s.bernbaum
Mostly lurking
@steveg700:
Most of your questions were well addressed by others. The wording I quote caught my eye.
It sounds like you are using stack attack. Don't do that. When you do you are letting the computer decide which units to attack with, thereby giving away a lot of the advantage that you get from having real intelligence. Pick a unit, use the move command (cntrl-G) to mouse over the enemy stack, but don't click on it. The display will show you the odds for that unit to attack. When you see odds that are okay with you, for a unit, then click and make the attack. I almost always look at several different attack choices before deciding. If you are using BUG, the attack results for cats and other siege will show up as messages at top screen center telling you how many units suffered collateral damage from your attack. If not using BUG, you can find that info in the log at the top left of the screen. Also, if you mouse over the stack after each siege attack, you can see the strength of the enemy units and figure what damage was done. Once there is enough damage to satisfy you, you switch your attackers to your combat units.
As others have mentioned spears and pikes are the units to use against mounted enemy. It sounds like you are in the classical period, which means spears. A spear is 4 and gets 100% against mounted, which includes elephants, for a total of 8. That makes your spear even with the elephant at 1:1 giving 50% odds. If one or the other has promotions, that will sway the odds, so you want to promote your spears as much as you can in this situation. If you use the cats first, the elephants will already be damaged and your spears will have the advantage.
In the field, like when the enemy stack is invading you, use cats not trebs. The cats are stronger units. However, when attacking cities, use the trebs because they get a bonus against cities, making them stronger than cats in that setting.
Also, swords are only really useful for attacking cities, where they get a bonus. In the field, both axes and elephants get bonuses versus them making them pretty weak units in that setting. I rarely build any swords.
Most of your questions were well addressed by others. The wording I quote caught my eye.
It sounds like you are using stack attack. Don't do that. When you do you are letting the computer decide which units to attack with, thereby giving away a lot of the advantage that you get from having real intelligence. Pick a unit, use the move command (cntrl-G) to mouse over the enemy stack, but don't click on it. The display will show you the odds for that unit to attack. When you see odds that are okay with you, for a unit, then click and make the attack. I almost always look at several different attack choices before deciding. If you are using BUG, the attack results for cats and other siege will show up as messages at top screen center telling you how many units suffered collateral damage from your attack. If not using BUG, you can find that info in the log at the top left of the screen. Also, if you mouse over the stack after each siege attack, you can see the strength of the enemy units and figure what damage was done. Once there is enough damage to satisfy you, you switch your attackers to your combat units.
As others have mentioned spears and pikes are the units to use against mounted enemy. It sounds like you are in the classical period, which means spears. A spear is 4 and gets 100% against mounted, which includes elephants, for a total of 8. That makes your spear even with the elephant at 1:1 giving 50% odds. If one or the other has promotions, that will sway the odds, so you want to promote your spears as much as you can in this situation. If you use the cats first, the elephants will already be damaged and your spears will have the advantage.
In the field, like when the enemy stack is invading you, use cats not trebs. The cats are stronger units. However, when attacking cities, use the trebs because they get a bonus against cities, making them stronger than cats in that setting.
Also, swords are only really useful for attacking cities, where they get a bonus. In the field, both axes and elephants get bonuses versus them making them pretty weak units in that setting. I rarely build any swords.
))
. Great Generals, UBs, and vassals are from Warlords, but BTS includes (well, BTS) everything from Warlords except the scenarios (although the Complete version contains Warlords and BTS, so you get the scenarions).
