What to do with a 4th Great General?

[dalamb]

Hmm. At this point I could always decide fun was more important than effectiveness.

That extra 9 XP to go from 17 to 26 for a 5th promotion means splitting the GG points 2 ways can be a reasonable choice. A Woods III/Medic I axeman (4 promotions for an AGG leader) heals as well as a Medic III Kheshik and moves just as well through the woods, of which there are still a lot on the board. Starting at 7 XP in my military city he just needs 10 XP to get those 4; the other 10 applied to an 11 XP Kheshik could get a different 4 promotions - particularly Combat I/Medic III. Alternatively that first axe could have been (Combat I)/Woods III/Shock and a really good stack defender (in the woods, of course) even against small numbers of axes.

A 31-XP Kheshik could be Flanking II/Tactics for an 80% withdrawal chance; Leadership would mean faster promotion thereafter, and the Combat chain would start making him a better attacker. Getting to 37 for Combat II would mean winning 6 trivial fights. But, of course, there's the usual issue that even an 80% withdrawal means he'll die eventually, and why bother having a great attacker that you only use in trivial fights?

If I go for one of the above I'd wait 14 more turns (or so) for Theocracy for +2 XP. Still thinking, and perhaps inclining towards the boring but effective choice of settling in my 2nd best production city.

If I ever want to have fun with horse archers again I might try Cyrus (CHA/IMP), maybe even of the Mongols (Ger), for even faster promotions.

 

[Roxlimn]

Go for Blitz mounted units. Those are always fun for overkill scenarios.

 

[dalamb]

In general, maybe, but in this particular game we'll never get to Military Science (unless things really bog down). I did have a couple of Blitz destroyers in an older game; the mapmaker had gerrymandered things so nobody else had oil, and there was quite a nice window between Combustion and Fission where they couldn't make a modern navy.

 

[mirthadir]

A big question is how much better a great general must be compared to a normal unit to be worthwhile.

In his arboria situation, a woodsman axe and some careful movement should keep up with keshiks. In the general situation, you might be moving your horse archer stack across flat land, at which point your archer/axe falls behind. You can slow down or risk letting spears suicide on your stack. Next turn you can clean them up outside of a city, but you will often be defending with your strongest horse archer.

How much do you lose per battle? I turn to a combat calculator. Edit: the calculator doesn't subtract shock from defense properly. Used WB instead.
Spearman C1 vs Combat 2 Shock. 70.1%
Spearman 1 vs Combat 3 Shock. 66%
Spearman 2 vs combat 2 shock HA. 74.7%
Spearman 2 vs Combat 3 shock HA. 71.2%

Spearman 1 vs Combat Shock axe: 0.7%%
Spearman 1 vs Combat 3 axe: 0.8%%
Spearman 2 vs Combat 3 axe: 1.2%
Spearman 2 vs Combat 3 axe, 3.6 strength (average remaining strength after one battle): 20%

So each time a spear attacks, you lose about 0.65 to 0.75 horse archers.
Now they're not just ordinary 2 promotion horse archers, they are 3 to 4 promotion horse archers. I believe mithrandir is the one who said that a promotion is worth 15% more. So a 3 promotion horse archer is worth 11% more, a 4 promotion 23% more.

So each time a combat 1 spear attacks, your c3 morale axe earns about 0.8 worth of 5 exp horse archers. Every time a combat 2 spear attacks, you earn 0.82 to 0.87 horse archers.

So after say 5 defenses, you save about 4 horse archers. More if they attrition more, less if they don't. Is that worth it? Well if you're gunning from 11 exp to 17 exp, you're gaining a 11.5% bonus over a 5 exp horse archer (from the 15% figure) at the cost of 3 great generals, so each great general is about a 4% multiplier, or you get 4 horse archers worth after 100 horse archers.
A tactics great general will save 2.5 flanking 2 horse archers at terrible odds, possibly more with some promotions. Granted those are terrible since it's highly vulnerable to bad luck and they aren't replaceable...
Say a combat 6 great general is worth, let's see, say combat 6 is worth 2 promotions, 1+7*.15=2.05 compared to 1.3 for a 5 exp horse archer. That's 1.6 horse archers.

Note: on flat land, a combat 3 shock horse archer will defend a non-shock sword before a combat 1 shock axe, which is before a combat 3 axe. A combat 3 axe will defend before a combat 2 shock horse archer. Against a shock sword, the shock archer will defend first.

For the normal situation though, you will be using a sentry unit and at the time in question your mobility is roughly equal to his (2 moves a side if you stay on roads), with keshiks your mobility is higher than the spear. The AI builds laughably few spears, attacks with them reasonably seldom, does a horrid job keeping the metal online, and is hopelessly incompotent if you use sentry/spies to dodge around any large collection of spears whilst slow moving up an axe or two (or deliver an amphib ax). It is not uncommon for me to find all the spears bottled in the cap if I've used good tactics to get around the AI (having a sentry camp near the cap sends the AIs reinforcement strategies all to heck). Very rarely do I find the spears attacking me, more often I'm attacking them with cheap shock/flanking HAs, equivalent mobility gives a distinct advantage to anyone who is not a tactically deficient AI. Very rarely, I will go for an amphib delivered axe near the AI cap. I would also note that with Mongolia a settled GG + rax + ger is 9 xp in a secondary city; that's .12 Keshiks per Keshik produced with the bonus of an immediate bonus heal (call it 5% efficiency increase as a WAG). Which is equivalent at the 30th Keshik.

For a normal game you are going to stop spamming Keshiks long before the 4th GG and stop to digest. At this point making a slow UBERMASH is relatively easy. WIII/MIII is just 41 XP; getting 11 off his current military pump and 20 with the gg leaves us with 10 which is either one more GG or a reasonably short number of battles (e.g. 10 with cannon rape). More often I'd be tempted to either wait for a mil acad or settle so I can stay in B/anything but theo and still keep up enoACugh 2 promo non-cav units to remain competitive.

 

[vicawoo]

For the normal situation though, you will be using a sentry unit and at the time in question your mobility is roughly equal to his (2 moves a side if you stay on roads), with keshiks your mobility is higher than the spear. The AI builds laughably few spears, attacks with them reasonably seldom, does a horrid job keeping the metal online, and is hopelessly incompotent if you use sentry/spies to dodge around any large collection of spears whilst slow moving up an axe or two (or deliver an amphib ax). It is not uncommon for me to find all the spears bottled in the cap if I've used good tactics to get around the AI (having a sentry camp near the cap sends the AIs reinforcement strategies all to heck). Very rarely do I find the spears attacking me, more often I'm attacking them with cheap shock/flanking HAs, equivalent mobility gives a distinct advantage to anyone who is not a tactically deficient AI. Very rarely, I will go for an amphib delivered axe near the AI cap. I would also note that with Mongolia a settled GG + rax + ger is 9 xp in a secondary city; that's .12 Keshiks per Keshik produced with the bonus of an immediate bonus heal (call it 5% efficiency increase as a WAG). Which is equivalent at the 30th Keshik.

For a normal game you are going to stop spamming Keshiks long before the 4th GG and stop to digest. At this point making a slow UBERMASH is relatively easy. WIII/MIII is just 41 XP; getting 11 off his current military pump and 20 with the gg leaves us with 10 which is either one more GG or a reasonably short number of battles (e.g. 10 with cannon rape). More often I'd be tempted to either wait for a mil acad or settle so I can stay in B/anything but theo and still keep up enoACugh 2 promo non-cav units to remain competitive.

This is why I call it more anti-shaka build, since he will build more spears than usual and his have superior mobility. I still find that I'll get at very conservative 2 pesky spear attacks before I can finish off a civ, and if they have a decent sized empire with multiple hard to reach metals, it will may be more. If you declare on a second civ, it's pretty easy to get up to those 5 attacks.

Where did you get 41 exp, and don't you mean you need 2 settled great generals for the .12 bonus?

 

[mirthadir]

This is why I call it more anti-shaka build, since he will build more spears than usual and his have superior mobility. I still find that I'll get at very conservative 2 pesky spear attacks before I can finish off a civ, and if they have a decent sized empire with multiple hard to reach metals, it will may be more. If you declare on a second civ, it's pretty easy to get up to those 5 attacks.

Where did you get 41 exp, and don't you mean you need 2 settled great generals for the .12 bonus?

If I'm going to Keshik Shaka under normal circumstances, I'm normally going to send in two chariots early and burn the metal. Shaka with metal often makes it better just to back up your keshiks with pults and be done with it. If I declare on a second civ, it is normally either because they are a peaceful AI with low unit prob or they lack metal (or both =) - and preferably aren't near construction; immort and deity AIs (outside of marathon/maybe epic games) have too many units to make hitting two war mongers with keshiks really viable most of the time. Even when I do go for a second AI, I'm far more worried about pults and enemy HA than spears. A spear I can see and avoid or at most, lose one HA (modded up by promos, but still), with a pult I face the risk of taking collateral and then having non-avoidable HAs hitting me for decent odds. I rarely find a second smackable civ where the short term costs fall in the narrow range of "high enough to require long term sacrfice", but low enough not to "just kill them later".

I suppose I should note the common scenario of dogpiling on after the start of an AI-AI war, but really that's a gimmee. The AIs tactics suck even more and any large offensive stack of spears is long gone. This is, I believe, the only way I've ever gotten a second HA war to be viable on normal deity.

The AI just doesn't build enough spears and attacks with them even more rarely. Honestly, the AIs habit of spamming swords which actually attack is a bigger issue for metal for me than the paltry few spears they will use offensively.

For Ghenghis, you have CI so you need 6 promos for a slow WIII/MIII ubermash (something worth getting if you intend to say, have your next war around the time of cannons of later). 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 = 41; which I believe is the progression for the xp required for promos. With 9 xp out the door in the main military city this makes it a reasonably easy shot to hit at the end of your keshik war or to get early in your next war.

The .12 bonus is in a secondary military city which will place these units 1 xp away from the next promo. I'm awarding the full 4xp to the gg mainly because I discount heavily the time it takes to get a "normal" unit over the hump, at this point the question of logistics is paramount. The healing time needed to deal with 3xp is substantially more than one and every turn I stop to heal up a 7, 8, or 9 xp keshik is less stregnth-turns I get to actually use it. Remember we don't just want more keshiks, we want more keshiks killing stuff; every turn spent healing that you otherwise wouldn't is a pretty steep discount.