Immortal University XI - Washington

[silverbullet]

A general question about my game before I post a detailed report

Spoiler for around 1400AD

Spoiler :

My question is: Is it feasible to run a riflemen+cannon+cavalry war against riflemen+cavalry? I will post a save later, don't have it right now, but in general, how much larger does my army need to be, and what mix of units is best?

I started by blocking Churchill and squeezing 6 cities. I also (surprisingly) managed to grab the pyramids around 0AD.
From there I went caste systems and got ahead in tech. I was in a tech lead until about 800AD, but with very little infrastructure.

Diplomacy: Churchill, Qin and Shaka are my hindu friends. I always agree to help them in wars because I don't share borders.
Problem: HC got too strong. Toku willingly vassalized to him and they both have good land.

I managed to get steel as the free tech from liberalism and started (too late) a war with churchill around 1000AD. The war with him was easy, but I had to bribe HC for peace with him so he wouldn't vassalize. After finishing the english, I managed to trade steel +sci method for rifling and economy with china, and then bribed shaka to war with china.

Then I made the mistake of trying to run a peaceful game for a few turns to get oxford in London. I realized it was too late when I saw and SOD of curassiers near my borders. I traded liberalism to Toku and HC for gold and upgraded my maces and muskets to rifles, while drafting some more and building cavalries. I declared on HC, and he sent his SOD to be slaughtered in my borders, but...
then I started noticing cavalries, both in HC and Toku's armies. He still haven't upgraded most of his army, but by the time I reach his core cities they will be fully upgraded. After killing his troops in my borders I managed to change my power ratio with him from 0.5 to 0.8~0.9, which means I have a larger moving army now, because he leaves 2~3 defending units everywhere.
He doesn't have chemistry yet, but has a good research and might get steel in less than 10 turns if he beelines (unless war weariness has crippled him since so far most of his units died in my border).

My gut feeling is that I should send my units to his border now, but perhaps I should build more cannons. I don't know exactly how bad flanking is going to be and his cavalries will have 60% chance of success. HC has a big cities and can whip a lot, and I don't think I have seen the worst of Toku yet. I can hold on my borders very well right now but I am afraid that if I wait too long I will see infantry there.

I am sorry for the lack of details, I will post a save soon, but in the mean time I would appreciate some feedback (other than the obvious - you should have decalred sooner )

EDIT: As promised a save attached.

 

[Dirk1302]

@silverbullet

Spoiler :

Yes, Cannons go as long as the oppo doesn't have infantry, you'll need artillery and infantry yourself after he's got them.You also need a good stack and reinforcements because there'll be some losses due to taking out the rifles. Cavs are not a big problem as long as you've got enough Rifles to backup the cannons. I fought a war like that in the Charlie game against Joao, i had to be careful but it ran like clockwork in the end.

Edit:
Read a bit more careful just now, 0.8-0.9 power is ok when i attacked Joao in that game i mentioned it was between 0.5~0.6 ( i also had to defend with landsknechts instead of rifles there).I'd surely attack asap now. Flanking is a bit of an issue but i have fought these kinds of wars often enough, and never got more than some damaged cannons. keep your stack together in the beginning of the war, fine chance he won't attack you anyway. And once you've got a few rifles promoted the cavs won't stand a chance anymore.

If he gets steel soon you can run into problems if he's able to upgrade, this isn't likely though, ai's don't prioritize steel in any way and if he gets steel once you have half of his cities he won't be able to build much cannons ( i ran into that situation a few times but that didn't prove troublesome).

 

[silverbullet]

Dirk:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the feedback.
Most of my rifles are well promoted due to charismatic. I have some CR3 rifles, and some combat II formation rifles (total +70% against mounted). I am not afraid of losses to cavalry that much, more concerned about flanking damage.

What is a good ratio of rifles/cannon/cavalry?
I think I have too many rifles and not enough cannons. Maybe around 12 cannons or so, 20~30 rifles and 5 cavalries. I will have to look at the save to make sure. I think I will need to whip/build 10~20 more cannons, but I will definitely go and attack ASAP.

 

[Dirk1302]

@silverbullet

Spoiler :

If the rifles can defend there isn't any flanking problem, i'm actually not sure about this but i thought a cav has to win a fight in order to dish out flanking damage. I know from experience that flanking damage from cavs vs rifles is almost non existent, in the Charlie game i mentioned earlier it was a bit of a factor but even here the pikes defended reasonably well against the cavs.

You're indeed a bit low on the cannons, still enough to take out all cultural defence in one turn. The idea is to initially attack only with cannons, you'll lose only +/- 2-3 per city due to the colllateral i think, rifles are for mopping up only. So i typically have about 60% cannons in stack, in the Alex game even 70% was cannons but that was a bit too much, rest is rifles (or muskets/pikes, i don't always wait for rifles). If i go for a cannon rush i usually don't bother with mounted units, they come in handy though for dealing with counter attacks on your borders and keeping the rinforcement line clean so i'd keep them behind the main front. In your case i'd use cannons mainly for bombing, then sacrifice 1 to get reasonable odds but then let the rifles clear up (you have cr rifles which compensates for few cannons). I'd attack immediately but concentrate your cities only on cannons from now on. A medic 3 unit'll help enormously since you will incur more damage on the rifles than when you attacked with cannons initially.

 

[Dirk1302]

I actually played this game to the end so i'll post a short report, i'll post some saves later.

Spoiler :

Find out quickly that we're somewhat hemmed in by Churchill,using early blocking there's room for 7 cities though and the land we've got is sensational. Since there's no risk of over expanding here i concentrate on developing everything asap, building cottages mostly. Research percentages are very high as a consequence, the flip side of the coin is i don't really have enough food to mass whip cuirassiers. Not that much of a problem as i've got rifling somewhere between 1000-1100 AD (getting the GM from economics in the process). Problem is nobody's got Nationalism yet so i can't draft them immediately. So i build workshops on the plains and getting through 2 successive golden ages i can build quite a lot of knights while researching nationalism, military tradition, bulbing chemistry. Since Justinian and Toku are taking cities from Churchill i declare on him too 1200 AD with some 15 knights. Toku'll be next so i don't mind him but i'd like to leave Justinian alone for the moment.

Churchill is dead in no time (5 turns or so) and after upgrading the knights to cavs i declare on Huyna who has lots and lots of land but almost no defence. At this moment i'm drafting rifles from GT too. It's important to declare on Huyna first since he'll get to infantry in due time while Toku will remain an idiot until well in the 1800's.

I don't use spies in these wars since cavs just plainly over run longbows, i take approx one city/turn, iirc Huyna's down 1430 AD, Toku 1585 AD. i have +/- 57% of all the lands and 57% of population now. I could have taken on Justinian now for domination in the 1700's. I want to see if i can get an early space race though.

This doen't really pan out, while i get sensational research around 5k/turn in the end leaving the others totally in the dust it takes me some time to get there and the others in wfyabta don't help at all. So 1894 AD it is, still before 1900 which is ok in itself. One of my better games in the series, for a higher score i should have gone for the domination vic though, score still was around 100.000 iirc. For the very early space races you should probably get a lot of land early (maybe with a lightning fast war),ending a war 1585 ad seems to be too late to get an early race.

What i learned from this game (and the last deity pangae challenge) is that a fast teching small empire can be more powerful than early over expansion to 12 cities recovering subsequently.

 

[silverbullet]

Dirk:

Spoiler :

I am always surprised to see the amazing research rate you get with cottages. I guess I am doing something wrong when I try to work cottages. Either too much whipping or too many specialists or maybe not enough cities early enough.
Anyway, I am curious to see your saves and see your city placement and cottaging.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

If the rifles can defend there isn't any flanking problem, i'm actually not sure about this but i thought a cav has to win a fight in order to dish out flanking damage. I know from experience that flanking damage from cavs vs rifles is almost non existent, in the Charlie game i mentioned earlier it was a bit of a factor but even here the pikes defended reasonably well against the cavs.

actually, cavs. don't have to win; they have to either win or withdraw; and a f2 cav. has 50%(? - far away from the game) chance to withdraw; and the ai loves f2 promotion. So quite some flanking will occur when facing cavalry, even if they have no chance of actually winning some fights.

In tech. parity at rifles/cannons/cav. level, I usually try something like: bombard with all but 2-3 cannons(the sacrifice ones) which will actually have a decent heal ratio from flanking dmg. even in enemy land(due to super healer) and then attack with those. And well, after they're soften up abit, life's always better...

and regarding warring at tech parity in this age, I've noticed that unless the guy's protective(or charismatic or imperialistic with many gg) to take cg3 units out of the gate, it's usually doable, albeit hard. However, I don't know how much "grind him down" approach you can afford on normal speed.

 

[Dirk1302]

^ this is all very well Snow and i certainly check all this, in real (civ) life this flanking is just not so much of a problem, you'll lose some units whatever if you're warring, i've never lost lots of cannons (or any) to cavs (can only recall some damage actually) with rifles around them, there are lots of threads discussing monarch/emperor detailing such mechanics, i'd rather go along and hit them fast and lose some units.

Some more experience, instead of endless mechanics, if the oppo has infantry you'll really know what losing units means, flanking damage is nothing compared to being late and having to face this infantry (or artillery), cannons hardly seem to hurt them let alone the pathetic rifles. so my advice , strike asap and avoid the infantry.

imo it doesn't matter if my oppo is protective or not or whatever or if i'm aggressive or not, whatever, it's just the military advantage that count's.Rifles can't defend to 20 cannons protective/agressive or not, infantry can so this should be avoided and so i like things like financial/organized/philosophical to press home this advantage.

Bottom line:

Promotions don't matter that much, silver's got the cannon advantage now, it should be capitalized on to the max really.

 

[Dirk1302]

Dirk:

Spoiler :

I am always surprised to see the amazing research rate you get with cottages. I guess I am doing something wrong when I try to work cottages. Either too much whipping or too many specialists or maybe not enough cities early enough.
Anyway, I am curious to see your saves and see your city placement and cottaging.

Spoiler :

Well see what Rusten does without building cots, i agree that i have fine research rates but i always need these workshops to get the production going , this works alright but Rusten's whipping strat is even more effective so i'm going to experiment with this sort of strat more in the next games. Bit tired right now but i'll put up the saves tomorrow with some extra comments.

 

[silverbullet]

^ this is all very well Snow and i certainly check all this, in real (civ) life this flanking is just not so much of a problem, you'll lose some units whatever if you're warring, i've never lost lots of cannons (or any) to cavs (can only recall some damage actually) with rifles around them, there are lots of threads discussing monarch/emperor detailing such mechanics, i'd rather go along and hit them fast and lose some units.

Some more experience, instead of endless mechanics, if the oppo has infantry you'll really know what losing units means, flanking damage is nothing compared to being late and having to face this infantry (or artillery), cannons hardly seem to hurt them let alone the pathetic rifles. so my advice , strike asap and avoid the infantry.

imo it doesn't matter if my oppo is protective or not or whatever or if i'm aggressive or not, whatever, it's just the military advantage that count's.Rifles can't defend to 20 cannons protective/agressive or not, infantry can so this should be avoided and so i like things like financial/organized/philosophical to press home this advantage.

Bottom line:

Promotions don't matter that much, silver's got the cannon advantage now, it should be capitalized on to the max really.

Spoiler :

Right to the point.
It worked great. I reopened the save and found that I actually had 17 cannons. I had whipped some ex-english cities to size 2.
With that in mind, I went to attack. My SOD was only attacked by a few catapults and the rest of his cavalry were just cannon targets. I had some CRIII cannons so my attack chances were 80% or more. Overall, this war was easier than some rifles vs. longbows war I had in other games. Charismatic is great
Oh... and one more thing - 2 rounds after my invasion into incan lands Toku renounces HC's protection and becomes a free state. I make peace with him and get some cash for it, but more importantly 10 turns of quiet on this front.

 

[Dirk1302]

Some saves from this game.