Who is the greatest general of all time?

[smak]

What unit do you think is the most effective place to assign your great general, ensuring victory over your enemies in a war of conquest against other competing colonies. NOT to fight the king's army.

If you actually have a strategy/reason to go along with your choice of unit then go ahead and reply with it here.

Please remember that this question is purely about multiplayer strategies and has nothing to do with fighting the king for independance. What works against the ai is not the same as what can fool players. If that was the case then a Veteran soldier with grenadier 3, veteran 6, formation, siege, withdraw 3, ranger 3, mountaineer 3 or as many of those as you could get to sit on a forested hill one tile inland from your citys center tile would be able to decimate the kings army as they take and dock into your town. With of course enough soldiers with ranger and mountaineer backing him up as you can get and one dragoon to finish off the last unit remaining in your old city before returning to your stack of doom.

[PrinceMyshkin]

double post. plz delete me.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Smack,

I mostly play AoD II.

For every stack the first great general must be a greater medic. The second, third general adds veterancy to soldiers, or SoLs.

I never had any dragoon when I skip the turn -unless they have no remaining movement points to be turn into soldiers.

At the same time I never attack with anything different but dragoons; Convert footsoldiers into dragoons, attack, return back to the colony and then convert into footsoldiers again.

The only time, I would leave a footsoldier out of a colony, is when I would have had to remain for a number of turns out of a hostile colony. In this case, I usually pick a hill or a forest, and protect my dragoons with a couple footsoldiers.

Hence, it is hard to distinguish between soldier/dragoon.

I almost explicitely add a great general to veteran soliders due to their 100% XP bonus. Exceptions can be scouts, who may reach very high experience levels during the first phase of exploration.

When a naval victory can be achieved, I do not hessitate to remove ground troops from a colony, and add multiple great generals in a stack of SoLs - to avoid sharing experience with ground troops.

Not only I have never added a great general to a cannon, but also I try to remove cannons from the stack, when adding a great general - again to avoid sharing XP with cannons.

Moreover, after the first great general, which is always a great medic, I do not use my great generals. The moment I have decided whether I wish to fight on the land or the sea for independance, or make a defensive war, or offensive against a player; I add them to ground or naval troops on the fly. So the idea is wait, wait, wait with great generals till you know 100% what upgrades you would like to have.

I do not know what to vote here!

Who is the greatest general of all time? Hmmm... There have been plenty military genii (geniuses?)! But I would vote for the only one who remained undefeated; The two-horn beast, Alexander the Great!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great



HTH

[smak]

Prince, i understand you mostly just play aod2 so this poll really doesnt apply to you but when you say that dragoons and soldiers are the same its not entirely accurate, since soldiers gain access to promotions that dragoons do not such as min man 3, ranger 3, mountaineer 3, and they can fortify where dragoons cannot get any defense bonuses at all. When im asking what unit makes the best great general im refering to that unit types special abilities such as a cannons ability to attack cities, warships ability to kill other warships, soldiers ability to defend cities or rugged turrain ect. The general just augments these units by unlocking special promotions like min man 3, withdraw 3, ranger 3, bomb 3, surgeon 3 yadda yadda. If you make a general and dont give that unit leadership or any of these unlocked abilities you might as well have not made him a general at all since normal combat can get you the promotions you want.

When i first started playing the game i would make a veteran dragoon and a cannon and use them to attack indians. The dragoon makes a good defender for the cannon early on since you dont want to be in heavy forests when fighting indians so a soldier defender would only get hill defense but most times it is flatlands. Also when on the attack you keep moving and a soldier wouldnt have fortify bonus. So the dragoons base str of 4 makes him a more powerful early defender for the cannon. I would attack with just the cannon to their cities and if an indian was in the open next to me or if the last couple defenders of the city were not fortified i would attack with the dragoons for some exp on him too. And i would always get surgeon 1 first, then veteran 2, then formation, then surgeon 2, and by that time i would get a general and attach it to the dragoon to get surgeon 3. So now my attacking force can heal up very fast between battles and i would add more dragoons/cannon as my economy grew until i had about 8 units and then i would attack other players or ai colonies.

But lately i have found that surgeon on a dragoon is a waste of promotion since its better to go all veteran 5 and then get formation, charge, skirmish 2 to make the dragoon a more beefy fighter. So i have been giving a veteran soldier the general and getting him surgeon 3, ranger 3, formation, skirmish 3 and veteran 6 to make him a very powerful defender of my army when i lay sieges. I would just set up shop in a forest next to their city and they couldnt kick me out as i bombard defenses and slowly destroyed all the defenders with cannon attacks.

On the other hand if when i get a general my attacking force gets wiped out fighting indians or other players early on or if i expect a strong attack from a player with a high score that i havent encountered yet then i will put my general in my city and not give him surgeon 3 but instead give him min man 3, charge, formation, veteran 6, skirmish 3 and i would have a second soldier with surgeon 1, min man 2, and charge to function as my medic defender. 10% is less than surgeon 3 but since you are in a city you dont need much healing bonus to defend.

Im not saying that putting general on either dragoon or soldier is the best place all the time for general though. I have used general on a privateer to give him veteran 6 and he had over 9 str in coast making him able to kill frigates or ships of the line that had no experience. Of course a ship of the line with veteran 6 would be the best navel power but by the time you get ship of line the privateer would have had time to exp up.

I havent tried making a general cannon yet but i could see how it would be very powerful to have bomb 3 and veteran 6. He would be able to attack heavily defended cities from a transport ship taking out the best defender every attack with little chance of defeat. If you add in a frigate or ship of the line then you can also bombard the defenses first making it pretty much impossible to stop you.

I will not bias the vote by saying what would be the best unit myself and let others form their own conclusions. I just mentioned some possibilities.

[PrinceMyshkin]

OK sorry my point of vew at the moment is AoD2.

I switch between soldiers/dragoons all the time, so I give veterancy, formation and medics to them, as they apply to both.

Cannons is AoD2 are nerfed, so there isn't such an option.

[Dale]

Cannons is AoD2 are fixed, so there isn't such an option.

[smak]

Thats cool prince, your strategy works in both mod and the vanilla mp games. Makes for a very flexible defense so you can bust out of a siege situation. But i find that having a min man 3, formation, charge, veteran 6, skirmish 3 general is the best possible defense, and if your city is on a hill then mountaineer 3 too. No need to attack their army just let them die against your machinegun nest. Cause thats what it seems like you have with those promotions. Possibly one of da vinci's early multibarreled weapon plans made it into your hands.

[Dale]

I like to go vet soldier for my first to make a super medic who camps behind the frontlines to repair dragoons. After that, I'll go for vet dragoons to get withdraw.

[smak]

Dale, do you know the mechanics of how withdraw works? I always assumed that in any combat if your unit is going to lose the battle they instead have that withdraw % chance to leave combat with around 10% hp left. If you have a higher withdraw % does it allow you to leave combat with more health left over? or does it just effect the % chance to successfully end the fight. And if you have a higher str bonus like veteran 5 along with withdraw will you have better chances of having more health left over when you do withdraw?

I thought you might have a better idea of how this all works since you look at alot of the different values in the code as you mod.

[Dale]

The withdraw percent means you have a higher percentage to withdraw if you're going to lose the battle. I don't know if HP is affected by anything. I would assume yes, as I'm pretty sure the remaining HP is a percentage like you say.

[smak]

So i guess that withdraw is a skill whose primary goal is to prevent damaged units from being finished off after already winning a fight they started at full health in. And then it is not a replacement for standard str bonuses to help you win the initial fights.

[PrinceMyshkin]

That's right. From what I've seen (pretty much emperical) if a unit *thinks* it can win it never retreats.

On the contrary, if the unit has early casualties, it has a chance to retreat. I wish I knew the mechanics.

Smak, the unit which you described "min man 3, formation, charge, veteran 6, skirmish" is quite hard to get. Do you often have units like this? If yes, how do you do it?

Also from my understanding skirmish only applies when you attack.

Dale, sure cannons in AoD2 got fixed, and I am very glad for it. Do you think we may have to "fix" the cannon promotions too?

[smak]

Prince, i almost always play jose. So depending on how the game calculates it i get 225% to 250% exp per kill. The best way to get exp is to fight indians and start by getting veteran 1-5 using a veteran dragoon and one cannon to take out fortified or gun toting braves. By the time you have that promotion you will spawn a general. I seem to get 2 promotions from the first kill, 1 from second kill, then it takes a couple kills to get the 4th promotion and then you already have veteran 5 since you started with veteran 1. Then you attach general to him and get veteran 6 from the bonus exp. After that its just more indian kills as you save up promotions to use after you return to city and dismount. Then you add in min man 3, charge if you didnt get it already, and if you still have exp get skirmish too. If you only attack with one cannon and one dragoon as you clear out these native villages you will end up stacking all that exp on those two units. By the way i always get formation for free from founding father promotion.

After you return to city and change the dragoon into a defending infantry you have one uber defender and one super cannon. That one cannon alone can raze any city if you make your attacks from sea, no need to even bombard since veteran 5 and bomb 2 give way more str than you lose from their walls.

And yes skirmish works when defending i have seen it go off. Im 99% certain, altho in this game a 99% chance to win a battle seems to fail every time those bastard indians are in a forest... crazy ass 95% forest bonuses hah.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Smak, sometimes I have seen the stats displayed in a wrong way.

Do you use indians for education/trading?

[smak]

Most of the time i trade with indians until they run out of gold and then kill them with dragoons and cannon.

I pretty much never live among natives for skills since i dont build up any gold generating economy. The only profession they can have i might uses is fisherman but for the last month or so i havent even looked at what each indian tribe trains you in. In fact i dont scout at all unless there is an indian tribe next to my starting village and then i will try to get a couple promotions from it with my veteran soldier.

I get enough gold trading with 1 or 2 indian tribes nearby my starting city to fund my initial army and/or navy. After that i just ship raw materials generated by my center city tile to europe to pay for tools used to build defenses.

I think the best i did was one game where i traded with one indian till he was broke and since he had been selling me silver and furs every trip too i made enough gold to diplomatically request and hurry immigrate 4-5 veteran dragoons/soldiers and 3-4 cannon. Yes i was lucky to have a veteran soldier become available in immigration. When i attacked the nearest player he had just 2 soldiers to defend with and i think a stockade. I had all those units with 2 or 3 promotions each from killing that indian tribe.

But i have a new strategy that involves not making any cities unless you are ready to spawn a great general. You can check it out on civ fanatics.