vicawoo
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2007
- Messages
- 3,226
After reading a post rating the civ traits, and thinking how a lot of them are very useful in certain situations, I gave myself the challenging of figuring a way to leverage the protective trait. It does seem weak, but surely there's a way to get the most out of it.
The bonuses: drill 1/cg1 on archery and gunpowder unit, half price walls and castles.
I brainstormed some tactics:
1. Early archer rush. You can get cover archers with a mere barracks (tokugawa's best for this because of half-priced barracks. You can't take cities, but you can pillage and block his expansions. Soften your nearest neighbor and take him easily later.
Con: You can't take cities, and you need to go archery earlier than usual. After some thought, archers are worse pillagers than axemen due to how weak they are.
1a. Get them to attack you part 2. Pillage war with xbows. Maybe you can get them to attack your units on fortifications. The best thing about protective is that it's damn hard to take your cities. You can whip a wall with 1 pop and you're invincible early on. You don't need special resources if you rely on archers. If you're saladin, camel archers don't take horses.
2. Cheap castles for extra trade route. I don't play BTS yet, but it would be more useful then. For 150/2=75 production, that's cheaper than a courthouse and can compensate for far away cities.
Con: Engineering is really out of the way if you're going for machinery (xbows) or civil service, and becomes obsolete virtually two techs later (engineering is guild level). Maybe if you're beelining catapults. Also, if you're doing a land grab, you need to close borders until you can block off your land.
3. overflow "Wealth" trick for city walls. Especially if you have stone, chop some forests and whip for enormous wall overflow.
Con: you can only do it once, unlike national epic.
4. Archers with city walls don't die to axemen. That's right, raging barbarians.
Con: at higher difficulties, AI start with archers so aren't hurt much by barbs. Also, they expand fast enough that barbarians are only a problem (more so for you) for a very short time.
5. Less defenders (due to city walls and free cg) means pacifism is easier. If you're going to use this, hereditary rule becomes a little less useful and drama a little more so. Not bad, since you're worrying about getting caste system, construction, and machinery.
Protective leaders:
Mao. Expansive, chukonu. Expansive means cheaper workers, so good for pillaging and early production boosts. 1 whip granaries means early-mid boost. + health is good for GP farms and cottaging your capital. Half-price harbor synergizes with castle trade routes. You have buff crossbows. Starts with mining.
Saladin. Spiritual, camel archers. If you get caste early, you don't need monuments to border pop. No anarchy is worth extra turns. You don't need so many units, so you can run pacifism more cheaply. Camel archers don't need horses, but do need archery. Camel archers compensate well for your lack of attack power. Starts with mysticism, good for building early monuments.
Wang Kon. Financial is good, but I'm loathe to use him just for that, since you could easily just ignore the protective trait. Ok, so financial means commerce is useful, so maybe CE with monarchy. UU catapults, so engineering, so you can get the most out of your extra castle trade route.
Qi. Industrious, chukonu. Less hammers on units means you can focus on wonders more. Half-priced forges mean machinery beeline is even stronger.
My picks for the best protective leaders are saladin then mao.
Then I played some monarch games. Once I got a nearby stone, got pyramids, easy win, but not much to do with protective. Same with nearby bronze, once you get axes, archers are pretty useless. On raging, level 2 archers did really well and the emergency city wall was awesome... until I realized the other civs barely seemed affected and just surviving wasn't enough, and my expansion was too slow.
Overall, your economy boost is pretty small, just the mid game extra trade route and the minor pacifism boost.
Militarily, pillaging is nice in theory, but if you're playing on higher difficulties, they probably have larger empires than you if you don't war, and you need to take cities.
Going machinery delays liberalism/cavalry beeline, but to make the most out of your protective trait, you have to keep the world in the medieval age.
Sad to say, but I'm having a harder time than when I'm randoming my leader. Anyone have thoughts about maximizing protective?
The bonuses: drill 1/cg1 on archery and gunpowder unit, half price walls and castles.
I brainstormed some tactics:
1. Early archer rush. You can get cover archers with a mere barracks (tokugawa's best for this because of half-priced barracks. You can't take cities, but you can pillage and block his expansions. Soften your nearest neighbor and take him easily later.
Con: You can't take cities, and you need to go archery earlier than usual. After some thought, archers are worse pillagers than axemen due to how weak they are.
1a. Get them to attack you part 2. Pillage war with xbows. Maybe you can get them to attack your units on fortifications. The best thing about protective is that it's damn hard to take your cities. You can whip a wall with 1 pop and you're invincible early on. You don't need special resources if you rely on archers. If you're saladin, camel archers don't take horses.
2. Cheap castles for extra trade route. I don't play BTS yet, but it would be more useful then. For 150/2=75 production, that's cheaper than a courthouse and can compensate for far away cities.
Con: Engineering is really out of the way if you're going for machinery (xbows) or civil service, and becomes obsolete virtually two techs later (engineering is guild level). Maybe if you're beelining catapults. Also, if you're doing a land grab, you need to close borders until you can block off your land.
3. overflow "Wealth" trick for city walls. Especially if you have stone, chop some forests and whip for enormous wall overflow.
Con: you can only do it once, unlike national epic.
4. Archers with city walls don't die to axemen. That's right, raging barbarians.
Con: at higher difficulties, AI start with archers so aren't hurt much by barbs. Also, they expand fast enough that barbarians are only a problem (more so for you) for a very short time.
5. Less defenders (due to city walls and free cg) means pacifism is easier. If you're going to use this, hereditary rule becomes a little less useful and drama a little more so. Not bad, since you're worrying about getting caste system, construction, and machinery.
Protective leaders:
Mao. Expansive, chukonu. Expansive means cheaper workers, so good for pillaging and early production boosts. 1 whip granaries means early-mid boost. + health is good for GP farms and cottaging your capital. Half-price harbor synergizes with castle trade routes. You have buff crossbows. Starts with mining.
Saladin. Spiritual, camel archers. If you get caste early, you don't need monuments to border pop. No anarchy is worth extra turns. You don't need so many units, so you can run pacifism more cheaply. Camel archers don't need horses, but do need archery. Camel archers compensate well for your lack of attack power. Starts with mysticism, good for building early monuments.
Wang Kon. Financial is good, but I'm loathe to use him just for that, since you could easily just ignore the protective trait. Ok, so financial means commerce is useful, so maybe CE with monarchy. UU catapults, so engineering, so you can get the most out of your extra castle trade route.
Qi. Industrious, chukonu. Less hammers on units means you can focus on wonders more. Half-priced forges mean machinery beeline is even stronger.
My picks for the best protective leaders are saladin then mao.
Then I played some monarch games. Once I got a nearby stone, got pyramids, easy win, but not much to do with protective. Same with nearby bronze, once you get axes, archers are pretty useless. On raging, level 2 archers did really well and the emergency city wall was awesome... until I realized the other civs barely seemed affected and just surviving wasn't enough, and my expansion was too slow.
Overall, your economy boost is pretty small, just the mid game extra trade route and the minor pacifism boost.
Militarily, pillaging is nice in theory, but if you're playing on higher difficulties, they probably have larger empires than you if you don't war, and you need to take cities.
Going machinery delays liberalism/cavalry beeline, but to make the most out of your protective trait, you have to keep the world in the medieval age.
Sad to say, but I'm having a harder time than when I'm randoming my leader. Anyone have thoughts about maximizing protective?
, they finally have a semi-purpose. The Gwall also gives Gspy points and plays well with a protective game. I have heard from some people that spies(the specialists) are almost as efficient as scientists. How I'm not quite sure, but it has something to do with the beaker/gold ratio. Building the GWall also leads into playing a defensive game, seeing as the bonuses only apply within your own territory. Sitting bull is good for this, because he can maximize the usefullness of the GWall, Rep-enhanced scientists, and the GSpy.
. Because they are archery units, Protective leaders' Crossbowmen are seriously powerful. No melee units can stand against them due to their +50% bonus against melee, artillery units do less collateral against them due to their Drill, and Arabia's Camel Archers, superior to Knights, easily take care of the Arabian Crossbowmen's only reliable counters, Horse Archers and Knights. Heck actually you could even use Pikemen to back up your Crossbowmen, they are way cheaper than Camels and more effective against Mounted units. If you haven't already, I strongly suggest you try it sometime 
