When you are scouting around with a warrior at the beginning of the game, do you avoid lions etc. at all costs or do you let the warrior take on a lion, particularly in a forest tile? Is the xp worth the risk?
If you can give yourself a terrain advantage (hill, forest, across river) while defending let them attack you. Conversely if you can hit them on open terrain may be worth it. A few free promotions means you can then clean up animals easily, and the promotions help for barb troops or even against enemy troops.
When attacking Barb Animals, I prefer to attack them when they are in defensive terrain such as in a Forest or on a Hills square (but not across of a River). That's because Barb Animals do not get defensive bonuses (other than the River defense bonus), but after you've won the battle, if you are wounded, you'll prefer to be on defensive terrain so that any further Barb units that are nearby will have a harder time of enacting revenge on your unit.
I largely agree with dmd175. Get a terrain advantage and let them attack you, unless you are playing an aggressive civ and have a strength promoted warrior and can attack on open terrain.
Thanks, that is a very solid piece of advice that I will use in my next game. Then I agree it's to our benefit to attack not on open terrain but when animals are on forests/hills so the warrior can heal on defense bonus terrain. Thanks for the tip.
You are chancing your exploration which is far more important then potential woodsman promotion in early stages of game. And after exploring surroundings you don't want waste too many hammers on new fogbusters. OTOH WoodyII is useful for workerstealing. So it depends on situation.
Difficult question, usually you'll get 3 exp from attacking, 1 exp for defending on defensive terrain. That can be important since woodsman 2 is needed to reliably defend against barb archers (or you can have multiple warriors).
Edit: put it this way, if most animals are about to disappear, what's more likely, defending against a barb archer 2 more times, or killing a lion with a slight combat bonus (usually ~65%).
It also depends when you get your second warrior out, and how much map you need to scout by then.
At Prince & below, you get a certain number of "free wins" vs barbs (pretty sure animals count as barbs). It's 5 free wins at Settler, decreasing by 1 each level up. I think this applies whether attacking or defending. As noted, you get more exp for attacking so if you have a free win, use it to attack.
Also, there are some interesting modifiers at the lower levels for animal attack probability and strength. Check out page 74 of the C4BTS RefGuide PDF (it's on here somewhere).
At higher levels, I try to protect my scouts with terrain as much as possible.
I normally defend on good terrain instead of running away, but my gut feeling is that running away would often be more sensible, especially with the first warrior.
in the very early stages of a game, don't forget that by not moving, letting the barb come to you next turn, gives a 5% defense bonus to your unit, it all counts.
I don't do the math, I just figure any defensive terrain combination of forest/jungle + hill/crossing water is good enough to fight. But is a 1/5 chance of losing a warrior really worth 1/3 of a promotion? Losing a couple of early warriors (even if they did have good odds) can really screw you up. I guess you also have to take into account fortify bonus and whether you will have to kill the barb/animal at some point anyway.
Unless I'm on a forested hill, river+forest (or other way to get 75%+ defense) I run away. The lost turns healing and chance to loose the worrier is not worth the risk for 1XP
Is it a good idea to boost an warrior to Woodsman III and to attach a general to it for a super-duper healer? Maybe upgrading it before to an axeman to be able to steal few XP?
^^ I've done it several times. But you should keep in mind what you have to invest in order to achieve it. You have to get 4 more promotions on top of Woodsman III. As your experience gained from barbs is capped at 10XP and a general gives you 20XP you have to fight (a lot) against AIs or share free XP from other GGs (for which you have to fight AIs too). If you're charismatic or aggressive the equation changes in favor of doing it.
What do you get in return? Instead of healing 25 HP per turn a unit heals 40 HP per turn on the same tile as your medic. Thereby a totally wrecked unit doesn't take 4 turns but 3 to fully heal. Whether that is worth it is up to you, but I consider other promotions like morale to be more worthwhile. For example if you want your warrior or axe super healer to keep up with cavalry.
If you don't feel too much like cheating when reloading... let the lion come to you.
If you want to be fair, then run, at least with first warrior.... Nothing more boring than 15 turns without anything to do after your lone warrior is dead and your first worker is still in the oven.
The whole idea is to scout the map. Anything else just wastes valuable time that could be used to reveal better sites to settle. In fact, I don't even stop to heal if my scout has taken damage very early in the game. Finding good city sites that early means a lot more than a well promoted warrior.
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