Pointers on combat Vs the AI

[Blake]

Giving catapults the city raider promotion is interesting. Typically I figure that I'm throwing the unit away on a battle with hopeless odds for the sole purpose of using the collateral damage against the stack of city defenders. So since collateral damage is what I'm after I typically take that promotion.

Though I've never compared the two. What are the advantages of city raider vs. collateral damage?

It's very possible to have catapults vs Archers & Axemen. At that stage of the game there's no point in using anything other than City Raider Catapults, Swordmen get ruined by Axemen, while Axemen don't deal collatoral, pults are clearly the best city raider.

It's important to note how a siege-attack works, lets say there's a longbow and 3 archers in a city.
The catapult will engage in normal combat with the Longbow, collatoral damage is dealt to the 3 archers. There is the possibility that the longbow will win all rounds and not take any damage at all - the attacked unit is immune to collatoral.

Now, Collatoral upgrade will increase the damage *weaker, other* units take, City Raider will increase the damage the *toughest* unit takes. This is the tradeoff.

In the case of 1 longbow 3 archers, the archers are already "soft" enough to be easy for a raider pult, therefore you should use City Raider catapults to maximize damage to the longbow.

As a rule of thumb, use Collatoral Damage as softeners, once all the units except the toughest are softened, then start using City Raiders, the raiders will continue to further soften the other units just fine while doing better damage to the toughest units.
I find it's rarely productive to sacrifice more than 2 collatoral pults before moving on to raiders.

I find that when the best defenders are Longbows it's still best to attack exclusively with catapults and use maces and your own longbows as escorts only (and mop-up to get the 1exp to go from 4 to 5 exp). When up against Macemen, Knights and Musketeers it makes sense to stop all offenses until calvary, grenadiars and cannons. Macemen and Knights are kind of expensive as cannon fodder, it's best to use units with more going for them.

[gus_smedstad]

Re: Pointers on combat Vs the AI

Originally posted by Hauptman
Axemen however should be the mainstay unit, as there is no counter unit. Only an equal unit (or with horse archers, slightly stronger).

In practice, prior to Catapults, my armies tend to be mostly Swordsmen and maybe one or two Axemen and one or two Spearmen. The Axemen are there to deal with enemy Axemen, and the Spearmen are there for Horse Archers, but when it comes to taking a city, the Swordsmen do it best.

In theory, this could be countered with Axemen. In practice, the AI very rarely parks an Axeman in a city for defense. The AI regards Axemen as offensive units, and even if there's one in the city, it's quite likely to move out to attack.

A Swordsman with City Raider is on even terms with base-level Archers in a +40% (Culture 100-499) city. City Raider II is on better than even terms with +60% cities. Now and then you'll run into Archers with City Defense, but fairly often they have no promotions at all.

Compared to the era of Catapults, your losses are definitely higher, but it's not a huge disadvantage.

- Gus

[Arrian]

I don't think city raider is ever an option for catapults.

Yes it is. I use it all the time. Great against archers. Not so great against longbows, though. I think I've been doing it basically right, just with too few 'pults.

-Arrian

[Swiss Pauli]

What about attacking stack composition? What sort of size of stack and mix of units do you go for? I tend to favour 5 units with one anti-mounted, one anti-melee and the rest intented for city assault.

[gus_smedstad]

It depends on how much opposition you expect. Whenever possible I prefer to scout everyone with Open Borders before war begins. As a rule of thumb I want at least 50% more swordsmen then they have archers in a single city.

- Gus

[Hauptman]

Blake pretty much nailed it on the head...

City attack cats do the most damage to the unit they attack, where as collateral do the most damage to all the others...

I mix it up half and half personally. I use the collateral cats first, they can get lucky and still hurt the target defender, and get lots of splash damage on the others... usually enough that the city attack cats have a good chance to WIN their fights. In almost every game I play, the only cats available to upgrade to cannons are my city attack 3 cats that just kept winning their fights.


It should also be noted that grenadiers only beat rifles ON THE ATTACK. They do not get the 50% bonus when they defend vs rifles. So rifles are a good investment if you use them smartly. keep them stacked with cavalry and grenadiers of your own, and they should never fall victim to enemy grenadiers. (side note, do grenadiers get the bonus vs redcoats? I havent really checked, though I'm sure they do.)

Infantry vs artillery beeline... Well thats your preference based on the game... If i was on a offensive push, I'd go for the arty. If it was peace time or a defensive war, then Infantry, but mostly because that tech gives factories also. And that settles the choice for me most times. On an offensive land grab war, I'd take arty just because it helps on the city busting and I'm not gonna stop producing units to build factories.

Usually the late industrial era is my most peaceful. The calm before the storm. Arty and infantry are nice, But tanks and bombers are better, and not far off.

[Blake]

I mix it up half and half personally. I use the collateral cats first, they can get lucky and still hurt the target defender, and get lots of splash damage on the others... usually enough that the city attack cats have a good chance to WIN their fights. In almost every game I play, the only cats available to upgrade to cannons are my city attack 3 cats that just kept winning their fights.

Yup, this is exactly it. Sacrifice collatoral pults until the city raiders actually have a chance to win (I consider ~35% odds good enough, combined with the retreat chance there's even odds of me having the pult at the end).

Quite often I end up getting 2 or more lvl5 pults, because I'll start with like 7-10 city raiders and aren't careful with them (ie throw them into 40% odds fights), at least a couple dodge death enough times to end up promoted with 3xRaider 1x Collatoral. The fun thing about engaging in poor odds fights is there is huge exp for winning, it only takes a few wins to hit lvl5.