Units

[darski]

you have to kill the units you hit, if you don't kill them, they will just heal in the inter-turn.

Always make sure you will take the city you want to take before you start your attack on it.

.

1 hit point off a defender is not going to get them dead... like I said they kill knights with impunity.

re point # 2... so then you are saying bring 36 knights with the 12 Cats since the cats will likely not do anything. Just kill off knights to get those hit points down.

And again I say... why bother with bombard? it is pretty much useless if you just have to sacrifice your units anyway.

 

[Aabraxan]

1 hit point off a defender is not going to get them dead... like I said they kill knights with impunity.

re point # 2... so then you are saying bring 36 knights with the 12 Cats since the cats will likely not do anything. Just kill off knights to get those hit points down.

And again I say... why bother with bombard? it is pretty much useless if you just have to sacrifice your units anyway.

Start with cats. Bombard & redline the defenders. Then move in with knights for the kills. Cats can't kill anything on their own; you need another unit to come in behind and kill the defender. However, bombarding with cats reduces the number of other military units that you lose (like the knights in the above example). I have a hard time with cats, because I have to build an absolutely huge stack of them for the effect to be appreciable. Try it the other way around: 36 cats (trebs if you have them) & 12 medieval infantry. I suggest MI because they're 1-move units, like cats. With that many cats/trebs, you shouldn't lose many of the MI.

Some corollaries:
1) Bombardment reduces losses.
2) Reduced losses = reduces war weariness.
3) More attacker victories can = higher chances for MGLs.

 

[darski]

but you didn't factor in my war weariness,, when I spend 20 turns hitting b + click to no foreseeable purpose.

My patience line starts at zero and declines quickly. One hit point from one of three defenders is pretty useless.

I just get nowhere with the RNG. Just so not on my side.

Now, I have had turns when it actually did help to bombard but it is so rare that my image of the B move is totally negative.

 

[Aabraxan]

You're the only one who can factor in your war weariness, I'm afraid. If the thought of using cats is just painful, don't do it. But that doesn't mean that they won't help your odds on the battlefield. The utility of bombardment units, like everything else, depends. "One hit point from one of 3 defenders is pretty useless." If you have 36 cavs and the defenders are spears, you're absolutely right. OTOH, if you've only got 5 archers in your stack and the defenders are pikes, that one hit point can be the difference between success and failure. My point is that at some point, you can just overrun the AI with overwhelming force and technology. Up until that point, bombardment can help your odds.

 

[gmaharriet]

but you didn't factor in my war weariness,, when I spend 20 turns hitting b + click to no foreseeable purpose.

My patience line starts at zero and declines quickly. One hit point from one of three defenders is pretty useless.

I just get nowhere with the RNG. Just so not on my side.

Now, I have had turns when it actually did help to bombard but it is so rare that my image of the B move is totally negative.

I agree with everything Aabraxan said. You have to bring along enough arty-type units to do the job, but even just weakening several units (if you can't redline them) helps your units to win. In addition, each upgrade in type of arty-unit improves their strength and accuracy.

One thing that might seem to affect your RNG luck is the victims' defensive bonuses. While a stack of "x" cannons might be enough to redline enemy unit(s) "y" on open grassland, the same unit "y" fortified on a mountain will be hit less often and do less damage. Same with an enemy fortified in a city on a hill or behind a river. DO use ctl-shift-M to clear the map and see what geographical advantages your opponents have before you attack. Sometimes you have a choice of which tiles to attack from...other times you have no choice and have to expect less beneficial results.

 

[Aceman101]

you have to kill the units you hit, if you don't kill them, they will just heal in the inter-turn.

That is why you need BOMBERS!!! .

(edit) I know were talking about the ancient ages and yes I do agree that you need cats. But I couldn't help writing that! So many people don't use them.

When I was playing vanilla they didn't have lethal land\sea bombardment. I was very happy to find out they do in complete .

 

[MAS]

1 hit point off a defender is not going to get them dead... like I said they kill knights with impunity.

But 1 hp less and then wait a turn means 0 HP less. And that is even worse.

so then you are saying bring 36 knights with the 12 Cats since the cats will likely not do anything. Just kill off knights to get those hit points down.

If you are going to use 36 knights and 12 Cats, you might as well use 39 knights and 0 cats. Artillery is only worth it in large numbers.

You can also build 12 knights and 96 cats. (24 knights is 24*70=1680 shields, and 1680/20=84 cats) or 24 knights and 54 cats.

And again I say... why bother with bombard? it is pretty much useless if you just have to sacrifice your units anyway.

at low difficulty levels, or when you are not playing AW. It is probably better to just build nothing but horseman/knights/cav.


Some points to note:
In vanilla, catapults are less useful than in C3C. They hit less often. But artillery from the industrial age is still good enough. So do try those when/if you reach the industrial age. But I remember using cats in vanilla too. And not unsuccessfully.

If you damage a defender, it will move to the back of the stack, and the next strongest defender will be at the top/
So if a stack has 20 vet units, and you remove 10 HP, then that means 10 units will have 3 hp and 10 will still have 4. If you want to red-line at least 1 unit from this stack, you'd have to remove at least 41 hp.



In any event, you should certainly not spend 20 turns damaging units in a single city, the city should be taken the very turn you attack at.

 

[darski]

That is my point. They just go on and on.

So then I have the disadvantage of ancient (middle) war and vanilla. There are times I would kill for lethal bombard.

 

[psweetman1590]

But if you can't redline the units in the first place, lethal bombard wont do a thing for you.

Here is your problem: Too. Few. Units.

Yes, that's right. If you want to redline a stack of units, multiply the number of units by four, then multiply that by two (to account for misses). That's how many catapults or cannon you'll need. I usually encounter five units or so in a city. If I wanted to redline every defender in that city, I would need 40 catapults. Or trebuchets. Whatever. You can make use of slightly fewer
Artillery because they have 2 Rof, so they're more powerful, but you still need a good stack.

And like the others said, you don't need to redline a unit. Just taking one hitpoint off of every unit in the stack will work wonders when your tech is equal to or less than theirs. I would usually take a city (with five defenders) with at least fifteen cats, and at least twenty attackers (assuming you have at least tech parity). I will easily take the city, and have plenty of strength left for the taking of a second and third city. I'm not really seeing where your difficulties are coming from, aside from the fact that you don't have enough cats (which suck against pikes even more than against spearmen).

Civ is an attritional warfare model, it's all about the numbers. Not doing well? Get more units and lets see if that works!

 

[Aabraxan]

But if you can't redline the units in the first place, lethal bombard wont do a thing for you.

Not entirely true, at least for C3C. (I've no clue about vanilla on this). I have killed units stationed in cities with bombers before my artillery could get within range. And this isn't exactly the scenario we're discussing, but I've also killed galleons at sea with bombers, where artillery couldn't reach. So while I'd agree that redlining with, say, artillery, before sending in bombers is surely preferable, lethal bombard can still work without redlining.

 

[psweetman1590]

Not entirely true, at least for C3C. (I've no clue about vanilla on this). I have killed units stationed in cities with bombers before my artillery could get within range. And this isn't exactly the scenario we're discussing, but I've also killed galleons at sea with bombers, where artillery couldn't reach. So while I'd agree that redlining with, say, artillery, before sending in bombers is surely preferable, lethal bombard can still work without redlining.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I know you can lethally bombard things without redlining them with artillery first. However, if you don't have enough artillery or bombers or whatever to redline the units, what makes you'll kill anything? You don't have enough firepower.

 

[Aabraxan]

I did misunderstand. It sounded to me like you were saying that you wouldn't be able to kill with lethal bombardment unless you redlined the defenders (probably with some non-lethal bombard unit) first. My mistake.

 

[MAS]

If you want to redline a stack of units, multiply the number of units by four, then multiply that by two (to account for misses). That's how many catapults or cannon you'll need. I usually encounter five units or so in a city. If I wanted to redline every defender in that city, I would need 40 catapults. Or trebuchets. Whatever. You can make use of slightly fewer

My calculations would go like this:

To red-line a regular, you need 2 hits, to red-line a vet, you need 3 hits, to red-line an elite, you need 4 hits. I'll assume I'm not going to encounter enough elites to make it worth taking them into consideration, so I'll assume mostly reg's early on, and mostly vets if the civ has had a chance to develop itself. In your example that would be 5*3*2=30 cats.

Civ is an attritional warfare model, it's all about the numbers. Not doing well? Get more units and lets see if that works!

I kind of disagree here, you can still win with less units, you should just use strategy to increase your kill ratio, and to make it so that you outnumber the enemy locally by concentrating your forces. Having enough units is a part of the formula.

 

[Pyrrhos]

In the game I'm playing right now, the Mayans thought they could do some nice extortion as they had huge numbers. Well, their three stacks were red- or yellowline by my artillery and finished off with my bombers. The first turn alone, he lost some 40+ units...

Artillery + bombers =

 

[Aceman101]

Artillery + bombers =

Exactly what I'm trying to prove .

 

[Pyrrhos]

You're spot on, Aceman (or shoud I say "fair dinkum mate!" ). The joy of not having to commit your ground forces to a single battle - even against redliners - while you're building up your invasion force has to be experienced firsthand.

Perhaps, for a single game, it might be worthwhile to go down a level, aim for scientific superiority so that when the AI decides it's cavalry is invincible you greet it with a huge number of artillery (40-50+) and some 30-40+ bombers. But remember that cavalry WILL take out tanks every now and then, so do have 2+ infantry defending your cities and artillery positions!

 

[Aceman101]

You're spot on, Aceman (or shoud I say "fair dinkum mate!" ).

I don't use that term much.

The joy of not having to commit your ground forces to a single battle - even against redliners - while you're building up your invasion force has to be experienced firsthand.

True .

Perhaps, for a single game, it might be worthwhile to go down a level, aim for scientific superiority...

I find I'm pretty much always ahead in techs on warlord and below. For me, it's time to start moving up! .

My next game will definetly be regent. I just had an easy warlord game to get the mechanics of the new complete expansion pack right.

So that when the AI decides it's cavalry is invincible you greet it with a huge number of artillery (40-50+) and some 30-40+ bombers.

Yes. Although it does take a while to produce an army of bombers. And carriers for global battles.

But remember that cavalry WILL take out tanks every now and then, so do have 2+ infantry defending your cities and artillery positions!

But if the AI are ahead in techs and have better units... .

If I jumped to Monarch, then I would almost certainly be behind in techs.

 

[MAS]

If I jumped to Monarch, then I would almost certainly be behind in techs.

You should be able to pass the AI during the middle ages.

 

[Aceman101]

I have so many science farms but it still takes 10 turns for an industrial tech, the corporation. But my science slider is 40%.

 

[Sweetchuck]

The science slider is bogus.

If I'm at the standard 50%, I slide it up on a tech that I want to get quicker, and it costs me more money - but the turns don't change, same number of turns at a higher cost even if I shoot it way up to 100%.

What's up with that?

So, I figure I'll see if it will save me money.

It does, but the turns increase.

Lame