Ordu from Huns

[Tonny]

I don't understand this building from the Huns. Is it pure for aesthetics?

Spoiler :

Thanks

 

[Siptah]

The unique outposts need better descriptions. As it says, this one cannot be attached to cities, so expansion with the huns is a bit different.

What the Ordu can do, however, is building/buying the unique Hunnic Horde, which is available as soon as you hit classical. I've you've never played hordes, and like to fight, you should give it a try. You also get hordes by using the militaristic ability with the huns or mongols (if that hasn't changed since I tried it). Hordes grow by killing enemy units, a bit like your tribes in the neolithic. After you switch out of the huns (and don't pick mongols), your Ordus become regular outposts that can be attached.

 

[Tonny]

Thanks

 

[lymond]

One neat trick is you can take some units...say some scouts you have running around..and disband then in the territory of an Ordu outpost to add pop. You need at least 4 pop in an Ordu to instantly create a Hunnic Horde stack. Even cooler, is you can take pop from a nearby city by using the Conscripts button to produce 4 militia and move then over to the Ordu to disband and then create your Horde.

I mentioned this to you already, but I'll mention again for others. It's best to spit up Horde stacks so that your Horde can grow with kills. Empty slots are needed to accrue food and so new units can form.

 

[Taefin]

Does killing units give them food now? That wasn’t the case in Victor was it? If so, I’ll have to try them again. I fear the AI Huns! Admittedly my Hunnic neighbor right now does not have dozens of horde running around as far as I can tell, but my visibility on them is low…

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Does killing units give them food now? That wasn’t the case in Victor was it? If so, I’ll have to try them again. I fear the AI Huns! Admittedly my Hunnic neighbor right now does not have dozens of horde running around as far as I can tell, but my visibility on them is low…

Like your stacks of Neolithic Hunters with animals, the Huns gain new horse-archer/Horde units from kills of enemy units, but only if you have less than 4 Hun horse-archer units in your army - you need an empty 'slot' for the new unit. With that one proviso, though, Huns can be absolutely Terrifying in the Classical Age, because, as posted above, you can shift population to the Ordos to instant-generate 4-unit Hordes. Even worse, the Hordes require No new Technology: they are available as soon as you advance to the Classical Age and choose the Huns (and have a single Horse resource available), which usually means they are available before anybody else's Classical units. The Persian Immortals and Greek Hoplites are both Emblematic Spearmen who are generally pretty good at seeing off mounted units, but you can't get them until half-way through the Classical Age tech tree - which if you've been trying to fight off Hordes since the beginning of the Age, may be much, much too late!

Oh, and the AI is very aware of the advantages of Huns and Mongols: I've played several games in which an AI Faction on another continent picks Huns in Classical, then Mongols in Medieval, and when I meet them in Early Modern Age they are Alone on the continent, having wiped out their neighbors . . .

 

[Taefin]

Uh oh. I see hoards now! Luckily Carthaginian elephants get a stench bonus against them for being weaker.

What I’m really afraid of is their multi-move feature, do I want to start a battle where every AI turn will last 3 minutes?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Uh oh. I see hoards now! Luckily Carthaginian elephants get a stench bonus against them for being weaker.

What I’m really afraid of is their multi-move feature, do I want to start a battle where every AI turn will last 3 minutes?

All the early Elephant units (Mauryans, Carthaginians) should have gotten the Anti-Cavalry effect, which would have been a neat use of the 'separate individual effects' method of Unit Definition in Humankind. Instead, the Carthaginian elephants got Trample, which simply makes them more effective against any weaker unit. The sneaky thing about that is that at Combat Strength 31, they are stronger than all other Classical units, regular and Emblematic! The Maurya elephant full of archers gets Elephant Platform which removes the melee penalty for Ranged units and I found in two games so far that they also seem to get a much less restrictive Line of Sight: they could fire at targets that ordinary Archers or Crossbowmen could not shoot at (I kept a bunch of Mauryan elephants around through most of the Medieval Age for that reason - they could provide better fire support than Crossbowman who had to be positioned more carefully to fire at all)

 

[Taefin]

I kept a bunch of Mauryan elephants around through most of the Medieval Age for that reason - they could provide better fire support than Crossbowman who had to be positioned more carefully to fire at all)

Biggest mistake I made in my last game was upgrading my Khmer elephant archers into machines guns. Those suckers sunk an ironclad and would have been super helpful in supporting my line infantry, actually being able to shoot over them and all.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Biggest mistake I made in my last game was upgrading my Khmer elephant archers into machines guns. Those suckers sunk an ironclad and would have been super helpful in supporting my line infantry, actually being able to shoot over them and all.

I am fast becoming a Pachydermophile in Humankind: the elephant-based units have Hidden Strengths and advantages that I really appreciate.

This is also modifying my thoughts about potential Elephant units in Civ VII. Civ never got elephants right, and Humankind, as posted above, missed the specific 'anti-horse' advantage of elephants against mounted units, but is much closer to the right 'feel' for them - but only for Emblematic (Unique) units. As we've discussed in a Thread here in CivFanatics, I'd like to see Civ VII offer both the very specific Emblematic (Unique) Elephants for specific Civs, like the Mughul Armored Elephants or the Siamese 'Maxim (machinegun) Elephants', and 'generic' elephant units buildable by anyone with access to the Elephant Resource on the map. The 'generic' elephants could be divided into a basic archer-carrying Ranged Elephant (typical of everybody east of Persia using elephants) or a Melee Elephant (typical of everybody west of Persia, the Diadochi, Catthaginians, Egyptian Ptolemies, etc) which could even have a Siege capability since they were also used to push in gates to fortified cities.

With, as was suggested and run with by others, potential graphic changes providing varied elephant types for different continents/terrains: Mammoths, Mastodonia, and the varied 'modern' African and Asian breeds.

 

[Galvatron]

You also get hordes by using the militaristic ability with the huns or mongols (if that hasn't changed since I tried it).

No fracking way.

 

[Siptah]

No fracking way.

Yeah, luckily this got changed at some point and you now get the usual levy-type units.

 

[playshogi]

The easiest way to get Hordes is to draft them from outposts. You need an outpost with 5 pop. Use 4 pop and about 73 influence and you instantly build an army of 4 Hordes. So, join your older units to outposts to get up to 5 pop and exchange them (and a little bit of influence) for 4 hordes. They do cost 8 gold per turn to maintain, so make sure you have a lot of gold before embarking on this plan.

 

[Galvatron]

Yeah, luckily this got changed at some point and you now get the usual levy-type units.

Damn.

 

[Jkchart]

All the early Elephant units (Mauryans, Carthaginians) should have gotten the Anti-Cavalry effect, which would have been a neat use of the 'separate individual effects' method of Unit Definition in Humankind. Instead, the Carthaginian elephants got Trample, which simply makes them more effective against any weaker unit. The sneaky thing about that is that at Combat Strength 31, they are stronger than all other Classical units, regular and Emblematic! The Maurya elephant full of archers gets Elephant Platform which removes the melee penalty for Ranged units and I found in two games so far that they also seem to get a much less restrictive Line of Sight: they could fire at targets that ordinary Archers or Crossbowmen could not shoot at (I kept a bunch of Mauryan elephants around through most of the Medieval Age for that reason - they could provide better fire support than Crossbowman who had to be positioned more carefully to fire at all)

Mauryan Elephants were a godsend in my fourth game since I fought three consecutive and rather long wars with the Food Empire for about half the game (I call them that since they only picked the Agrarian cultures) and those are good up to the end of the medieval

 

[Taefin]

Went Hittite > Huns this game and it’s pretty fun! The Gigir are much stronger than I expected! So far I’ve only fought ancient units but the suppression allows everyone to pile on the target which is at -5 strength. Combined with the Huns this makes for quick kills and the +2 to cav keeps the Gigir relevant much longer. Once I pick up prof army and get +2 from civics they’ll be at 27 and hitting 31 on the charge, which I’m guessing will be enough to punch into the classical.

Also picked up a hilarious early scout cap on my nearest neighbor, they had a capital with 3 district in a line off a cliff, with the city tile at the bottom. So I killed the militia in the center, captured the flag, and with only one tile to attack from, the other militia didn’t kill the flag holder and I took the city. They immediately founded another capital but it had 0 pop so my other scout took it, ending the war. Took all their territory with 240 war score and had to ransack a city to get down to 3 cities. BTW I’m not convinced 2 cities is the way to go, I’ll drop my thoughts over in Influence Me tomorrow.

 

[Victoria]

BTW I’m not convinced 2 cities is the way to go

If you can take a second, sure

 

[Taefin]

Sooooo…. do Hun hoards upgrade to anything besides Mongol hordes? I wasn’t fast enough on the era for that, and I don’t know that I would have wanted to, so if not, I’m pretty soon these hordes are going back to the cities, which I acknowledge may be the whole point of ceasing being nomadic.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Polish Winged Hussars (Early Modern)
Dragoons (Industrial)

 

[Taefin]

Polish Winged Hussars (Early Modern)
Dragoons (Industrial)

Thanks, right after posting I saw that the fandom wiki is up and running with all this info. My bad

I passed on the Poles, but found that using complete hun armies is an excellent way to found outposts, since they can found an outpost by disbanding their entire army into the outpost, for zero influence. If you were still Huns, you could then immediately extract them again, but if going to add them to pop anyway, it helps save the influence for meeting those outposts with cities. I’m playing my first 10 player huge map (2 continents 60% land) and there is so much territory, much still unclaimed at the start of EM.