Promotion Strategy?

[wades]

So, reading the posts here I see that it's a common noob mistake to use up promotions too early: save them as instant-healing potions and to customize your forces to suit the tactical situation, goes the advice.

I recently applied this a bit too literally. I invaded a neighbor with a 65-unit stack of mostly 6+ exp. unpromoted units, and a bunch of them got blown away before they could assault a city. I'm thinking that there should have been a subset of those guys with at least combat II. On the + side the survivors had plenty of unused promotions to heal themselves enough to carry out the first assault.

What are some good guidelines for promotion paths? I currently am playing a game where I'm the first to tanks and planes, have the Pentagon & a West Point city, and several places with settled GG, so I make lots of exp 6+ units. How much of that should I spend when the units are fresh, and on what?

 

[mercury529]

Yeah, it appears you learned the lesson (albeit the hard way). You should always have stack defenders in your SoD. Since these defenders are pre-designated to fulfilling certain roles (i.e. anti-melee, anti-mounted, etc) their promotions should already be clear (i.e. shock axes, formation pikeman, etc). The added defense they get from their promotions outweighs the free healing the promotion would offer.

My basic rule of thumb is, if I believe I am going to give a unit promotions that in no way benefit on defense, I will always wait until the last possible moment to promote them.

 

[Valivator]

EDIT: ninja'ed by mercury529

You should make stack defenders. These are units who have promotions like formation, shock, cover, charge, and pinch. Also, the anti-units are very good as well, for example, the axeman, spearman, anti-tank, and maybe some archery units will the drill promotion. Try reading this guide.

 

[KeloGBites]

If you got blow out of the water before you even got to a city, you need to bring more stack defenders, Machine Guns for the Industrial Era work wonderful. Pikes, Spears, Chariots, Axes, Xbows. All great stack defenders (bring different kinds). You might want to settle your GGs in the HE/Westpoint (?) or IW/Westpoint(or Redcross) city. And have just those two citys concentrate on pumping out units.

As for promotions, I tend to use mine immediately and use an early GG attached to a Scout/Chariot/Explorer with Medic 3/Woodsman 3 for all my healing needs, the healing that single unit provides is ridiculous.

Edit* Damn beat to the punch :S

 

[PieceOfMind]

Super medic healing does nothing if your units are on the move (unless you are lucky enough to have a lot of march troops). When you have a tech lead (e.g. fighting longbows with cavalry) it's often a good idea to leave at least one promotion unchosen in each attack so you can heal most of your hitpoints immediately after combat.

Obviously for promotions that have no benefit in defending (that includes the flanking promos for pretty much every mounted unit) you should always wait til you attack to promote.

Generally speaking, you should always give your units better defensive promos if you are expecting to get attacked. Combat promos are generally bad at that except that Combat 1 and 2 can open up better counter-unit promos.

 

[wades]

BTW is there a table or algorithm that tells how many exp. to reach a given level?

 

[PieceOfMind]

BTW is there a table or algorithm that tells how many exp. to reach a given level?

For the nth level you need (n-1)^2+1 xp, except for level 1 which doesn't need any xp.

 

[DaveMcW]

Obviously for promotions that have no benefit in defending (that includes the flanking promos for pretty much every mounted unit) you should always wait til you attack to promote.

Flanking II is useful against Drill IV attackers.

 

[zyphyr]

N^2+1 for non-charismatic

 

[PieceOfMind]

Flanking II is useful against Drill IV attackers.

I'm not sure what motivation there is behind this comment given that most mounted units are already immune to first strikes...

Are you referring perhaps to naval combat or the use of cavalry?

EDIT... I notice you did a ninja edit.
My comment is a bit less related now.

 

[UWHabs]

Say I'm a bit late and can build 10XP cavalry off the bat. Then when I go to attack with it, I check my odds. If I like them, then I'll just go and save the promos for healing. If I don't, I'll give enough to feel comfortable. If I need them, I attack with them.

The other important thing to note with promos is say I build a cavalry with 9XP. If I give 2 promos, so he's 9/10, then attack, I have to wait until next turn to promote the next one. However, if I only give one promo, so I still have one spare one, then attack, I'll be able to give both promotions to him this turn, so I immediately get double healing (and immediate use of the next promotion). This can be very useful if you know you need the help in the off-turn. So mop up with your 4/2 rifleman then give him C1/pinch after the battle to defend your newly captured city or stack instead of with your 4/5 C1 rifleman who won't get healing or have pinch this off-turn.

 

[Woodreaux]

I save promotions for my offensive units. But for defenders (city and SoD) I promote ASAP. I believe variety is key with SoD defender promo's. I go with a mix of woody II and guerilla II, as well as Combat-specialty (Pinch, Formation, Ambush).

 

[aggri1]

Hi there.

I was interested in the relative merits of the various traits which provided free promotions to built units, looking purely at unit promotions for now (i.e. ignoring other aspects of the traits such as cheap walls etc...). I made a table showing required experience points against number of promotions.

The first column lists the experience level. Normally you get one promotion for each level gained, so you have (level-1) promotions.

The second column lists the number of experience points required to gain each promotion for a non-charismatic leader, whose units start with no free promotions.

The third column lists the number of experience points required to gain each promotion for a CHArismatic leader, whose units start with no free promotions.

The third, fourth and fifth columns list the number of experience points required to gain each promotion for a non-charismatic leader, whose units start with one, two, and three, free promotions, respectively. These columns might correspond to, for instance, an aggressive leader (free combat I), a protective leader (free drill and city garrison), and a protective leader with some bulding-enhanced unit (guerilla from a dun, or the red cross one, for example) or a unit-specific free promo'. There are all sorts of possibilities!

I _haven't_ listed charismatic levels when free promotions are involved.



A few observations.
1) The higher the experience, the more valuable the free promotions become. To reach ten promotions, a unit would normally require 101 experience points (! I've never managed that). However, a unit which has received three free promotions gets to ten promotions at just 50 experience points! That's HALF as many! (This is of course just a reflection of the quadratic increase in level costs, but still...).
2) Charismatic units reach parity with non-CHA units who've received one and two free promotions at 38XP and 170XP respectively. Three free promotions would be off somewhere even higher. I think this demonstrates that the free promotions afforded by AGG and PRO are pretty valuable compared with the slightly (25%) reduced XP requirement of CHA.
3) The above comparison (CHA v free promo) is of course only valid if the free promotions are useful.

I hope the table's useful for someone!

Thoughts?

Cheers, A.

 

[jwez11007]

i've noticed no one answered your specific question in regards to the game you're currently on. So I'll make the assumption based on you're statement that you have a big enough tech or production advantage that your window of opportunity is fairly sizable. If this is the case and the game is inevitably over I'ld make the powergaming suggestion and run up the combat line exclusively for brevity's sake. If it's not gonna be a guaranteed win at this point (or you want to play 'idealy') then follow similar principles as outline by promoting stack defenders while saving promos on the rest. Be sure to just use specific promos on your tanks to defend against different type of units (pinch, ambush, etc.), lugging around single move machine guns and infantry is far more inefficient.

Another thought comes to mind if you have extra xp on red cross tanks. I've never tried it but med I usually grants access to march and march tanks would be even more efficient and easy to promote than running up the combat line.