Jalaluddin Muhammed Akbar

[Diadem]

@ couerdelion: Tanks are actually allowed each of these three promotions by default. So no problems there.

How did I do this? Well, for a start I didn't bother with early warfare, or anything like that. I just teched, teched teched, until I could build tanks. I ofc had a great general ready to slap onto the very first tank I build. Then I declared war on one foe and just started hitting him, with that single tank and some infantry for support (healing mostly). My goal wasn't to kill him, just to get experience on my tank.

Remember I played on settler difficulty. So I had a huge techlead. I was facing mostly melee and archery units. All easy battles.

The next step was upgrading my tank to a modern armor. By that time he had something like 50 exp or so, enough for drill and combat IV.

Once he was a modern armor I simply declared war on every civilization at once. I spent the next 30 or so turns defending my territory which was being invaded from all sides. The pillaged half of my land, because, of course, I only wanted to use my one tank in defence. After they stopped comming for me, I went for them.

He killed about 4 enemy civilizations on his own. He would have gotten them all if I had had more turns

There's one important trick to getting lots of experience. Easy battles yield less experience than tough ones. So most of the time I kept my tank about about 20 strength, just to make battles tougher. You want those battles with a 99.x% chance of winning, because they often yield 2 or even more exp. Even lower odds battles would give even more exp, but then your unit could die. You don't want that.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Adagio
401 experience?

How the hell is that possible? Does my spearman still have a chance against that tank?

I'm sure it is possible to get that kind of experience in a game, but I would have only thought it possible for something that had been around since it was a warrior (started off battering wolves). But the earliest this unit could have been around since is when it was a tank/panzer, which surely wouldn't have given enough time to give that kind of level of experience.

[Forwarn45]

Originally posted by Diadem


He killed about 4 enemy civilizations on his own. He would have gotten them all if I had had more turns

I was wondering how you did it, and now I get it. Basically your tank was the OGRE.

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by Forwarn45


I was wondering how you did it, and now I get it. Basically your tank was the OGRE.

Heh! A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was one of the co creators of a Mod (although we didn't call them Mods back then) for Warlords II Deluxe that changed the fantasy units to OGRE units.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison

I'm sure it is possible to get that kind of experience in a game, but I would have only thought it possible for something that had been around since it was a warrior (started off battering wolves). But the earliest this unit could have been around since is when it was a tank/panzer, which surely wouldn't have given enough time to give that kind of level of experience.

A warrior is actually a pretty bad idea for such a unit. No first strikes, and even worse, no blitz. You really need blitz to get this kind of exp. You can do at least 3 hits a turn then, and with luck a few more (if you hit a single unit, or the last unit in a stack, your unit moves, and if this happens on roads or railroads that movement bonus counts, so you can do more hits then).

You could start with a chariot or a horse archer. But without a huge techlead it'll be difficult to keep your unit alive all the time. Plus it's a lot of work to do all that warfare during the entire game. A gunship has even more attacks then a tank though. He's weaker, but with enough techlead that's not a problem at all. So perhaps it's even better with a gunship.

I actually did this on a normal sized map, during a quick game. With marathon on a huge map I'm sure you could get much, much more exp. A thousand is probably possible. If you start with a chariot and you have the patience to milk your opponents of units during the entire game... I dunno, maybe even 2000 is possible then.

[smbakeresq]

I had an artillery unit up to around 100 pts once, IIRC. Drill IV, Barrage III, tactics? Pretty good city killer. Never got deep into the 200' though!

[chuckdelicious]

So, I am at it again. Playing marathon, huge map and 15 civs. These are the settings I normally play, but I dialed the difficulty back to noble. I'm only going to use one unit to attack, so this could get really ugly. Wars are extremely protracted with only one unit attacking, but more on that in the next post. I lost the horse archer I was priming to be my main guy and ended up with this fella.

[chuckdelicious]

This next shot is that same guy upgraded to cavalry and already with a load of xp. Usually by this time when I play on noble, the game is pretty much over and I'm mopping up the other continent. This time, not so much. The crazy thing about this unit is that usually when he attacks, the percentages look like 86% win, 14% withdrawal. I actually threw him at a rifleman in a city 3 times when he had 2.5 health and he withdrew each time. He's not going to die unless he gets attacked, but I keep him in a pretty large stack of stuff for the most part. Because of the long wars, the ai has pretty much caught up on tech and taking out a city defended with 5 riflemen with a single cavalry, even this guy, is not easy and certainly not quick. I've resorted to using artillery pieces to soften up cities, but it's taking way too long so I'm trying to expidite flight and rocketry. I've got to get to work on that other continent or it's going to be tough to win via conquest.

[Diadem]

Seems clear that my record is going to be toast Well it was no contest, huge marathon vs. normal quick game...

But that withdrawel story is interesting. I don't know how withdrawel works to be honest, I've never experimented with it much, as it seemed useless. How can you get a 100% withdrawel chance? I've tried it once, a general on a submarine to get 100%, but it seemed hard-capped at 80% (iirc).

[Dis]

80% wow. I'm happy if I can get around 30 or 40. But I tend to lose my high experience units too easily.

[Diadem]

Well a submarine starts with 50% already. One promotion gives 10% extra, the next one gives another 20%. If you slap a warlord on him you can give hijm another 30%. That's 110% total.

But like I said: It's hardcapped.

[chuckdelicious]

Well, it's definitely not capped at 80%, see the cavalry unit screenie above.

EDIT: I was actually gonna stop playing that game (gunship is around 580xp now and out of upgrades), but I've got a warlord and a sub laying around...let's experiment.

[Diadem]

Wait, now I remember. They put it so that you simply can't get over 100%.

A submarine starts with 50%, when you put the 30% bonus on it from the warlords upgrade, and another 10% from flanking 1, then the flanking 2 promotion disappears altogether.

If you however put flanking 1 and 2 on him first, then the warlords withdrawel promotion disappears altogether.

So in the first scenario you get 90%, and in the second 80%

This, by the way, is a rather bad method of implementation of a hard-cap

[Virdrago]

Originally posted by chuckdelicious
EDIT: I was actually gonna stop playing that game (gunship is around 580xp now and out of upgrades), but I've got a warlord and a sub laying around...let's experiment.

Can you actually put a General on a ship? I haven't tried that...

[Diadem]

Yes, it is possible. I recall the manual saying somewhere that you can do it on coasts, and walk onto the ship, so to speak, but that didn't work for me.

You can however, put a submarine in a city, together with a warlord. And move all other units out to avoid exp-pollution.