Sincro
Thou hast no Cu, again...
I've started to really enjoy making cannon armies at the earliest possible time and going on an immediate rampage through whomever is close to me.
I do have a few questions about how to maximize the effectiveness of such an army. Please note I play vanilla, with all the limitations and benefits (like seige units being able to kill while on offense) this implies.
1) What's the normal unit to use as stack defense? Since Chemistry comes along the way to Steel, I tend to use Grenadiers. In fact, I normally prebuild my army with CR 2 cats, combat 1 and CR 1 Maces/Axes with a couple utterly obsolete units for stack healing. (Combat 1 and Medic 1 warriors seem to work well as they never defend against anything until they are the last unit left.) Once I have Steel, I go to total money for the unit upgrades to Cannons and Grens for a few turns, then launch. I rarely can make enough money in just a couple turns to upgrade more then 8 cats to cannons + appropriate stack defense, however. I find that I am perpetually in low cash land in order to maximize my science. Not to mention having large amounts of gold tends to make the AI ask for it. Greedy buggers.
2) Better to waste the turn blowing away cultural defenses, or accept the lower victory odds and start attacking right away? I normally do burn a turn wasting the cultural defenses of the city I intend to attack. If my stack is sufficiently large (which normally happens as the war goes on) I start my attack immediately, but the first few cities I go after I usually don't have enough cannons for that.
3) How much of an army is advisable to build up before you declare? I normally construct a pair of armies, each with 4-6 cannons, 2-3 stack defenders, an initial garrison unit for the first city taken, plus the stack healer. Unless I'm in the middle of building something crucial, my cities at this point are all producing replacement cannons with 1 or 2 producing replacement stack healers/garrison units for conquered cities. I hear lots of tales about people drowning their continents in units, but I'm always itching to go before someone else techs out their own grenadiers and cannons, which significantly raises my casualty rate once it happens. And I have noticed that the AIs tend to immediately beeline either rifling or chemistry the moment you start blowing through any AIs territory with cannons.
4) Once you have a fairly advanced army of promoted cannons, do you use those highly promoted CR3 (and sometimes even combat/barrage promos) as your initial attackers, or is it more advisable to spend a couple underpromoted units to weaken defenses first, knowing that there's a significant chance of losing both? I tend to conserve the highly promoted ones, but I can see the advantages either way.
5) Lastly, do you ignore singleton AI units on your way to the cities? Most often they are defending a resource. Since the point of the cannon army is to get your licks in while they have total supremacy, I often find that there's no point in delaying getting to the city to attack it. Especially if the geography indicates that taking the city will deprive the AI of the resource. Would I be better served taking those units out and pillaging those tiles? Perhaps using a separate stack dedicated for that purpose?
Thanks for the advice.
-Sinc
I do have a few questions about how to maximize the effectiveness of such an army. Please note I play vanilla, with all the limitations and benefits (like seige units being able to kill while on offense) this implies.
1) What's the normal unit to use as stack defense? Since Chemistry comes along the way to Steel, I tend to use Grenadiers. In fact, I normally prebuild my army with CR 2 cats, combat 1 and CR 1 Maces/Axes with a couple utterly obsolete units for stack healing. (Combat 1 and Medic 1 warriors seem to work well as they never defend against anything until they are the last unit left.) Once I have Steel, I go to total money for the unit upgrades to Cannons and Grens for a few turns, then launch. I rarely can make enough money in just a couple turns to upgrade more then 8 cats to cannons + appropriate stack defense, however. I find that I am perpetually in low cash land in order to maximize my science. Not to mention having large amounts of gold tends to make the AI ask for it. Greedy buggers.
2) Better to waste the turn blowing away cultural defenses, or accept the lower victory odds and start attacking right away? I normally do burn a turn wasting the cultural defenses of the city I intend to attack. If my stack is sufficiently large (which normally happens as the war goes on) I start my attack immediately, but the first few cities I go after I usually don't have enough cannons for that.
3) How much of an army is advisable to build up before you declare? I normally construct a pair of armies, each with 4-6 cannons, 2-3 stack defenders, an initial garrison unit for the first city taken, plus the stack healer. Unless I'm in the middle of building something crucial, my cities at this point are all producing replacement cannons with 1 or 2 producing replacement stack healers/garrison units for conquered cities. I hear lots of tales about people drowning their continents in units, but I'm always itching to go before someone else techs out their own grenadiers and cannons, which significantly raises my casualty rate once it happens. And I have noticed that the AIs tend to immediately beeline either rifling or chemistry the moment you start blowing through any AIs territory with cannons.
4) Once you have a fairly advanced army of promoted cannons, do you use those highly promoted CR3 (and sometimes even combat/barrage promos) as your initial attackers, or is it more advisable to spend a couple underpromoted units to weaken defenses first, knowing that there's a significant chance of losing both? I tend to conserve the highly promoted ones, but I can see the advantages either way.
5) Lastly, do you ignore singleton AI units on your way to the cities? Most often they are defending a resource. Since the point of the cannon army is to get your licks in while they have total supremacy, I often find that there's no point in delaying getting to the city to attack it. Especially if the geography indicates that taking the city will deprive the AI of the resource. Would I be better served taking those units out and pillaging those tiles? Perhaps using a separate stack dedicated for that purpose?
Thanks for the advice.
-Sinc
