Waywatcher
Chieftain
Hello all.
Moderately long time lurker, first time poster. First off, I'd like to congratulate those on this forum whose posts I've enjoyed from my comfy perch in anonymity. It appears to be quite a close-knit little family here, without as much of the petty back-biting and immature flame-baited drivel I'm used to from other video game forums.
Let's see if we can change all that, shall we?
Anyway, I'm a Civ3 rook, more or less. I usually multiplay on Regent or lower (whenever I play with friends, of course - the prospect of playing Civ3 with random people who are just as apt to turn the game into the turn-based equivalent of zergling rushes really doesn't appeal to me.../digress).
I've recently enjoyed pounding Chieftain with ever-increasing numbers of opponents but, to be honest, it's a guilty pleasure knowing that I've actually grasped the nuances of higher-levels of game play and am indulging in fun-running wonders simply because I can. So I tried Regent. And am not doing well.
I think it's got more to do with attention span rather than anything else. I often formulate intricate strategic plans for my civilizations, broken down into what I want to do with each city. But as soon as I save, hit the sack, and load 'er up the next day, I've forgotten most of it and feel like starting from scratch. Of course, unless I play for 50+ consecutive hours (not an option...), I won't be finishing too many games in the future, I suppose...
Anyway, I'm pretty aware of the things I'm doing wrong (specifically not micromanaging to the point of counting fpt & spt, setting up hard-and-fast settler factories, etc.), but the only question that I wanted to ask that, thus far, hasn't already been addressed is: how do you guys control your stacks so well?
In Chieftain, I would essentially stack about 75-100 cavalry (or sipahi) and roll over everything in sight, dropping wounded units back to neutral ground (or just a mountain, provided I had Battlefield Medicine...which I did, of course. Come on, it's Chieftain
), not really caring about organization. And then I discovered that artillery in all its many forms (including even the ancient cats and trebs) was a wonder to behold. So I began working on combined arms attacks (as well as leaving some artys back on my frontier cities and in spearmen-fortified mountain fortresses for defense).
The problem is this. I'm moving a stack of 10-15 defenders (usually muskets or spears - really not a big fan of pikes, to be honest), with either 25-30 longbows or MDI's (depending on my iron situation) and as many artillery pieces as I can cram together. So it typically takes me a while to reach a distant opponent but, when I get there, well "They're all in big, big trouble..." to paraphrase Billy Madison.
Except each of the units in the stack are advancing at a snail's pace. And even when my patience holds long enough to have an enemy unit, stack, or city adjacent to my SoD, I reach another quandry: how do I keep the stack together?
Let's say O is us and X is an enemy:
O.....
..X...
We've got a target 1 adjacent tile to our SE. For the sake of argument, let's say he's a veteran with 4 HP. I use three of my cats (trebs, cannons, whatever) to knock him down to 1 HP. I'm not the Koreans so I don't have the luxury of the H'wacha's lethal bombardment. Alright, so I move in a single MDI or longbow to finish the job. Now I have 3 cats that have expended their move by attacking, one longbow who's off the stack now that he's executed his target, and a bunch of other units with "choices" (which, to me, often leads to headaches).
How can I keep this stack together?
I usually compromise, send half of my moveable stack pieces up to cover the longbow, fortify the other half, and then wait for the next turn. The problem is, now I have to expend yet another turn to bring up the 3 cats and their honor guard to rejoin the stack. And heaven help me if yet another enemy target rears its ugly head in the meantime. If the target in question is a city, I'm normally OK. I'll take my time, regather in the city (particularly long enough to quell resisters. I may even disband some units to hurry the production of walls, barracks, a temple, etc. if the need arises), heal, drop a few defensive pieces off inside, and keep rollin'. But it's an almighty headache watching my mighty Stack of Death devolve into smaller Regiments of Death, and so on and so forth until all I've got are glorified Puddles of Death mightily trickling their way through enemy territory
How do you guys handle this? Do you bring 2 move units (horses, knights, cav, ancient cav, etc.) along on offense instead so they can expend one move to eliminate a target and one move to rejoin the stack? Or do you suffer through the same tedium of unit micromanagement that drives every anal-retentive fiber of my being into a frenzy (only, I presume, you're actually sane and don't lose sleep worrying about stack control)?
Any advice would be much appreciated. I have a feeling I may one day become a decent player if I can get past niggling issues such as these.
And now I'll turn around so you all may laugh at the inanity of this topic.
The watcher.
Moderately long time lurker, first time poster. First off, I'd like to congratulate those on this forum whose posts I've enjoyed from my comfy perch in anonymity. It appears to be quite a close-knit little family here, without as much of the petty back-biting and immature flame-baited drivel I'm used to from other video game forums.
Let's see if we can change all that, shall we?
Anyway, I'm a Civ3 rook, more or less. I usually multiplay on Regent or lower (whenever I play with friends, of course - the prospect of playing Civ3 with random people who are just as apt to turn the game into the turn-based equivalent of zergling rushes really doesn't appeal to me.../digress).
I've recently enjoyed pounding Chieftain with ever-increasing numbers of opponents but, to be honest, it's a guilty pleasure knowing that I've actually grasped the nuances of higher-levels of game play and am indulging in fun-running wonders simply because I can. So I tried Regent. And am not doing well.
I think it's got more to do with attention span rather than anything else. I often formulate intricate strategic plans for my civilizations, broken down into what I want to do with each city. But as soon as I save, hit the sack, and load 'er up the next day, I've forgotten most of it and feel like starting from scratch. Of course, unless I play for 50+ consecutive hours (not an option...), I won't be finishing too many games in the future, I suppose...
Anyway, I'm pretty aware of the things I'm doing wrong (specifically not micromanaging to the point of counting fpt & spt, setting up hard-and-fast settler factories, etc.), but the only question that I wanted to ask that, thus far, hasn't already been addressed is: how do you guys control your stacks so well?
In Chieftain, I would essentially stack about 75-100 cavalry (or sipahi) and roll over everything in sight, dropping wounded units back to neutral ground (or just a mountain, provided I had Battlefield Medicine...which I did, of course. Come on, it's Chieftain
), not really caring about organization. And then I discovered that artillery in all its many forms (including even the ancient cats and trebs) was a wonder to behold. So I began working on combined arms attacks (as well as leaving some artys back on my frontier cities and in spearmen-fortified mountain fortresses for defense).The problem is this. I'm moving a stack of 10-15 defenders (usually muskets or spears - really not a big fan of pikes, to be honest), with either 25-30 longbows or MDI's (depending on my iron situation) and as many artillery pieces as I can cram together. So it typically takes me a while to reach a distant opponent but, when I get there, well "They're all in big, big trouble..." to paraphrase Billy Madison.
Except each of the units in the stack are advancing at a snail's pace. And even when my patience holds long enough to have an enemy unit, stack, or city adjacent to my SoD, I reach another quandry: how do I keep the stack together?
Let's say O is us and X is an enemy:
O.....
..X...
We've got a target 1 adjacent tile to our SE. For the sake of argument, let's say he's a veteran with 4 HP. I use three of my cats (trebs, cannons, whatever) to knock him down to 1 HP. I'm not the Koreans so I don't have the luxury of the H'wacha's lethal bombardment. Alright, so I move in a single MDI or longbow to finish the job. Now I have 3 cats that have expended their move by attacking, one longbow who's off the stack now that he's executed his target, and a bunch of other units with "choices" (which, to me, often leads to headaches).
How can I keep this stack together?
I usually compromise, send half of my moveable stack pieces up to cover the longbow, fortify the other half, and then wait for the next turn. The problem is, now I have to expend yet another turn to bring up the 3 cats and their honor guard to rejoin the stack. And heaven help me if yet another enemy target rears its ugly head in the meantime. If the target in question is a city, I'm normally OK. I'll take my time, regather in the city (particularly long enough to quell resisters. I may even disband some units to hurry the production of walls, barracks, a temple, etc. if the need arises), heal, drop a few defensive pieces off inside, and keep rollin'. But it's an almighty headache watching my mighty Stack of Death devolve into smaller Regiments of Death, and so on and so forth until all I've got are glorified Puddles of Death mightily trickling their way through enemy territory
How do you guys handle this? Do you bring 2 move units (horses, knights, cav, ancient cav, etc.) along on offense instead so they can expend one move to eliminate a target and one move to rejoin the stack? Or do you suffer through the same tedium of unit micromanagement that drives every anal-retentive fiber of my being into a frenzy (only, I presume, you're actually sane and don't lose sleep worrying about stack control)?
Any advice would be much appreciated. I have a feeling I may one day become a decent player if I can get past niggling issues such as these.
And now I'll turn around so you all may laugh at the inanity of this topic.
The watcher.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
[dance]
). I'll stack knights, pikes (yeah, muskets are a bit expensive, upon second reckoning...not to mention I'll be fighting this war partially to get saltpeter in the first place...), and trebs (later, cannons) in my SoD and see how that works out. I like the idea of a defensive stack moving as a screen in front of an offensive clean-up crew - maybe fast units serving as a moving net - but I'll have to toy with it to feel comfortable with the strategy.
