What is the best early plunderer?

[Wlauzon]

Once in a while I get a situation where the best way to stop or slow down an attacking civ is to reduce all his towns, mines, etc to rubble as fast as possible.

I have been using cheap fast moving units, like chariots, but was wondering if there is a better way - for example, cavalry can move fast, and can destroy 2 land improvement per turn.

Or is this strategy really worth even pursuing in depth?

 

[Shadzy19]

I would say woodsman 2 axes or impi's , just make sure u get there early enough.

 

[Refar]

Pillaging campains can be worthwhile. The force you need will depend on your objectives - i.e. how deep you want to get onto enemy land...

The point - imho - is not to be able to pillage many tiles per turn - if you try this, you will take - say a Impi (great one if you happen to be Shaka) - it will move in pillage 2 tiles in one turn, and most likely die to an axe on the next turn. While sometimes worthwhile - if you pillage a important tile - this does not make for a real "Pillaging Campain"

What you could try instead is making your stack survive long enought to get to the really juicy tiles... You can field more than one pillaging stack if you want to speed things up.

I often take a Spear (Combat/Medic), one or two axes (Combat/Shock) - those are for stack protection - and two or sometimes three faster units - often chariots. In medieaval ages those are other units, but the same idea - a mix of fast pillagesrs and slower protectors to counter different attacks... I rarely go pillaging post medieval... Not sure why...

The stack moves slowly because of the protectors. But it can still pillage one tile per turn (The faster units can move and pillage the same turn... and 3 are enought to burn a Village down to nothing - giving good money...).
At the same time the units are somewhat protected...

Such a stack often can move deeply into enemy land, not only porviding good money, but it will often make the enemy divert some troops to it, making the work a bit easier for your units on the front...

If planning to pillage a strategic ressource, you should also concider taking additional protector-type units, which then can fortify on the pillaged tile, preventing the enemy from rebuilding, while the main stack moves on.

 

[braindrain]

anything that can move fast and still defend is a great pilliager:
french musketeer, persian immortal, zulu impi, i think spanish conquistador retains defense too...
mali's skirmishers and babylonian bowmen also make stubborn pilliagers because they can be really hard to kill in early game

 

[DigitalBoy]

Horse archers are dandy pillagers provided you can disconnect their metal so they can't counter with melee units. Stacks of melee units with chariots in them are less risky, though it moves slower than a stack of horse archers across open ground (when not pillaging).

 

[futurehermit]

Chariots (including uus) or impis. The other units either come later or don't have 2 movement points so they are slow. If your goal is pillaging you want to get in, disconnect metals/horses asap so they are just churning archers in their cities. This allows you to pillage them back into the stoneage and they aren't able to expand their empire. This can be nice if there is a tech threat like Mansa who is on your continent, but too far away to take out directly. You want to keep them from running away on you, but you can't take them out, which would be ideal.

However, the price of this is that when you do get around to conquering them, the prize of their empire is not what it could've been

 

[druidravi]

Immortals for the famous immortal choke.

 

[Wlauzon]

I usually play on Huge Pangea, which is why I need the speed.

I tried some slow movers to keep Tokujerk back in the stone age, but he was on the far end of the continent, so by the time my chariots got there, they were badly obsolete

For modern I built gunships by the ton, they move fast and can pillage 2x even after moving, but there seems to be nothing close to that in earlier times. (in a recent game I reduced Cathy to throwing longbow type tech at me even when she had the tech for tanks )

I might try some of the other suggestions though, perhaps with enough really cheap units with some basic defense (so barb warriors can't kill them), they would be effective.