplo gets tougher as you move up. There are better players than me at this game - I know that. There are guys who are out-teching deity CPUs and building more units. But not many of us are in that boat Over the past few months, I've expressed my love of being near guys like Justinian, Zara, and Charlie, because between religion and favorite civics, I know I can control them... But when you've got someone sitting at pleased on a high difficulty, and you can't afford to inflate your power graph through units, "good diplo" just doesn't cut it for keeping a lot of them from backstabbing you. Almost anyone can declare war on you, and some nasty bugger will - may be your good friend that you just can't quite tip over to friendly. Unfortunately, being at pleased while lower on the power graph is a red flag for most CPUs, and sooner or later, it will come to bite you.

Protective shines when you're really being taxed. Before then, you have liberty to tech up and build nice big stacks of siege and knights that will be big enough to deal with whatever comes. If you're attacking with a near ideal stack, a good mix of units, chances are you're not *really* being challenged by the CPU. That or you're one of those real pro players lurking around here, or just lucky.. When things start being denied to you, and you find your early game based on trying desperately to get iron for your pikes/knights/maces/crossbows, when you get all the techs you need for them, just to find that the CPU had them a while ago and has more units than you... All of the sudden protective becomes an amazing trait. You can focus on building your empire with some sense of security, rather than frantically scrambling to nab the resources you think you need to build the luxuries you're used to from lower difficulties.

Have fun playing any which way. Nice day, so I'll be out for most of it... Oh, and you guys should give Plants VS Zombies a try - it sounds silly, but it's actually a lot of fun

 

[Molybdeus]

Seriously, the only one worth playing is Charlemagne who surprisingly gets some sort of synergy because you can spam settlers and have fewer units defending and have Rathause everywhere to bring down the maintenance costs.

The starting techs are just so bad, though. I prefer the Chinese leaders if I'm going to play a protective civ. Korea is good too, but cottages and protective are not a great combo.

If you want to play a civ that plays defense well choose Mansa Musa. Skirmishers are much better than protective archers as they can beat enemy units out in the field.