Huns & Exploiting Huns UA

[revelation216]

How do you exploit starting with Animal Husbandry and +1 for Pastures?

Starting with ability to build caravans, know where horses are for pastures, is it recommended to change tech or build order?

Also does it make taking God of the Open Sky pantheon more worth it?

How do you deal with not having any pastures around?

i am playing at immortal level, standard speed, large map 10 civs/20 city states. domination victory only.

 

[phillipwyllie]

I'd tech Bronze working asap and take out your immediate neighbor(s) and carry on until the Battering Rams are no longer effective(ie they get killed too easily). If you have no pastures nearby consider re-rolling. Pantheons usually only give a small early boost, except Spain and 'one with nature'. normally you would pick a faith generating pantheon so you have a good chance at a religion.

 

[Omegazxi]

Steal a worker asap or get the free worker from the liberty tree and put it to work building your pastures, if you get lucky and pop a ruin that upgrades your warrior into a battering ram then try to get your horse archers up and moving by researching the wheel. The great thing about the Hunnic horse archers are they do not require any horses to build. Just keep at war and wiping out your neighbors, and pilliage as much as possible since any extra gold will help and your going to be burning down most of the cities anyways.

Burn every city and sell the buildings as it burn to get money to buy building in your cities or more units, unless it has a resource you need. But remember your going to be taking capitals and capitals almost always have some good lux. resources, which helps to off set the unhappiness.

Every time I play as the Huns on Immortal I find that my offensive is slowed down by one of two things
1.) The Great wall
2.) Crossbow men and other medieval age units in mass

 

[budweiser]

I feel like not having a pasture is a waste - reroll.

There's a decent chance that you can get a weapons upgrade from a hut which allows the chance to kill a nearby CS before you meet anyone. I did this last time and they already had a granary built. So I quick built a caravan and was sending food back to Attila's Court by turn 40 thanks to the extra hammers from the UA.

I have been messing around with AH>BW in my games because it shows where the extra hammers are right off the bat. Then I go to Pottery > Writing. Since you start with AH already, you can get to BW faster and then on to the Wheel. I usually have to build 1 archer for barb defense before I can get the Horse Archers unlocked.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

The production boost is nice. You need a worker to start improving.

the huns are all about clearing your continent / 2-3 nearby AI ASAP in the early game. The Horse archer can be an un-touchable force of destruction early on. The ability to move in rough terrain and fire a range shot is great. Once you have logistics you can move shoot move, or just move shoot shoot.

With that covered, bee line the tech to horse archer ASAP (archery + Wheel ?). while that is going on try to get a worker early (steal from CS / AI) to improve pastures. Once you have the ability to build those horse archers, do it. You want 6 of them. Chop forests for them if possible. You want them ASAP.

With any luck you still have your warrior for city capture. Maybe he even got upgraded to a battering ram. with this army and little else you can probably conquer the known world (at least three AI).

I usualy dont found more than one extra city, i just capture and burn the AI. Raze every city you can. you can always plant new ones later.

Once the horse rush is over, thats when I plant new cities of my own. I always play Liberty with the huns.

 

[revelation216]

So fair to say there's no rush to go for National College?

What about diplomacy? Pretty screwed after an all out offensive conquering 3 civs, no?

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

well, yes. Growth focus is still important, but the NC tends to be late the way I play the Huns.
Its just how I play it. Search the forums and you will find some very boiled down guides for the Huns. Probably more efficient than how I play.

I tend to do a 1 city NC with them
and it tends to be late

but I usually have one or two puppet capitols waiting to be annexed after I complete the NC. I annex them one at a time to build the Courthouse, and so mathematics must be done by then.

 

[MrDumpstertrash]

I just won a DomV with Attila on Emperor very easily (I think it was by 1540?). Spawned next to Shaka, Monty and Ghandi. Steal a worker, go liberty and focus only on horse archers and battering rams (happiness building if needed). Once you have no one left on the continent (around turn 140 on epic), then you can build libraries and catch up. Build massive navy and invade next continent. It's silly how powerful Attila can be

 

[reddishrecue]

I guess you could exploit the hun ua with the piety opener. If you get piety and begin making faith with early shrines and temples you could have a religion in any difficulty. You don't have to worry about horse archer promotions becoming obsolete with the advent of chivalry and the Knights upgrade when you can build more better units of that era. The unique benefits of the huns are free animal husbandry and extra hammers per pasture.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

Getting back to the OP,
Obviously, having more pastures is "better" for the Huns. If you dont have any, then move. Or get new territory with some critters somehow. What else can you do?

Being able to build a caravan immediately is a nice option if there is a very nearby CS, and its an even better option when there are two CS (so you can more safely declare war on one and send the caravan to the other)

If there is no good target for this caravan, then dont build it (?) If there is, then I would consider the caravan ahead of say, the 4th military unit. You may need that gold for unit maintenance early on. I think this is usually what i do.

As for religion: the huns are no different than anyone else. If you do have loads of pastures, then maybe open sky. BUT, faith generation is king. I would look for a way to have faith first and production second. Remeber, you *Will* be able to take a few early capitols. If you can snag dessert folklore and conquer Egypt...that's a good deal.

 

[alciefrederic]

I'm currently playing the Hun on Deity now, and fairly close to winning (currently holding 5 capitals). Can't say i'm super good at this, but the things I've learned:

- Play on Great Plains. Tons of horses, cows, sheeps. A bit cheaty but who cares? Potentially you can get +3 +4 productions per city which is kinda a big deal in the early game but certainly falls off late game.
- I personally find horse archer kinda underwhelming. I mean it's certainly really strong but the thing is its upgrade path is so terrible I really don't want to use them. I find building archers then having enough money to upgrade to composite is better in terms of efficiency as you can upgrade them to crossbowman right after that. You might win your first war with your Horse Archers, but after that they're only useful for pillaging tiles.
- Sell your horses+irons. One of the tricks people don't seem to know is that if you sell strategic resources 1 at a time, you can sell them at 2 apiece if the AIs have nothing against you.
- Cover I doesn't carry over, but if you upgrade your rams to Cover II (by simplying having a barracks), the two promotions carry over when you upgrade to trebuchet. However it means that it'll take a while to get the +50% against city. There's give and take here. The cost of building ram ~ the cost of building catapult, so it's up to you whether you want the two cover promotions instead of the damage promotions. I personally'd take the cover promotions. And again rams are only useful for your first war at best in Deity difficulty, but they have much better upgrade path, no wasted promotions so it might be a good idea building ~4-5 and upgrade.
- Need money~ to upgrade so don't focus too much on internal trade.
- Even if people are denouncing you left and right, they still will buy your resources (or 5 strategic resources) at 3 GPT. Not much but if you have like 7 salts 8 golds or stuffs like that after your killing spree, you can sell them (or give them away for free for some dip boost, rather than just letting them sitting around).