Subutai The Almighty

[Diadem]

Well as you can see I'm playing Carthage. There was a reason for that choice. Hannibal is charismatic, which is essentional for this, and he is the only charismatic leader with an UU with a free promotion.

The UU in itself is not useful, the free promotion is. When I got the UU I played around with it a bit, but not a lot. Just enough to get a general iirc.

Once I had my first warlords unit, a Numidian Cavalry of course, I just waited and beelined for military tradition. Once I had cavalry I started levelling.

I took a few risks, early on, before I had a lot of exp. They went right, but had they gone wrong I would have picked a few unit. Not a biggie when you don't have a lot of exp yet. Once I had some good solid levels I started being more careful though. Having a huge techlead helped a lot though. A pikeman is not much of a challenge for a combatIV cavalry with shock.

Once I had all possible promotions that a cavalry can have but a gunship can't, I upgraded him. The last couple of hundred exp I did as a gunship, and they were the easiest. That thing just won't die.

I did loose a few battles. Not a lot, two or three times I think. With 85% withdraw, and 90% as a cavalry, that's not much of a problem though

One time I was stuck at 0.2 health and no moves next to an enemy city, with just 1 garrison unit left. It didn't attack me, for some reason


You have a 99.1% chance of winning against a unit twice as weak as you. 15 base strength and 100% modifiers (combatIV + shock) means 30 base strength. A pike with 40% culture and hills has 15.9 strength. Not much risk of dying.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Thedrin


Not if the unit was made into a Warlord with the leadership promotion upon being built. Assuming it was originally a mounted unit built in a city with only a barracks and a stables for initial XP, it would only have needed to win 283 battles to reach that level. Less if it had more initial XP, it ever shared a tile with other newly created Warlords, or in its early life it was used a little more recklessly (not surprising if it had a high withdraw chance early on).

Yep, you're right on all accounts. The leadership promotion makes sure you have at least 2 experience per battle every time. And yeah, I took some more risk with early battles.

There's 20 free exp from a warlord, plus another 40 or so over the course of the game from other warlords units made in the same tile.

[Shr3dZ]

Umm ya, thats a killer unit~


Question while Im here: It seems the withdrawl chance is wierd - I tend to take flanking but when you attack a unit, even though it says you should have an 80% to retreat, in the odds calculator it shows sometimes something like 12%... wth does it get changed?

[Solver]

Odds shows the odds of actually retreating, not the odds of retreating if you have to .

Simple example. Cavalry has 30% retreat chance. Now, suppose, it's up against some unit and has a 70% chance of victory. That means 100-70=30% of losing, which is where the retreat chance kicks in. So the 30% chance of retreat is from those 30% of losing - which amounts to an overall 9% chance of retreat. So the final odds are: 70% victory, 21% loss, 9% retreat.

[Shr3dZ]

Now I get it, haha - so you its actually saying that you have a 9% chance to retreat at 30%? Im not sure if im even more confused or understanding it perfectly... 0_o

[Solver]

The chance to retreat (Flanking, inherent, etc.) means the chance to retreat instead of losing. So if the unit wins, it doesn't even matter. If it is about to lose, then it has that 30% or whatever chance of retreating. Since your units also have a pretty high (hopefully) chance of winning, they're thus less likely to retreat.

[dacole]

If you have a 30% chance of loosing you have a 30% of 30% chance of retreating. For an overall chance of 9% to retreat. If the %chance you loose goes up so does the percent chance of retreating (since the number you are taking 30% of goes up). Hope this helps.

[Brutus66]

Wow. You need to put Ride of the Valkyries in your music rotation.
Too bad this game doesn't have air mobile infantry to go with that gunship. They dropped the ball in omitting that kind of unit I think.

[Shr3dZ]

So if I have a 0% chance to win, i should have exactly 30% chance to retreat, and 70% to die. So actually you can ignore the odds calculator retreat chance, 30% chance to retreat is 30% chance to retreat, if youre going to lose. Whew~

[Virdrago]

That's useful info. Thanks Solver (again living up to the name). I was wondering about that.

[Solver]

Where is that tie adjust smilie when you need it...

I find the retreat odds display useful for calculating survival chance. If I see something like victory odds 80% and retreat odds 12%, I know that the unit has a 92% chance of survival, which makes me send it into combat without too much worrying.

[vee4473]

Originally posted by Nacht

He said he didn't cheat.

Some people don't consider reloading cheating.

[chuckdelicious]

I'll call your Subutai with Charlamagne.

[chuckdelicious]

And raise you a Sun Tzu.

[chuckdelicious]

I actually wasn't planning on making this particular game about super units, but when I saw that the other continent was absolutely in the stone ages when I arrived, I was going to make a horde of super units. Unfortunately, I lost my other 3 GGs to a vicious Mongolian counter attack involving around 50 trebuchets...

Also, I'm apparently making some poor upgrade decisions on my gunships as they don't have the medic promotions.