Persia for early start.

[incubuspawn]

Can someone who has played persia please answer this. Are they simpy as awesome in early expansion as they look stats wise ?

Im wondering this because Cyrus is both creative ( plus 2 culture per round ) and expansion ( plus 2 health ) And starts with farming ( growth ) and hunting ( scout ) plus the UU is a chariot ( very early conquest ) That adds up to a fast start IMO. JUst wanted to see if there is anyone who has experienced this yet.

ps. is this the same Cyrus that caused the greeks so much strife??? why is his description only showing the good things about this guy lol
The way I see this is turn the capitol into a worker/settler town, and have all others build military. research wheel and animal husbandry first, and eliminate your immediate neighbor ( provided you get horses ). meanwhile even without horses you can just build farms in all your cities that expand borders rather fast, and build up that population in every city. either way... guess I'll just give it a try lol.

 

[Vizzini]

If you get horses very fast and if your opponents are near-by... yes. Persia rules for Ancient Era warmongering. My most recent win was Persia, 5 Civs, Tiny (continents) map, on Noble. I wiped out 2 Civs before 1000 BC. Those Immortals are so cheap and so very good against Archers it's scary. You'll still need an unholy number of them tho - since a single Spearman can ruin a stack of 5 or so Immortals all by himself.

The third Civ took quite a bit longer because by then it was stacks of Immortals vs Archer/Spearman/Axemen defenders (and Axemen will make sushi out of your Immortals)

Don't be dismayed at the losses tho - since by that time you'll need to cull the herd so-to-speak to keep your economy from crashing, but Persia as a Warmonger in the Ancient Era is a lot of fun.

Persia without Horses very early tho?

Ugh.

 

[suspendinlight]

Yeah I am working on a game with them right now. The combo creative/expansive combo is nice to grab some land early. I am not impressed with the immortals though. For one thing, you have to be lucky enough to have a horse resource near your first city or two for them to be any use and once you get to Iron Working, they are not much better than swordsmen at taking cities (which is really all Immortals are good for anyway).

 

[incubuspawn]

If you get horses very fast and if your opponents are near-by... yes. Persia rules for Ancient Era warmongering. My most recent win was Persia, 5 Civs, Tiny (continents) map, on Noble. I wiped out 2 Civs before 1000 BC. Those Immortals are so cheap and so very good against Archers it's scary. You'll still need an unholy number of them tho - since a single Spearman can ruin a stack of 5 or so Immortals all by himself.

The third Civ took quite a bit longer because by then it was stacks of Immortals vs Archer/Spearman/Axemen defenders (and Axemen will make sushi out of your Immortals)

Don't be dismayed at the losses tho - since by that time you'll need to cull the herd so-to-speak to keep your economy from crashing, but Persia as a Warmonger in the Ancient Era is a lot of fun.

Persia without Horses very early tho?

Ugh.

I was thinking that even wihtout horses, persia could simply expand ( with the free border growth 5 turns after settleing ) and farm each city up to 8 and the put them to work. How did that work for you??? or have you tried that? ok I got myself all jacked up lol IM going for a persian game lol.

 

[Vizzini]

once you get to Iron Working, they are not much better than swordsmen at taking cities (which is really all Immortals are good for anyway).

I disagree.

At Flanking II with their built-in 30% Withdraw ability they've got better than 50/50 odds of getting out of a losing fight alive, have a built-in +50% bonus vs Archers, are immune to Archer First Strikes, move at 2 rather than 1... and cost 38% less than Swordsmen. As Archers will be your bane until Gunpowder - Immortals > Swordsmen when attacking a city, especially since you can have more of them and get them rolling long before Iron.

Key point tho: Your Swordsman fails to kill a city defender your Swordsman is dead. My Immortal has very good odds to get out of that fight alive, even if it loses the fight... They're called Immortals for a reason. The kicker? In the time it takes you to build 5 Swordsman I'll have 8 Immortals built - and they'll get to the fight twice as fast.

Very very very powerful unit - and remains so all the way to Gunpowder. (Altho to be fair Pikemen will cause murderous losses if you don't prep the city with Cats first)

 

[MiamiBigAL]

All good ponts, but expansionist trait is really quite sub-par unless you play on really high difficulty levels. And in multiplayer, where everyone is noble, it's pretty much wasted. Immortals are awesome though, but you're gambling heavily on getting horses early. I prefer UUs that come a little later that you have a big chance of finding the correct resource for.

Flanking 2 is nice, but you're going to be losing every battles against cities by the time you have the tech to have a couple upgrades (note that he's not aggressive). on the other hand, a city raider 1 + 2 Swordsman is going to be much more effective, even if they can't withdraw.

But my favourite....Inca que-cha rushes! They're so nasty.

 

[suspendinlight]

I disagree.

At Flanking II with their built-in 30% Withdraw ability they've got better than 50/50 odds of getting out of a losing fight alive, have a built-in +50% bonus vs Archers, are immune to Archer First Strikes, move at 2 rather than 1... and cost 38% less than Swordsmen. As Archers will be your bane until Gunpowder - Immortals > Swordsmen when attacking a city, especially since you can have more of them and get them rolling long before Iron.

Key point tho: Your Swordsman fails to kill a city defender your Swordsman is dead. My Immortal has very good odds to get out of that fight alive, even if it loses the fight... They're called Immortals for a reason. The kicker? In the time it takes you to build 5 Swordsman I'll have 8 Immortals built - and they'll get to the fight twice as fast.

Very very very powerful unit - and remains so all the way to Gunpowder. (Altho to be fair Pikemen will cause murderous losses if you don't prep the city with Cats first)

I agree with most of what you say about Immortals over Swords (and note I did say that Immortals are not MUCH better), but all it takes is a few well-placed spearmen to take down an army of Immortals (4 vs. 8 is pretty bad odds and that's in the open field). Once the enemy gets to pikemen, they are certainly useless. Even without spear units, once cities begin to have Longbows your immortals are only evenly matched in the open field. If you also assume the Longbows are going to be in cities and probably have +25% defense promotion, you are looking at pretty bad odds there. They are only useful if you can get them up and running right away, when the enemy has only archers (ie you have horses near your first or second city) and steamroll over a couple of nearby civs.

 

[Vizzini]

all it takes is a few well-placed spearmen to take down an army of Immortals (4 vs. 8 is pretty bad odds and that's in the open field). Once the enemy gets to pikemen, they are certainly useless. Even without spear units, once cities begin to have Longbows your immortals are only evenly matched in the open field. If you also assume the Longbows are going to be in cities and probably have +25% defense promotion, you are looking at pretty bad odds there. They are only useful if you can get them up and running right away, when the enemy has only archers (ie you have horses near your first or second city) and steamroll over a couple of nearby civs.

All true - Immortals will lose more often than they'll win vs Spearmen and Longbows. (And especially Pikes - must prep with Cats first)

What you marginalize tho is what makes them such awesome raiders: They are Immortals. I've taken a stack of 10 Immortals and attacked a city with 1 spearman and 2 archers - fortified on a hill with no catapults to prep it. The worst possible city to try and take - with barely 5ish vs 9+ odds. If I recall correctly at one point I was see +90% bonuses to the defenders in that long list of Red stuff when I was looking at the combat odds

So I attacked and I lost over half of the individual fights, it took all 10 to take the city - but I still had 8 Immortals when the fight was over. I "lost" 6+ times - but only really got 2 units killed doing that. Three to four turns fortified in the town and that stack is ready to march again... and by then the reinforcements have already arrived for the march on the next city.

They're going to lose, and lose regularly vs enemy defenders and I don't think anyone will try and say otherwise... this does not mean however that they're all going to get destroyed. It is a major gamble that you'll have Horses early enough to exploit this unit for all it's worth but if you do...

 

[narmox]

Plus it's not that hard to get flanking II

Build a barracks, and win one fight against anything (barb, animal, or enemy unit) and you got flanking II already.

 

[Mujadaddy]

FYI, Egypt is similar in the early game as well (Spiritual, Creative; War Chariots; Start with Wheel and Agriculture) ... If you get horses close by, you can pump out some Strength 5 chariots as soon as your worker has hooked the horses up...

 

[Astax]

First don't immortals need horses? Secondly Immortal vs a horse archer. Not so good is it :/ you got 4 vs 6 plus the horse archer matches your speed so he can attack you where your flanking does jack.

Tactically speaking all ancient conflicts are bassed on who has horses. Yeah maybe you can raid a city with it, but you have to get to the city first and if you bring defensive units in your stack you'll slow yourself down to 1 speed :/

 

[incubuspawn]

First don't immortals need horses? Secondly Immortal vs a horse archer. Not so good is it :/ you got 4 vs 6 plus the horse archer matches your speed so he can attack you where your flanking does jack.

Tactically speaking all ancient conflicts are bassed on who has horses. Yeah maybe you can raid a city with it, but you have to get to the city first and if you bring defensive units in your stack you'll slow yourself down to 1 speed :/

Well that is just the thing, With persia you can either competely dominate with mass expansion ( only civ with both creative and expansion ). So even with no horses, you have a great start.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Astax-- Persia can get Immortals as soon as they get the Wheel---they don't need to wait for Archery AND Horseback Riding...

It's a big *IF* ... but IF Persia can hook up their horses and Immortal production before the opponent can tech up to Horseback Riding... they're in a dominant position to invade, find the enemy Horses (and Bronze...and Iron...), pillage and starve the enemy out of existence. That's the theory, at least

 

[TheDervish]

ps. is this the same Cyrus that caused the greeks so much strife??? why is his description only showing the good things about this guy lol

http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/meso/cyrus.html

Cyrus the Great was probably the first monarch on earth to institute a multitude of human rights initiatives, even in the ancient world. Freedom of religion, for one thing. He was also one of the first Imperial conquerers in history to take cities and let them stand, rather than razing them to the ground. A copy of the Cyrus Cylinder text is displayed prominently in the United Nations (for a sample of the text, see my signature). Persia was the first empire to recognize the sanctity of diplomatic immunity (i.e., an envoy of a foreign country, even an enemy, wasn't necessarily killed on site, or imprisoned/tortured). Once word got around of Persian conquests, some people in the ancient world would actually look forward to impending Persian invasions.

Oh, and he, like most of the Achaemenids, were adept at planning their military conquests, as well.

 

[incubuspawn]

http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/meso/cyrus.html

Cyrus the Great was probably the first monarch on earth to institute a multitude of human rights initiatives, even in the ancient world. Freedom of religion, for one thing. He was also one of the first Imperial conquerers in history to take cities and let them stand, rather than razing them to the ground. A copy of the Cyrus Cylinder text is displayed prominently in the United Nations (for a sample of the text, see my signature). Persia was the first empire to recognize the sanctity of diplomatic immunity (i.e., an envoy of a foreign country, even an enemy, wasn't necessarily killed on site, or imprisoned/tortured). Once word got around of Persian conquests, some people in the ancient world would actually look forward to impending Persian invasions.

Oh, and he, like most of the Achaemenids, were adept at planning their military conquests, as well.

I knew this I am wondering about his invasion of greece. Or was that another persian king. Made no sense to raid greece imo, as they where better trade partners than they ever where a conquest traget. ( Only rome had a chance to benefit the conquest, so they did. ) But I may have my kings and times confused. Perhaps Darius is who I am thinking of ... not Cyrus.

 

[petey]

I like the Aztecs for early military. It takes a couple more turns, but the Jaguar warriors give you a swordsman without Iron and also good defensive bonuses in the woods. I like to pillage rather than conquer in the early game until I get my economy beefed up and having them pillage through the woods gets them promoted to Woodsman II early, so they can run around like mounted units and have major defensive bonuses on top of that.

The AI's production and research go into the crapper and then they're easy pickings once I've built up my base enough to afford to expand and take over their cities.

 

[sydhe]

Darius I and Xerxes I were the Persian kings who invaded Greece. Darius's army was defeated at Marathon, and Xerxes' navy at Salamis (before Xerxes' eyes) and his army at Plataea.

Cyrus was a decent man for a world conqueror.

 

[incubuspawn]

Darius I and Xerxes I were the Persian kings who invaded Greece. Darius's army was defeated at Marathon, and Xerxes' navy at Salamis (before Xerxes' eyes) and his army at Plataea.

Cyrus was a decent man for a world conqueror.

yeah its cleared up now lol. thanks

 

[Gufnork]

Expansive doesn't help in expanding. It helps for having big honkin' cities, which you rarely get when you expand quickly. And Immortal rushes kicks arse, my only win on Immortal was with Cyrus.

The thing about countering them is that there's no time. You can start training them really early, they're cheap as dirt and you have to declare war as soon as you can and head for any horse or copper resource your opponent might have. Any useful units your opponent managed to train before you do that will die in a massive onslaught that won't cost you that many troops.

The biggest problem is affording all those immortals trying to heal up from battle.

 

[Mujadaddy]

The biggest problem is affording all those immortals trying to heal up from battle.

That's a problem I can afford to have