Playing Nubia; Switch from Ranged to Cavalry?

[Stevanovic]

I'm playing Nubia, King/Continents/Standard, turn 107. I'm on a second island continent and have just captured my fourth capital with pitati archers. The AI has just started to build walls and the three remaining capitals are on a third island continent some distance away that requires an ocean crossing to reach.

The pitati archers have between two and four promotions. Should I continue the game by staying with ranged units upgrading them to crossbowmen and field cannon and continue promoting them. Or consolidate for a short while and switch to light and heavy cavalry?

The problem that I can see with continuing with ranged is that movement drops back to 2 per turn compared to 4 or 5 per turn for cavalry and I still have a lot of distance to travel to reach the remaining capitals. It's going to take a long time to reach the those capitals at just 2 movement per turn and I will lose a lot of momentum.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

It sounds like you should do both. Level 4 crossbows will be effective, and field cannons will be even better so certainly take them with you. Remember, they all swim at the same speed anyway. Building cavalry is still a great idea though. Either chop them in or upgrade from heavy chariots. Go ahead and hard-build some if it's going to take you a while to get to cartography. At king difficulty knights will stay good for a long time, especially once you can form corps. Bring a battering ram with you to take care of walls. You can (and should) launch the invasion as soon as you hit cartography, but it might be a good idea to add some frigates asap, depending on how many cities are vulnerable. By now you should have enough cities to secure a decisive lead, and if you chop in some campuses (campii?) your knights and xbows will be ready in time to out-class anything that's waiting for you. Just make sure you bring enough of them.

 

[Stevanovic]

It sounds like you should do both. Level 4 crossbows will be effective, and field cannons will be even better so certainly take them with you. Remember, they all swim at the same speed anyway. Building cavalry is still a great idea though. Either chop them in or upgrade from heavy chariots. Go ahead and hard-build some if it's going to take you a while to get to cartography. At king difficulty knights will stay good for a long time, especially once you can form corps. Bring a battering ram with you to take care of walls. You can (and should) launch the invasion as soon as you hit cartography, but it might be a good idea to add some frigates asap, depending on how many cities are vulnerable. By now you should have enough cities to secure a decisive lead, and if you chop in some campuses (campii?) your knights and xbows will be ready in time to out-class anything that's waiting for you. Just make sure you bring enough of them.

Thanks for your help. Finished the game at turn 162.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Nice work, 162 is pretty fast. Are you going to up the difficulty? From what you're posting you won't have much trouble with Emperor or even Immortal. That basic blueprint of archer rush into knights is extremely strong, especially with Nubia.

 

[Stevanovic]

Nice work, 162 is pretty fast. Are you going to up the difficulty? From what you're posting you won't have much trouble with Emperor or even Immortal. That basic blueprint of archer rush into knights is extremely strong, especially with Nubia.

I do go up to Emperor difficulty occasionally, but tend to make too many mistakes or not play efficiently enough which leads to too many roll backs.

For example, in that game I had three island continents, the second continent I could reach without cartography, but the third continent required an ocean crossing. I went left on the map with my archers and conquered the second continent. I had 8 heavy chariots on my original continent ready to upgrade to knights. Got the stirrups tech, upgraded to knights and started the long journey left across the map to invade the third continent. I got half way there when it suddenly dawned on me that now I had cartography I could simply have gone right on the map directly to the third continent in a fraction of the time...

Roll back to strirrups and cartography and start again.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Haha... that can happen to the best of us. Just the same, your fundamental approach seems to be strong enough to absorb a few blunders on Emperor, and maybe even Immortal. Reloading is cheesy if you look at it one way, but if it helps you learn it becomes valid. The game will forgive small mistakes up until Deity, which requires a somewhat different (but not very) mind set. If you can win at King on turn 162 you can beat Deity.

 

[Victoria]

Switching to frigates could have been fun, that +50% XP makes them quite a good seafaring race also.