Oh, NOW you completely forget the drill thing. All of the sudden it's only CG longbowmen in the city - of course there are going to be multiple upgraded drill units in the city, making the city HIGHLY resilient against siege.
What do you mean, I'm forgetting it? I was using your exact words: "You know what kills just about everything in a stack of death though? Triple CG/drill upgraded longbowmen camped in a city."
But don't take my word for it - look at the drill line. Reduces siege damage. How exactly are CGI drill IV longbowmen + CGIII drill I longbowmen going to be "eaten alive" without the enemy devoting an inordinately more resources than the defender? Simple - they won't.
I know what the Drill line does. First off, you never mentioned anything about including Drill Longbows. Second, Drill reduces the collateral damage, it doesn't eliminate it (60% max reduction). Thirdly, while CG III is fairly easily obtainable early game (barracks + theocracy/GG), Drill IV would require 10XP, which you aren't likely to promote to immediately. You'd like only have Drill III, which only decreases collateral damage by 40%.
All in all, yes, your city is going to be a tough nut to crack. But no, it's not going to be able to stop an attacker with a decent amount of siege units and CR III Macemen.
Bhruic, come on, who are you fooling? When I put "Since that (attacking cities) happens so infrequently" in my post, I was quoting you from earlier in this thread. Are you telling me that when you said that attacking cities happens infrequently, you were in fact not saying that the AI pillages and doesn't attack? Please, enlighten me as to your hidden meaning here! Is the AI taking snapshots of my territory, not pillaging OR attacking?
Attacking cities does happen infrequently. You know what else happens infrequently? Pillaging. In BTS, the AI almost
never tries to pillage your terrain. At best, an invading army will pillage the squares it passes over on the way to attack a city. So no, I did not say, nor did I mean that the AI pillages and doesn't attack.
I mean, come on, there's no possible way I could mean the AI doesn't attack when I've already said that the AI attacks infrequently. That just defies what I would have assumed is common sense.
No, you said it infrequently does. Didn't have to invent that... And it's a load of hogwash.
I'm well aware I said it does it infrequently. What you invented was a claim that I said it doesn't attack at all. Once again: "Oh, the AI
never attacks well defended cities". Emphasis mine. It's easy to pull an example of two of the AI attacking a city and then defeat your strawman argument. That does not, however, do anything to defeat my claim that such attacks happen infrequently.
Yes, they just happen to. 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. And a small stack of siege units can leave large portions of the stack they're hitting at a fraction of their total health. I don't get why you're even mentioning this point... That's what siege units do - cripple lots of units so other units can clean them up!
Because I'm talking about probability. The chances of a couple of siege units just happening to target the specific defenders you need is extremely low.
But you know what? Let's give you that. Let's assume that's exactly what happens. And let's follow it through. So my Pikemen are wounded, and, we can assume, the stack gets attacked by Knights. What happens? The wounded Pikemen still defend, because they are still stronger than the CR units/other specialized defenders. But they are wounded so they lose. Assuming the enemy has sufficient Knights, they can probably continue to kill other units in the stack.
Ok, let's contrast that to what happens if your stack gets attacked. Let's assume the Knights are Combat promoted, and we won't even give them Pinch. And let's give both sides 3 promotions. Let's see, 13 str Knights vs 9.9 str Musketmen. And the Knights have complete First Strike immunity. Look at that, 77.5% odds. So the Knights are going to win most of those fights too.
In other words, your example, even if you somehow get lucky with the Catapults (and I was generous enough not to have the defending Musketmen get damaged by them) still doesn't result in a worse scenario than defending with generalists.
I don't consider generalists necessary - just desirable. Some portions of my ideal stack are specialized, some are generalized... And the beauty of a stack with more generalized elements is, those units don't start collecting dust after the war, waiting for the next one - they're viable defenders, on field combatents, sometimes medics, etc.
And that's fine. There's nothing particularily "wrong" with generalists. I just don't consider them as valuable as specialists.
Putting words in your mouth? Like the ones I quoted earlier, which all of the sudden you're apparently not advocating and I'm just inventing?
No, I mean like the ones above that I've demonstrated twice now that I never actually said.
As for you saying it's "useless," not directly, but your position has been roughly that it is relatively less useful than most other traits. That's pretty damned close to saying it's useless, if everything else is better.
That's nowhere close to saying it's useless. That's merely your defensive interpretation. Even if I were to say, which I'm not, that Protective was the absolute worst trait in the game, that doesn't mean it's useless, it just means it's less useful than the rest.
Well, here's a thought. I can honestly say "Philosophical doesn't help my games at all." Does that throw the usefulness of philosophical into question for me? Of course not, because I realize that somewhere out there, someone is cleaning house with it. In this case, as is pretty clear from this thread and the proponents of protective, there are people cleaning house with it. So, why do you disbelieve them, and their rather enthusiastic accounts?
Because their arguments supporting them supposedly "cleaning house" aren't sufficient to be convincing. I mean, look at the "Is Germany overpowered" thread. You've got a guy claiming that the German UU kicks ass. But look, there's you posting that the German UU is "a few notches above the worst". Why are you disbelieving the original poster and his enthusiastic account of the German UU cleaning house?
You're being evasive more than I'm making things up. "Since that (attacking cities) happens so infrequently" and then claiming that you're not arguing that the AI pillages much more than attacks? Get your argument on the same page, and stop claiming that I'm putting words in your mouth when I'm calling you on obvious errors in what you've been arguing.
You are putting words in my mouth. Once AGAIN, I never brought up pillaging. At all. So there is absolutely no way that I could be making any claim about the AI pillaging more than attacking. The only one who's brought that up at all is
you. So attributing such a statement to me is very clearly putting words in my mouth.
As it stands, you're saying it's a bad trait because you have relatively little idea as to how to use it. If you disagree that with a turtle-builder it's anything other than mediocre, you're making a mistake, because the reality is that it is very powerful.
I'm not making a mistake. It is, at best, mediocre. And I'm well aware of how to use it. Most of the other traits in the game, when leveraged properly, are much superior to Protective. Even when it's leveraged properly. No claim you've made has demonstrated anything otherwise.
Bh
ill take that.
for offensive units, thus reducing the chances of any enemies arriving at your doorstep. As you said yourself, counterattack can be effective.
Besides, since even the lightest weighting in strength changes the odds as much as 20-40%, two stronger units would do better, I think?
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.
