So how do you fight a praetorian war?

[marasaidw]

Well next Noble's Club is Augustus, so that undoubtedly means praetorian war. I've never actually played Rome before. How are they executed? Do you rush IW chop/whip a bunch out and just go? At some point should you start adding siege to the stack? If so is it less siege than usual.

And how do you maintain an economy while doing this?

 

[Seraiel]

There are 2 ways of which I know:

1. Beeline Ironcasting, found something like 3 cities, rush with Praetorians only.

2. (imo better way, but needs higher game-difficulty because otherwise, AIs will be too slow) : Get Alphabet asap, trade for IW, rush neighbour if he doesn't have metals by chance, otherwise, REX further, go for Praets + Catapults (beats basically anything until Maces and even single Maces can be beaten) .

Greatest advantage of Praets btw. is not rushing them, but that they live so long. Praets + Cannons i. e. is an awesome combo that even beats Rifles at very fair Hammer-rates.

 

[Macksideshow]

Their only real problem before maces are elephants. I like to bee-line iron working because then you know where the iron is. Nothing causes a praet war to fail like not having iron. Some catapults with bombard are good, then I head for Trebs (extra movement on roads from engineering is good too). Treb/Praets have a rather large window of usefulness.

 

[Seraiel]

Elephants are no problem for Praets. Praets can easily get CR 2, bringing an Elephant, that gets no defensive bonuses down to a STR that's below an Axe.

 

[Choggy]

Yep, Praets last forever (iirc they're obsoleted by Military Science and as Seraiel mentioned they can go up against Rifles with cannon support) and more importantly they're cheap so build lots of them and expect to lose lots of them.

 

[strijder20]

How are they executed?

Clicking the skull button or pressing delete should work, although you should really build other units if you don't want hem.

 

[Izuul]

I definitely prefer the delayed cat + praet war when using AC. This still allows you to pursue a good early wonder with IND and get a bit of a base set up to launch from.

The IW beeline with settler first at size 1 > settle 2nd city by iron > attack with just praets can work OK for JC because ORG can potentially save your ass when you have a bunch of cities and a terrible economy.

 

[Gumbolt]

I am more interested in how players fight off a Roman attack on their cities when the Romans have pults and prets. Keeping Romans at bay on immortal can be quite challenging if you can't keep them at pleased.

 

[backthief]

Pretorians on immortal level is like playing Settler mode. But if AI is Roman, i try to stay far, very far from them until Macemen. I have retired a couples games already when Romans declar war on me.

 

[MegaLurker]

There are 2 ways of which I know:

1. Beeline Ironcasting, found something like 3 cities, rush with Praetorians only.

2. (imo better way, but needs higher game-difficulty because otherwise, AIs will be too slow) : Get Alphabet asap, trade for IW, rush neighbour if he doesn't have metals by chance, otherwise, REX further, go for Praets + Catapults (beats basically anything until Maces and even single Maces can be beaten) .

Greatest advantage of Praets btw. is not rushing them, but that they live so long. Praets + Cannons i. e. is an awesome combo that even beats Rifles at very fair Hammer-rates.

I definitely prefer the delayed cat + praet war when using AC. This still allows you to pursue a good early wonder with IND and get a bit of a base set up to launch from.

The IW beeline with settler first at size 1 > settle 2nd city by iron > attack with just praets can work OK for JC because ORG can potentially save your ass when you have a bunch of cities and a terrible economy.

If there is an AI that's very close with good land, I think it's best to do a bit of both. Beeline with only 2 cities, take the nearby land, consolidate and make sure you're still in the tech game, then continue when siege is available. This avoids the problem of being left without iron. It'll slow down your construction date of course but maybe not by much if you got a decent chunk of city capture gold and the first target was close enough.

 

[strijder20]

I am more interested in how players fight off a Roman attack on their cities when the Romans have pults and prets. Keeping Romans at bay on immortal can be quite challenging if you can't keep them at pleased.

Pults + shock HAs.

 

[Nexlev]

I am more interested in how players fight off a Roman attack on their cities when the Romans have pults and prets. Keeping Romans at bay on immortal can be quite challenging if you can't keep them at pleased.

If I'm next door to Romans I try to get iron-working before them and prevent them from hooking it up.

Barring that, find their iron and pillage it, bribe someone to help and just pray.

 

[Gumbolt]

Pults + shock HAs.

Assuming they have no phants. A early stack of phants, Prets and pults can be almost unstoppable. 5-6 pults and a large number of axes/HA might work.

Of course phants would be a reasonable answer to prets.

 

[cseanny]

On Emperor and below I'd just beeline iron, found a second city, and then take cities at will. On Immortal+ I'd prefer to set up 4-5 cities and then just head straight to Praets and go conquer. Cata's are nice but they take a bit longer and pre Mace there's not anything around that's going to stop you. CRII and III Praets do remarkably well vs LBs, even on hills so no worries. But yea, on higher levels I like the foundation set up so you can afford all the unit and city maintenance you'll run into.

 

[Pangaea]

In the current NC game I went straight for IW on Immortal, and declared around 1000BC. It's certainly doable at that level too, because Praets will murder anything in front of them basically, but the big issue at immortal (and even more so on deity, I'm sure) is maintenance costs. Even before cities were getting online I was losing money at 0% research due to unit support. I still like the approach, because it's fun to attack that early, but in hindsight it might have been better to postpone the attack a bit by founding more cities and developing the economy/land better, and likewise let the victims develop their/our cities more before declaring. Post-war recovery would probably be faster.

 

[strijder20]

Assuming they have no phants.

Phants are somewhat out of the question here, since phant + cat rushes are nigh unstoppable anyway (only suicide cats to batter them down followed up by swords works). In fact, if they wouldn't be more expensive, Phants are even more OP than praets in this situation.

 

[MegaLurker]

In the current NC game I went straight for IW on Immortal, and declared around 1000BC. It's certainly doable at that level too, because Praets will murder anything in front of them basically, but the big issue at immortal (and even more so on deity, I'm sure) is maintenance costs. Even before cities were getting online I was losing money at 0% research due to unit support. I still like the approach, because it's fun to attack that early, but in hindsight it might have been better to postpone the attack a bit by founding more cities and developing the economy/land better, and likewise let the victims develop their/our cities more before declaring. Post-war recovery would probably be faster.

On Deity and to a lesser extent Immortal you can make a huge difference to your gold situation by selling resources for gpt and techs for cash. Between that, city capture gold, gold for peace, a couple cottage spam cities, and building wealth you should be able to get into an easily winnable situation with Praets.

Sometimes you could even win the game with them. I think I remember Duckweed doing a Deity win with Praets.

If you crash before currency you've screwed yourself.

 

[Pangaea]

On Deity and to a lesser extent Immortal you can make a huge difference to your gold situation by selling resources for gpt and techs for cash. Between that, city capture gold, gold for peace, a couple cottage spam cities, and building wealth you should be able to get into an easily winnable situation with Praets.

Sometimes you could even win the game with them. I think I remember Duckweed doing a Deity win with Praets.

If you crash before currency you've screwed yourself.

Yeah, that is certainly doable, but only once Currency is online, and that is quite a bit off atm. It may be too late for a recovery if I'm honest, but I'll continue the game and see how it goes. If nothing else, it was great fun to whip HARD, produce a Praet a turn for 20-odd turns and crush a neighbour in the pretty early BCs. With Alpha in war tribute, I guess the best choice right now is to build research to Currency and hope that gets me out of a bind quick enough.

It's the ONE thing I need to get much better at to truly hack Immortal: post-war recovery, and economy more generally.

If videos is anything to go by, selling techs works MUCH better at Deity than Immortal, as the sums you get is much higher, probably due to the AIs generally have much bigger empires early on.

 

[MegaLurker]

Pay attention to AI gold when wonders go. AIs that failed the wonder will have a whole bunch but sometimes it'll be available very briefly.

 

[Pangaea]

Pay attention to AI gold when wonders go. AIs that failed the wonder will have a whole bunch but sometimes it'll be available very briefly.

Figured I'd make a short update on how Project Recovery went (so far). Built research in all 6 cities (after whipping out two settlers just in case a certain AI would steal my good spots), changed to Rep (Mids). There wasn't enough gold, but I had Praets marching towards two barb cities. Took the first without losses and grabbed 60-ish gold, funding research for a few more turns. Towards the other barb city. On the same turn gold ran out, we grabbed it (sadly with 3 stupid losses) and got 100-ish gold, which just got me across the line to currency. Phew!

I'll keep an eye out for gold when wonders go, I usually do, and hope we can cash in with some techs. But the main problem is solved now, when we can build wealth.