The middle-age "stack of doom"

[DeepO]

Originally posted by cal_01
Actually, DeepO, I find that first strike is essential to fighting superior numbers; it allows for the catapult to score more hits and retreat more often.

Well, compared to no promotions you're right, of course. But when facing superiour units (not superious numbers, higher strengths than the cats has), you will gain more from a combat promotion than from a fs promotion. FS is useful when attacking or defending multiple times before you've got a chance to heal... nearly by definition collateral cats do not fight multilple times. They're lucky to live on fight.

Further, fs has nothing to do with retreat. For cats, retreat chances are always 25%, and these do not go up or down adding fs.

Moreover, having one or two drill promotions tends to allow a catapult to kill anything in its path.

? Cats with Drill II most certainly does not kill maceman on forested hills, and the original example was about maceman being too hard for cats.

Elimination of the target with minimal losses/unit survival tends to be the key factors in winning a war of attrition.

I agree, in general. But this depends on playing style: if you have a very hammer intensive style, you might not dread a loss that hard. If you play a commerce-heavy style, losses are very bad, and need to be avoided at all costs... myself, I lean towards the latter too.

My advice during mid-late middle ages: get some walls (or a castle, but I never build it), and spam Longbowmen/Pikemen. I never bother with Crossbows because Longbows are more essential with city defense. OTOH, you could try sniping their Macemen with Crossbows, but I doubt it'll work that well even with their bonus for melee units.

Crossbows work very well against maceman, especially with a couple of Drill promotions
The problem is you rarely can attack a macemen stack outright, as there is a good chance he has some mounted units with it. So you need to let the AI attack your crossbows, so that you gain the advantage. A bit tricky, but certainly viable.

DeepO

[cal_01]

That's true, too, on the last part about actually hitting the Macemen in the stack. If memory serves me correctly, it would be crossbows versus knights, right?

[DeepO]

Originally posted by cal_01
That's true, too, on the last part about actually hitting the Macemen in the stack. If memory serves me correctly, it would be crossbows versus knights, right?

It depends, but with the 50% bonus vs melee, there's a good chance a mounted units get on top. Or longbows with the right promotions...

DeepO

[Simplicity]

And this is why I think a trebuchet unit is needed in the next expansion pack.

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by Simplicity
And this is why I think a trebuchet unit is needed in the next expansion pack.

attack 8 trebuchets FTW