Is there a reason to be Decius? (Calabim)

[Micky Onimusha]

Bill Bisco inspired my thread title

But seriously... is there any reason to be him? I was playing (and finished, woo, I rarely have the drive to finish a game ) as Flauros and thought to myself "y'know, it'd be nice if everyone else could keep up with my Commando Uber Vampaladins + Losha, Decius might be worth a go with Raiders."

So I decided I'd try the Calabim in Decius's hands. At first I thought "okay, he hasn't got Flauros's economic superpowers, I'll find my nearest neighbour and go for an early rush." Fair to say, those Blood Pets lived up to their name leaving my neighbours very amused by their new red coloured fields.

"Okay, that went wrong - I'll try a more conservative strategy." This one I played out until 224 turns around the point where the entire world declared war on me and Falamar of all people was pretty much game-set-and-match ready to wipe the floor with my (only just turned to the sparkly side) Vampy butt, so as you can guess, this didn't pan out well. Lurchirp closing in on my West, Elves to the North and Captain Lady lover to my West... and the end of the world to my South.

Now this may just be down to some noviceness on my part, but whilst the Calabim are one of the clearly strongest Civs out there... they seemed to fall flat on their face in Decius's hands.

I was cornered in pretty quickly by the Ljo & Khazad and left with a mere 3 cities; Decius seemed much slower to expand than Flauros and since Flauros has the Financial trait, that probably isn't my imagination. It didn't take them long to duo declared war on me (I was kind of impressed actually, I was preparing myself for war with the Ljo for territory and then Kandros blindsided me from the other side of my kingdom - and as much as I moan about them sucking, Catas saved my ass). Anyhow, I overcame that obstacle, admittedly whilst the rest of the world spun without me. Arendel was quite willing to grant me peace with little hassle; my guess is Kandros dragged her into the war and her peace loving ways couldn't cope with the thought of warring with a neighbour (it probably helped that I'd gone FoL during that time). A big horde of Morai and Catas showed the Khazad why they should stay in the Underhome as I wiped their short asses off of Erebus - and then I thought things would finally start looking up; as I had control of two rather nicely stocked and fully developed cities.

Of course, during this "war" (it was more like a Skirmish - Kandros briefly took one of my 3 cities but I snapped it back in an insant before pushing over to his land for some revenge), as I mentioned, the world spun without me. I found myself with half as many points as Falamar, Arendel, Beeri and still lagging some way behind Vallendia. The only other opponent as gimped as I was was Os-Gabella, who I can only guess was on the opposite side of the world because I saw nothing of her short of a couple of Scouts.

Anyway, war stories aside ... is Decius even worth bothering with as the Calabim? Does anyone have any success stories/strategies with him? To be frank, he seems to offer nothing, short of Raiders late-game so your Blood Pets can keep up with the demolition crew. Alexis is better at early warfare and Flauros is better at building a sound economic basis to work with.

And to raise a further question, is there any reason to be Decius period? His trait combination, at least to me, looks very unappealing.

Anyway, thought maybe I'd stir up some discussions / knowledge getting / whining because "the other dwarves" grabbed my toys, threw them out of the pram and then made their golems stamp on them ... and Falamar called me a monkey!

 

[Worm4life]

I think going with the financial leader is ALWAYS the better choice. Financial was always by far the best trait in Civ4, and little has changed in that regard for FFH.

Especially the Lanun. Good god why would you go with the dude leader instead of the chick?

 

[popejubal]

Raiders for Blood Pets isn't what I enjoyed with Decius so much as Commando on all of my "real" units. Getting Commando on all my Vampires immediately and not having to "waste" a promotion on it even when I got them leveled enough made a big difference in my ability to annoy and harrass my neighbors.

How much pillaging did you do? Raiders +100% gold for pillaging has made a big difference for me and pillaging Towns/Villages/Hamlets/Cottages down to the ground actually made up a significant portion of my economy for a good chunk of the game.

Obviously, that only does you any good if you're at war with someone, but almost anyone can get together a stack that has an Archer/whatever stack defender (appropriately promoted) and a couple of Blood Pets just to go out pillaging, so it's even worthwhile to declare war just for the purposes of pillaging someone back to the terrain-improvement stone age. If you do eventually lose the stack, it's no big deal since your defensive units in the stack hopefully made them pay significantly more hammers to take the stack out than you paid to build it. If they attack you back in your own empire, you'll have a lot easier time of it since home-based wars are so much easier to wage than wars in your neighbor's territory. Just make sure you have a couple of catapults to wear down any stack(s) of doom that they send over.

Even if you don't take any cities during the war, getting a bucketload of gold to help your slider gives you a boost and that empire will now be considerably the next time you declare on them 30 turns from now. You'll have another couple of additional techs and a decent number of additional units and they'll have a couple of additional nothing since you crippled their economy.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I've never been much of a pillager, although I've lately decided to make the plunge from Monarch to Emperor, so maybe I should learn my way into the habit of pillaging and the other ways to get Gold in this game.

The jump from Monarch to Emperor has really taking me aback. It's so strange not bossing the game like I'm used to doing. If I pick a spot to settle, the AI beats my Settler to it by a couple of turns and the like. It's a shock to the system. I don't know whether I should be trying Decius on Emporer or just stick to ol' faithful in Flauros... starting to think maybe I should even switch to Alexis because I feel really cramped by this REXing AI and want me some territory... hmm... something for a different thread I guess.

But yeah, Raiders economy? I've never really tried it, but I suppose the Calabim are built as good as any for it.

 

[Worm4life]

Raiders is one of those tragic aspects that's more fun than it is effective.

It's reeeeaaaaally circumstantial. The only practical use I've found for it is if you have the adaptive trait and have a neighbor whose cities you can't capture but is also not strong enough to invade you. In that case you can switch to raiders, declare war, then make some extra money teraing up his improvements before switching to another trait.

Otherwise you're just better off leaving the improvements intact and capturing the cities.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Raiders is one of those tragic aspects that's more fun than it is effective.

It's reeeeaaaaally circumstantial. The only practical use I've found for it is if you have the adaptive trait and have a neighbor whose cities you can't capture but is also not strong enough to invade you. In that case you can switch to raiders, declare war, then make some extra money teraing up his improvements before switching to another trait.

Otherwise you're just better off leaving the improvements intact and capturing the cities.

Oh okay. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it this way. I rarely declare a war I can't win - so pillaging works the wrong way for me in that regard - and sending evil little men off into the enemy territory to pillage them to hell is just too much micromanagement for my impatient little mind

 

[loffenx]

Anyone knows the amount of you get from pillaging different improvements? I rave around quite alot on the countryside as the Svarts, but the gains have always felt a bit random.

 

[cabbagemeister]

Raiders for Blood Pets isn't what I enjoyed with Decius so much as Commando on all of my "real" units. Getting Commando on all my Vampires immediately and not having to "waste" a promotion on it even when I got them leveled enough made a big difference in my ability to annoy and harrass my neighbors.

I don't really agree with this--free promos on vamps aren't really that powerful because it's SO EASY to get xp with them. Other civs have to slog through enemies to get that extra promo, but for vamps, it's just one more turn of Feasting in your size 30 city.

In my opinion, Decius is the inferior choice for both Calabim and Malakim. For Calabim, his traits don't mesh well with a builder (well, builder until you get Vamps) civ with huge cities. For Malakim, the lack of the Spiritual trait and the inability to get Financial make him vastly inferior to Varn. I'm still undecided on him with the Bannor, but in general I feel like choosing Decius is essentially handicapping yourself.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Anyone knows the amount of you get from pillaging different improvements? I rave around quite alot on the countryside as the Svarts, but the gains have always felt a bit random.

The civilopedia entries for improvements list how much you get, on average, for pillaging them. There is random variance though.

 

[loffenx]

The civilopedia entries for improvements list how much you get, on average, for pillaging them. There is random variance though.

Ah, thank you!

 

[Worm4life]

A HUGE random variance. I've gotten 10 from towns and I've gotten 80.

The problem with me is that i DO enjoy those micromanaged pillage raids, but really in the grand scheme it's just not worth it. It's only helpful if you're heavy with cavalry that can withdraw and someone too strong to take their cities declares war on you. Then you can at least do some damage and make some money from it.

Otherwise there's no point in pillaging. If you can take the cities then take the cities and keep the improvements. If you can't take the cities then don't declare war because the computer will NEVER accept peace unless you've stomped him down real good.

The only real benefit of raiders is it lets your invading armies move faster, but even then you have to say screw catapults for that to work.

 

[loffenx]

Anyone know the details about when the AI moves from refuse to talk, talkable and willing to make peace? I read (here or in the vanilla-forums) that they only take the number of units killed or the power-graph into consideration.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Raider leaders can use Fire mages as well. Besides, it's good for quick strikes on underdefended cities. For me, Commando on all units is the main advantage to that trait, and +100% gold from pillaging is just a useful bonus.

Mobility+Commando is just nuts.

 

[popejubal]

A HUGE random variance. I've gotten 10 from towns and I've gotten 80.

The problem with me is that i DO enjoy those micromanaged pillage raids, but really in the grand scheme it's just not worth it. It's only helpful if you're heavy with cavalry that can withdraw and someone too strong to take their cities declares war on you.

...or if you have Raiders.

There's a lot of units that have very good bang for their buck defensively. Iron equipped Longbows can really take a pounding and still survive - for their hammer cost, they're outstanding. Just take a couple of those boys along with some generic warriors/axes and watch your neighbor's land slowly crumble. There's a very good amount of gold involved in a sustained pillage campaign and there are lots of times when I'm tough enough to survive a war with a neighbor who teched to Bowyers even when I can't take their cities for one reason or another.

Otherwise there's no point in pillaging. If you can take the cities then take the cities and keep the improvements. If you can't take the cities then don't declare war because the computer will NEVER accept peace unless you've stomped him down real good.

Being in a state of permanent war isn't so bad since it's number of casualties rather than number of turns at war that creates War Weariness and I generally don't find War Weariness to be an enormous problem. If I am next door to a builder civ, then there's a good chance that I won't be able to take the well defended cities for a very long time (No AI Building Requirement is always turned on in my games). If I can shut down their empire, though, I can still eliminate them as a threat even if I can't take their land.

The only real benefit of raiders is it lets your invading armies move faster, but even then you have to say screw catapults for that to work.

I like Catapults for sitting at home and knocking some hit points off of invading stacks, but I can't think of the time I last used them in an invading army. Mages, Giants, Religous Heroes and Baron vonWolfenstein are what I tend to use for taking cities.

 

[JFSebastian]

If you research Bowyers and go with CoE you can send in some Nightwatch with Mobility I to pillage without declaring war. If your neighbor has built a lot of villages/towns, the amount of money you can bring in from pillaging can be HUGE!

Another trick that I haven't tried yet, is to build scouts, casting Mask on the ones that get CoE. Then upgrade these to horsemen/horse archers, retaining the HN promotion.

 

[loffenx]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181512

If this is correct for FFH aswell, it is probably of interest to the pillage-hungry