fortydayweekend
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 239
Is anyone else doing this a lot on HK level? I'm finding that surrendering is often good value, especially if the neighbouring Huns have 3-4 stacks of Horde inside my borders as soon as they declare.
If they don't have any territory claims you can usually get away with around 1600 gold in reparations. On the margins gold is used for rush-buying and that's equivalent to about 500 industry or so at that stage of the game, which is maybe 1-2 turns of combined city industry.
Sure, you do take a hit to development by not being able to buy any new trade goods or rush buy, and you will probably need to move some workers into traders to get out of debt quicker, buy you can still keep building and researching and the stability hit is manageable.
The alternative is to put all your pop and industry into building a lot of units, with almost guaranteed losses and no guarantee that you'll actually win. Losing a war will definitely cripple your growth. Even winning and getting a city might not necessarily be a better outcome if it means losing a lot of units and diverting pop away from research.
So I'm finding that I'm doing a quick calculation to work out whether I can win and very often choosing to just surrender immediately to be able to keep focusing on growth. I'm looking at what their units are, what I can build, what terrain I can fight on etc. In my current game I can build Carthaginian war elephants and I have some swords and archers but the Huns have 4 stacks of Horde and the terrain is very broken and next to a coast. It's on an isthmus so he'll bring all his stacks into battle just by accident, no opportunities to fight piecemeal. There's a good cliff for my archers but no way for my elephants to surround him, and they'll be outnumbered even if I turn every pop I have into an elephant. Also, the battle would be taking place next to my second city and tying up production there for a few turns. I don't think I can win, or at least not at a huge cost in terms of industry and research.
It seems to make sense to just not build any units, pay the gold, and keep teching and building towards Medieval, where there are more powerful counter-units like pikes and the opportunity to beeline ahead to gunpowder or chivalry for a timing attack.
I should say this is based on not cheesing neolithic and not having amazing start locations. With a strong start you can be so far ahead that nobody attacks you and you're always on the offensive. And it's very situational, many superior AI forces can be beaten with the right terrain and tactics. I also play with settings that mean having 2-3 close neighbours so early wars are almost guaranteed.
Anyway I'm starting to see surrendering as a likely part of the opening strategy and working around it - picking Merchant cultures and not building any more military units than I need to handle the independents, and making sure to buy all the available trade before getting declared on. Is anyone else doing something similar?
If they don't have any territory claims you can usually get away with around 1600 gold in reparations. On the margins gold is used for rush-buying and that's equivalent to about 500 industry or so at that stage of the game, which is maybe 1-2 turns of combined city industry.
Sure, you do take a hit to development by not being able to buy any new trade goods or rush buy, and you will probably need to move some workers into traders to get out of debt quicker, buy you can still keep building and researching and the stability hit is manageable.
The alternative is to put all your pop and industry into building a lot of units, with almost guaranteed losses and no guarantee that you'll actually win. Losing a war will definitely cripple your growth. Even winning and getting a city might not necessarily be a better outcome if it means losing a lot of units and diverting pop away from research.
So I'm finding that I'm doing a quick calculation to work out whether I can win and very often choosing to just surrender immediately to be able to keep focusing on growth. I'm looking at what their units are, what I can build, what terrain I can fight on etc. In my current game I can build Carthaginian war elephants and I have some swords and archers but the Huns have 4 stacks of Horde and the terrain is very broken and next to a coast. It's on an isthmus so he'll bring all his stacks into battle just by accident, no opportunities to fight piecemeal. There's a good cliff for my archers but no way for my elephants to surround him, and they'll be outnumbered even if I turn every pop I have into an elephant. Also, the battle would be taking place next to my second city and tying up production there for a few turns. I don't think I can win, or at least not at a huge cost in terms of industry and research.
It seems to make sense to just not build any units, pay the gold, and keep teching and building towards Medieval, where there are more powerful counter-units like pikes and the opportunity to beeline ahead to gunpowder or chivalry for a timing attack.
I should say this is based on not cheesing neolithic and not having amazing start locations. With a strong start you can be so far ahead that nobody attacks you and you're always on the offensive. And it's very situational, many superior AI forces can be beaten with the right terrain and tactics. I also play with settings that mean having 2-3 close neighbours so early wars are almost guaranteed.
Anyway I'm starting to see surrendering as a likely part of the opening strategy and working around it - picking Merchant cultures and not building any more military units than I need to handle the independents, and making sure to buy all the available trade before getting declared on. Is anyone else doing something similar?