No axes, barb swords, what to do?

[Silu]

Is there any possibility of luring a sword off with a worker? You'd have better chances with two archers and a warrior vs three swords than vs four, of course...but I don't know if the barbs would kill a worker before attacking the city.

For lemming-mode barbs such as the ones from the barb invasion event, no. Nothing can deviate them from their path AFAIK.

 

[tycoonist]

I've been batting 100% with HA's for some time on immortal now, too. Once I got used to using them it really IS automatic -----> ~ 15 HA's around or just after 500 BC and any production base the target has is gone. Any problematic AI units can be killed in the field since the AI_Defense garrisons are actually pretty small.

But the HA battles take less time...probably similar losses. If the AI gets longbows, elephant wars have material costs too.

waaaaaaay more losses with HAs i promise you. admittedly they do move quickly, which is definitely an advantage, but HAs with combat 1 (maybe 2) dont get very good odds against CG2 archers, even in 20% defence cities. if the city is on a hill, the losses will be even higher. elephants on the other hand come with catapults alongside. i like to tech to construction, build 5 catapults or so while i wait for HBR to come in. in a war against a non-protective civ, i would expect to lose max. 1 elephant per city. against a protective civ, maybe 1 elephant and a catapult.

without catapults, you dont have that kinda luxury. HA losses would be far higher.

 

[synthboy]

I had a peculiar one where I got the barb invasion event and thought, "Well, that's it, game over." and instead the stack skirted my border, headed off into the fog and a few turns later I got the message "The American Civilization Has Been Destroyed". Of course, that meant that Charlemagne had no-one to hold back his expansion and I lost in a dogpile attack around 1700AD but still odd that this happened.

 

[City Raider]

On the HA vs. Elephants comments, isn't HBR needed for Elephants?

If you're beelining construction to get to elephants quick, you can go with the HA's and save yourself the tech time of Masonary/Math/Contruction?

I'm only on emperor, but I think the key to HA is speed (of units) and time saved (more cities earlier). I think you can have them in 6 techs (Agr/AH/Wheel/Hunting/Archery/HBR). Obviously HBR is expensive but not much different than an IW rush. And HA with flanking promotions can usually do pretty good in retreating to negate losses.

 

[Hsinchu]

I usually pray there is a hill or forested hill nearby. Archers get the same bonus for hill as for forest thanks to innate. This means +100% on forested hill, with first strike being the tipping point. Try to draw an attack NOT in your capital as this means allowing the swords to destroy loads of hard work. Make sure to pair archers so that a successful attack on one unit is followed with swift XP gaining retribution. Double hills is REALLY a fat promo if you have linked hills in city.

If you are REALLY paranoid or don't have hills but forests/jungles, whip out a warrior or two as softeners. If you time it right, you can get an archer or another warrior right behind the first whipped unit.

But yea.... archers archers archers.

Next step, learn from your mistakes. Either turn barbs off next game, or turn raging barbs on and learn to fogbust like mad.

I know that learning to fogbust improved my game DRAMATICALLY. I am so moved by the revelation that I'm thinking about starting a succession teaching game just to drive the point home.

 

[Negator_UK]

If you can get at leasr 3 archers to the target, whip a wall, it enhances all their defences - but its not much use if there's only a few defenders relative to the attack force.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

waaaaaaay more losses with HAs i promise you. admittedly they do move quickly, which is definitely an advantage, but HAs with combat 1 (maybe 2) dont get very good odds against CG2 archers, even in 20% defence cities. if the city is on a hill, the losses will be even higher. elephants on the other hand come with catapults alongside. i like to tech to construction, build 5 catapults or so while i wait for HBR to come in. in a war against a non-protective civ, i would expect to lose max. 1 elephant per city. against a protective civ, maybe 1 elephant and a catapult.

without catapults, you dont have that kinda luxury. HA losses would be far higher.

HA losses would be higher if you waited until catapult times to use them. There's no reason to do that though.

A HA rush against PRO will see SOME (but not many) CG II. Obviously, all HAs are going to have flanking II or combat II. A HA force attacking an AI in the mid-late BCs will experience ~ 70% survival on attack, sometimes better.

Your estimate w/ losses/city with elephants is optimistic. The first catapult, on average, is likely to die, especially against CG II but even vs CG I (and you're more likely to see stronger promos by now). You also have to kill a lot more units (probably double or more) than with earlier horse archers, because of bombardment and slow move.

Horse archers have a higher survival rate than catapults for small #'s of enemies in this time period - flanking II will give > 60% survival odds even against fortified CG II or better (and they ignore first strikes on top of this). Catapults handle larger stacks of garrison better, which is good because they'll see much larger stacks. If you're attacking with elephants after bombardment w/o suicide cats, then you're probably running up against a spear and the occasional loss of an elephant to an archer ----> you're not coming out very far ahead hammer wise given that you have to kill many more units.

The above analysis completely ignores the possibility of fast longbows (late BC's or early ADs), which completely neuters the catapult strat in a comparison between the two. The faster cities are taken, the less likely the AI will see feudalism.

If all you need to win is to take out 1 AI, then below deity horse = easy win (even against the likes of gilgamesh). I've seen successful HA attacks on deity and will probably try some myself soon.