The Commando Promotion

[mirthadir]

Does anyone use it much at all? It requires so many lvls to get that only aggressive or charasmatic leaders can expect get more than a handful of units up that high. On occasion I've used it to with a sacrificial unit via a great general to raze a capital off the coast after destroying all the defenders with missiles, choppers, and nukes.

My one and only game where I made extensive use of it was playing as the Celts (guess which one) and captured an enemy cap with enough settled GGs that with WP I could churn out commando infantry backed by fighters (this was the old patch) before the AI had SAM infantry. Just curious to see if anyone else has found any uses for this that warrant the effort to get such highly promoted units.

 

[midwaymas]

If you've had a really war heavy game and are in the modern-ish era (with 3-4 GGs settled as advisors, West Point, Barracks, West Point, Vassalage and Theocracy) in your main production city commando troops riding rail roads can strike into the heart of enemy territory in a single turn, especially devastating with modern armor.

 

[SirLamphead]

I have never used the promotion.
The only unit that gets it is the spy.
It requires to many Combat promotion wich could go to more specialized promos like city raider for early and pinch later on. Plus A commando should be backed up with a spy to revolt a city and even then your chances might not be in favor.

 

[CivEikka]

If you've had a really war heavy game and are in the modern-ish era (with 3-4 GGs settled as advisors, West Point, Barracks, West Point, Vassalage and Theocracy)

Cool, i have never ever builded 2 West Points.

Charismatic trait really helps, so does the aggressive trait. (Boudica!)

But i have never promoted to commando, becouse my games ends usually in the middle age.

 

[Genv [FP]]

I have never used the promotion.
The only unit that gets it is the spy.
It requires to many Combat promotion wich could go to more specialized promos like city raider for early and pinch later on. Plus A commando should be backed up with a spy to revolt a city and even then your chances might not be in favor.

It's actually ridiculously easy to get if you're Cyrus

 

[SnowlyWhite]

never used bar boudica(13xp)

at 21xp, which a normal cha leader would get... bah, can imagine better uses then that; cute the invented this promo I suppose... pity it's unrealistic. But then it's good it's unrealistic, because programming the ai to cope with mass commando units would be nigh on impossible.

 

[Genv [FP]]

I'm telling you. Try Cyrus. He's Imp and Char.

 

[midwaymas]

Cool, i have never ever builded 2 West Points.

Charismatic trait really helps, so does the aggressive trait. (Boudica!)

But i have never promoted to commando, becouse my games ends usually in the middle age.

Lol, I read over it, and somehow thought I forgot to put in West Point, and added it in again =/

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You need 5 promos . It's so hard to get 5 promos on stock units...even for super warmonger traits like AGG/IMP/Cha. Best bet would be some combination of the two but it would still be almost impossible to compose most of your military with this kind of unit .

 

[CivEikka]

Charismatic is the must trait for getting commando for units.

Try Cyrus in pangea map with aggressive AI:s

 

[J-man]

I have gotten commando's with Hannibal once, but that was so late in the game I had practically won. Commando isn't very useful but it's still a cool promotion.

 

[patagonia]

You can get commando units reasonably easily as Cyrus on a huge map if you do a lot of warmongering. The pay-off is that they're a bit situational to say the least and it means settling all your GG into one super military city rather than spreading them around for more less-promoted troops. The flipside is that they're really "expendable" as you've got a city capable of building them out of the gate, so you don't need to worry about sending them on suicide missions.

Nothing beats racing C4Commando MA deep into enemy territory to take/raze a core city your bombers have been blitzing on the first turn of war. Since they took barrage away from armoured units, I've become a much bigger fan of the combat line on them too.

 

[mboettcher]

I take it whenever its available. On tanks/ma it means your army on land can move as fast as the airpower. Its not only absurd how quickly you can bypass enemy defenses but the ability to strike at the most significant targets while ignoring the more irrelevant ones can seriously expand the flexibility of your offense.

The reason commando comes so late is because its so powerful. Its one of those promotions that lends a lot of credence to the use of warlords. If you have 4-6 warlord units that have 150+ xp supported by airunits you can take major cities every turn.

 

[mboettcher]

Its certainly more of a marathon game promotion for civs that expect to get a lot of workhorse performance out of their UU and be at war early and often. Certainly civs like the Celts, Rome, England (especially churchill), Germany, Mongolia etc all should have the opportunity to get numerous units at this level.

Another point to make is that this is not an individual units promotion. ITs value is in volume. Its about having fast moving armies not just one strong fast unit.

 

[mirthadir]

mboettcher:

I'm not following you regarding the Celtic, Roman, and Mongolian UU's. Commando requires you to tech military science before you can use it (or so I thought) which means all the early UU's can't possibly use it as their UUs.

If you mean having a few of the UU take general leadership, odds one surviving 20 odd combats, assuming you husband them to only attack at 98% on average, means that you will still lose 1 in 3 (btw 97% drops this down to 1 in 2; anything less is effectual suicide in the long run). For non-charismatics (like Rome, Germany, Mongolia, etc.) this just doesn't seem doable; particularly if you are doing it with pre-vassalage UUs. Imperialist MIGHT able to run it on its own, but the promos required are huge. How many GGs must you settle for initial XP, how many GG are you having lead for more promos, and how may battles must you fight before you unlock commando?

I can't possibly imagine getting enough commando units to take key cities without using hoards of missiles/choppers/nukes (in which case you need one of them supermobile freaks) without going imp/agr/cha (or even more likely a combo). Avoiding it being a suicide mission (barring mass paratroop reinforcement which is highly situational) requires that you have many combat 4 units sitting outside the city you just swatted, one airlifted defender, and and enough units inside (without CG, pinch, etc.) inside to withstand the attack after siege batters them. GG led troops just seem so utterly not worth the GG points.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

well, I never use vassalage, so - 2 from theo, 3 from racks, 4 from wp, 2 settled ggs - 13xp; with boudica you start with c1. So it's perfectly doable.

with cyrus it already seems dubious, as you need, even with theo and vassalage, 21xp, so 5 settled ggs - 6 without vassalage(which is still perfectly doable, only that I find dubious settling 5 ggs in the same city - I prefer 3 cities taking out 3 promo units instead of 1 with 5 promo units).

otherwise, the moment you get them, and most important, the moment they get railroads... the game starts being ******ed; especially when you have bomber support(and we all know it's easy to get them in, as the ai loves suiciding his fighters in the 1st 3 turns of a war). Mind you, even as human and with a good strategy grip, I doubt there's much you can do to stop an enemy with tons of commando troops - 20 movement/turn for any tank/ma means they can basically strike any city in bomber range; and bombers can be deployed in forts, to bypass the limit of city loading(and by that time, your workers chew bubble gum anyway).

p.s. - the only good thing is that, if you can muster all that, probably you'd win the game regardless of commando.

 

[vicawoo]

Commando elephants?

 

[mboettcher]

@ Mirthadir

True its difficult to get a unit to this point and yes pbviously you're going to support your armies with bombers/choppers/missles and whatnot because there is no such thing as an effective blitzkrieg w/o their aide. I wasn;t suggesting one uses commando units w/o air support. I was simply suggesting that in the event that the commando promo is available one should take it as in the light of effective support it can double or better the city conquest rate if exploited properly. And yes, like any speed conquer strat, its going to cost one some risks in terms of unit loss in order to expoit it.

As far as the pre-mil sci civs one usually has a plethora of high xp units left over after early conquests. Its easy to contrive an army of High xp commandos for later left over from early wars or generated from the GG produced. I wasn;t inferring that one should have praetorian 200xp commandos with lvl 6 combat and city raider 3.

 

[mirthadir]

@ Mirthadir

True its difficult to get a unit to this point and yes pbviously you're going to support your armies with bombers/choppers/missles and whatnot because there is no such thing as an effective blitzkrieg w/o their aide. I wasn;t suggesting one uses commando units w/o air support. I was simply suggesting that in the event that the commando promo is available one should take it as in the light of effective support it can double or better the city conquest rate if exploited properly. And yes, like any speed conquer strat, its going to cost one some risks in terms of unit loss in order to expoit it.

As far as the pre-mil sci civs one usually has a plethora of high xp units left over after early conquests. Its easy to contrive an army of High xp commandos for later left over from early wars or generated from the GG produced. I wasn;t inferring that one should have praetorian 200xp commandos with lvl 6 combat and city raider 3.

My point is that in order to take a city you need to either:
1. Actually kill everything with nukes/choppers/missiles.
2. Use bombers and leave all units with minimal heath. Then you need normally 4, though sometimes FAR more to administer the final blow.

In the former case you need exactly ONE commando unit. Not an army of them. The devil comes from reinforcing the city with actual defensive forces. You get to airlift in one unit, good. But if it is truly mobile warfare you need far more. Depending on sea access you might be able to dump in choppers (fine unless they have SAM infantry or worse mobile SAMs) and possibly paratroops. In the modern armor age this generally is not sufficient garrison to keep the city when the enemy SoD hits.

In the latter case, you are going to need at least 3 commandos and more like 6. If they aren't tanks or cav they will be sitting ducks outside the city at the end of the turn. Again you have the problem that combat IV anything is not good garrison material for the counter attack.

Regarding old units with high XP, sorry but that doesn't work particularly well. Unless said unit is lead by a GG, all that XP vanishes down to 10 with promotion (in theory you could get your prat up to lvl 5 and save the promotion until you get military science, but this requires you to sacrifice the utility of that promotion for many, many turns). Further most ancient UUs don't take the combat promotion line, seriously how many prats do you have that go combat III as opposed to CR III or Combat II/shock or Combat II/cover? Ancient units that do go combat tend to be mounted and for the purposes of taking cities, they top out at cavalry.

Again for non-chas units that need 5 promos require you to win SO many battles, even for hoards of ancient units the odds of them surviving even just 95% odds every time are nil.

Do you have a save you might be able to show me?

 

[Polobo]

Mind you, even as human and with a good strategy grip, I doubt there's much you can do to stop an enemy with tons of commando troops - 20 movement/turn for any tank/ma means they can basically strike any city in bomber range;

While I haven't actually play-tested this myself (I do not often make it to railroads before starting a new game, and when I do I forget) but others have constantly chastised me on this point: railroads make is so any unit can ONLY move 10 tiles during their turn, regardless of base movement points.