Protective Underestimated

[Wodan]

A CG III/Drill I Longbow is a formidable defender, there's no denying. On the other hand, a city with a few CG III/Drill I Longbows is going to get eaten alive by an attacking force that includes multiple siege weapons. Especially if backed up by some CR III Macemen.

How do you figure? Drill reduces the collateral threat. How does that = "eaten alive"? What would your stack do against a non-Drill defending force? "really eaten alive"?

We also have to recognize that the defender is probably going to promote up Drill, rather than up CG. Personally, if I had to pick only 2 promotions for the units, I would pick CGII/DII. (That's 1.5 first strikes and +70% defense.)

Plus, you as defender could hit the incoming stack with a Cat or two. (Which, by the way, would not be effective if your opponent sent in a stack which was comprised of Drill units instead of CR, along with the siege.)

I won't argue that a properly sized stack can take down even a CGII/DII defensive force. But that same stack will make mincemeat out of the non-Protective alternative: CGII with no Drill.

What Pro does is lets you survive with fewer units, as well as cause more attrition to the attackers (whether the invader took the city or not, your counterattacking / rallying forces will have a much easier time getting rid of the survivors, allowing your counterattackers to be smaller and fewer units and to be effective earlier without having to rally a huge force).

Again, my point is merely that getting them for free for some units does not make for a very good trait.

Actually, your case is stronger than you state. You don't really get them "for free". There's a hefty cost... it's one of your 2 leader traits.

Have you ever used a siege engine before? They oftentimes do big chunks of damage to multiple units... It's sort of what they do.

No offense AS... you're speaking down to him, and all that's going to do is cause contention. We all (including me) need to take a deep breath.

Attacking cities does happen infrequently. You know what else happens infrequently? Pillaging.

To me, what is more relevant (than pillaging) is that the invader has units in my territory. Whether he's pillaging or not, they're there, and it's my job to get rid of them.

I can be non-Pro, and have to devote more units to city defense plus my CR-promoted standing army.

Or I can be Pro and I can rally my Drill-promoted standing army, plus a "nodal" defensive strike force composed of a few cats and knights or whatever floats my boat that game. (I get the units for the "nodal" defensive strike forces from the units I don't have to devote to city defenses across my empire.)

Anyway, that's just me.

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

That ends up generalizing in ways I'm not sure are realistic.

I tend to agree, but the exercise will be worthwhile.

For example, let's take a look at the Drill line. Protective gives you Drill I. But without Protective, can you get Drill I? Yup. Can you get all the way to Drill IV? Yup. So all Protective is really doing here is getting you one step along the way for free. There is nothing stopping you from making Drill IV units without Protective, you're just going to need one more promotion to do so. With a Charismatic leader, it won't even require that much more XP to do so.

This isn't about Chr, so I'd say leave that out.

Anyway you're ignoring one factor... getting a promotion without having to pay XP not only is free XP, it accelerates the curve of promotions. Getting the third or fourth promotion costs much less XP than without it.

So yes, you can do that without Pro. But, it'll cost you the difference of between 17XP up to 26XP (or whatever).

And, Pro is even better. It gives you two free promotions. So, that's like the difference between 17XP up to 35XP (or whatever the next step is).

That is a huge benefit.

The debate comes in as to whether getting CG I/Drill I and cheap Walls/Castles is worth taking up a trait slot. And that devolves into a debate as to whether CG I/Drill I promotions are valuable (I haven't seen too many people argue that cheap Walls/Castles are valuable).

Besides me, you mean. I've mentioned it several times.

I'll try to sum up:

• inflates the Power graph, reduces undesired AI wars
• allows a strategy of less military units (possibly with Pacifism, or anything else as well where you need a lot of units elsewhere such as a tight map where you have few cities thus your free unit support is very small), costing less commerce
• costs less production to give defensive bonuses to frontline cities
• allows cheaper production (of walls/castles) in more cities, such as coastal cities
• allows earlier production of castles, giving trade routes
• allows a strategy of mass-castle production, giving trade routes

Umm, what else. That's just off the top of my head.

What it comes down to for me is the belief that most of the other traits offer bonuses/enhancements that are more useful in general than Protective's bonuses. AfterShafter brought up the point that something like Philosophical is relatively useless if you aren't using any GPs. That's entirely true. But when it is used, I believe if gives more of an advantage that Protective does, even when Protective is used to maximum advantage. The same is true of most of the rest of the traits.

Well, you're both entirely accurate in this conclusion. Ultimately, it's subjective and each person will say something different.

One thing which might be relevant is whether each person has tried the different Pro strategies as well as the other strategies. And, not just tried them, but tried to abuse them, and tried multiple times. It takes at least 3-4 games (if not a half dozen or more) to perfect a strategy.

Most of us have done a high-level CE, as well as one or more of the different types of SE. I daresay most of us have not done the same with the different Pro strategies. The fact that the strategies are not even well established, that we have to discuss them to point out what they are, is telling.

I can say that I've tried the Drill-promoted army, I've tried the early-and-late-obsolete-Castles, and other variations. I don't remember how many times but more than a half dozen. So I can say I speak from experience that these strategies compare favorably to just about anything else, including Phi, Fin, or whatever.

I'm not asking that everyone give their resume, but ask yourself and admit, at least to yourself if not the rest of us, have you really tried to abuse Pro, and not just the one Pro strategy but each of the strategies? If not, then perhaps this thread will encourage you to do so, and to give it a fair shake.

Wodan

 

[AfterShafter]

No offense AS... you're speaking down to him, and all that's going to do is cause contention. We all (including me) need to take a deep breath.

Wodan, the first thing the fellow said to me was "If you read what I wrote before"... A notably mocking comment after I tried to make a very cut and dry post, and more mud has been flying ever since.

I'll be replying later, but in that time, I'll try and take a deep breath and get back to dealing with the facts rather than character assassination.

 

[Wodan]

Wodan, the first thing the fellow said to me was "If you read what I wrote before"... A notably mocking comment after I tried to make a very cut and dry post, and more mud has been flying ever since.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you weren't wrong when you did it back.

I guess I blew past his, because I had to throttle my own instinct to fire back. Sorry for picking on you. Just trying to interject a modicrum of levelheadness back into it, is all.

I'll be replying later, but in that time, I'll try and take a deep breath and get back to dealing with the facts rather than character assassination.

Wodan

 

[Bhruic]

Wodan, the first thing the fellow said to me was "If you read what I wrote before"... A notably mocking comment after I tried to make a very cut and dry post, and more mud has been flying ever since.

How is that mocking? You weren't replying to me, so I wasn't sure that you'd even read my post at that point. And the fact is, I had addressed the issue you were raising. If you say "no one is talking about X", and I've just finished discussing X, then it's perfectly reasonable to assume that you haven't read my post.

Bh

 

[Bhruic]

My apologies. Let me restate.
You implied collateral is irrelevant. And, by "irrelevant" I mean infrequent to the point of not being a consideration when choosing your promotion strategy.

Here's what you said: "...it's hard to imagine a significant need for the Drill line, beyond cleanup duty. The Drill promotions are situationally useful, granted, but that situation isn't one that comes up often."

I don't consider post-siege to be clean up. Clean up, to me, is when you've attacked a unit, lost, but almost killed it. Like that Longbow that got taken from 6 str down to 0.2 str. Siege isn't going to do that.

In any event, I'm telling you I did not put it out there as a straw man. Since it outnumbers the use of CR, it's a valid point when comparing Drill to CR as a promotion strategy.

I'm not saying it's not a valid point. I'm saying that it's not a point I was making. Using my previous Woodsman III analogy, it's clear that it's a better unit to attack a forest square than a Drill IV unit. But I wouldn't make such a claim because you've never tried to suggest that Drill IV is better than Woodsman III. See what I mean?

And we've been discussing it on those merits. Full circle back to my claim: siege makes CR overkill, thus Drill's other benefits (health and usefulness in non-city attacks) make it a better choice than CR.

You're right - full circle. Because I'll just counter with the argument that having specialists is superior to having generalists. And that siege doesn't make CR overkill at all.

I just looked at all your posts and I don't see any such data. Please provide a link to compensate for my poor searching abilities. With such a link, we will have a basis to proceed with the discussion, and my apologies for the confusion.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6411394&postcount=40

Apologies if you missed it before, I incorrectly thought it was from a post responding to you, but turned out I was misremembering.

Personally I would rate anything over 90% combat success as the decision point. You seem to want a "sure thing", which is fine, and a valid strategy. However, IMO losing one or two out of a hundred battles is worth it to gain the speed of prosecution of the war (which has a direct correlation to how much commerce the war costs you) plus the flexibility for non-city-attacks. Note also that you'll get more XP than you do if all your battles are 99.9%.

Then could you please address the siege issue that I brought up before? In case you don't remember, the gist was that you are using siege weapons to "soften" up the city before attacking. Those siege weapons are going to get damaged, and need time to heal. If you need to stop to heal the siege weapons, then you don't lose any time if your CR units heal at the same time. Alternatively, if you are bringing in new siege weapons to replace ones lost/damaged, then you need time to bring those in. Either way, if you are using siege, then you are going to need time to handle them. How do you save any time by having less damaged Drill units?

You can agree or disagree with it, but the above assumption predicates my earlier arguments. (Just as it's now clear to me that your assumption is for the desired strategy of all of your battles to be at 99.9% odds.)

No, that's not my assumption, that's just a good end goal. Ideally I'd like to fight all battles at > 99.9%. Who wants to lose when it's not necessary? But I recognize that's not going to happen all the time. I still prefer to get as close as possible.

Let's say you get it down to Str 1.5 (I think that's the limit, 25% of base). It's now +1.5 (instead of +6). How would CR compare in this situation? It would change the bonus from 100% to 25%, which changes the bonus from +1.5 to +0.375.

Ok, that might be the source of confusion. 25% base is the limit for an actual attacking Trebuchet (ie, the damage it can do to the unit it is attacking). The percentage for collateral damage appears to be 60% for Trebuchets (that's what my in-game tests showed, taking Longbows to 3.6 str, although the XML file seems to suggest it should do 50%).

3.6 for 100% vs 0.9 bonus? Or 7.2 str vs 4.5? You're telling me you don't think that's going to make a significant difference in win chance?

Bh

 

[Bhruic]

How do you figure? Drill reduces the collateral threat. How does that = "eaten alive"? What would your stack do against a non-Drill defending force? "really eaten alive"?

We also have to recognize that the defender is probably going to promote up Drill, rather than up CG. Personally, if I had to pick only 2 promotions for the units, I would pick CGII/DII. (That's 1.5 first strikes and +70% defense.)

If you go back and re-read what I was quoting at that point, you'll note that I was specifically referring to CG III/Drill I. That is, AfterShafter made the claim that CG III/Drill I are going "kill just about everything in a stack of death". So that is the claim I was countering.

Plus, you as defender could hit the incoming stack with a Cat or two. (Which, by the way, would not be effective if your opponent sent in a stack which was comprised of Drill units instead of CR, along with the siege.)

Again, hitting them with Cats was not part of the scenario being presented. I mean, you know what else I could do? Attack them with my stack of 2,000 Modern Armour.

I won't argue that a properly sized stack can take down even a CGII/DII defensive force. But that same stack will make mincemeat out of the non-Protective alternative: CGII with no Drill.

What exactly do you think is so special about having the Drill II in that particular case? The fact it has a whopping 20% collateral damage reduction? The fact it has a 1-2 extra first strike chances? Neither of those are going to cause a stack any significant difficulty. Now if you were talking the difference between CG III/Drill IV units and normal CG III units, sure. But that's not a realistic level of promotion (in the majority of cases).

Actually, your case is stronger than you state. You don't really get them "for free". There's a hefty cost... it's one of your 2 leader traits.

That's almost a semantic argument. Your units get them for "free". Your leader doesn't get the trait for "free", because it's giving up another one.

I can be non-Pro, and have to devote more units to city defense plus my CR-promoted standing army.

This claim has been made a few times, but it really hasn't been quantified. What, to you, qualifies as "more units"?

Bh

 

[Bhruic]

This isn't about Chr, so I'd say leave that out.

Why leave it out? If the goal is to get to Drill IV, and Cha gets you there almost as fast as Pro, doesn't that speak to the relative value(s) of both Pro and Cha?

Anyway you're ignoring one factor... getting a promotion without having to pay XP not only is free XP, it accelerates the curve of promotions. Getting the third or fourth promotion costs much less XP than without it.

I'm not ignoring that at all, obviously the promotion costs increase as you go. Certainly that's an advantage of the Pro trait.

And, Pro is even better. It gives you two free promotions. So, that's like the difference between 17XP up to 35XP (or whatever the next step is).

Making the assumption that the unit was going to advance up both of the trees in any case. I don't buy that assumption in general.

Besides me, you mean. I've mentioned it several times.

In this thread? I don't recall reading you mention it.

[*] inflates the Power graph, reduces undesired AI wars

I searched, but I was unable to find anywhere that says that promotions affect the power graph. Got a source for that?

I'm not asking that everyone give their resume, but ask yourself and admit, at least to yourself if not the rest of us, have you really tried to abuse Pro, and not just the one Pro strategy but each of the strategies? If not, then perhaps this thread will encourage you to do so, and to give it a fair shake.

The fact that you need to try to "abuse" Pro just demonstrates its inferiority. There's no need to "abuse" Cha, or Phi, or Fin, etc, etc. Just normal usage of them is sufficient to demonstrate their clear advantage. If I have to try to "abuse" a trait to make it useful, that just proves that it's not a good trait to begin with.

Bh

 

[MyOtherName]

The fact that you need to try to "abuse" Pro just demonstrates its inferiority. ... If I have to try to "abuse" a trait to make it useful, that just proves that it's not a good trait to begin with.

You can't be serious....

 

[Wodan]

I don't consider post-siege to be clean up. Clean up, to me, is when you've attacked a unit, lost, but almost killed it. Like that Longbow that got taken from 6 str down to 0.2 str. Siege isn't going to do that.

So you don't believe that Drill can be used post-siege with combat odds approaching 99%?

I'm not saying it's not a valid point. I'm saying that it's not a point I was making. Using my previous Woodsman III analogy, it's clear that it's a better unit to attack a forest square than a Drill IV unit. But I wouldn't make such a claim because you've never tried to suggest that Drill IV is better than Woodsman III. See what I mean?

Yeah but there's been so much back and forth that I'm totally confused.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that CR is only good when you're attacking cities. When the AI attacks you in the open, when the AI attacks your cities, or when you attack the AI in the open... with each of those 3 permutations both in your territory, and in the AI's territory, are more numerous. Drill gives at least some benefit in all those situations, whereas CR is useless.

We can (and have been) debating how much benefit Drill gives, but it's inarguable I think that it's more benefit than CR gives (since CR gives Zero benefit).

You're right - full circle. Because I'll just counter with the argument that having specialists is superior to having generalists. And that siege doesn't make CR overkill at all.

For the former, that's just different play style. It sounds like you're unwilling or unable to try different play styles, and that's your loss.

You know, I'm going to end it there. Need to get some lunch.

Wodan

 

[Bhruic]

So you don't believe that Drill can be used post-siege with combat odds approaching 99%?

Can be used? Of course. Is optimal? Nope. See the numbers I posted above with Trebuchets vs Longbows.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that CR is only good when you're attacking cities. When the AI attacks you in the open, when the AI attacks your cities, or when you attack the AI in the open... with each of those 3 permutations both in your territory, and in the AI's territory, are more numerous. Drill gives at least some benefit in all those situations, whereas CR is useless.

Yes, that I agree with. But again, I'd rather go with some specialized defenders than rely on Drill.

We can (and have been) debating how much benefit Drill gives, but it's inarguable I think that it's more benefit than CR gives (since CR gives Zero benefit).

Are you still refering to open ground?

For the former, that's just different play style. It sounds like you're unwilling or unable to try different play styles, and that's your loss.

I'd disagree to both - I don't think it's a loss for me, and I don't think it's just a difference in playstyles. I think specialized stack defenders are a more optimal choice than generalists. That doesn't mean generalists can't work, I just don't think they work as well.

And for the record, I have played with Drill IV units. I didn't find them particularily impressive.

You know, I'm going to end it there. Need to get some lunch.

Fair enough.

Bh

 

[Roxlimn]

Bhruic:

Let's get away from sniping here. We're not around to show each other how big our privates are. That goes for everyone, not just Bhruic.

I would like to know how big you think an Industrial era attack stack ought to be, and what components it should have in which proportions. Let's say that you have a 10 city CIv with a strong 6 city core and you're going to fight a continental war.

How many stacks? What defenses will you leave behind? What defenses are you planning for the new cities? Counterattack plan? Counter-stack plan?


Please make things more concrete for us so that we will know how show you that you're trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Every trait needs a strategy to "abuse" its benefits. Certainly, you're not necessarily going to major in Cottages as early with a nonFin Civ as you will with a Fin one, and you're not going to go Writing and Libs ultra-early without a Phi trait. Same with Pro.

For my part, I've tried the CR upgraded Rifles and I've found them to be largely superfluous outside of about 3 or 4 per stack, assuming that I'm attacking a hard point of 10 to 20 city defenders twice. With stacks larger than 25, you really want a good core of siege equipment - better at taking down cities than CR units. Once the siege units are finished, the attack odds rarely go below 95% regardless of how the unit is promoted.

Going along varied terrain, you could promote along Guerilla lines or Woodsman lines for defensive units, but their defensive value is situational. More likely, you're going to want to promote, say, a Pikeman along Shock lines so it doesn't get killed by Macemen. For Rifles, you want both Pinch and Promotion units for varied defense, and also to help in taking the cities.

If you're Pro, you get "free" Drill1 and CG1 promotions layered on top of that, and you also get the option of promoting heavily down the Drill line. Heavy Drill line promotions are useful for going deep into cultural borders when you expect a heavy barrage of siege fire. CR units, from experience, tend to be useless when you actually get to combat, even when you have a good core of siege units to do most of the actual fighting. They get so damaged from collateral that even when battling heavily damaged units, they're no good.

Too, you only have a limited number of such units because you can't regenerate CR Grenadiers and Rifles.


For my part, I'll also illustrate a posited defense stance for taking advantage of the Pro trait. Let's say that it's Medieval era, though it can easily be any other. Take Walls and Castles for your border cities, getting the Engineering tech early for the early Castle trade route bonuses.

So Walls + Castles + say, 6 Drill3/CG1 Longbowmen in the city with 4 Knights and 3 Shock Macemen in the field on standby as active defense.

Without Pro, you likely won't have Castles, perhaps not even Walls because they would cost you the extra hammers - that's the point at which it's not really great to go for the early Castles, and your Longbowmen would only have 2 promotions - take your pick. I would not be certain as to the survival of the city under attack for a 30 unit SoD, whereas in the case of Pro, I'm wiping out a larger stack with a smaller one (almost half its size), and with WW advantage on my part.

Castles are a major advantage in defense. It effectively stalls even a 40 unit stack for at least a turn in front of your city - that's a major advantage when that city is on cultural borders (like when it's newly conquered or losing a culture war) and you can't expect active defense to work well. Even on active defense, a stack of 5 or so mounted units with Flank can obliterate any attack stack's siege equipment. If you can ensure that that stack is right on your city's doortsep - deep in your cultural borders - the AI is liable to suicide its 25+ remaining troops on your Castled city with little to no losses on your part - massive hammer and WW advantage there. Sometimes, the AI doesn't suicide, but even then you have an SOD wandering around in your borders ripe for the picking - it shouldn't be too hard to pick it apart in 4 to 5 turns.

 

[Bhruic]

I would like to know how big you think an Industrial era attack stack ought to be, and what components it should have in which proportions. Let's say that you have a 10 city CIv with a strong 6 city core and you're going to fight a continental war.

There's absolutely no point to doing that. What difficulty level? What game speed? What map size? How many opponents do you have? There are way too many variables to be considered to make that question useful.

Every trait needs a strategy to "abuse" its benefits. Certainly, you're not necessarily going to major in Cottages as early with a nonFin Civ as you will with a Fin one, and you're not going to go Writing and Libs ultra-early without a Phi trait. Same with Pro.

No, every trait does not need to be "abused". You'll still get significant benefits from Fin, even if you don't mass spam early cottages. You'll still get significant benefits from Phi, even if you don't rush Libraries.

More likely, you're going to want to promote, say, a Pikeman along Shock lines so it doesn't get killed by Macemen.

What? Why would you waste a promotion by giving a Pikeman Shock? There's no way a str 6 unit is going to be able to stand up to a str 8 +50% unit by getting +25%.

Let's say that it's Medieval era, though it can easily be any other. Take Walls and Castles for your border cities, getting the Engineering tech early for the early Castle trade route bonuses.

You mean it could easily be any other era like the ones where Walls/Castles have been obsoleted?

Without Pro, you likely won't have Castles, perhaps not even Walls because they would cost you the extra hammers

It's certainly not that hard to whip Walls.

Anyway, as entertaining as this discussion has been, I'm finished. None of the arguments from the other side have been convincing, and now they are just getting rehashed. No point continuing. If someone else wants to get in a "last word", by all means, do so, but I'm out.

Bh

 

[Diamondeye]

I understand the "not showing up" part. My point is that it's not the promotions that are causing them to not show up, it's the fact that you've got a larger offensive force. And you can make that larger offensive force even if you're defending with non-Protective units.

Point taken. Enemies not showing up has nothing to do with the promotions.

And the Charge promotion. Yes, but it only opens those promotions up for units that tend to be defensive units. Opening up the promotion line(s) for offensive units is more valuable, imo. The primary exception to that would be Pinch for gunpowder units, but Aggressive gets that as well.

Aggressive units use charge? Isn't that the +% against siege? I'd rather use that one defensiely, but I get your point that offensive needs medics more crucially than defensive (since healrate is lower in enemy territory).

No, every trait does not need to be "abused". You'll still get significant benefits from Fin, even if you don't mass spam early cottages. You'll still get significant benefits from Phi, even if you don't rush Libraries.

I agree with the point stated, that traits benefit the civilization passively, but so does Pro.

What? Why would you waste a promotion by giving a Pikeman Shock? There's no way a str 6 unit is going to be able to stand up to a str 8 +50% unit by getting +25%.

Exactly.

You mean it could easily be any other era like the ones where Walls/Castles have been obsoleted?

headshot.

It's certainly not that hard to whip Walls.

Anyway, as entertaining as this discussion has been, I'm finished. None of the arguments from the other side have been convincing, and now they are just getting rehashed. No point continuing. If someone else wants to get in a "last word", by all means, do so, but I'm out.
Bh

yeah, I think the discussion is solved. I have one last statement concerning the xp curve.

PRO: 2 xp: Drill II CG I, 5 xp Drill III CG I, 10 xp Drill IV CG I, 17 xp Drill IV CG II, 26 xp Drill IV CG III.
CHM: 2 xp: Drill I, 4 xp Drill II, 8 xp Drill III, 13 xp Drill IV, 21 (?) xp Drill IV CG I, 29 (?) xp Drill IV CG II, 38 (?) xp Drill IV CG III.
CHURCHILL: 2 xp: Drill II CG I, 4 xp Drill III CG I, 8 xp Drill IV CG I, 13 xp Drill IV CG II, 21 (?) xp Drill IV CG III.

So that's the best case for Pro, when you need a Drill/CG. PRO is still fastest even when seven promotions are needed (although two of them are from PRO). So, if you use alot of drill / CG units, PRO pays off quite a while.
It is, ofcourse, completely different if you need any other kinds of units.

 

[Ihmemies]

I usually see no point with protective. It gives an useless upgrade that I only use for show.

If someone attacks my city, and I can't kill the stack, the city is lost. Protecitve doesn't help with that. Maybe it makes the city a little bit harder to capture, but not nearly enough to use a trait for such a special case.

I'd rather have some general boost which helps me 24/7 during the whole game. Of course everyone can do whatever they like, but personally I don't like pacifism

 

[UncleJJ]

I usually see no point with protective. It gives an useless upgrade that I only use for show.

If someone attacks my city, and I can't kill the stack, the city is lost. Protecitve doesn't help with that. Maybe it makes the city a little bit harder to capture, but not nearly enough to use a trait for such a special case.

I'd rather have some general boost which helps me 24/7 during the whole game. Of course everyone can do whatever they like, but personally I don't like pacifism

I don't agree that a city with walls and castle and protective units is a "little bit harder to capture" I'd say it takes 5 times the effort from the AI. I use the castle and defenders to shelter active defenders that counter attack against the SoD even if I can't take it out yet. Use a few catapults against normal troops and HAs for flanking against the seige and they are massively reduced in potential. The AI seems to not use healers and so once damaged their troops only heal at 5% per turn (if they stay stationary which they often don't). The AI then choses to throw damaged units at my protective defenders, fortified behind castle and walls (100% bonus) in sporadic and uncoordinated attacks. Key defenders take damage but can heal at 35% between turns while retaining their fortify bonus.

Despite what Bhruic says (he apparently doesn't acknowledge this potent strategy) it is easy to leverage Protective (sounds better than abusing it ). Just induce the stupid AI to attack you on favourable ground. Done properly this can produce a 5 to 1 hammer exchange rate in favour of the defender. Add to that the experience your troops gain (defenders and counterattackers) and the GG points and then the War Weariness the AI picks up for fighting in your culturally controlled tiles. I use this strategy with none Protective civs as well and it still works great against powerful AI like Shaka. Protective is just a lot better at it than other traits, the castles and walls are cheaper, and the free CG and drill promotions are useful for getting the key defenders and they are better quality than otherwise.

If you (Ihmemies) and Bhruic don't use this passive-aggressive strategy then I can see why you under value Protective. You should try it before dismissing Protective. I think most people arguing for Protective being considered as a decent trait are using it at least part of the time like this to wear down a powerful AI opponent before invading his territory.

 

[Wodan]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6411394&postcount=40

Apologies if you missed it before, I incorrectly thought it was from a post responding to you, but turned out I was misremembering.

No-where in that post did you mention Combat promotions.

Again... so far, we've been discussing the relative merits of CR vs Drill.

If we're going to compare Combat vs Drill, that's a different discussion, and if you posted numbers as a basis for comparison, I sure don't see them.

Then could you please address the siege issue that I brought up before? In case you don't remember, the gist was that you are using siege weapons to "soften" up the city before attacking. Those siege weapons are going to get damaged, and need time to heal. If you need to stop to heal the siege weapons, then you don't lose any time if your CR units heal at the same time. Alternatively, if you are bringing in new siege weapons to replace ones lost/damaged, then you need time to bring those in. Either way, if you are using siege, then you are going to need time to handle them. How do you save any time by having less damaged Drill units?

Whether you are using CR or Drill, some siege are going to die along the way. Good strategic planning accounts for this.

What you're saying is that you either don't plan ahead or, if you plan, you plan to build new siege after you have already started your invasion.

In other words, your strategy assumes that your invasion moves slowly enough for you to not only build new siege units, but to move them deep into the opponent's territory and join your SOD which has stopped to heal.

That's what's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you knew your invasion would happen faster and did not have to wait to heal, then you would plan to have the siege available in the first place.

No, that's not my assumption, that's just a good end goal. Ideally I'd like to fight all battles at > 99.9%. Who wants to lose when it's not necessary? But I recognize that's not going to happen all the time. I still prefer to get as close as possible.

Sure, and I agree with that. However, there is a cost associated with any strategy. What you're saying is that you prefer to pay a much higher cost in order to preserve a couple extra military units. Which is fine. I just disagree with it. Research and commerce is king. I have no desire to get bogged down in WW, to spend a lot of unit maintenance prosecuting a war, or to have the war last 2x or 3x longer than it has to. If I lose a unit or two as a result, the incredible amount of saved commerce is more than worth it.

What exactly do you think is so special about having the Drill II in that particular case? The fact it has a whopping 20% collateral damage reduction? The fact it has a 1-2 extra first strike chances? Neither of those are going to cause a stack any significant difficulty.

We're talking about garrison units. Promoting along Drill means that unit is more useful in active defense, which you agreed (actually you suggested it) is preferable. Also, it means that your example of the incoming SOD has to have 20% more siege units in order to inflict sufficient collateral that your CR-promoted attacker has his 99.9% chance.

That's almost a semantic argument. Your units get them for "free". Your leader doesn't get the trait for "free", because it's giving up another one.

Yeah, I agree. That's what I just said. (Yes, I agreed with you, twice now.

This claim has been made a few times, but it really hasn't been quantified. What, to you, qualifies as "more units"?

To achieve the same defensive benefit, a non-Pro player has no choice but to devote more units. Either by having extra units in each and every border city, or by having larger "nodal" responsive forces. The only other option is the player has to live with higher risk of loss of cities due to invasion (which too is a cost).

Why leave it out? If the goal is to get to Drill IV, and Cha gets you there almost as fast as Pro, doesn't that speak to the relative value(s) of both Pro and Cha?

That's not the goal. The goal is to consider the relative merits of traits.

I believe Cha is best used to accelerate promotion lines which you would use anyway. Pro is a special case because it encourages you to go along the Drill line. Why would you do the same thing with Cha? The Combat line is a much better choice for Cha. Better than CR, even.

CR I think is a good option for non-Pro AND non-Cha AND non-Agg.

I'm not ignoring that at all, obviously the promotion costs increase as you go. Certainly that's an advantage of the Pro trait.

Oh okay. Well, from the reader's perspective "not mentioning" is the same as "ignoring".

In this thread? I don't recall reading you mention it.

Post 59

And, you're right, I've also mentioned it in other threads recently, both here and Apolyton.

I searched, but I was unable to find anywhere that says that promotions affect the power graph. Got a source for that?

We're not talking about Promotions, we're talking about Walls and Castles.

It's the "iPower" value in the BuildingInfos XML.

Try searching for "iPower" (use the google forum search link).

The fact that you need to try to "abuse" Pro just demonstrates its inferiority. There's no need to "abuse" Cha, or Phi, or Fin, etc, etc. Just normal usage of them is sufficient to demonstrate their clear advantage. If I have to try to "abuse" a trait to make it useful, that just proves that it's not a good trait to begin with.

Oh come on. I'm not talking about making Pro "useful". All you have to do is build a single Walls and Pro is "useful". What I'm talking about is learning from your game play, refining your strategies and improving as a player.

Even casual players seek to perfect their strategies, to improve and to explore better ways of playing. Experienced, high-level players do the same thing to an extreme to take a strat to its fullest extent. They do this with Phi just the same as they should do it with Pro. They do not la-de-da approach their game strat in a casual or "normal" attitude, they have a plan and they use it. They also constantly look for ways to improve that plan.

If you object to my word "abuse" then feel free to use a different one such as "leveraging" as UncleJJ suggests.

Can be used? Of course. Is optimal? Nope. See the numbers I posted above with Trebuchets vs Longbows.

This just gets back to your desire to have all combats be 99.9%. To me this amounts to nitpicking what "optimal" means.

To me, I want for the entire war to be "optimal". That means that the odds in a single combat isn't my focus... I'm looking at the big picture, how many units I have to build, how many die, how much commerce the war costs me, etc.

And for the record, I have played with Drill IV units. I didn't find them particularily impressive.

I didn't ask if you've played with Drill IV units, I asked if you have explored and tried to improve not just one but multiple Pro strategies, each of them at least 3-4 times.

If you're approaching this whole issue that way, then we really have no basis for discussion. That's like me saying, "hey, I used some specialists last game with Phi, and it didn't do much at all. Fin is so much better!"

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

I don't agree that a city with walls and castle and protective units is a "little bit harder to capture" I'd say it takes 5 times the effort from the AI. I use the castle and defenders to shelter active defenders that counter attack against the SoD even if I can't take it out yet. Use a few catapults against normal troops and HAs for flanking against the seige and they are massively reduced in potential. The AI seems to not use healers and so once damaged their troops only heal at 5% per turn (if they stay stationary which they often don't). The AI then choses to throw damaged units at my protective defenders, fortified behind castle and walls (100% bonus) in sporadic and uncoordinated attacks. Key defenders take damage but can heal at 35% between turns while retaining their fortify bonus.

Despite what Bhruic says (he apparently doesn't acknowledge this potent strategy) it is easy to leverage Protective (sounds better than abusing it ). Just induce the stupid AI to attack you on favourable ground. Done properly this can produce a 5 to 1 hammer exchange rate in favour of the defender. Add to that the experience your troops gain (defenders and counterattackers) and the GG points and then the War Weariness the AI picks up for fighting in your culturally controlled tiles. I use this strategy with none Protective civs as well and it still works great against powerful AI like Shaka. Protective is just a lot better at it than other traits, the castles and walls are cheaper, and the free CG and drill promotions are useful for getting the key defenders and they are better quality than otherwise.

If you (Ihmemies) and Bhruic don't use this passive-aggressive strategy then I can see why you under value Protective. You should try it before dismissing Protective. I think most people arguing for Protective being considered as a decent trait are using it at least part of the time like this to wear down a powerful AI opponent before invading his territory.

I agree with all this. Good summary UncleJJ.

Wodan

 

[Bhruic]

Not to get into the argument again, but just to address a few things.

No-where in that post did you mention Combat promotions.

Yes I did. I'll requote because you're obviously missing it:

"Moreover, a CIII musket vs a Drill IV musket has a 51% chance of victory. Even better, a CII + Pinch musket has a 73.2% chance to beat a Drill IV musket (all standing in the open)."

In fact, you even responded to that point, so I'm not sure how you've forgotten, by asking about CII + Pinch vs Drill III + Pinch, to which I responded:

"Sure, CII + Pinch vs DIII + Pinch has a 58.4% chance of winning."

What you're saying is that you either don't plan ahead or, if you plan, you plan to build new siege after you have already started your invasion.

In other words, your strategy assumes that your invasion moves slowly enough for you to not only build new siege units, but to move them deep into the opponent's territory and join your SOD which has stopped to heal.

That's what's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you knew your invasion would happen faster and did not have to wait to heal, then you would plan to have the siege available in the first place.

Ok, this is just plain stupid, and frankly I expected much better of you. If you are making the assumption you have excess siege available, then there's no reason to believe you can't have excess CR available. And if you do, there's nothing slowing down an invasion, because you can leave those excess units behind.

We're not talking about Promotions, we're talking about Walls and Castles.

That's what I was unclear on. You went directly from talking about promotions to talking about an increase in power. I assumed you meant that promotions increased power ratings.

I didn't ask if you've played with Drill IV units, I asked if you have explored and tried to improve not just one but multiple Pro strategies, each of them at least 3-4 times.

What you said was "I can say that I've tried the Drill-promoted army". The implication here is that you've somehow got more authority to speak on the subject because you've tried it and I haven't. I was pointing out that I had, in fact, tried it, and can also speak from experience.

Bh

 

[Wodan]

Not to get into the argument again, but just to address a few things.

Yes I did. I'll requote because you're obviously missing it:

"Moreover, a CIII musket vs a Drill IV musket has a 51% chance of victory. Even better, a CII + Pinch musket has a 73.2% chance to beat a Drill IV musket (all standing in the open)."

In fact, you even responded to that point, so I'm not sure how you've forgotten, by asking about CII + Pinch vs Drill III + Pinch, to which I responded:

"Sure, CII + Pinch vs DIII + Pinch has a 58.4% chance of winning."

Ah, I see. Totally my fault. I thought you were talking about CR there, not Combat. My apologies.

Are you going to discuss Combat vs Drill, or should I not bother responding to your numbers because you're absenting yourself?

Ok, this is just plain stupid, and frankly I expected much better of you. If you are making the assumption you have excess siege available, then there's no reason to believe you can't have excess CR available. And if you do, there's nothing slowing down an invasion, because you can leave those excess units behind.

It's not excess, it's what is needed to prosecute the war anyway, whether using CR or Drill. Some of the siege are going to die, so it's not like the siege needed to take the first city can be reused. Some of them can, but you're also going to need more. I'm suggesting that Drill encourages the player to build them before invading.

You're asking what if the CR player did the same... prebuilt. That's fine, but what we're talking about here is not the prebuilding. The prebuilding is just a consequence of Drill's accelerated healing's meaning your pace of fighting the war is much faster than that of a CR army. No matter what, the CR player has to sit and wait while his CR units heal.

If you're going to say the CR player has x2 the number of CR units than the Drill player has of Drill units, to allow half the CR to heal while the other half keeps marching, (while both have the same number of siege units,) then that's hardly fair.

That's what I was unclear on. You went directly from talking about promotions to talking about an increase in power. I assumed you meant that promotions increased power ratings.

I was listing the benefits of "CG I/Drill I and cheap Walls/Castles".

Anyway, now that you're clear on the point, is there any discussion or do you agree?

What you said was "I can say that I've tried the Drill-promoted army". The implication here is that you've somehow got more authority to speak on the subject because you've tried it and I haven't. I was pointing out that I had, in fact, tried it, and can also speak from experience.

The implication wasn't so much to increase my authority, but to get you to question your own assumptions.

What is comes down to is this: most if not all of us have played dozens if not hundreds of games of, say, Phi, where we specifically work to leverage Phi. How about Fin... same thing if not more: dozens or hundreds. Compare that to Pro. One or two? And, what about the Walls/Castles strats. Zero?

This is not a pissing contest and I could care less if I've done something more than you. This isn't about who is a "better player", (whatever that means anyway). The relevance is in where we're each coming from. The goal is to at least try to objectively evaluate Pro vs other traits. Fair enough?

Wodan