Innovation challenge

[Gooblah]

Another civ @ war with target than yourself, that has IIRC at least 8 tiles bordering it. It drastically reduces the power variation/average power requirements to get the target to capitulate.

Using other vassals of yours for this counts too. Which is good, because otherwise your vassals count for jack and having their extra power hurts cap odds, because the mechanics are ridiculously stupid.

A while back I posted a screen shot of a war target that was still "doing fine on its own". Just to prove this garbage, I DELETED MY OWN VASSAL using WB. After doing so, the target would capitulate, since average power was now higher than target power. So ******ed. Maybe the game should ignore vassals when doing the avg power calculation? Just maybe?

But w/e. That's how it is so use the broken mechanics however possible.

I have a quick SDK fix for it, which I'll prolly post (once I can get Codeblocks to freaking COMPILE! AARGH! ) in the Downloads. It's a pretty brutish solution (eliminates either the weakest, 2 weakest, or 3 weakest Civs based on map size from average power calculation), but I should have a better solution (ignoring vassals) coded soon.

 

[Iranon]

When pondering early resourceless units recently, I might have stumbled across something... although admittedly this is mostly untested as of yet.

I hadn't really considered Mali's skirmisher unit as something I intended to use as a matter of course. Ok, it'll hold off barbarians just fine, choke, pillage or pull off a desperation rush independent of resources. However, there might be more...

What I had not noticed until today is that the first regular units (excluding siege and UUs) to beat them in the field on a hammer-for-hammer basis are... knights. Knights! Incidentally, Muskets also lose in case those show up first.
I think this is unmatched by any other unit. For example, Praetorians will lose against an equal-hammer force of Axes or Macemen (but will do fine against Crossbowmen).

As an archer replacement, Skirmishers are not exactly at their best in an open field engagement either... holding hills, forts or cities will make them much more formidable. I'm seriously considering whether using them as a mainstay into the medieval or even Renaissance era (probably delaying Feudalism; I think putting off Machinery is a lot more problematic) might be promising.

One advantage would be that they have literally nothing to fear but siege... anything else will cost the opponent more than us. I would NOT deny an opponent metal before knights - neither axes nor swords nor macemen should be a problem; archery units or siege seem worse.
One note: they will, of course, not allow casualty-free taking of underdefended cities like Praetorians or even AGG swords might. The idea is to reliably win any war of attrition, hopefully with some help from the AI (they are quite fond of suicide attacks with their main stack, which should become more suicidal since Skirmishers are first-rate defenders).

Also... being a unit with no real counter yet some offensive potential... would a heavy focus on Skirmishers be viable in mutliplayer? As I said earlier, I don't see any real weakness and I'd hate to be on the receiving end of a relentless Skirmisher attack.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

I tested skirmisher rushes on deity Warlords extensively, they did quite well. Haven't tested skirms in BtS, because I don't (need to) rush that much anymore.

In MP, the theoretical counter to Mali is Inca. The deciding factors however are map and game type (pitboss, cton, duel, teamer).

 

[Ghpstage]

I've never really used muskets because at this point of the game I prefer to just beeline through to rifles or cannons, but recently playing Immortal I've been forced to fight a lot of wars either at tech parity, or within just a few techs of, so pressing any tech advantage can be crucial.

Mostly I have been wondering how to best use muskets and they're ability to ignore walls and castles, mostly because muskets seem to be valued lowly (usually due to the low base ) and the AI likes to build these buildings a lot. So I thought I'd start a discussion about them

Bit of a long bit....

Spoiler :

So first lets look at how big an ability this really is
Most AI cities toward the end of the medieval era tend to have between 40-60% culture defense.

Assuming a castle,
For your maces/trebs/knights etc this is a flat 100% regardless of culture level.
However for muskets ignoring walls shows itself in a way similar to an attack bonus
So for a city with 60% culture, you gain +40% attack, for a city with 40% culture, the bonus is 60%, and so on for other culture levels and wall/castle setups.


On the face of it at least, this bonus is pretty big. The downside however, is that these defenses can be bombarded away, although some things happen here that IMO will make a big difference to the true value of muskets.

-Firstly walls and castles reduce bombardment damage done to the city by a total of 75%, this means that sieges will take an extremely long time to break the defences especially as a treb with accuracy will only cause a mere 6% reduction per turn!

-Secondly, the bombardment damage is split between culutre, and the walls based on the ratio of the two.

i.e. if a city has only 20% culture, and 100% from walls and castle, 4/5 of the defense reduction will be absorbed by the walls/castle.

If the culture defense value is 80% then the trebuchet does a lot better with only 1/5 being absorbed by the walls/castle
Regardless of the cultural defense, both cities will take the same number of trebuchet turns to reduce to 0.

As muskets ignore the wall defense this stuff means that, at lower cultural defenses a good percentage of the trebs bombardment is completely wasted, so its probably better to just charge in while, at higher cultures bombardment will help more.
The waste still exists though, I don't know how much of an issue this causes to musketmen as a whole.

Bizzarely this also applies to cannons (probably artillery too), against cities with walls and castles they are forced to reduce the defense from 100%, just as any other siege unit. Although in this case the 75% defense against bombardment is removed.


*As a side note, the trebs higher bombardment ability than cannons (they're equal to artillery!) combined with walls being obsolete at rifling may make some accuracy promoted ones worth keeping post steel.


Now the other things
Being draftable does help offset the lack of any units that can upgrade into muskets a bit, and I feel that the ignoring walls bonus as it needs no promotions, works quite well with the draft.

The other main advantage for muskets, is they are pretty hard to counter.
On the flat knights will beat them yes, but muskets can gain defensive bonuses, and can access the formation promotion (easily if AGG, PRO or CHA) while the anti musket promotion Pinch, is only available with gunpowder. To me this says muskets are potentially a major breakthrough if you reach gunpowder before your oppponent.

However, without the CR line of promotions, they are signifacntly worse at taking cities without castles than maces are.

Most people will agree that muskets are pretty effective city and stack defense.
But what about oother roles?
Taking them as the main part of your attack could reduce the time used messing around with siege as a portion of city fortifications will likely be ignored.

I think I'll propose another potential job, as skirmishers to attack low culture border cities in a similar way Horse Archers do before walls and castles appear.
Reason being that these 40% and less culture cities with castles are where the muskets gain the most from ignoring built defenses, they can also protect themselves (maybe throw a pike in for good measure) and they aren't too bad at taking these cities.
Unfortunately cuirrasiers come along not too long after and may replace muskets in this role, however muskets are better at defending themselves and the cities they capture, they are also cheaper and draftable.
Musketeers would shine in this role if it actually turns out to be of use .

This is obviously going to take some testing mind you

What do the rest of you think?
Any other ideas on how to use muskets?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Wanna know how I made 40 of these? Six promotions without using any xp!

 

[DampRain]

Tokugawa, Red cross, march as mech, did you get the last (anti armour) one from random event? O_o

 

[madscientist]

Tokugawa, Red cross, march as mech, did you get the last (anti armour) one from random event? O_o

Does anti-tanks upgrade to MEchanical Infantry???

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Does anti-tanks upgrade to MEchanical Infantry???

Yes. They do. I build AT's a lot so I noticed. Building one of those suckers out of red cross as toku would do the job if you upgrade it.

Cute but questionable . It's pretty expensive IIRC, just to get ambush on the mechs (everything else would be built in either way for toku).

 

[PieceOfMind]

That's right madscientist.

The only downside here is you have to play as Tokugawa for the whole game up to that point.

Also, if one is happy to go without the Ambush promotion (the anti-tank promo) then one can just draft the mech infantry. Since drafting mech infantry takes 3 pop it balances perfectly with the 3 it causes, and is a perfect way to get rid of those citizens working useless ocean tiles.

Drafting the mech infantry would work out heaps cheaper than building the ATs then upgrading, but I am using a mix of both in my current game.

On Epic speed, it costs 180 to build an anti-tank and then 320 to upgrade to a mech infantry. Of course, the anti-tanks can be mass upgraded immediately upon reaching the necessary tech.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Yes. They do. I build AT's a lot so I noticed. Building one of those suckers out of red cross as toku would do the job if you upgrade it.

Cute but questionable . It's pretty expensive IIRC, just to get ambush on the mechs (everything else would be built in either way for toku).

It is expensive but not ridiculously so. For the upgrade, you're converting gold into hammers at a ratio of of 2.67:1. If I understand correctly, this is not all that bad compared with using rushbuy without Kremlin.

But yeah, I'm finding out in my current game that drafted Japanese mech infantry are pretty crazy. They can fill so many roles - the upgraded ATs are ideal for defense against tanks I guess.