Upgrades

nerovats

Emperor
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Feb 23, 2004
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I read about a lot of post of people claiming to have fully upgraded units. How do you guys do that? The most I get is about 3-4 upgrades. To fully upgrade a unit take how many turn? Close to 100 I think. I never have 100 turns of war in 1 game, let along attack 100 times with 1 unit. Occasionally a unit dies.

Also I read a lot of posts about overpowerd ships. So tried to do more war with ships in my current game. As soon a ship ends it's turn within range of a city it is dead.

So how do you keep your units alife? Verry defensive war might do the trick, but then you don't advance either.
 
The best way I have found to keep my units healthy is to attack with large numbers, in force. If you're taking a city, it's best to arrange your forces so you can take the city in one or two turns. More than that, and you start losing units, not only from the city's counterattack, but also from the AI bringing up reinforcements from the rear. When you hit, hit HARD, with plenty of units.

Retreat wounded units to heal them, or bring along a Medic or two.

If your ships are dying in one hit from a city, then you're probably attacking with vastly underpowered units. Most ships should at least be able to withstand one hit unless the defending city 1) is much more powerful than you, or 2) has several defensive units nearby (in coastal cities it loves to station a ranged land unit PLUS a ranged ship). Your attacking ship then takes three hits, all from the city -- city bombard, land unit bombard, ship bombard).

Train your ranged ships by bombarding land units if you can. They can't strike back and unless there are ranged units or cities nearby, you can blast them with impunity. Melee ships you can only train by taking out other ships or by making them the capturing unit on coastal cities.

The AI will concentrate on weakened units or highly promoted units. If one of those is taking heavy fire, retreat it out of range and rotate someone else in.

Also, don't underestimate the power of building units that are already promoted. Get a head start on XP (if you're going to be doing lots of warring) by building your units from cities containing XP buildings (barracks, etc.) and wonders (Alhambra, Brandenburg Gate). If you build a unit from a city with barracks, armory, military academy, and Brandenburg Gate, bombers can start with Siege I and II plus Air Repair. Add in Alhambra and your land units could start with Drill I, II and III (and possibly March as well -- can't recall, haven't done the math). If you start out with units that already have a head start like that, they're a lot more likely to stay alive longer and get even more promotions.

cheers,
Phil
 
What difficulty are you playing, and what's your goal ?

Try to thnik about combat windows and being ready to act when you build/buy troops and there is a scouted target or threat. Even if your not strong enough to beat your opponent, you want to be in a war so that your units can take damage/deal damage and get experience, even at stalemate early on. Just play defensive wars until

a.) an army melts on you giving you a clear target as you amass strength
b.) your army reaches critical mass from continued porduction

In respect to cities and their damage output you need to be able to kill a city with what you have in 2~3 turns once you step in range. stay a tile out with your ranged's.
Put your melee as a buffer to eat hits, cycle them out and keep them to take cities, don't lose units otherwise unless it's tactical trade/freekill(kill a siege/range that doesn't put you in fatal harm) until the coast is clear or you can take him out.

Some things to consider also,

say you have a CS that DOW'd you as an ally of someone and you have the option to kiss and make up after your war is done
OR
use an at war cs to pelt some your dudes and act as a xp firing range as you heal and cycle units if you don't have a real war to fight.

The longer you stay at war, the more xp you can gain.
 
I play emperor at the moment. I do attack cities with a force large enough to take it in 1-2 turns. But that means most units will just attack 2 times. Take 2-3 cities and happiness becomes an issue so the war ends. Most units will be upgraded 1 time, but not more then that.

A strenght 20 city and a CB will sink any ship within it's reach. Even ships with several upgrades, and there are no stronger ships in the early game. So if I loose 1 ship per turn, they never get upgraded very much. But I do read people conquering the world with dromons.

Basically I win my wars rather easily but take casualties. Especially using ships. If terrain is difficult there often is now way no retreat units. Don't use barracks anymore because of this. For the price of a barrack I can get an extra unit. Honor would help (fatser promotions), but that would also cripple every other aspect of the game. I'd end up falling behind in techs so I face stronger units and cities to fight with less units (because I'll have fewer and smaller cities).
 
You need frigates to wage effective naval wars, build galeases and promote them up shooting brbs and units, then go for range frigates which will survive city attacks, and later stay out of range altogether.
 
Also I read a lot of posts about overpowerd ships. So tried to do more war with ships in my current game. As soon a ship ends it's turn within range of a city it is dead.

So how do you keep your units alife? Verry defensive war might do the trick, but then you don't advance either.

The ancient era naval ship doesn't work well against cities unless used in conjunction with land forces.
In any case, if you don't have the movement to actually attack the city, you stay just out of range.

But mostly we're referring to the combo of Frigates (pre-built as first naval ranged unit and upgraded) & Privateers (built in a city with Barracks + Armory so it starts with Coastal Raider III).

These units become even better when they get upgraded (Battleships have range of 3 and so can't be damaged by the city & a Destroyer with Coastal Raider III can murder cities.)

The next promotion you can get after Coastal Raider III (in case of Privateers) is an extra attack. But the more important feature is that the promotion allows you to retreat after attack.
 
You need meatshields. Some units you coddle and get the promotions up...others are supposed to be one-and-done. The barracks is nice in that even your one-and-dones have a promo on them.
 
Try playing on epic speed. I find there's overall more fighting in each game.
 
take casualties
Ehm... it's a war, yes? :)

Military Tradition (Honor tree) allows faster XP. Kinda must have for ships unless you want to spend the eternity on getting range/logistics. With these they become immortal. Land units rely on meat shields. If you start warring early (archers/CB's) you'll have a bunch of reasonably promoted ranged guys which you need to protect and others (melee, mounted and maybe ranged freshmen) that have to be sacrificed for these purposes.
Later, when you approach cannons, barracks and armory come in handy to crank out units with two promotions. Better meat shields and cannons soon to be artillery are much closer to logistics this way. In early game barracks aren't worth it, IMO. Maybe only for Russia, but even then meh...
 
You need meatshields. Some units you coddle and get the promotions up...others are supposed to be one-and-done. The barracks is nice in that even your one-and-dones have a promo on them.

The AI is so bad at tactical combat there's no need to ever use cannon-folder; at least in the base game.
You can easily place units in spots in which the AI won't kill any of them.

Some of the scenarios have time limit considerations but you have all the time in the world in the base game to bring all your troops home alive while conquering.

The idea isn't for your guys to die for your county, its to force the AI's guys to die for his.

Edit: Anticipating the Civ with the Great Wall:
1) It has no effect on naval units; just pull back on land and wait for navy and then take their coastal cities with it.
2) But Citadels can also be used offensively. (Instead of going at the city stay out of city bombardment range and rack up great general point killing units. Then send Great General to found a citadel 1 tile in your opponents territory in the direction of their city. Even if the AI later pillages it, you now have several tiles where you have fast movement.)
 
Ranged ships that can't tolerate a hit from a city can usually find other things to shoot at. Sometimes the targets can't even shoot back (enemy workers, melee units, great persons, etc.). That's a good way for them to rack up experience.

As for archer-type units, the first top-tier promotion I give to them is range rather than logistics or march. With range they can usually stand out of harm's way and fire every turn. Promotions come quickly then.
 
Greatly depends on your difficulty and style of play. On my one and only Deity game, I had 140 turns of war with one civilization without any breaks. If you're going for a longish domination game, you probably won't have too many units at level 8-9 because some unit lines become less useful(the archer line). If you go for fast domination games, you'll probably have a few really high units because losing several units when you're on the other side of the map is a bad idea.
 
I'm not reaching 'fully' upgraded units either, but then, just reaching Logistics for ranged units is very satisfying on its own.

Going up a level should help. You'll get into more defensive wars, more AI units coming towards you, your own cities will offer protection for your own units by both defensive bombard and zone of control, so more of your units will be busy for longer periods - I'm also assuming you'll often be able to turn a defensive war into an offensive war.
Playing Attila makes a difference for the Horse Archer, as it already starts with a promotion (some other civs also have units that start with promotions, but usually not a promotion leading to Logistics).

Some players use tricks of course, like declaring war on a nearby City State purely for their units to gain experience. Or they remove the XP cap against barbs.
 
Also, don't underestimate the power of building units that are already promoted. Get a head start on XP (if you're going to be doing lots of warring) by building your units from cities containing XP buildings (barracks, etc.) and wonders (Alhambra, Brandenburg Gate). If you build a unit from a city with barracks, armory, military academy, and Brandenburg Gate, bombers can start with Siege I and II plus Air Repair. Add in Alhambra and your land units could start with Drill I, II and III (and possibly March as well -- can't recall, haven't done the math). If you start out with units that already have a head start like that, they're a lot more likely to stay alive longer and get even more promotions.

cheers,
Phil

Yes, all +XP in a city gives your three promotions, so with Drill I already from Alhambra, you get up to Drill III then march. I like it with Caroleans since you already have March too, so you can either take Woodsman, Blitz or whatever other one you like. I'm not sure which other UU still available with Military Science researched get innate promotions. I know Samurai does, but is obsolete by then I think. Sea Beggars are ridiculous even without getting the Alhambra bonus with all the other +XP.
 
Maybe I should build baracks again in some cities, to get some quality units.
You'll gave me some stuff to try out. :goodjob:
 
Hmm...
Library or barracks?
Worker or barracks?
Stone Works or barracks?
Settler or barracks?
The barracks always loses out for me when I'm comparing priorities. The potential of taking a few more hitpoints off an opponent with a yet to build unit in a yet to start war never seems really urgent. When a war looks near, it's units or walls that I want.
Sometimes in retrospect I think I should have built a barracks, but other hammer investments always look safer bets at the time.

The earliest units you've built will get promotions from fighting barbs, and those are the units that later on will reach those interesting upgrades. If you find there isn't the time for those units to become fully upgraded, then buildings won't help, because the units gaining XP from those buildings are built way later, so their window is even smaller.

From the way you are describing your wars it sounds very effective; you gather your troops and in 2 or 3 turns you take that AI town. There's not much wrong with effectiveness, the only question I would ask is what those units were doing before they were taking that town.
Probably you're only starting wars once you're strong enough to take on cities. Maybe you could have joined a war a few dozen turns earlier, when you were not yet strong enough to go on the offense successfully, but strong enough to do some damage. Maybe you see that as 'not progressing', but it sounds like your units are doing almost nothing until you have them taking those AI towns (since you say they're hardly getting promoted). You're probably still better off having your units do something, so maybe get a war started earlier.
That doesn't need to mean switching away from peacefully expanding earlier, it's often possible to do a bit of both. Sometimes I think a war will help my early expansion, as the AI sends less settlers out when at war, so that leaves more space for mine.

Also, if the AI has more units - on higher levels - it does become a much more valid strategy to first do something about their numbers, and it's easier doing that where they don't get assistance from their own towns.

Not directly related, I think Honour becomes better when the level goes up, and Liberty when the level goes down.
 
Main reason for barracks is Heroic Epic for me. You can't get the +15% Combat Strength after the fact. I won't build many units unless I must before it, but I won't wait for all the +XP either since I agree you can always get XP.
 
Main reason for barracks is Heroic Epic for me. You can't get the +15% Combat Strength after the fact. I won't build many units unless I must before it, but I won't wait for all the +XP either since I agree you can always get XP.

Main reason for Barracks for me is get Privateers that start with 30 XP for City Raider III.
It indeed loses to all the items the poster before you mentioned.
But it does get built in one city (along with an Armory) by that above time line.

I will eventually build HE; after which I sell all extra copies of Barracks to save maintenance costs.
 
Probably you're only starting wars once you're strong enough to take on cities. Maybe you could have joined a war a few dozen turns earlier, when you were not yet strong enough to go on the offense successfully, but strong enough to do some damage. Maybe you see that as 'not progressing', but it sounds like your units are doing almost nothing until you have them taking those AI towns (since you say they're hardly getting promoted). You're probably still better off having your units do something, so maybe get a war started earlier.

Find strong defencive position and let AI suicide against you. That's how I start my war. Also in start of the game when one of the AI DoW's on me. Play defensive for a couple of turns, to reduce the AI's army. Maybe I just don't play at a high enough level. Will try Immortal next time. Playing defensive war for a longer period sounds a bit boring. Will get enough XP points.
 
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