The Dwarven Giant Charge

[Master_Hugian]

Civilization: Luchuirp
Leader: Garrim Gyr

This is a very rapid rush which can spell doom for most other civilizations, there are however some weaknesses (as always) and in this case it is Hunters, however due to the speed of the rush you might be able to destroy them before they can produce their hunters.

Turn x
You have settled your first city, cast your world spell and get your free engineer in your city, this will later provide you with a Great Engineer which will be used later. You city will produce warriors until you have at least 6 warriors, lower research if you need to provide for your army. Start researching Exploration followed by Cartography and then rush with your engineer Pact of the Nilhorn, this will get you 3 Strength 7 giants that can bombard cities, whats not to like.

Invasion
You now have three giants add to you invasion force 4 warriors just to provide some backup. March to your nearest neighbour and declare war. Produce your first mud golem and then start spamming out more warriors to join up with your army/provide defence. Research wise focus on getting money, if you have gems or gold nearby get mining, otherwise head for Education and start spamming cotteges everywhere (You have Financial) and adopt city states to reduce the maintaince of your conquered cities. Once you have education, you might have a neightbour with some excellent defence, get to construction so you can produce Wood Golems/Barnaxus and run them down bringing catapults if required. Soon the world will fall under your rule.

Please make any suggestions/comments to the strategy and do you think its effective versus players?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I did this with Beeri, not Garrim. Defender sucks ass. Cottage spam is good early but starts to blow once scholarship and caste system hit, while civic upkeep costs are up in FfH because populations are up. This makes Organized compare more favorably to Financial in FfH than it does in vanilla. Spiritual is improved from the normal version because it gives disciples a great promotion for free... yeah, he's the better Luchuirp leader in my mind, no question.

Anywho it kicks ass in singleplayer, I got an easy win on Emperor and over 300k points when I tried it, and I was still a greenhorn to FfH when I did it (it was like my 3rd win ever.) Can't speak for multiplayer, because I hate it and it's beneath me to waste time on it. I'd expect you could catch a decent human with his pants down once using this strategy, then he'd learn to prioritize hunting if the Luchuirp are nearby. If you tried this on anyone who has

A) had this happen to him before
B) read this topic

Your giants would get their asses handed to them.

Again, all speculation, again, await confirmation from someone with bad enough taste to actually bother with MP, etc

 

[Master_Hugian]

After some more experimentation, I have found that the AI has a bonus vs animals, including your hill giants, on higher difficulties (found this out when a barbarian polar bear massacred my hill giant on Emperor difficulty and when i checked the odds it had a AI Animal Bonus of 30%.

Garrim is better on smaller maps in my oppinion as those with this strategy tend to not last long, however I agree that Beeri is better on larger maps due to his Organized trait.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah I've done this, it works pretty well. In fact, I have a hard time NOT doing it now, at least getting the hill giants. You need fear very little once you get a 'free' triplet of giants to help expand/guard your lands.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I thought Hill Giants were unitcombat_beast. Why do scouts have a bonus versus them?

 

[scaramouche]

I thought Hill Giants were unitcombat_beast. Why do scouts have a bonus versus them?

Sevopedia tells me they are unitcombat_animal.

 

[xienwolf]

XML and Civlopedia both report Unitcombat is Beast. And on a sidenote, is the FfHBUG working fine under .31e? Haven't tried it myself yet.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I thought Hill Giants were unitcombat_beast. Why do scouts have a bonus versus them?

Yeah it's wierd, I was noticing it before. Someone check scoutesque units to make sure they are in fact only bonus'd against animals maybe?

 

[xienwolf]

Didn't re-read the entire thread, but I just want to know if anyone has seen this value show up in the actual Combat logs other than Master Hugian.

The combat Log entry he saw was from a Polar Bear, which is quite notably NOT a scout. Hence I am thinking that this bonus was due to the standard Bonus which an AI gets against Animal Units. Which is most probably tied to the <bAnimal> tag, not the Unitcombat.

So has anyone seen in the combat Log that scouts are getting a bonus against Hill Giants? I am guessing that it is not the case and that ANY AI unit gets a bonus against the Hill Giants due to this tag.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I'd cut and paste it, but I didn't have a save nearby.

In combat log, hill giant attacks lizardman. There were TWO different bonus' listed:

+50% against animals
+20% Ai vs animals

I don't recall the exact % of the latter, but it existed. Note that it did NOT show up when I did an 'alt' computation of the combat effects (Though the bonus to the stats of the defending lizardmen were augmented).

 

[xienwolf]

Vexing. So the AI scouts are getting a double bonus then, with the rest of the AI still getting a difficulty based bonus (which may or may not be intentional).

I'll try to sift through the code later on and see if I can find where it might be deciding to assign the bonus vs Animals for scouts to Beasts as well. Or test a combat or 2 with the <bAnimal> tag set to 0 to see if that clears up both of the bonuses or just the one.

 

[xienwolf]

Ok, so I did a test on this and it is kinda horrible.

I created 2 exact copies of the Hill Giant. On one of them I changed the UNITCOMBAT to MELEE, and on the other I removed the <bAnimal> tag. No other changes to either one.

I loaded the game and tested each of the two newly modified Hill Giants against a Barbarian Lizardman.

UNITCOMBAT_MELEE: Suffered the same +50% against Animals AND the +20% AI vs Animals.

<bAnimal>0<: This Hill Giant had no modifiers at all involved in his combat against a Barbarian Lizardman.


So I turned around and gave the Barbarians a <bAnimal>0< Hill Giant and I gave myself a Hunter. Attacking the Hill Giant again resulted in no modifiers for the combat.


End result: A bonus against animals does not apply against the Unitcombat, but rather against the flag <bAnimal>. Which is kinda craptastic.