Just one archer

[Xiao Xiong]

It's amazing how a single archer can lay waste to an entire enemy horde. Seems a little overpowered no?

Put one archer in the nearest city to the AI, start a war, destroy entire enemy force.

This is mostly because the AI doesn't co-ordinate its attacks. It'll split up its army and send most of them to the nearest city, but a few will go somewhere else. Instead of coming in as a wave, they'll sort of dribble in. And it doesn't often make effective use of ranged weapons.

So the one archer, sitting in the city, or on a nearby mountaintop, along with the city's own attack--really can smash the entire enemy force.

 

[Bamboocha]

Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's a shame that the AI doesn't change even the slightest bit on increasing difficulties, merely the resources it has at its disposal. I hope this gets changed in a future patch.

 

[pxpdoo]

Speaking of this, does anyone know under which circumstances an encamped barb will leave the encampment to attack? Because it seems pretty random to me. Have seen them come out to suicide attack a healthy pike, but have also seen them leave a lone Scout with 1HP alone...?

 

[chazzycat]

OP: what difficulty are you on? I routinely get punished for neglecting my military like that on immortal. Or are you just referring to the initial warrior rush? Yes it's true one archer and a city can kill a lot of warriors.

 

[The_Quasar]

Speaking of this, does anyone know under which circumstances an encamped barb will leave the encampment to attack? Because it seems pretty random to me. Have seen them come out to suicide attack a healthy pike, but have also seen them leave a lone Scout with 1HP alone...?

I have seen the same, but it's strange how it seems to know if you can't really afford to lose a unit, it will immediately spawn another unit, and attack with both!

I think there's probably about a 1 in 8 chance of it coming out to attack, but the spawning of another unit is possible too. I don't think it assesses it's chances first, or if it does, the algorithm is broken somehow.

 

[Civciv5]

I have this problem always...
When a AI declares war on me and invades my country,one city destroys the whole army and it ends most of the time with me taking the enemy capital and destroying the civ.

 

[Aspon]

again you won't find this on immortal or deity difficulties. if you play anything below immortal you might. also what terrain are you in that can make a huge difference.

 

[_hero_]

Archers are a nice boost to defense, but on the harder difficulties they rarely are enough to save a single city from being captured. It might work when 3-4 units come after you, but when you get 6-10 warriors on you at once (not uncommon on Diety), it's a different story.

 

[jega001]

2 archers, especially archers with any sort of correct promotion can defend a city against a warrior rush on Deity if you have defensible terrain. It really comes down the the terrain and using the archers correctly. If you get rushed by say 4 warriors and 3 archers, once you take down the warriors the archers usually (not always, its hard to find absolutes in civ5) turn back.

 

[Dreamshifter]

Speaking of this, does anyone know under which circumstances an encamped barb will leave the encampment to attack? Because it seems pretty random to me. Have seen them come out to suicide attack a healthy pike, but have also seen them leave a lone Scout with 1HP alone...?

It depends on whether the barbarians are on attack mode or not. I often park a warrior out away from my cities to distract incoming barbies. Most of the time, they will do loops around them for a long time, then both will attack. However, in my experience, if the barbies attack one unit that way, they will all attack on that turn. Including ones near other units. Something seems to put them into "attack regardless" mode. No idea what, or if my observations are even right, though.

Plus, early on, they don't seem to attack nearly as much. I've even run un-escorted settlers past them, and been ignored. On the other hand, that is a very rare thing, and might have been because the barb had just spawned, so it couldn't attack yet.

 

[Aspon]

2 archers, especially archers with any sort of correct promotion can defend a city against a warrior rush on Deity if you have defensible terrain. It really comes down the the terrain and using the archers correctly. If you get rushed by say 4 warriors and 3 archers, once you take down the warriors the archers usually (not always, its hard to find absolutes in civ5) turn back.

yeah the thing is the ai advances and uses more then warriors and archers pretty quickly.

often an archer or two is capable of stopping a warrior invasion.

and if all you got sent at you on deity difficulty level was 4 warriors you might be right.

so congratulations you have found a way to survive till 3000 bc on deity. Now the next challenge try to finish a game without been killed or better yet try to win a game.

 

[Camikaze]

What the OP describes is a function of poor AI, not overpowered Archers. But then, I personally haven't really experienced that, so it seems to me a little hypothetical.

 

[ViterboKnight]

I hope the SDK will be released asap, so many players will have the chance to code a better AI (same story as Civ4, where the BTS AI was mainly written by players).

 

[The Pilgrim]

2 archers, especially archers with any sort of correct promotion can defend a city against a warrior rush on Deity if you have defensible terrain. It really comes down the the terrain and using the archers correctly. If you get rushed by say 4 warriors and 3 archers, once you take down the warriors the archers usually (not always, its hard to find absolutes in civ5) turn back.

Yep. First wave of units (few warriors/archers) are manageable with an archer or two.
By the time the second wave arrives usually I'm ready or almost ready to go offensive.

Once I had a very lucky terrain, defended by mountains chain on front and allied CS next to it. There was a narrow passage, so I positioned an archer and later a crossbow on forested hill where this dude spent 95% of the game thrashing american hordes. And there were hordes... I've got few more units from military CS but they had absolutely no usage. I love archers-crossbows. Well promoted crossbow wipes out everything up to modern.

 

[MadDjinn]

warriors are a horrible choice to attack with anyways, as the city defence can quickly speed past the point of no return for them. (Ie, not doing enough damage)

so really, that helps the case of archers being powerful defence early. It's not that the archers are powerful, but it's the attacking for that's too weak. (a few UUs aside)

 

[headcase]

What the OP describes is a function of poor AI, not overpowered Archers. But then, I personally haven't really experienced that, so it seems to me a little hypothetical.

It's a working hypothesis

 

[woodshadows]

great wall works great with longbows or chokonus, you can declare war on someone with a much larger army and basically have them file in to be killed off before gaining the numerical advantage and going on the offensive.

 

[Talim [own]]

Even more true if the said archer was a scout before

 

[timtofly]

Speaking of this, does anyone know under which circumstances an encamped barb will leave the encampment to attack? Because it seems pretty random to me. Have seen them come out to suicide attack a healthy pike, but have also seen them leave a lone Scout with 1HP alone...?

If you have a civilian, they like going for them. Just don't let them "see" your military unit.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

What the OP describes is a function of poor AI, not overpowered Archers. But then, I personally haven't really experienced that, so it seems to me a little hypothetical.

Well to be fair I do put a bit more planning into it. When I found a city adjacent to an AI's territory I will put it in the easiest to defend spot that I can, and try and buy or build a wall to go along with the archer. So the ideal situation is I've got my one archer in a walled city on a hill. That really slaughters the AI.

But even just if the city is on the hill it's pretty good.