Offense or defense?

[Delphi456]

With the lux slider at 10% and sci at 0% I'm making 96 gpt in republic, paying 126 in unit support. I have 23 towns. I have all first tier MA techs, plus chivalry. Only one civ has Invention. My army conists of:

1 sword army
7 horses
25 sword
14 MI
14 bowmen
10 cats
13 trebs

I'll spend 300 g to upgrade the cats, but I don't think I can afford to keep running 0 sci to upgrade the horses and swords. I've stopped unit production to focus on building markets (hving 3 luxes) and libs. One town has both so it can go back to producing units. Should it make pikes or knights?

 

[vmxa]

We would need to know a few things like what is the level? What is the map like? Are you on par, ahead or behind in tech? IOW do they have pikes and knights or not. Is there more land to grab and are you working on that?

In general I would not upgrade cats. I would maybe upgrade a couple of horses, if I had an army they could go into. Upgrading swords is probably better as that extra attack could be useful. No upgrades if you are not going to war.

As long as you are not in a position to make more units, you could make some to replace others, rather than build nothing.

I would not have that many units and be sitting on them. I would be attacking someone. That sword army is about to get so much less useful, until you can add a 4th unit. All those units are best used now, prior to facing pikes and muskets.

So disband units, if you are not going to fight.

 

[Raliuven]

With that many units I would hazard to say that my immediate next door neighbors should be looking for somewhere else to live. I don't see any boats in your list so I am assuming a Pangaea map?

I wouldn't bother upgrading artillery at this point. I rarely bother upgrading artillery at all. Same with units in general but mostly because I rarely have the extra gold stocked up. It seems that the AA to MA upgrades are the most expensive and prohibitive. If I upgrade it is usually knights to cavs.

If you can reach another Civ (close neighbor) and you can do so without busting your rep, I would suggest attacking them. A republic can support a decent army so long as you continue to grow. More towns = more unit support & more income to support even more units.

If you can't grow, disband old units and upgrade. A Republic needs to have a lean (hopefully modern) army or at least one that is earning its keep. A 0% science gambit (by which I hope you mean you are on a lone scientist?) is only healthy if you are out conquering everyone else so that they will not get to the chance to progress beyond the point that you can roll over them. (Aside from the Great Library, of course.) So you either need to use or your units or get rid of them.

 

[tR1cKy]

pikes. you need a few of them to absorb attacks from skirmishers once you invade. let's say 2 defensive units per invading stack, or even more if the difficulty level is high. as soon as you have that minimal defense force, go war-frenzy.

 

[Delphi456]

Emp, huge pangea, 31 civs.

I know 27 civs, only one civ knows a tech I don't know. I've wiped out Spain and Egypt only has 2 towns left. I will be in constant war until this game is over. I'm curious why you guys don't think upgrading cats is a good idea. They are barely adequate against spears in towns, and soon I will be facing pikes in cities.

 

[Raliuven]

The question is if the Treb is really going to do that much better than the catapult to make an upgrade worthwhile. How long will it take to send it back for the upgrade and then get it back into position to make it worthwhile? It may be that by the time this is accomplished you will need to send them back to upgrade them to cannons because Trebs don't do well against pikes/muskets in a city.

For me it is a tradeoff. Cats=Trebs=Cannons is a costly upgrade and I don't know that you really get much for the gold. Once artillery is available I tend to use more and may upgrade some, but that is more because of its ROF and the fact that there are rails to move them around. Suddenly it is possible to mass your artillery exactly where you want it for full effect. Until then you need to use your crystal ball and put them in the path of the invaders to get a shot at them. I still like them, but not enough to upgrade them.

The tradeoff is using the gold to build infrastructure or keep research moving. Would I rather upgrade a cat to a cannon or rush a library/market/etc. Or I'd rather use that bank of gold to run deficit research to get to a tech first and make a killing in the trading with the AI? The answer will change with each game and each situation, but generally I find the money is better used elsewhere.

 

[Delphi456]

I'm kinda confused as to how to you attack cities. So until Artillery is available you are attacking muskets and rifles with cats? Or don't you do any city attacking until RP?

 

[vmxa]

Cats, trebs not much difference. If I have money to burn, yeah I will upgrade everything. That is not the case most of the time and money has to be used for other things. I may need a rush in a new town. I may need to defict spend on research or to pay for troops.

How much better is a cat than a treb or even a cannon? I cannot say, but to me they are about the same. I will have strings of misses with either. Only arty are superior enough to care about.

So 10 cats or 10 trebs not a significant difference as far as I can tell. So I save my gold for more useful things. I prefer to attack cities with armies. In an AWE 31 civs game, I should have plenty of armies by now.

If you are just now getting to a serious war footing, you should start getting leaders for armies. Otherwise you will have to drag lots of cats and troops to reduce losses. Enough cats will take down any units. It is just a pain to move and shoot them.

The other issue is that without an army you have to be concerned about the stack being attacked.

 

[Raliuven]

If it is a really hard nut to crack I will roll up whatever mismatched artillery I have IF I don't have an army or two I can used to whittled down the defenders. Send an army through to pillage their resources and infrastructure to deny the enemy the iron and salt they need to make pikes and muskets. The real game changer is rifles which require no resource so you can't deny them (and, of course, TOW if the game gets that far). If using your armies to pillage the helpless AI seems like an exploit, then plan your battles to go after the cities with those resources first.

If they have pikes hopefully I have knights and I will sometimes absorb the losses and live with the retreat results. If they muskets hopefully I have cavs & same thing. Of course if you are playing from behind that is not possible. Sometimes you just take the hit if you really need to take the city. And if you have many units you are planning to disband anyway, might as well disband them in the tried and true method. (Though be careful if you are a Republic - for some reason people don't like it when litte Johnny goes off to war and is never seen again though it is perfectly okay to draft him for 6500 years. )

 

[vmxa]

One thing about just running in units to die, is to consider promotions. I will dump old units in to die as long as they do not have a lot of units that I am going to give an extra HP or I am sure that any units promoted are going to be killed.

I hate to give an extra HP to an infantry or rifle. Not so much on musket or less. That one HP on an infantry can cost me several units.

 

[bigFRANK]

Upgrade the horse's to knights and crack on with a war before the world discovers gun powder.

 

[MarkK]

When in question, Offense. You can answer them later.