Playing with Oromo Warriors

[ahmedhadzi]

Started playing with Ethiopia, and I see that Oromo Warrior has Drill 1 and 2 without the barracks! With barracks and Military specialist in the city you have Drill 4 unit of the doors with whooping 7-10 first strikes.
My question is what is better use for these? Offense or defense?

Or just building these and then update them into Rifles which can't get 4 promotions straight and can't have City Raider for that big war which you are cooking.

Thoughts?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It depends on the individual game, but they're stout on O and D. Use them any time you get an opportunity to do so, they're in the 2nd tier of UU's just behind the likes of praetorians and immortals - great units.

 

[Iranon]

One of the coolest bits of Oromos is that they give you a huge flexibility in timing. They're quite good as soon as you get them... for both offense and defense (I'd use them mostly for cleanup and defense after trebuchets; but they're handy for storming castles which take an annoyingly long time to bombard down).

While upgrading them to Rifles will give you a force to be reckoned with, I prefer other long-term plans: beeline cannons. Those blow things up nicely and Oromos are more than good enough for cleanup if an opponent doesn't have Rifles... and a late Renaissance/early Industrial war ceases to be fun if they do anyway.
Delaying Rifles yourself, you can amass Oromos for an upgrade straight to Infantry, which allows a second big push with a considerable advantage for you.


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Incidentally: Forget City Raider Rifles; that's usually a misuse of promotions if you can fight with a tech advantage. High-strength units attacking low-strength units brought up to par by a ton of defensive bonuses often do better promoted along the combat line, which will also be more useful if you have to fight in the field.

 

[ahmedhadzi]

Incidentally: Forget City Raider Rifles; that's usually a misuse of promotions if you can fight with a tech advantage. High-strength units attacking low-strength units brought up to par by a ton of defensive bonuses often do better promoted along the combat line, which will also be more useful if you have to fight in the field.

I'm not sure that I quite follow this, so what is the line of promotions that you do on Rifles?
Beeline Steel with Oromos is maybe even stronger than going to Rifles first, since it gives you more edge. Also, paired up with support from Maces which I amass before hand with CR1 and 2 is really good, and than I usually upgrade those to Rifles.
The problem is that I'm not used to build Muskets or equivalent since it always looked to me that they have short spam of time where you can use them effectively but these guys are changing my opinion on the whole matter.
My initial question was about Drill itself is where does it give you more edge? My opinion is attack since the Oromo would be on par with longbows in strength level roughly speaking, where having Drill on defense is a waste since it can only shine in the part of your land where you expect an invasion, right?

 

[Iranon]

Against longbow-defended cities, Riflemen with combat promotions can do better than those with City Raider promotions (depending on how much defensive bonuses the Longbows get). Combat is, naturally, also more useful if you expect counterattacks.
Against Muskets, City Raider will usually be better but those tend to remain rare since they can't be upgraded to.

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Drill gives you the biggest edge when fighting against far weaker troops... in particular, it greatly raises your chances to win a battle undamaged. Since it also reduces collateral damage, its biggest use lies in allowing you to weather attacks from vastly superior numbers of outdated units (Monty and Shaka can throw 200-300 units at you on Deity once in a while... although this is rare.) which would wear combat or counter-promoted units down by sheer numbers.

I like the Drill line for cleanup troops - it's useful for defense, and it's useful for picking off wounded units after your siege inflicted some collateral. Just keep some anti-mounted with you, because first strikes don't do anything against most of them.

 

[Ghpstage]

Beeline Steel with Oromos is maybe even stronger than going to Rifles first, since it gives you more edge. Also, paired up with support from Maces which I amass before hand with CR1 and 2 is really good, and than I usually upgrade those to Rifles.

Going for steel before rifling is something I find better in almost all circumstances whether I have Oromos or not!

The problem is that I'm not used to build Muskets or equivalent since it always looked to me that they have short spam of time where you can use them effectively but these guys are changing my opinion on the whole matter.

Muskets are quite underated imo. They have a decent strength value, but the most important aspects are that they are draftable and lie on the path to steel.
Oromos in particular are very good for drafting, drafted uniots only have 1/2 the normal xp in a city, which doesn't affect the 2 free promos, AND Oromos are immune to first strikes which is great against the longbows you will likely face.

Steel and draft will go a very long way with how amazing Oromos are

My initial question was about Drill itself is where does it give you more edge? My opinion is attack since the Oromo would be on par with longbows in strength level roughly speaking, where having Drill on defense is a waste since it can only shine in the part of your land where you expect an invasion, right?

First strikes from Drill best when you have a strength or health advantage. So these situations really.

-If you outtech your opponent by a decent marging Drill helps attacking with a good chance of taking no damage,

-If you have defensive bonuses (city or field!) then it will give a good chance of no damage to the defender, which is very important. It also greatly reduces collateral damage from enemy siege.

-Attacking wounded units is obviously a good plan in any case, but Drill gains directly from the loss of an enemies hp whereas other lines only gain by the loss of strength, this is a wierd concept so i'll post an example

Drill 4 Oromo against a full health 14 rifle

Spoiler :

Well this one was obvious really
Drill 4 Oromo against a 52% health 15 infantry

Spoiler :

Strange though it is, the 15 infantry is odds on losing against this 9 Oromo thanks to low hp and first strikes
This hp thing is something that isn't worth worrying about unless your behind in tech though.

There are 2 significant drawbacks to Drill promos however, first is some units are immune to first strikes (mostly mounted types) so be careful of that, and the second is that the first 2 Drill promos are very weak while 4 holds most of the power of the drill line, this makes it less attractive if your leader isn't protective or has a UU with Drill 1

 

[PieceOfMind]

Summoned!

Just a correction...

Drill 1 to 4 gives you 3-6 first strikes overall. Oromos start with 1 first strike (like many other units) and so Drill IV oromos have 4-7 first strikes, not 7-10!

 

[Conqistador]

Out of interest, what is the highest amount of first strikes (and first strike chances) that a unit can get, both legitimately and theoretically? By theoretically, I mean if a unit could get every promotion in the game, including those limited to Naval or Air units.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Drill 4 -> 3-6 first strikes.
Woodsman3 -> 2 first strikes.

Highest native number of first strikes is 2 e.g. samurai. So in theory, 7-10.

Of course, you could always go and edit the XML to give your unit 100 first strikes.

 

[civzombie]

PoW - is it true that samurai can get 2 native first strikes, 2 for woodsman III, and then another 4-7 for drill?

That would be 8-11 first strikes? Lots of promotions though

 

[Pir Lan Tota]

PoW - is it true that samurai can get 2 native first strikes, 2 for woodsman III, and then another 4-7 for drill?

That would be 8-11 first strikes? Lots of promotions though

No, 7-10....Drill gives you only 3 - 6 as mentioned above......but yes, 7 - 10 will inflict a nice bit of damage on most units

 

[PieceOfMind]

PoW - is it true that samurai can get 2 native first strikes, 2 for woodsman III, and then another 4-7 for drill?

That would be 8-11 first strikes? Lots of promotions though

It seems I answered your question a couple of weeks ago, in the post right before.

And am I PoW now?